Adventioneering

“This doesn’t work anything like minecraft”.

So after going around and around on this for weeks, I finally ordered a new bumper (pictured). The problem is the front frame rails on the JK are a lot different than the TJ, and results in some weird bumper situations, especially when you want a winch.

With the TJ, you can run out and for a couple of hundred get a great stubby bumper with a very simple installation. Or just keep the factory bumper and get a $60 winch plate, which is a flat piece of metal with some holes in it. LOD makes a great TJ stubby bumper, if you have the patience to wait for it. All the JK bumpers are… complicated. Especially because the manufacturers (and supposedly I guess the buyers) seem hell-bent on keeping the factory fog-lights.

All I want is something simple and small, and the best option there seems to be the Rugged Ridge 11540.10. I looked at the LOD one but it didn’t seem better enough to justify the price tag (and inevitable multi-week wait for them to get around to making it). If the LOD one has an advantage it might be that it cradles the winch a little lower and protects it a little more, but I actually prefer the winch to be more open after having bad experiences with the ARB bumper on the land rover.

Now I just have to pick a winch. Decisions decisions.

Sometime in the electronic bronze age of the 90s, Garmin came out with an application called MapSource. Relatively progressive at the time, this was a map and waypoint manager that allowed you to view your Garmin map product on a PC.

This was a disruptive app and probably was a reason a lot of prosumer GPS users bailed on Magellan at the time. Disruptive in terms of price and availability: if you wanted to work with maps electronically at the time, you basically were dealing with Arc GIS.

MapSource is relatively crude. It doesn’t work on mac. It allows you to view a number of mapping products that you have installed directly on the PC as well as do very crude management of waypoints and tracks. The interface was clunky and annoying. It was slow, and downright painful if you had thousands of waypoints, although faster computers improved this.

It would be tempting to think that Garmin had realized MapSource the way Google realizes products; give away something free that gives the customer a reason to intertwine their life with the product (google maps directions) and benefit from the halo affect as we all buy more Garmin GPS units.

I think they had cruder commercial purposes though; at the time you were buying map product on CD sets (no DVD yet) and we didn’t have tiny affordable compact flash cards that could hold entire products. In short, if Garmin wanted to sell you cartography and get you a way to get it on the GPS, they had to give you an app to do it in. And if you could manage some waypoints in the process, well, that was just a perk.

My first GPS back when they still cost a fortune was a Magellan. I bought it shortly after the infamous KFC roadtrip (along with a camera, which got me back into photography) because I realized we had gone to all these places and we had absolutely no idea where any of them were. To this day, the route we took is still somewhat a mystery.

The Magellan was typical of hand-helds at that time: it did not work well taking sometimes 10 minutes to lock in an open field, gave you lat/long and could do bearing navigation and nothing else, and ate batteries. A lot of batteries. To be honest, I don’t think I actually ever used it for anything despite carrying it on numerous camping and road trips. A total waste of money. Quite a lot, I remember bitterly. Especially if you factor in all those batteries.

Eventually I started to go through some Garmin handhelds and an automotive unit that could do routing. I wanted to have a soft spot for Garmin. After all, they were in Overland Park KS, a city I worked in for years. The fact was, though, my StreetPilot had a horrible interface, was slow, and eventually broke. Four figures I paid for that thing, although I claim ownership was a success. It was hugely valuable on so many trips. My eTrex and later eTrex Vista was useless under tree cover or mountains, in short, most of the places I went, and the screen was inadequate for making good use of topos. In the end, I’d prefer map and compass when hiking.

Back then even though the USGS quads were in public domain, it wasn’t like you were just getting them easily from the Internet. You were paying for them, more often in the form of costly maps. So the topo product from Garmin actually worked out to be a good deal, particularly if you wanted to work with the maps electronically, even if they were worthless if you ever downloaded them onto the eTrex. That was the secret value I don’t think Garmin got at first: the fact you could access nationwide or worldwide product on a PC. Or a laptop. That you could take with you.

My love affair with topo product on my PC ended like a sentence encountering a full stop period when Google thought it would be amusing to buy KeyHole and give their product, now renamed Google Earth, away to everyone for free. Google Earth is, by my account, also a horrible application, but less horrible than MapSource. You gained a 3D view. The app, though, wasn’t the point.

The point was that Google was prepared to give you overhead imagery for free. In modern times, this tends to be 1 meter product, although it was worse when GE was first introduced to the public. In general, they always gave you the best that was commercially available.

I don’t think the value of that has been widely appreciated by people. To put it in perspective, the current 2012 pricing for Ikonos 1M archive imagery is $10 per square kilometer. Archive imagery is what Google offers: images from no particular date that are not necessarily current. Current tasking, if you want a picture of something right now, runs $25.

The Seattle metro area is 21,202 square kilometers, or $212,020 in imagery. And they keep updating it. Over the years of using GE, I’ve literally consumed millions of dollars of value in imagery, and this remains my #1 way of scouting remote destinations and has completely transformed how I plan back country trips. The fact they were also willing to give you NAVTEQ routing in the same app was simply a huge bonus.

I left MapSource like Olivia Wilde had knocked on my door drunk. And so it went for years. It isn’t that GE didn’t have problems, it did. The user interface is lousy when you have more than a few hundred waypoints (no batch organization), it’s management of tracks is crude, and most of all, it requires you to be online to use.

Oh there are workarounds for that – it remembers whatever it has cached (up to 2GB) but that is unreliable and sometimes doesn’t want to start up without the Internet. You can print out maps, but by screen capturing them (against T&C). If you are technically sophisticated you can steal the image tiles and make your own maps, which is wildly against the T&C.

My general approach then was to make a ton of waypoints based the overheads, transfer them to the GPS, and navigate between them. This is practical, as long as you are on-plan, but if you need to know about things you didn’t bother to waypoint, you need to have some form of local product. This went really badly for me at least once.

During this GE infatuation and my StreetPilot breaking, I began another love afair, which is TomTom units for turn by turn nav. Consistently faster and much easier to use (imo) than the early Garmin turn by turn units, and cheaper, I was happy to not buy anything Garmin.

Eventually my Vista gave up the ghost and I needed another hand-held. I wanted something a little more sophisticated, and something that was easy to GeoCache with, so I ended up with a Colorado. I liked it because it had a good feature set, progressive interface, and could optionally do turn by turn if you bought the cartography for it. One of the neater and lesser known features is you can create and upload your own map product to it in the form of image tiles.

Sometime in 2010 Garmin introduced a new product called BirdsEye, which I’ve only just gotten around to noticing and caring about. BirdsEye is a subscription product, $30 a year, that lets you gain access to US and Canadian USGS quads (raster, not vector, so the old green maps you are used to dealing with) as well as satellite imagery. I compared and the imagery is generally the same as GE is offering. For example, off the coast of Ecuador, I could see that the product was identical (same waves in the ocean).

Why pay for something already free? Here’s the kicker. If you have subscription, you can download the imagery legitimately into BaseCamp, the modern rewritten MapSource. If you download it onto a toughbook or laptop, obviously, you can then travel around with reliable raster cartography. Additionally, a bunch of the hand-helds (including my Colorado) can have the product downloaded onto them, so you can see the actual overheads on the device. The quality is surprisingly good.

In turn this made me start looking at BaseCamp. My last experience with it was shortly after it came out, on Mac. I had tried to use it to load maps onto my Garmin and it had been a pretty awful experience. They’ve really put some elbow grease into it, though – enough that I am actually switching back from GE for my “system of record” since I can get everything in one place.

At least, track management that works properly, correct integration for tracks and the extra data (temperature, elevation), and somewhat but not entirely more reasonable approach to managing more way points. And all my map products again re-united under one interface.

Not that there isn’t a good place for GE. Given the fact it has all the imagery on-tap and also links to Panaramio, street view, and other services, it’s still the best choice for virtual tourism and just looking around.

The group disbanded after breakfast and everyone headed home (or at least, to Denny’s for pancakes). Instead I went east over the pass in search of something different. Earlier I had been researching a road network north of Cashmere after randomly stumbling on Nahahum Canyon in the summer of 2011 while riding around on the Ducati.

I figured that the area would be totally covered in snow, but since I was most of the way out there anyways, I might as well drive down and see. If not I could always drive north up the columbia river (I’ve never been further north than Entiat), or, hook down south to Roslyn, or just get drunk in a country bar. The word was my oyster.

It turns out though that the snow “ended” or at least drastically thinned out not much past Leavenworth. This was good news, and I figured I’d try to get into the road network. I was a little nervous about getting stuck (I feel naked without a winch) but I had a shovel and enough camping gear for most any weather, so I didn’t really think much could go too wrong. I knew that it would only be a ten or twenty mile hike out.

As it happened there was really nothing to worry about. There was snow at the higher elevations but it was mostly a pack and just a few inches down to a mixed ice base. It was a little sloppy in 2wd but stuck fine in 4wd, I didn’t have any problems at all.

Not having good maps, I tried NF7415 first because it was a thicker line in the Garmin, but I have also learned the hard way to not trust a single thing CityNavigator says about the forest roads in the cascades. Hoping to get higher I opted to try to get out of the valley, but ran into a gate at 47° 36.053′N 120° 25.893′W, a sight that never ceases to make me sad.

Backtracking I tried 7415 the other way, east, idly hoping that it would pop me out someplace else, but expecting to run into either a dead-end or too-deep snow. Instead I was treated to an absolutely glorious drive down one of the tightest little valleys I have ever been in, and thankfully the trees opened up so I could properly appreciate it.

There weren’t many people out this way, unlike Beckler, which was like DisneyLand; I only saw a couple other groups. Four or five people out of a Cherokee wearing so much Orvis and Barbour they could start a store for old British pheasant hunters. Are any birds even in season, or do they just fancy looking like this? Then there were a couple ancient guys in a big dodge something or other, and a group camped further down the valley. There are some awesome campsites to be had east of about 47° 35.167′N 120° 22.338′W.

And as luck would have it, the route solidly dumped me out on the east end of the valley at the Columbia river. This is apple country and it’s hard to forget it, because even if you somehow didn’t notice all the orchards, everything is named Apple something. Even the radio stations. Apple Gas. Apple Industrial Supply.

This apple orchard eerily reminded me of one up the hill from where I used to live in Vermont. I used to around there when the weather was bad in winter, too. I was amazed to see that some of the trees had apples on them, and the entire place had a delightful smell of applewood, which is always some of my favorite for a fire.

I have no idea if the apples were any good – stealing wasn’t on my list of things todo – but they were solid to the feel anyways, not rotten. I figure they were bad or late for one reason for another and the pickers just left them up there. The road opened up into the columbia river basin just north of the Rocky Beach dam. Altogether not a very long run at all and probably a joke in good weather – do it in a Honda civic – but there is definitely a lot of good opportunity further into the interior. I’m very interested to find out what the longest route that can be chained together through here is.

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The plan they proposed was to hit up Beckler for New Years’s. With a forecast of lows in the 20s and 70% chance of snow, it sounded like the perfect time to be outside. We headed up in the early morning and I was able to make easy contact on 2 meter with my bodge antenna – proof that you can, in fact, solder a random piece of wire to the stud of a 2.4ghz wifi antenna, shove the whole thing in some heat shrink, and call it an “antenna”.

Unsurprisingly there were quite a few trucks in the area. It had looked like from the tracks that a lot of people had gone in, but not very many had come out, and new years morning I saw a team of 12 Jeeps heading in.

As usual though my shooting spot was deserted and everyone had a chance to get some rounds off. JG has a new 710 and took a crack at a couple of 100 yard targets we measured out by GPS. I took a crack at it standing with my AR on irons, and put them all in, but it was sloppier than I would have liked (I get happy at 6-8″ groups standing).

Sure enough it got cold, and a three person expedition tent (the only thing I had poles for) with one person in it doesn’t want to warm up. This is the first winter I’ve camped without a candle too. I was never sure if having a candle in the tent makes it much warmer, or just suffocates you, but at least I always found the light pleasant.

During the night it snowed, and I got out of my tent to find everything blanketed in snow. It had melted off by morning, though, which is too bad because I wanted

I was warm enough in my bags though, and got the first real nights rest I’ve had in weeks. And wild dreams, for some reason. I don’t know why that is, but whenever I’m camping and it’s cold (or specially high altitude), I have the weird dreams.

Since JG asked I have the 4-part modular sleep system (MSS) which is NSN 8465-01-445-6274. There’s a new part number that gets you a digital camo instead of woodland camp bivy but otherwise they are the same. Don’t pay more than a couple hundred for the entire set (new stock) and make sure you are getting all four pieces when you buy. Some of the less honest Internet vendors I’ve seen pull the goretex bivvy and just sell the bags.

Happy New Years!

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What do we have here? I had never heard of these things until my brother got me one as a gift. For years humans marveled upon fire, but perhaps we were not civilized until we figured out how to keep an actual fire in our pocket. I give you the Jon-E, ostensibly a hand-warmer.

For as dangerous as they are – and I should emphasize that they are, in fact, in no way even remotely safe – they are surprisingly widely available. I am not kidding – he set a car on fire with one, which is why I always have a fire extinguisher around now. I ran across mine and was glad for it, as it’s been keeping my hands warm on these snowy days in the mountains.

The device is simple enough; the tank, a wick, and a lid. The construction is very similar in appearance to a regular polished zippo. I’ve only ever seen Jon-E’s in this finish, although I have seen them in two sizes, a small and a large. They are manufactured by a company called Orbex and protected by patents. This should settle any outstanding bar bets on the matter of whether or not you can patent a fire hazard.

They run on just about any kind of fuel. I haven’t tried rum, but I am pretty sure it would work. Normally I would use white gas, or VM Naptha (burns with more cancer and a bit of a smell). You can always pay too much and use Zippo fluid as illustrated; it was all I had handy. I’d avoid petrol.

They give you a handy little measuring cup so you know how much highly flammable material you will be carrying in your pocket. About that much, which is really a lot when you think about it. You can also just fill the thing until it is full, and remarkably, this makes it even more dangerous. If it’s not filled properly, though, it really won’t work properly.

You fill it up with the appropriate amount of fuel (or too much if that is how you like to roll), re-assemble it, and then light the little wick to get it going. It seems only appropriate to light this thing with a zippo. You let it burn for a few minutes and take that time to ponder how cave men could not carry fires in their pockets, or perhaps, that both the zippo and the jon-e are things still made in America, and how rare is that.

Once a few minutes have gone by you blow out the flame. Tiny embers of dangerous combustion will lurk inside the larger wick. Now you put the cap on, let it run for about another five minutes. It’ll get too hot to hold comfortably, at which point the felt pouch makes sense. Opening or closing the porch controls the airflow into your little campfire, and controls how hot it gets. At this point, you can toss it in a pocket.

It’s worth observing that this thing is filled with liquid fuel, so it is in your best interest to keep it upright. If you knock it over and the fuel spills out, or perhaps in your pocket, you can only expect a runtime of several terrible minutes. With a full fill of fuel and no antics, it’ll provide a couple of hours of delicious warmth.

Safety fourth! Go forth and be warm this winter season.

Now, this is how you do it. For those of you not familiar with the FF, this is Ferrari’s upcoming 4wd car. There’s a neat video of the mule making the rounds during testing below. I wonder what the latest tire tech for snow is? Last I ever remember, it was always the Blizzaks but I remember my Ferrari dealer saying they had something rare for the Maserati’s due to the weird tire sizes. I don’t remember what it was, though.

It would be truly interesting to see Ferrari attempt to make a run at rally competition. They have the platform for it now, anyways – if anyone would let them enter a V12.

May 25 – May 28 2012. Taking advantage of the three-day weekend, I figure one day down and one day return, so two days in the BRD area to explore the region. The playa should still be lake-like but travel around the edges, or in the numerous tracks in the area should be possible. Chilly at night, I expect!

This would only be the second time I had been to the BRD without Burning Man, and hopefully, it won’t be nearly as ill-fated as last time.

You just have to be in the right spot, since I reason it’s always snowing somewhere. With an upcoming camping trip being planned and a lot of hypotheticals being thrown around about the suitability of some of the classic spots for early-winter camping I thought the simplest thing would be to just go and see.

My goals were to ascertain the snow elevation and to figure out what the access and conditions were like at Denny/Tinkham, Lost Lake, Cle Elum Lake, and Naches. And, of course, a childlike desire to get snowed on for Christmas.

It was raining with heavy winds up towards Snoqualmie Pass on I-90. The temps were around 40 but dropping quickly with the elevation. The snow technically starts around 1500′ with “serious” accumulation around 1800′.

The traffic was nice and light – I guess I can thank all those people safe & warm inside with their families.

The east Tinkham Rd exit and road had less snow than I had lead to believe. The entire area is under a couple of inches of snow. At least at this elevation, the road is easily readily passable with 4wd. Heading up, obviously, the snow thickens up.

It was sleeting up at the summit and over on the east side, it thickened into real snow. WADOT was running the blows and they were doing a pretty decent job, although this didn’t stop the Washingtonians from wrecking their cars.

No sooner than I passed a rolled over Audi, another one flew past. I guess he saw his wrecked comrade as a challenge rather than a cautionary tale.

The cute girl above was one of about ten cars I saw wadded up or rolled over by the time I got back to the city. I really don’t think that’s going to buff out. At least she has the right attitude – taking pictures!

Unsure about the JK I took it easy and didn’t have any problems at all. Then again, I’ve driven in snow more than thrice, which seems to be the state average given some of the antics I witnessed.

By the time I got out to Roslyn, I was rewarded with the good, fluffy stuff. That stereotypical idealized snow. That snow you think of when someone says “snow”.

I headed up 903 to see what was going on. The road is a couple of inches of snow onto pavement, there isn’t much of an ice base. It is well groomed and there is a lot of snowmobile traffic – even on Christmas.

The access to the camp grounds at 47.352072° -121.105296° is gated but the conditions in there are pretty good. You’d even have picnic tables if you scraped the snow off them. The lake is beautiful in the snow.

The road is closed for the winter to wheeled vehicles at N57 23.980 W121 5.690. Of course, besides the snow mobiles I saw no less than two snow-cats, and they do make those tank-tread things for Jeeps…

Heading over to Naches, I went in at N47 06.828 W120 48.308. The conditions there are a couple of inches of good snow on top of a solid ice base. In particular on the roads, the center hump is solid ice. The no-lift JK easily cleared, but I didn’t venture very far in, either. As the road climbs higher the snow gets a bit deeper. Given the ice base, this is probably a good place to have a set of chains.

Merry Christmas!

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