Category: Backpacking
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Shit that used to work: Black Diamond Zippo
As I mentioned back in the spring, I love a good used gear sale, and most of all, love unearthing a well used, even thrashed, classic backpack. These provide both design time capsules and occasionally profound insight into how packs hold up over truly extended use. That being said, I was beyond excited to find…
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Shit that works: MSR tent stakes
Back in July I seized on a weather window and probable lack of snow and did a big alpine traverse in the Bob. Early summer in the alpine, especially in the limestone reaches of the Bob that hold water in mysterious places, generally mean bugs. So when set my camp the first night, in a…
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Shit that works: Rab Pulse hoody
The newish variations of ~100 gram/meter poly baselayers might be my most loved innovation in gear out of the last five years. As someone whose larger challenge with thermoregulation almost always has to do with managing sweat, and rather rarely with outright heat generation (or more exactly, lack of it), the way these thin fabrics…
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Shit that works: the Rocketbox
Our Yakima Rocketbox turns 20 this year. Over that time, few other items have been as consistently useful when it comes to outdoor adventure. The US is set up for cars, with the overwhelming majority of prospective destinations not lending themselves to non-private motorized transportation. If in places like Alaska the wilderness can make hard…
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Shit that works week: the return
The original series has remained amongst my most-read posts throughout the nearly five years since it was published. This is because, in the end, backcountry gear is not as complicated as we are inclined to think, and because the online world (concerning outdoor adventure and generally) has become ever more fake. Let us discuss. The…
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Isle Royale debrief
To review; what I set out to do was this. What I ended up doing was this. Camps were Birch Island, Island Mine, Malone Bay, and Daisy Farm. I knew going in that the original plan would be subject to potentially extensive change on the fly, due to how difficult the off-trail sections would end…
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Isle Royale fall planning
I’ve been wanting to do something like this for ages, and a weeks ago circumstances aligned such that I’d be close (if a 12 hour detour is close) to Isle Royale in late September, making the temptation unavoidable. Therefore, next week I’ll have 3 whole days and 2 half days, the time between when the…
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Properly hiding ones paddle
A few days ago I read Dan’s account of a trip in the Caribou Mountains of BC. Highly recommended, and guaranteed to fire the imagination. What astonishes me is that both Dan and Will completed the trip, with hours of monstrous, worst-case bushwacking, with their paddles strapped to the outsides of their packs. Dan lost…
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Seeing Rocks
Hunters are fond of saying that success correlates with time in the field, that it only takes one (more). Numerically this is true, but not all hours afield count the same. Animals use the landscape deliberately, and substituting brute math for knowledge uses cliche as fiction; that even given time and attention native logic is…
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My ultimate hunting pack
Last month a reader contacted me about a pack bag for a Seek Outside frame, mentioning these bags as inspiration. Primary use for the pack would be elk hunting in the Olympics, with capacity and simplicity as main design priorities, along with side pockets which would hold a sizeable tripod and 80mm+ objective spotting scope. …
Bedrock & Paradox 
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