Category Archives: Hiking

The Haute Route, (or the High Route or Mountaineers’ Route) is the name given to a route (with several variations) undertaken on foot or by ski touring between Chamonix in France and Zermatt in Switzerland.

The 180-kilometer route is packed with glorious views of glaciers, mountains, and snow-capped peaks. Though the hike is rather strenuous and challenging, there are mountain huts providing ample backpacker’s luxury: hot showers, hot meals, soft beds, cold drinks and stunning views of the glaciers or the alps. The best part of our Haute Route experience was finding a heated mud room for our wet gear after a long hike through a hailstorm.

We were advised that rock climbing skills are not required for this hiking route. However, I was very glad to have the rock climbing experience of knowing how to collect my marbles when we were to take via ferrata.

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Once upon a time, Chopper and Cher were lightweight-crazy about their camping/hiking gear. In order to save weight, Chopper spent many sleepless nights on a woman-size Therm-a-Rest ProLite sleeping pads, while Cher painstakingly tried to keep her down sleeping bag away from the wet single-wall tent during cold nights. We did choose this skimpy little Mont-bell Crescent 2 tent for good reasons: it is super lightweight (only 3 pounds), durable, waterproof, easy to set up, and it has a full mesh wall on one side which maximizes the air flow during the dry nights with the rainfly rolled up.

The design is simple and brilliant, yet it was before long that we started to hate its lightweight brilliancy. First of all,  the single pole construction leaves us a very limited head space. We had to take turns to get dressed and pack in the tent simply because it was too crowded for two. Being a very tight 2-person tent,  It is said that this tent can shelter 3 people in emergency, but I think the third person has to be a child under the age of 8 or 3 people have all to be slim Asians. Also, the single shoulder-width entrance is quite challenging to crawl in and out of quickly during rainy days. And when it comes to cold rainy days, the tiny entrance is the least of your worry – the single wall side is always there for you and your down sleeping bags, wet and dripping.

As we decided to strike a balance between comfort and lightweight, we upgraded our headquarter to a double-wall 3-person tent with dual entrance. In memory of our old skimpy little tent, we put together a slide show to remind us those intimate (sometimes uncomfortably so) nights we had.

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In the summer of 2009, we spent 1 month on the road, hiking and camping at national and state parks around the United States. We started from New York, east-west bound till we hit Big Bend National Park.  Upon reaching Route 1, we traveled northwards and visited many impressive national and state parks along the way, including Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Mount Rainier National Park. After getting out of Olympic National Park, we traveled eastwards and had our grand finale – a canoe/hiking/fishing trip at Isle Royale National Park. Among more than 30 national parks that we hiked and camped, it is very hard to say which one is the best. However, we ended up visiting Isle Royale National Park again during the summer of 2013.

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