Category: Backpacking
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The applicability of the wilderness serape
I’ve become a convert to what I’m calling (and with all due homage to HPG) a wilderness serape. A synthetic blanket/overbag/poncho with a light, but not too light, DWR coated nylon shell. You can find the specs on the ugly one I made this past autumn here. It’s been indispensable ever since. The serape is…
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Things unseen
There are many places road should never have been built. Park Avenue and the Courthouse Towers in Arches are one. Yosemite Valley beyond El Portal/Big Oak Flat is another, as is the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Many Glacier valley would also be high on this list; digesting the view above should require that…
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The best reason to buy new gear
There are three sorts of gear purchases: banal stuff you need, fun stuff you don’t need, and fun stuff you need. I suppose there’s banal stuff you don’t need, but why would you do that to yourself. Banal stuff you need is primarily the little things which wear, or whose upgrading is unexciting but will…
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The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act
An interesting example of what I wrote about a few days ago is currently afoot here in Montana, the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act sponsored by our senior senator Max Baucus. The Front is a spectacular location, where the Bob Complex meets the prairie without mediation in a tangle of limestone reefs, broad valleys, and…
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The third way: morals in recreation
Last week Lou Dawson of Wildsnow, who like most is best when he lets himself off the leash, wrote a worthwhile piece about the future recreation and those interested in it might play in shaping how public lands are governed in the United States. It’s not useful for me to summarize the many salient points…
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La Sportiva Boulder X Mid GTX: numbers and rationale
I recently bought the first pair of non-ski or snow boots I’ve had in a decade; the Sportiva Boulder X Mids. The reason? I wanted something that would be more comfortable than trail runners with strap on crampons, and I wanted the lightest and most hikable boot which would kick steps in moderate snow. In…
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Mental mapping
Our more rugged wild landscapes tend to generate obsession. Mountains are the worst for the human collectors: all the peaks over a certain elevation, each of those peaks in every season or month, every named summit, and so forth. The Colorado Plateau is in my experience the very worst; though the absurdity of trying to…
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Rossignol BCX11: not quite enough boot
There’s not been much to love about the BCX11s since I bought them almost exactly a year ago, but there has been a fair bit to like. They’re not totally waterproof, but they’re waterproof enough. They don’t have excellent control, but with skinny XCD sticks they have enough control for survival skiing just about anywhere. …
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Spring lakes and mountains
I had hoped to make it up to both Margaret and Cerulean Lakes this winter: two big sub-alpine lakes off-trail in two different drainages in two different corners of Glacier. Fatigue and conditions meant I didn’t even try to get close to Margaret last weekend, and the too soon march of spring made the snowpack…
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The feather-hammer of civilization
A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start a dormant tree. Last fisher trip of the year; with the best last: the Belly River. In fifteen southwesterly arching miles the aspen foothills rise…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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