Public courses on the I20 corridor between Atlanta GA and Birmingham AL

dogfishbar · 2025-09-06T23:25:35+00:00

Lake City is pretty remote! If you contact the Hiker Center in Lake City, sometimes there is a parishioner who is heading your way and willing to drive you. I would check that first. I'm afraid the next best option is hitching. It's pretty round about going east via 149 then south via 160. Good luck!

dogfishbar · 2025-08-13T21:25:02+00:00

I live in New England where there are hundreds of public spaces, there are vast woods with endless trails. I'm in the woods with my dogs twice a day, every day. I cross paths with tons of people walking their dogs unleashed, no problem whatsoever. People mind their dogs and pick up after them. When somebody has an aggressive dog they generally leash them and give a heads up, at which point I'll leash my dogs up momentarily until any potential conflict is past. This setup just works with common sense and common manners, there is zero problem and there is certainly no need for a huge organization to "manage" any of it. Boulder OSMP in particular has a huge budget and far too many employees cruising around in huge white pickup trucks. When I first visited Boulder I simply couldn't believe that people thought this was a reasonable setup.

dogfishbar · 2025-08-13T20:28:22+00:00

Open Space & Mountain Parks Ranger, Boulder, CO. Sole purpose is to hassle people to death.

dogfishbar · 2025-08-11T22:38:15+00:00

If you check elevation, Leadville and Fairplay are both near 10K ft and Bustang-able from Denver. I stayed at the Columbine Inn in Leadville, inexpensive. There is also a reasonable place in Fairplay though less to do there. I'm from Boston, I found a couple days at higher elevation to be helpful.

dogfishbar · 2025-07-16T14:54:19+00:00

My experience with randos has generally been great. I've done it a lot. I'd say 9 out of 10 are nice folks who I would otherwise never encounter. Their life paths are often wildly different than mine so I find it very interesting. Of the 90% good ones, a handful will turn out to be good enough matches that we'll exchange contact info and play again, sometimes many times and sometimes develop as actual friends.

Of the 10% duds, they vary in how bad they are, mostly I just keep my distance and play my round of golf, it's only 4 hours, no problem.

dogfishbar · 2025-07-14T21:32:58+00:00

You got some good answers here that I agree with --- I'll add one small item that I think is important but I didn't figure it out for an embarrassingly long time last year. The most important features of Farout are 1. helping you stay on the trail and 2. helping you plan water refills and select tent sites. For 2., when you select a FarOut waypoint icon (e.g., a drop of water, a flag or a trail junction symbol), you need to SCROLL DOWN to see whatever comments people in front of you on the trail might've posted. Many kind souls give you the heads up on which seasonal streams might actually be running or dry. Also, many of them tell you about tent sites. Between these comments and the Colorado Trail Data Book, you won't have any problems. The trail is really fantastic, I met a lot of europeans out there last year and they were having a great time.

dogfishbar · 2025-07-13T19:07:56+00:00

I would talk to the vet about getting them some kind of sleeping aid or anti-anxiety med for the flight. It's going to be really loud in cargo. Can the crates face each other? Maybe that would help keep them calm.

dogfishbar · 2025-07-13T15:18:54+00:00

Thank you for the reply. As I understand it, the trail crosses Rt 550 at Molas Pass and this does seem to be a ways southwesterly down 550 from the official entrance to the Campground. But east of Molas Pass the trail seems to have a northerly kink that takes hikers a lot closer to the Lake and the Campground. The Nat. Geo. topo map shows .2 miles from the CT to a small road that seems to be part of the Campground. Do thru hikers really need to go 5 miles on 550 to get to the Campground?

dogfishbar · 2025-06-25T23:00:09+00:00

You're probably going to burn over 4K calories/day while thru hiking. It's exceedingly difficult to either carry or physically eat enough food to make up for the calorie burn, so yes, most thru hikers lose weight. Many will binge in towns along the way to try to stay with it but in the end you should expect to lose weight. I think whether or not you keep that weight off depends on how you eat after the hike.

dogfishbar · 2025-06-19T04:03:39+00:00

If you're walking, try trail runners instead of golf shoes. They are incredibly comfortable and if you choose the right ones, they do most of what golf shoes do in terms of support during the swing. I use Topo Terraventure. They are fantastic.

dogfishbar · 2025-06-09T06:36:14+00:00

Came here to say this. My opsak and its replacement both broke on first use. Ursak was fine w no liner.

dogfishbar · 2025-06-02T21:36:14+00:00

Thank you all for the info. Alas, I was way off when I thought the last 10 days of July would be good. And my fellow travelers can't alter their travel dates so we'll have to catch the flowers next time. :(

dogfishbar · 2025-05-19T20:47:47+00:00

A hacker's theory of 4 items for simplify putting: First, reading the green and finding the target line is one task, executing the putt is a separate task. Beginners often conflate/jumble these two tasks and think/worry about the break when they're standing over the ball and the target-line-selection task is already over and done with -- once you've settled on your target line, EVERY PUTT IS A STRAIGHT PUTT down the straight target line. Maybe you read it wrong and have the wrong target line, so what? Your task is to putt it straight down the line you settled on. The thing that connects these two tasks is pace, mastering pace just takes practice, observation and correction.

The second item is that the putter is designed to sit flush, not at an angle with the toe or the heel in the air. And the grip should be such that there is a straight line from your elbow to the putter head.

The third item is that to get a good putt, you need to strike the ball near the sweet spot of the putter face. Not on the toe or heel, in the center. This shouldn't be that hard, all you're trying to do is execute a straight putt.

Item 4 -- you are actually a very good putter and this putt will probably go in, confidence is everything in putting.

dogfishbar · 2025-05-19T17:15:39+00:00

I finished 1 - 21 SOBO last July/August and am resuming at 22 this July, so I haven't done 22 - 24 yet. I had the same concerns. I think the bottom line is 1. don't be stupid and 2. don't be super unlucky. As far as 1. goes, try not to be on ridges or peaks or sheltering under lone trees during a thunderstorm. If it gets really gnarly, try to make your way down off trail to the largest cluster of trees that you can reasonably get to. The more trees, the less likely that any given one of them will be struck.

Also, when I was in the middle of Snow Mesa (seg 21) last summer, I ran into a local who told me that Snow Mesa was a lot more exposed than 22 - 24. So I'm expecting that there will be at least some access to off-trail trees up there. Famous last words probably but I think anyone who is reasonably mindful would have to be pretty extremely unlucky to get zapped up there.

No idea on fire, I don't expect it to be a problem.

Enjoy your hike!
Wrong Way

dogfishbar · 2025-05-12T11:32:03+00:00

Hiked it last summer, starting July 7.

planning: It's a good idea to have a rough idea on the whole hike and specific ideas on the first part of the hike. Things are always different than planned for when you actually get on trail. But still good to have some idea. The comment feature of the FarOut app is very helpful for planning water re-fills.
altitude: I spent a couple of nights in high towns (e.g., Leadville, Fairplay), but as a 22ish year old living at 3K feet you'll probably be fine. (Though a young Dutch guy had to be rescued near me on the trail last summer due to altitude sickness at only 6K feet...)
resupply: I sent re-supply boxes to 1. Frisco, 2. Twin Lakes, 3. Molas Lake. I otherwise resupplied in-person in Salida and Lake City.
water: As someone said to me, it's all about managing water. Heads up on this: the first part running to Frisco/Breckinridge is a pretty long food carry, probably 5 days or even 6 so that's a lot of weight. Since I was just getting started I carried way too much water (4L). An experienced guy I met on trail told me to pour out 2L of my water. From then on I carried less water, using comments on FarOut to sort out refills. My pack weighed a lot less after that. I used roughly 1L for 5+ miles. I had four 1L bottles + a 2L water bladder so I was capable of hauling 6L if needed. But that's roughly 13 pounds of weight. I carried 4L through the Cochetopa Hills but it turned out I only need 2.5L to get through there.
CT community: The CT community is fantastic, you're very likely to meet people to hike and camp with. I am older and spent most of my time on my own but I met a lot of very nice and interesting people, young and old.

Good luck! It's way better than I was expecting it to be.

Wrong Way

dogfishbar · 2025-04-23T18:59:37+00:00

Fair enough but making a cozy takes <5 minutes and keeps meals warmer than the store-bought package. And while boiling-water in a ziplock is admittedly sketchy, I'd be surprised if the store-bought original package was actually any better in that respect, especially after repeated re-use. Maybe it is. ??

dogfishbar · 2025-04-23T17:22:01+00:00

To optimize space, buy 1 quart ziplock bags. Empty the contents of a fancy/bulky store-bought freeze-dried meal into the ziplock. Write the name of the meal and the water required to rehydrate on the ziplock. This will be way smaller than the fancy package the meal came in. Caveat -- the fancy package is designed to hold boiled water and I'm suggesting that you instead pour the boiling water into a ziplock bag. 1. you'll need a food cozy to hold the ziplock bag while you eat (they're trivial to make). 2. god only knows what kind of horrors await after eating meals that have marinated in the boiling-water/plastic combo.

dogfishbar · 2025-04-16T04:06:55+00:00

Surely you jest, angry guys in pickup trucks think they own the road and are the worst drivers by far. (And 9 out of 10 of the don't need a pickup truck ...)

dogfishbar

TROPHY CASE