CORWIN, OHIO, Jan. 25, 2009: Friends of the Little Miami State Park (FLMSP) held its second meeting tonight in the Caesar Creek State Park Day Lodge. More than 30 people braved snow-slicked roads and temps in the teens to attend. Simeon Copple, FLMSP co-founder and president, said the organization had raised about $1,500 and built a contact database of more than 200 since its first meeting in November.

Copple, who owns the Corwin Peddler restaurant with his wife Ann, started the effort to build support for the narrow, 50-mile long Little Miami State Park and its recreational trail. Several bicyclists have been injured because of deteriorating trailway conditions, some seriously. The trail follows an old railroad bed, and some old bridges pose expensive maintenance problems. Facing looming budget deficits, Ohio is short of money for its parks — and nearly everything else.

The movement is organizing rapidly, according to Copple. The group has incorporated, formed a board of directors and applied for 501(c)(3) tax status. It is developing priorities for projects to fund, topped by bridge repairs, and is working on an Adopt-a-Trail program.

The trail in the Little Miami State Park is an integral part of a major recreational trail network in southwestern Ohio.

Tags: Bicycling, Little Miami River, Bike Trails, Scenic Rivers

Famed Mount Everest climber Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 on a small farm in Auckland, New Zealand. He loved wilderness travel and had begun climbing New Zealand’s mountains when World War II came. He joined the New Zealand air force and was trained as a navigator. He was only in the service for two years, but his navigation skills proved vital in 1957, when he led the first New Zealand expedition to the South Pole (his team reached it on Jan. 4, 1958.) Compasses are unreliable in polar regions, and the Antarctic summer brought 24-hour daylight. Hillary navigated with an astrocompass, a device which allowed him to determine the team’s location by measuring the sun’s position in the sky.

Tags: Edmund Hillary, Mount Everest, New Zealand, Antarctica, Astrocompass

After a rainy week and an overnight threat of snow flurries, I thought my first day as a volunteer trailbuilder for Five Rivers MetroParks on Sunday would be a bust. But a dozen people showed up, and Brent Anslinger of the metroparks' Five Rivers Outdoors handed out the tools. We spent four hours keeping warm by digging dirt and chopping roots to grade a section of the future Twin Valley Backpack Trail in Germantown MetroPark.

What's it all about? The county park district is creating a recreational backpacking trail in southwestern Ohio's Montgomery County. A new stretch of trail will connect two existing loop trails in Germantown and Twin Creek MetroPark. When finished, the backpacking trail will include over 22 miles of hiking with group and backcountry camping.

I've hiked backpacking trails for more than 30 years, but just a few hours of work on Sunday taught me a lot about what goes into the construction of a durable trail that preserves nature by resisting erosion. Want to learn more? Volunteer! Here's the link.

Update 12/23/09: I recently hiked the Twin Valley Trail. I traced the route as closely as I could on Google Maps.

I had my head in the clouds. I was all wet. Go ahead, pick your cliché. My winter retreat in the Great Smoky Mountains didn't go exactly as planned.

Why head for the Smokies backcountry in January? Simple: No bugs, no bears, no crowds, and — best of all — no rain. On past winter backpacks, I found the Smokies cold but dry, with all the water locked up in ice and snow. It might sound strange, but I find it a lot easier to stay warm when the temperatures are well below freezing. That's because there's no rain or damp air to soak my clothes and gear. And cold temps tend to keep most folks down in Dollywood.

So right after my retirement at the end of last year, I packed up for a nice winter backpack trip from Jan. 4-7, 2007. I packed plenty of cotton-free layers, my down sleeping bag, a one-person bivvy tent (I've used it in the trail shelters for extra warmth,) instep crampons and trekking poles. I was geared up for 20 below zero and ice-glazed trails.

(Trip details: I picked an airy stroll on the Appalachian Trail from Newfound Gap, over the summit of Clingman's Dome (highest point in the Smokies at 6,643 feet) and west along ridgetops to Silers Bald, then back to Newfound Gap. I had permits for three nights in backcountry shelters — the first and last in Mount Collins, and the second in Silers Bald. From Newfound Gap to Clingman's Dome, the AT parallels the Clingman's Dome Road, which is closed in winter but made a possible escape route if the weather got truly nasty.)

Well, what I got was unseasonably mild temperatures, a pleasant first day, a big (but friendly) crowd that filled the shelter on my first night, and drenching rain overnight and into the next day. On Clingman's Dome, instead of uplifing views I found my head and all the rest of me in a cloud. The mountain blasted me with the hardest rain I've ever hiked in. Worse yet was the forecast I got from a passing dayhiker — my ridgetop walk would be accompanied by a possibility of thunderstorms. Snow I was ready for. Ice I was ready for. Thunder, lightning and blowing rain? What appealed to me at that moment was a long, fast stroll down Clingman's Dome Road to my car. It wasn't much of a winter, but it sure was a retreat.

But, hey, I snapped a few decent pictures. Check them out in my new photo gallery.

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