Author: DaveC
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A perfect hunting story
This is a perfect hunting story because it ends with a dead bull elk, the apotheosis of my five year quest to hunt an elk in the Bob Marshall and get it out all on my own. It is also a perfect hunting story because the actual practice of hunting occupies but little time within…
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Shit that works week; again
We’re back! In the season of flash sales and emails, where impulse purchases push companies into the black and fill our closets with things that aren’t strictly necessary, it behooves us to step back and take a break. As I wrote three years ago: “A lot of gear upgrading is malarkey, born of boredom or…
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Our Kuiu problem
[Greetings to the small flood of new readers brought here by internet searches concerning the fate of Jason Hairston. As of 2100 MDT on September 5 we know that Mr. Hairston died recently. Internet rumors strongly suggest, but do not confirm, suicide. After you’ve satisfied your curiosity on that front and mourned the loss of…
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Mounting problems
My first rule of skiing is that my gear has to do a lot of things, in the backcountry. I don’t go outside to be around people, and recent events have confirmed that for me serious ski mountaineering is simply too dangerous. Therefore I’ll inevitably be drawn to longer, moderate, backpacking-type routes that feature plenty…
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Getting what you paid
This is how an obsession starts, refinement of a tool whose elegance is only matched by its ubiquity, and the unessentialness of special details. The appeal of knives is easy to grasp, and so too is the dizzying extent to which in the internet age they’ve been fetishized into almost nonexistence. Nothing speaks to the…
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Two deer, one day, one river
Stephen Ambrose is full of crap. Or, if he indeed thinks of the Missouri River from Coal Banks to Judith Landing that “Of all the historic and/or scenic sights we have visited in the world, this is number one” he just simply didn’t get out much. Ambrose is the most prominent of the many…
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Little Bear and Papa Bear have an adventure
Wherein adventure means that things did not go as intended. Until this past weekend LB had gone his entire life without spending a night apart from his mama. The fervent complication that is making sure an infant takes care of itself took me enough by surprise that all sorts of ambitions came and went while…
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4 days with slime
I don’t expect anyone to believe me. The butte spilled at a right angle, diving from flatness into finger ridges then flowing into mud that twisted leisurely out to the lake, several miles away. Careful belly crawling that put half my face over the edge told me that the sheep had in fact bedded, and…
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DIY spraydeck and the perfect backcountry packraft
I’ve written a lot, indeed too much, about the ideal backcountry packraft, and the extent to which the market has continued to drift further towards putting backcountry and sidecountry whitewater front and center. The new boats are amazing, and will in the next five years help reinvent remote whitewater paddling. But that isn’t my primary…
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Patagonia Nano Air Light Hoody: the fleece killer
Back when I reviewed outdoor gear professionally, which is to say I regularly got stuff for free and was paid for writing about it, and is not to say that ever amounted to a sustainable living, trips like this were as rare as they were lusted after. Outings where conditions were so bad, so consistently…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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