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Essenshell, examined
Amber dropping a knee last weekend. I should also note that today, below 5300′ or so, was the very first breakable crust day of the year. Fairly mellow icey rain crust, which I’m happy to report the Marquettes made absolutely inconsequential. Rocker is the shit. My quest for the best shell for ______ continues. Early…
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Slacklining
As this video from Cedar Wright shows (he’s more than dabbled in highlining!), slacklining is a great form of physical and mental training. For any form of outdoor adventure. I taught myself to slackline when I moved back to Iowa to finish undergrad: I spent the better part of a very snowy February and…
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Future plans
Bill Hatcher photo; the legendary Dial-Tobin-Adkins Alaska Range bike traverse. Look at that tiny pack! The past weekend of fun and the extensive germ exposure of my job caught up to me, and I’ve spent the past two days feeling achey and sluggish, trying to not get any more ill. Hopefully it works. Life up…
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Wahoo!
Wahoo Creek, that is. It’s a good place to ski. I’m spilling the beans because I found out about it the old fashioned way: looking at a map and then going to investigate. Going up. Wahoo faces north. It traps snow, has plenty of shaded aspects, and the lower reaches seem to strongly resist being…
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The new Egyptian revolution
Sunset over Cairo, from the Citadel, looking towards downtown Cairo may well be the greatest city in the world. The combination of deep history and thronging, chaotic modernity is special, perhaps unmatched. Of course, I’m not enough of a traveler or a historian to really say such things, but with the events of the past…
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Marquette Backcountry ski review
Are the Marquette’s real skis? In many ways this is the central question, because the answer dictates the criteria against which they are judged. If we take them at the face value of the marketing schtick (70% ski, 30% snowshoe, 100% fun) success only calls for an idiosyncratic and fun tool for bushwhacking. The performance…
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Packrafting the Grand Canyon
Super stylish route (with a massive shuttle) by the east coasters. It is great news that multiple permitted packraft trips, with unconventional entry and exit points, have been completed. Hopefully it will open the door to even more, and more hopefully, to a blending of the backcountry and river permitting process that would be less…
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Cki Team weekend roundup (Whitefish Whiteout race report)
Sunset over Lake McDonald and the Apgar Range, today. Rando racing (skimo) is hard. Best analogy I can make is doing an XC mountain bike race with no flat and very technical descents on a rigid singlespeed. Analogy only as I’ve never done an XC-length bike race. And in all fairness, the skiing might be…
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(re)Defining Lightweight Backpacking
The difference between lightweight backpacking and ‘normal’ backpacking is obviously the gear. Winter has reached that point where we talk about summer. After a long weekend of rain, a bunch of us found ourselves in the Northern in Whitefish after an avy meeting last night, discussing not skiing and snow, but sunshine and fly fishing…
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Mounting tricks
As has been explored previously here, my tastes in ski gear (well, most gear, actually) is rather idiosyncratic. Driven by an overvaluation of simplicity and aesthetics, and at the moment, a strong need for affordability. I say all this as a sort of disclaimer: take my advice, and you may consider yourself misled down the…
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Bedrock & Paradox 
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