Category: Packrafting
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Patagonia STP Hoody; final thoughts
I’ve been using the Stretch Terre Planing hoody almost daily, and almost exclusively, for 18 months. It has proved to be as ideal a windshirt as I can imagine, without falling into hyperbolic hopes concerning future fabrics. As I detailed in the post last year, my windshirt quest has over the past decade consisted in […]
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2022 Bob Open un/official report
The 2022 Open started at Blackleaf Canyon on the Rocky Mountain Front, and ran either to the Rattlesnake trailhead outside Missoula, or looped back to finish at the start, with a mandatory checkpoint at the confluence of Youngs and Danaher Creeks. 9 folks took the start, with several planning for alternate routes. 2022 had started […]
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Isle Royale family loop
I’m proud of this one. Back in December when we made boat reservations and committed, I could as is usual with a big trip imagine some difficulties, not others. But those unknowns built and compounded and by the time we arrived in Copper Harbor at 11pm the night before, put the kids to bed in […]
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Things from 2021
Astute readers may have noticed that, back in mid spring, photo quality here took a turn. The previous fall my long standing iPhone 5se took a dive (literally, on main stream in Escalante) and after 4 months of tape holding chunks of the screen in, reliability mandated a new phone. I’d spent the winter putting […]
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little Big Blackfoot bikeraft loops
As opposed to the Little Blackfoot, whose headwaters are too small and brushy for good floating, the Big Blackfoot River rarely runs parallel to a road, something that makes for convenient and high quality floating. The middle section of the Big Blackfoot and its tributaries, which is to say the bit in the Helmville/Ovando valley, […]
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Accident report: near-drowning in Meadow Creek Gorge
Paddler A and B were on the fourth day of a packrafting trip on the South Fork of the Flathead at low water (a hair above 500 cfs at Twin Creeks). They passed through the intro rapid right below the normal Meadow Creek takeout and arrived at the first serious rapid 1/2 mile later around […]
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Alpacka Explorer 42 review
We spent a lot of time thinking about this one. Our need for a second large packraft, to compliment our Double Duck, was obvious. You really can’t paddle more difficult water with a kid in your lap, one previous option to getting both kids out of the front of the Duck, and we needed to […]
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National Parks; the future is still now
The national parks are crowded, or rather, they have been. The pandemic reduced and altered visitation in potentially unexpected ways which are worth pondering. Anecdotally, visitation is back close to or has exceeded the previous records, which were generally set in the latter half of the last decade. This seems to be the COVID outdoor […]
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Challenge Ultraweave abrasion testing
Advanced (read: non-nylon) woven fabrics have spent most of the past decade promising to upend standard performance to weight ratios, especially where backpacks are concerned. Standard and hybrid cuben laminates have been a disappointment in this respect, with inadequate durability and poor balance between performance and cost. The hype and rhetoric associated with hybrid cuben […]
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Summer
A month ago I knew we were in trouble. In the dead of winter I had plotted a lookout/packraft/hiking trip, hoping the agency optimism in opening slots so early in the summer would lead to cool isolation. The final road was drifted in, but the scorching days I was there sublimated those into hollow, slushy […]
Bedrock & Paradox 
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