Category: hiking

Lisa’s Birthday Adventure Week – Moab, Utah

On By Rick McIn cycling, food, friends, hiking, travel1 Comment

I had a GREAT time with Dave and Lisa Adlard in one of my top 10 hiking towns of the world – Moab.

End of March should be ideal weather for outdoor activity. BUT 2023 was colder than usual.

Lisa rented a huge house. We had 19 people.

AND another 10+ over at other rental properties.

Click PLAY or watch a HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO on YouTube.

The birthday girl and friends enjoyed a SPA session.

That same day we were at a Climbing Club in Salt Lake City.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Rapel at William’s Bottom was a highlight.

I was video guy for this one. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I skipped the Side-by-side Quad adventuring. Jason only rolled his quad once. And only a quarter turn into sand. No injuries.

We had 2 dirt motor bikes, as well.

Corona Arch was the hike where most of our group got together for sunset.

Arches National Park was cold and windy when we were there. A fantastic place.

Dead Horse Point is wonderful. We had one group hike. And one group cycle.

Click PLAY or see Deadhorse on YouTube.

We ate most of our meals at the house. One restaurant blowout was hosted at Zac’s.

The infamous mountain bike circuit is called Slickrock Trail. I survived it in 2007 and did NOT want to risk a second time. BUT some of our group cycled it safely. Jeni and I hiked Slickrock.

A wonderful adventure vacation. It reminded me of a similar trip with Adlards to the Oregon Coast in 2021.

For Want of a Nail

On By Rick McIn cycling, hikingLeave a comment

I’m typically the guy who says: “Why carry a nail? It’s too heavy! … We probably won’t need it on this trip.” 😀

#FamousLastWords

The proverb is found in a number of forms, beginning as early as the 13th century.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Related sayings are “A stitch, in time, saves nine” and “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. 

Farewell Bermuda

On By Rick McIn gymnastics, hiking, travelLeave a comment

I escaped the Great White North winter for about 5 weeks. I’m a volunteer with the Gymnastics Federation and did some coaching at the two competitive clubs.

Population of Bermuda is only about 65,000.

I’ve been coming to Bermuda since 2016. But still treat every goodbye as my last. 😎

My VIDEO Highlights 2022

On By Rick McIn hiking, music, videoLeave a comment

Happy New Year!

To celebrate, I’m posting my hiking highlights of the past year.

I got a cheap drone December 2021 and most of the clips are from the drone.

My favourite music of 2022 was by Odesza — so it’s appropriate that the soundtrack is one of their songs: Wide Awake.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

PLANNING to Hike the Canary Islands

On By Rick McIn hiking, travelLeave a comment

I spontaneously flew to the Canary Islands from the U.K.

Flights are cheap.

Weather is great in November. 😎

On arrival I found you couldn’t easily purchase camping fuel. Nor are hiking guidebooks available for sale.

Surprising.

I decided to stay just one week. And only on Tenerife. Reconnaissance.

But I’ll be back.

The best islands for hiking are:

Some of the best hikes require complicated permits. Some are only open on weekends. I’ll need to do more planning next time.

I’m thinking at least 3 weeks. At least 4 islands.

Buy my hiking books online. Book permits well in advance.

November ➙ February look to be the best months.

There are plenty of European tourists. But I didn’t meet even one American or Canadian over a week.

Also, you need to speak Spanglish here.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

P.S.

Once I bought a cheap flight to Lisbon, I found the fuel canister I needed in a hostel FREE BOX. So I know they exist on the Canary Islands.

They MIGHT be for sale from either Leroy Merlin or Decathlon in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Some have found them at petrol stations and ferreterias, hardware stores.

Meru – climbing the Shark’s Fin

On By Rick McIn hiking, moviesLeave a comment

My goal in hiking is to ENJOY the experience as much as possible.

High altitude mountaineers suffer — the opposite.

I finally got around to watching Meru, the 2015 documentary film about climbing the Shark’s Fin route in the Indian Himalayas.

Mainly because I really admire Jimmy Chin, the best climber of all-time who can ALSO film his adventures.

In 2008 Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and new guy Renan Ozturk almost made the first ascent of the infamous Shark’s Fin. It was harsh. They suffered physically and psychologically.

Before their next attempt in 2011, both Chin and Ozturk (separately) suffered horrific climbing falls. Somehow Jimmy popped out of a monster avalanche suffering barely a scratch.

Watching the movie, everyone agrees Renan should not be going back to Meru. He suffers a minor stroke during the second climb.

Jimmy’s master work was the Academy Award winning Free Solo. (2018)

This one is no Free Solo. But it did keep me gripped from start to finish.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

“Meru is the anti-Everest,” says mountaineer and author Jon Krakauer. “This climb has seen more attempts and more failures than any peak in the Himalaya.”

Krakauer commentary throughout was a highlight for me.

My Video Editing Journey 😀

On By Rick McIn cycling, hiking, travel, videoLeave a comment

When pandemic cancelled all my travel and Gymnastics coaching gigs, I took the time to improve my video editing. It’s become my main hobby.

Three phases (so far):

  1. Learning the technology. Experimenting with different cameras. And acce$$ories.
  2. Story. Story. Story.
  3. My personal style.

After posting my French Creek tribute, I declared I was GOOD ENOUGH at video editing technology for my purposes. I could sit down at a table with a professional video editor and understand 75% of what they were talking about. 😀

Far more difficult is to decide on what story to tell. And to tell it effectively. Many super skillful editors struggle finding their next story.

I threw this short video together quickly as a teaser for my How to Survive the West Coast Trail videos. But in some weird way, it’s evocative of that wild and challenging hike. It tells the story well

I’m particularly happy with the audio.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Putting these together is incredibly time consuming.

I kept trying to find ways to improve my efficiency. And that ended up evolving into my personal style of video — as of October 2022, at least. Who knows what’s next? 😀

I posted Valencia, Spain in January 2022. My edits today are all similar. But I’m adding more personal drone footage rather than drone stock video.

What is my style?

  • Music driven
  • Landscape, not vertical (portrait)
  • Cuts are mostly on the beats
  • Mostly hard cuts
  • Use transitions sparingly
  • Use gimmickry sparingly … though I do love speed ramps 😀
  • Lots of drone footage
  • Normally no voice over
  • No ads
  • Social media pestering only at the end.

Challenging for me is finding the right music for each story.

One of my best edits was Norway Highlights. I credit the song — Odesza Higher Ground — as once I decided on the soundtrack, it was easy to decide where to put each clip. In the example, below, the colours are music blocks to be filled with scenes I decide upon later.

Increasingly I’m picking music first, shooting the video later.

Odesza is my favourite band right now. Very popular for YouTube edits.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

What’s next?

I’ve been studying Colour Grading through a course called … Color Grading Academy.

It’s a very complicated process.

Some of the best video editors online send out their final product for Colour experts to finish. An art, not a science.

Things I’ve decided NOT to use:

  • Tracking
  • Hue / Saturation curves
  • … more to be added

P.S.

I posted the Englishman River Falls hike in November 2020 and again in October 2022. I’ve definitely improved.

Click PLAY or watch the Nov 2020 edit on YouTube. I was quite happy with it. But NOW I’m wondering what weird colour grade I was experimenting with at that time. 😀

Click PLAY or watch the Oct 2022 edit on YouTube.

My Skyrace in Norway 😀

On By Rick McIn health & fitness, hiking, travelLeave a comment

I was stuck in Tromsø — the Paris of the north — waiting on my bike and gear which were stuck at Heathrow airport for over 2 weeks. Why not race !!

Tromsø Skyrace was launched 2014 by Kilian Jornet and Emelie Forsberg.

Kílian Jornet is the fastest mountain runner of all time though Karl Egloff has bettered some of Kilian’s records.

Emelie Forsberg is Kilian’s partner, mother of two, and also an insane mountain runner.

I’d like to claim I was in the mix with the sponsored super athletes in this video … 😀

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

There are 3-4 different distances raced each year. Mine was shortest.

I signed up 2-days in advance of the race for the EASY 16km up and down.

It was more of a hike than a knife edge ridge.

I ended up 153rd, 1hr 44min behind the winner in the short race. My time 3hr 11min.

BUT I was happy with how I did. Running in I still felt great — avoiding muscle cramps which threatened throughout. I’d not really gone running in over a year before this day.

Louise finished ahead of me. We recovered with free vegetarian chile. So tasty, I bought some to take cycling.

In fact, at that point, Louise was wondering what happened to her brother Henry — turned out he had kept going at the short race turnaround. Henry ended up running an extra 7km or so.

Happily, his luck changed later — winning an official race hoody.

DJI OM 5 Gimbal – my review

On By Rick McIn hiking, product endorsements, video1 Comment

I was quite happy with the DJI OM 4 Gimbal — but somehow lost the magnetic phone clamp.

The magnetic phone clamp is the best feature. The one thing that makes it better FOR ME than competitors like the Zhiyun Smooth Q4. I hate balancing phones on a gimbal. With the OM 4 and 5 you don’t need to.

Rather than pay for a replacement magnetic phone clamp (CAD $35), it was smarter to simply buy the upgraded OM 5 (CAD $149) which includes the phone clamp. I can use the same phone and clamp on either gimbal.

I do feel the OM 5 is slightly better:

  • NEW built-in extension rod for “selfies”
  • lighter and more compact — but at the expense of much shorter battery life
  • ActiveTrack 4.0 and gesture control does seem more reliable. An important feature for me.
  • In “selfie” camera mode, it smoothly tracks your face by default

The MAIN downside is a shorter battery life than the OM 4. Only about 6 hours.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I used iPhone 13 on the OM 5 shooting in portrait orientation to keep the footage as SMOOTH as possible. I’d intended to upload it VERTICAL to Instagram and Facebook. Facebook worked. Instagram wouldn’t upload over multiple attempts.

I certainly prefer landscape and YouTube.

BACK to the OM 5 …

Click PLAY or watch the DJI hype video on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch the DJI tutorial on YouTube.

Here’s the best tutorial I’ve found.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The following tutorial is more comprehensive.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Visiting León, Spain

On By Rick McIn cycling, hiking, travelLeave a comment

I took the train to León where I’d be starting a week long cycling trip to Santiago de Compostela on the French Camino. A pilgrimage people have been doing for over 1000 years.

It’s very walkable, a small city with most of the attractions close together.

León’s Cathedral is one of the finest in Europe.

Panorama of Plaza de Regla and Leon Cathedral, Castile and Leon, Spain
Me and the cops.

My official start is this Cathedral. I’ll finish at the Cathedral in Santiago.

León is a great tourist town. I did a lot of cycling there testing the rental bike.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.