Category: Backpacking
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My favorite shoes
This fall I’ve been wearing little other than the Astral TR1 Merge, and for the sort of walking I like to do these days, they are far and away the best pair of shoes I’ve ever had. While they don’t have a tremendous number of miles on them, almost all of those miles have been…
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The Frank Open 2021
Bonanza to Fenn Ranger Station. Saturday April 24th, 0600 MDT. (?) That’s 126 straight line miles. Here’s what is in my head about this. First, that is a big route. Probably close to 200 miles on the ground. Second, that time frame has the obvious potential to be quite challenging. Third, and most important, I…
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Hiking Kant into the 21st century
Even professionals dread Kant. His style, especially in translation, is notoriously turgid, but the primary difficult with him is the same as with any writer pushing the edge of what language can do. Another way to put that would be, pushing the limits of what humans can understand about the world and themselves. Indeed, Kants…
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Good shoes
There is an emerging consensus is that 23% of the land on earth (excluding Antarctica) remains “unmodified by the direct effect of human activities.” In a similar vein, the mass of humans on earth is, currently, “an order of magnitude higher than the mass of all wild mammals combined. ” Thus it seems in retrospect…
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Too many elk
Out on the prairie the clear night sunsets linger half an hour past those in the mountains, with light still sneaking back over the curve of the earth throwing shadows longer than human comprehension. Elk and trees and I blended in, each another thing taller than the grass and hilltops, whose rolled edges were themselves…
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Waters
A bit ago we bought a canoe, having searched casually all summer, and finally found the right one. It’s a plastic Coleman, very old, and quite cheap. Cheap enough that we didn’t feel bad surfing rocks down the Lewis River this past weekend, and old enough that the sun faded tan on the surface was…
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Seek Outside Flight One trouble shooting
The Seek Outside Flight One is a ~50 liter, reasonably featured ~2.5 pound backpack designed to carry loads over 30 pounds well. Better load carriage and more coherent features than a Windrider 3400, and a burlier build than a Gossamer Gear Gorilla. In short, a modern lightweight backpack; an increasingly busy class, with the relevant…
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Astral again
Last summer I bought what ended up being one of my favorites shoes ever; the Astral Brewer. All of the limitations, and virtues, I noted in my review last summer have held true. The lack of a little extra structure in the sides of the forefoot has gotten me pinched on numerous occasions. The lack…
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FAQ: so I want to start packrafting..
Another frequent question is how to get started packrafting. Due to right time, right place a decade ago, and the guidebook, I’ve become one of the promoters of packrafting in the lower 48, which is fine. Due to the slant of content here, the inquiries I receive are essentially always from someone with a backpacking/wilderness…
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FAQ: packrafting with kids
A number of years ago I removed the Contact button from the front page here, and hid my email link in the Fine Print. This has been effective, cutting out the overwhelming majority of the knucklehead emails (“Can you plan my whole Glacier backpack for me?”) which used to be almost daily, while not impacting…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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