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gently caress. marry. t-rex posted:Then we sprinted down the whole slope with gravity and it was super easy- literally flew down intersecting our trudged cutbacks in the snow over and over me and my friends running as fast as we could and we finished in about 15 minutes and it was v exhilarating. Then we left because if stayed another night we'd probably die it was like -10f Take care when hiking downhill though everybody, you can seriously gently caress your knees up. People tend to think of the downhill bit as the 'easy' part, but you can injure yourself so much more if you do it wrong, and there aren't really any ways to avoid it other than caution and moderation. Last year I was doing a 20km hike up and down a mountain that I hadn't done in a while, and on the way down I misjudged the distance, kept thinking there was a good spot to rest sooner than there was, ended up pushing me and my wife way further and harder than I should have and hosed up the iliotibial band in both my knees, and both of hers. Did 8k down in probably an hour and a half, then the last 2k in about 6. It was very unpleasant, especially the last km or so, when I decided carrying my wife on my back and both backpacks over my shoulders was a good idea, since I'd worked out a marginally faster stride than she could manage. Remember, every step you take on a level surface exerts like, 3-5 times your bodyweight or something on your load bearing knee, more obviously when you've got a loaded backpack, and more when you're going downhill, making longer reaches with your leg, jarring it or distributing weight more evenly. Couldn't go back to hiking for a month after that. Shouldn't have been hiking even then, honestly, lots of pain, but I wasn't going to lose more of the summer. Lots of hiking horror stories in this thread though, gonna have to post something more uplifting. There's a pretty good positive sentiment implied though in the fact that even after going through these poo poo episodes, we keep going back nonetheless. |
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Oct 9, 2015 12:57
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
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Hiking off the BC coast this summer provided some depressing evidence for how hosed up the climate has been there lately. There are a few glacial lakes deep in the mountains I usually like to go cliff jumping at, but this year they were at least ten to fifteen feet lower than usual. Where I'd normally be jumping into was nothing bust wide expanses of barren boulders. The river that usually flows downhill the whole way along the "trail" was nowhere to be seen. Coastal rainforest transforming into coastal desert. |
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Oct 9, 2015 14:31
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Here's one of the lakes I was talking about earlier. Not the worst example, but all the land in the foreground should be under water, and the water line around the edges ought to be right up to the tree line. Here's a small stream that I had to walk back down along after wrecking my iliotibial bands.  Aaaand a stairway made out of roots that I thought was neat?  I dunno, most of my pictures are on a portable harddrive I don't feel like digging through right now. |
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Oct 9, 2015 18:06
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dogcrash truther posted:These are great...whereabouts did you take em? Looks like the Pacific Northwest. Got it in one, yeah. These were all taken in BC, couple hours out of Vancouver, the Chilliwack area. Here's a non hiking story. Couple months ago some of my friends and I decided to build a hot tub while camping by another lake in the area. Then we did.  Seems to have had a weird effect on Brian here though.  Couple weeks later there was a forest fire in that area. Went camping again and watched it from across the lake.  And here's a picture of my wife hanging out by a river, as an apology for all that pasty goony dudeflesh earlier up. 
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Oct 9, 2015 19:41
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tao of lmao posted:as promised Beautiful. |
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Oct 10, 2015 00:42
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joke_explainer posted:it's hard to justify leaving, like, air conditioning, and really solidly built walls to go out to the wilderness. Nope! You can even do it in the winter, it can be rewarding no matter when you do it. Here's two from the camping trip where I proposed.  
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Oct 10, 2015 12:01
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Fantastic. meteloides posted:winter camping seems hardcore to me, but I freeze my rear end off at the slightest inclination. the pictures are beautiful, though! One of the great appeals to this sort of activity for me is the isolation, the removal of other human stimuli, and you almost never get that as poignantly as when winter camping. The silence is pristine, especially when your in a real freezing period, it's like the entire world around you is paused, holding its breath. When it snows you can hear the snow falling in this pervasive soft static, the only sound, and its almost like being in an outdoor isolation chamber, when your vision is limited to a short distance in any direction, details beyond become formless, fluid things, and there's no sound in the stillness but the soft hissing of snowfall. And when your tastes go the other way, you never appreciate a roaring fire and a bunch of booze as much as you do in the frozen outdoors. It goes from just a pleasant distraction to the best thing on earth. Great if you've got access to a simple cabin or something too, where you can close it up and turn the room into a sauna, then jump outside into the snow every once in a while. It's great too if you can camp somewhere with a lot of natural water features, as when waterfalls freeze, or partially freeze, you get all these awesome ice 'sculptures' you can come across. |
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Oct 11, 2015 11:43
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Why not go fly fishing or deer hunting whilst being thrown up on? |
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Oct 11, 2015 13:18
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Nonsense, the earlier a baby comes to know the rapids, the earlier it can master their power! Or, some kind of harness setup? Baby earplugs? |
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Oct 11, 2015 14:28
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Get them started early |
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Oct 11, 2015 17:39
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There's no denying that some people, the people who engage in uncharted cave diving without telling anyone or whatever, are playing fast and loose with their lives. That being said, generally people who are "officially" exploring new ground are doing it with rescue groups and safety precautions in place, and do it in controlled stages, with lots of training. Most cavers will stick to places previously mapped, or will be exploring places that seem relatively geologically stable, rather than squeezing through miles of just body sized unmarked crevices. And frankly, a cave, a long-standing geological structure of solid stone, is often much safer than an industrial scene. In a factory or whatever, you do things incredibly carefully because there's a chance some nob is going to come by and turn on the thresher while you're inside it or whatever (plus some company is trying to cover their liability), that's not usually a problem in a cave. |
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Oct 12, 2015 09:19
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Surfing in most of the world seems to require a very ... unique, and dedicated, mind set. Watched some surfers off the east coast of Scotland in October a year or two back, it seemed like the most miserable experience. Raining, maybe 8 degrees, relatively frigid water, pretty anaemic waves, yet there those guys went. They'd paddle for what had to be fifteen minutes, getting out into the waves, before finally finding something that was suitable. They'd get up on their boards, and ride back to shore in a matter of seconds. Then it'd be back to paddling, repeat indefinitely. 15 minutes of 'work' in what most people consider unpleasant conditions, for distinctly less than 30 seconds payoff. That ride must be spectacular, because, watching it, it just seemed torturous. I mean, I like the cold, I like polar-bear swimming, and I'm happy to just swim around in cold water for ages, but when you couple it with this single-minded focus, this determination to get out as far as you can and force your board upon any wave that will take you and damned well surf, no matter how brief and pitiful the trip, I dunno, it doesn't seem worth it. But then I've never tried it. |
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Oct 16, 2015 17:05
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
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I can't help a burning desire to know your feelings on otters though. |
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Nov 11, 2015 02:53
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