Outdoors

Camelbak Intro

Logan is doing a lot more hiking these days and had asked for my thoughts about hydration packs. Here’s what I came up with:

They’re great! Hydration can make the difference between a good hike and a bad one. Having your water easily accessible makes it a lot easier to stay hydrated.
Camelbak is the most popular but there are other brands of hydration packs.
Just because you decide you want a Camelbak, you don’t need to limit yourself to Camelbak branded backpacks. Lots of packs have a separate pouch designed for hydration packs or you could just throw it into a normal backpack too. It is nice if the spot for your pouch has a little loop to hang the hydration pack from. The straw connects at the bottom of the pouch and without that hanger loop, the pouch can slouch down and cut off the water.
Keep your pouch clean! It can be really tricky to keep mold from growing in the pouches when you’re not using them. Some people just keep them in the freezer between uses but since I only use mine a handful of times each year, I prefer to fully dry them out. I recommend getting a cleaning kit. You can use things from around the house like coat hangers but these kits work really well and aren’t too expensive. I hang and dry my pouches after every hike and then use the cleaning tablets every once in a while.
You can buy new bite valves in case yours gets really dirty, is used by a gross human or if it just wears out.

benmartens October 7, 2016 Outdoors

Logan invited us along on a hike and we ended up at Rattlesnake Ledge. I’ve done the hike a few times before but it was the first time for Logan, Tyla and Elijah. The hike provides a great payout for a moderate amount of effort which means that it is usually very crowded and that day was no exception.

I carried Elijah in the pack all the way up and most of the way down. He was happy to walk part of it, but it was really slow going since we had to stop to get passed both by people heading the opposite way but also by people who were going the same way as us. So he just bopped along (heavily) in my backpack.

It really is a beautiful hike and the consistent climb up to the top is nice versus a hike that alternates between flat and steep sections. The crowds get to me after a while though. I prefer the hikes where you only see a couple other people but there are reasons why those trails are more sparsely populated. I’ll have to get used to these easier busier trails for a while as Elijah learns to hike on his own.

benmartens October 4, 2016 Outdoors

Fremont Lookout Hike

Today is my birthday and when Tyla asked what I wanted to do for my birthday weekend, I requested a hike. I had hoped to do a lot more hiking this summer but it hasn’t happened yet. So on Saturday we packed up the car and headed to Mt. Rainier.

I chose the hike out to Fremont Lookout. It’s one I’ve done twice before but it’s a great one. It’s something like 6 miles round trip with about 800 feet of elevation gain. It’s not super strenuous but the trail does get narrow and requires your concentration to avoid a long slide to your doom.

The weather was gorgeous and the temperature was perfect for hiking. Unfortunately it was a little windy at times and Elijah was just along for the ride so he was pretty cool. Thankfully Tyla had planned well and we had enough extra gear to keep him warm. Elijah walked about 1 of the 6 miles and happily rode in the backpack for the rest of the way. I was happy to survive the hike with the ~40 pound pack.

It’s a little over 2 hours away from our house so it’s quite a hike (pun intended) but it’s so cool to have world class hikes like this within range of an easy day trip!

Thanks to Tyla for taking a bunch of great pictures along the way too! Oddly enough, neither Tyla nor I took any pictures of the actual lookout, but you can find plenty of those on the interwebz.

benmartens September 12, 2016 Family, Outdoors

Tolt MacDonald Camping

Tyla and I used to go camping once or twice a summer before Elijah came along. Then we got a little gunshy about camping with a munchkin. We have visited Tyla’s family at a campsite multiple times but we’ve never slept at one overnight. It was time to try it out for real.

I picked Tolt MacDonald park as a location that wasn’t too far away but one that still has some interesting stuff for us to explore. It’s the same park where we had our family photos taken. I know there are lots of you who would have been happy to come along, but we wanted to do this first trip by ourselves to make some family memories and then be ready for bigger trips with more people.

We had great weather for the trip and Elijah loved it! We all went to bed together at night around the time the sun set and he was zonked so he fell asleep quickly. We spent Saturday down by the river playing the sand and we also drove over to Snoqualmie Falls. I haven’t been there since they redid the lower viewing area. They have it completely blocked off so that it’s impossible to get down to the rocks below the falls. I’m glad we had opportunities to explore there years ago before access was shut off.

Elijah got to roast his first marshmallows over a real campfire and eat meals outside. He loved it all and didn’t want to go home at the end. The only misstep we had was that he woke up at 6am on the last day and couldn’t get back to sleep. He hasn’t figured out how to keep quiet for very long so we went on a 2 mile hike through the woods to avoid waking up everyone else. All in all, the trip was a success though.

Personally, I was thrilled to go camping with the truck. It was so easy to toss everything in the back. And this was the first time we had fully set up our new tent. That tent is going to last us forever. It’s built really well and worked great. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for my air mattress. I vaguely remember a leak from the last time I used it years ago but for some reason it didn’t get thrown away. So I spent the second half of both nights laying on the ground. I remembered to toss it in the trash this time.

It was a really nice weekend and I’m excited that we can start adding these trips back into our summer schedules again.

benmartens August 5, 2016 Family, Outdoors

Birch Bay

We spent Memorial Day up at Birch Bay with Tyla’s family. The weather was pretty wet on Saturday but Sunday was gorgeous. We spent all of Sunday morning down by the water enjoying the views and attempting to fly kites. (Logan won that contest.) Traveling with a kid means a lot of extra work but it was nice to get away and enjoy some good times and nice scenery.

benmartens June 1, 2016 Outdoors, Travel

Losing Our Views

Usually conservationist efforts are about conserving our natural areas. But what happens when the natural areas grow up so much that they remove any of the good views that caused us to want to preserve the spot in the first place? Is it ok to cut some trees down in that case? Cliff Mass has an interesting post showing photos of some trouble spots. It would be interesting to see some kind of bill go through to conserve views at specific nature spots. I wonder how it would play out?

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/05/washington-state-is-losing-its.html

benmartens May 31, 2016 Links, Outdoors

Tent

It has been 11 years since I bought a tent. That last $35 tent served me well over the years but it was always flimsy, it wasn’t great in the rain, and the last time we used it, Oskar ran through the door destroying the zipper.

With Elijah getting to an age where we are considering camping, I decided it was time to stock up on some new gear. Instead of going for another cheapo tent, I decided to buy one that will probably last us for the rest of our lives. Tim and Chelsea bought the 6-person Cabela’s Alaskan Guide Geodesic Tent a few years ago. They’ve had that tent out in a lot of wild weather and it’s still in fantastic condition. Those experiences coupled with a $100-off sale on tents at Cabelas caused me to pull the trigger before even figuring out if Elijah actually likes camping. In addition to the $100-off sale, I was able to ship it to the store which is in another county that has a lower tax rate so I saved quite a bit of money.

Elijah and I picked up the tent last weekend and set it up in the front room. We didn’t set it up fully, but it was enough to make sure that the tent was in good shape and to get him excited about the idea of camping. We’re going to book a quick camping weekend with just the three of us somewhere close by to see how it goes, but hopefully we’ll be getting out a little more often in the coming summers.

benmartens May 27, 2016 Outdoors

Talus Rocks Hike

All this nice weather had me itching to get out for a hike so Saturday morning we piled in the car and headed for Tiger Mountain. Instead of attempting the peak with a ~25 pound kid in a backpack, we did the Talus Rocks trail (#8 from Beyond Mt Si).

Elijah did a fantastic job on the trip. He rode calmly in the backpack the whole time and talked nonstop. The most common topic was about which trees had fallen down and which ones were “good strong trees.” I think he’s slightly nervous because we’ve seen some trees falling (even on a car) so this was his way of working through it.

We made pretty good time on the hike with only one quick stop to shed some layers. The trail from the main West Tiger 3 trail over to the Nook Trail was pretty much covered in trees and we bushwacked a bit around some closed areas. Eventually the deer path or whatever we were following ended up back on the main trail and we continued along. The nice thing about Tiger Mountain is that as long as you understand the basic layout of the main trails or if you have a map handy on your phone, it’s pretty hard to get lost because there are so many well-travelled and well-marked trails.

We covered 3.3 miles and averaged 2.4 mph. Hopefully this was just the first of many hikes for the season!

benmartens April 18, 2016 Outdoors

Greenwater Lakes

After the success of our Barclay Lake hike, we decided to try it again. We met Mandy and Ike at their house, got both car seats into one car and piled in for a 1 hour 45 minute drive down to the trailhead for Greenwater Lakes. It’s off of Hwy 410 on Forest Road 70. The drive was a little long for the boys both coming and going, but it’s nice to get a little farther away from the popular, crowded trails.

The hike had a little more vertical than the Barclay Lake hike but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately the lakes at the end weren’t as great as we were expecting. They both looked really low which is unusual for this time of year but probably expected given the low snowpack. We had a normal amount of precipitation during the winter, but it wasn’t in the form of snow so it wasn’t released slowly down the mountain during the spring melt.

We ended up going all the way past the bigger, second lake and found a nice spot along the river that feeds into the lakes. The boys had fun throwing rocks into the water while we enjoyed a picnic and rested up for the trip back.

I don’t think we’ll do this one again, or at least if we do, we’ll wait until we know the lakes are fuller. There were some reasonably good camping sites available in that area too.

benmartens June 16, 2015 Outdoors

Barclay Lake

We’ve had an incredible spring in terms of weather. Normally we are in the midst of “June gloom” where it might not be super wet, but it’s 100% cloudy for weeks on end. Instead, we’re in a stretch of warm weather and clear blue skies. We don’t usually get this until July. I’ll take it!

When you get nice weather in the Pacific Northwest, you better take advantage of it, and that’s just what we did. We loaded up the car and headed to Barclay Lake for a hike with Nancy, Megan, Mandy and Ike. Our previous attempts at hiking haven’t been super successful because Elijah ends up getting tired of riding in the backpack and wants to walk. Walking turns into a game of endless distractions that doesn’t result in us moving down the trail.

This hike went a lot better, and it might be because Ike and Elijah could both see the other one riding in a backpack. The hike was not too difficult, but it ended at a very nice lake. Elijah and Ike spent their time throwing rocks and mud into the lake while the rest of us had a picnic.

Ike and Elijah both fell asleep in the backpacks on the way back to the car and the hike was a success! The only downfall was that I had underestimated the traffic that would be coming back through the pass on Memorial Day. It added about 90 minutes to our 90 minute drive. Ouch.

Two thumbs up for Barclay Lake though. There were a lot of very nice potential camping spots around the lake and I could see it being a good spot for a first overnight trip with Elijah when he’s older and able to carry his own pack.

benmartens June 12, 2015 Outdoors

Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Just trying to get through life without looking stupid, so far it's not going very well.