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…More
North Fork Falls Canyon
The lowest unroaded section of the North Fork of the Blackfoot is a proper packraft classic. You can packraft it at kayak flows (~600 cfs or more), but I much prefer the pure boulder garden aesthetics and utterly clear water of true summer levels, with 350 cfs being ideal. Casey and I got it, from…More
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…More
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…More
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…More
Jefferson Lives
No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought… And…More
Creeks of fear
Several creeks from the golden age of my explorations in Glacier and the Bob stand out for their blankness, the extent to which specifics were and remain washed out by fear. I’ve begun revisiting some of them, haphazard fun which has self-organized into a project, to delve into how far modern boats, modern rigging, improved…More
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…More
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…More
Part of the system
I’m using Andew’s post from the other week to call myself out; since returning from the Salmon to a world newly convulsed by protest and riots I have checked out and tried to go about business as usual, at least to the greatest extent possible. Normalcy has been a fleeting ideal for some time, since…More
