Category: Skiing
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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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Tiny Adventures
First things don’t happen for me at work all that often, but in one day last week I was called a nigger and filled out a police report. First things don’t happen too often, but the variations on the unexpected never end. Seven year olds are rarely able to articulate the despair and injustice which…
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Nordic backcountry
When we moved to Montana a decade ago I knew a bit about groomed nordic skiing, and very little about in-area downhill skiing, and almost nothing about anything else. It’s been quite the learning curve since, with the predominant question being not so much what gear and skills I need, but why there is so…
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Winter trip planning case study
In Montana, when planning a trip during the lighter 7 months of the year I almost always do what I can to assess and predict conditions of the my chosen route, and adapt my gear and schedule to the anticipated. Rivers too high or low for good floating, and very steep snow and ice, are…
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Premium baselayers: what you get
For the last three years my one-sized solution to any temps above really cold has been the original version of the Sitka LW Core hoody. With ~100 grams/meter 100% poly bicomponent (grid inner) and a trim, simple fit it is the shirt I spent close to decade waiting for. A decade ago baselayer fabric wasn’t…
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Bob Open survey update
The initial 6 days of responses display a clear trend. With the mean response to question 3 being well below 1, and the slim majority of responses to question 2 amounting to “thought about doing it but don’t have the skills/experience”, it seems clear that there are lots of folks, both past starters/finishers and aspirants,…
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Planning the 2019 Bob Open
It’s time to start planning the 2019 Bob Open. If you want to cut to the chase, click here to take a 1 minute survey. Until recently the process of picking a route across the Bob has been simple; I pick out a few places I haven’t been and want to go (often this had…
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Holy snow
Central-western Montana has had an extraordinary winter, which is necessarily leading to an extraordinary spring. Massive amounts of snow means massive amounts of water, and in the last month temps have yet to get too warm (which is nice, as upper 60s feels stifling at the moment), and have been punctuated with big storms which…
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My best time of year
At work we have three recesses a day. The kindergartners would not mind another, and from a no-window office my sense of the how the day evolves is generally driven by these three openings, which together add up to just short of 90 minutes. Some days I hardly make it out of my cave, and…
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Loving winter
There have been a few occasions in the past three months when I’ve been nostalgic for last winter in the desert; when snow lasting more than a day was extraordinary and aside for six weeks of wet north facing slickrock we could do wherever, whenever. Since right after Thanksgiving there hasn’t been a day when…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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