Category: Backpacking
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Unlimited
Montana has a number of unlimited bighorn sheep hunting districts. Located north of Yellowstone, they only require a tag purchased in the spring of that year, unlike every other district in the state, which require entry into a lottery. Sheep hunting being as popular as it is, success in these lotteries usually takes a decade…
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Circles
I started my outdoor life hiking, and to hiking I will always return. It has been as constant as just about anything else in my life. Glacier is an important place in my life. Decades ago during that first visit we did what most people do; hike the highline, play on the pebble beach at…
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The Glacier Divide route: a sketch
A trend has emerged lately, to construct a high route through a given range, the idea being to create a rugged backpacking path which is non or minimally technical, and maximizes scenic value. No route will ever be definitive, but a high route should be as close to a one-stop-shop for an experienced visiting hiker…
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One of those places
If you get out and about and live in the American west for long enough, odds are you’ve collected a few categories of favorite places. There are the most spectacular and most memorable places, and the places worth an annual visit because they make such pleasing routes. There can be remarkably little overlap between these…
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The 10 best packraft runs in Bob Marshall country
What a summer of packrafting it has been. Above all else, exceptional floats of all varieties have been the theme. Normally I don’t go in for lists; subjectivity makes them an absurd exercise and I intentionally do not indulge in traffic-driving techniques or cater to folks poor attention spans. The following is an amusing and…
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The Spirit of Backpacking
Where is the spirit of backpacking? Out there, of course. It’s in the soft guys in boonie hats, sitting and sweating in the middle of that steep pitch up to Ptarmigan Lake, a third of the way to their camp, on the first night of their trip. It’s the three guys with Walmart packs, and…
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Hiking with ghosts
Rob Kehrer is dead. Based on reports I assume he and the other founding member of Team Heavy, Greg Mills, hiked around the Tana River canyon and put back in on the river, where Rob was quickly flipped by a boil or whirlpool, became separated from his packraft, and drowned and/or succumbed to hypothermia before he…
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Three cuts traverse
Or; just another dayhike in Glacier. Details not made explicit to protect others future fun. The off-trail part starts by traversing a bench. A vestigal terminal moraine collects snowmelt and directs it under the talus and dirt. It re-emerges as a series of springs 200 meters downhill. Following sheep trails, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, is…
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The farewell tour
Going through the lower reaches of the South Fork, down to and past Spotted Bear, I saw no one for hours. A civilized stretch of river relative to the past days, but still two hours of dirt road from anything. A raft came into view, a guy with a big hat at the hours, and…
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The long summer hike
It’s a good problem to have, but summer around here is getting long in the tooth. 6 weeks of good weather and 16+ hours of daylight each day must be filled, and inevitably energy runs low before either days or possibilities, no matter how insistent the looming winter is that all useable moments must be…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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