2012 Ohio Valley Derecho

On June 29th, 2012, I was camping at Wolf Run State Park near the Village of Belle Valley of Noble County on the north side of Buckeye Trail's "The Wilderness Loop."  I was there to camp in an electric site.

I was sleeping my collapsible camper that I hand made for the back of my Chevy HHR, which I humorously call "The Cramper."  It was quite improvised.  That night, the nastiest windstorm that I had ever been in (in all my life) came through SE Ohio.  I think it started in the evening and I took shelter early.  It was bad.  But when I got up the next morning, The Cramper actually survived due to the system of bungee cords that mounted a large tarp to the back.

I broke camp and drove down to the Ring Mill Campground on the Road Fork Section, and then another site.  And that's where I found signs posted from NFS stating that the forest had been ordered closed by the forest supervising ranger and that anybody going beyond the signs risked a $5000 fine.  Since NFS was putting sawyers on mandatory overtime and advertising on the radio that anybody certified was asked to apply and would probably get hired, as I understood, NFS was not prepared for the magnitude of this storm.  I have a picture of this closure somewhere.

The Marietta Unit is an 85 year old older young growth forest.  And from what I could see, it took a beating.  When I became the Whipple Section (volunteer) Supervisor about 2 -1/2 year later, I had an indoctrination at the Wayne National Forest Headquarters in Nelsonville of Hocking County.  And they said that trees were down in dangerous ways and that their sawyers were fighting through webs of them.  If the hikers were to try and go through there, it could have been life threatening?  It ended up taking NFS that entire summer to reopen the BT/ NCT in the Marietta Unit of The Wayne.

I was reading a journal for Luke "Strider" Jordan, who was then a thru hiker on the North Country Trail, which are concurrent with the Road Fork and Whipple Sections - BT on The Wilderness Loop.  I was curious how he fared on his way through.  But in reading his log for Sat. August 24, he by-passed Road Fork and Whipple.  That was actually the right thing to do.  According to the closure, only the trails were closed.  But who knows what damage was done to the backcounty?  I wouldn't want be in there then.

Depending on who you ask, the BT/ NCT has about 45 miles of almost continuous off-road in the Marietta Unit of the Wayne.  If you eliminate the forest, there's nowhere else stated to overnight in the area.  I recommended to Buckeye that they put up a trail alert to shut down the Road Fork and Whipple Sections entirely, but that never got enacted.    But I am Whipple's supervisor now and under these conditions and for the record, I'd standby Strider's decision to by-pass it in my official capacity.

Log 03/23/2017

I just extracted the off-road track on 7 of 26 sections.  It's been going a little slower today.  But I found new transit off of Scioto Trail Section, Point 09 from Ahoy Transport, LLC out of Vinton County.  The only problem is that the hiker would have to walk 3.0 miles on US-50.  That would reach a radio tower on Dixon Mill Rd.  While I don't suppose the vehicle would pull in.  But it's on a lesser used road and the radio tower is just a good landmark.

After learning that the Buckeye Trail Association could have some differences in accounting map mileages, and it may be possible that either their's or my data is off, I went ahead and tallied it's total mileage.  Pay close attention to the date of this log.  Buckeye Trail re-routes often.  With my maps and tracks being as updated as possible, I my data shows the trail's total length to be 1,445.21 miles with an average section track variance of +0.0504 miles beyond the Map Team's numbers.  If I were to continue to back down the tracks to make mile markers, in the past, I've only done it with a variance of +/- 0.2 miles per section.

Digital mile markers could help prospective hikers.  Along with parking, camping, lodging data all in one place, there'd be no more guess work and measuring. Planing hikes would be a snap.  My GPS tracks for the BT are probably in condition now?

Digital mile markers are a lot of work, but they're worth it in the end.  And that's because in Google Earth, you have open the properties menu with the "measurements" tab up to have access and back down track.  Every time you reach a desired mileage, you have to close the menu and then put down a placemark.  In accordance with my data, on the Whipple Section, that has to be performed 58 times.  And the backing down part is what's time consuming.  You have to back space it at a controlled rate, or Google Earth could easily overshoot the mark.

In other things, I've been thinking about my 5th installment towards a Household Life Membership in the Buckeye Trail Association.  It's coming up early next month.  For the installment plan, I may have found that money orders from the US Post Office might be better than the Money Grams for other that I've been using.  Apparently, they never expire or devalue.  I have a PO Box, so I'll have to verify this soon.  There's only 10 installments, so #5 is half way.

I looks like I'll be re-building The Cramper next month.  I'm thinking about something lighter and cheaper.  But I have to go by the home improvement store to try and find a way to temporarily seal it to the tailgate frame.

Sometime in the next month or two, I need to start gathering supplies for trail promotion in SE Ohio.

Log 2016051603

I wanted to take this time to write about my former improvised camper, which was humorously called "The Cramper."  To bring you up to speed, I converted my 2008 Chevy HHR with a piece of ply as the floor on 2x4 runners.  It split at 32" so that everything would fit during transport mode.  It was braced with a 4x4.  On that, I attached several pieces of 2x4 in a row and used pieces of aluminum angles to create a slot for some scissor jacks, which I put on cement rectangles as an adjustment in case the car wasn't parked on the level.

Today I want to talk about boon docking power.  This is when you need to power your electric gadgets without an external AC power supply.    It's not good to be attached to your car's battery power without knowing what you're draining from it.  I towed a small trailer, so I had a marine battery encased in a plastic box mounted to it that I could draw power from.  But on occasion, I also used a portable, rechargeable battery jump box.  It has a cigarette lighter power socket on it and I inserted a 120V power inverter into it to get a 3 prong outlet.  That ran my laptop computer watching 2 - 43 minute episodes a day for about 4 nights.  I also carried 2 spare charged laptop batteries that I used before this.  You might be able to get high capasity batteries for yours, but a normal size one like that which comes from the factory lasts about 3 days at this rate.  And that's taking into account that it's charging the smartphone at the same time and you should make sure that your computer's batteries power settings are set conservatively.

Trail Angel on Old Man's Cave Section

-I hosted Greg K. at Basecamp D for a few days

We hiked Old Man's Cave Section from Pt. 19 - S to 26 - W, which I've designated as the ST Lawn in the Pretty Run property.

I took a waypoint for Pt. 26. The one that I had was an approximate location.

Afterwards, we met a friend there who is known to many in the BTA. Instead of riding back, I was grateful that he gave me a ride back to Basecamp D.

Correction regarding the name of the campground for Basecamp D. It is the "Old Man's Cave Campground" at Hocking Hills State Park in Benton Twp of Hocking County. 

Axles on my mountain bike need to be calibrated again. I have a quick releases on both wheels with disc braking system. The true on the rear wheel has been holding up, but I'm not sure how much longer?

The bicycle's tires have been deflated to 44psi to put more rubber down and handle more aggressive dirt roads. But when i came down hill around a turn at high speed on a paved road, the rear wheel folded over and i almost wiped out.

The USB generator as mounted on the bicycle's right rear fork was moved back about 1". This was done so that it would no longer knock into the right crank in gears 5 - 7 on the high sprocket. 

Nonetheless,  shifting into gears 5 & 6 high require that I over shift, then down shift into them. 6 high still requires that some torque be applied before it shifts at all. From what I'm told, it's probably a problem with the rear detailer, but it's nothing that needs fixed imeadately.  With all that being said, the gear cassette was just recently changed in Zanesville by a mechanic that i trust and have used in the past. And I'm confident that it's my bike and not their work. Frankly, they are some of the only two people who have ever got my bike right. The way i see it, you have to stick to what work.

My Minora truing stand lost a piece that secures a bicycle axle when the spokes are being serviced. I'm convinced that i might be able to use the other parts of the stand which might bend and reach up to the rim if i attempt to true it as still mounted to the bike using my double kickstand? It could work on both wheels if I place a load on the rear rack to bring up the front tire.

The accuracy of my Garmin eTrex 20 seems to be very good for a hand held GPS.

Some of my NiMH battery cells are bad. They'll have to be charged up one, or two at a time to weed out the bad ones.

The Cramper's awning is showing signs of stress.  During a hard rain, water will pelt through. This piece of canvas was waterproofed in July.