RumiDude
Trail Wise!
Marmota olympus
Posts: 2,361 
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Post by RumiDude on Jul 4, 2015 8:32:36 GMT -8
Here is a short little piece on Andrew Skurka. In case you are unfamiliar with him, he is an ultralight long distance adventure hiker. Anyway, give it a view.
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Post by trinity on Jul 4, 2015 10:47:01 GMT -8
Cool, thanks for posting.
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rangewalker
Trail Wise!
Agitate, organize and educate.
Posts: 1,029
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Post by rangewalker on Jul 4, 2015 11:29:59 GMT -8
Skurka donated his time for leading a hike, doing a workshop, and screening a presentation on his Yukon tour for a conservation organization I was working for in WY three years ago. I was a very old school Colin Fletcher 60-70's backpacker because that is what we had for inspiration and style. Skurka really made me rethink nearly every aspect from clothes, base gear, to even walking style. I am a not a devotee. Skurka is a performance athlete that hikes. In his pursuit he gave me a some tools to really parse every item in the gear list and really lets folks shed a lot of old assumptions on needs.
I find his diet appalling but his creed to maximize nutrition with every food item he selects his really helped me cut food weight yet max calories with the choices I make.
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BigLoad
Trail Wise!
Pancakes!
Posts: 12,981
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Post by BigLoad on Jul 4, 2015 11:39:01 GMT -8
I posted on this so long ago that I doubt anyone remembers. Years ago, I hiked the Safford-Morenci Trail in AZ, a great deal of which is really a route connecting various streambeds and old roads. The geology is fascinating. The cutbanks show a bizarre sequence of gaudy sedimentary and volcanic layers. The neighboring cliffs are volcanics (dislaying structures created by differential rates of cooling in the lava) and towers of deep sedimentary deposits. There is a marvelous slot canyon and some seemingly unreachable ruins near a rushing stream.
Well, that all sounds like fun, but the route-finding was quite a challenge, especially in places where the "trail" turns up out of a streambed onto practically unused traverses marked only by a slight drop in the density of vegetation. With only one reliable water source on the trip, and two categories of restricted land to avoid, I was anxious and tired when I reached the far end on the second day. The far end was wide spot off a forest road in the middle of nowhere, so it didn't feel much like I had got anywhere. It was somehow very comforting to see Andrew Skurka's name on the TH register, just above mine. He had been there a month earlier on his GET through-hike, which I had been following in various media. The interval also made me feel a little safer, since my tent was set up in what amounted to a parking lot.
Every time I see Andrew's name in print, I think of the moment I dropped my pack in that dusty clearing.
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Image Credit / Coolkat
