Just above the Bridge in the Redwall, one of the runners stopped to squat behind a bush. His partner came to a rest with me on along the metal span. “No chance he’s going to bury that, huh?” I knew the answer.

I don’t expect these guys to carry trowels. Plus, where the hell would they bury it? It’s not like coconino sandstone is real easy easy to penetrate without explosives. I also know what ultra-running does to a body. I’ve seen elite runners broken apart into stumbling, incontinent zombies. It’s all part of pushing your body to such limits.

However, these guys were in control. This was an easy training run for them. Plus, there was a pit toilet just over a mile ahead at the Supai Tunnel.

It’s very possible I witnessed an isolated incident because I didn’t see any members of the other groups acquiesce to the processes of their digestive tract in such a fashion. If so, then the guy I watched bust a deuce on the North Kaibab trail is just an inconsiderate savage and not at all representative of his fellow Grand Canyon runners. Or, it’s pretty common and others do a better job of concealing it. I don’t know.

Still, I wonder what’s worse, the occasional trail dump or the trash left behind by ignorant hikers? Maybe I should ask that question to the teams of NPS workers and volunteers I came across working on the corridor trails that weekend.

What can’t be argued is that a lot of people still don’t give a shit about maintaining our national parks. Then again, I guess some people do.

I’m not surprised at all that someone has landed a double backflip on a mountain bike. Actually, I thought it already happened. Nevertheless, it’s impressive as hell. More impressive though is Paul Basagoitia’s walking away from the couple of face-first diggers he took while trying to land his feat. Jesus they look brutal.

If you don’t check up on thesnaz.com every few days, you should start. It’s a minimalist, photo-heavy blog about all things Jackson, the Tetons and western Wyoming. So yeah, it’s about the outdoors. For the last couple of years The Snaz has been sounding the bell on whitebark pine destruction with an effort called Tree Fight. Check that out, too.

The other thing The Snaz is really good at doing is finding some seriously attractive outdoorsy chicks and putting them on the Internet doing very cool outdoorsy things. In this case, they accomplished that yet again and got me to click over to the Tree Fight site. Again. Enjoy.

There are more than enough fantastic wildlife videos out there. I could probably fill the blog with them everyday. This is one of the rare ones though, simply because it goes beyond the oft-captured “fish in talons” meme. This is clearly about the this bird, a massive and graceful Osprey. With one hell of an appetite.

Every surfer in the world is going to lose a couple of minutes of sleep tonight. 

I was poking around the Internets the other day for some tips and general research on backpacking and the like. It’s a good way to uncover a useful packing strategy or two and uncover unique gear. There are a lot of innovative backpackers out there, especially in the light and fast crowd. Plus, in the same way most of us form political perspectives, it’s good to have what you espouse justified by complete strangers on the web.

Once on YouTube, I click across the video you can see here, posted by YokoWenis. (Embedding was not enabled, so you’ll need to head over there.)

Everything seems normal in the first few minutes as he displays and explains his gear choices. He’s clearly an experienced backpacker, buys everything Backpacker tells him to and seems to be someone with who you could talk trail. (Although I’m no fan of Mountain House meals, pocket showers or pack covers.) And then, at the 5:20 mark, the record scratches. His next piece of gear, which he calls “the fun stuff,” is a semi-automatic handgun. With two magazines.

The video description suggests this specific packing breakdown is for a trip to the Tetons, an area popular with brown and black bears. Although, the big ones are much more prevalent in the national park entity directly to the north of the videographer’s destination mountain range. Nevertheless, it appears that bear protection is why he’s carrying it. In the comments section, he also mentions “weirdoes” on the trail. I couldn’t agree more on that point.

Twenty seconds later it gets even better. “Oh, I’m going with six guys and we’re all packing guns.”

That’s seven handguns. S-E-V-E-N. On one trip.

Before you go getting all NRA on me, a disclaimer: I’m not anti-gun. I was raised by a cop and my brothers hunted. We had guns in the house for most of my youth. I believe firmly that if a gun was loaded, locked in a secret room and never interacted with by a human for 20 years, two decades later that gun would not be responsible for a single death.

What I am against is seven jackasses hunting bear in the same backcountry where I spend time. No, they’re not hunting? I can’t really think of any other reason to substitute a fucking phalanx of handguns for pepper spray and common sense unless someone in the group is hoping, even a little bit, that he gets the chance to unholster his sidearm. On second thought, I’ll acquiesce. Let’s call it, “hunting light.”

You could win me over with an argument for carrying one gun, especially if you were in Alaska, where man’s position on the food chain is somewhere between seal meat and dumpster pizza. I would have even less of a reason to ridicule if you were hiking alone in very remote areas of bear-heavy regions. What I will not do for a second is even attempt to comprehend reasoning for seven pistols in a single group of backpackers. Hey, Marshall Givens, you know the bears are un-armed, right?

Other than those pesky arguments for personal safety (you can’t tell me that a group carrying seven guns is not going to spend a significant amount of time discussing the merits of each, which will no doubt lead to a number of impromptu show-and-tell sessions), guns in bear country tend to coincide with a lack of concern for bear camping etiquette. On this I realize I may be wrong, perhaps these guys are master bear tacticians. Or, maybe they know shit about camping in bear country so they carry handguns. It could be that.

Lastly, handguns do little to protect you against charging bears. I know this because I read. Oh, and the Mormons did a little study on it.

Again, one gun is reasonable if you’re alone. I maintain it should remain a last resort though, as in, not until things reach threat-level Timothy Treadwell.

There is not one sound argument—not one—for every member of a seven-team backpacking excursion to have a gun. I get it though, it’s your right. Ultimately, that wins the argument every time. But get a grip fellas.

And lastly, the guns in national parks law can’t get over-turned fast enough. Have you seen some of the idiots who visit our national parks?

Devil’s Hole is a hot water-filled limestone cavern in the small corner of Nevada’s section of Death Valley National Park. It’s studied for a number of reasons, perhaps the most important of which is the Devil’s Hole pupfish, an endangered species known only to reside in the pit’s warm waters.

Last month, researchers were on hand to experience, and film, an extremely rare and fascinating occurrence: an earthquake in southern Mexico creating a mini-tsunami in Devil’s Hole. Metrics have even registered ripples on Devil’s Hole’s surface shortly after earthquakes last year in Japan and China.

One can only wonder just how deep and far-reaching the labyrinth’s network stretches. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, in 1965, three divers went in to explore it and only two resurfaced. Their bodies were never found. Furthermore, it demonstrates just how physically connected our earth really is.

Random bear encounters: Reason #15 Why Texting While Walking is Hazardous.

This is just awesome. A black bear wanders into a neighborhood in La Crescenta, CA and the person filming was there to capture what happens when a person walking and texting looks up just in time to see a rather well-proportioned black bear on his sidewalk.

You can’t help but love the Aussie pitchman’s relaxed, no-nonsense delivery. He’s sure confident about his product’s “nano-silver” purification technology. I don’t know what that is, and apparently, nor do the Interwebs, as evidenced by my Google search revealing the following options:

So, your guess is as good as Google’s as to what the underlying technology is that allows us to drink the water after it’s gone through its cleansing process. Here’s the site’s explanation.

The filter looks packable enough and simple to use. I’m concerned about how to refill larger bottles, like a Nalgene. It looks like it could screw on to something like a Platypus softbottle though.

Anyway, it’s new gear, so that’s cool. Anyone use it?

click the map to find out more about your state.

The Natural Resources Defense Council put together a rather handy spreadsheet detailing which states are better prepared—if at all—for the impending water apocalypse. This isn’t just about plans to deal with temporary summer droughts. Rather, this is a list for when we reach a “Holy shit the country’s a super-heated barren sand pit, what the hell do we do now?” situation. One would think the southwestern states would be all doomsday prepper for this kind of event. Apparently, not so much.

Download the PDF map here.