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Thrice busted
It is a poorly understood aspect of Wilderness management that any commercial filming requires a permit, and that these permits are almost never granted. Therefore films like this one, and perhaps this one, however modest they may be in scope and limited in commercial ambition, are almost always illegally made. It’s a particular conflict between…
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The feds, the states, and the critters
Since before the Revolutionary War wildlife in the United States has been public property, and for almost as long the oversight of that wildlife has been the purview of the states. Just as with almost every other issue, from education to health care, the integrity and coherence of state control has become less clear as…
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Wind River high
There are several controversies which must be dispensed with before discussing a high backpacking route through the Wind River range. The first is integrity. A few years ago Alan Dixon and Don Wilson released a detailed, free, online guide to a route they hyped as “better than the Sierra High Route.” If online reports are…
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The most important backcountry skill
The above is a screen grab from the latest episode of Meat Eater. Whats significant here is not the episode itself, which is an excellent one, but what Steve Rinella is doing here. A few minutes prior he shot a large-antlered, mature mule deer, fulfilling a decades long quest with a perfectly placed 392 yard…
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The closest I’ve come
This post the other week got me thinking about the fact I’ve never called for or thought about calling for a rescue, on what occasions I’ve been closest to doing so, and what things prevented me from doing so. The following is a fairly hasty and not especially hierarchical overview of the incidences which came…
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Only the big things
Since we returned to Montana in early January, Little Bear has continued sleeping like a 6 month old should, which is to say not for especially long. M and I are bumping along just fine, but smaller things like household organization, non-essential dishes, and alpine skiing are not getting done. The big, important stuff like…
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Seek Outside Divide 4500 by the numbers
This is generation two of Seek Outside’s backpacking/all purpose pack, the Divide. Specs on this one are ~4500 cubic inches. 35 inches of unrolled height along the back panel, 32 inches of effective height (shown in first photo, below) with two rolls of the roll top. Top circumference is 40.5 inches, bottom is 36. The…
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Shills and ambassadors
Seek Outside BT2. Didn’t pay for the mid, and Seek Outside fast-tracked a prototype nest so we didn’t get munched by sandflies last winter. Such treatment is both a privilege and a burden. Getting free stuff is awesome. And not primarily because you don’t have to buy it yourself, though as someone who went down a not…
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Oversnow travel tools overview and update
This is a brief revisitation and update of an article I wrote for BackpackingLight three years ago. We’re having a proper winter here in NW Montana, and having Little Bear has significantly changed when and how we go outside, so discussing recent changes in the tools for oversnow travel seems relevant. It’s worth emphasizing that…
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Canyoneering and accidents
A few weeks ago a few folks got stuck in a relatively remote canyon in Utah. They had driven 3+ hours off the pavement, descended a technical slot canyon (which is pretty moderate, save the rap which is usually a 60 meter drop off a rock stack), and proceeded down a very pretty canyon to…
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Bedrock & Paradox 
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