The below is an article i wrote for the Family Pulse for June 2011. It’s either in your mailbox (if you have a kid in school) or it’s on it’s way.

Todd Kristie and Ginnie backpacking

One of the awesome things about living where we do is the proximity to the epic alpine terrain of the eastern Sierra Nevada. Now that I’m a dad, my definition of “epic” has changed from long backpacking treks, to nice casual hikes in the backcountry. Tahoe has a ton of great short hikes that once were nice snack stops on the way to a farther destination, but are now about as far as we can get before the little dude needs a break, nap, food, change, etc…

We missed the boat last year. Our son, Bowie, was born on mother’s day so by the end of backpacking season, he was only 6 months old and not quit up for an overnight on the trail.

But some of our friends were able to get out for overnight trips with young kids. I surveyed them and here are some tips for getting youngsters out on the trail overnight.

Todd and Ginnie crossing a creek

Pack and Packing

We use the Deuter Kid Comfort pack. My friends are equally split between that and the Kelty FC pack. Both are light weight, comfortable aluminum frame packs that hold a kid and a bit of gear. Tennile O’Meara and her husband Shawn took their daughter Sidney out to Winnemucca Lake last year and used the Kelty pack. “It was not easy to pack,” she says. “First we got out all of the gear we usually bring and all the gear we thought the baby would need (almost gave up right then).” They then whittled their gear down, setting aside luxury [heavy] items and, “continued on packing and repacking until we got it right (or at least right enough).”

Todd and Ginnie on the trail

Usually one person carries the kid and all the kid gear, amounting to a standard to heavy backpacking load. Then the spouse carries all the gear for the couple, which amounts to a heavy to really heavy pack.

Meals and Snacks

Unless you give your kid a lot of cheese and perishables, the normal snacks and food will work as backpacking food. If your kid is still nursing, ore on on formula, that’s a super easy (and light) solution. Kristie Connolly gave her daughter Ginnie gold fish, nuts and kid cliff bars for snacks and shared their freeze-dried backpacker food from REI for meals. Barrett and Dawn Donovan brought their son Caleb’s regular food and Formula for snacks.

Tips

“I would have not done such a long trip in such a short time.” Says Connoly. She recommends doing just a few miles a day so your kid can get down and play more.

Ginnie having some fun!

“Have a backup plan.” says Donovan. They had to bail on a backpacking trip in favor of car camping and day hikes when a last minute melt-down made an extended hike impractical.

“Pick a location you are already familiar with,” suggests O’Meara. “Don’t go when you think it will be buggy, don’t bring (many) toys, relax.”

Where to go

The Tahoe area is filled with great short hikes that are a mellow Micro-backpacking excursion for families with small kids. As the Sierra snow melts off, here are a few close by as well as one more further afield.

Lake Margret

• Mileage: 2.5
• Region: Carson Pass
• Map: National Geographic Lake Tahoe Basin
• Activities: When it’s hot, this is a great swimming hole with rocks to jump off into the water.

Winnemucca Lake

• Mileage: 2 – 3 (depending on where you start)
• Region: Carson Pass, Caples Lake
• Map: USDA A Guide to The Mokelumne Wilderness
• Activities: Beautiful high altitude alpine lake with many day hikes and landmarks to explore.

Gilmore lake

• Mileage: 3.7
• Region: Tahoe, Fallen Leaf Lake
• Map: National Geographic Lake Tahoe Basin
• Activities: This one is a bit more strenuous, but the high alpine lake is beautiful and you can easily do a day hike from here to the summit of Mt. Tallac at 9745 feet.

Long Lake

• Mileage: 2.8
• Region: Bishop, CA: Bishop Pass
• Map: Tom Harrison Maps: Bishop Pass
• Activities: There are many stops along this hike for resting, exploring and fishing. Also, it’s right below Bishop Pass which crosses the Sierra Crest with stunning views down into La Conte Canyon of the upper Kings River, Dusy Basin and the west face of The Palisade Peaks.

Resources:
USFS Map: A Guide to The Mokelumne Wilderness

National geographic Maps

• Lake Tahoe Basin
• Yosemite SE
• Mammoth Lakes, Mono Divide

Tom Harrison Maps

• Bishop Pass
• Desolation Wilderness
• Hoover Wilderness Region
• Mammoth High Country
• Order Tom Harrison Maps

Mike Henderson is an avid mountaineer, climber and backpacker looking forward to his first summer exploring the backcountry with his son.

It was a good run, but as of today, i am no longer employed by the company formerly known as Twelve Horses.  Myself, and several others (all horses) were let go.

First things first. I want to recognize the guidance, support, help, friendship and leadership of David LaPlante, Martin Gastanaga and Steve Spencer. Not only are they awesome to work for, they each have given me knowledge, experience, confidence and connections that I need to succeed.

I learn something from everyone. I take some quality, way of doing things, phrases, attitudes, philosophies etc. that might potentially make me a better person or more like them. From Dave: I take the ability to think big, couch wacky ideas in common sense terms and the importance of having someone watching your back (also triangles). From Martin I take the ability to juxtapose legit business seriousness with Natty Ice, the importance of supporting and fighting for your team and the importance of staying true to your word, (also donuts). From Steve, the ability to calculate a situation and boil a problem down to it’s essence and attack it and the ability to make people laugh in 5 time zones at the same time.

Second: Thanks to everyone at Twelve Horses for being great to work with. I’ve learned a lot from all of you, including, but not limited to the following:

• how to impress clients with backflips
• how to tell people that they’re wrong and that’s not going to work and we’re going to do it this way while making them laugh and totally want to change gears
• How to call a spade a spade and then turn it into an ace
• how to follow a Gantt chart
• how to be a nice cheerful IT guy
• how to deal with crabby IT guys
• how to produce jello wrestling videos
• how to communicate vague half formed creative ideas
• how to file an insurance claim for $8,000 in stolen equipment

Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Robert Payne, Rob Gaedtke and especially Leilani Schweitzer are awesome.

What am I going to do next?

Well, no one likes to be shown the door, but it’s worse to be get caught with your pants down. My pants are firmly up… I saw this coming and am prepared. What’s next for me is freelance. I’ll be working on new video projects with clients under the name Podlatch Media.

I’ll also be working with some of the other local independent web developers, strategists and creatives to take on some cool small brand identity, social media, web design and video projects under the name Arborglyph.

I thought about doing a Michael Moore style documentary by going under cover to expose the conspiracy of the FDA to make people think Bacon is bad for you. I’m still in the early phases of that. I also might run for president. What else should I do?

-M

That he was quiet was what I remember most.

That he lifted up his head and looked at us. Or at least in our direction. He made himself comfortable. We took a look and found out who he was. Danielle said his name. And someone, other than the two of us, for the first time heard it and wrote it down. He relaxed. We relaxed. He made strange noises. We freaked out. Then i wrapped him in a towel and held him while other things happened.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom

He can sit up, he can roll over, he can crawl, he gets sick, he gets better, he eats solid food, he gets more milk, then less, and he’s a year old and sprinting around the house behind his rolly cart, he’s banging on the computer while grandparents watch from 500 miles away, he disembowels the cupboards, while i watch videos of him wriggling in his owl chair with skinny legs and socks like bags on his feet.

He’s the rowdy one

The first to laugh. The first to make monster noises and bear hug his cousin, the first to grab crackers off the table. He smiles, he laughs, he cries, he sleeps like a baby. [I thought i knew what that meant.]

He’s one year old today, from right now. 365 days ago he was born. 140 days before that we saw his picture. 140 days before that he was a bunch of cells going nuts. 140 days before that we thought hay, you know what might be fun?

We were right.

Happy Birthday Little Buddy!

-M

Weekly Challenge video this week

is a trip to the park with Bowie and Juni. Shot on my Canon HV30 mounted to the bike, the Burley Trailer, and the fence with a clamp mount and a Bogen mini ball mount. Edited in Final Cut, strobed to 12 FPS and sped up to 400% and 600%.

The music is Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like an Eagle remixed by Pretty Lights. I found Pretty Lights last week on A tiny Day in the Jackson Hole Backcountry by Tristan Greszko. Download Pretty Lights music here.

That was a long week wasn’t it!

In fact, it was a regulation week. I still have my weekly challenge in tack though. I uploaded my last video on Sunday March 27th and this one Saturday May 9th. So I got almost 2 weeks to get this one out! But now I only have 7 days for the next one…

-M

It’s been so long since I’ve logged in here that i forgot my password

Not really. But I did update at least half a dozen point releases of wordpress. I have no intention of apologizing to you for my absence. You don’t come here for whining. According to google you’re here because I once blogged about women farting.There’s some esoteric crap below, so if you’re not interested, just skip down to the section labeled SO MY POINT IS THIS.

I’ve been thinking about some things lately

that I wanted to write about. One of which is the idea of the Ulysses Contract. The concept of using a group dynamic to help you commit to future action. In The Odyssey, Ulysses needed to sail past the Syrens. He also wanted to hear the syrens for himself. He also wanted to survive and get to his destination where he was going to ride a big rocking horse. So he made a deal with his men. They would block their ears with wax to avoid becoming enchanted by the syren song and lash Ulysses to the mast and ignore any pleas or orders from him until they were safely past the syrens.

Of course he went mad with the sound. All he wanted was to steer the ship toward their rock, or dive into the sea. Either option would have meant his death. He wanted what he wanted and nothing would stop him. Except the ropes and his hearing impaired crew.

You see this all the time

The only way to deter immediate instincts or desires is with competing immediate instincts or desires. The strongest one will win. Fitness challenges like Nike Fit or Endomondo use a group game dynamic to let you commit in the present to future behavior by using group awareness and interaction as a less dramatic version of the Ulysses Contract. If you don’t go run, ride, ski, whatever, then you either get outed publicly, or, which is probably worse, you have nothing to talk about and nothing for people to comment, like, retweet or hashtag (which we know is a powerful motivator). Social rewards are as powerful as the desire to stay in bed and sleep another hour .

My friend Colin is doing something similar with his goal of “Becoming a Better Writer.” By announcing it to his community and posting regular updates he’s hoping that we’ll hold him to his goal and that our awareness will affect his adherence to the goal. And I’m sure it’ll work.

There are a couple awesome examples

in a Radiolab Podcast from a few weeks ago. In it they describe a path to quitting smoking which mirrors how I gave up being a finger sucker when I was a kid. It’s an urge. My mom didn’t believe in pacifiers, so I made my own. It was comforting, relaxing. A very difficult thing to give up voluntarily, and not something that is easy to avert with physical means or a vague notion of future consequences, like “you’re going to have to get braces if you keep sucking you finger!” (Especially when all the cool kids have braces…)

My parents had a foster kid at the time named Todd. Todd was AWESOME! He was older, cooler, more rebellious, and more awesome than anyone I had met up to that point. We’d hang out in his room and he’d tell me stories and talk about cars and music videos. He was the one who set up the contract for me.

He told me he had a friend who sucked his finger. This friend wouldn’t quit either. And he suffered. Big Time. He got gang green. And his finger got moldy and fell off. Then his arm got moldy. And it spread. It was smelly, and disgusting looking and super painful and he just got more disgusting and moldy and miserable until he just lived in an attic and they fed him through a slit in the door. All from sucking his finger!

It left a big impression on me. I thought about it a lot. I had a vivid picture of Todd’s friend doubled over in agony as his arms fell to the floor and a putrescent cloud filled the room as he slowly suffered the consequences of finger sucking. From then on whenever I put my finger in my mouth, I saw (and smelled) that, and I pulled it out. Even when i was asleep.

I don’t know when I realized what he’d done. When I realized he just made it up. But the habit had already been kicked. The other think I don’t know is what to do about the fact that my son sucks his finger too…

So my point is this

I want to become a better Videographer. For the free subscription, Vimeo lets you upload one HD video per week. I will create one HD video per week and post it to Vimeo. You will, hopefully, watch that video and give me some kind of feedback. A like, a favorite, a comment, a tweet, a “sweet video” shouted out the window as I’m walking down the street. Something. Could be anything. In return, when it’s late on saturday evening and I’d rather watch an X-Files episode on Netflix and sleep in, I’ll finish a video…

This Week’s Video

Music by Phoenix. Check them out and buy their albums!

This is from my nephew’s 1st birthday party. It’s a family thing. It seems simple, but I spent a lot of time going through the clips and pulling out the ones that captured the mannerisms, expressions and essence of the people there. I spent a lot of time selecting the music and then cutting the clips to match the track beats, changes and timing. In the end, it probably won’t mean much to you. But I’m hoping that in 5 or 10 or 50 years, it’ll mean a whole lot to us.

Upcoming Videos:

• Cooking with Clint Jolly
• Photography in Zion National Park
• Tallcan TV
• A modestly intelligent person’s guide to making coffee

-M

A few years ago I bought a Polaroid 600 camera for my sister’s wedding. I took photos of guests and had them write something to Carrie and Dave and then collected all the photos for them to keep. I used the remaining film snapping silly photos and such.

Now Polaroid isn’t making instant film anymore. You can find some on Ebay, and it’s a hot comodity. Fortunately, a group of people are determined to resurrect instant photography.  I found out about this when my friend John posted about the Impossible Project on PhotographyReview.com.

I have a project of my own, though it’s proven to be far from impossible, at least so far. The Polaroid, and my video camera will play heavily in this new project. Here’s a little preview.

The Film is Impossible PX 600 First Flush Instant Silver Shade Film. Not sure what it looks like yet. Check back for more. It’s going to really get going any day now…

-M

Our friends John and Mary were AWESOME enough to put together what has been the most DELICIOUS photo session for Bacon365 so far.

Danielle, the Sea Monkey, and I had a fabulous time consuming this. I agree with John that Ravioli is one of the finest bacon consumption vectors.

Follow the progress of Bacon265 here on Flickr.

Check out the recipe below from KeyIngredient.com:

Yield: 4 servings

16ounces fresh or frozen cheese ravioli

6slices bacon

2cloves garlic, sliced

10ounces frozen peas

¼cup reserved pasta water

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2ounces ricotta salata, grated

Cook ravioli according to the package directions, reserving ¼ cup pasta water.

In a large skillet, cook bacon until crisp; remove and crumble. Add garlic to the skillet and cook until golden. Add peas and cook until heated through.

Mix in the ravioli and reserved pasta water; season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the bacon and ricotta salata.

Bacon is important to me. And so is photography. So my project this year is to post a photo of bacon every day for the next year.

Follow my progress on Twitter, Flickr, or Facebook.

Below are the first week’s submissions:

#1

More than 2 billion pounds of bacon is produced in the U.S. each year.

#2

Regular sliced bacon is .062 inches thick (1/16 inch) 16 – 20 slices per pound. Thin sliced bacon is .031 inches thick (1/32 inch) 28 – 32 slices per pound, and thick sliced bacon is .111 inches thick (1/8 inch) 10 – 14 slices per pound.

#3

#4

#5

#6

Bacon has no vitamin C or dietary fiber, that’s why it’s important to add a little salad to your bacon occasionally.

#7

I had his tapes. Back in the day. We wore Z. Cavaricci puffy pants and Air jordans. Or at least I would have if my parents were into paying $60 for shoes. I was deprived…

Me and MC

The company I work for, One To One Interactive, Heavenly Mountain Resort and Harrah’s/Harvey’s Lake Tahoe put on Tahoe Snowcial again this year. It’s an event we want to be the Sundance/SXSW of the [skiing/riding] Facebook generation. I think we’ve gotten off to a sweet start!

So in the initial planning phases of the event I was searching through wesites looking for other interesting things happening in Tahoe during the event and noticed that Hammer was playing Harrah’s South Shore Room Saturday night. Perfect. We looked into getting tickets, and Dave, on the sly, contacted his manager, found out that he’s something of a social media/dance thoughtleader and badda bing, badda boom, he was our keynote speaker! Not only that, he blew us all away.

Here’s a little interview Pete Blackshaw got of Hammer after the conference:

All in all Snowcial was a fun time with fun people. I didn’t get to spend a ton of time with people cause I was working the event, trying to coordinate things and such. I really enjoy spending time with Rob Sandie, Sonny Mayugba, The Loredos, the tubemogul crew, Eugene, Brian and Deepak. Also, met Scott Roeben, photographer, blogger and creator of Dribbleglass.com. Always good to hang out with my friends John Shafer and Jenni Curtis. John got some good photos of me. Perhaps I’ll consider using one of them as a new avatar…

Photo by John Shafer

Also was happy to get to know Jenn Gleckman better. I’ve run into her a couple of times and we’ve jousted on twitter, but that’s not the same as shredding perfect corduroy @ Tahoe!

The half day conference was perfect. A great format for engaging presentations that don’t get tiresome and boring. Presenters of note were Rob Sandie, who talked about using video contests to get customers talking about themselves rather than the brand; Monica Sullivan, talking about how Harrah’s Entertainment is using social media to market their national quiver of hotel and casino brands; Digi Dave Amirault, taking about the convergence of online media, communities, and print magazine publishing; Christine Loredo talking about mobile marketing and mobile apps; and Pete Blackshaw talking about trends and potential in online social marketing.

Best part of the short conference with a long weekend, was getting to hang with the presenters over beers, snow and steaks!

Wolfing Steak. Photo by Photo_John

Second best part of the conference was watching the snowcialites dance on stage…

The third best part was the SKIING! The conditions were firm, but Heavenly does a great job of grooming, so it was pretty good. There was a NASTY temperature inversion on with Bay Area style fog at lake level, but up above it all at the resort it made for a stunning view.

View from the Heavenly Tram down Gunbarrel

Thanks to everyone who came and made it a great event! I’ll be working to help make it kick ass again next year. If you’re interested in participating, please check in here for info, and sign up for a Snowcial invite here.

Peace out,

-M

Abstract:

Chestie McCougar huunter is a semi nomadic, solitary species observed only in the Reno region of Northern Nevada. He is characterized by flamboyantly amazing physical personage, sleeveless clothing, or the semi-lack thereof. His behaviors include pursuing and devouring attractive and attention-starved older women and purchasing malt liquor at local quickie marts. His hunting grounds are Wingfield Park, Reno, Washoe County, Nevada, USA, North America, Earth. Though the Cougarhunter’s importance as a species due to their unique ability to control the surplus cougar population is understood and widely appreciated, many things are unknown about chestie, Washoe County’s only known Cougarhunter. This document outlines what is known, and what is being done to learn more.

Chestie en route to a hunt Photo by Michelle McChestiehunter

Observations

Chestie can be seen downtown at outdoor venues during summer months prowling around without a shirt on.

Though the old Chestie never wore shorts or a shirt, in recent years he has taken to wearing shorts and a shirt in an effort to tone down his cugarhunting abilities and regain some of the thrill and craft of cougarhunting from when it wasn’t so easy.

You can recognize Chestie by his bulging and exposed chest muscles. He has the most magnificent chest in Reno. If you find yourself magnetically transfixed on the chest, man or woman, boy or girl, you’re in the midst of Chestie. But don’t worry, unless you are a sexy and flamboyant divorcee or widow over the age of 45, you have nothing to fear from Chestie.

Chestie rides a comfort bicycle, but he is deceptively fast. He can out sprint a hipster on a fixie in ladypants.

Chestie usually arrives on the scene on his bike and circles the venue stopping intermittently to scan the scene for vulnerable Cougars. As he is doing this, though this has never been witnessed, he rubs his chest on various objects around the park to mark his territory and confuse the cougars. The cougarhunter has scent glands on his chest much the same way dogs have scent glands in their buttholes.

Snapping a photo of Chestie is difficult, though it has occasionally been done. Usually would-be photographers get trapped in the shimmering radiance of his Olympian pectorals and drop their cameras in the river. No photos to date are conclusively Chestie and none so far have shown him in the act of hunting, capturing or dragging off a cougar for devouring.

Chestie has dark hair, dark skin, is about 5 foot 10. Nationality: unknown. Language: unknown. age: indeterminate. Next of Kin: unknown. Domicile: though the exact location is unknown, Chestie has been seen in the Old Southwest area of Reno somewhere south of La Rue, north of Virginia Lake, east of Arlington Ave, and west of Watt St. It has been theorized by M. Henderson, J. Scripps, R. Jerz et.al that he nests in the homes of various local cougars who reside in that area. This theory has yet to be tested. A definite range extent has not been determined. Survey data is being compiled based on sightings.

While Cougarhunters are social animals, they only socialize with the the opposite sex if they are more than 20 years his age and possess a significant amount of expendable income. Occasionally Chestie can be seen speaking to another male and occasionally another cougarhunter, but only briefly. Chestie is the Alpha cougarhunter in the area. All others hang back and hunt only after Chestie has bagged his cougar.

Chestie either hibernates for the winter, or grows a thick coat of white fur. He has never been seen in the winter. It has been surmised that he migrates to warmer regions of southern Arizona to feast on the vast herds of Snowbird Cougars there.

Methods

Photos of Chestie must show some defining characteristic of Chestie as described above. Images that show his face are encouraged, but not necessary. Photos of him in action, and on his home habitat are highly desired. Images and observation notes may be posted to drop.io/chestiemccougarhunter or mailed to chestiemccougarhunter AT drop.io.

References

Original Chestie McCougarhunter Blog Post
Chestie’s Twitter Page
Chestie’s Drop.io Page
Flickr Photo Repository
Chestie Sighting, with huntind tips