Scary - Andrew Skurka's new Great Alaskan-Yukon Loop Project

In one year circumvent the Alaska - Yukon wilderness. 4500 miles. No trails. Seven months.
Andrew Skurka's webpage on this trip

There was a local Camino de Santiago gathering of pilgrims recently. A lot of sharing of stories and exchange of experiences, and a couple of presentations. One was by Phil Cousineau, author of the Art of Pilgrimage. He was a good speaker, and I took a bunch of notes which I can't locate now. I do remember that he had a broad definition of pilgrimage. As a baseball fan, he made a pilgrimage to Cooperstown. Certainly Andrew's trips are pilgrimage to the extreme.

Sibley Desecration

The Sibley Labyrinth is one of the sacred spots in our east bay hills. Hills block the freeway sounds to the east and the west.



A good spot to take grandchildren for a moment with nature.

BEFORE

We've been gone most of the summer, hiking on the long distance trails, so it has been months since we have been to the Sibley Labyrinth. Finally a couple of friends stop by for a hike, and we include the labyrinth. I am absolutely stunned when I round the corner where the labyrinth comes into view. Instead of this scene of peace, there is a giant dam in front of us - fill for a new road cutting around the hill to the east. A major part of the hill has been removed to provide the fill.

AFTER

As I looked at this, I kept saying how could they do this without a hearing? Maybe something happened while we were gone, but this kind of construction doesn't go on without considerable planning. I still don't know why it was allowed to happen, but our friend was able to find out the purpose.

The road now leads down to a hill with three PG&E towers on it. EBRPD made some sort of trade with PG&E for some of their land for the right to build this road.

I don't know what the park district gained from this trade, but I hope it was substantial. I still find it hard to believe that any EBRPD board member who had been to the labyrinth would allow this desecration.

Walking from California to Jerusalem?!

I consider ourselves chronic walkers, possibly obsessed, but once in a while I run across someone who gives us a reality check. On the bell shaped curve, we are far from the outliers.

This morning a Google Alert on Camino de Santiago popped up about our friend and walker, Sue Kenney, so I checked it out. She is picking up some friends in Ontario (Canada) who have walked from Paso Robles, California. I check further.

Today's outliers are Peta Wolf and Mike Metras, walking from Paso Robles, California to Jerusalem. In the past they have walked the Camino de Santiago, and from Germany to Rome. Check out their website at

http://www.walkingwithawareness.com/ctjwalk.htm

Adventures with Oakland Tribune Customer Service

It's been a long time since we've subscribed to the Oakland Tribune, and I had forgotten the adventures with customer service.

A promotion came in the mail a couple of weeks ago that seemed so good that we decided to try the Trib again. This was 52 weeks of the print edition for $49.95.

I filled out and submitted the order online www.bayareanewsgroup.info/DMOT0909 on Oct 10 and expected to see the paper within 7 days. Nothing had arrived by Sunday the 18th, so I go online and search for the subscriber services form.

That is not easy. Oakland Tribune is one of multiple newspapers owned by ANG newspapers, which is now Bay Area Newspapers. It's never clear which ownership layer does what. I google for oakland tribune customer service. At the very top of the page is a link to Home Delivery - clicking that just brings up a general ang page. Finally I go to help at the bottom of the page and that gives me a choice of New Subscription or Manage your subscriptions online, which is where the original Home Delivery link should have sent me. I go to to Manage your subscription and fill out the subscriber services form for Contact by email.

It is now three days later, and I have not heard anything from the Tribune.

Time to telephone. I google for Oakland Tribune Customer Service. First hit is the contact us page. No phone for customer service, just main switchboard. I call that number, she (the computer) says speak name or dept you want. I say "customer service" the computer says I don't recognize that name. After a couple of trys it lets me hit 0 for operator, or maybe I had to say operator. Finally, live person! I say "I'm calling about an Oakland Tribune special offer that... she cuts me off. "you have the wrong number". I say "this is ang isn't it?". She "what?", me "isn't this ANG?", she "yes, but you have to call 839-7323. I say "but the Oakland Tribune Contact Us page sent me here" "oh, well, I understand, thanks" and hang up.

Next, call the 7323 number. After verifying my name and address, he says I am a former customer and we are not subscribed. He tells me to fax him credit card statement showing proof that we have paid for new subscription.

I hang up, check with the credit card company - no charge for the Oakland Tribune showing - they haven't processed the credit card. I look online for the special offer again - can't find it - don't remember the secret link that was on the special mailing. The mailer is in the recycle bin somewhere. Today is garbage day, so a lot in the bin. Dump it out, search, near bottom, find the mailer.

Decide just to start over, ordering it again. This time I call the number on the mailer. Don't use the special link. A live woman answers. I tell her my story. She says "We're an outside service. We just collect the information and send it to customer service. If you call them and give them the special code, they will give you the special rate".

One more time I call the 7323 number. Get the same person. Give him the special code. He says we can do a new subscription. And he starts talking about their ezpay automatic credit card deduction. I say "no, I just want this one year special deal". He says ok one year for .... and quotes me the full rate. I say "no, I want the DMOT0909 one year 7 day print issues for $49.95. He queries me some more about it. Finally, says they don't have any such offer in their database. They will have to escalate it. Call them back in four or five days.

I say "can't you call me back? I've already made five calls today". He says something I didn't quite understand, but think the meaning was that I have to call back. So, that is where it stands now. If I haven't heard from them in a week, and even remember this issue (I do have a life outside of calling the Oakland Tribune), I will call them back.

This was initially an email to the Tribune Customer Service, just for a heads up from a customer's view, but the email probably will just go to some call center on Easter Island. It at least has given me something to blog about for the day.

Whine and Dine aka Our GR653 Walk from Dourgne - Sept 2009 to Oloron St. Marie

For a music backed overview, check out our YouTube video of the Dourgne to Oloron walk.

In spite of the video appearances this was a somewhat difficult and stressful trip for us. Our seventh walk on a pilgrimage trail, we were looking at it as more of a vacation adventure, than as a serious trek. Our plan was 20 to 25k per day and to use B&Bs and hotels when possible, not using scarce pilgrim gite space, leaving that for the pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostella. I'll give you an overview of the day to day, some planning tips, and then why it wasn't so fine for us, but could be for you.

Trip Notes:

1. From Toulouse, got taxi to Gare Routiere got bus to in Revel, the closest point to Dourgne. From there got a taxi to Dourgne. Toulouse bus schedules at www.haute-garonne.fr and the bus lines that go to Revel are 56 and 57.

Walked from Dourgne to St. Felix. Stayed at Le Cocagne - no star room, but food and ambiance good. In the main square. The fancier hotel is away from square.

Walked La Rigole & stayed at gite Moulin de Naurouze where GR653 hits Canal du Midi - very welcoming and pilgrim friendly - lots of pilgrim info. Canal du Midi info www.canal-et-voie-verte.com/

From there walked Canal du Midi. Choice is canal with shade, water, but paved path or GR653 with villages, no shade, and few facilities. Stayed at La Masquière in Écluse en Laval. Nice but pricey. Nothing else available and this wasn't far enough for the next day to work.

Took taxi to Ramonville, walked from there into Toulouse. Stayed at Hotel des Arts a one star but centrally located and pilgrim friendly. Takes some adjusting to get used to the toilet being visible from every part of the room. Don't miss Augustin Museum.

From Toulouse, took bus to Colomiers at outskirts of town, then walked to pilgrim gite in Leguevin. Found out that next day's route had just been changed, too many trees down in forest, and temporary route setup - not waymarked.

From Leguevin walked to just short of L'Isle-Jourdain at Chateau de Guerre - hard to get to from new route - had to ask and walk thru someone's fields to get there.

Next day on to Gimont at Hotel Le Coin du Feu - supermarket in town, but it closed just before we got to it, 15 minutes before closing hours. After that we paid attention. Closing hours in southern France mean when the last employee locks the door and leaves. They might close the door to incoming customers much earlier, also, if store is empty near closing, they sometimes lock up and leave.

Next day was one of our favorite stays - the gite at La Croisee de St. Cricq, just short of Auch. Very nice couple running it. We were only ones there and shared their meal.

Then a short day into Auch, the birthplace of D'Artagnan, at Hotel de France

From Auch, on to L'Isle de Noe - a town on a small island between two rivers. We stayed at Edna's Chambres d'Hotes - Mme Moody. A unique stay. She saw an ad in an English paper about 3 years ago, and bought it sight unseen, never having been to France, and not speaking a word of French.

From there walked to Monlezun and stayed with Mme Seailles - she had no English, and we little French, but it worked out.

The next day we walked direct to Maubourguet, bypassing Marciac and following an alternate route in the CFSJ. Only problem was that distances and details in CFSJ weren't quite right, but map and compass got us there. Stayed at Hotel de France.

General note on prices. Bed, dinner and breakfast at a gite or CdH for two was about 70 euros, at a hotel in a small town, about 90 euros.

From Maubourguet, there are no accommodations within our walking range on the GR653, so we took the alternate route thru Lembeye. The CFSJ description of the alternate did not match the trail at all - possibly it has been rerouted since guide was made. Anyway, we soon realized we had missed the alternate, due to our map and compass checking, and made our way by small roads to our stay in Lembeye. Hotel Pelerin was not open - apparently on owner's whim, opens and closes, but stayed with Mme Price and her daughter about 1 km past town. Nice meal and company.

From Lembeye, back to the GR653 at Anoye and on to Morlaas, again at Hotel de France don't think they are a chain - no similarities.

The next day we pass the outskirts of Pau on the way to Lescar. One of the highlights of the trip was walking into the cathedral, tired and pack laden and hearing the sound of the huge organ as the organist practiced. The pipes filled the end of the cathedral, and the sounds penetrated to the bone. Stayed at La Terrasse - wonderful gaspacho. Another pilgrim told us that the gite was excellent, but we had already booked the hotel.

Next day to Estialescq - CdH Maison Naha - we highly recommend, due to hostess, food and accommodation.

Waymarking varied. Some new, some old and faded, never any comfort waymarks - i.e. on a 5k straight stretch, one mark at each end. One in the middle would be a comfort mark, to reassure that you are still on the trail. In some areas there were red and white plastic flags, from extremely faded to new, that seemed to mark the trail.

On to Oloron St. Marie - stayed at Hotel Alysson - too far from main section of town and pricey, restricting food choices - suggest Hotel de la Paix as better option.

Train back to Toulouse with a couple hour layover in Pau - went up the nearby funicular to center of Pau - views, castle, people, restaurants, then on to Toulouse and Hotel des Arts again. Next day fly home.

Suggestions, Hints

Some of the difficulties were unique to our trip, others you may encounter. Starting from Toulouse would be better than starting from Dourgne. Accommodations are infrequent and quickly filled in the area around Toulouse. This is a fine bicycle route, as you can adapt to filled accommodations, and just go on to the next.

For walkers it is a different matter. As a walker, you need to reserve your accommodations if you expect them to prepare you a meal, and it is a good idea to reserve even if you just need a bed. You need a plan for when you can't get a place, such as a tent and food, a taxi, etc. The stages work a little better if you can easily do 30k per day. If you are staying in a place that provides breakfast, it is hard to get walking before 8 or 8:30. If we couldn't find accommodations within 25k, we would opt for a lesser distance. For 30k per day, it is best to get going by 7 or 7:30. Accommodations are frequently off trail, so your navigation skills must be good.

Always carry lunch material. It is very rare to find more than one place per day where you can buy supplies, so when you hit the village of the day, get what you need. I also suggest carrying snack material so that you have something to eat about 10:30 in the morning and 2:30 in the afternoon. That snack should provide lots of salt and sugar to keep you going.

For most of the trip, we found we didn't have much energy after walking the first couple of hours. Late in the trip we decided that this was probably an electrolyte imbalance due to hours of sweating, and at first opportunity started carrying bags of potato chips. This helped quite a bit. Energy bars of some sort would have been a good idea, but we never had our act together enough to get some. The little Casino groceries didn't have them and supermarkets within walking distance were rare. On the plus side, there were lots of figs on trees hanging over the trail, so we got some fruit intake. (We would never reach over a fence or onto a farmer's property, but we figured that anything in the airspace directly above the road/trail was fair game).

We had a number of days in the 80s (ºF) and a number in the 40s, a couple of days of rain and boot sucking mud - the rain happened to coincide with few days of dirt tracks. Humidity very high for most of the trip. 95% of the time is on small paved country roads. Imagine a 10 inch pie 2 inches thick attached to your foot, and a softball on the end of your hiking stick, and that is boot sucking mud.

When we got home and looked at our pictures, it looked like the best trip we ever took, and in some ways it was. The people we met were delightful, the cities buzzing with activity. However, on the trail, we saw practically no one, maybe a dozen hikers over three weeks, including the ones we met in the few gites where we stayed. Many days were fairly boring. After several days of walking through cornfields, Susan said: "Are you sure we're not in Iowa?". Same feeling after walking along La Rigole - a small feeder canal to Canal du Midi - haven't we been at this curve a dozen times already today? The sameness also made the navigation difficult. Some areas were well waymarked, others scarce or missing waymarks. You had to count the little side roads, as they were not labeled. "Is this the 5th side road from the right, or the sixth? Well, it is a dirt road. Do dirt roads count?".

Almost forgot, have to put in © 2009 backpack45.com to slow the blog bandits. I don't mind if they give attribution, but there are some spammers that copy legitimate articles and highlight text so a click will go off to their spam.

When to go:

We did this trip in September. That accounts for the lack of other walking pilgrims. In talking to our various hosts, we found that during April and May there is a lot of pilgrim traffic - frequently filling the gites. These are the people walking the entire route from Arles to Santiago. Many of them carry a tent and expect to do their own meals much of the time, though some have sent their tent home by the time they get to Oloron St. Marie.

Navigation Notes:

I have carried a small Silva compass, about 2x3 inches on all our trips, backpacking and otherwise, and rarely if ever looked at it. This trip I carried it and the map in my hand, and looked at it frequently. With all the little unmarked roads, and sameness of the trail, it was important to know exactly where we were. If we had off trail accommodations, we had to know that we were turning off on the right road. We carried the 1/100000 IGN maps for the trail. These are identical to the map pages in the back of the Sur le chemin de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, la via Tolosona, la voie du soleil... - Francois Lepere & André Dehnel guide. (we didn't use this guide except the maps). We carried the Miam Miam Dodo, the Confraternity of St. James Guide, and the Le chemin d'Arles vers Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, Louis Laborde-Balen - Jean-Pierre Siréjol guide. We mostly relied on the CFSJ, the MMD and the map and compass.

If I were to do this part of the route again, I would look for more detailed maps. Excellent maps are available interactively on http://www.geoportail.fr/ but they don't print out easily. Since we got back I've been looking for better maps. You can get the 1:24000 IGN maps, but it is costly and heavy. There is a website www.geolives.com that allows you to download topo maps of Europe, and load them to your iphone or pda. You can also print them. It looks like a possibility, but I haven't tried it.

Cell Phones

Last year we carried an unlocked GSM phone and bought an Orange sim card when we got to Paris. This year we ordered a sim card in advance from Rebelfone. The Orange card is prepaid, and we had to buy cards to top it up as we went along. Orange also now has a cheap cellphone that you can buy with initial minutes when you get to France. However, the Rebelfone has worked out ok to make calls. When we got the sim card, it had the phone number on it, so we knew our number in advance. We were able to make calls without problems throughout southern France. We still haven't gotten the final charges on our credit card, since they have to wait until the charges from the French carrier come through. Hopefully they will be reasonable. Orange is the French carrier.

Why did we have a difficult time?

It was a matter of mindset and circumstances. We were not primed for a serious venture. If we had been headed for Santiago, a couple of months away, then a week of not so good walking would not be significant. We could anticipate something different in the days to come. In this case we were using our scarce vacation time, and when much of that time was not fun, having some doubts about our choice of activity. We did get off to a bad start. Missed our plane connection in London, so got to Toulouse the next day and by taxi, bus and taxi again, got to Dourgne and started walking immediately, rather than having a night's rest first in Toulouse. That put us into catch-up mode as far as food, arranging accommodations, etc., not to mention jet lag, and we never really caught up. The lack of other hikers had a big negative impact. When we encounter other walkers and spend a few minutes chatting, that has a huge positive effect - it gives us a burst of mental energy that will carry us for a couple of hours. It helps the boring parts. That has always been a highlight of other trips, but it wasn't till this trip that we realized how much we depend on it.

I think if you start this trip from Toulouse, and have food for emergency supper and breakfast, as well as the usual lunch and snacks supply, you will do fine.

Ray Jardines new book "Trail Life"

I've been a Ray Jardine fan ever since I read his first book, The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook, back around 1995. When he came out with Beyond Backpacking in 1999, I snatched it up and again devoured his tips.

This time though, I resisted. I'd been following his tips for 10 years or more - used a tarp in the Sierras, trekked 500 miles in a lightweight pack with no waist belt. What more could he have to say?And lets face it, he is a little off the deep end on some subjects. Also, the book was available only on his website and at full price. Finally I broke down and ordered it from him.

I sat down, read it from cover to cover, and again was captured. He seems so utterly rational that I am tempted to once more "go by the book" - Ray's book. However, I have to keep in mind that he is one of the least likely persons to die a natural death that I know of - and probably is going to drag Jenny along with him. Those adventures, though, give a massive depth of experience. Some 25000 miles of hiking and backpacking, climbing mountains in Antarctica, falling from the sky, paddling across the Atlantic and still going.

In case it's not clear, I do recommend the book. You can gloss over some his extremes, such as the pages on how to remove brand logos from clothing and equipment, and read the nitty gritty. Ultralight pack, quilt, tarp, gear, food.

The book is now available on Amazon, but only from other sellers. You can also order it direct from Ray.

To foil the blog thieves copyright 2009 www.backpack45.com

Of Altered States and Airplanes

We just got back from walking three weeks on the GR653 in France a couple of days ago. In some ways it was a difficult trip for us, but I am still digesting it and will write about it later. However, as I do the chores of home, I find that I'm still in that altered state common to finishing long walks, even though the walk was stressful.

In that frame of mind, I am in the kitchen peacefully peeling a squash for supper, gazing out the window. There is this screaming of an airplane, seemingly right on top of us. I see the neighbor across the street, running out to see what is happening. I don't see anything, so run out a side door, looking another direction. Susan goes out the front door. It still sounds like an airplane is going to drop into our laps.

Suddenly this gigantic gray airplane with no markings pops over the the ridge to the south, right at treetop level, and heading for us, straight north along the Oakland hills. The noise is deafening. The photo is a photoshop mockup, as I hadn't the presence of mind to grab a camera, but it is fairly accurate as to size and location of the plane. We think the plane is going down, but it banks east and we don't hear a crash. Sirens are going off.

We turn on the news, call friends, trying to find out what happened. Nothing. Get on Twitter. A few others have seen it - a comment "Holy Mother of God, what was that?".
Nothing the next morning in the papers and nothing in the news, so this is one near miss that didn't get recorded. (plane was lower than a close by hilltop).

The next day, since nothing was in the news, I get on the net, do an Oakland airport noise report, and in the course of that, find an incredibly useful planes in flight website that shows both real time and in replay mode, all the planes flying in our area. I set it for replay mode for the time the incident occurred, and just watched the planes. In a few minutes I saw the culprit - a military Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, flight FRED08. If you click the right spot, you can see the plane's entire flight path. It had circled Mt. Diablo about five times, headed towards us, and made one circle around the hilltop near us and then headed north. That circle by us, took it over us twice, so we heard the first pass, and then saw it when it came over the second time.

Their elevation was 2808 feet according to the tracking website. We are at 1000 feet, and it seemed like it was 500 to 1000 feet above us. Roundtop, the nearby hilltop is 1762. It looked to be lower than Roundtop. The C-5 is one of the largest aircraft in the world. Here is a video of a C-5 taking off.

If you want to follow this flight yourself, get onto the webtrak website above, and in replay mode, select Oct 3 17:03 and select the airplanes for a few minutes. FRED08 will show up near the middle. Once you have selected it, Click the little airplane in the box that appears with the FRED08 flight info, and a trace of the entire flight path will appear.

*** followup *** Got a call from Oakland airport a few days later, confirming that it was a military flight. The UC Berkeley - USC football game was going on at the time of the flight, and the stadium is about a mile north of us. The plane was buzzing the stadium as part of a stunt.

You water rich East Coasters and Pacific Northwesters don't properly appreciate the lush beauty of your surroundings

As we water impoverished Californians followed the PCT into Oregon, and a week or so ago into Washington, we were stunned by the shades of green. First of all, plants covered everything, nothing at all like the sands of the Mojave or the granite of the high Sierra.

One of the first things we saw was the bat winged plant. That is my name. It always has three leaves, each one lobed like the wings of a bat. Sometimes the middle leaf would be smaller, like a head, giving an even more bat winged appearance. Scarce initially, as we got into northern Oregon we saw it whenever we saw Thimbleberries (which was often). Eventually it was identified as the Vanilla Leaf plant. I like my name better.

Insert to slow down blog thieves: ©2009 backpack45.com - ok to quote if credit given.

And the Big Plants. We would walk by some small wet area, and there would be these giant leaved plants. There must have been a half dozen different species with leaves over a foot in diameter. Some of them were positively evil looking. One had these big maple like leaves facing upward, the entire top surface covered with impressive thorns. Look a little further to see the stem as well covered with thorns. Any caterpillar crawling or dropping on this plant would be impaled in moments. Turns out it is named Devil's Club and is used in all sorts of herbal cures. i.e. rubbing a man's body with the sap makes him irresistible to women, etc.


Walking along the trail, you have the feeling that these big plants are lurking to grab some unwary hiker and stealthily devour him. Possibly I exaggerate, but it really is an entirely different world from most of California. There are conifers, but most are different from the ones we know. Lupine and paintbrush abound, but new strange and beautiful new ones all over. There is this big bunchgrass like thing, but it is not grass. It has huge flower stalks - up to six feet tall - fields of them. After weeks, we found out it is beargrass, traditionally used in Native American basket weaving.

We did a lot of dry camps this last trip, in spite of hitting water every day, the water wasn't where we wanted to end the day. The greenery gave us a new problem. Anywhere we dry camp, we at least need a flat enough spot to put our tent down. In California, at least we could see the ground surface and tell if it were totally covered with down timber, big rocks, etc. In Oregon and Washington, the ground surface was a mystery - in most places probably the sun hadn't hit the ground since the last forest fire several hundred years ago. We walked a few extra miles each day, looking for a place to sleep. The tent was an essential for us, due to the flies and mosquitos. However, some had a simpler solution. For example, at 7:30 one morning we walked by this one hiker still cowboy camping right on the trail.

There are regional attitudes. Our last three days were in Washington. The PCT takes three days to get to Panther Creek Campground. It can be road walked in one day. Several people we met on the trail lived in the Pacific Northwest, and said those first three days were boring. We found them challenging at times, but green and beautiful. Even in the Pacific Crest Guide for Washington and Oregon we saw signs of this attitude difference. In southern California, a water source might be described as a seeping spring. When you got there you would find a green spot of a foot or so, with a true trickle of water, maybe a cup a minute. Some hike would have already scooped out a depression big enough so you could get the edge of your cup in and get a half cup or so, and wait for it to fill again. In Oregon and Washington, a seeping spring might be four feet in diameter, six inches deep, and a gallon per minute flowing out.

My message is appreciate what you have.

Backpack45.com Oldest US based Camino website still active?

I've thought this was true for some time, but decided to do some checking with the wayback machine, etc. After some poking around, decided to expand this to a short history of the online/internet English language sources of Camino de Santiago information.

2000, when I was searching for information, I found two sources. The GoCamino listserv was the best, but the Online Telegraph provided good basic information. Around that time the St. James Yahoo Group existed, but I didn't find it.
It was an outshoot of Caminho de Santiago de Compostela website - the Brazilian based site said to founded around 1996, but its first appearance on the wayback machine is Sept 14, 2000.

The US based GoCamino listserv was setup by Maryjane Dunn and Linda Davidson, and had a supporting website - Friends of the Road to Santiago. Both the listserv and website ceased to be active in Aug of 2004 as the founders moved on to other interests. GoCamino was reborn as an oakapple.net listserv a few months later and all the GoCamino listserv archives can be found there.

The British Confraternity of St. James has maintained a site since Oct 11, 1999 and now has a wealth of information, but in 2000 it was minimal.

The Yahoo Group Santiagobis has been around since Oct 19,2000 and has been consistently an excellent source of information. European based, but pilgrims worldwide participate.

Aug 14, 2002 the Canadian Little Company of Pilgrims website started. This site has a strong Canadian focus, so has not attracted much US participation.

Backpack45.com was setup on May 24, 2003 as a way of giving back for all the support we got while on our pilgrimage in 2001. We have continued to update it ever since, as we walk the French routes, and from Portugal. I have yet to find a US based site that started earlier and is still continuing.

April 6, 2004 American Pilgrims sets up their initial webpage. Oct 14,2007 converted to their new full service website.

May 12, 2004 Grant Spangler sets up the excellent US based msn group ElCaminoSantiago. That continued until Feb 2008 when Microsoft discontinued group support. He has since setup the website ElCaminoSantiago.com.

Dec 23, 2005 James Clem sets up US based ourcamino.com


Doing this post got me curious enough to do some more research. You can find the resulting page on our website: http://www.backpack45.com/camino-web-history.html

Insert to slow down blog thieves: ©2009 backpack45.com - ok to quote if credit given.

Pacific Crest Trail - this year's trip

Toads, slugs, volcanos. People say that Oregon is just a fast long green break on the way to Canada, but that is not the way we found it. Some truly spectacular mountain wilderness areas - The Sisters, Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, to mention the main ones. It might have been 100 degrees down in Bend, but we had about a week of hiking most of the day in below 40 weather. Still, the ghostly appearance of 100 foot trees shrouded in the fog is worth seeing. Even Mirror Lake was beautiful, with mist rising off of it, and not a mountain reflection to be seen, not even the far shore.

This year we started at highway 58 in Oregon, just past Lake Odell, and finished in Panther Creek Campground, about 3 days into Washington.

In Southern California, lizards are always zipping away from your feet at the last minute. In Oregon it was small toads. Their color varied according to the terrain, but all had a faint yellow stripe down the back. Days later we went through a stretch where we saw more slugs per mile than anywhere else on the PCT. These were sort of a dark olive green.

Our one innovation this trip was cooking breakfast in the tent vestibule (very carefully) - a real luxury on those cold mornings.

Insert to slow down blog thieves: ©2009 backpack45.com - ok to quote if credit given.

I had better give you at least one mountain picture.