Well yesterday was supposed to be a nice day on the river with the fly rod. I was hoping to catch a few small mouth since I haven't done that in a while. Well, when we got to the river I immediately saw that the fishing may not be as I had hoped. The river wasn't very high but because of recent rains it was quite murky. I decided to try for a bit anyhow but quite quickly found that even the bream weren't biting. On my way back to the jeep to grab a snack I saw some Hickory nuts laying on the trail. I picked up a few and then decided I would turn a bad day of fishing into a great day for gathering wild edibles. So for the rest of the day Kayla and I tromped through the forest looking for more nuts, acorns, and wild ginger. It was on our way out that we hit the jackpot, muscadine grapes! We gathered enough to fill my ball cap quite quickly. We continued to find more and more vines and soon had two ball caps, a nalgene bottle, and whatever else we had on us to fill up. We headed home excited to get to cooking with our gathered forage. After giving the dog a bath (which she needed) we spent the rest of the night skinning and de-seeding the grapes for muscadine jam. I would have photos of the process but my hands were busy. I have to say that this morning it was awesome on some whole wheat toast. We still have to crack the nuts and I believe Kayla is going to make acorn tortillas. We're also going to give ginger beer a try, and I plan on using the rest of the grapes to make some wine. It just goes to show that if you know what you are doing you can turn a bad day of fishing into a homemade jar of jam.
I just received an email from Erin Engelson from the Kenya Stove project. Most of us backpackers are fully aware of wood gas stoves and probably own at least one. Well now that cool little stove that runs on twigs laying around the camp site, and you've been using to make coffee on is going global. If you have been following the recent issues in Africa dealing with the illegal charcoal production, you know its a growing problem and its destroying habitats for many animals most notably Gorillas. The problem is that charcoal is what is used in many of the home cook stoves and fires of the local population. Well the Kenya Stove projects has taken the idea of the wood gas stove and come up with a possible solution to that problem. I don't want to steel too much from the kenyastove site but burning wood most notably mesquite (an invasive species) in these larger stoves could reduce if not eliminate the need to make charcoal. I urge you to check out this site and help out if you can. It sure is nice to see that a piece of gear that backpackers built just to boil some water is about to help people and conserve nature in such a positive way.
See you on the trail,
As some of you may have noticed I have put up a page "outdoor quotes" and a page of trail words called "enHikielopedia". I have put a lot of information on both of these pages and have just added some new quotes as well. If you know of a great quote about the outdoors, or a word to add to the enHikelopedia let me know and I will get it up on the page.
Well I'm back from California. It was quite the trip and I went for several reasons. I flew into LAX and my first impression of Los Angeles was that of too many people, too much traffic, and too much city. You can imagine my excitement and relief once I was in the mountains. We hiked up the East fork of the San Gabriel river. There is a lot of history to this small river that flows through a high dessert just North East of L.A. If you pay attention as you hike you will see the evidence of an old road that was built in the thirties which was washed away in a flood only a few years later. If you are willing to take on a ten mile hike you can hike up the canyon to "the bridge to nowhere" which is five miles from the nearest road now. There are several other signs that this remote area was once much more populated than today. The main goal for our hike was to do some prospecting. This area has a rich history of producing gold that goes all the way back to the Native Americans who settled there. The other reason for going was to do a little fly fishing or I should say Tenkara. There are native wild rainbows which are the descendants of the steel head that used to run all the way up the river before dams were built down stream. The area is truly rich with trout and I spent every morning before the sun and anyone else was up, walking the river casting dry flies to these little gems. Well Ive attached a video and some photos. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did taking them.
Ive had this little piece of gear in my day pack for at least a year now, and I don't know why Ive never done a post on it. This piece of gear happens to be the Sea to Summit Tarp-Poncho in ultra-sil. It's actually a pretty cool item to have in your kit. It's very small and pretty light weighing in at 12 ounces. Although I don't use it on backpacking trips, I do take it with me when I hike into remote native trout streams as an emergency shelter and, well, poncho. I figure that if I have to stay the night in the mountains (and I'm not backpacking of course) its because I have somehow gotten injured (If was lost I could just fallow the stream back). So with that said I most likely will not want to or be able to gather materials for a shelter. Also if I get caught in a rain storm, which I'm sure we all have at some time, I have a poncho to at least hike out in. I pair this up with a SOL Bivvy which is a high end space blanket and a small kit with a whistle, fire starting supplies, a few bandages, and some cord for a nice little survival kit (yes there is always a knife in my pocket or pack). I have added lengths of cord to the four corners for tie downs and have looped them on for easy removal for poncho mode or reconfiguring how I want to set it up. Its simple yet effective and good insurance to have if you ever have to stay the night in the woods. Heck I may even take it on a mild weather backpacking trip just to see what its like.
