Category: Backpacking
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How the Dana Longbed Works
Amongst the few dozen folks worldwide who care about such things, the Dana Designs external frame packs are regarded as the pinnacle of the genre. I spent a couple hundred field days carrying an Arcflex, and for a number of reasons gladly passed it along a decade ago. Finding both the load carriage and feature…
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It
There is a meadow hidden below the center of the universe. Going north, towards the sawtoothed limestone knobs and canyons you might for the expanse of sky miss entirely, a burnt bog curves in unison with the river. To the eye water is held distinct from vegetation by a 10 foot band of cobbles. The…
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Ending tourism
“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience.” -David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster” If…
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Evolution of the Tamarisk: Shoulder Straps
First: what the hell is happening with those packs, maan? A lot. Unfortunately, almost none of that is helping to get you a pack faster. While the pandemic hasn’t impacted our family as directly or egregiously as it could, or still might, it has made the world more complicated. I’ve been and remain on a…
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Yaak skyline
The Yaak is a contradictory place, equal parts obscuring temperate forest and friendly eroded hills. The few spiky places in the landscape draw your eye from miles and miles away. Satellite photos reveal glacial history in series, scalloped ridges, whose pattern and line pull from afar, but on the ground, in a fire lookout, atop…
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The new rules for nature
There has been much discussion in the past few months about how the significant, perhaps even colossal, surge in those camping and going outside will in effect unite the insta-hipster trend of the past 5 years with the COVID-induced cabin fever and lack of options. Those who went camping twice last year, and wouldn’t have…
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Basal outdoor skills
A few days ago I was exploring some of the exceptional, hidden limestone cliffs we have locally, and following some mountain goat tracks up a scree slope led to option soloing up broken gullies and sticky slabs. While liebacking off crisp solution pockets and smearing floppy shoes up sharp corrugations my mind went backwards. To…
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2020 Bob Open report
Top photo by Mike Moore. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the mass start for the 2020 Open was cancelled, a decision I made not to avoid the modest social contact at the start point but rather to discourage the still inherently problematic matter of folks traveling to Montana from out of state. A still robust…
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Middle Fork Salmon debrief
After a day and a half of floating, and over 30 miles and 1500′ of vertical from our put in, Marble Creek felt comforting in it’s familiarity. We blew up and put in on a tiny side channel and were swept downstream, the thin eddies and beaver-cut willows a quick 30 feet apart. A mile…
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Shorty
For a number of years I’ve wanted a short handy shotgun like my modified Tuffy, but with more ummph. .410 is an excellent squirrel chambering, and mostly adequate for grouse and rabbit. With these larger critters range is a practical limiter, not so much outright than with respect to pattern. With a .410 20 yard…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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