Vital Heat
Vital Heat In Coming into the Country, John McPhee offers a series of portraits of Alaskan backwoods men and women. One particularly striking character is Dick Cook, an able trapper who among other quirky traits disdains wool, wearing instead cotton, the one fabric every outdoor adviser warns against. We’ve all heard the phrase “cotton kills” […]
Day 46
Oct 16 day 46 National Park 0 km. Another zero at National Park, waiting for Cory to get his stuff organized. We should be on the river tomorrow. To get all that square, we have to skip the hike into Whakaporo Landing, which was mostly just a long road walk anyway. A little disappointed to […]
Day 45
Oct 15 day 45. National Park 0 km. Turns out I need to take a couple of unanticipated zero days to work out the river transportation. A large segment of the trail is impassable because of a collapsed bridge, so the best (only) strategy is to put in the water at Wades Landing and canoe […]
Day 44
Oct 14 day 44 Whakapapa Campground to National Park 20 km 9:00-2:00 Today was all about the trail. It was also about my usually wrong preconceptions. Here in the middle of the national park– Tongiriro/Ruapehu– are a large number of trails catering to an equally large number of tourists. I started this morning from Wakapapa […]