High Sierra Topix

On web boards it does not take much effort to knock off say a half to one page trip report with a few embedded images that will be of interest to a broad audience. TR's on today's web really need images. And one ought make an effort to annotate or describe any posted images. One will often see people on web boards posting links to image posting sites where someone has dumped in a long list of pictures they captured with their digital camera including nauseating duplicates or near duplicates, poorly captured images, etc none or few of which are annotated.

The more one writes, the more difficult it is to do so in ways that maintain interest in an audience. And that takes writing skills something I hope to get into more as I near retirement. Regardless many people today on the web won't bother reading anything more than a few sentences long regardless of how well or interesting something is presented. A reflection of our culture today.

Thus anyone writing longer features is not really addressing that impatient public audience segment but rather those that that can pick up a magazine and sit there reading several pages or is used to picking up a daily newspaper and sit there for a half hour to hour reading whatever is interesting. That is the public audience I have a primary interest in and when my trips don't fit into that realm, am likely to not bother.

The two I crafted in 2012:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/Redwoods_20 ... _2012.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.davidsenesac.com/MinnowCr/minnowcr_0.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As a reminder, this section of the HST forums is "Backpacking / Hiking / Camping." You don't have to be way off trail for a report out to be interesting. Lots of us like to go camping as well and it's as important as any other aspect Sierra.

It's gonna be a long winter. Might as well start posting your reports. Don't be shy. We mostly don't bite here....

I've already posted a number of trip reports, but for convenience (or self-promotion--take your pick!) I'll post links:

Sphinx Crest loop, late July

Goat Rocks Wilderness, late August (I posted a few pics here, but this is the full report posted at Portlandhikers.net)

Joshua Tree & Mojave, early April (camping, not backpacking)

I also added some notes on the group trip to Ansel Adams Wilderness in mid-July

I have 2 trip reports that I'm waiting on. It's been a busy fall. I'll get them out sometime over the winter

Haven't gotten out all summer, so please keep those trip reports coming.

Hopefully one of these days I'll have some time to try consolidate/organize all the trip report threads of the summer into a single index that's easy and fun to browse. Until then, keep the reports coming!

What might be interesting would to make a sticky thread that listed links to TR's with a brief explanation for each link. Perhaps a sticky for the current years TR's, and another for past TR's.
Format example (bold a link):

Sphinx Crest Loop, Loop of the Sphinx Crest, late July

Name of the trip, Brief explanation of the trip.

DoyleWDonehoo wrote:What might be interesting would to make a sticky thread that listed links to TR's with a brief explanation for each link. Perhaps a sticky for the current years TR's, and another for past TR's.

That' the hope (amongst other things) - thanks for the template idea. I was waiting until the season was over to compile them all for the season so the post doesn't have to be constantly updated.

If the goal is to keep trip reports together in one place, we could have a sub-forum just for trip reports, nothing else.

tomba wrote:If the goal is to keep trip reports together in one place, we could have a sub-forum just for trip reports, nothing else.

That is a already a reason for B/H/C. Any forum will only push older TR's down off the front page, out of site, out of mind. Greg's got the right idea. Even then one would be posting in B/H/C while it was entered into a searchable listing with a set of required useful data fields.

David

It would be great to be able to search for trip report close to some area of interest. For example, close to some point on a map (coordinates).