I can’t agree more with eBomb’s opinion on Steve House’s story from the latest issue of Outside magazine. I read the issue weeks ago, but every time I recall the article I still feel sick. Adventurers need to be bold but House has pushed it too far and become arrogant. The point he wants to make regarding the style of alpinism might make sense, but by discounting other styles of climbing he makes his voice not worth listening to. There is not only one road that leads to Rome, and there is certainly not only one way to make it to the summit.

Jeremy, my husband, is a talented and graceful skater; in contrast, I am dull on skates. Why hadn’t I seized this great resource and learned to glide gracefully? Perhaps I will end up managing to do triple toe loop? Sigh… Inline skating is one of the many sports I am confident that I will not be good at. I am too afraid to fall on hard surfaces; my nerves will be on edge way before my skates are on their edges.

I decided to join Jeremy for one of his practice sessions last week after all. So that next time when he hangs out with his friends he will have an answer to “does your wife skate?” And maybe I can shorten my waiting time to get something to respond to my outdoor buddies’ question: “does your husband hike?”

I couldn’t do cones right away and had to start with learning basics, because I am not like him – I am not an Italian, not Crazy and not Special (It seems that all the names of freestyle skating moves are tailored to him. It is so not fair). I spent probably a couple of hours repeating toe turns, 180 hop turns, front crossovers, t-brakes and finally I did a few runs of regular slalom with cones which are 80 centimeters apart from one another.

This is exciting, outdoor bloggers are planning to meet up somewhere OUT there (Bah, west coast again?! Maybe I should consider moving… )

This “1st Annual Outdoor Blogger Ho Down” is proposed by climb_ca at GetOutdoors and the tentative plan has been shaped up by him and Tom Mangan at Two Heel Drive:

“It’s the weekend of Oct. 6-8 (Friday the 6th was added as a travel day). Current thought is to hike a couple miles to Horse Camp in the Mt. Shasta Wilderness. Camping is limited to 10 people per group; the Sierra Club rents campsites at Horse Camp for $5 a night.”

Since I started to kayak two years ago, Lehigh River has been my major playground. It has two whitewater sections of Class 3: the Upper Gorge (Whitehaven to Rockport) and the Lower Gorge (Rockport to Glen Onoko). The Upper has more play spots and the Lower requires accurate boat control. I like them both. I’ve kayaked on the Upper five times, but I was never bored, instead, the river gave me new kinds of fun, training and surprise every time I visited it.

I was doing some research online to shovel up some facts, rapid description and area maps of the Lehigh Gorge because I have been thinking to compose several articles to depict my excitement and experience on kayaking through the Lehigh Gorge. I hope that my readers will not only share my river satisfaction but also learn more about this river and consider doing some whitewater sport as well.

Below I describe two links which I found useful:

1. Lehigh River Water Trail (http://wildlandspa.org/lrwt/)

This site is very informative. It contains river maps, access point maps, description of rapids and everything you need to know about paddling in the Lehigh River.

2. Northeast PA Kayak School (http://www.kayakschool.com/)

If you have never kayaked before and want to try it, I suggest you to take an instructional class before you head to the river since whitewater sports are accompanied with considerable risks. I personally recommend taking a class from the Northeast PA Kayak School.

The founder of the Northeast PA Kayak School, Jerry McAward, is an excellent instructor. He knows how to diagnose and fix students’ mistakes and is a fun person to be with. I also had experience with another instructor, Tim, who explains the concepts of river reading and kayak strokes in such a simple and clear way, easy for people to digest and apply to.

I’m very glad that my husband, Jeremy, is now working on a project with his best friend on a sport which he is really good at – inline skating – so how wouldn’t I advertise for him?

I am never really good on inline skates – skating forward used to be the only thing I did. If not because inline skating is the summer sport to practice skiing off-season, I guess the fear of falling on dead hard pavement would have scared me away from this sport a long time ago.

When I met my husband, he gave me the impression that skating could be fun rather than just a workout. He dances on them, jumps over puddles and skates down along stair cases, and he taught me how to skate backwards, which added some colors to my skating life.

I stopped advancing from there because I still would rather fall on snow or fall into water than hard surfaces, but he keeps moving forward because inline skating is his beloved sport. Jeremy and his friend, Denni, will challenge freestyle slalom runs starting from moving their skates with different techniques to skate through cones which are 80 centimeters apart to 50 centimeters apart and maybe even some distance shorter!

If you’re interested in inline skating, don’t wait another second to check their website to read some useful information and watch some practice videos:

TheSLALOM.com
http://www.theslalom.com/

I was reading some old articles on snowbliss.com and came across these two interesting products: RibCap and Psolar BX Balaclava.

RibCap is a piece of headgear; it’s soft and wears comfortably but could act as a helmet. RibCap uses a special material called d3o which consists of free-moving molecules: when your body moves slowly, they move with you, and therefore you should feel the material soft and flexible. However, when d3o encounters impact, the molecules lock together to absorb the shock.

I am intrigued by this product since I am still looking for a ski helmet. Although the testimony snowbliss.com quotes lowers my doubt, I think I’ll stick with traditional hard-shell ones for now after reading the disclaimer from the official website of RibCap: “The ribcap doesn’t offer a complete head protection and doesn’t comply with any standards established for protective headgear like helmets.”

Psolar BX Balaclava and other Psolar products use a heat exchange module called QXtec®. This module warms up the cold air you inhale by forcing a phase change from vapor to liquid, and it could raise the temperature of the air from the freezing point up to over 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here is a quote from their website describing how QXtex works: “a QXtec module that is made of desiccant coated plastic. The desiccant grabs the moisture from the air, forcing a phase change from vapor to liquid. This phase change releases heat that is added to the natural heat of exhalation, warming the plastic. This warmth is transferred to the air as it is inhaled.”

A few days ago, I read about this product, LightCap, on Gizmodo, and it grasped my attention.

I backpacked in the Catskills last weekend. On Saturday, after finishing up hanging the bear bag, the sun was long gone and I couldn’t see my tent even with my headlamp on. Although I lost my sense of direction, I wasn’t nervous because I knew that my tent wasn’t too far away, and I had the map and compass with me. However, that reminded me about many stories I heard about such as people went out of the tent at night for bathroom break and couldn’t find their way back. One friend, who is an experienced backpacker, once told me that he always hangs a lantern or a small flashlight in the tent when he leaves his tent at night. That is a good idea, but given the extra weight and packed space, I still count on my compass.

This product might be a good compromise. It weighs 4.6 oz (about 130 grams; actually I still have no sense about imperial system) more than a regular water bottle. More importantly, it’s a gadget and I like gadgets. In addition, simplehiker found out that it’s cheaper if you buy it on amazon.com.

One of my blogging friends, who lives in Japan, just posted this article about a sleeping bag that has two legs. Don’t ask me about the specs of this bag because I don’t read Japanese. The only thing I know is it’s not a cheap bag: it’s over $400.00.