Category: Backpacking
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Hunting with style
Climbing writer Doug Robinson wrote (in paraphrase) that technology forces itself upon the landscape, while technique looks for a way through. Climbing is on matters of style an illustrative pairing for hunting, especially in the 21st century, where the later is on the cusp of a new wave of popularity which will likely substantially reinvent…
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Tiny Adventures
First things don’t happen for me at work all that often, but in one day last week I was called a nigger and filled out a police report. First things don’t happen too often, but the variations on the unexpected never end. Seven year olds are rarely able to articulate the despair and injustice which…
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Nordic backcountry
When we moved to Montana a decade ago I knew a bit about groomed nordic skiing, and very little about in-area downhill skiing, and almost nothing about anything else. It’s been quite the learning curve since, with the predominant question being not so much what gear and skills I need, but why there is so…
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Winter trip planning case study
In Montana, when planning a trip during the lighter 7 months of the year I almost always do what I can to assess and predict conditions of the my chosen route, and adapt my gear and schedule to the anticipated. Rivers too high or low for good floating, and very steep snow and ice, are…
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2018 Hunting in Review
In spite of drawing a bison, which fulfilled expectations in providing what I expect to remain a top-5 lifetime hunt, I knew this year would be hard pressed to compete with last year. I’d been thinking about hunting a bison for over a decade, but of necessity hadn’t been actually trying to do it. Hunting…
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Thanks
In Montana the last day of the general/rifle deer, elk, and black bear season is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which provides many folks with a last extended weekend and psyche-up. This year I was among them, and in the early afternoon Sunday trailed confused deer tracks across an open face; burnt sticks spaced across the…
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Porcelain crash
The reason why writers fail when they attempt to evoke horror is that horror is something invented after the fact, when one is re-creating the experience over again in the memory. Horror does not manifest itself in the world of reality. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars The wind came out of the north,…
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Cold
There’s the cold of walking downstairs, barefooted into the crosswinds of baseboard heaters just turned on. A head fuzzy with sleep and the unguardedness of pajamas that has you wanting an extra sweater. There’s the creeping cold; a headwind soaking into your layers and sublimating back and down your spine. After one hour you’re chilled,…
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Intimacy of looking
A little over eight years ago I had most of a day of what remain the worst conditions through which I’ve ever traveled. The high valleys and gentle passes of the Greater Yellowstone gave me a dozen straight miles of travel above 8000 feet, which in May made for over a dozen miles on six…
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How to hunt bison in the backcountry
Photo: Mike Moore Or; how we did our recent hunt, and what I might consider doing differently next time. First, you have to get a tag. I explained the particular appeal of the Absaroka-Beartooth tag in this post, and was beyond pleased that my thesis about this hunt was borne out on the ground. We…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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