Category: Backpacking
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Quantifying the ideal ‘mid
Pyramid shelters have become inexorably associated with modern “ultralight” backcountry travel. For me they’re a staple, one I’ve discussed extensively (most recently and completely here), that for many conditions provides a light and simple no-thought solution to whatever weather might come along. That said, I do think the utility of mids has been overstated. Their…
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La Sportiva Trango TRK review
When you go hunting, particularly hunting in the snow, you need boots. The wet feet aren’t necessarily problematic, but wet feet mean cold feet when you stop to glass. Hunting also, generally, takes you off the trail and across ridges and sidehills while carrying a heavy pack. Most people want more shoe or boot in…
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Bears Ears in crisis
Add.: Now that the alterations discussed below have become law (however, we hope, temporary) it is worth paying close attention to the reactions. Patagonia blacking out their webpage and declaring “The President Stole Your Land” is a satisfying bold statement, but companies on the REI side of the line don’t really have much to loose…
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Seek Outside Revolution review
For the two years that I’ve had it the Seek Outside Revolution frame has been absolutely indispensable. A solid, comfortable load hauling frame is very nice to have for hunting, and this fall I put it to particularly good use, but for family backpacking a true hauler has been something I cannot imagine us living…
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A perfect hunting story
This is a perfect hunting story because it ends with a dead bull elk, the apotheosis of my five year quest to hunt an elk in the Bob Marshall and get it out all on my own. It is also a perfect hunting story because the actual practice of hunting occupies but little time within…
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Shit that works week; again
We’re back! In the season of flash sales and emails, where impulse purchases push companies into the black and fill our closets with things that aren’t strictly necessary, it behooves us to step back and take a break. As I wrote three years ago: “A lot of gear upgrading is malarkey, born of boredom or…
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Mounting problems
My first rule of skiing is that my gear has to do a lot of things, in the backcountry. I don’t go outside to be around people, and recent events have confirmed that for me serious ski mountaineering is simply too dangerous. Therefore I’ll inevitably be drawn to longer, moderate, backpacking-type routes that feature plenty…
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Getting what you paid
This is how an obsession starts, refinement of a tool whose elegance is only matched by its ubiquity, and the unessentialness of special details. The appeal of knives is easy to grasp, and so too is the dizzying extent to which in the internet age they’ve been fetishized into almost nonexistence. Nothing speaks to the…
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Two deer, one day, one river
Stephen Ambrose is full of crap. Or, if he indeed thinks of the Missouri River from Coal Banks to Judith Landing that “Of all the historic and/or scenic sights we have visited in the world, this is number one” he just simply didn’t get out much. Ambrose is the most prominent of the many…
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4 days with slime
I don’t expect anyone to believe me. The butte spilled at a right angle, diving from flatness into finger ridges then flowing into mud that twisted leisurely out to the lake, several miles away. Careful belly crawling that put half my face over the edge told me that the sheep had in fact bedded, and…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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