Category: Cultural critique
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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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Progression in context
I’m not a big fan of the term progression as it’s most often used today; in so-called gravity or action (lets be honest and just keep the word extreme) sports to denote marginal gains in technical difficulty, consequence, or both. The term, and the human experience behind it, could mean so much given more thorough…
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The capture and flight of Joe Cosley
Joe Cosley was one of Glacier Parks original rangers. He had been a trapper in the area prior to the founding in 1910, and thus a natural choice. Cosley must have remained a rough character; while on his first trip around the park in the winter of 1913 Norton Pearl noted that Cosley’s cabin was…
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Why
Skiing would be total bullshit if it weren’t so awesome. Photo by Danni, photochop by me. I’ve said it before; winter in proper mountains is at once the root of human civilization and the ultimate instantiation of the Other. The snowbound fastness above treeline makes us fear for our lives, which is why the rare…
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With a bang
First, know that I’m alright. No injuries whatsoever. On the way to work yesterday I made my routine turns through the snowy streets, routine run through the countryside, routine paranoid lane change through the profligate stop lights and sprawl of airbag alley (the northern fringe of Kalispell), and made a left on to a small…
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The king heuristic
The conversation among the group shouldn’t be, “How much risk can we take and get away with?” It should be, “How can we be 100-percent safe and still have fun?”…People say you have to go and ski powder—that’s the sickest. But maybe that’s the hype that’s killing people. -Drew Tabke I have yet to ski…
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We need mountains
For mountains winter is the rule, and summer the exception; a dragon’s luxuriant yawn and the resultant 60-day lapse of attention. Soon enough the snow comes back and mountains are once again a place we humans, and the larger mammals with whom we most easily identify, find hostile. Those rare creatures like wolverines who thrive…
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Hill People Gear Runner’s Kit bag review
I’d love to see a historical accounting of when outdoor recreation became, in the first world, bifurcated as it is today. My research indicates that by the mid 70s the effete world of hiking/backpacking/skiing/etc was well separated (in, among other places, ads) from that of hook and bullet. Cultural distinctions between these two have only…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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