Photo from rjones856's Flickr photostream

Hanging Lake from above

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Photo courtesy Aarn North America

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"What's that peak? Wait, don't tell me..."

​If you're a mountain lover like us, you've probably looked toward a mountain-studded horizon and wished you could know the names of all the peaks instantly. Now you can, sort of: Software developer Augmented Outdoors just released Peaks 2.0 for iPhone.

The premise is simple. You hold your phone up to the view, and the software coordinates GPS and compass readings with a peak database to determine the prominent peaks you're looking at. It lists name, altitude, and distance to the summit in a gray pop-up box that appears just above the peak. Users can then take a pic or instantly Twitter that photo to make poor sods stuck in offices jealous.

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​Pack your poop, people: This week the Fort Collins Coloradoan and LovelandConnection.com are reporting on a new program at Rocky Mountain National Park to distribute free bags for packing out human waste, after park rangers noticed rising coliform bacteria counts in the groundwater near popular camping areas.

The double-bagged disposable travel toilet systems are available from "poop bag dispensers" at the Lumpy Ridge trailhead and Chasm Lake Junction on the trail to Longs Peak, and are being offered to anyone who obtains overnight backcountry permits for the park. To buy a supply of your own, check out WhenNatureCalls.com.

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Photo by Eric Peterson

Big Bend is calling.

​Spring is upon us. Despite its snowy start, I have a feeling it will end with mud. It's the perfect time to get out of town for a weekend or a week in search of adventure, warm weather, or dry earth -- or some combination of the three.  More >>

Like seeing this by yourself? Me too.

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Recently, I took fellow OTE blogger Greg Benchwick's advice and I headed out to Moab, Utah. This isn't a rare pilgrimage for Front Rangers -- it just usually happens in spring and summer, when dirt hounds can get their tires and tread reliably on trails without snow. A mention of my winter pilgrimage usually got me weird looks and expectations that I'd return frozen and dusted red.

I'd like to call BS on that notion: Whereas Moab summers are choked to the gills with jeeping jerks and the fannypacked masses clogging roads, winter is blissfully empty. Best of all, you don't really have to sacrifice any comfort.  More >>

Image from www.icebug.se

​It's black-ice season on the trails (not to mention the Denver sidewalks) for the foreseeable future, and there are plenty of uphills that will put you flat on your ass if you try to climb them in your Chuck Taylors.

Since 2001, Sweden's Icebug has been solving that problem with sneakers and boots featuring a special rubber sole impregnated with 15 or 16 steel studs. The studs not only afford the wearer traction, but -- unlike most studs -- they're also intelligent.
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coolantarctica.com

A sampling of the terrain the women crossed to get to the South Pole

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Three days in to the 38-day trek and one of the women had already dropped out. Her hands were frostbitten. She couldn't continue. The seven other women labored on, and on the last day of 2009 they completed their 562-mile cross country ski journey through blizzards, 80 mph winds, and negative 42-degree temperatures. They were at the South Pole.

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Paul Carroll c/o Flickr.

Berthoud Pass backcountry.

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A while ago, I wrote about rescues and who should save you in the mountains. The story arose from an incident on Mt. Hood. One of the overreactions to the deaths of the three climbers has been the idea of mandating that climbers carry personal locator beacons (PLBs) with them when they climb Mt. Hood.

Many professional rescue teams are against the idea of mandating personal locator beacons, as well as the idea of the charging people for rescues. Ultimately, carrying PLBs can become a false blanket of security for those that have them. Further, as a series of incidents in the Colorado backcountry demonstrates, PLBs can cause their own problems.
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​"We are a local store that could use a leg up this season," writes Marily Macdonald, marketing coordinator for the Outdoor Divas shops in Boulder and Cherry Creek, just as I'm heading out the door to scrape the snow off my car and scrape together the last of my last-minute holiday shopping.

How local? We put the question back to her and got a list of local lines carried in the Outdoor Divas shops:

Here are some of my favorites:

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