Most everyone who enjoys the outdoors has a story or two about an epic. It’s part of the culture. And we’ve got many such tales amongst the crew here at Gregory. 
After all, you learn from your mistakes, eh?
Now, it appears, you can learn from others’ mistakes as well. And all in one place.
Via Dougald McDonald’s blog The Mountain World (an excellent read in itself if you’re interested in climbing news and dispatches from the climbing world), we learned about a new blog, Hiker Hell, which documents hiking and camping mishaps. Its tagline: “Learn from other hikers’ mistakes (and triumphs).”
It appears there’s no shortage of material out there, either. The blog’s only been around for two months, but in June and July alone its author has managed to document 220 cases of outdoor mishaps - falls, rescues, survival stories, and, uh, mistakes where people paid the ultimate price.
If you’re looking for - or fascincated by - things not to do while you’re hiking or otherwise getting outdoors, there’s plenty to read. Continue reading >>
If you follow news from the high-altitude climbing world, you know it’s been a serious couple of weeks on Pakistan’s Nanga Parbet.
The Shared Summits Team that Gregory co-sponsored on their trip to Nanga Parbat found serious conditions and unforgiving weather on the mountain and took a more moderate course than some of the teams that were there. Expedition Leader Chris Warner says when it comes to climbing 8,000-meter peaks, success is coming home.
Now that the team has left the mountain, Warner has a few thoughts on what he saw over recent weeks, and what really matters when it comes to climbing big peaks.
This past weekend, George and I traveled out to Buena Vista, CO for the 2008 Continental Divide Trail Alliance’s Trailfest event. We ditched the car at the hotel and decided to stroll down the road to see what the town had to offer. After a quick drop by The Trailhead - one of our retailers in town - we headed over to the Lariat Bar & Grill on E. Main Street for some lunch. This place is awesome, and if you are ever in Buena Vista, or just traveling through, it’s worth a stop (and be sure to say what’s up to the bartender Ryan for us). This bar is one of the oldest establishments in town and is still in the family. And with all of the good people and fun stuff to do in there-pool, foosball, darts, running the dj booth for an hour-we guarentee you’ll have no trouble closing the place either. Continue reading >>
Thanks to skydivexxl, who submitted some photos of his recent climb of Mt. Shasta to Gregory Pack’s Flickr photo group.
What’s that all about?
Check out the link on the right side of the page here. We’re asking people to shoot and submit photos of themselves or f
riends using their Gregory packs for adventures of all sorts. Upload them to Flickr, and then scroll to the bottom and geo-tag the image on the map, which will show where a particular image was shot.
The idea is to have the wider Gregory community help us build a worldwide map of the places that people who use Gregory gear have traveled with their pack. We know what our sponsored athletes are doing with our gear, but we want to know what the larger Gregory community is out there doing. Help us out!
At Gregory, our designers have just about seen it all in the world of backpacks. Or at least they thought they had.
Come to find out backpacks are being used in the flight against global warming. Methane from cows, it seems, contribute
s to global warming.
And not just a little. A lot.
So, in Argentina, where cow’s methane contributes to as much as 30 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, they got the idea to contain the gas in specially designed backpacks. Yes, cow packs.
All we can say is it’s a good thing methane is lighter than air, because, while they’re certainly doing some thinking about atmospheric science, it doesn’t look like they put a lot of thought into cow pack suspension.
That, and no smoking.
At Gregory, since we’re a backpack company, we get a lot of questions about backpacks. Good ones.
One of the more common is, ‘what’s the best way to pack a backpack,’ or various variations thereof. That’s a great question, because there are a lot of opinions and theories on the matter. More often than not, Gregory customer service/jack of all trades guru George McCloskey (that’s him getting the faceshot) is the guy to take the phone call, e-mail or Facebook message.
So, in the vein of being of service, we thought we’d put George on the spot find out what he tells folks. Turns out, George just answered the question again recently, so here’s what he said (clearly he’s done a little thinking on the matter):
When it comes to packing your backpack, everyone seems to have their own way, and therefore we only ‘publish’ general guidelines. That said, here are my own personal guidelines (and please feel free to ‘build’ your own):
I typically start with my sleeping bag in the bottom (sometimes with, sometimes without a stuff sack, but I don’t necessarily recommend if for the first timer, because not using one allows you to stuff out the corners really well, which can be tougher when in a stuff sack). And a key point here is that packing your backpack well, ie: using all the space effectively without having dead spots with nothing in them, is essential to achieving positive load transfer, which means transferring the weight effectively to your body, and that’s what you want if you want your pack to carry well. Continue reading >>
A new survey by the CDC, as reported in the New York Times and on Backpacker’s blog by writer, editor and regular contributor Grant Davis, shows that hiking is the third most outdoor sport, if assessed by the numbers of injuries stemming from a given sport. The numbers are from data collected in 2004 and 2005. 
The New York Times takes the tack that it’s odd that snowboarding is number one - and higher than the rates for a number of other outdoor activities, including boating, waterskiing, mountain biking and camping, combined. Davis notes how odd it is that hiking - which is essentially walking - ranks so highly as to be in third place, and wonders where skiing is in the mix.
Curious indeed that hiking ranks so highly, but it’s probably like those statistics that show driving is so much more dangerous that flying, simply because so many people drive. After all, most everybody walks.
But I’d like to know how they define hiking. Is walking around a city park hiking? Or is that just walking?
Do you have a to be wearing a backpack to be hiking? Or wearing hiking boots, not running shoes?
And the most obvious question: Is hiking more dangerous than just staying home and watching TV?
Anyway, there’s a lot of amusement to be had in both Davis’ post and the report in general. And if you haven’t checked out Backpacker’s excellent and relatively new blog page, which offers frequent entries from Davis along with Backpacker Rocky Mountain Editor Steve Howe and regular blogger Ted Alvarez, there’s lots of thoughtful info there. Worth a bookmark.
et a little perspective on the race. As they say, time is the greatest healer.
mentary on NBC