Author: DaveC
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Feathered Friends Vireo Nano review
Last fall I decided I needed a new “three season” (i.e. lows above 20F) sleeping bag. The synthetic quilt/bag I’d been using for the past four years was not nearly as warm as it used to be. I decided that I did not want a quilt, as I don’t value roominess or venting ability, and…
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Grand Canyon Packrafting today
Back in 2007 Roman Dial started a discussion which led to packrafting being explicitly legal in Grand Canyon National Park for the first time. He and his group, and many groups to follow, were able to do a proper packrafting trip (hiking in and out, running significant sections of river) by obtaining a conventional noncommercial…
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Be safe out there
It is not infrequently that I want to return to these days, when almost all the trails in Glacier National Park were new, and I had only the maps vaguest idea of what was around the next corner. Today, I’m running into needing two hands to count the times I’ve been over many of the…
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Vortex Solo Monocular review, and Beaver Chilindron
The Vortex Solo R/T is a solid little monocular (8×36 is the only option available). It weighs 10.4 ounces, is a little over 6 inches long, and features rubber armor and a big clip which make it easy to hold and carry. The ranging reticle features features both milliradian hashmarks and silhouettes which allow you…
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They are not yours
It’s been tough work the last 18 months, becoming a hunter, and not because the discipline itself is so multifaceted. Video by Adam Moffat. The difficulty has to do with hunters, and with hunting itself as it all too often practiced in the US. I’ve heard endless chest-thumping bravado, about “smoking” an animal and cultivating…
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A walk in late June
Snow diverted use from our original objective. While it poured for 72 hours in town last week, three feet fell in the highest reaches. The critters are in full summer feeding mode. rufukkinwidme? Plan B turned to Plan C when still more snow sent us down and around the first lake, rather than up through…
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Another weekend
First I went bear hunting, and then we went backpacking. June is when a low level of panic begins to set in. Do the math and you realize that the weekends between today and the first fall storm are few, not nearly enough for half the things on the list. But right not the streams…
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92,000 cfs
Gibson Reservoir overtopping the dam, June 1964. Photo via the USGS. Last weekend I checked the Middle Fork Flathead gauge, as I habitually do almost every morning, and noticed a big number. 92,000 cfs; the historic maximum, set in 1964. As the first week of June came to a close in 1964, unusual but not…
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Liebster’d
Courtesy of Woodtrekker. The Leibster Award has fuzzy origins, and amounts to a series of questions to answer, and a series of questions you in turn ask of the bloggers to whom you pass on the award. Amusingly, the german word has a platonic, male connotation. The answers: 1: Who are some of the people…
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Summer is sneaky
It’s summer here, which is to say the rivers have crested and are slowly on their way down, temps above 70 can be taken for granted, and snow is making a rapid retreat in even the highest places. There are a couple reasons why this transformation always seems to take me by surprise. First, the…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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