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TrailGroove Blog

A Blog by the TrailGroove Team

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Contributors to this blog

  • Aaron Zagrodnick 244
  • Mark Wetherington 76
  • PaulMags 27
  • Susan Dragoo 27
  • Steve Ancik 18
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Gear | Trips | Food | Technique | Reading

Entries in this blog

Trips

Hiking the Mariscal Rim Trail: A Return to Big Bend

Last fall, my sister, Melissa, and I visited Big Bend National Park in west Texas (see TrailGroove #56). As we left, we decided that we needed to return in the spring – unfinished business! One of the main reasons was to hike the Mariscal Canyon Rim Trail, which we didn’t hike last trip as the temperature was going to be too high. While our previous trip (detailed here) involved more extensive hiking and some backpacking, during our latest trip, we hiked several shorter hikes and drov
Steve Ancik

Steve Ancik in Trips

2
Reading

Backpacking and Hiking Songs: 11 Favorite Classics

Whether you’re driving across the country to finally hike that classic mountain range that’s been on your mind for years or simply on the way to your local trailhead, perhaps nothing can get you ready for the hike like the perfect song or hiking playlist. And hey, there’s nothing else to really do in the car anyway. On the flipside, it could be argued that nothing is more annoying than getting the latest pop song – that you happened to hear on the radio right before locking the car – stuck in yo
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Reading

3
Food

10 Best Freeze Dried and Dehydrated Backpacking Meals

Let’s be honest; not every backpacking trip provides the time for us to prepare a nightly gourmet meal, and not all of us are ready to embrace, or perhaps we have yet to have a discussion with, our inner hidden chef. While I like to create backpacking meals from scratch at times and when I can, if you’re like me, after a long day on the trail I simply often find myself wanting a sufficient amount of calories that taste great, and I want that meal as quickly and as easily as possible with minimal
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Food

6
Gear

REI Co-op Flexlite Air Chair: Long Term Review

While some categories of backpacking gear have already gone from heavy to as light as possible and already cycled back to achieve a balance between weight and durability using currently available materials and technology, of all things the backpacking chair stills seems to be in the middle of this cycle. As lighter and more packable chair designs supersede previous models on a near yearly basis, one of the latest and lightest chairs to hit the market in the lightweight, somewhat contradictory to
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

0
Gear

Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo Tent Review

For groups of two looking for a lightweight backpacking tent with decent elbow room, the choice of lightweight backcountry shelters can at times seem limited. The category can be narrowed down to just a few contenders quite quickly, with one of the leading candidates being the topic of this review, the venerable Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo. A single-walled shelter offering 34 square feet of interior floor space, the Lunar Duo offers a nicely adequate floor plan for 2 or luxury for 1. This is a we
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

0
Gear

Feathered Friends Hummingbird UL 20 Sleeping Bag Review

For three-season backpacking in most of the continental United States, a 20-degree bag is an ideal choice. When it’s warm it can be used like a quilt, when a late season or high elevation trip has a cold night or two dropping into the teens it will be adequate if not downright comfortable (especially if paired with a down jacket and thick socks), and for nights where low temperatures range in the upper 20s to low 40s it seems perfect. Although I’ve owned 30-degree bags and 15-degree bags over th
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Gear

0
Food

Mountain House Chicken Tikka Masala Review

No matter how many freeze-dried meals you have queued up in your gear stash, it’s eventually nice to add some variety even to an otherwise favorite selection of backcountry meals. Mountain House recently released a couple new meals to include the Chicken Tikka Masala meal reviewed here, as well as a Kung Pao Chicken meal. When I noticed the meals were out, I had to give these meals a try to see if they’d either serve to add that needed variety for the season ahead, or maybe they’d even become a
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Food

0
Food

Wild Zora Paleo Meals to Go Mountain Beef Stew Review

The Mountain Beef Stew meal from Wild Zora is a just add water freeze dried meal suitable for backpacking that keeps the ingredient list simple while also meeting a slew of dietary requirements and preferences. The meal has no gluten, milk, grain, nuts, or added sugar and was designed to meet a higher meat Paleo dietary requirement. This meal is just one in a line of meals including breakfasts and dinners and with options ranging from the Caldera Chicken Curry to the Bedrock Beef Chili .
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Food

0
Trips

Skiing to Hogan Cabin: Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest

In typical backpacker fashion, I did my solemn duty of taking off the Thursday before a federal holiday falling on a Friday to schedule a two-night trip followed by a day of rest. A stroke of good fortune allowed me to book Christmas Eve and Christmas night at a small, rustic Forest Service rental cabin in the mountains of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Given the frigid forecast, it was well worth the nominal fee to know that after skiing around all day I’d have four walls,
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Trips

1
Trips

The Devil's Eyebrow: Hard Hiking in Northwest Arkansas

“Build a railroad right through these mountains? You can’t do it, man; you can’t do it. You might as well try to build a railroad on the Devil’s eyebrow as to undertake to build one in such a place.” And so the words of a pioneer gave a rugged sandstone formation in northwest Arkansas its name. The year was 1880, and surveyors were doing preliminary work on the location of the Frisco Railroad. The railroad was built, the name stuck, and today “Devil’s Eyebrow” is one of 75 Natural Areas managed
Susan Dragoo

Susan Dragoo in Trips

0
Gear

MSR Quick Skillet Review

Like most backpackers, my cook kit usually consists of a stove, pot, spork, and mug. Sometimes I even forego the mug in a quest for simplicity and weight savings and just drink my tea and coffee out of the pot. And, inadvertently, I’ve left my spork behind once or twice and enjoyed extremely minimal and inconvenient weight savings. However, under certain conditions, I’ve been known to expand my cook kit to include a non-stick skillet and cook up meals normally reserved for car camping
Mark Wetherington

Mark Wetherington in Gear

0
Gear

Alcohol and Canister Stove Weight Comparisons

When it comes to backpacking stoves a key consideration is of course weight, and more importantly the weight of a system including fuel for the duration of your trip. Not only is initial weight important, but also the average weight you’ll carry each day. For 3 season, lightweight backpacking use alcohol stoves and upright canister stoves are the most used options for weight conscious backpackers, and while both are very different in application, many similarities can be found to exist in the we
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

6
Trips

Rugged and Remote: Backpacking the Ferris Mountains WSA

For years and usually while driving to go hike or visit some other place, a small mountain range in southern Wyoming had always caught my eye from a remote stretch of highway in south-central Wyoming – a range that sharply rises up above the dry sagebrush plains in a place nearly without a name. The consistently jaw-dropping views of these obscure peaks from north of the range and a unique row of limestone fins on the south side of the range led to further research, and I eventually learned that
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

3
Trips

Springtime Solitude - A Wyoming Red Desert Overnight

The Red Desert of Wyoming holds a unique appeal no matter your approach – it’s a country just as suitable for backpacking as it is for exploring and camping beside your vehicle off a rough and long forgotten dirt road. Either way, you’re likely to be in the middle of the nowhere. Adding to its allure, to begin the year the desert can only be comfortably explored for a short time each spring after the roads have sufficiently dried from melting snow to make passage by vehicle (just to g
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

0
Gear

Gossamer Gear Gorilla Backpack: A 3,000 Mile Review

Gossamer Gear has been refining their ultralight oriented backpacks since 1998, including multiple iterations of the Gorilla – their medium volume framed pack. The Gorilla was redesigned in early 2015 using gray Robic fabric instead of the white Dyneema Grid fabric as seen on older packs. The shoulder straps are now unisex, more contoured, thicker, and slightly narrower than the previous version. The hip belt was also redesigned to have more padding with a mesh inner face to wick sweat. Trekking
HikerBox

HikerBox in Gear

4
Trips

Backpacking in the Maze, Canyonlands National Park

A few years ago and to follow up on a previous Utah hiking trip, Ted Ehrlich and I spent a few days backpacking in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. The Maze is frequently referred to as one of the most remote spots in the lower 48, and though I’m not sure how exactly it ranks on that scale, it did require some significant amounts of off-highway driving to reach. The Maze is located in southeastern Utah, west of the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers and bordere
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Trips

8
Reading

Trail Tested by Justin Lichter

Over a decade ago now, Justin Lichter (also known by his trail name Trauma) released a collection of insights, tips, and stories detailed across more than 200 pages in his book Trail Tested. If you haven’t heard of Justin yet, he’s quite famous in the long distance backpacking and hiking community – having hiked over 35,000 miles in his career. Not only has he completed the Triple Crown of the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails – he’s done it twice. Throughout his tra
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Reading

1
Gear

Evernew Ultralight Titanium Review: 1.3 and .9 Liter Pots

While the potential exists to makes one's backcountry cooking setup nearly as complex as the average home kitchen, albeit hopefully a bit more miniaturized and lighter, in most cases the average lightweight backpacker only needs to boil water for freeze-dried dinners, freezer bag style cooking, to heat and hydrate a basic meal within the pot, or to heat water for things like coffee and tea. For these backpackers – like myself – the Evernew Ultralight Titanium Series pots have been a fairly popul
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

0
Food

Backpacker's Pantry Rocky Mountain Scramble Review

While most breakfasts on the trail in my case are whatever gets me hiking the fastest – typically an energy bar or two and coffee – from time to time a more elaborate breakfast is called for. And of course, there’s always breakfast for dinner, which for me is the most likely time I’ll make such a breakfast meal. For this purpose I already have a couple go-to freeze dried backpacking breakfast meals including the Breakfast Skillet from Mountain House and their Spicy Southwest Style Skillet. Varie
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Food

0
Reading

Book Review: I Hike by Lawton Grinter

A couple years ago I came across The Walkumentary, a film produced by Lawton Grinter (trail name Disco) detailing the southbound CDT thru-hike that he completed in 2006 along with his partner P.O.D. and a loose group of other hikers. The film really shows the viewer not only what it’s like to hike and to do so every day, but also what it’s like to do so along the CDT, where a thru-hike frequently involves longer, more remote stretches between resupply stops and staying “found” can at
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Reading

0
Gear

Mountain Laurel Designs eVent Superlight Gaiters Review

No matter your outdoor recreation activity of choice, for most any type of winter activity in deeper snow some type of gaiter is desired to keep snow from entering through the top of your footwear and causing an uncomfortably chilly situation, or even eventually worse, predicament for your feet. Although of a shorter design I’ve been utilizing the Mountain Laurel Designs (MLD) Superlight gaiter for the past several years as my gaiter of choice anytime snow is present in shoulder seasons, and thr
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

0
Trips

Overnight Ski to Section House at Boreas Pass, Colorado

They say fire warms the soul, better yet when that fire is in a potbelly stove set inside a historic cabin atop the spine of the continent burning wood you didn’t have to chop! Rachel and I decided to celebrate my 31st birthday and our recent move to Colorado by booking an overnight stay at one of the over 30 backcountry huts for rent in Colorado through the 10th Mountain Hut Association and the above scenario is exactly what we found. Based on some advice from fellow TrailGroove writer @PaulMag
HikerBox

HikerBox in Trips

1
Food

Good To-Go Chicken Pho Review

Many years ago, I was stuck at a cubicle all day under fluorescent lights in the corporate world. In such an environment one has to find small ways to make their days positive – getting your favorite morning coffee, a lunchtime stroll, or looking forward to that dedicated Friday lunch spot. One such eatery was a local restaurant that specialized in one thing: Vietnamese pho. Perfect on bitter winter days, the dish for me is a satisfying blend of a flavorful soup broth and noodles but with a heav
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Food

0
Trips

Biking the Burr Trail, Utah

The last two winters I’ve spent living in the American southwest, and before I left I planned to take a long bike ride. I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go, but I was leaning towards somewhere way out in the desert. I changed my mind many times in the months before the trip, but eventually decided to leave sunny California, and drive further inland, to Utah. I had driven this highway once before, a scenic route through the southern part of Utah. Highway 12, “The All American Road
michaelswanbeck

michaelswanbeck in Trips

0
Gear

Alite Designs Monarch Chair Review

A chair is an item that often doesn’t make its way onto many lightweight gear lists, and perhaps rightfully so if your goal is to hike until sunset, eat dinner, go to sleep, and repeat the process day after day. In those situations, a rock, log, or the ground without a doubt is a free and weightless solution. However, if you’re taking things easier a chair can start to make a lot of sense in the backcountry and sometimes those little perks can make all the difference. And when it only
Aaron Zagrodnick

Aaron Zagrodnick in Gear

6



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