Author: DaveC
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The 2014 Bob Marshall Wilderness Open: It will never be the same
Sometimes you get a bad feeling, and it needs to be obeyed. Walking along the upper North Fork of the Sun River Sunday afternoon, my feet were swollen and tired. The river, quite small above Lick Creek, was not small that day. It was dark, swollen up into the willows, and churning with a swift…
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March of 2003
Forrest recently posted photos and video from a trip in the Escalante which made one of my favorite memories even more vivid. Spring of 2003 was my last semester of undergrad. In spite of taking three seminars/thesis-level classes in three different departments, I really had my shit together. Grinnell College had a two week spring…
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The validity of health
Sometimes it all makes sense. Sudden news this morning: Niels Albert is retiring, at the age of 28. Why would you care? Albert has been, for the past 3 or 4 years, the second best cyclocross racer on earth. Cross is rather like speed skating, in that it’s popularity (and by extension $$) in one…
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One Bear
Spring. Rain. A damn big pile of sticks. Grizz. After getting shut out of bears last month, I figured it was worth another try. I saw one bear, the big chocolate griz that left the above tracks, but nothing of black bears besides tracks. Committing to shooting a bear back in the Bob means committing…
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The Future of Yellowstone
This originally ran as an Op-Ed in the Missoulian. I see the current debate about paddling in YNP as having to do with a lot more than just boating. It’s about Yellowstone’s repeated indifference to non-traditional forms of human-powered recreation, and more broadly about the future of national parks generally. A lifetime ago Yellowstone National Park…
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Hunting for Turkeys
It’s hard to get excited about turkey hunting. They’re a non-native critter, and so far as I could tell last month, when they were gobbling like mad, spring turkeys like to hang out in peoples yards. While there were surely some turkeys hanging out in some far off meadow in the woods, I didn’t prioritize…
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Buying the rapture
Last night I finished up an article about the current state of bikepacking, which gave me cause to do a little research into the current state of mainstream mountain bikes, a subject I typically all but ignore. Naively, I had not realized that the considerable technological innovations of the last 4 years had gone along…
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The Rossi Tuffy as a real gun
Over the winter it was an easy decision to buy a gun for high country small game backpack hunting. Grouse are phenomenally tasty birds, especially the pheasant-sized Dusky or Blue Grouse. Ideal grouse habitat, especially Dusky habitat, tends to be not close to the road. My main field shotgun is light for what it is,…
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How Chris Sharma saved American Climbing
I started rock climbing in 1993. Climbing in America was different then. Commercial crash pads didn’t exist. No one sold “pre-made” quickdraws. The ATC had just come out. And in the world of pure rock climbing, Americans sucked. Not so much from being worse (read: less hard) climbers as a group than Europeans, but by…
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Paradox Unaweep by the numbers
Disclaimer: as an ambassador for Seek Outside I got this pack for free. A few months ago I was chatting with Seek Outside/Paradox Pack’s Kevin Timm about, among other things, becoming an ambassador and working with them on product development. Kevin mentioned that they were thinking about making a pack which would integrate the Paradox…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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