For most of the last year I have been working at the University of the Arts London to develop its first digital sustainability strategy. UAL is Europe’s largest specialist art and design university. It has around 25,000 network users and a large and varied digital estate that includes
One of the things people are most often curious about the trail is where we get our water from. There are a variety of different ways you can make the water found in lakes, streams, puddles and ponds drinkable. These range from filters and purification tables, to good old fashioned
We had met Big Shrimpin' back when he was called Cameron, at Mandy and Diego's place in Wrightwood. This had also been where we met Windwalker and Wonder Woman, and where we were reunited with the Frenchies who we had not seen since Scout & Frodo'
It was the worst night's sleep on trail by a country mile. Comments on FarOut for the Donner Ski Ranch had suggested that weary hikers could cheat the system by heading to camp on a gravel patch behind the large piles of mulch just visible from the deck
We awoke in the historic Bridgeport Inn to a historic stink. We had been unable to find anywhere to do laundry in town the day before and so had attempted to do it in the hotel shower with a detergent pod and a drybag. With nowhere to dry and clothes
In his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac's main narrator, Ray Smith, takes a trip out of San Francisco with fellow zen poet and general mountain-man friend, Japhy Ryder, to climb the Matterhorn in the Sierra Nevada. I read the book following a field trip to the
Yosemite Valley is simply the grandest example of vertical granite cliff faces to be found anywhere on earth. It is home to both Half Dome and El Capitan, iconic and instantly recognisable features, as well as innumerable other climbing objectives, hiking trails, and waterfalls. It is incised by the Merced
I quit smoking in January 2024 and barring one or two exceptions I have stuck to it. However, if there is one thing which will drive me back to cigarettes, it is the mosquitoes in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. One of the above-mentioned lapses was in the climbing
I am, at heart, a sea-level boy. I have lived nearly my entire adult life within an arm's reach of the ocean, never directly on the coast but always unconsciously dictated to by the tide. It is a big change to come to the mountains, real mountains, where
When you see a bear, the correct response is to stand your ground and yell loudly. Black bears can, in theory, be found all throughout the Pacific Crest Trail, however it is usually assumed that they do not pose a problem for hikers until the end of the southern California
Writing this from Lake Isabella where we are staying at the Kern Motel, so named for the river Kern which flows down south from the Sierra through this way. The area has seemingly seen better days. At the gas station slash liquor store, the shelves seemed empty of most things,
We have landed on our feet, and found ourselves in Wrightwood on Memorial Day weekend at the mercy of small-town post office opening hours. As Grace was awaiting the delivery of a critical replacement component for her bag we would not be out of here until the following morning at