Cold Splinters is off to another winter version of Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. Holler if you’re around and we’ll see you there.

Along with Andrea from Fjallraven/Armor Lux/Wool and the Gang, Cold Splinters was asked to curate an “outdoor” section of Capsule this year. The show-within-a-show is called Above Tree Line and includes brands like Snow Peak, Poler, Heimplanet, Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Juniper Ridge, Outlier, Woolpower, and many more. It’ll be a damn good time, so if you’re around New York on Monday and Tuesday for the show, stop by and say hello.

“I’d rather be broke down and lost in the wilds of Big Bend, any day, than wake up some morning in a penthouse suite high above the megalomania of Dallas or Houston.”  - Ed Abbey

Cold Splinters and Upstate are gearing up for a southern adventure down to Big Bend National Park towards the beginning of next month. It’s an area we’ve never experienced, so if you’re lucky enough to have spent a night or two in that “barren, sun-blasted, apparently lifeless, stone-bleak ocean of the Chihuahuan Desert,” drop me a line. Let me know where we should go (backcountry hot springs, please), and more importantly, where we shouldn’t.

MP3: Smog – Too Many Birds

When I was 10, I spent my summers at camp in Bemidji, MN where I hiked, canoed, pretended to like archery, and learned to play the guitar. And while I’m not knocking the “outdoorsiness” of camp (I still think about my time there very often), it seems like city living compared to Cameron Pendleton’s adventures. The kid started the AT with his dad when he was 10, turned 11 three weeks into the ordeal, and six months later, made it to the top of Katahdin. Boys’ Life interviewed Cameron, now 12, about his experience on the trail, the challenges he faced, and of course, the origins of his trail name. (Hint: It’s “Chili.”)  You can listen to the audio right here.

“Put me out in the desert, I’m going to die. I don’t know anything about the desert. Put me on the seacoast, I can feed my family. I got that wired.”

Next week is the Bozeman Ice Climbing Festival, a 15 year old gathering of climbers who aim to promote and protect the world-class ice climbing in Montana’s Hyalite Canyon. In addition to a lot of crampons and a couple of live presentations, several films will be shown, including a filmed interview with Yvon Chouinard discussing ice climbing’s history. Check out the clip above.

People used to get together round a fire
Fishes were cooked, songs were sung
Moonlight used to guide our way through the dark
Do you find it hard remembering?

MP3: Donovan – People Used To

Cold Splinters recently spent a wonderful autumn weekend in Lumberland, New York, enjoying the property/project/fort that belongs to our extremely hospitable friends at Best Made Co.. To read more about their adventures and to see what else they’ll be cooking on a newly built outdoor oven, click here.

MP3: Sandro Perri – Changes

Boundary Rock was once a well-known landmark in southern Nova Scotia, a massive piece of granite that sat at the borders of several counties in the area. Fisherman and hunters, like the ones in the picture above, would take their picture at the rock while passing through. But over the last 100 years, Boundary Rock has vanished, sending people on quests into the woods to find out what happened. CBC’s Maritime Magazine did just that and you can listen to the podcast recounting their journey into the Tobeatic Wilderness right here. The pictures above are from the flickr of expedition leader, Philip Moscovitch. (Thanks to reader Andrea for sending this to me.)

Do they find it? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out.

MP3: Sibylle Baier – I Lost Something In The Hills

Anybody dressing up as an NPS ranger today? Didn’t think so.

Have a happy and safe Halloween and enjoy all the Fun Size candy you get to eat (or have already eaten) this week. Save me the Krackel.

MP3: Ween – Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain

On his 13th (!) hike along the 2,663 mile Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from British Columbia down to the California/Mexico border, Scott Williamson, a tree climber from California, set a new speed record, finishing the length in 64 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. That is insane. He added 20 miles to his hike with only 12 (another !) drops for food and gear. Interesting part of a recent interview with Mr. Williamson:

“There is more trash, more impact on the water sources and fires have really adversely affected the trail in the 19 years I’ve been on it, particularly in the last 10 years,” Williamson said. “The trail, especially this first 700 miles through Southern California, is radically different due to fire and tree disease. There are stretches that used to be pine forest that now are just chaparral because the trees died due to different diseases or fire. The first 700 miles of the trail are now shadeless.

“The positive changes are that, since there now are about 500 plus people thru-hiking it each year, the preservation and maintenance of the trail is exponentially greater than when I first started hiking this trail,” he added.

“I think the positives in the last 20 years vastly outweigh the negative changes. The maintenance level that is occurring now is much greater than 20 years ago, and I feel there is an effort to preserve the trail from the various threats, the development, things of that nature.”

(via The Goat)