Trip Reports

Days 5-7: TGO Challenge Route Plan 2010 During the first 4 days of my route plan, I kept my daily mileage low to acclimate to the local environment and build in a hedge against bad weather which is common in Western Scotland. …

    Days 3 & 4: TGO Challenge Route Plan (2010) On days 3 and 4 of my hike, I’m going to be walking cross-country to Fort Augustus which is located at the southern end of Loch Ness. I’ll spend the night …

  Day 2 : TGO Challenge Route Plan (2010) After breaking camp somewhere between Alltbeithe Youth Hostel and Carnach Mor, I continue along the northern side of River Affric passing Allt Coire Ghaidheil (NH108208) and several ruins on the other side of …

  Introduction As I’ve mentioned before, the TGO Challenge is a 14 day coast-to-cost walk across Scotland running from May 14th – May 29th, 2010. I’ve been accepted into this year’s event from a field of international applicants. I’m in the final …

If you want to hike in Scotland, you need to learn some basic Gaelic words so you can read a map. The maps of Scotland published by the UK’s Ordnance Survey are full of Gaelic place names like Lairg Ghru, Beinn Bhreas, …

Here is a working draft of my 2010 TGO Challenge Route across Scotland. I realize that this probably just looks like a bunch of Gaelic place names right now, but I’ll be expanding the detail considerably over the next few weeks, with …

Photos Courtesy of Martin Rye Walter Underwood left a great comment last week on my book review of the NOLs Wilderness Guide, where he was critical about the book’s lack of time control plan (TCP) examples. A TCP or Route Plan, as …

Naturegirl and I got out on our first hike of the New Year on Saturday, snowshoeing 7 miles to Nancy Pond and back. We had driven up to the White Mountains the evening before and were staying at the Boulder Court Cottages …

Yesterday, naturegirl and I drove up to the Whites to climb Mt Tom (4,051 ft), a four thousand footer, near the entrance to Crawford Notch. We wanted to beat the blizzard that is raging now across southern New England and get a …

I went on a surprisingly difficult 9 mile ridge walk (cumulative elevation of about 3,500 ft) on the section of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail yesterday that traverses The Seven Sisters and most of the Holyoke Range in Western Massachusetts. The Metacommet-Monadnock Trail is …

The Lakes of the Clouds Hut is located at about 5,000 ft elevation on the southwest side of Mt Washington (6,288 ft.) and is named for the alpine tarns located next to it – the Lakes of the Clouds.This hut is a …

After spending the past few months section hiking the AT in New Hampshire and Maine, I did a big section down in southwestern  Massachusetts on Wednesday, finally finishing the state. As usual, I got off to an early start, sneaking out of …

I have two short sections of the Appalachian Trail left in New Hampshire and had hoped to complete one of them this weekend, a 2.7 mile stretch (requiring 14 miles of hiking) from the Skookumchuck Trail at the northern foot of Mt. …

I had a benign bear encounter this weekend at Lower Gentian Pond on the Mahoosuc Trail, way up in the northern part of New Hampshire, near the Maine state line. I stupidly left some beef jerky in my rain jacket which was …