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Volcan Mountain is one of my favorite new hikes here in San Diego County, I had tried to hike it last year but wasn’t feeling it then life happened and never really got around to it again, until November of this year. Located in East San Diego County this five mile-ish out and back trail has some pretty neat stuff going on and amazing views. Although they steep grade of the access road/trail can make for a good work out so be prepared.

Last Sunday was an amazing new adventure for me, Canyoneering… our friend Bjorn from Triple B Adventures hit me and Brady up about doing the Middle Fork Lytle Creek route in the San Gabriel Mountains. I have been wanting to try canyoneering for a while and could not pass this opportunity up especially with the heat I figured a trip down a canyon and some water would be nice.

I have done some big hikes in some great places this year and have put down some decent milage, for me when it is time to work with getting new hikers out there it can be a personal struggle to adapt the trip to make sure they have fun. Like taking my mom on a twenty miler through Joshua Tree, ha-ha. But you wouldn’t run a marathon cold, nor would you take someone out for their first run and do a marathon, so it stands to reason that introduction to this past time should be easy and fun.

So, it has been a couple weeks since the last blog post and for a good reason, I was up in Colma California getting my Wilderness First Responder (WFR) with Sierra Rescue International.

Survival Starts at Home: Tools, well there are a million and one ways to address this and I will start off with this one, make sure your tools are in good repair and ready to go. So much of what we do in the outdoors is seasonal and because of that a third of our gear can be shelved for the season at any given time. So, we should be aware that what we need to make sure we might need to keep our backcountry adventures safe and fun might need some periodic maintenance and a check out before we grab it and go.

Survival Starts at Home: Fire, well, well, well, fire is a touchy subject as I sit here writing this and California has some major wildfires going on. So, first off, its summer here its hot you probably don’t need a campfire, you might want one, but you probably don’t need one, it’s like me and my relationship with snickers bars.

Survival Starts at Home: Water, we spent an amazing week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and you can read about it HERE, but it was definitely a stark contrast from the water situation down here in SoCal.

Survival Starts at Home: Signaling, one of the more underused, carried and understood concepts of backcountry travel is signaling. Like what am I talking about when I even bring it up, who are we trying to signal and how are we doing it. Well like we say Survival Starts at Home with planning, training and communicating a plan.

Survival Starts at Home, Shelter; when we are talking “survival” we love to jump right into the worst case and learn the cool skills (which are important) but the true mark of a backcountry pro is not having to use those skills because of things that they can control.