One of the fun parts of running a website is tracking browser stats. This information is useful in site design (matching your content to your users’ interests). It’s also just plain…interesting.

So I was looking over a list of keywords that brought people to SierraDescents this week when I came across this search phrase: “putting in a diamond on your teeth yourself”.

Now, this may sound crazy, but I think I understand why Google referred this searcher to my site (more…)

LATE SEASON STORMS aside, I’ve been looking forward to ditching the ski gear and switching to hiking and climbing.

After all, summer camping in the Sierra is easier in almost every respect than winter. There is one big difference, however: in summer, we share the mountains with bears.

I must say I ordinarily harbor no ill will toward bears, but as a hiker I find they present an added layer of complexity that I would be happy to do without.

Talk to your friendly forest ranger about bears, and you’ll come away all but convinced bears possess magical powers. That may be an exaggeration, but bears can present a significant threat to both you and your food. With a few simple strategies, however, you can greatly reduce the chances of an unwanted encounter (more…)

WITH OPPRESSIVE TEMPS currently baking Southern California, I thought I’d escape for a moment by listing a few tips on melting snow for water that I’ve learned these past few seasons snow camping.

What’s attractive about melting snow instead of carrying water is you can save a lot of weight.

One can of fuel (weighing about five or six ounces) can easily give you four liters of water or more, which would be prohibitively heavy to carry up the mountain—especially when you factor in the cruel load of winter camping gear and climbing hardware.

Regardless, carrying water becomes moot once the temperature drops past a certain magic number and your bag or bottle of water freezes into a solid brick.

So, if you’re going to camp in winter, you’re going to want to know how to melt snow to get water.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, I’ve found it’s a little tricker than you’d expect.

Melting snow takes a great deal of energy—ie, fuel. Efficiency is therefore going to be one of your primary goals.

If your melting methods are poor, your yield per can of fuel will plummet.

Here are a few tips that should make a big difference: (more…)

Climbing Mount Williamson via Bairs Creek leaves you with a lot more than memories (and scratches): you also get gummed up with quite a bit of pine pitch.

It gets on your clothes, your hair, and your gear. So what do you do when you come home with everything covered in sap? Well, assuming you resist the temptation to just back your car up against a dumpster and get rid of everything, you’ll probably want to find some way to clean off the sap.

I know of two cleaners that work effectively against sap (more…)