Showing posts with label camping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label camping. Show all posts

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Autumn Backpacking Guide

Did you know fall hiking is considered to be the time span from September 22 to December 21? I didn't but maybe that's because I'm from Alaska. The time stretch provides quite a range of temperatures and weather conditions even at a single elevation. Last night we went to another REI hosted presentation  on fall backpacking led by Bernie Wilt. We’ve been to two presentations before and this one was exactly what I was hoping it would be. The first one was on Fall Hikes in the Columbia River Gorge and another one on trail running put on by Salomon, which was really just a 1 hour commercial for their products. It did answer the two questions I had about trail running though. 1) do I need any special gear or considerations to do it? No. Trail specific shoes might help but they aren’t necessary. We did learn some things to consider in shoe shopping though like materials and tread design, but overall we don’t need to buy anything new and definitely not anything expensive (thanks, but no thanks on the $500 watch with GPS, maps, weather, and altimeter or the super duper hydration vest because believe it or not we don’t run super ultra-marathons). 2) Where around here are trails to run on? Technically, trail running is running anywhere but on the road/ pavement, but the only places they had to suggest were Forest Park (which we have yet to check out despite it vast size and trails available and proximity to Portland proper) and a few short ones around the Beaverton area, one of which we have already run on- the Nike campus trails. So, all in all that presentation was our least favorite.  [...]