Category: MYOG
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Shit that used to work: Black Diamond Zippo
As I mentioned back in the spring, I love a good used gear sale, and most of all, love unearthing a well used, even thrashed, classic backpack. These provide both design time capsules and occasionally profound insight into how packs hold up over truly extended use. That being said, I was beyond excited to find…
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My ultimate hunting pack
Last month a reader contacted me about a pack bag for a Seek Outside frame, mentioning these bags as inspiration. Primary use for the pack would be elk hunting in the Olympics, with capacity and simplicity as main design priorities, along with side pockets which would hold a sizeable tripod and 80mm+ objective spotting scope. …
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Introducing North Fork Packraft straps
The astute will have noticed months ago that I’m in the process of launching a pack company, North Fork. I’m pleased to report that it is going very well indeed, in spite of no overt public evidence of progress. Two years ago I sketched out a detailed idea of the two packs I wanted to…
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Rebuilding the Osprey Vertigo
Sometimes function is encapsulated in a moment. Back in the day Todd Goss had a solid gig guiding rock adventure courses for guests at the Green Valley Resort in Saint George, which in either of the few locales (Moe’s valley for convenience, the mountains to avoid the worst heat) involved some steep hiking, some easy…
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How the Imlay Kolob works
Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time. M and I lived in Moab for most of 2004, which was significantly the first spring after Mike Kelsey’s Technical Slot Canyon Guide to the Colorado Plateau was first published. Prior to this there was plenty of incomplete or tangential beta for technical slots…
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The perfect pole; revised
These poles have worked very well in the 5.5 years since I put them together. They’ve been light enough, bomber, and the ability to swap lowers and have a pole longer enough for nordic skiing (or pitching a mid with a single pole) has been very handy. Shortcomings have been two fold. While the…
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Pack materials for 2018
This post and the follow-up a year later have remained among my most popular works, and with 2018 coming into focus they are at last worth updating. Not too much has changed in the world of backpack fabrics, but time has allowed for enough clarification that a few things are worth saying again. There are…
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Concerning pack weight
There remains some confusion about how to make a backpack lightweight, and yet still functional. The simplest and best way remains to raise your own bar; get better at packing, need fewer things, need lighter things, and so forth. But this can be a hard end to maintain, as I have recently been reminded, and…
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The year I grew up
It’s an inherently vain exercise, but if I had to pick a favorite moment of 2017 it would be late on the second day of my bike/packrafting trip along the Dirty Devil River. All the boat dragging, cold, and ambiguity had worn my mind to a jagged, dull edge. I made camp near the apex…
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Quantifying the ideal ‘mid
Pyramid shelters have become inexorably associated with modern “ultralight” backcountry travel. For me they’re a staple, one I’ve discussed extensively (most recently and completely here), that for many conditions provides a light and simple no-thought solution to whatever weather might come along. That said, I do think the utility of mids has been overstated. Their…
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