Day 2: Bigly Bufous Bear, Eponymous Bear Sign. 10 miles, ERM = 13
     The Bigly Bufous Bear scat is soft, pliable and recent. Yowee. Gorgeous. Manzanita berries, and many unseen tidbits grace the fresh, almost steaming, Bear scat. Investigating farther down canyon, a Bigly Bufous Bear track appears in the wet sand. A yuge Bigly Bufous Bear. Yes, we're in eponymous Bear Sign Canyon. Excellent.
     It's a cool and natural quiet morning on the Group W Bench. The echoing sounds of the stream reverberate along the sandstone cliffs, and I think that the wind is on the way. With the arriving sun, the air warms and we're soon hiking in single layers.
     Over the David Miller bump we trek, and sharply into Bear Sign Canyon. This canyon is filled with a diverse mixture of trees, P-Pines, Arizona Cypress, Alligator Juniper, and surprisingly, Douglas Fir, due, I suppose, to it's narrow terrain and a bit more water.
     Lunch is enjoyed on a sandy bench, aside trickling water, while butterflies dodge about on the faint breeze. Gorgeous.
     Joining Dry Creek, we encounter a FS, Forest Service, trail crew, who informs us that it's not only the Dry Creek Trailhead that is closed because of crowds forming, but that the FR, Forest Road, and perhaps the whole Secret Canyon area is now closed. Well, we visited just in time, we muse. Continuing on, we complete our lollipop loop and retrace our track over Brinns Mesa and home, extolling the virtues of Antisocial Social Distancing in the Redrock-Secret Canyon Wilderness.

Photos from Day 2, Secret Canyon, 4-2020

Click thumbnail to see full size image

sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-1 flower w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-2 big wall w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-3 Manzanita w.jpg
sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-4 butte w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-5 moon w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-6 Giant Manzanita w.jpg
sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-7 Paintbrush w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-8 Bigly scat w.jpg	sedona-secret-4-2020-day2-9 Bigly track w.jpg

     *ERM: Energy Required Miles, are there data to support this mileage adjustment?
     Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education and Leadership
     Petzoldt first proposed his theory in his 1976 book ?Teton Trails? to help backpackers plan trips and calculate their energy needs on mountain trails. ?Petzoldt defined one energy mile as the energy required to walk one mile on the flat. He recommended adding two energy miles for every 1,000 feet of elevation gain, so a person hiking one mile and 1,000 feet upward would use the equivalent of three energy miles,? Phipps said.
     Petzoldt?s energy mile theory was just a reflection of the mountaineer?s ?gut feeling,? Phipps said. The theory had never been tested in a laboratory before the study began in WCU?s Exercise Physiology Laboratory in the spring of 2010, Phipps said.
     To determine the validity of the theory, the study measured the energy cost and perceived exertion for walking on flat ground, with and without a 44.5-pound backpack, and up an elevation gain of 1,000 feet, with and without the backpack, through the collection of metabolic data, Phipps said.
     Twenty-four student, faculty and staff volunteers, including 12 males and 12 females, went through four testing sessions as the research continued into fall semester of 2010. The study results showed that the additional energy cost for ascending 1,000 feet ranged from 1.34 to 2.02 energy mile equivalents, for an average of about 1.6 miles, compared to Petzoldt?s use of two energy miles for each 1,000 feet. The range revealed by the study was due to the ?hikers? personal weight differences, Phipps said. ?It is remarkable that Petzoldt?s energy mile theory is so close to the actual energy cost measured during our study,? Phipps said. ?In the field of outdoor education, it?s important for leaders to include an estimation of energy requirements during the planning of hiking trips.?
     Phipps said the energy required for hiking up steep mountain trails would vary for individuals and groups, and the variables of the trail would also factor in, but he recommends that backpackers stick with Petzoldt?s idea of adding two energy miles for every 1,000 feet of elevation gain when planning trips.
     The Validity of Petzoldt's Energy Mile Theory, 2010
Authors: Maridy McNeff Troy, Maurice L. Phipps
Publication: Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership

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     trump is responsible for the nearly nonexistent and deadly late response to COVID-19.

     trump has blood on his hands. Lots of it. If you doubt the veracity of this statement, look at the progress of the US vs. South Korea (which acted with strong federal government action when the WHO (World Health Organization) issued their warnings - the same warning trump ignored and tried to suppress, now blaming those who brought the news).

     I thought I would post a little history lesson for everyone who has forgotten or never paid attention to the value of people-centered government (rather than the me, Me, ME! of trumpism). I think it’s important that we understand the truth, especially come November when it’s time to vote. Forgive the length, but hey, we all have time on our hands to read, correct?

     President Obama and Ebola. Altogether, the CDC, under President Obama, trained 24,655 medical workers in West Africa, educating them on how to prevent and control the disease before a single case left Africa or reached the U.S.

     Working with the U.N. and the World Health Organization President Obama ordered the re-routing of travelers heading to the U.S. through certain specific airports equipped to handle mass testing.
     Back home in America, more than 6,500 people were trained through mock outbreaks and practice scenarios. That was done before a single case hit America.
     Three months after President Obama activated this unprecedented response, on September 30, 2014, we detected our first case in the U.S.A. A man had traveled from West Africa to Dallas and somehow slipped through the testing protocol. He was immediately detected and isolated. He died a week later. Two nurses who tended to him contracted Ebola but later recovered. All the protocols had worked. It was contained.
     The Ebola epidemic could have easily become a pandemic, but thanks to the actions of our government under President Obama, it never did. Those THREE EBOLA CONFIRMED CASES were the ONLY cases of Ebola in the U.S.A. because Obama did what needed to be done THREE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE FIRST CASE.
     Ebola is even more contagious than COVID-19. Had Obama not acted swiftly, millions of Americans would have died horrible, painful, deaths like something out of a horror movie (if you’ve never seen how Ebola kills, it’s horrific).

     It's ironic because since President Obama acted decisively we forget about his actions since the disease never reached our shores in the waves that COVID-19 has.

     Now the story of COVID-19 and Trump’s response that we know about so far:

     Before anyone even knew about the disease (even in China) Trump disbanded the pandemic response team that Obama had put in place. He cut funding to the CDC, and he cut our contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO).
     Trump fired Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, the person on the National Security Council in charge of stopping the spread of infectious diseases before they reach our country - a position created by the Obama administration.
     When the outbreak started in China, Trump assumed it was China’s problem and sent no research, supplies or help of any kind. We were in a trade war, why should he help them?
     In January he received a briefing from our intelligence organizations that the outbreak was much worse than China was admitting and that it would definitely hit our country if something wasn’t done to prevent it. He ignored the report, not trusting our own intelligence.
     When the disease spread to Europe, the World Health Organization offered a plethora of tests to the United States. Trump turned them down, saying private companies here would make the tests “better” if we needed them. However, he never ordered U.S. companies to make tests and they had no profit motive to do so on their own.
     According to scientists at Yale and several public university medical schools, when they asked for permission to start working on our own testing protocol and potential treatments or vaccines, they were denied by Trump’s FDA.
     When Trump knew about the first case in the United States he did nothing. It was just one case and the patient was isolated. When doctors and scientists started screaming in the media that this was a mistake, Trump claimed it was a “liberal hoax” conjured up to try to make him “look bad after impeachment failed.”
     The next time Trump spoke of COVID-19, we had SIXTY-FOUR CONFIRMED CASES but Trump went before microphones and told the American public that we only had FIFTEEN cases “and pretty soon that number will be close to zero.” All while the disease was spreading, he took no action to get more tests.
     What Trump did was to stop flights from China from coming here. This was too late and accomplished nothing according to scientists and doctors. By then the disease was worldwide and was already spreading exponentially in the U.S. by Americans, not Chinese people as Trump would like you to believe.
     As the unknown number of cases explodes and the death count mounts (little testing, remember, we just don't know the full scope of this pandemic in the US), trump has stated "I don't take responsibility, none at all." He passes responsibility to the states so that he has none, although he preens each day during his rallies disguised as "press conferences." He is not going to help, but wants to take credit for anything that might go well. By the time you read this, many more horrible things will have happened, many preventable if we had a government for the people rather than for trump and the corporations. If you're (rightly) upset about the continuing restrictions and want the "economy" to open soon, blame trump, he's the one responsible for the lack of response, the late response (months of wasted time), the refusal to help with materials and testing, the lack of responsible behavior. Either trump should not be president because he refuses to help the people, or he should not be president because he's incompetent; or both. He's only there because the Senate republicans refuse to do the right thing and remove trump from office. Remember, come November.

     Elections have consequences. In the case of the GOP science-deniers and transfer of wealth to the rich and corporate welfare artists in the trump administration, life and death consequences. It didn't have to be this way. Policy centered around glorifying trump, no interest in governing or protecting the people from corporations, from pandemics is what trump has wrought on us. Now trump is pushing false equivalencies of economy over life and magical thinking about how the economy will quickly recover if those (people-centered governors) obstructionists will just do the right thing (wherever trump's whim of the day leads his gut). Forget science, trump is god.

     Flush the turds on November 3rd.