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I carry ibuprofen and acetaminophen in my first aid kit. Ibuprofen seems to work better for me, so that's what I prefer to take, although I very rarely use any pain medications.

The question of drug effectiveness beyond expiration date has been studied by FDA at the request of the military. Here is a link to high-level summary at NIH web site: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7040264/

This one made me chuckle, as I certainly have been guilty of doing this (perhaps less the assertion that I haven't been swimming): https://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?59166-Mount-Obama-4-17-17

I am one of (few?) people who did not have a sponsor. I came across VFTT when googling for information on Kate Matrosova. One thing that struck me from the beginning was the quality of posts - instead of bashing that permeated other sites I felt that VFTT members genuinely tried to understand...

They are probably using high ISO setting which is probably why the picture looks a bit grainy. They could be also setting exposure time higher at night. For comparison, I took these two pictures in total darkness while backpacking in Sierra Nevada back in September but I used longer exposure...

I don't know how these heel straps look like or how they are mounted but I bet you can buy some generic synthetic straps (probably 1/2 inch would be strong enough) and some screws / washers / rivets to fix this yourself. It will just take some more effort & care.

If supplies run really low one can always type in "DIY snowshoes" in YouTube search box...

Since I was not getting much progress with a file I thought that my choice was either to use bench grinder or to replace the microspikes altogether as they got dull to the point that is was really easy to curved tooth edges on "grip side". I tried to be gentle as to no heat the teeth up in...

Now that winter is here again, I though I would post an update on sharpening my microspikes - I tried using a file as we as a rotary tool but all this was going too slow, so I ended up using a bench grinder. It probably took me about an hour to go through all teeth and I hope I didn't damage any...

If your snowshoes are 18 years old and the material became brittle then it seems quite likely that you might experience similar problem in other parts of the snowshoe that uses the same type of material (perhaps just on the other snowshoe.) While I generally prefer to repair things rather than...

All popular hiking-oriented mapping apps that I am aware of utilize smartphone built-in gps and have some (perhaps paid) option to pre-download maps prior to hiking. Hence with a little planning ahead of the hike there should be no need for cell phone signal. I think the primary issues are...

When I see errors on OpenStreetMap I just upload my gps traces after the hike and fix whatever is wrong. It's really not that hard to do and makes the map better for future users. Paper maps also get out of date even if they are accurate at the time of publication. Obviously one issue with...

Btw, the battery door is usually holding up really well (at least on all Garmin units I had so far), so I wonder if the lock is working properly on yours? It should click as as you turn the lock tab.

I think Doug is making a really good call here. Your maps on SD card might be fine but as SD card fell out, your GPS possibly decided that your topo map was no longer available, and now it just needs to be re-enabled for display. Here are the instructions from GPSMAP 64 manual: Map Settings...

I asked my son for some more details. Their group did not fit into a lean-to, so some kids were sleeping inside of a lean-to while 6 slept in tents pitched next to a lean-to which was less than 150 feet from the trail. The ranger came at 1 a.m. and ticketed each of 6 kids sleeping in tents...

Hikerbrian, Perhaps you had some bad luck but it's not the first time I hear a story like this. Few years ago my son went with his scout troop to Catskills and they got awoken in the middle of the night by a ranger who ticketed them for pitching their tents in violation of some rule (either...

Ratings are subjective and inherently asymmetric - the person rating the trail will very likely perceive the difficulty differently than a random user of the guide. That's why I prefer attributes such as "rocky trail", "very steep section", "slick slab", "difficult stream crossing", "sparse...

You probably should check out https://www.alltrails.com I believe this is currently the most popular on-line "living" trail guide that has a quite a number of useful features. It has curated & community content. You can create routes and get distance & elevation profiles for them prior to...

I recently backpacked in Sierra Nevada and my observation is that depending on the wind direction you may get air filled with smoke and horrible visibility or a perfect blue sky. Here are two picture of the same peak - one taken at sunset and another one taken next morning.

If you find plane crash sites interesting, then there are many geocaches placed near them, so geocaching might be one of the easiest way of getting coordinates for places like this.