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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Deep
3 years ago at the packraft roundup Kevin Colburn blew my mind. We had been emailing for years, about creeks and water levels, without having ever met and thus eagerly sat down to chat about packrafting. He showed me a gorgeous photo guide to creeks in western Montana he had put together for friends, and…
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Basal outdoor skills
A few days ago I was exploring some of the exceptional, hidden limestone cliffs we have locally, and following some mountain goat tracks up a scree slope led to option soloing up broken gullies and sticky slabs. While liebacking off crisp solution pockets and smearing floppy shoes up sharp corrugations my mind went backwards. To…
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2020 Bob Open report
Top photo by Mike Moore. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the mass start for the 2020 Open was cancelled, a decision I made not to avoid the modest social contact at the start point but rather to discourage the still inherently problematic matter of folks traveling to Montana from out of state. A still robust…
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Middle Fork Salmon debrief
After a day and a half of floating, and over 30 miles and 1500′ of vertical from our put in, Marble Creek felt comforting in it’s familiarity. We blew up and put in on a tiny side channel and were swept downstream, the thin eddies and beaver-cut willows a quick 30 feet apart. A mile…
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Bedrock & Paradox 
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