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Hiking!

Knower of nothing

Well-Known Member
AKA the single outdoor hobby that I try to practice at least once a year.

What's your best hiking picture?
Best hiking encounter?
Best location you've visited?
Or just stories from hiking in general.
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While it's heavily location dependent, most of my greatest memories of being outside were all hikes. Relatively short ones that can be done in a day or even just half of one. I don't have the physical condition for anything greater.
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As all of my days indoors are similar to each other, the times on hikes form distinct anchor points for memory. Each trip linked to what things were like at the time.
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As I only got a smartphone rather recently, most of the older hike photos were taken by the flip phone I've had since I was a kid before then.
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I love the desolate. I love the open. And I think that as the magic fades from our twilight world, these are the places where it can still be found.
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This is one of the best locations, Pulpit Rock. It takes around two hours to walk up there. It's a 604 meter drop straight down to the fjord beneath.

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This is one of the best locations, Pulpit Rock. It takes around two hours to walk up there. It's a 604 meter drop straight down to the fjord beneath.

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Incredible, though the tourist-heavy locations are generally avoided by me! Norway is still on my must-visit list.
Slightly less impressive scale-wise, I have fond memories of this part on Handa Island in Scotland.
It's all bird nests along the cliff-side. Take some binoculars and watch little puffins.
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I like this place, on the way up to a place called Kjerag Plateau you walk past this. It's called the Kjerag Bolt. It's just a large stone, but it's wedged in a crevice in the mountain. I would have liked to see how it ended up there. It has been there for a loong time.

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Nice pictures Forest Cat and Knower. I need to find some old SD cards for some of my better pictures. Here is a picture of some rocks in the water from the cliff @ Sonoma State Beach Park just North of Bodega Bay CA.
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I love the Colorado Plateau. One delightful backpacking trip was going cross country in the Escalante with American French-Alpine wethers as pack goats. They are marvelous in that terrain.
  • First pic. the packgoats on slickrock
  • Second pic. Bowman Arch, one of the arches we encountered.
  • Third pic. My spouse above Calf Creek.
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These were taken in February 2018 in Colorado National Monument IIRC. This is not a typical time for me to hike but I was staying in Grand Junction to attend a funeral in Moab Utah, so why not hike afterward? There is a place called Cold Shivers Point that is aptly named.
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View attachment 80290 These were taken in February 2018 in Colorado National Monument IIRC. This is not a typical time for me to hike but I was staying in Grand Junction to attend a funeral in Moab Utah, so why not hike afterward? There is a place called Cold Shivers Point that is aptly named.
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CNM is a gorgeous park. In fact there is a lot of spectacular geology in the region. Once my spouse and I did a short canoe trip on the Colorado River from Fruita to the Westwater ranger Station. Halfway through is Black Rocks, Precambrian basalts rising out of the river eroded into strange shapes.

Alas, Moab and Arches National park are being overrun by motorized tourists. Yet, for us desert rats who know how to stay safe, there are still hiking opportunities following the dry gulches and small canyons that also contain petroglyphs.
 
Paint Pots, located at the end of the Johnston Canyon trail in Banff, AB.

The trailhead is accessible via public transit from Banff and the trail provides a bit of everything: forest walking, catwalks in the canyon itself, waterfalls, and at the end, a stunning valley.

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We hike a lot, and I keep a diary of our best ones. Here's today's walk...

PEACEFUL BAY COASTAL WALK

We had a wonderful sunny day by the seaside today, doing a 12km hike of gorgeous coastline. We were only away for the day but it really feels like we've been on a much-needed mini-holiday, and I thought I'd share the scenery and some of the remarkable things we saw today.

This is Jess at the start of the walk.




She's been super excited since yesterday night about our outing, since she understands words for walking, going somewhere in the car, and that there will be swimming opportunities (which she loves). In Jess-speak that's walkies, broom-broom and splish respectively - onomatopoeia is helpful and so is repetition around those activities, so that now, for instance, if you say "broom-broom" she will leap around and start herding you to the door and then wait expectantly near the hatch, and if you say "splish" she will look around for water and go swim if possible. As Jess is 10 and slowing down a bit, we realise time is getting short and we want her to have as many lovely long walks with as possible. ♥

The general coastline:

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You end up going from beach to beach around a point and it's just totally splendid scenery and geology. This has got to be one of my favourite coastal walks anywhere, and goodness knows we are spoilt for choice on the South Coast.





Brett and I felt as if we were the only people left in the world for much of today's hike, because we met nobody else for the whole three-and-a-half hours, and the landscape is so primal and pristine.

We filmed a wonderful example of the power of the sea on the South Coast today. These are the waves that wash unwary rock fishermen into the sea, and then even strong swimmers have low chances of getting back to shore safely, which is why we have regular deaths from this...


There was a huge treat when we came to our picnic stop near Point Irwin. Brett was pointing at the sea. We couldn't make out what it was at first. It almost looked like dolphins, which are commonly encountered along this coast, but the fin shapes were wrong and there were so many of them close together...



Since we've done and documented this exact walk once before, we didn't take a proper camera with us today, so the photo isn't very clear as these critters were quite a way from us and we couldn't get closer to them. There are a few more photos in the complete-photo slideshow which I will link to later.

After a while it dawned on us what they were. We'd never seen this in real life before - but we had seen it on a David Attenborough documentary years ago. They were seals sunning themselves in the water, most of them floating sideways and upside-down, and what we were seeing were not fins but flippers!

We were watching this while eating apples from our own garden and drinking iced coffees made from local fresh milk the cow owner delivers to us once a week - quite a memorable picnic. It was lunchtime, but we'd already brunched in Denmark on the way through, at the award-winning bakery there - a pepper pie and princess slice for Brett, a seafood pie and beesting for me - a big treat because so well made and because these are not things I make at home. We still had one item each from that bakery in our backpack - a fruit-custard tart with a spelt crust brushed in dark chocolate (to deliciously keep the custard from making the pastry soggy, pure genius and I do that with all my own fruit tarts these days too), and a cherry-coconut slice for Brett - but we saved them for later!

Soon we were climbing to the highest point of this walk, into typical granite country:



The views west opened up from there and were amazing. That's Rame Head in the middle distance, with Point Nuyts far in the distance.



And then we saw whales blowing a little way offshore! Today just had everything...


In the second video you can see seagulls flocking over to where the whales are.


We couldn't make out if they were Humpbacks or Southern Right Whales, as they were far away and not coming out of the water enough. Both migrate around our coast this time of year. But if I had to guess I would say they were Humpbacks, because of the incredible almost trumpeting noise they were making at one point clearing their blowholes. It was a big sound and one I'd not heard before in years of whalewatching!

The ever-changing geology and scenery on this walk is just astonishing. It is so extraordinary...





We came to a little cove that was literally boiling with waves and I took a film. Brett volunteered to be in it so viewers could get a sense of the scale of these waves...


People say the Atlantic on the West Coast of Ireland is powerful, but the Southern Ocean has an enormous uninterrupted fetch right to the Antarctic and our South Coast is situated in the Roaring Forties. When you walk along this coast the ground shakes beneath your feet, like an earthquake. It's hard to describe the sheer power of the huge pounding waves here, but it is reflected too in the grandness of the coastal scenery, which has been hammered with this huge force for many thousands of years.

The remaining coastline photos are from the last beach along before the Bibbulmun Track veered back into the dunes, from where we then returned via a shortcut track to Peaceful Bay, rather than continuing to Rame Head Hut, which walk we have done previously and is in our hiking diary here if anyone wants to see that.

This is a truly magical beach. The second photo below is my favourite from today.





The dog really enjoyed this outing.





We played in the water and Brett caught it; in the slideshow we have a kind of water ballet sequence where the dog and I were just enjoying the sea and waves. Then we all had afternoon tea in this lovely spot at the end of the beach:





After that I had truly joyous splash in the water with Jess, playing tag with each other and egging each other on to chase waves. We didn't get any photos of that, but it will remain a golden memory of Jess and me for years to come - the fun and the scenery and the beautiful afternoon light...

We feel so privileged to live here and be able to walk in such magnificent places, many hours from major cities, literally at the edge of the world. ♥

A complete-photo slideshow of today can be accessed via this link - then use the right arrows to go forward!
 
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I backpacked the Trans Catalina trail with some friends on Catalina Island in California a little over a year ago. May have been my favorite trip that I have done.
 
I’ve got way more hiking gear than is probably reasonable for one person. I try to get in one two local hikes each month and one or two good trips a year.

I went to the snow for the first time in my life a few years ago. It has been my favourite hike so far.

It was unique in the fact that it was so quiet. No birds, no insects and no other people. Felt like being on another world.
 

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The Glass House Mountains are less than an hours drive from where I live. I’ve been hiking them since I was a child. I’ve climbed all of them except Crookneck as it’s off limits.

Mt. Beerwah is the tallest at over half a kilometre high. It’s mostly scrambling as it’s steep and rocky most of the way up.
 

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Mt. Ngungun (pronounced gun-gun by locals but technically pronounced noo-noo) is my youngest’s favourite hike because it isn’t scary like Mt. Beerwah and there’s a plateau at the top that has some lovely views.
 

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I’ve got way more hiking gear than is probably reasonable for one person. I try to get in one two local hikes each month and one or two good trips a year.

I went to the snow for the first time in my life a few years ago. It has been my favourite hike so far.

It was unique in the fact that it was so quiet. No birds, no insects and no other people. Felt like being on another world.
I've heard this feeling described as "stillness" in the interview with a hermit who survived in the winter in the woods. It's very precious, does something to you. I imagine it is an impact of the same character as you would experience on antarctica or the moon, just different intensities.
 
Oh boy lol... I have literally THOUSANDS of hiking photos and videos on my laptop and phone. I go hiking at least twice a week if I have breaks in between work and events.

I'm going on vacation on Sunday and I will be hiking, boating and exploring for an entire week.

But for a small sample of my hiking adventures, here is a video from 2019 when I went hiking at Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire. My dogs are sadly not featured in this one lol but they were there.

I love all the photos in this thread and I'll definitely post more. I have hiked all of New England, a lot of the US and some other countries.

 
It was unique in the fact that it was so quiet. No birds, no insects and no other people. Felt like being on another world.
Imagine XC-skiing in a nice set of tracks in the deep snow winding through a Northern Oak Savana while it's snowing. It is the loudest silence that you will hear. Clumps of snow plopping from the trees to the ground, the sibilant noise as your skis glide foreward, being enmeshed in your stride and breathing, going for endurance. That is the snow I love.
 
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