New Rafting Trip Planned for 2012

I'm excited to announce a brand new rafting trip scheduled for September of 2012! The Lower Gauley River, during Gauley Season.
In the world of rafting, the Gauley River in West Virginia holds the number 5 spot on a long list of the biggest, hardest hitting, most technical, single day journey, heart-pounding runs in the entire world. The Gauley itself would then be split into two sections; the upper and lower. The Upper Gauley gets all the thunder due to it's spectacular class 5+ rapids. However, the Lower Gauley is not far behind.
I like to think of the lower section as the "little brother"... with spunk. For you Upper Gauley veterans out there that may consider this a cake walk - you still must stay focused on the rapids of the Lower Gauley. Long rollercoaster wave trains such as Upper and Lower Stairstep, big holes such as Backender and Hell Hole, and boulder gardens like those at Upper Mash will keep even the most accomplished rafters on their toes.
So get ready, get excited, for a great run this fall as we return to the world famous Gauley River!
Please visit WildXpeditions for more info on this trip, see you there!

Making a tinder bundle

Dried grasses work well and can be found almost everywhere but lack any accelerants. Most resins, or sap, will act as accelerants within the tinder bundle. Evergreen trees are full of resins to help ignite the spark, or coal, into a flame.

Cedar is by far my favorite material for making tinder bundles, or nest. Cedar’s can be found all over and are easily identifiable. It’s the bark of the cedar that makes the tinder, not the foliage. If you gently scrape across the bark with your fingernails or a knife, you can remove the loose, peeling, dry bark off without harming the tree. Once you’ve got a fist full then you will need to work the material into that bird’s nest shape. To “work” the material, simply ball the bark up in your hands and pull it apart, ripping and shredding it a bit in the process. Be careful not to overdo this and turn your tinder into dust.

Tinder is an easily combustible material used to ignite fires by rudimentary methods. Basically, tinder is the

How to Choose Hiking Boots: Expert Advice from REI

How to Choose Hiking Boots: Expert Advice from REI

From day hikes to long treks over many miles of rough terrain, this covers it all. Nothing trumps comfort when you're out on the trail - and it all starts with footwear. Click the link above for the complete guide to choosing the right hiking boots.

WILD 101 Wilderness Class

Wild 101: A full day class all about “what to do if you’re lost in the wild“.

The location for this will be at Sandy Point State Forest. Sandy point road is off of RT 30 and just a few miles southeast of King William Co. court house. (on the left if you’re heading towards West Point) Follow Sandy Point road all the way to the end and we’ll meet you there in the parking lot. Please contact me at the email below if you need further directions.

Meeting at 10am at S.P. Be sure to pack a lunch you can throw in a daypack and bring water for each member of your family. Be sure and dress for the day’s temperature, being cold is a choice. Hiking boots would be a good idea as we may encounter rough terrain and possible muddy conditions. We’ll be back at the parking area about 4pm.

What does this class cover?

Doug Robinson's photostream

Doug Robinson's photostream on Flickr.

10lbs for 10 miles - Daypacks

Quite often I find myself planning day trips and suggesting certain gear, clothing, etc., that people should take along with them to make their journey safer and more enjoyable. I’d like to tell you a little about proper daypack packing and weight distribution for each person on any wilderness trek.

First of all, each person should have their own lightweight daypack. You could even use your child’s backpack from school if need be, as long as it’s comfortable. When my family goes out hiking we all have our own packs, it helps to distribute weight mostly, but I have also found that

Extreme Rafting Trip Planning

For the last 8 years I have organized annual rafting trips down the famous Upper Gauley river in West Virginia. We go during a 22-day period known as Gauley Season. This is when the Army Corp of Engineers have a controlled dam release from Summersville reservoir dam. At the bottom of the dam the mighty Upper Gauley starts it’s decent through some of WV”s most beautiful scenery, while providing some of the best class 5+ white water action the northern hemisphere has ever seen!

There is a lot a variables that go into scheduling this trip, and after so many years of making this run I‘ve figured out a thing or two about planning it. I’ll share some things that may help you with scheduling your trip to have the best time possible.

10,000,000 Acre Forest… Gone

I’d like to share some facts about our precious forest that may shock you. Here is a little history I dug up about the ugly side of deforestation.

Before 1750, over 10,000,000 acres of virgin forest existed in the State of West Virginia. George Washington wrote in his journal while traveling along the Kanawa River, "Just as we came to the hills, we met with a Sycamore of a most extraordinary size, it measuring three feet from the ground, forty-five feet round, lacking two inches; and not fifty yards away from it was another, thirty-one feet round."

Along with massive trees, extensive undergrowth existed as documented by an account written in 1857 by David Strother:
"The hunters had been dodging the laurel-brakes all day. They had stories of men who had spent days in them, wandering in circles, and who had finally perished from starvation. Some of these brakes extend for many miles, and are so dense that even the deer cannot pass except by finding the thinnest places. Ascending the stump of a riven hemlock, a striking picture presented itself.

Get with the Picture

Most families seem to have one person that ends up taking all the photos. Sometimes it’s because you are the best with the camera, and other times it is just because it happens to be one of your favorite hobbies and you just love it. The latter is the case in my family. I will generally be the first one to pick up the camera or video recorder at any opportunity. Because of this, I find that I’m not in the photos as often as I’d like to be. The solution for this is simple, let someone else take some shots or get a tripod. I try and do both.

By letting others take shots it puts a different style in the picture. For example, my 8 yr old son is always

This Photo is Alive

Some of us may never see the value in snapping photos at every opportunity, but for the ones that do, you’ll be very thankful down the road. For me, it’s about capturing the mood of a particular moment that’s most important. If your family and friends pose for every shot, then they will look very similar in every picture you take.
Next time you turn on that camera try and resist the urge to draw attention to yourself by waving your arms frantically and shouting ’over here!!’, or waiting until it’s all smiles all around, instead take a few shots of whatever is happing right now; without warning. I think you will be pleasantly surprised more often than not. I’m not saying each photo will be great, but they will all catch

World's most fearless 8yr old surfer

Best Adventures of 2010

Humpback Rocks

On the Blue Ridge pkwy, at milepost 6, there is a great little spot called Humpback Rocks. There is parking on either side of the parkway here - visitor’s center and old pioneer village is on the west side and trailhead parking for the Humpback Rocks trail is on the east side.

This was part 2 of the Adventure Club’s November 2010 trip “Birds of Prey / Bird’s Eye View”. The first part of the day had been spent touring The Wildlife Center of Virginia, and as neat as that was, it was time to get some hiking in! Humpback Rocks is an outcropping of granite high in the mountains. The trail is only about 8 tenths of a mile long but the elevation gain is over 1000 feet! That’s steep people. Never-the-less, we all made it to the top just fine. The ages on our hike ranged from 8 - 45 yrs old. The view from the rocks was amazing to say the least. I spent a lot of time searching for the best photo spots up there and took lots of shots with the kids. My favorite photo of the trip was this shot of the Adventure Club boys hanging out on the rocks. This picture is somewhat deceiving though, they’re actually laying down on the rocks on about a 45 degree angle so I just angled the camera to create the cliff scene.

After spending 2 hours at the top, just hanging out with great family and friends, we started our decent. Going down this trail proved to be very rough on the knees, but nothing a long drive back home wouldn’t cure.

Birds of prey

In November of 2010 the Adventure Club and I traveled to the mountains for the trip we called, Birds of Prey / Birds Eye View. The plan was to visit the Wildlife Center of Virginia, where we would take a tour of the facilities and get to know some of the birds of prey that they were helping at the time.

The Wildlife Center is located near Waynesboro, Virginia and right off of interstate 64. It was very easy to find. I had called ahead to schedule our tour, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a stray visitor from time to time. There was a fee involved for the tour, however, most of the fee went directly to the treatment and care of our native Virginia wildlife so we did not mind at all. First we watched a short video about the Center and the animals they cared for, and afterwards our guide held a general Q&A session. The kids took full advantage of asking some very unique, and down right weird, questions and I think I even saw our poor tour guide blush once or twice. Once we were all educated in the Center’s daily operations we ventured out back to where the birds of prey were housed. The enclosures were kept very tidy and the birds looked very well taken care of, despite their injuries. We learned even more about the Owls, Hawks, Eagles, etc., then it was time to say good-bye. The tour was about two hours in length.

I would recommend visiting The Wildlife Center of Virginia to anyone who may be interested in a career of helping native wildlife, the staff was very helpful and very eager to educate us.

The second part of our day we would spend hiking a nearby trail at Humpback Rocks.

Learn S.T.O.P.

In the wild, most people don’t realize that they are in fact lost until they have been truly lost for quite some time. You don’t just cut a corner and say…huh!? I’m lost. It usually starts with you quietly doubting yourself, then it turns to you trying to re-assure yourself that salvation must be just over there, or maybe just over here. As your immediate conditions dwindle you are suddenly faced with a choice, a choice you will not have complete control over; to panic or keep your wits.

I think most people automatically panic, even if it’s just

Lost in the wild

The old saying is; “When you’re lost in the wild, your best bet is to find water, follow it downstream until it becomes a creek, then a river, and your sure to find civilization”. This is great advice, unless you’re lost in the upper regions of Canada, with more fresh water streams, rivers, and lakes than you can poke a stick at. What if you follow a stream, and after hours of winding back and forth along its banks, you find yourself at the shore of a remote lake? I would say, that finding water should be a top priority, but you might not always find the salvation you’re looking for

Niagara Falls in winter

Niagara Falls in January is quite a site. Ice formations cover the sides of the cliffs around the falls from the never-ending spray. The mist from the falls fall back to the ground as ice pellets and cover the surrounding area under a heavy coat of ice. None-the-less, it was our first trip to Niagara Falls and we were loving it!

 This photo here is actually the American Falls, we would later venture out to Goat Island and also get a view from the top of Niagara. Because it was winter, all other vantage points were off limits and the boats below were dry docked because of the ice.

Drive to Lake Erie

A few years ago, we were having an abnormally warm winter here in Virginia. Only an inch or two of snow had fallen and it was already fast approaching the end of January. Well, we decided that just would not do. So we did what any snow loving family would do… we went to snow!

We called it our annual “family snow day”. The idea was inspired by something my friends and I used to do when we were younger (and gas cost less than a dollar a gallon). We would watch eagerly as the forecasters called for snowfall in our area, only to have the mountains suck out all the moisture and deny us of any snow at all. This happened over and over until one day we got the bright idea that we would simply go to the snow. This sounded great, after all, how nice it is to leave home on a Friday afternoon and be in a hotel deep in the mountains by late evening with three to four feet of snow outside on the ground. Play all day on Saturday in the snow, then drive Saturday night with clear road conditions back home. You still had a day to recoup and then back to work, awesome right? My thoughts where, wouldn’t this same plan work with my family?

Sure it would. Times had changed though, back then we’d just get in the car, and then come up with a plan. No way, not today. I had to come up with a decent plan of action before we even left the house this time. So I researched what parts of the U.S. had the most snowfall on average that was within a one day journey by car. There were two places that I found, the first was Elkins, West Virginia - which I had done when I was younger with my friends and found as much as 4 feet of snow back then!- the second place was Jamestown, New York (which is about 60 miles south of Buffalo) and was claiming to have 3 feet of snow on the ground now with more on the way! With all the lake effect snow pouring down at Jamestown, NY I new this was our destination.

The plan was to make it a three-day weekend since we had about 9 hours each way of drive time. We left home at 4am on Saturday to arrive at a hotel around 1pm that afternoon. The temperature was about 45 degrees as we left our house in Virginia, in the early hours of the morning, still much warmer than average for late January. About 6 hours later we stopped for fuel in Pennsylvania and “man alive!!” was it ever cold. We past a bank sign a few miles later and I believe it read 16! I know some of you may think that’s not quite ‘arctic cold’ but for it being in the mid-40’s earlier that day, we noticed.

As we drove closer to Lake Erie a snow storm developed out of nowhere, then the wind picked up, before we knew it we where in white-out conditions and a full blown blizzard was on us! Then, just as quickly as it came on, it lightened up and started to clear. That only lasted about 10 miles, but traffic had slowed to a crawl and it was quite exciting. We actually decided to stay at a hotel right on the shore of Lake Erie (20 miles west of Jamestown). The lake was froze over as far as the eye could see, which made for a pretty cool view out of a second story window. There were people out on the ice in little huts, it took me a minute to figure out that they were ice fishing. “How cool is that!”, I told my kids. We had never seen anyone doing this before except on TV.

Once at the hotel room, we decided that we wouldn’t waste a single minute. We through our stuff in the room and jumped right back in the car. Now… where to? Well we as close as we had ever been to Niagara Falls, so that was it, to the FALLS!

900ft Zipline

Tales of a 900 foot zipline buzzed around the web, and right here in our own backyard.

In May of 2010 The Adventure Club of central VA set out to conquer the zip line at Eagle Landing in our own beautiful Blueridge Mountains. We were all a little nervous and some more than others I believe. Non-the-less, there we were staring down a 900 foot long cable that ended abruptly at a tower… and over a lake!

No turnin’ back now…

Never too late to start

If it’s adventure you seek, then I know how you feel. I spend countless hours researching locations, scouting, and talking to all the right people just to be able to plan out the most enjoyable trip a group could ever have. I do this simply because I love it! My reward comes from the satisfaction of others, especially my family. There is no better legacy than one made up of great memories! Already I know my kids will look back with great joy on the adventures we’ve been through together, and we’re just getting started. If anyone were to ever ask me for advice on fatherhood, I’d simply tell them just be there, be active, and be patient and strong. It’s never too late to start, now get out there and have some fun, make some memories together today.