Pacific Hiking

Hiking along the United States West Coast

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Unseasonably Warm

Things are unseasonably warm this spring in the Northwest. It's a shame that I'm missing out on the good weather this week and having to delay my next hike, but sometimes you just don't have a choice. Sometimes things just don't align the way you like.

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Visit Number 2 to Quinault Lake’s Hiking Trails

The weather was a lot better than we expected it to be, which meant sun and warmth we weren’t really prepared for. But, at least this time we got to see a giant Sequoia tree, and a bit of a wasteland left behind by some event years ago. Plus a few trees downed across the trail. Still totally worth it.

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Tiger Mountain: Hard Edition

Shorter than the East Tiger Mountain hike, but at a much steeper grade (14% vs 8%). Early challenge hike goal for the season.

Length: ~5mi

Vertical Climb: 2000ft

Map Source: Northwest Topos

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An interesting hike between a large Sitka Spruce and the Douglas Fir Loop Trail. Not much vertical climb either.

Length: ~4mi

Vertical Climb: 500ft

Map Source: Northwest Topos

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Hike Report: Cedar Butte

Still some snow on the ground as we made our way up to the summit of Cedar Butte this last Saturday. There were also a couple downed trees that made following the trail a bit more difficult along the main (steep) trail fork. On the way back down, we took the Boxley Blowout trail for a longer, but a bit more relaxing return trek. The view at the top was worth it though.

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The weather is getting better, although a bit heavy on the rain. But hiking season is pretty much here if you are willing to get a bit wet (or find the gap in the weather). A good way to start the hiking season in my mind is a hike that can be done in a couple hours, but offers something new, but manageable.

Cedar Butte is a good place to start, and somewhere I have yet to visit, although I've been in the area for other reasons. The route can also be reversed to make it a bit easier on the way up.

Length: ~4mi

Vertical Climb: ~1000ft

Map Source: Northwest Topos

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Not much this week, but I figured I'd throw up some more details on that camping battery in the form of pictures.

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Building a Portable Power Station

As electronic devices become a bigger part of our lives, they are even making their way into the gear we take out into the wilderness. Astrophotography going digital has gotten to the point where it is normal to use a laptop in the field for multiple nights. Finding ways to keep electronics powered off the grid is becoming a blooming market, with companies like GoalZero carving out a niche for complete kits at premium prices.

For many though who need as much power as possible, as cheaply as possible, doing it yourself is an option. This is something I did before the rise of solar recharging options a few years ago, building a >100Ah 12V battery. With fuses, monitoring of battery state, and 4 12V cigarette lighter outlets, it was possible to keep my USB gadgets powered while also powering a laptop and astrophotography gear for 4-8 days at a dark site.

The parts for this particular project (links to parts that I used for my project): * One lead-acid battery. AGM will be more durable, and require less maintenance, at a higher price. Wet cell batteries are also an option, but need more care. * A battery box to contain it. * 12V outlets. * One or more fuses. * A single position, single throw (SPST) switch. * Wire, ring terminals (for the battery), and crimps (if not using solder to splice wires). * Optional: A battery monitor, like “Watts Up”. * An automotive battery charger.

All this provides the raw materials to make the battery box. As for tools, it is a bit easier. The work here is to make holes in the lid, and join wires together, depending on if the plan is to use solder or crimps for the joins. In my case, I used pliers and a Dremel to do all the work. The work is all done on the lid of the battery box.

The first step is to spend some time with everything to figure out where the outlets will be. In my case, I didn’t do this, and the result was that the 12V sockets overlapped the battery itself a bit and made them prone to popping out of the lid a little bit if pressure was applied to the lid.

Once that’s done, it is time to drill the holes in the lid for the key pieces: the fuse(s), the outlets and the switch. For this I used a Dremel once the locations were picked. I checked as I went until the drilled holes were just large enough to thread things into place. At the time, Radioshack offered parts that were perfect for this, since they would click into place or use a hold to thread things into place. The result actually looks pretty clean.

The optional battery monitor is the next step. As I used a Watts Up, I wanted the display to be visible when the lid was closed, and so drilled small holes for the wires. Threading the wires in place was enough to keep the display held in place. Some positions may require that you use double-sided tape to hold it in place, so it can handle being jostled.

Once this is done, the wires need to be run and spliced. The usual pitfall is making wire lengths too short. Since this all will be hidden underneath the lid of the battery box, don’t be too afraid of making the wires a bit longer than you actually need. Worst case, you trim them a bit.

The positive terminal should be wired up to the switch, and the switch to the positive terminals of the fuses. Then from the fuses’ negative terminal to the positive terminals of the 12V sockets. From there, the negative terminals of all the sockets should go to the negative terminal on the battery.

Wiring in the Watts Up makes it a bit more complicated, depending on if you want the switch to turn off the display, which I did. You will want to look at the manual for the monitor to see how it should be wired up, depending on if it has a current and voltage display. In the case of the Watts Up, both positive terminals (for voltage and current) were wired up to the switch’s negative. The negative current terminal was then passed onto the fuse so the monitor could measure the current. The negative voltage terminal was wired up with the sockets’ negative terminals to the negative terminal on the battery.

Once this is all done, you can charge the battery and hit the camping or dark site.

Now, a couple closing notes. A large battery is heavy. Very heavy. The battery box I built was roughly 72 lbs for a 100Ah/1250Wh capacity. And the box doesn’t really have good grips for such weight. Either look at making handles for the box, or make sure you don’t overbuy on the battery itself. One way to do this is to look at recharging solutions you can use in the field. Solar chargers are getting good enough for this role, and one reason I’ve dropped down to a 30Ah battery. Carrying 72 lbs for a camping trip, or a small trip away from the city for one night is not something I actually enjoy. Also, this isn't exactly a great backpacker item, as lead acid batteries are heavy, but affordable.

Inverters are a useful way to power something that cannot be run on DC power directly, but they come at a cost. My astrophotography rig at the time of this writing uses 25W if I use an inverter for the laptop, but using a 12V supply drops it down to 20W. 20% less power is nothing to sneeze at. So if possible, look at ways to avoid needing an inverter. It will lengthen your run time or let you get away with a lighter battery.

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Bike Report: Sammamish River + Burke-Gilman Trails

Not quite a hike report, but hey.

As part of a 30-mile bike ride, I rode out from Marymoor Park along the Sammamish River Trail. Once reaching a fork in the trail, I followed Burke-Gilman Trail into Seattle city limits before turning around and heading back. The trail was crowded in areas with people who had the same idea I did which was to do a longer ride during the nice weather.

The trail itself is fairly scenic, and it is worth checking out at least a couple specific areas of the trail. The area starting at Wilmot Gateway Park heading south along the river is very nice, and buffered fairly well from the highway and other parts of civilization. The section west of Kenmore is quite nice as well, even more so as it gets closer to Puget Sound. If you can’t do the full trail, you will capture what I believe are the best parts starting at either of these locations. When summer starts up again, I’ll be biking this path again.

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Hike Route: Tiger Mountain East Summit

The fairly straight-forward route for the Tiger Mountain East Summit. This was also using Basecamp, with the 24k Topos in addition to the excellent Northwest Topos at Switchbacks.com.

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Hike Report: Tiger Mountain (East Summit)

This is a very popular hike in the Seattle area for both hiking and biking. The trailhead here starts just off of highway 18 and works north for almost 4 miles to the summit at a measly 3000ft. The challenge here is the 1600ft of elevation gain, which can make for good exercise if you take it at a brisk pace.

The trail itself is densely wooded, and there aren’t many locations along the trail that provide good views of the surrounding area. The best views are available further up the slope near the top, making it a sort of reward for hikers. The best view is at the summit, where if weather conditions permit, you can see for miles.

There are also plenty of reasons to keep coming back, as there is a dense trail network connecting all 4 summits together with trail heads on both highway 18 and I-90. It is possible to take different routes every week for months and not take the same route twice.

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Trip Gallery: Yellowstone

Yellowstone is far too large to really visit once and be done with it. This trip hit some of the larger or more interesting sites on the west side of the park. I will say that I thought some of the areas around the springs were actually more interesting than Old Faithful.

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Review: Garmin Oregon 600

Garmin has been in the business of producing GPS devices for outdoor use like the eTrex since the turn of the millennium. The Oregon 600 represents another step in the evolution of these outdoor GPS units that are ruggedized against the elements, but does it stand up against today’s mobile devices? Read on for the full review.

Initial Impressions

Before purchasing the 600, I was using an Oregon 450 for hiking trips. The size, shape and weight of the 600 is very familiar to people who have used the older models. The biggest difference is the glass screen paired with capacitive touch, instead of the plastic resistive touch layer used in previous models.

Within a few minutes of playing with it, I’m pretty optimistic that this will replace the 450 quite easily.

Display Quality & Performance

Oregon 450 vs Oregon 600 in Glare

Oregon 450 vs Oregon 600 on the Trail

This is an area where the handheld devices have historically struggled. To keep battery life strong, slower processors are used, and Garmin’s display on the Oregon 450, which attempts to make it possible to use the light from the Sun to make the screen readable with the backlight off is held back by the resistive touch, unlike the eTrex 10/20/30 models.

In terms of the display quality, the move to glass has definitely improved the daytime visibility. With the Oregon 450, having shaded terrain on was not a good idea, as it robbed what little contrast the screen had. The 600 is nearly identical to the eTrex 10/20/30. On a sunny day, I can leave shaded terrain on and not have any problems reading the screen with the backlight off. The effect is even more pronounced in person than it is in these shots.

The move to capacitive touch is a bit of a mixed bag though. The upside is that the contrast is much better, but now it has the same limitations of any other smartphone that uses this style of touch screen. Thankfully it has a high-sensitivity touch mode so that you can use the screen with some types of gloves. Using it in the rain is now tougher, due to how the droplets may cause touches to be registered. I leave the screen locked during hikes to minimize the issue. I’d say the trade-off Garmin made here was worth it, all said.

Performance is another area where things have greatly improved. It still isn’t up to par with today’s smartphones, but it is at the point where redraws aren’t painfully slow, even with many layers turned on. Turning some layers off will improve the speed a bit (especially terrain shading). Personally, I find the shading too useful to turn off, now that the performance doesn’t become glacial when it is turned on.

Features Galore

The Garmin Oregon is filled to the brim with features that are meant to make it possible to do everything you might want with GPS from the one device. It is safe to say, that for general outdoor use, you will have a hard time finding something you want it to do that it doesn’t do. It even includes a calculator, if you need one for some reason.

The core functionality is well polished by this point. Displaying maps, and following routes or tracks all works as expected, and the dashboard is customizable to display anything you need it to display. Profiles is also a core feature for those who want to use the Oregon for multiple roles, such as biking, hiking and geocaching. This allows you to apply all these customizations to each profile so that the information you want in a particular setting is available when you want it.

New to the 600 is the nüvi style map view, which is quite handy for biking or motorcycling. While you can use the Oregon in a car, it isn’t all that useful with such a small screen and no voice directions. This appears to be part of an effort to unify the firmware across the different devices going forward, such as the larger Montana. I do still find myself using a tweaked nüvi view for biking when I’m recording my path.

Garmin’s push to create a “do it all” outdoor GPS here does leave it with a problem. Without any focus to the device, many features are left with rough edges, or treated like an afterthought. And you will run into them. The 3D view for example, is still far too slow to be of much use. And it took a couple patches to prevent it from crashing repeatedly. Geocachers will find some rough edges here as well.

One new feature that shows promise is the bluetooth connectivity for talking to a smartphone. It allows Basecamp Mobile for iOS to copy/view recorded tracks, routes and waypoints, with connectivity with Garmin’s cloud storage. This is useful, but since it currently supports only iOS, Android users are left in the cold.

For folks looking for a camera, the 650/650t includes one. I haven’t had a chance to see the results of images from this camera, unfortunately.

Map Data

This gets its own section, since it is probably the one thing that might make someone reconsider the purchase. The 600 doesn’t include any map data on its own, beyond a very rough base map. The 600t comes with 100k topographical maps which are useful for those who don’t need a ton of detail. Separately though, Garmin sells 24k topographical maps through a couple different means: SD card, download, and DVD. The biggest problem is that if you want maps of trails that are routable, a feature Garmin touts, then Garmin’s maps are woefully incomplete.

All is not lost, as there are 3rd party map sources, including a couple places producing topographical maps from OpenStreetMap data which are routable and contain better detail for trails. As OpenStreetMap is a bit more popular in Europe than the US, even their data is incomplete in places, but still much better than Garmin. There are also sources for 24k topographical maps, that unfortunately lack terrain shading, and access to USGS maps that you can load on the Oregon through Garmin as well as aerial views. In the Northwest, the aerial views are mostly just trees, which has made me avoid trying them.

So it is a bit of a mixed bag. This is an area where it doesn’t “just work”. Someone who buys the device has to think about what type of maps they want to use, and how they want to get them. There isn’t any solution better out there, but it may make the smartphone apps more palatable if you are using OSM data in either case. One recommendation I have is to get the 100k topo version which will include terrain shading that way if you want it. And then use 3rd party sources for 24k topography in areas where you need it, or just use USGS maps if you want.

Specifically for those in the Northwest, there is the Northwest Trails project whose goal is to provide an overlay of trail data that you can put on top of the topo maps that Garmin provides. The data is a lot more up to date and accurate, although it isn’t routable. Routable maps are not something someone needs, but it does save time planning out routes, or when you want to suddenly change your plans at the camp site.

Final Thoughts

The Oregon 600 is one of the only devices of its kind on the market, with Garmin not really having a whole lot of competition here. It’s mostly a question of what screen size do you want, and how much you willing to pay. It is hands down the best Oregon Garmin has released in my mind. And the size of the Oregon is ideal for me, as I’m not looking to use this in the car like the Montana is somewhat intended to do.

The bigger question here is more if it can compete with some of the options available today, in the form of applications on your smartphone, along with a ruggedized case. Some cases, like the Mophie Juice Pack Pro for the iPhone 4/4S give you a ruggedized case along with enough extra battery life to get through a couple of days for 150$, when the Oregon 600’s MSRP is 400$. What these smartphone solutions lack though, is the option of replaceable AAs, accessories to mount the GPS onto your bike or backpack like the Garmin, and the amount of features that work completely disconnected from cellular networks. The smartphone apps will evolve somewhat more quickly, and have access to some of the same data sources like OpenStreetMap, in addition to having a more responsive UI.

My first blush answer is that the Oregon cannot yet be replaced by a smartphone for the person who is outdoors often enough, and likes to go on camping trips with hiking/biking as part of the plan. It’s just a more versatile option. I do have a couple apps that I want to try out on day hikes over this next hiking season, and the idea of carrying one less device on these day hikes is an alluring one.

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Hike Report: Quinault Loop Trail

This was our first hike of the spring hiking season for 2013. Despite the fog and rain rolling in as we arrived at the trailhead, we decided to press on anyways. Good thing we all brought some sort of rain gear to help, just in case.

The full length of the loop is around 4 miles, and the terrain is fairly easy. There’s not a lot of ascent along the loop, which makes it ideal for more leisurely hikes. It also offers up good scenery along the way in the form of many small waterfalls, and one or two larger ones. There are plenty of off-shoots to explore in later trips to encourage folks to keep coming back, or spend a couple days at the lodge along the trail so they can explore them all.

Our path took us past Quinault Lake along the south side, which was unfortunately fogged in. Recent storms had also fallen a few trees, which had been cleared out of the path at the time we passed through. Despite this, and the rain, it was a good trail to go through, if a bit of a drive from Seattle.

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Hike Report: Pacific Crest Trail (Snoqualmie Pass)

A summer hike through the area near the Snoqualmie West Summit, which goes through winter ski slopes. The difference between winter and summer is quite startling.

The hike itself started at the trail head just off of I-90, and headed south to Lodge Lake. It was a fairly short hike, but with the higher altitude, it is a bit tougher to make progress if you aren't already used to it. The purpose was for more of a leisurely hike as well, which wasn't helped by altitude. The scenery is quite lovely, although once you pass the peak of the ski slopes and make it into the actual forest, the trail narrows and the terrain gets rougher.

Also of note, is the Summit Pancake House that offers a good breakfast for a decent price before taking off on the hike. 

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Hike Route: Mineral Point Trail (No 82)

Not a whole lot to share for this week, so here's the rough map we used to plan the Mineral Point Trail hike during our trip. Nothing shiny like Garmin Basecamp here, as it was a bit of a last minute decision made on the trip itself.

Source

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Hike Report: Mineral Point Trail (No 82), Idaho

Not to be confused with Mineral Ridge.

This was actually a pretty good hike to take as part of a vacation to the Sandpoint area. There is a fair bit of driving you have to do in order to get to either end of the trail, as a good chunk on it is on dirt road. And this is only a piece of a trail system that makes a good source of day hikes in the area.

One word of caution is that the trail does run along a high vertical drop for a fair distance, and the trail is narrow in these areas as well. But you do get a good view of Lake Pend Orielle as a reward.