It's great when you start January 1st with a bang! We headed off to sunny Palm Springs, California for what we hope will be a year of many trips. We racked up some miles hiking in the desert as a warm up to many more hikes planned this year. Our first footsteps were a bit rusty, exerting us more that we thought but after the first hike, we were eager to find more trails.
Discovering some really cool hiking spots is always fun, especially when you have the trail to yourselves for most of the time. This was the coldest month for Palm Springs so not a lot of folks were out but we were already winter-hardened coming from Canada so it was absolutely, perfectly warm for us.
One of the interesting discoveries was learning about the Wildlands Conservancy and what that organization's purpose was, which is making the outdoors accessible to all. Isn't that great? As it turned out, we hiked three of their preserves, with our unanimous favourite being the Whitewater River Preserve, just north of Palm Springs. It crosses the Pacific Crest Trail, which was enough to give us inspiration to hike this track. Be sure to check them out next time you are in California.
For the rest of the year, we have a couple beach trips planned, as well as backcountry test hikes leading up to the BIG multi-day Eastern Sierra hike planned for the Fall. It's early days still, but so far we have done two backyard gear shake-downs to see what it feels like sleeping in 0ºC/32ºF weather. Our cat, Tazz just shook his head at us and walked back to his warm bed. We're gonna need warmer gear, that's for sure! I have my eye on these down booties that you can customize...(another excuse to feed my inner gear junkie habit).
So stay tuned to see where we end up next! (27 more sleeps at the time of writing and counting down!)
Cheers,
Karen & Dave
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