A $49 Smartwatch Just Doesn't Cut It

Last Friday I received a nice surprise before leaving to do some hiking in Zion National Park. My replacement smartwatch arrived from Suunto even though I was told not to expect it until Monday. It showed up and I had time to charge the battery before the drive down to Cedar City, Utah. That means I left my cheap temporary replacement at home. I haven't used it since I took it off.

I will admit that I did get used to one or two features of my $49 smartwatch. First it is very thin compared to the Suunto. Of course it doesn't have a GPS and that does take up space. It also is noticeably brighter but that comes at a battery cost. It also had a tendency to light up the room in the middle of the night when I went to check the time.

The thing I missed the most on my Suunto is all of the various sport modes. We hiked around Zion on Saturday and it recorded our path. I can then go back and look at where we walked on my Smartphone app. It also recorded average and maximum heart rate. I never figured out how to do that on the temporary watch. Yesterday and today, I hiked and skied Alta. There is a ski touring setting that records all of the stats one could possible want, including time going up, time skiing down, vertical feet climbed, heart rate information, and a lot of other data that can help determine if you are getting stronger or not. I really missed not having all of that information. It may sound useless until you start to use it and then you find you can't live without it.

One nice thing about my temporary watch is that it does have an off button. I have charged the battery and will put it back in its case. Then I can use it should my Suunto have to go back to the service department in a year or two. I do hope it is longer than that though.

Unknown Places Becoming Popular

Recently my youngest son suggested I watch the movie "Gorging" as he thought I would like it. It is a documentary about canyoning or canyoneering and gives a brief history of the sport. This is something I discovered a little over a year ago when I toured Zion National Park's Subway. I then followed it up a month later by doing Pine Creek Canyon.

For those that don't know, canyoneering is where you follow a dry (or wet) stream bed as it winds its way down. The canyons the water forms in soft sandstone can be very deep and narrow. They can be very visually stunning. The Subway is mostly rock scrambling with only a couple of technical sections requiring a rappel. Pine Creek Canyon is much more involved with the final obstacle being a rappel of around 90 feet or so.

I enjoyed watching the movie as it showcased a number of places I have been. One of the points made by the movie is how the Internet has opened up a number of unknown places. We see a visually spectacular place and post it on a popular social media site. Then all of our friends re-post it until this once remote place is now swarming with tourists. The national park system has addressed this by issuing a limited number of permits for such places. This has helped cut down on some traffic but not all.

I have to agree with the conclusion the movie made. During my canyoneering adventures I have seen quite a few people in areas once thought to be remote. For the most part, people are good about taking care of the environment but that much traffic in a fragile desert environment may not be able to recover. So is this a bad thing? If so, do we blame the Internet or the crowds of passionate tourists?

My daughter suggested we hike The Subway at Zion National Park and until then, I had no idea it even existed. She found out about the hike because of my oldest son. My youngest son is how I found out about Pine Creek Canyon. I am not really sure we can blame the Internet for my interest in canyoneering. However if this is the first time you have heard about those places then we definitely can.

Personally I think the world is filled with a lot of great places to visit. I like reading about them and wouldn't have the chance without the Internet. Therefore I appreciate the ease of finding information on these formerly unknown places. Now it is important for me to treat this information carefully. Before heading into dangerous areas I need to make sure I have the correct training and proper equipment. Without the ubiquity of travel information I might show up ill prepared and that would be bad. Hopefully you agree. If not, let me know.

Taking the Best Outdoor Pictures

Last month I took my youngest daughter on an adventure vacation to Zion National Park. I had so much fun that Saturday I decided to sneak another quick trip down there before the snow arrives and I occupy my leisure time with skiing. I announced my idea on the Sunday before to get a count of who would be able to go with me to hike Pine Creek Canyon. I then checked with the National Park Service (NPS) to see if I could get a hiking permit for the group. Once I got it, I made hotel and equipment reservations. Friday night we drove down, spent the night, and then began the adventure the next morning.

One mistake I made with the trip a month ago is that I didn't take enough pictures. I have a really high-end waterproof camera and so I made sure to bring it on this trip and keep it in a place where I could easily get it for pictures. This time I brought my wife, youngest son, and his wife. We had a great time doing the various rappels (technically, there are 7 of them). There are 2 very spectacular drops: the first one into the Great Cathedral and the second one being a 100-foot free rappel (meaning it is just you and the rope with nothing around you but air). I took a lot of pictures and think they look great.

At the end of the hike, I hitched a ride back to the car and then came back for my crew. As we drove out of the park, a large group of people assembled on a bridge with cameras to catch the magnificent red rock perfectly lit at sundown. The picture everyone was trying to get has been recorded thousands of times in other photographs and can be purchased inexpensively in the form of calendars and post cards.

We got home and I passed around my camera so everyone could select the photos they wanted me to send them. Interestingly enough, nobody cared about the various landscapes that I worked hard to frame. Instead they wanted the pictures with people in them. My wife wanted the ones with my son and his wife while my son wanted the pictures of his wife hanging from a 10 mm rope 100-feet off the ground. In the end, it is the people that make the surroundings special not just the scenery. So when you go someplace exciting and new, don't worry about the setting. Make sure you include the people in your group. It will make your pictures that much better.

Adventure Vacation

I spent the first part of the week down in Zion National Park with my youngest daughter. She is out of school for a fall break and wanted to do something adventurous while I needed a short break from work. I had her set up the itinerary so I took care of the hotel. One of the hikes she wanted to do is called, "The Subway," and requires a permit in order to hike it.

The Subway at Zion National Park

As I left all of the itinerary planning to my daughter, I didn't worry about the technical things like the equipment we would need or if we would need help shuttling between the start and the end of the hike. We entered the lottery to get a permit the Monday before our arrival. If we didn't receive one, we had a backup plan. On Saturday at 1pm, my daughter received an e-mail from the National Park Service congratulating us on being awarded the chance to hike "The Subway." The next day we stopped by the park's visitor center to collect the permit.

In talking with the Park employee, we discovered that we needed to get dry suits as we would be swimming in very cold water to get through the hike. We would also need to do some repels during the hike but had all of the necessary equipment. We also needed to set up a shuttle as we would drop our car at the exit and take the shuttle 7 miles up the road to the beginning of the hike.

So what does all of this have to do with computers and technology? While we could look all of this up on the Internet, once we left the hotel at 6am on Monday morning to begin the hike, we couldn't rely on technology to help us get through the hike. We had no mobile phone service nor Internet. Furthermore the conditions for the hike can change from day-to-day and so none of the sources we looked at told us we would need wet suits or dry suits. We only got recommendations for them. However when we collected our permit, the National Park Service told us it was a requirement to have one or the other because of the nighttime freezing temperatures. I'm glad they required it as the rented dry suits came in handy during the hike.

We had a wonderful adventure on Monday and really enjoyed the hike. It took us about 2 hours to get through the beginning of the hike where we carefully navigated our way through an alpine forest and across Southern Utah's famous slick rock. It then took us 3 hours to exit the subway. When we look at how much time we spent actually in "The Subway," it was 4 hours of fun. Amazingly that time felt like only 15 minutes. We had a lot of fun and I recommend the hike.