Hiking Day

"Hill Country View" Leander, 2018
“Hill Country View” Leander, 2018

こんばんは。How’s it going?

Well, as I alluded to in yesterday’s post, I planned to hit the trails with my new Merrell Moab 2s today, and not only did I get to hike, but my son came along with me! It was a lot of fun, we enjoyed perfect weather, and the shoes worked well. I also got to try out a couple other new pieces of gear: trekking poles, a selfie stick, and the Victure 4K action camera.

First up, the BAFX trekking poles are my first pair of modern hiking poles. I previously used a wooden stick that I bought for a few dollars from Home Depot (like a big dowel rod), and it worked nicely, but was kind of heavy and took up a lot of space in the car. I did get to pretend I was Gandalf when trekking with it though…

But these new aluminum poles are a nice upgrade. Not only are they super-lightweight, but they collapse down to 25″ for storing. Using two poles instead of a single hiking stick is really great. Although the poles can help with bearing weight, I think that the main benefit is that they give you better positional awareness of your body. Now there are two additional points of reference to augment your inner ear and feet, and that makes a huge difference.

The selfie stick and action camera were a lot of fun to use, and I can see that it takes a bit of practice to get some decent footage. But I can also see that it just takes some experience in order to improve. I don’t think there are many technical aspects to master since the action cam is not so sophisticated, and the selfie stick is extremely basic as well. The video quality isn’t the greatest, but for $40 for the camera and $10 for the selfie stick, I cannot complain.

Anyways, here’s some footage from the hike:

… and the GPS track I recorded in Strava.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね~

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