Ariel's Old Photoblog

This Blog is Moving!

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:54 -0700

After about a solid 5 years of faithful service, this blog is being retired. With the growing desire to have one single post filled with multiple pictures, videos, and interspersed with text, I'm moving from this photoblog software (pixelpost) to a more powerful, capable, and automated program called WordPress.

In any event, future posts will now be displayed at www.ArielBravy.com/travel. Thank you so much for coming along the ride with me these past few years and now I invite you to come join me as we take the next step to even greater experiences.

See you there! :)

www.ArielBravy.com/travel

Pearl Street in the Spring

Sat, 01 May 2010 17:50 -0700

So I'm gonna be leaving Boulder, leaving Colorado soon and so I wanted to take a little time and enjoy Boulder with fresh eyes once again. I noticed I didn't have any good pics of Pearl Street so I wanted to get a shot of it. It's is so beautiful now in the spring. They've planted lots of flowers here. It seems like there's new flowers every day!

There's also some amazing street performers out. The ones that juggle and do tricks and all all seem to be pretty much the same. The ones I really enjoy here are the musicians... It's also nice to go up and talk to them or just relax and enjoy them if you get the opportunity. Here's some of my favorites from today and the past week or so:

Pair of latino guys playing guitars and pipes.

African Marimbas played by a group of kids from Hawaii.

A beautiful performance on the harp by a guy named Gaffer.

The Halo Drum which was so nice to relax and listen to...

Fairy Festival on Pearl Street in Boulder, CO

Sat, 01 May 2010 16:31 -0700

The other day one of my WTS hiking buddies and I decided to hang out again and so we opted to meet up in Boulder. Pearl Street is one of the main touristy areas here with lots of shops, restaurants, bars, street performers, play areas, and so on. Some of my recent videos were shot here. You'll notice the brick walkway behind me, the flowers which have sprung up now that it's spring, and the shops on either side.

Anyways, I was walking along Pearl Street and was surprised to find so many people and vendors there, and many of the kids were wearing fairy outfits! Apparently I missed something here... It's interesting to note how the warmer it gets, the more people (both tourists and locals) come in, as well as the more street performers will show up.

Anyways, there was some of the most random stuff going on... including a fire truck which had parked in the street and slowly extended its ladder to maximum height. It's amazing how tall that thing is when fully extended! You also had parents and kids in fairy outfits, face painting and games for the little people, earth conservation type stuff for the big people (that's REALLY big here in Boulder), of course the tulips which have been planted here, and even some awesome marimba players. They were kids from Hawaii playing African music. The music was really enjoyable to listen to and I've posted a pair of videos up on YouTube for you to listen to and enjoy. :)

It's so cool just stumbling across fun random stuff like this... :)

It was sunny at first, then started turning cloudy, and being that this is the mountains and all and the weather is pretty variable, it started hailing! It wasn't the hardy icey hail, but rather small clusters of soft snow.. This was enough to get the musicians to cover their instruments, have the people go inside, and the firetruck to retract its ladder. Then again, maybe 20 minutes later the hail was long gone and it was sunny again! It was pretty chilly all day and certainly windy... There's a saying here in the mountains, "If you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes!" and it's so true!

Reading and Navigating with Topo Map

Sat, 01 May 2010 11:02 -0700

Reading a topo map turns out to be a very useful skill and once you learn how to do it, it's pretty cool how well you can navigate through the backcountry. When we were practicing, we would take turns having a couple people out of the group lead the navigation to get to the next point. I had the incredible opportunity of navigating towards a point that was a little more complicated than figuring out what direction the point is away from where we are, setting our compass to point that way, and walking a bearing straight towards the point. I'd like to show you our trip, explain the basics of reading a topo map, and how we got from one point to another.

First of all, a topo map, or topographical map, is a special map that shows you things like elevation changes, rivers and bodies of water, areas of tree cover or open clearings, park boundaries, power lines, trails, and other useful things that you'd find out in the backcountry. One of the most useful markers are the brown contour lines that denote elevation. Imagine if you were to take a mountain and slice it up horizontally every 40 feet or so, like layers of a cake. If it was a perfectly cone-shaped mountain, if you looked at those slices from above, you'd see concentric circles, like a target or bullseye. The center of the mountain on the map, as seen from above, would be a small circle signifying a peak. Typically, however, mountains are not perfect cones. One thing the contour lines will show you is how steep or flat an area is. If you see contour lines that are very close together, that means that it takes very little horizontal distance to do a lot of vertical distance.. such as the face of a cliff. If you look at the top left on the map, you'll see a steep cliff. We stopped there to have lunch and the view facing north was really nice. :) If you see contour lines that are far apart, that means you have a relatively flat area, like an open field or meadow.

So, with that said, let's look at our setup. We started at point 35 right underneath the world Trail where the trails merge. If you notice, that area is at the top of a mountain, as denoted by the closed circle and concentric lines around the top. Our target was point 5, southeast of point 35. Setting a bearing by figuring out the angle between point 35 and point 5 would work, but if you notice that area of the map is green meaning it's trees and in this case, thick brush. Also, there's a convenient trail we could follow to get closer, rather than trying to bushwhack the whole way there.

Point 5 is slightly on a ridge. If you look at the way the line curves, pointing away from the peak, we can recognize that that's a ridge. If you look juuuust north of point 5, running horizontally you'll see some V-shaped lines pointing left, pointing towards the peak. This is a gulley, like a little valley with land up above you on either side. We decided to try following the trail down to the point that was due west of point 5. If you look at the map, you'll see it slightly turns where the gulley is and we could follow the gulley down towards point 5 and then hop up on the ridge and find the point. The question is.. how far do we walk and how do we know where it is? We want to go the right direction and know how far to walk without going past, you know?

Pulling out our measuring devices, we figured it was about 0.2 miles from where the trails merge near point 35 to where the trail is due west of point 5. Earlier that day we had hiked 0.5 miles on flat terrain and found out that it took roughly 500 paces. (One pace is two steps, right and left.) We also learned that the world mile is based off the word mil, a number that has to do with the number 1,000. Back when the Roman army was around, one mile was basically the distance it took to them to march 1,000 paces. That's where that comes from. So doing a little basic math, we know that every 0.1 miles corresponds to roughly 100 paces. This varies depending upon the length of your stride, if you're going downhill or uphill, how much weight you're carrying on your back, if you're walking on an area like bouldery terrain that requires you to vary the length of your strides, and so on.. but to get a close estimate, you can use pacing to figure out roughly how far you go. So, given that we had measured out 0.2 miles, we knew we had to hike about 200 paces. The plan was to hike down the trail to the point due west of point 5, try and go down the gulley, and get to point 5. When we get there, we would examine how hikeable that terrain was and if it wasn't, we could hike further and try going in from another direction.

So, off we go, walking downhill (notice we're going away from the closed circle) along the trail, mentally counting out 200 paces. The three of us counting paces all stopped at right around the same area. One thing that confused us right away was that the trail did a little S-turn which wasn't shown on the map and so although we were supposed to be heading south according to the map, the compass was showing us heading north. This immediately threw us off and it got a little confusing. Looking around from this area, we were able to find what we thought was the gulley, but it turns out that it was full of thick brush. We later found out that because water tends to flow through gulleys, that area tends to get a lot more plant life and is therefore more difficult to walk through than an open ridge, for example. Since this area was tough to walk through and we weren't exactly sure where we were which made it tough to figure out the exact direction from our current location to point 5, we decided to keep walking down the trail and find an easy to recognize point and set a bearing from there.

Looking back at the map, we saw several options. First, we could keep walking towards the dashed/dotted line that signifies the park boundary. We had seen signposts up earlier off-trail that told us where the boundary of the park was and we figured that if they were out in the backcountry, they'd definitely be along the trail as well. However, if we missed the park boundary, we'd have two catchlines: the north-south trail and the river. If we crossed either one of those two, we'd know we'd gone too far. If we missed the park boundary, we could keep walking to the north-south trail, hike up north that way, and hike in from the east.

So we decided to keep walking and wouldn't you know it, we walked right up to the area where the trails met near the river. It turns out there weren't any signs denoting the park boundary for whatever reason... So, here we are at a junction of multiple trails with a river running east of us. If we took a left and hiked north, we could wind up east of point 5 and hike in from that direction. The trail would curve right a bit and at that point, we could hike west, looking at the landscape and seeing that point 5 was up on a ridge and had a gulley on either side. We could hike up the ridge and find the point. Not only that, but if you notice the map is also white in that area which meant that it was more in a clearing and there would be less plantlife to bushwhack through. It looked like a much easier route than going through the green area.

and so with this we started hiking north. We found the point where the trail started curving right, but we wanted to make sure we knew exactly where we were so that we could set a precise bearing on our compass and walk directly towards the point. It was actually a bit confusing to identify our location, but one guy in our group stepped up with a great idea. He looked around and saw that there was a pretty prominent hill near us northeast of our current location. If you look at the map, east of point 5, along the trail where it starts to curve right, you'll notice a small closed loop northeast of that trail curve that represented the summit of that hill. Sweet!

We then started working out the exact direction that the summit was from our current location. If you draw a line on the map from the little loop towards the trail in the right location, it would then show us exactly where on the trail we were. When we figured that out, we could then figure out what direction point 5 was relative to us and we could hike in that direction.

However, there was a slightly easier solution that our instructor suggested. He suggested that we draw a line on our map between point 5 and that hilltop. That line would cross through the trail. If you look at the map and mentally draw that line, you'll notice that that line would cross the trail slightly north from the curve on the trail where we currently were. What we could do is then figure out that angle and then set our compass to that angle. We'd then start walking north along the trail until our aligned compass pointing towards the summit until the magnetic pointer inside the dial lined up with the angle we wanted. When it did, we knew that we were standing right on the line that goes from point 5 to the peak of the hill. Sweet.

The task then was to simply backsight by aligning the compass with the direction we wanted to go, keeping the summit of the hill 180 degrees behind us, and keeping the compass aligned the whole time.

Once we figured out exactly what direction point 5 was relative to our current location, as well as knowing that the point was up on top of a ridge, we were able to start leap-frogging our way there. Basically we'd send one person out in front and have them walk that invisible line between the summit and point 5 and the person behind them would make sure they're walking the correct line, motioning them to move right or left to stay on line. Following this technique and working out way right up the ridge, we wound up walking right towards the marker! Woohoo!! Success!!

We also had to do declination calculation this whole time. See, compasses work based upon the earth's magnetic field, but it turns out that magnetic north is not the same as true north. The earth's magnetic field actually changes over time and varies depending upon where in the world you are. The magnetic declination in Colorado is currently about 9 degrees east. Back in Georgia it's currently about 4 degrees west. How this affects us is that if you line up north on the map with where the compass is pointing north, they actually won't be pointing the same direction. The compass is going to point slightly off to the side of true north towards magnetic north. The trick is to learn which direction it's pointing and which direction to adjust our compasses and route, whether we should add or subtract that 9 degrees from our bearing calculation. Luckily you get the hang of magnetic declination adjustment pretty quickly and there's some handy mnemonics you can learn to help you remember. Depending on if you're going from magnetic north to true north like reading from the compass to the map, and vice versa, you either add or subtract the magnetic declination value.

Route finding... it's a lot of fun. You take into account lots of variables, and figuring out the best, quickest, easiest, and/or safest way to get from point A to B. There's even a sport based upon route-finding called orienteering and competitions and races where people compete on various difficulty courses to see who can get to all the points the most quickly.

Yeah... fun stuff!!

Oh also, I cooked up a little extra stuff. Google Maps now allows you to get an interactive 3D Google Earth view so you can pan and zoom and change your angle which'll help give us a better idea of the correlation between a topo map and the 3D view you'll find on Google Maps/Earth. Here's the Google Maps/Earth view of this location, and here's an overlay image I created that shows the trails, river, and two points on the 3D map, just to make it easier to jump in and start reading the map on Google Maps/Earth!

Ariel Navigating on a Mountain with Map and Compass

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:31 -0700

Had to get a shot of yours truly enjoying navigating the mountains... ;)

WTS Map & Compass Field Day

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:13 -0700

So one of our field day events with the Wilderness Trekking School included learning how to navigate by map and compass. Turns out this is a lot of fun! Plus the compass helps give you a good sense of direction and carefully studying and following a map you get a much better appreciation of the details of the land. It's also nice to be able to go off-trail! Admittedly it felt a little faux pas at first, but it was nice to have that freedom to go around wherever you want. :)

For this event we were given points to plot on our map, bearing 139 degrees relative to the spring of a river. and sometimes we'd get a hint like it's at 7600 ft., on the northwest side of a hill.

It's so cool the different techniques for actually getting to a location. For example, let's say you know where you are and you want to go straight to a point (which often is not the easiest way.. it may be up a mountain, through thick brush, or off the side of a cliff). You can set a bearing of 139 degrees and eye an object in the distance that lines up with that direction and walk towards it. When you get there, line your compass up again, find another distant object like a tree or whatever, and walk towards that.

Sometimes you don't have an object to spot and so you use a friend. What you do is find the direction you want to go and have them walk out in that direction. You motion to them right or left with your hand and get them to line up with where your compass points. They'll backsight, which means they do the same thing looking backwards to make sure you're 180 degrees in the opposite direction of where they were going, and when both people are happy with the alignment, the person in the back walks up to the person in the front. This works well, but the problem with it is that it's pretty slow going, especially when you have a large group.

Another option is to leap frog, where you have 3 people doing this alignment process. One person stays on the point that they know is in line towards the target, the second person walks out and gets aligned, and the third person walks even farther to get ready for the next alignment. This third person helps everyone progress that much more quickly.

Camping out for the Scratch & Dent Sale at REI Boulder

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:39 -0700

A few nights back REI had a scratch and dent sale. Here they call 'em garage sales. Either way, it's their awesome sales where they sell off all the returned used gear at significant discounts. In GA they don't let you camp out over night, but at this store they do. I was pretty surprised and made sure to check with several people about this. The day before the sale, they started getting everything prepared and I had a chance to scope out the gear and see what was available... backpacks, sleeping bags, pillows, camping gear, clothing, lots and lots of shoes, snowshoes, tents, and all the typical goodies you'd expect to see.

The REI peeps mentioned that the first people usually start showing up at about 5:30-6 and given that they were going to start doing these things every 2 months instead of every 3, there would be less of a need to camp out. heh.. I got there at 10pm. :D

I didn't actually need any gear (which people the next morning thought was hilarious when they found out what time I'd gotten there)... I just wanted to have the experience of camping out overnight for one of these, plus it's fun talking to people in line and it was a fresh new different place to sleep!

The forecast called for 2-4 inches of snow and 20-30mph winds. I had my tent at the ready in the car in case I needed it, but didn't want to set up the whole shebang if I didn't need to. If you look at the photo, you'll notice that there was a protective overhang conveniently covering this area up. I also pointed the sleeping bag out to allow for more people to huddle in under the overhang in the morning in case the weather was coming down. My night essentials, including blindfold for the streetlights.. a little trick I picked up along the way, water to sip on at night, my cameraphone, keys (zipped into the sleeping bag pocket), and a waterproof jacket in case I had to run back to my car in the rain/snow to grab my tent.

It started drizzling shortly after I set up my sleeping bag and the wind was blowing it towards me, so I wound up turning my sleeping bag 90 degrees and tucking it close to the wall. You don't want a down sleeping bag getting wet! A bivy would come in handy.. basically a protective weatherproof bag that you can sleeping bag into and bivy need a tent. Great for ultralight camping. I carry a small emergency bivy in my daypack for warmth and protection from the elements in case I have to spend an unplanned night out in the backcountry and I don't have my overnight gear with me.

Anyways, the first couple arrived at 4:30am and slowly started shuffling in until 7am which is when more and more people really started to pile in.

The weather turned out being pretty awesome. No major precipitation and all was well! When I finally woke up and got all my gear stowed away, I went across the street to Panera and had a delicious french toast flavored bagel with scrambled egg. It was such a tasty way to start the morning! I love cool new foods like that... :)

By 9am when the doors opened, there were hundreds of people in line. Walking in, I headed straight towards the camping, eyeing the shoes as they passed by. There was a compactable camp pillow I'd spotted the night before that I grabbed as well as an ultralight tent I'd wanted for quite a while, an REI QuarterDome tent. Taking it out into the store to set it up, it was in pretty good shape, all things considered given that it was 3 years old. That's right.. the guy returned the tent 3 years later and got his money back! The reason for the return was that the poles were really hard to get locked in and yeah, they really were. It also needed a few minor repairs, but I just didn't need a second tent, and the weight savings of a pound or two wouldn't be a big deal given that I don't typically hike long distances with my tent.. :)

After deciding against the tent, I brought it back to the camping area. I remember going to these sales before and being closer to the back of the line and thinking that all the good stuff would have been snatched up early on. Well, someone who came later scooped up an awesome tent. As the saying goes, good things come to people who wait. :)

I also wound up picking up a third pair of trailrunners. haha... These were the Salomon XA Comp 4 GTX, the black shoes I show in this video I recently published showing my collection of hiking footwear. I wear a pair of size 9's in Salomon's shoes and at first found a pair of 9.5's which were just a touch too big. Given that I didn't really need the shoes, I set them aside. Well it turns out they have a LOT of shoes at the sale and just aren't able to bring them all out at once, so they keep bringing more out front as the current ones get snatched up and sold. Well wouldn't you know it, they brought out a pair of size 9's. I had just gotten a slightly better version of the shoe with a little more support in the sole during REI's recent 20% off sale and they have become my favorite shoes, but I was happy to get another pair of waterproof shoes to not put as much wear and tear on my good ones. These are so handy for walking around in Colorado weather. Here we have several times recently gotten sunny skies, rain, hail, and snow all in one day! Plus it's nice having waterproof shoes for when you feel like walking through a creek or splashing through a puddle in the middle of the day. :) So yeah, I picked up a virtually new pair of $125 shoes for $49. Pretty sweet!

Good times!

Foxes Playing in Boulder

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:05 -0700

The other day I went in to get my car's brakes replaced. When they gave me the receipt, I didn't need it and asked if there was a recycle bin around. They said there wasn't, but one of the shop guys walked by and mentioned there might be one around the corner so I casually strolled around to the side of the building and happened to spot a momma fox and her 2 cubs playing. She seemed pretty chill, just standing there as her cubs ran around. There was a car that had pulled up to my left and they were also snapping pictures. Her fur was pretty dirty and tattered and I could tell she'd been spending a lot of time roughin' it. In this picture, you can see one cub running off into the grass on the left and the other one to the left of the ladder in the corner, mostly obscured by the layers of fence.

I debated going back to grab my big camera gear, but didn't want to go all the way back to grab it, plus I wanted to put the iPhone through its paces and see how my readily available camera would perform when I couldn't get too too close. It did quite well, all things considered. :)

We were able to follow the foxes around as they ran to some crates next to a little stream nearby. They must be pretty used to people b/c the momma didn't get on alert until we got pretty close.

I also saw a fox walking by last night when cooking dinner here in Golden, CO.

This looks like the same type of red fox that I spotted down at Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs. They seem to be the most abundant wildlife I see running around here in Colorado, even in the cities.

Bicycle Touring

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:33 -0700

So lately I've been looking to find a different way to live, to find a different type of home. I have been developing a sense of peace and calm with living out of my car and enjoying the freedom associated with that, but I've also found myself growing curious about alternatives and not really sure what it is that I actually want and so I'm doing a little exploratory research. ;)

Last night I spotted an RV parked near the place I like to sleep in Boulder so I drove over and parked next to them, enjoying the luxuriousness and amenities that such a lifestyle offered.

This evening an REI in southern Denver offered a talk on bicycle touring. Back in New Orleans I met two guys who were bike touring which basically involves biking across countries and continents. You have your bike with everything you need attached to it including tent, sleeping bag, food, water, and so on, and trek all around the world. The two guys I'd met there, one had been on the road for 18 months and the other for 4 years.

The guy I met today had been bicycle touring for something like 25+ years! He's biked 6 continents including Antarctica, gone across the USA 6 times, been all over the world, has hundreds of amazing stories, is incredibly kind and open with people, and is absolutely hilarious! The guy actually really minded me of myself. He's overflowing with enthusiasm, gratitude, and joy, totally into adventure, fully embraces the Law of Attraction, is spiritual, and is all about enjoying your life, writing about your experiences, and sharing your journeys with others. The guy's actually written 14 books and gave me several great tips on writing and being published.

His enthusiasm was so infections, I stayed after to ask questions and even helped to clean up and talk with him for a good 20 minutes outside by the car. This idea is SO exciting it literally felt like I was ready to jump out of my skin!

Hiking is awesome. I love it. You get very intimate with nature, but it's pretty slow going, you gotta carry lots of weight on your back, and you can't go very far very quickly. Traveling by car is very fast and you can cover a lot of ground and not worry about carrying weight, but you gotta pay for gas, you're pretty disconnected from the outdoors due to the windshield and car body, and you don't hear the sounds of nature. Bicycle touring looks like a happy medium. You can go faster than hiking yet slower than driving. You get to be intimate with nature and really experience it. You can also pull over and take a hike if you wish.

I asked him how he found a place to sleep and he responded that he ALWAYS finds a place to camp right when he needs it, no matter where he is in the world. He even finds people who take him in and ask questions, giving him free meals and a place to sleep and they get a chance to listen to all his amazing stories. He's also found people to be really friendly and interested in this sort of lifestyle and it's so cool to see the ways in which the universe provides. He told us about staying on this huge lake in South America where some wealthy guy took him in, catered food for him, let him take out a sailboat, jetski, yacht, or whatever he wanted... It's this sort of life that I LOVE... Getting to have all sorts of amazing experiences without the burden of actually having to deal with this stuff. :D I guess it's kinda like how grandparents get the fun of playing with their grandkids without having to deal with them every day. ;) It's like that. I wanna play with lots of fun stuff and then let it all go. There's an incredible freedom in having the ability to experience many things without having too many physical possessions. There's a real lightness in that. On that note, anyone know where I can get access to an RV for a little while? :D

There was SO much cool stuff... man, not only the stories, but the lifestyle, the ability to share your experiences with others, the degree to which you can experience the universe supporting you, all the fun you can have, the joy of feeling your body performing at its peak and glowing with energy... I really like this idea and am strongly considering getting into this sometime.

Hiking by a Twisted Tree

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:36 -0700

At one point during our outing, we stopped and listened to our instructor lecture which was very nice because he's really funny to listen to. :)

I laid down in the grass and made myself comfortable. A little while later I noticed I had all these pricklers in my hand which I figured was from the nearby grass. I spent the next little while plucking them out of my palm. Looking around to find the source of the pricklers, I was confused as seeing that I couldn't find a source... It was only 'till I moved a bit more than I realized I had been lying down on a flat cactus!! lol...

It turns out that my right butt cheek had a load of pricklers poking into it through my clothes. I was definitely walking funny all the rest of the way down the mountain, trying to keep the little poking dudes from annoying my bum. :D

I'm actually doing laundry right now and hopefully that'll get 'em all out. By doing laundry I mean I picked up some Wilderness Wash (this special biodegradable gel that can be used for shampoo, body wash, dishes cleaner, and laundry detergent. talk about useful!!), mixed it with hot water in a waterproof, leakproof, smellproof bag, and am letting it sit. Portable laundry! To dry my clothes out I may go lay it out in the sun tomorrow, or I may just take it to a laundromat and have it done the traditional way.

Life has been really fun lately. It's cool what happens when you simply choose joy for its own sake, for no other reason that it feels good. :)

Oh, as for this picture, this was a sweet tree we saw hiking in and hiking out. I think it's a bristlecone pine. The Flatirons you can see in the shade. They face east towards Boulder so they light up nicely in the morning and the sun sets behind 'em in the evening. :)