Author: DaveC
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Little Bear rides the wind
We still haven’t taken Little Bear backpacking, which I feel bad about. He’s proven to be a good sleeper, but still fusses and cries unpredictably and fairly often, especially during nighttime diaper changes. Frankly, I still can’t get it out of my head what a fantastic predator call his wailing is, and thus we’ve been…
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Low percentages
Sam came back over the sage at a slow run, white mustache twitching with moisture in the bright noon air. “I like to think I’m a good judge of character,” he begins, then tells me how when he walked to the other side of the pass to get service he looked up after dialing his…
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All about insulation
Insulation in outdoor clothing can be confusing. The common question is “will ___ keep me warm during ____”, which is as understandable as it is naive (and bluntly, stupid). Clothing does not make you warm, clothing keeps you warm, and neglecting metabolic training (ex: burning fats), proper fueling and hydration, and technique (ex: slow down…
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Little Bear goes to Granite Park
Some places are a big deal. Even after his best (longest) night of sleep yet, it is still really easy to stay home and avoid the dis-ease that comes with doing anything new. But that’s not very fun. What used to be a simple and rather prosaic, if exceptionally scenic, dayhike is now a somewhat…
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Planning pile: Tendoy Bighorn hunt
I’m nervous about being rusty. It’s been almost 3 months since I went backpacking, and while taken as a whole it isn’t exactly a perishable skill, the profusion of little things which come together to make a backcountry trip go smoothly make it easy to forget stuff. So I’ve got a nice pile on the…
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Clearness
As you may have heard, we had a lot of fires this summer. At first the Reynolds Creek fire in Glacier was merely a curiosity; it didn’t disturb any plans we had, and was a novel alteration in a landscape we loved. Then the big lightning storm blew in the second week of August, hundreds…
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Esee Candiru review
I hesitate to discuss knives, as they’ve become one of the major talismans of the talk-more, do-lessitude which is such a feature of outdoor culture on the internet. That is not a condemnation of individuals so much as it is a reminder, to everyone, that it is disconcertingly easy to pave the rhetorical road to…
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North Bob Marshall forest fire roundup
As most everyone knows, the mountains of the lower 48 have over the past month produced a fire season which will be discussed for decades. However outstanding, this cannot be a surprise. The mountains of Washington, Idaho, and Montana all had a fairly to egregiously mild winter, and without fail an early spring and a…
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That 78 year old bastard
The Pittman-Robertson Act turns 78 years old today, and this anniversary should have the whole non-consumptive, not hook and bullet, REI crowd a bit ashamed of themselves. 2 people and ~2000 dollars of gear in Grand Canyon National Park. Short story long, back in the days of FDR a tax on firearms and ammunition, with…
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Six weeks
Six weeks ago today Little Bear was born. A procrastinator like his mother, he was almost a full week late, which was not entirely welcome during a summer which was unrelentingly hot, in a state where almost no one (us included) has air conditioning. So it was a relief Sunday afternoon when contractions became intense…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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