You may think you only need trekking poles when carrying a 20 or 30lb pack, on a backpacking trip. But there are plenty of legit reasons to use your poles when day hiking as well. I’ll share with you some of my personal ones for using mine on my local excursions. Related: I use the Cascade Mountain Tech Quick Lock, …
What is a Hiking Mid Layer?
A hiking mid layer is an insulated piece of clothing that generally covers your trunk, arms, and at least the lower part of your neck. It’s meant to go directly over your base layer and provide warmth, if such alone, or with a shell, is not warm enough on the trail. The term ‘mid layer’ can mean different things, depending …
How to Import a Gaia GPS Route Into Google Earth
There may be times when you want to import your Gaia GPS route into Google Earth. Gaia’s 3D mode is a little less smooth than Google Earth’s, when it comes to moving the map around with the mouse on a laptop. So, for instance, if you’re doing a recorded visual demonstration of a hiking trail, like I did for my …
How Exactly Does Your Body Adjust To High Altitude?
When you find yourself at high altitude, your body has to adjust to the lack of oxygen, relative to that available at sea level. Otherwise you would not be able to survive or thrive in that type of environment. But how exactly does your body do just that? Indeed it performs an entire set of physiological changes to try to …
Day Hiking and Altitude Sickness – What to Know
Let’s talk about day hiking and altitude sickness, otherwise known as acute mountain sickness (AMS). Here in Southern California we have something called the Six-Pack of Peaks Challenge. Hikers register at the SPoP’s website, summit 6 different peaks included on the challenge at their own pace, then get invited to a completion party. Sounds good, but for the casual, So …
How to Choose a Winter Backpacking Tent
In this article, I’ll list a set of characteristics a 4-season tent should have, that distinguishes it from a 3-season tent, and makes it more winter-weather hardy. This will give you an inventory of items to look for, regarding how to choose a winter backpacking tent. Afterwards, I’ll show a real world example tent that meets most if not all …
11 Tips for Winter Backpacking
Here are tips for winter backpacking to help you start to wrap your mind around colder temperature excursions. I won’t cover everything here with these tips, but the further along I get with the subject on Camp Hike Live California, the more links I will provide throughout the article. And I will at least be going over the basics. It’s …
Understanding Base Layer Hiking Clothing
For outdoor activities that last hours to days, like hiking and backpacking, you need to understand what base layer clothing is, and how to use it. Doing so could mean the difference between having a warm, dry, enjoyable, and possibly less stinky outdoor experience, versus a cold, wet, miserable time, with a higher risk of hypothermia. What is base layer …
What’s Up With The REI Base Camp 4 Tent – Review
In this review, I’ll be going over what I’ve found using my REI Base Camp 4 tent at different So Cal locations, including windy Gaviota State Park, Big Bear Lake, Los Padres National Forest, and everyone’s favorite, El Capitan State Beach. Summary The REI Base Camp 4 is a great car camping tent for everything So Cal has to offer, …
Best Hikes Near The San Fernando Valley
On my “best hikes near the San Fernando Valley” list are trails, not necessarily all starting in the Valley, but which are credibly accessible to its residents. These are my favorite hikes, and I’ll let you know why as we go down the list. Topanga State Park trails, Topanga 20828 Entrada Rd, Topanga, CA 90290 Topanga State Park offers a …