Most importantly, starting tomorrow morning I’ll be taking three days to hike and float from Lodgepole Creek (Youngs Pass TH) to the Spotted Bear Ranger station, down Youngs Creek and then the South Fork of the Flathead.  Should be pretty bitchin.  The weather forecast is really good (projects no t-storms, ha), and there appears to be a second-round mayfly hatch going on in Western MT right now, confirming that this is indeed the summer of weird weather, and promising some good fishing.  I stocked up on Parachute Adams yesterday.  The spot tracker is here.

I also stocked up on food for the trip yesterday, something I have a pretty good system for now.  Dry and bagged weight for breakfasts (granola, oats, grape nuts, full-fat powdered goat milk, walnuts) and dinners (various mixtures, on this trip one is pesto ramen and the other potatoes/refried beans/taco and veggie flavor) should be between 7 and 8 oz.  For lunch/snacks I need 7-8 bar-food-equivalents, each of which should be around 2 oz and 200-250 calories.  This has proven to be a pretty reliable guide.  The types of food and carbs to fat ratio changes, with colder weather favorites like Snickers and salami having more fat than hot weather choices such as dried mango, twizzlers, and chips.

One thing that’s worth noting is that bringing complex-carb rich snacks that hold up to packing and are something I want to eat is difficult.  The best way is to use energy bars, but aside from Larabars energy bars seem to always be the only thing left uneaten after a trip.  On the other hand, dinners and especially breakfasts and very complex carb heavy, which is easy to logistically and what I seem to crave anyway.  Given how persistant and functional this pattern of morning/evening complex carbs and fat and sugar during the day is, I must presume that some nutritional logic underlies it.

The other thing worth noting is that, with the exception of Larabars, dried fruit, and nuts, all of my snacks end up being junk food.  Candy, chips, candy, and more chips.  And maybe some corn nuts, too.  Doesn’t seem healthy, but if Roman can do 600 miles across the arctic on 5 lbs of chips and 45 chocolate bars, and Mike’s 2000 gastric abomination, I am by no means an outlier.  (The remakable thing comparing the two aforementioned cases is the huge caloric difference, and that Roman claims to’ve not been famished for weeks after.  The Roman wasn’t inexorably starving after such an effort is almost as remarkable as Mike being able to eat that at all.  Cold weather plus the extra metabolic damage a bike allows one to inflict are a potent combination, it would seem.)  In any case, my parents did a great job of raising me to have good eating habits, role modeling it well without being dogmatic.  But between the endurance habit of the last 5 years and being married to a queen of carbs have made the last four years the highpoint of my processed sugar comsumption.  Not necessarily problematic, and I eat quite well during “normal” life, but an interesting process to retroactively observe.

The transition from junk food to beer is perhaps a logical one, so it might then be no great cooincidence that Beer Advocate’s list of the 100 Greatest Beers on Planet Earth came to my attention this morning.  I was gratified to see that the first beer in their hierarchy that I’ve actually drank is also my favorite of all time, Unibroue’s La Fin du Monde.  Additionally, what I decided last month was the best IPA I’ve yet tasted is also the first non-Imperial IPA on their list, Bell’s Brewing Two Hearted Ale (both of these have some of the best beer names to boot).  The list certainly seems Imperial Stout-centric, a type of beer that’s never been my favorite.  Nonethless, Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout has never struck me as exceptional, and I can’t help but think that many beers were overlooked when the list was made.  Fatty Boombalatty (one of the worst beer names, but onamontapoetic nonetheless) not on the list but Sierra Nevada Pale Ale making it (ick, such a boring beer!) seems absurd, and no Montana brews made the list.  Most MT offering are not yet mature enough to do so (Kettlehouse brews are still crud and unbalanced, Big Sky can’t seem to make up their minds and let beers like Slow Elk Stout be the unique beers they want to be), but I think that the best overall Montana brewery, Bayern, was overlooked.  Their Oktoberfest would toe the line with all but the best, but being seasonal and regional likely dooms it to obscurity for now.

Anyone else thirsty?

I conclude with packrafting.  First, watch Roman’s how-to fold a boat video.  The roll in two directions last step, and the obvious-in-retrospect step of smoothing the creases as you fold, made my boat much smaller.  Second, I finally hauled my boat down to Brennan’s wave last night (the downtonw surfing spot), and got my ass handed to me.  Some kayakers did acknowledge that the holes are pretty sticky at this level, and no one manged to make it out of the wave except upsidedown, but I never manged to surf for more than a few seconds before betting tossed.  I have to decide if I care enough to actually work on that.  They were my first unplanned flips in the boat, and I was reminded of why I never learned to roll a kayak: I hate being upsidedown under water.  The waist closure on the spraydeck was getting blown open on Rattlesnake Creek, so I replaced the loop velcro with wider and stickier stuff, and made the secondary waist tab much wider.  This works well, as the waves on the North Fork last Friday showed, but it it also strong enough that my weight no longer pulls the deck open when I flip.  Not yet sure how I feel about that tradeoff.

Packrafts are funny little boats.  In canoe parlance they have fantastic primary stability, and no secondary stability whatsoever.  In practical terms, that means they’re hard to flip, but once you reach the balance point you go fast.  All part of the learning curve, and a very real demonstation of the extent to which small water is great in a packraft, and big water is tough and scary.  A run like the North Fork Blackfoot, with tons of rocks that would pin and flip a hardshell boater, are pinball fun in a packraft, whereas more powerful waves, that even a downriver canoe like the Rendezvous I used back in April, will slice through waves that in a packraft feel quite big.  Fortunately I’ve always liked small water.

I’ll be back next week, hopefully with good photos to share and stories to tell.