Welcome to the High Sierra Backpacker's Magazine, including forums for local and long-distance hikers sharing info about hiking the Sierra between Tahoe and Whitney.
This Magazine covers everything Sierra. Its Forums cover TYT, PCT, & JMT and alt-route hiker input from the Guide. The Tahoe to Whitney Trail Guide explores the trails & the necessary skills, fitness, and gear required to hike from Tahoe to Whitney. This evolving Magazine covers Current Conditions, News, the Arts, Sciences, Physicality, Spirituality, Gear, Environment, History, and Cultures of hiking Tahoe to Whitney.
Purposes: Expand Knowledge, Explore Potential
for Beginners: To get you off the couch, gear you up, get you into Sierra Shape, and onto the High Sierra Trails. Find info. Ask questions, get feedback, generate self-understanding and terrain awareness. Find killer short routes up and down the High Sierra Crest.
for Backpackers: Get you in deeper, longer, and higher. Train for the long trails. Find your next-steps trips. Hit the Long Trails. Hike the TYT and JMT. Find and explore side trails, alternative, and cross-country routes until you hike your skills into Winter compentency. Explore your potential.
for Experts: The information to come from anywhere in the US or world and backpack from Tahoe to Whitney. The Sierra Nevada is the ultimate wonderland for expert backpackers in top shape. But don't get cocky! The Sierra is bigger, stronger, and has been, and will be here much longer than any of us.
Another Soy Boy Degradation: Bad Brains
HEALTH & FITNESS
SOY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO FAT, SEXLESS, & STUPID
Oil-Fats US Consumption Chart
Soy by far the #1 of the edible fats and oils consumed in the U.S. during 2017/18. USDA, via the University of California - Riverside.
Another Soy Boy Degradation: Bad Brains
America's most Widely Consumed Oil Causes Genetic Changes in the Brain,
University of California - Riverside, January 17, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
New Soy Oil Degradations Found
"...soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, and depression."
Generally Bad for Bodies
"...found in 2015 that soybean oil induces obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and fatty liver in mice. Then in a 2017 study, the same group learned that if soybean oil is engineered to be low in linoleic acid, it induces less obesity and insulin resistance."
Technology News. The Bottom Line: Escape from the Tech Trap
UPDATE
Human Triggered Wave of Extinction Started Before Humans
Humans Ended Ice Age Cycle Before Industralism
Technology News
The Bottom Line
Escape from the Tech Trap
Our rising technological understanding of the physical reality around us has shifted humanity's fundamental challenge, which started with basic physical survival, into the sphere of the spiritual and motivational world.
As the scope and power of our technological understanding evolved to threaten all of us, and all life on this planet, it has become vitally important that the brutal operating code that our physical reality operates on, that, "life eats itself to survive," be put aside, by us, for our own survival.
Aussies Burning, Early 2020
Update
ECO-CRASHING NEWS, AUSTRALIA ON FIRE
Freak Fires, Now Freak Rains
Graphic Depicting Recent Intense Rainfall Across Western Australia
Puke Blue Color is 0-2" total precip, Red is 4-6". Graphic by NASA. NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using IMERG data from the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) at NASA/GSFC.
Heavy Rains Crush Parts of Western Austrailia
Rain Brought Brief Relief to Australia,
NASA Earth Observer, January 24, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
Some Relief
"In mid-January, some of those plumes were finally quelled by a few days of much-needed rainfall."
Wet Spots
"...north of Sydney, where rainfall averaged between 20 and 30 centimeters (8 and 12 inches). In Victoria, areas near Melbourne received a month’s worth of rain in a single day."
Women Warriors Ancient & Modern
HEALTH, FITNESS, & HUMAN HISTORY: WOMEN IN FIELD-INFANTRY WARFARE
9 BC Female Uratu Warrior Grave with Jewelry
One of The Original Amazons? Greek View of a Scythian Archer.
The chopped-up Chick. Anahit Khudaverdyan, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia
Below, We Explore
Uratus & Scythians Warrior Women, with a Macedonian Warrior Woman Mystery, all brought up to Modern Times through the experiences of two Combat-Experienced Female US Marine Infantry Officers.
Ancient Mounted Archer Warrior Women
Wounded Remains of Real-Life “Amazon” Woman Found in Armenia,
Vintage News, December 3, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
6th to 9th Century BC
"...discovery of a 2,500 year old “Amazon” warrior woman in an Armenia..."
A contemporary of Hesiod and Homer of early Greece.
Ancient Footprints off Canada Coast: Family Record 13,000 Years Old
UPDATED
April 23
Ancient Laetoli Footprints Reveal "Modern-Style" Bi-pedular Apes
Original Research
HUMAN CONDITION
Ancient Footprints off Canada Coast
Early American Footprints
13,000-year Old Human Footprints Found Off Canada's Pacific Coast
Photograph of track #17 beside digitally-enhanced image of same feature using the DStretch plugin for ImageJ. Note the toe impressions and arch indicating that this is a right footprint. Duncan McLaren, PLOS.
Family Record 13,000 Years Old
13,000-year-old human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast,
PLOS, March 28, 2018.
Massive Aussie Dust Storm Front, January 2020
ECO-CRASHING NEWS: AUSTRALIA
Massive Aussie Dust Storm Front, January 2020
Dust front stretching thousands of miles across Australia, Lansat 8, NASA.
Many Versions of Ecological Hell Unleashing Across Australia
Major Dust Storm Sweeps Across Australia,
NASA Earth Observatory, January 15, 2020.
MAIN POINT
Massive Dust…
Alice Springs NT, Australia
"...an enormous dust storm swept across the continent."
Thousands of Kilometers
"The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a natural-color image (top) showing a front of thick dust stretching thousands of kilometers across Australia on January 11, 2020."
NOAA Assesses the Global Climate & Weather of 2019
ECO-CRASHING NEWS:
NOAA Tracking Our Whole Planet's Rapidly Changing Climate & Weather
Global Temperature Percentiles for the Year of 2019
NOAA.
Second Hottest Land & Sea Temperatures in Recorded History
Assessing the Global Climate in 2019,
NOAA reports near-record warm year for the globe,
NCEI, January 15, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
Land & Ocean Temps
Second Highest on Record
"...the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.71°F (0.95°C) above the 20th century average. This was the second highest among all years in the 1880–2019 record and just 0.07°F (0.04°C) less than the record value set in 2016."
Trending Hot & Hotter
"...five warmest years have occurred since 2015; nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005. The year 1998 is the only 20th century year among the 10 warmest years on record."
Assessing the U.S. Climate during the Year of 2019
ECO-CRASHING NEWS:
NOAA TRACKING OUR CHANGING AMERICAN CLIMATE & WEATHER
Mean 2019 Annual US Temperatures
Percentiles, January-December 2019. By NOAA, NCEI.
2019 a Warm, Cool, & Wet Year of Extremes in the United States
Assessing the U.S. Climate in 2019,
Warmest year on record for Alaska, second wettest for contiguous U.S.,
NOAA, NCEI, January 8, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
US Temps
Not Hot, Not Cool
"...the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 52.7°F, 0.7°F above the 20th century average."
"...in the warmest third of the 125-year period of record..."
"...the coolest year since 2014."
US Regional Trends
Cool Plains. Hot Southeast
"Below-average temperatures, particularly daytime temperatures, were observed across the northern Plains, while above-average to record-warm overnight temperatures dominated across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic."
WEATHER for High Sierra Backpackers: REPORTS, FORECASTS, PREDICTIONS, SNOW, ROADS, CONDITIONS
ALL
HIGH SIERRA WEATHER RESOURCES
NEW
GOES-17-WEST
TWO VIEWS
of the
NE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA COAST, & THE HIGH SIERRA
NOW
THE WIDE VIEW
The NOAA VIEWER
Northern Pacific GeoColor
The Last 11 Hours over the Northeastern Pacific
The Big South East Pac View
From the South
Good for Observing-Tracking Tropical Transport Mechanisms
When, Where, & How We Humans Spread Globally
HEALTH, FITNESS, & THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
When, Where, & How We Spread Globally
A handful of recent discoveries have shattered anthropologists' picture of where humans came from, and when,
Business Insider, January 5, 2020
MAIN POINTS
New Picture Emerging
A New Puzzle, Really...
"A 2017 finding in Morocco threw into question the idea that modern humans originated in East Africa. Those bones were significantly older than any others ever found."
Trickle?
"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations."
Flood?
"A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter."
Early Modern Human Distribution
Interesting Recent Research & Discoveries
April 2019
Ancient Footprints off Canada Coast: Family Record 13,000 Years Old
Climate Changes Killing the Whole Planet: The Amazon is Crashing
1-2020 Update:
Amazon Regeneration Slower that Thought
TREE NEWS
Killing the Whole Planet
The Amazon is Crashing
Amazon deforestation is close to tipping point,
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, March 19, 2018.
FULL CRASH MODE APPROACHING
"Deforestation of the Amazon is about to reach a threshold beyond which the region's tropical rainforest may undergo irreversible changes that transform the landscape into degraded savanna with sparse shrubby plant cover and low biodiversity."
"The Amazon system is close to a tipping point."
OLD TIPPING POINT
"...the tipping point would be reached if approximately 40% of the region were deforested."
NEW TIPPING POINT
"...climate change and indiscriminate use of fire...indicates a shift to non-forest ecosystems in the eastern, southern and central portions of the Amazon region at between 20% and 25% deforestation."
Two Galactic Research Notices: Radcliff Wave in Our Spiral Arm, & A Look at the Godzilla Galaxy
ASTROPHYSICS & ASTRONOMY; GALAXIES, OURS AND "GODZILLA"
Two Galactic Research Notices
1> New View of Our Dynamic Milky Way Spiral Arm
2> New View of Distant, "Godzilla," Galaxy
1> New View of Our Dynamic Milky Way Spiral Arm: The Radcliffe Wave
Visualization of the Radcliffe Wave: a massive, wave-shaped gaseous structure made up of stellar nurseries, forming one of the largest coherent structures ever observed in our galaxy. This image, taken from the World Wide Telescope, represents the study data overlaid on an artist's illustration of the Milky Way and our sun. Image by Alyssa Goodman / Harvard University.
New Map of Milky Way Reveals Giant Wave of Stellar Nurseries,
Harvard University, January 7, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
Amazing Ancient Human Climate Interactions
ECO-CRASHING NEWS
Amazing Human-Climate Interactions
What a Long, Strange Trips It’s Been
Ancient farmers spared us from glaciers but profoundly changed Earth's climate,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, September 6, 2018.
MAIN POINTS
Human Global Warming began a Long Time Ago
“Millenia ago, ancient farmers...may have been fundamentally altering the climate of the Earth.“
Ice Age Averted
“...without this human influence, by the start of the Industrial Revolution, the planet would have likely been headed for another ice age.”
First Human Tipping Point
“...the Holocene reversed direction 5,000 years ago, hitting peak concentrations of both gases by 1850.”
The Long Cycle
“For most of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, its climate has largely been determined by a natural phenomenon known as Milankovitch Cycles, periodic changes in the shape of Earth's orbit around the sun - which fluctuates from more circular to more elliptical - and the way Earth wobbles and tilts on its axis.“
Finding Some Truth behind the Failure of The Paris Climate Agreement by Examining Its Pledges
1-2020 Update: China Coal Burning Skyrocketing
1-2020 Update 2: USA Shutting Down Coal
ECO-CRASHING NEWS: INTERNATIONAL FRAUDS
Grow, China, Grow!
Grow, USA, Grow!
Modern Industrial Infrastructure
A Power Plant
One of the, "Last of the Mohicans," if Paris is going to, "work?" Credit Carnegie Inst. Sci.
Not Targeting the Sources, Nor even the Symptoms!
The Truth behind the Paris Agreement Climate Pledges,
Universal Ecological Fund, November 5, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
It Studies Itself
This study, "...examines in great detail the 184 voluntary pledges under the Paris Agreement, the first collective global effort to address climate change."
Astronomical Observations & Information, Winter of 2020
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMIC OBSERVATIONS
Observations & Information, Winter of 2020
Events & Information
WHERE WE AT
Earth Closest to the Sun
The Earth at Perihelion,
In-The-Sky, January 6, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
Closest at Mid-Winter
"The Earth's annual orbit around the solar system will carry it to its closest point to the Sun, at a distance of 0.98 AU."
Annual Variation
"The Earth's distance from the Sun varies by around 3% over the course of the year because its orbit is slightly oval-shaped, following a path called an ellipse."
"...a 3% difference in the Earth's distance from the Sun is barely noticeable."
Our Tilted Engine of Weather
"Annual changes in our weather, for example between the summer and winter, are caused entirely by the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation, rather than by any change in its distance from the Sun."
Trail Guide
Astronomical Models of Earth Orbit & Angle to the Sun
WINTER SKIES
Tipping Points Falling Like Dominoes
ECO-CRASHING NEWS
Tipping Points Falling Like Dominoes
Nine Climate Tipping Points Now 'Active,' Warn Scientists,
University of Exeter, November 27, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
"More than half of the climate tipping points identified a decade ago are now "active", a group of leading scientists have warned."
"This "cascade" of changes sparked by global warming could threaten the existence of human civilisations."
"...these events are more likely and more interconnected than was previously thought, leading to a possible domino effect."
"...we must admit that we have underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the planet self-amplifies global warming."
Moron Alert
"Scientifically, this provides strong evidence for declaring a state of planetary emergency, to unleash world action that accelerates the path towards a world that can continue evolving on a stable planet."
Easy Money
"Exiting the fossil fuel economy is unlikely before 2050, but with temperature already at 1.1°C above pre-industrial temperature, it is likely Earth will cross the 1.5°C guardrail by 2040."
Nine active tipping points:
(With Links to Recent Research)
Melting Mongolian Ice Patches may Threaten Reindeer Pastoralism
ANTHROPOCENE, CRASHING CLIMATE CRASHING CULTURES
Melting Mongolian Ice Patches May Threaten Reindeer Pastoralism, Archeological Artefacts
(Left); Image of a persistent snow and ice patch in Mengebulag taken in 2006, showing domestic reindeer using the patch, and (right); the same patch in 2018, which local residents indicated had melted for the very first time. By Taylor et al, 2019.
Industrial Man Affecting Nature Affecting Natural Man Directly
Melting Mongolian Ice Patches may Threaten Reindeer Pastoralism, Archaeological Artifacts,
PLOS, November 20, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
RAPID NORTHERN HEATING
New World Weather
"Northern Mongolian "eternal ice" is melting for the first time in memory, threatening the traditional reindeer-herding lifestyle and exposing fragile cultural artifacts to the elements..."
Add Oxygen to Our Martian Methane Mystery
ASTROPHYSICS: PLANATARY SCIENCES
Curiosity Rover Landing Site in Gale Crater
The Context of Curiosity Landing Site in Gale Crater, NASA.
Add Oxygen to Our Martian Methane Mystery
With Mars Methane Mystery Unsolved, Curiosity Serves Scientists a New One: Oxygen,
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, November 12, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
Mars Atmosphere
Instrument
"...three Mars years (or nearly six Earth years) an instrument in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) portable chemistry lab inside the belly of NASA’s Curiosity rover inhaled the air of Gale Crater and analyzed its composition."
Cold Fresh Meltwater from Arctic Will Disrupt Gulf Stream
OCEANS, MELTING ICE, & THE GULF STREAM
Atlantic Ocean Circulation
This image shows the Atlantic Ocean Circulation, which transports relatively warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to north-western Europe, by Sven Baars, University of Groningen.
Cold Fresh Meltwater from Arctic Will Disrupt Gulf Stream
North Atlantic Current May Cease Temporarily in the Next Century,
University of Groningen, December 30, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
Gulf Stream & Its Effects
"The North Atlantic Current transports warm water from the Gulf of Mexico towards Europe, providing much of north-western Europe with a relatively mild climate."
Big Problems Coming
"...scientists suspect that meltwater from Greenland and excessive rainfall could interfere with this ocean current."
"...there is a 15 percent likelihood that there will be a temporary change in the current in the next 100 years."
Storm Intensity Increased by Climate Change
NEW WORLD WEATHER
Storm Intensity Increased by Climate Change
Study Confirms Climate Change Impacted Hurricane Florence's Precipitation and Size,
Stony Brook University, January 2, 2020.
MAIN POINTS
New Model
"The research in this study, however, is a first to use a "forecast attribution" framework that enables scientists to investigate the effect of climate change on individual storm events days in advance."
Climate-'Enhanced' Forecast
"They predicted Hurricane Florence would be slightly more intense for a longer portion of the forecast period, rainfall amounts over the Carolinas would be increased by 50 percent due to climate change and warmer water temperatures, and the hurricane would be approximately 80 kilometers larger due to the effect of climate change on the large-scale environment around the storm."
New World Storms
"More importantly, this post-storm modeling around climate change illustrates that the impact of climate change on storms is here now and is not something only projected for our future."
