Reflections on 20 Years of blogging

For those interested, here is a list of my gear that I have found works well for me. This is, of course, an affiliate link and your enjoyment of these may vary:

100 Peaks Amazon Gear List

The image at the top of this post is the first photo I took for the 100 Peaks blog in 2009. It feels so long ago.

However, I started sharing photos online around 2001. Social Media wasn’t a thing yet and I wanted a place to send my friends and family in order to see what I was up to. My wife and I had started traveling quite a bit. Her job was taking her around the world and I would sometimes be able to come along.

Over the years, I’ve made a variety of websites, such as my multimedia production company and my appraisal company, but in 2009, when Social Media emerged as a growing way to stay connected and promote one’s brand, 100 Peaks was born. Gary Vee was shouting from the rooftops about hustling on Social Media and I started 100 Peaks as a way to perhaps sell a book someday. I signed up for every new Social Media platform, nabbing the 100 Peaks name wherever I could. Most of those platforms have fallen to the wayside, but some of the mainstays are still here.

Some of my contemporaries have monetized their sites by inserting ads throughout the experience, but I never wanted to do that. My intent was to have a product to sell at a later time, but mostly I just wanted to share my experiences on the trail.

But what makes October 2023 the 20-year anniversary of me blogging?

My history of blogging

It was 2003. I had been building websites for clients and for my multimedia production company for a number of years, mostly using Macromedia Dreamweaver. I had heard of blogging, but wasn’t sure what it was. Blogger and LiveJournal had been around for a while, and Wordpress and Typepad Launched in 2003. Moveable Type was also another platform that had been around for a bit.

My website had been up since around 2001, mostly as a way to share photos with my family and friends. I had another website for my multimedia production company called Lone Orchard Productions from 2001 through 2005.

Lone Orchard Productions v.2 (contact information no longer correct)

By Jan of 2003, I had put up some of my photography, music, and creative writing. By Sept 2003, I had started writing what I called Rants. There were only two dated posts, manually arranged. I was also maintaining my company’s website, as my work was focused on usability research and technical consulting.

In October 2003, there was a link called Blog, where I posted a photo from a recent trip to Bristol, UK and chatted about wonderful food there. It was more like an instagram post than a proper blog post. Before long, there was a second post about the Cedar Fire, which caused us to cut short our first trip to Sedona.

The first time I have a link called “Blog”

Over the next few years, my posts were mostly quick soft photos from my Blackberry Pearl going about my day rather than full blog posts, again, closer to what we see on Instagram today than a proper blog post. However, from time to time, I would travel somewhere interesting and create an entire blog post about it.

I would place my most recent post on the home page, while cutting and pasting old ones to the top of my blog page. I developed a system of processing images and resizing them for dial-up. I was manually creating a long page of blog posts that would just get longer over the years. There was no real way to find old posts other than to scroll down.

I would sometimes create a navigation link to specific trips, such as my 2004 trip to Vietnam and my 2005 road trip with my dad.

In March of 2007, I then created a second ‘blog’ on my page, called Grape Adventure, where I started growing syrah grapes in my backyard with the intent to make wine.

Sometime in 2008, after manually organizing many blog posts and struggling with Moveable Type, I was able to get the hang of Wordpress and started using that to manage my content. I manually added my old posts to Wordpress, back-dating them to my original posting, and enjoying posting there for many years.

In June 2009, after some wonderful local hikes and a wonderful time attending a local boot camp called Gut Check Fitness, I turned my eyes on peaks across the county and decided to create a blog called 100 Peaks. It was inspired by the Sierra Club’s list in San Diego, but soon I would make my own version on Wordpress.

Over the next few years I would tweak the design and even collaborate with a media company that helped my design. I would blog about local outdoor happenings, but mostly share my hikes and trips related to the outdoors.

But, alas, Wordpress was hard to use, with formatting issues and plug-ins that would regularly break the site. In 2017, I made the big switch to Squarespace and retired my personal blog, rolling all of my historical content into Squarespace. It took a year to review and update all of my blog posts, making sure the photos were there and updated links. There are still some wonky links here and there, but I’ll probably find them eventually.

I haven’t looked back. Squarespace has been so easy to use.

My first SquareSpace version of 100peaks.com

Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually reads any blogs anymore, much less mine. I generally describe my blog as a diary that happens to be public. I enjoy writing and enjoy editing my photos. I sometimes go back to read the accounts of a long ago trip.

I am self-aware enough to realize this sounds very cheesy, but the best thing that came out of my blog was the friends I made along the way.

My main backpacking group ultimately came from people I met through my blog. This group has expanded to friends of friends. I also have several other hiking and backpacking friends who are readers of the blog.

I have had people email me, letting me know that I inspired them one way or another. Truly, that makes it all worth it.

The Future of the 100 Peaks Blog

I really don’t see myself stopping blogging. Like my relationship with the outdoors, I am sure the way I approach blogging or creating content will change. My motivation rises and falls with my moods and how busy I get. I have about 25 posts that I’d like to write. Some I may never get to.

I used to do more vlogs, but I’ve only done one true hiking/backpacking vlog in 10 years! That was my trip to Mildred Lake in 2021. (Vimeo Link)

But for now, I’ll keep on writing and editing photos. I’ll make the occasional video. I love comments on my posts, but it’s pretty rare these days that someone responds.

Thank you for reading. It means a lot.