Latest from Backcountry Nomad

Traveling in Colombia: Medellín, Minca, Salento

Excited to get back to South America and traveling instead of just vacation, Sadie and I took off to Colombia for three weeks. We spent about a week in Medellín, Minca (North Coast) and Salento (Central Coffee Region) respectively. The big thing to know is that Colombia is pretty safe now (aside from a couple specific regions) with a very active tourist industry that seems likely to keep it that way. If you follow basic traveler safety tips for any foreigner who is rich by local standards, you’ll have a fine time.

  • Highlights: Colombian and vegetarian food, coffee farm tours, canyoneering, volcano trek, bright colors, huge dog culture, salsa lessons, Medellín cable cars, good street art, explosive Tejo
  • Lowlights: Built for instagram/tourism experiences, nature entrance fees, sex tourism nightlife vibe
  • Intentionally Skipped: Cartagena, Cali, Bogota, The Lost City
  • Not Enough/The Right Time: Amazon, Caño Cristales River, El Cocuy Andes, more time in small towns like San Carlos
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Learning to Like Coffee: Coffee Cupping (Tasting) in Colombia

While there are over a dozen coffee tours in Salento (and dozens more elsewhere in the county) to choose from that give you the general information on how coffee is grown, harvested and produced… I wanted to specifically try “Coffee Cupping” (i.e. coffee tasting) because I’ve never liked the taste of coffee but wanted to see what ‘good coffee’ tasted like and how it varied. For this reason (and because Ocaso was close to where we were staying) we chose the “Premium Coffee Tour” from Ocaso. This was 100.000 COP ($29) per person in Jan-2024. 

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Burning Man 2023: Animalia

It’s drugs, sex and EDM. It’s the world’s biggest inside joke. It’s a playground for rich techies. It’s a place where if you think you can be absurd you have to prove it. It’s extreme camping. It’s a place of radical acceptance, creativity and self expression. It’s the easiest festival to get busted for drugs. It’s transformational. It’s Burning Man.

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Mining in Montana: Sluicing for Sapphires

The Berkeley Pit (by James St. John)

Montana has a rich history of resource extraction. The hill in Butte, MT was originally one of the most prosperous sources of copper as the electrification of the US started and WWII demanded this new technology. In 1920, this town (which in 2023 had about 40,000 people) held up to 100,000 people all working around the resource extraction biz until things became harder and harder to extract. Soon, “The Richest Hill” turned into an open pit mine, then a superfund site which kills any bird that lands in the pit’s heavy metal water and now a tourist attraction.

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Adventure Marriage in Moab

Photo by Desert Paintbrush

I recently was married to my life partner Sadie Skiles in adventure-style with a few close friends at an Elopement in Moab / Canyonlands. I normally don’t write about such things but I thought it might be useful to others looking for an active-elopement ideas and a great way to share some stunning photos.

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Adjusting to Climbing in the Eastern Sierra

A peak-baggers ascent attempt of Blacksmith Mountain

I’ve spent almost three years out here in the Eastern Sierra and its been a big climbing adjustment. Before, from the San Francisco Bay Area, the process was frequent, hard gym climbing, one season of the pure crack style in Yosemite followed by the foothills season of mostly crack practice. However, out in the Eastern Sierra I’ve found much more of a face-crack style of routes that has had me evaluate my generally weak face-climbing skills. Also, adjusting to a different seasonality of climbing that doesn’t involve Yosemite Valley (which is inaccessible for the best seasons from the Eastside).

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