I hear it all the time by other backpackers in the group, "You backpacked by yourself? I couldn't do it." Don't you get lonely? Aren't you afraid of getting hurt and nobody being around to help? You went through all this trouble in setting up a backpacking club so people wouldn't have to backpack alone... so why would you even consider backpacking alone?

After a scrumptious New York steak dinner the first night at our car camp site, a few folks went to bed, and some of us hung out tightly around the fire for warmth, sharing deep thoughts and some captivating stories.

Fresh after a sumptuous Thanksgiving Dinner, eight Perfect Pace guys met up for the journey to Santa Cruz Island at the Island Packers pier in Ventura Harbor.

Driving down into Kings Canyon was a trip in itself with jaw-dropping views of the canyon, mountains, and valley... one of the few places that you can look up and down and sideways.

Prepared with the right knowledge and gear, you can be perfectly comfortable in virtually any conditions.

A first-aid kit is the piece of outdoor gear that probably (hopefully) gets the least amount of use per mile carried.

The trails of the Northeast punish your knees. Unyielding rock slabs, plummeting descents, and thudding drops over refrigerator-sized boulders combine to induce Richter-scale compression on this precious joint. Aftershocks of soreness, stiffness, and downright pain can linger for days. Over time, this abuse can wear down your knees, paving the way for the development of arthritis.

How do you condense a week-long trip through spectacular Yosemite into a reasonably short article? Well, you don't, because you can't. So if you don't have time to read a slightly longer than usual article, here's a summary: drive, walk, wow, walk, drive.

(8/22/07) After a lousy year of rainfall, I dreaded the phone call to the ranger to inquire of the water situation in Tahquitz Valley. The ranger informed me Tahquitz Valley was now dry. Water must be packed in. With eleven folks signed up for the trip, I then dreaded having to inform them that it was now a dry backpack trip. The total number of participants immediately went from 11 to 5. Whoops... I guess I should have done a better job letting folks know that the extra water weight really was not that bad. I must be losing my sales voice.

The drive up from San Diego was a breeze. We just missed the holiday Saturday morning traffic. We we're so ahead of schedule, we stopped off at the lovely Dutch village of Solvang for Danish, and had Italian at Cambria for lunch.

A pair of trekking poles can transform you into a fleet-footed, four-legged, full-body hiking machine. Or a brush-snagging, rock-scarring, hand-encumbered trail beast, depending on your point of view.

Magical. It was the word I used to describe this trip last year as well. I'm not sure why I find this trip so magical. I used to think it was my favorite backpack - simply because of its close proximity to home. But there is something more about it that beckons me...

Perfect Pace is a new gay club dedicated to the outdoor sports of hiking, backpacking, and camping. Based in San Diego, the club serves both men and women for the Southern California area, with most members residing in Los Angeles and San Diego.

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