Choosing a Trail
Studying Guide Books and Maps to Find the Perfect Trip for the Season
Trip planning is one of the most enjoyable parts of backpacking - studying guide books and maps, to find a place where the adventure and beauty excites you.
I am having a tough time figuring out where to go backpacking this weekend. It seems like all my favorite destinations are 10,000 feet or higher. That is the level of the Colorado snowpack right now, so I have to keep studying the maps for somewhere lower. I think I am ready for the snow to melt and the aspen leaves to break bud.
Trip planning is one of my favorite parts of backpacking. I spend hours looking through backpacking guide books and searching the web, trying to find new places to explore.
A good resource for trip planning is topozone.com. They have online topographic maps for the entire U.S.
If you find a lake or basin or mountain you want more information on, sometimes you can search in google images to find a photograph.
A google image search led me to a beautiful 180 lake in Montana last August, that was turquoise blue from being fed by glacial water. Backpacking up to that lake was the highlight of my summer trekking.
Sometimes a photo is all you need to get your heart racing, as you visualize yourself standing next to that incredible spot. It's nice when it turns out to be better that you envisioned, which is often the case.
Here is what I can't wait for, when the snow melts. They are photos of last July, when me and Ben and Maggie (my border collies) camped alone above timberline:
(And here is a larger version, 1600 pixels wide).
