The future of ultralight backpacks is a ~45 liter bag made of materials which will last multiple years under all but the most abusive use, carry 50 pounds easily, and weigh a fair bit under 2 pounds.

The future is just about here.  I do need to bend the frame a bit to get those  shoulder straps in better contact.

This is my latest build on the Paradox frame and hipbelt. This is the standard 24″ tall frame, which I’ve cut to be 3/4″ narrower than the stock 14. The belt is the same one I’ve used for almost everything over the past 15 months. The camo fabric is X33 (simply the best all-around pack fabric available today), the black VX42, the green check 210 denier gripstop from Thruhiker.

The baffled back pocket floats, only attached via the four compression straps. The Paradox talon system has made me a full convert to this feature; as you can use it to carry everything from a wet jacket to 5 foot pieces of firewood.

The solution to properly places compression straps and side pockets which are useful is to put a slot in the pocket. Compare the two preceding photos.

The parallel 3/8″ webbing daisy chains are an obligatory feature, they make secondary lashing of just about anything under the compression pocket possible, and facilitate ideal attachment to the bow of a packraft.  The bartacks are sunk into a doubled patch of fabric inside the main bag, making for one layer of webbing and three layers of fabric, total.  The fabric will fail around the tack before the stitching will rip.

My favored way to make pack bags is to use three pieces of fabric; one for the bottom, one for the back panel (against the user), and another for the sides and front. The seam between the later two, which seems to take the most stress, is triple stitched, bartacked in the right places, then felled and stitched and tacked again. The bottom pieces is sewn on last, and seam sealed fairly heavily by hand-rubbing Aquaseal in. The side seams are sealed lightly. I’ve gone to using full 1 inch seam margins for all of this, a big part of the motivation for which is that I’m finally, after 5 years and 30+ packs, making things I know I’ll want to have around for a long time.

The frame is held in place by the bottom flap.  The flap is tiny, and more to put a layer between the webbing and the ground than anything else.  The generous travel between flap and buckle allows the bottom to be sucked down aggressively, which is key to carrying heavy, dense, smallish loads (like game meat) properly.  A single drain grommet is hidden behind the flap.

A three piece bag design like this one allows for limited options to manipulate the shape of the bag.  From a design and construction standpoint it’s easy to just make a rectangular bottom, which also has the virtue of being easy to load as well as maximizing space in the bag.  A squared-off bottom also hangs up on ledges and logs as you’re climbing around, as is high on my list of most-hated backpack features.  It should surprise no one that this list is not short.

It’s difficult to see, but the bottom of this pack is tapered both in and up.  The bottom edge in the above photo is 13″ wide, finished.  The top edge is 10″.  More hidden is the three inches of vertical rise between the same two points, which over the six inch depth of the pack at the bottom is quite a lot.  The cumulative effect can be seen in the first two photos: the pack lack hard edges in any direction.  Such a design is harder to pack well with rigid objects, but is also much less likely to get caught on stuff out there in the wild.

It seems I always come back to a drawstrong top with a single top strap (two for packs in excess of 40″ upper circumference) as the most utilitarian closure.  It’s simple and maximizes space, and allows odd things like paddle shafts and deer hooves to stick up and out as needed.

A top strap with a hook buckle is darn handy.  This one can be attached to either the loop on the bag or the loop on the pocket, without any extra buckles flapping around.

To help this one be a bit more waterproof, I slanted it a bit.  The user-side edge is 3 inches taller, and can be folded over a bit when the pack is full.  I don’t fuss about an absolutely waterproof pack, just one which keeps most precip out and gains minimal weight in the process.

The key to all of this is of course the Paradox frame.  The VX42 sleeves seen above, and the double layered (inner VX42, outer gridstop) pockets at the top are the only things added to the basic bag. Minimizing the extent and weight of frame-related elements is the key to making a truly light pack which can carry a lot of weight.

Start with the Mountain Laurel Designs Prophet, a bag similar in size and features to the one shown here and generally regarded as the pinnacle of frameless rucksacks. The Prophet is made of a lighter main material, similar shoulder straps, and with no frame whatsoever. The Prophet is claimed at 16 ounces. The next step up in the comparison are packs like the Gossamer Gear Gorilla, ULA Ohm, and HMG 2400 series. As I detailed earlier today all are around the same size, have similar features, and possess suspensions which cost a similar increase in weight over the Prophet (~14 ounces). I have reason to suspect that the 27 ounce total weight I originally quoted for the pack pictured here is inaccurate (our postal scale has finally gone round the bend), but I do know that stepping up to a comparably sized pack which matches or exceeds the load capacity requires an exponential increase in weight. To wit, the now discontinued Timberline 3 from Kifaru, which weighs 4.5 pounds.

I’ve used this pack to pack out two deer (albeit modest distances), and thus know that it takes loads a good deal above 50 pound to render the lack of load lifters a problem, given that the torso is properly sized.  That there is nothing more than a single layer of fabric between your back and the cargo demands a similar packing style to a frameless pack, you just have considerably enhanced load bearing ability and a massively supportive belt to go along with it.  I’ll probably use it for the Bob Open next year, day hunting next fall, any backpacking which doesn’t involve a massive load, and a few gear intensive daytrips.  This pack feels like the culmination of years of work, and a truly large step above that first pack back in the day.

It is, as they say, shit that works.

A lot of gear upgrading is malarkey, born of boredom or fashion or envy or lust or some other vaguely protestant shortcoming. Buying new stuff is fun, usually harmless in that postmodern capitalist headinthesand way, and sometimes even justified, but most often little substantive reward is gained. That jacket was probably not quite as warm or waterproof as the new one, but would have lasted another couple years. The old bike tires worked almost as well as the new. That old pack carried just fine if you were actually in shape.

Thankfully, there are areas where this is simply not the case, and one can invest in richly made tools and toys which both function so much better and give immense aesthetic pleasure. It is good to live in a world, suffused in money that it is, in which such things are still possible. Where buying a given item will legitimately spur you to get better at a given activity.

A Werner paddle will make you a better paddler. Even the four piece jobs, which are essential when buying an all purpose packrafting paddle, have an astonishingly imperceptible degree of flex, and transfer human power straight to the water with astonishing directness. They give you no excuses, either, both a blessing and a curse. Paddle one in hard-for-you water and you’ll realize plainly that the missed lines and blown boofs are your fault, and your fault alone. Better paddle more and get better, which will give you a great excuse to use your rad new paddle.

When I acquired my 210cm Shuna, Werner was not yet regularly making their whitewater paddles, which feature burlier blades and blade/shaft connections, in four piece models. Thanks to packrafters, they do now, but were I buying again I’d still get the lighter Shuna. The blade is very dinged up, but only cosmetically, which is impressive given the last three years of abuse. I appreciate the lighter swing and packed weight of the “touring” Shuna. If you bought your Alpacka with a bunch of extras bent on getting gnar, the similarly sized Sherpa would be a good choice.

A Werner packraft paddle is shit that works, shit that will get you worked, and shit that will get you to work harder and better.

Tonight’s entry makes the cut for a simple reason, it is the best in class. Different trekking poles are good for different things, but all of them are better with Gossamer Gear grips on top. And most of them shed significant weight in the process, as well. The geometry is ideal for a number of different grip methods, and the material is durable, not slippery when sweaty, and warm in the cold.

I’m not crazy about the Gossamer Gear poles which these grips most currently come attached to. The nonadjustable Litetrek 3s are sick light, and the new carbon used is pretty durable, but the nonadjustable-ness makes them a specialized tool. The adjuster on the Litetrek 4s drives me nuts; any grit or water, as well as temperatures below around 15 F, make them very finicky. At some point Gossamer Gear will release a flicklocked 2 or 3 section pole with heavier gauge carbon and the trekking pole market will collapse into monopoly.

Until then, adding the GGear grips to other poles in the way to go. I’ve been exceedingly pleased with the ones I made last year. A proper glue plug as mentioned in that post is crucial to long term viability. If you’re new to monkeying with gear this is a good introductory project, and will give you a pair of poles which are almost indestructible.

Light, burly, and not too expensive: that is shit that works.

Giving the gift of Aquaseal is to the regular outdoorsperson what the gift of socks or quality shaving razors is to anyone else; not exciting, but the pinnacle of practicality.  It is not possible for me to have too much Aquaseal laying around.  The uses are virtually innumerable, and too often when I want some the old tube is 1/3 full and mostly solidified.  That’s the genius of Aquaseal, it’s an air-cure urethene glue, as well as the most frequent determinant of shelf life.  So if you need a plainly unexpected gift this season, look no further.

The obvious uses of Aquaseal are as well known as they are important: seam sealing anything with a PU coating (not Sil!), adding traction stripes to the bottom of an inflatable sleeping pad (or the top), protecting stitch lines on shoes from abrasion, even gluing stuff on your packraft (though official urethene glues are more permanent), and of course patching holes in anything inflatable.  My new favorite use, told to me by the folks at Seek Outside, is to thin it with a bit of mineral spirits, put said slurry in a syringe, and inject-seal the seams on your backpack.

I’m not even going to say it again.

Black socks and black liner gloves irritate me. Yes, it’s the most universally pleasing color, important if you’re going to make only one available for a low-margin item, and yes it hides dirt. But a pair of black socks, when put into a drawer with six other pairs of black socks, are hard to differentiate, and a single black glove in the depths of a pack or stuff sack is hard to find.

Which is why I like these lightweight merino socks I bought from Patagonia last year. They’re a nice, dashing red, and the two pairs have been my most-worn socks this year. Not because they’re comfortable and durable (which they are), but because I can always find two of them before I can find two of anything else. I think they’re a little lighter than the current lightweight merino sock, which Patagonia makes in a pleasing variety of bright colors. Alas that Black Diamond did not do so with my current favorite (and out of stock because they’re awesome) light gloves, the Mont Blanc.

Good socks and good gloves are generic lack of other ideas gifts, and while they might be uninspired, they could hardly be more practical.  Socks and liner gloves are disposable items for hard users, and are as vital an appreciated day-to-day as they are unexciting to buy.  The art is getting the right ones for the right person.  I like BD gloves because the mediums fit my skinny fingers well.  I like light, breathable, quick drying socks, so I like those Patagonia socks, and hate Darn Toughs.  If you’re giving these most prosaic of gifts, best do some research first.

Not long after I started building packs from scratch I started packrafting, and realized in a hurry a truly large pack was a good idea if you prefer to not have a bunch of stuff yardsaled via straps on the outside. The result was this one. It’s funny to think back to designing and building that one, because a lot of things have stayed the same; while the pack discussed below is in many ways (chiefly having a frame) different, it’s also very much the same. My first ideas about size and features were dead on. Some things are different, such as a much more sophisticated understanding of suspension, and a wider availability of materials. In the fall of 2010 you couldn’t buy even VX21 anywhere at the retail level; Eric Parsons at Revelate (then Epic) Designs sold me five yards out of his shop. It’s been a long, enjoyable, rewarding, and in many ways circular road that took me from that pack to this one.

(This and several of the following photos by M.)

A variety of things this summer put it in my head that I’d need a bigger pack than the 3900 Unaweep. I can do a week-long, unsupported summer packrafting trip out of the Unaweep, with nothing but my PFD strapped externally, but the narrower bag does limit how easy it is to chuck in a bunch of gear. At the same time I knew I didn’t want anything much taller, due to stability and brush clearance issues.

Therefore the pack above was made with a 38 inch lower circumference, 42 inch upper circumference, and a 42 inch height, which maxes at 39 inches with the drawcord actually cinched closed. These dimensions, combined with an exhaustive compression system, allow for flexibility. If you’re bushwacking, load the pack fully and compress it down to shoulder height. If you’re on trail, let the load grow taller and suck it in. If the load is both small and heavy, as in a full disassembled deer on a day hunt, cinch in the lower straps to keep the weight up towards the shoulders.

This is the pack I used in the Grand Canyon this fall, where it was fantastic to have a lot of extra space. On the second morning it was obvious that both M and my mother were tired, so I took the majority of the group gear and food. With the Paradox frame and belt, and a new perspective on what qualifies as a heavy pack, I was able to take on all that and six liters of water and serve the best needs of the group through the long boulder hop of day two.  The muddy slides, downclimbs, and wades of that trip imparted some permanent stains to the fabric and webbing, a welcome bit of character.

This pack has most of the essential features of the smaller bag I outlined earlier this week. This larger pack came first, and the simple, seam-minimizing layout was driven by the knowledge I’d be using it to carry potentially very large and heavy loads.

Big packs get more abuse the midsized packs (because a heavy load added to a tired hiker equals less care), but less than small packs (which get used most often, and for the most abusive things). Therefore the bottom of this bag is 1000D cordura. The sides are double layered cordura over X33, while the bottom is just a single layer of cordura. A double bottom is largely unnecessary with the bottom flap, and starts adding enough layers that my machine has a hard time stitching it all. Plus over the year I’ve most consistently gotten holes in packs right above the bottom along the sides.

I’ve gone back and forth, but have decided that for big packs an internal compression strap is handy. This one attaches low on the front panel and buckles to a point right between the tops of the frame. Pulled tight it compresses and stabilizes the load, and (like the old Dana version) pulls the bag back and creates headroom. With a tall pack headroom will be a problem, unless like some companies you don’t contour the frame in above the shoulders (and then exacerbate it with a poor shoulder strap attachment point), which in my opinion is simply wrong.

For reasons mentioned earlier this week I like drawcord cinches.  When you attach the cordlock to the bag and provide a grab loop on the opposite side of the collar, this system is very fast.  I used some orange 40D sil/PU I had hanging around for the top 8 inches of the collar, to save weight, seal better, and provide a bit of safety during hunting season.

After some experimentation I arrived at two crossing top straps to cinch the top into order.  Finding a way to do this which isn’t heavy and slow (lid) and doesn’t have a ton of extra strap flying around is challenge with drawcord packs.

As can be seen in the top photo, my first draft was a Y strap, which created rabbit ears from the stiff X33 fabric.  This would not do.  But how to tame the strappage and have enough length for all possible loads?

The answer was the attach a loop of 3/8 inch webbing to each 3/4 inch top compression strap, and tune the length so that when the straps are girth hitching through the top daisy chain loop there is just enough strap to attach something to the top of a very full pack.  In any other situation, the loop is hitched lower on the daisy, resulting in less slack when the straps are cinched down.

I use the Paradox talon system with this pack, both the dual-pocketed blaze camo talon, and the slightly larger HPG Tarahumara shown here, modded to work as both a compression panel and a daypack with hide-away shoulder straps.  A just a bit narrower than the width of the front panel is crucial to directing the force of the compression in towards the back and making of the load a narrower, better carrying rectangle.  Full wrap compression straps work fine with light loads, but when really put to the test they sausage a heavy load badly, making it tight without really making it behave.

Where the full-wrap mode, with talon removed, really come into it’s own is when the pack is compressed into day mode.  As hinted at above, this isn’t really relevant for anyone who isn’t a hunter. However, I like that I can have total load control at any volume between 500 and 7000 cubic inches.

In spite of my or anyone’s obsessions on the subject, a pack is a piece of gear, whose ultimate judgement will only come in what jobs it does and how well. The main pleasure I’ve gotten out of this pack, and indeed the superlative Paradox Packs suspension in general, is how easily they’ve let me carry more than my share of the load. Ultralight packs which max a bit north of 30 pounds are fine, but upon occasion it’s nice to know that both your legs and your bag can handle, easily, a lot more.

I first met Luc Mehl way back in August of 2010, when I was living in Missoula, Luc came down to visit his brother, and thanks to the wonders of the ‘net and friends of friends we met up with Forrest McCarthy and packrafted the Selway.

I was nervous because I’d owned a packraft for all of 2.5 months at that point, but other than that it was a pretty routine excursion.  Luc, as vaguely seen in this photo was running a very overstuffed OR compression sack backpack which truly was a glorified grocery bag.  I didn’t pause to think of how, crap strapped to the outside not withstanding, it was an absurdly small bag for a packrafting trip.  When we stopped for the evening after walking all day, having found Moose Creek far too low for boating, I finally began to understand the Luc was/is not normal.

Forrest had a Golite Shangrila 3, and both Forrest and I had conventional sleeping pads and bags.  Luc had a torso sized foam mat, light puffy jacket and pants, and raingear.  He said he’d sleep by the fire, which seemed like a ridiculous choice even before it started to rain and got dark.  I did little more than shake my head, say “whatever dude” and go to bed.

Luc Mehl lecturing at The Trailhead in Missoula, MT.

It’s apparently been Luc’s m.o. for a while to assume that anything south of Alaska is, outside winter, so warm by comparison that he doesn’t need a sleeping bag.  Mid-summer in the Bob this makes sense, and Luc’s done some big hiking and packrafting traverses there before the golden age of Alpacka came upon us, the details of which are apparently so insignificant Luc can’t recall things like which rivers he actually floated.  Late summer on the Selway it got pretty cold, but Luc seemed to have slept well, and out paddled me easily the next day.  Going without a sleeping bag during the summer Classic is of course routine, though reportedly the approach worked less well in Mexico, especially sleeping at 15,000 feet.

The point is not that Luc is a masochist, which may partly be true, but that he’s managed to cultivate a particularly refined sense of what is a physical necessity insofar as his performance out in the wilderness is concerned, and what is merely for psychological support.  For most of us most of the time this isn’t a distinction we can see well, if at all, and no matter how sanguine you might be it’s likely always a factor.  But as Luc said repeatedly at his talk Wednesday night, the value of wilderness travel in demanding circumstances is that it strips away the secondary fears which are usually all that is available to look at.

The primary fears which lie at that core of your decision-making are almost always more complex and subjective than the secondary fears which are most often discussed.  Will I get lost/run out of food/be eaten by a bear/not make it through the snow? becomes with greater insight Will I get more cold/tired/stressed than I’ve been before and am confident of managing based on past precedent?  This is not to deny that objective hazards like avalanches, rapids, and cliffs don’t pose real dangers, but it is to assert that safety has relatively little to do with on-the-ground reality and almost everything to do with having the mental resources to put forth your best abilities in the moment.

This is why I bailed on the Wilderness Classic back in 2012, because I was scared enough that I knew I’d fuck up (more than I already had).  I had the skills and gear, but not the head.  Maybe I do today, but I’ll have to go back to find out.

When I arrived at Luc’s house for the 2011 Classic he was in the midst of recovering from his Denali Traverse, had just created his website, and was editing the Denali video, learning Final Cut in the process.  Buying that fat Canon DSLR was a massively influential purchase, because it made what Luc knows accessible.  The success of his films in the last three years has not been a surprise, and has been a pleasure to observe.

What Luc knows is that adventure begins and ends in the mind.  He also knows that we’re capable of drastically more adventurous things than we usually assume, even after quite a lot of time spent out there.  His example, and especially the sensitive and non-self-aggrandizing way he tells his stories, have been hugely influential for me.  It’s not going to be easy to be like Luc, but he makes it plain that with the requisite dedication and bravery you could.

I’d not seen Luc speaking with a capitol P until a few days ago, and was not surprised that he did exceedingly well.  He has fantastic photos and video, and as mentioned above a great way of telling us about them, to say nothing of a story very much worth telling.  He framed the journey of Wilderness Classics to Denali to Logan to now in terms of Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow; that an ideal wilderness trip takes a space somewhere along the line between control and flow, with occasional sojourns into arousal.  This is a moving target as skill (and one’s ability to consistently operate closer to the actual ceiling thereof) is constantly changing.  Optimizing reward on and of a trip is tied up in two parallel processes, maximizing flow by matching terrain (challenge) to skill, and best understanding as exactly as possible where your control/flow boundary lies.  Do these things and you’ll have a lot of fun, in the deeper sense.

The alternate, simultaneous function of introspection here is to better understand your flow/arousal and arousal/anxiety boundaries.  Luc touched on this, which is the issue of safety and risk assessment.  Taking for granted, as I think it’s easy and proper to do, that dying out in the woods “doing what you loved” is not desirable, balancing risk and reward becomes a major part of the conversation.  Csikszentmihalyi tells us we can’t have true satisfaction without risk, and while I think that skill is a more complex phenomenon in application than is usually admitted, that we flirt with death when we go after reward is inarguable.

Luc concluded that one answer is to ratchet back the risk-reward edge once you’ve gotten close to it.  He had an intense summer in 2012, with getting caught in an avalanche on Logan and an extraordinary performance in the Classic crammed into a six week stretch.  His trips since have been at least as visionary, his videos at least as poignant, but the level of intensity and exposure to consequence quite a bit lower.  After you’ve been out in the wilderness for long enough, and accumulated a sufficient body of experience, you’ll naturally be drawn to new terrain, and to old terrain in new seasons and conditions.  The temptation to be able to go anywhere in almost any circumstance is tempting, the possibility of an ever fully dialogue with the earth compelling, but there may be some places and some situations which are just too much.  Where and what are these?  No answer will ever be definitive.  Keep thinking, and keep watching Luc, and you’ll keep learning.

Silicone-impregnated (read: coated on both sides) nylon is one the of most significant outdoor gear innovations of the last 15 years. Previously polyurethene (PU) coated fabrics were the only game in town. PU tends to be heavier, and degrades significantly when exposed to UV light and abrasion. Floor delamination was a common cause of tent retirement, often happening when everything else was still in good shape. Silnylon has a much longer service life, is lighter, and is relatively inexpensive.

One major downside is that no one has yet invented a tape which can be used to waterproof the seams of a silnylon shelter, so you’ll have to do it yourself. The following technique is in my opinion by far the best, and as discussed has other uses beyond seam sealing.

Pictured above is everything you’ll need aside from the shelter in question: mineral spirits, clear silicone sealer, a small glass jar with a lid, and a small foam paint brush.  You must use traditional mineral spirits.  The idea here is that the spirits dissolve the silicone, it is painted into the seam in suspension, and becomes part of the shelter as the spirits evaporate.  I bought non-toxic pseudo-spirits once, and they did not dissolve the silicone.  Same story with various forms of alcohol.

The first step is to squeeze out a good dollop of silicone into the jar, then add mineral spirits  (I use a 1:5 ratio, approximately), close the lid, and shake vigorously for a few minutes until the silicone is completely dissolved.

The result should look like this, an opaque liquid which is a fair bit thicker than water, but still far from being a paste or gel.  Once this is achieved, simply paint the mixture into the seams with a foam brush.  A little goes a long way, but use a bit of pressure and back and forth to work it into the stitches and folds in the seam.

Obviously, you want to do this on the outside of the shelter.

Once you’ve gone over the seam and it’s had ~10 minutes to dry, it should look like this.  The sealer will cure to the touch in a few hours, and completely within 24.  By that time the sealing will be all but invisible.  This technique adds far less weight, and is far faster and cleaner than using the Silnet sealer sold in outdoor stores.  If your shelter came with Silnet you can thin it down using this procedure, just use a bit less mineral spirits.

Seam sealing in winter comes with a few challenges.  First, silicone cures best in warmer temperatures, so even if you have a clear day to work outside it’s best to do it indoors unless it’s quite warm.  You want dry air and temps above 60F.  Second, the fumes here are not too noxious, but it’s ideal to have a heated yet well-ventilated space like a garage or basement with a large door.  Third, you need to figure out a way to keep the seams hanging free of folds for their full length while they cure.  Setting up the shelter properly with full tension can make things easier, but is not necessary.

Lastly, this technique can be used to enhance to rebuild the waterproofing of a silnylon shelter.  The silicone coating will degrade over time, faster with heavy use, and it’s conceivable that well-traveled shelters, especially those seeing lots of the UV exposure and even more especially those made from lesser quality sil will mist under heavy, windblown precipitation.  Misting is of course a polite term for diffuse leaking, which is not desirable.  Not all silnylons are the same, and without diving into the miasma which is hydrostatic head figures, it is fair to say that some companies charge more for their product because they use better materials.  Feel the material; the waxier, thicker, more substantial coatings of good silnylon is easy to recognize.  The more crinkly the fabric, the worse it probably is in this respect.  Thankfully, if you bought a shelter with less-than-ideal materials you can easily bring it up to snuff by using the above method to make a lot of formula, and painting the whole shelter.

Have fun.

Presented in chronological order, with no gesture made towards the impossible task of assigning preference.

February; upper St. Mary River, Glacier National Park

If you’ve hiked the trail between Gunsight Lake and St. Mary Falls you’ve passed right by this little meadow, probably without noticing the clearing in which I pitched the Lil’ Bug Out on this snowy, windy ski trip.  There are big views the opposite direction thanks to the river, though I chose this spot because it gave access to water and kept me away from the abundant deadfall in the old growth spruce forest which envelops the whole valley.  I knew a big storm was brewing, but the one I got exceeded expectations, and is probably the most severe weather I’ve ever camped in.  It didn’t make for big views, but I’ve seen those before, and the sensation of hunkering down as the rain, snow and wind lashed all right was gratifying and, ultimately, cozy.  I even slept well, and the freshly felled, huge tree 150 yards down the trail the next morning convinced me that camping amongst the windbreaks is not always the smart choice.

March; Olo Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park

Brendan and I were at the end of a long and trying second day of our week long figure-eight, and to our distress did not find water in the gravel of Olo when we finally picked a route down to the floor.  We had enough to make due for the night, but I knew we’d do much better in the hard days to come if we could truly rehydrate, refuel, and relax.  I walked to the edge of the house-sized chockstone which forms the first, 100 foot freehanging rap into the initial slot and saw water, so down we went.  Brendan had done his first canyoneering rappel the day before, and this one was as intimidating as they get for the size.  Plus I got the pullcord hung up on a flake, which after much yanking thankfully pulled off, rather than requiring me to prusik the rope in the gathering darkness.  With flawlessly clear weather we ended up camped on the gravel in a 15 foot wide, 200 foot deep, polished limestone slot next to a nice pool of clear water.  The stars, the still air, and the owls who came by later all made it the best camp of a trip full of fantastic, memorable spots.  Brendan has a more descriptive shot here, of breakfast the next morning.

April; North Fork of the Sun River, Bob Marshall Wilderness

I was eager to get after an early bear hunt, too early as it turned out, as I saw no bear sign whatsoever on this muddy trip.  Too cold yet for the fresh green vegetation which forms the majority of Bob Marshall bear diets, I assume.  I did get myself a gorgeous, clear, and very windy two days watching critters in the magic meadows of the Sun, including a successful wolf hunt on elk which took place in the background of the above photo about 20 minutes after I packed up the Solomid.  Seeing that is rare enough, seeing it 10 miles from the road was a privilege indeed.

June; Stoney Indian Lake, Glacier National Park

I hiked all day, through rain and mostly over snow, to get up to the campground which sits just of the sight to the left, at the foot of the lake.  The campground was still under 5-7 feet of snow, and I was left with the task of arranging my tarp out of the driving wind on the flattest piece of snow I could find.  I slept on my deflated packraft and stuck my empty pack into one end of the tarp to keep the rain out when the wind shifted, and took a long time to fall asleep with my body heat slowly drying damp clothes.  I was greeted the next morning with warm sun, a brilliant crampon crossing of Stoney Indian Pass, and the rare sight of Stoney Indian Lake full of avalanche.

July; Danaher Creek, Bob Marshall Wilderness

Somehow between M and I the best photo we have of a truly great camp on Danaher Creek is this one, of the LBO and the stacked rocks necessary to pitch it.  After a long first day of hot hiking and fun rafting M, Luke, Spencer, and I were close to the confluence with Youngs Creek.  Ryan Jordan and Scouts had been down days earlier, and thanks to sat blogging we knew to expect a big wood portage.  We found it late, right before we lost the sun and the cold set in.  It had plenty of flat sand camping, good water, firewood, and a few fishing spots all close at hand.  When I roosted a big bull Moose out of the willows scoping the place out I knew we had good mojo, and called it a day.  I caught 4 fish with my first six casts, and we had a fantastic night roasting and eating them around the fire.  This trip, sharing a great loop in the Bob with folks mostly new to wilderness rafting, was one of my favorite trips of the year, and this camp was equal to all the good stuff which came before and after.

August; South Fork of the Flathead, Bob Marshall Wilderness

After I decided to cut my Bob traverse into just a South Fork trip, I had permission to fish all the good spots I had never stopped to fish, and camp in all the places I had always wanted to camp.  At the top of the list was this little sliver of sand between Bear Creek and Mid Creek, and I got to it just as a massive evening rainstorm moved in.  I let my fire tend to itself and retreated to my tarp, laying back and listening to rain pound down on the vegetation and water.  It relented eventually, and I was able to fry and eat my trout, sleep long and well to the music of the river, and move on the next day with one more thing checked off the list.

September; Big Horn Peak, Gallatin Mountains

It’s possible for a normal (read: not rich, and not lucky) hunter to go a lifetime without hunting sheep.  The pursuit has become fetishized, driving guiding rates to absurd levels and draw odds well below 1% just about everywhere.  Thankfully Montana still maintains a handful of districts around Yellowstone with a quota and (relatively) cheap over-the-counter tags.  Buying one was one of the better decisions I made this year.  Sheep hunting is venerated first because of it’s rarity (a vicious circle), and second because sheep tend to live in very cool country.  The huge, high volcanic mountains I hunted for those 2.5 days were quite unlike anything else I walked through in 2014.  Take my second camp as an example.  10 feet behind the Solomid is the Yellowstone Park boundary.  15 feet behind my back is a 2000 foot cliff.  The view from atop that cliff revealed mountain goats, elk, and eventually even a few sheep (ewes).  The sunrise on that utterly clear weekend was simply perfect, and the 10,000 foot meadow I camped in one of the most memorable places I’ve ever sunk a tent stake.

October; Crazy Jug Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park

I was nervous before this trip, having spent a lot of time and thought selecting a route which would give my mom a taste of true Grand Canyon backcountry without being excessively demanding.  Correctly extrapolating the abilities of others is not an easy thing to do when route planning, and I’ve missed the mark many times, but on this trip I nailed it.  The first day had been long and tough and went into darkness, but this patio had appeared by headlamp and I knew we had our ideal spot.  Running spring water, a flat surface, and clear sky, and tired folks made for lots of good sleep, and a great keystone image for a great trip.

2015 is close, so raise your beverage to all the great sites to come.

The Mountain Laurel Designs Solomid is an easy shelter to review, it’s been around a long time, but more significantly MLD’s specs and declared use are dead-on. The Solomid is a well-built, dependable shelter for the solo hiker who wants something which can be pitched very fast in a small spot, and provides excellent weatherproofing. The tradeoff is a modest amount of headroom and potentially very bad condensation.

The Solomid is available in sil or cuben. The sil version currently costs 195 bucks, and weighs a bit under a pound before seam sealing or adding guylines. It is 8.75 feet long, 3.5 feet wide, and a little over 4 feet tall when pitched to the ground. It can be pitched with one pole substantially offset, but is better with two in an inverted V. Said two pole arrangement requires two trekking or ski poles a little over 140cm long.  The footprint is a perfect rectangle, which along with the small size makes the Solomid one of the fastest and easiest-pitching shelters around.  With a little practice, zero to done in well under a minute is very realistic.

The modest size of the Solomid creates it’s major strengths and it’s major liabilities.  The biggest strength, after the easy of setup, is wind resistance.  The low, shark-fin like shape and perfectly- executed cat curves on the main seams makes the Solo slice through strong winds (from all five directions), and allows it to be very quiet while doing so.  The inverted V pole setup provides additional support along the long side panels, which is welcome for snow and an asset in wind, though the design already deals well with both.

A small shelter is a small shelter, and that has virtues and downsides.  The virtues have already been mentioned, the downsides are enhanced problems with condensation and low headroom.  Condensation is a problem in any enclosed space, and gets worse the more people are packed into a given square footage.  The reason the Solomid is particularly bad here is that other than raised the pitch a bit there’s no way to get more ventilation while still keeping rain out, and condensation is of course worst when humidity is high.  This is an inherent issue with mids, and the Solo is simply worse due to size.  The overhead clearance in the Solo is fine for a 6 footer in a 20 degree sleeping bag, but doesn’t leave much room for sag.  Add a moderate amount of snow and you run a real risk of waking up with the mid all but on your head.  MLD added an XL version this year, which is a hair longer and taller, and a fair bit wider, but I think these downsides will never be entirely separated from this design.

The other major downside of the Solomid is the cat curve along the long edges, which makes it quite impossible to truly seal them from wind against the ground.  As will be discussed below, this runs counter to the major strength of the Solomid and is thus particularly vexatious.

The obvious application for the Solomid is the solo hiker in alpine environments during the nicer 6-8 months of the year.  Space for gear is less of an issue here than during winter, and the concern for maintaining headspace when it snows less regular.  The quick pitch, small footprint, and excellent wind resistance are all major assets here.  The Solomid is less ideal when it’s darn cold, because of the side gaps, and during warmer, milder weather, due to the limited ventilation options.

After using it all year, I recently sold my Solomid.  I was quite pleased with the shelter, and valued it’s virtues, but in the end the somewhat narrow window of ideal use put me off.  My tarp always won out over the summer, and when winter begins to make an entrance I want something bigger and more easily sealed.  The Solomid would have likely still claimed a place in the quiver had it not been so bulky.  For a shelter from a ultralight specialist company the Solo is quite feature-heavy and even overbuilt.  The zipper has two snaps at mid-height, and a snap and small buckle at the bottom.  These, along with the sticky, waterproof #5 zipper are slow to use and bulky.  The top vent, which is quite large, also adds a lot of material, which quite frankly I do not think does very much at all.  The Seek Outside BT2, which could completely envelope a pitched Solomid, is only 9 ounces heavier once sealed, and takes up the same amount of space in a stuff sack.

In short, I think the Solomid is an eminently well-built and designed shelter, but not the most weight-efficient or versatile.  It certainly has a place, and with MLD making a full half-dozen rectangular mids, to say nothing of other companies, there are plenty of other choices which folks might find more suitable.

Today, it’s safe to say that there are more backpack options available for the outdoorsperson than at any other time.  Most of this is due to the ugly inevitability of population growth and the capitalist hegemony, but some of it has to do with a unique diversity of influences on pack design.  As I’ve detailed elsewhere the Jardine thesis concerning lightweight backpacking has been assimilated such that most “serious” backpackers have a hard time looking back beyond it.  Sub 2-pound packs with sub 400 denier fabrics and slim, flexible harness components are expected.  At the other end of the spectrum, human-powered backcountry hunters have spured a revolution in lighter packs which can still carry very heavy loads through rugged country.  Companies like Stone Glacier and Paradox Packs have made it definitive that there are few compelling excuses for any pack to be heavier than four pounds.

The Arc’teryx Altra 62, above at right, is over-engineered with tons of largely purposeless padding, overly complex pockets and straps, and a heavy hipbelt connection, and it is still under 5 pounds thanks to modern materials and sensibilities.

Identity marketing is all the rage, as manufacturers use it to define a niche within a fractured and diverse market.  In order to fight back against the hype it’s useful to examine the full range of backpack suspensions available, take a stab at dividing them into rough categories, and talk about why each category exists, it’s strengths and weaknesses, and the application to which each is best suited.  It’s also worth pointing out how, without fail, every boundary between suspension categories has been blurred and eroded by innovative builders.  It is a good time to be a pack geek.

Backpacks must do a simple job well in rigorous and varied environments, and it is precisely the huge number of hours we spend with packs on our backs which makes that job seem so complicated.

First, a pack must maintain vertical structure under a given load.  This is most commonly and usefully expressed as maintaining torso length.  By resisting collapse which would shorten the distance between the hipbelt and shoulder straps, a pack maintains the ability of the user to adjust weight between these two points as she sees fit.  Collapse in torso length leads to discomfort in very short order, with anything more than low single digits being unacceptable.  To make this possible the supportive components in a pack’s suspension must be sufficiently rigid, and the various connecting points within the design must have minimal ability to flex, twist, and stretch.  As will be discussed below, there are a number of popular packs whose carry capacity is not limited by their frame, but by the poor connection between the frame and the harness components.

Osprey Variants loaded with a lot of beer and packrafting gear.  These packs feature durable fabrics, a ton of features, and a suspension system which is heavier than it needs to be, and they’re still around 3.5 pounds.  If you’re not an obsessive gram-counter there are a lot of good, and cheap, options around today.

Second, a pack must enable comfortable transfer of said weight to the wearer via a hipbelt and shoulder straps.  20 years ago these were often made from thick, stiff padding encased in packcloth.  Fortunately the industry has moved towards thinner, wider, softer, more conforming harness components, as a change in mentality (and a drive to save weight) has prompted ever better foams and laminates.  This is still an area for development, if for no other reason than that it is pretty basic to make a pack which will have no torso collapse whatsoever, making the harness/user interface the sole limiting factor.  80 pound loads are a trial for a hipbelt, and ruthlessly expose any shortcomings.  As above, many packs are limited not by the integrity of their frame, but by the weight at which the hipbelt will cease to be comfortable (usually by slipping down).

There are an infinite number of minor factors which go into making a good pack, but these two are the colossi.  Without them, everything else is just pretty frosting on a shit cookie.

The MLD Exodus, photo from BPL.

There are remarkably few truly frameless packs still on the market.  I define a frameless pack as one without any provision for a frame structure whatsoever, including a sleeve for a foam pad.  The keystone frameless packs in the recent past are the Golite Breeze, Gust, and first generation Jam.  The best examples currently available are the Mountain Laurel Designs series, Burn through Ark, and the ULA CDT.  The CDT has elastic pad holders, which keep the included foam pad in place, but unlike the packs discussed below this system doesn’t add much of anything to the quality of the load carry.  Frameless packs are of course the lightest, simplest option, and when packed well with a modestly light backpacking load can carry very well up towards 30 pounds, but necessitate careful packing and suffer from a lack of versatility.  With no integral padding or bulky stuff to provide structure a frameless pack isn’t going to carry too well with a wad of cams on board or skis strapped on.  They’ll remain a niche item and continue to be marginalized as the systems discuss below continue to get lighter.

This pack, which I discussed here, is built to accept a folded 3/8″ foam pad in an internal, velcro-d sleeve.  Not the lightest arrangement, but a very versatile one.

For this reason, frameless packs with a pad sleeve are far more common and popular.  Even though packs like the Cilogear 30 liter worksack rely on a 1/4″ sheet of stiff foam folded in half and nothing more, they often represent just enough non-discriminatory support to work well enough in most situations.  Stiff foam well contained with a good hipbelt can carry a lot of weight.  Just as with truly frameless packs, when packed well such that the load forms a sort of frame the weak point of the system will often be the belt-user interface.  Without contour to the back of the pack, there are often gaps which reduce the ability of the hipbelt to work properly.  Under ideal circumstances these packs can approach or even exceed the 30 pound mark, but often circumstances are not ideal, making these packs suited to either plain backpacking, as discussed above, or to varied activities with far lighter loads.  My pack pictured here is almost always used with weights less than 20 pounds.

I have a number of ideas on how to make a hipbelt work more efficiently with such packs, but given how effective and light true frames currently are, I can’t see myself prioritizing these projects any time soon.

Version 1 of the ULA Ohm, photo from the NOC.

The logical extension of using a foam pad in a pocket to enhance load carry is to use very light frame components to do the same job for less weight.  A stiffer foam pad is multi-use, but the pad and associated fabric and velcro can easily add six ounces.  Lightly framed packs try to maintain a weight close to that of frameless packs, but with more effective load transfer which works with a wider variety of loads and load shapes.  My favorite example here is the original version of the ULA Ohm, pictured above.  The Ohm added a bit of size, load lifters and a carbon hoop along the perimeter of the back panel to the CDT, at the cost of 8 ounces  (18 to 26).  Though it was replaced by the Ohm 2.0, which added a much larger and heavier (5 oz) belt, the original Ohm has remained an enduring classic because not because it’s raw upper carry limit was so high, but because it carried so well across a variety of weights and settings.

There are many such packs on the market, and they’re justifiably popular because they provide a good blend of light weight and forgiving load carry.  The most effective system will depend on variations in anatomy to a large extent, and is a question too large to address well today.  Rather, the more relevant question is when to distinguish between a lightly framed pack and a fully framed, traditional internal.  Over at BPL a number of years ago Will Rietveld proposed that this distinction be made by stating that internal frame packs have a direct connection between the frame (usually stays) and the hipbelt.  It’s a useful idea, but one with enough grey area that as a diagnostic tool it’s almost useless.

Kifaru Duplex frame, from Kifaru, International.

The best example of the classic internal frame is the Kifaru Duplex frame, shown here.  Two stays, shaped to the users back, insert into sleeves from the bottom and are held in place by pockets sewn into the base of the removable hipbelt.  The shoulder straps adjust for length via webbing and a buckle which run parallel to the stays.  A comprehensive pictorial overview of the system can be found here.  With only enough fabric to hold the stays in place and enough foam to prevent point pressure between the user and the stays, the Kifaru suspension is almost as direct as is possible

Of course, many good designs use a mediated version of this system for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with the extra weight and complication added by Kifaru’s hinged lumbar pad.  The classic Dana Designs internals used a single aluminium stay which inserted from the top and ran into the lumbar pad, behind which the hipbelt attached via velcro.  Hyperlight Mountain Gear, a lighter and more relevant example of an internal frame pack, uses two thin stays which insert from the top into two sleeves inside the pack.  The sleeves are stitching through padding into the non-removable belt (aside from the Ice Pack).  The lack of direct connection in the HMG system has proven to be a limiting factor, and saw the addition of a framesheet in the 4400 series of packs to better stabilize things (at the cost of ~6 ounces).

The Unaweep from Paradox Packs.

The material and padding required to optimize the connection between the hipbelt and the stays of an internal frame pack are a liability, and amount to weight which only serves one purpose.  Oddly enough, a far simpler and lighter system has been around for decades, the full wrap belt bolted directly to the frame which has been a haulmark of external frame packs ever since the original Keltys.

Externals died out just about everywhere aside from moose hauling a long time ago, due to fashion and the bulky, often lurch-prone frames (often 15 inches wide and close to 30 tall).  Their belt system is still the best available, and when Seek Outside figured out how to shrink the frame and introduce flexibility into the system without degrading load transfer, they invented something I’ve been very excited about for the last 15 months.  The Paradox Packs really aren’t internals, and really aren’t externals either, but rather a hybrid of both, and simply put, a major evolutionary step in pack design which goes a long way towards making internal frames irrelevant.

My current project pack; making the Paradox system as light and sleek as possible.  When suspension this robust adds less weight than most internal frames, there is no downside.

I think the most interesting developments in packs during the years to come will be in the areas between the old categories.  How do you make a pack which is almost as light and simple as a frameless pack, but offers better and more versatile load carrying abilities?  (Not yet answered.)  How do you get a pack which will carry anything you can, and do it while being sleek, flexible with light loads, and less than 4 pounds?  (Buy a Unaweep.)  Because of new technologies and the diverse range of influences and demands, pack development is enjoying a golden age at present, and we get to be around to see it.

December north of the 45th parallel wants to be a quiet time, and in the last six years I’ve learned to let it be just that. So in the three weeks after hunting season I did only as much of anything as I wanted to, which added up to a few hikes and snowbike rides and ski trips, a fair amount of sewing, a lot of sitting around, and quite a bit of going to bed well before 9pm. Rest and recharge is a good use for 15 hour nights.

But the foundation for next year is built right now, so last week I used the inevitable less-busy time at work to start regular training.  As of ten days ago I was not un-fit, but I wasn’t anywhere close to fit either, and a bit on the heavy side as well.  Both things that are easily fixed, and the best cure to be found around here is laps up and down the local ski hill.  2000′ of vertical in a short stretch with weights on each foot (4+ pounds a foot all in, even with my fairly light gear) will sort your hiking fitness out fast if you do it regularly for a few months.  It is not a coincidence that the best hiking shape of my life, for the Classic in 2011, came after the biggest and best winter in over a decade.

The key at this stage of the game is consistency.  If a training outing needs to be cut short (windchill yesterday morning) or moved (windchill today, went out in the afternoon) that is not a problem, so long as you’re getting out and putting lots of vertical into the legs regularly.

With goals and priorities months down the road, fine tuning and rigor will come along in due time.  But even with a base of fitness both deep and wide, you’ll get burned if you try to shortcut the foundation.

The above were on the first outing of my new camera, a Ricoh GR, which will I think work out nicely.  All functions can be easily manipulated with gloves on, a unprecedented thing for a digital, and quite welcome when it’s -5F.

Not the best hikes, skis, or floats, but the best single isolated miles of travel.  The ones which are worth a lot of potentially frustrating work to find.  Presented in chronological order, with one photo and one mile for each month of 2014.  For organizational and review purposes; January was a long time ago, and big and small memories both are worth recalling in detail.

My favorite mile of January was the frozen ice in the middle of the middle of Lake Sherburne, as M and I were headed back out after our overnight in Many Glacier.  The ice was corrogated and cracked, coated at random with sastrugi, deep black, blue and white in alternate patches, and the wind was maching at a steady 60 mph.  Fast enough to push us along at 3-10 mph, depending on the ice surface.  M understandably found the experience disconcerting, so she rode her edges pretty hard, and thus found it tiring.  Having done this sort of thing before, and being a more experienced skier, I enjoyed the free ride and the ability to sit back and relax in a setting and experience which is quite rare.

The best mile of February was the ridge east of Whitefish Mountain Resort on the long loop Amber, Lauren and I did out from the hill and back again.  Perfect fresh powder, and a clear, blue, cold, and calm day made for fantastic skiing and a gorgeous skinning as we farmed the fingers of the ridge for turns.

March makes for both an easy and a hard choice; it is an obvious contest between the Redwall slots in 150 Mile Canyon and Scotty’s Hollow, but which?  I’ll go with the meat of Scotty’s because the higher temperatures and exertion of the many fun obstacles to climb made the constant wetness comfortable, while in 150 we were on the edge of being cold the whole time.  This is the prettiest and most fun section of slot canyon I’ve ever seen.

Come late April the ski hill shuts down, thanks to environmental regulations built into their lease from the Forest Service.  The ski area makes our little town what it is, good and bad inextricable, but I like that this yearly event reminds them that their hegemony over the local economy and our public lands is not complete.  It’s all the sweeter in a year like 2014, when the snowpack lingers deep and solid well into May, and April storms bring flawless powder laid out on empty slopes with huge views east into Glacier.  One late, late April storm in particular brought together the best of winter and spring all at once, and the last bit of the hike up and descent down was my favorite mile of the month.

I have a lot of good memories tied up in Granite Park Chalet, and a quiet, solo visit via bike and skis in May is a favorite trip each year.  A good way to guarantee you won’t see anyone the whole day is to go on a weekend where valley rain turns into mountain snow not long after you leave your bike and start the hike and skin up.  It was a wet and chilly day, especially the bike descent, but the skiing was fantastic and ambiance of the spring landscape caught in the grip of one last snowstorm made the last mile up to the chalet the most memorable of the month.

The best part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Open is always going somewhere you, and just about anyone else, would never go otherwise.  Seeing the most remote parts of the Bob when they’re just shaking off the mantel of winter has become one of my most cherished experiences, and crossing Badger Pass on snowshoes fit the bill early this June.  I’d never been their before, and with any hint at the trail (and indeed the creek) hidden under 10+ feet of snow, the crossing felt truly wild.  These experiences are the closest we 21st century hikers can get to pre-Lewis and Clark wilderness, and those miles are thus always particularly precious.

I’d be hard pressed to pick and exact mile (and I don’t have a good photo of it), but my favorite mile of July was floating below Burnt Park down to the White River with M, Spencer, and Luke.  We had survived our run-in with that log on that rapid in Burnt, the day was getting nice and warm, and the river was clear, fast, and perfectly gorgeous.  At the midpoint of our loop we were just about as far from a road as one can get in the Bob, and doing so in ideal style.  Floating the upper South Fork on a warm day at 5000 cfs is as good as being outdoors gets.

I’m cheating a little by counting the mile across the Sperry Glacier with my mom as August rather than September, but it was close and the combination of the rugged, otherworldly terrain, harsh weather, being having my mom along makes it a must-pick.  More than anything, it was a world I had long wanted to show her, and doing so at last was satisfying.

Part of the reason I have to stretch the previous entry is that the first mile of the packout on my September deer hunt in the Bob is the most obvious answer to this question for any month the whole year.  The terrain was tough, but not egregious, and the scenery was excellent, but not exceptional.  What made that mile stick out so thoroughly was the satisfaction of bringing such a long project to completion, combined with the entirely new sensation of carrying a really heavy pack through tough terrain.  The later miles, mostly on trail, hurt, but that mile I was so focused on the intricacy of moving up steep grass slopes without slipping, and down through talus and small cliffs without falling, that the weight would have gone unnoticed had it not been for how much that 80 pounds altered by gait and balance.  It’s something I look forward to getting reacquainted with, and soon.

Picking one mile out of October is easy; the labyrinth that is the Tapeats Creek narrows upstream from Thunder River.  The novelty, the cold clear water so out of place, and the dizzying bends make it utterly unique in my experience.  Sometimes things just plain stand out, no matter how many miles you’ve hiked, and this was absolutely one of them.

I didn’t stop to take a picture of what has become my secret deer spot down in the Blackfoot, but I shot this doe a few hours after leaving the ridge and saddle where I’ve seen different huge bucks the last two years running (both times with my buck tag already filled).  From a hiker’s eye it’s not an exceptional place, but as a hunter you can see that the ridge along the top of the short, steep, rugged, densely forested hills makes for an ideal hiding spot.  Deer can take a short evening journey into the neighboring fields to get fat on wheat (I got a pint of pure lard off the back fat of this doe), and then retreat come morning to a sunny bed with both plenty of cover and very good views of most approach angles.  I have other designs on my general season tag next year, but look forward to eventually drawing this doe tag again and returning to hunt a subtle, plain, but very cool spot.  The center of that ridge is my favorite mile from November.

December hasn’t been a very active month, making the choice of the last mile up to upper Holland Lake with Casey and Travis another easy choice.  The snow wasn’t quite there yet in volumes ideal for skiing, but the winter ambiance was in full effect.  Looking back at the whole year, most of my favorite miles had a lot in common with this one; a combination of a spectacular big context with rich, fulfilling details, and a satisfying back-story.  I’m looking forward to next year.

Hunting is expensive. Non-resident elk tags in the lower 48 run between 500 and 1300 dollars, when all costs are included. Deer tags are generally a fair bit less. Any other big game species (bear, moose, mountain goat, sheep) is generally quite a bit, or exponentially, more expensive than elk. Sheep tags cost between 1300 and 10,000 or so dollars (the later figure being the mandatory guiding provision in Alaska). These figures are for me shocking, coming from a background of fair-means human powered recreation where the cost of the activity in question is usually (outside National Parks) zero. The only exception is road-accessed wilderness rafting, which I’ve grown to regard as not exactly fair means, and along with backpacking in National Parks provides a decent means of comparison.

Bob Marshall forky; in 2014 a resident Sportsman’s License (which includes deer, elk, and bear) cost 85 dollars.  An 8 mile hike gets you off trail and into deer which only rarely see people.

Rivers like the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, Selway in Idaho, and Smith in Montana all have permit systems because left unregulated too many people would do the float during prime season, the result being excessive impact on camp sites and wilderness experience. Popular National Parks and National Forests, places like Glacier, Grand Canyon, and most of the Sierra (including Yosemite) demand a quota system for the same reasons as the aforementioned rivers. Most people don’t like having to jump through these hoops, especially when a prime August permit in Glacier or October permit to float the Grand might take years to get. At the same time, I recall no reasonable objections to the spirit or goal of these regulations. No one wants to see abundant poop under rocks in alpine meadows or desert beaches, nor profligate side trails through the precious vegetation in such locations.

Similar things can be said for hunting; any sane hunter wants to be able to spend a day or week out in prime terrain and never see another human, as well as plenty of well-fed critters. If hunting licenses and tags did not exist, or didn’t bring enough restrictions with them, neither of these things would ever be possible. There are just too many people on earth.

The Spotted Dog Wildlife Management Area, Montana.

My quarrel with contemporary river and hunting regulations is that they cost too much money and don’t provide enough opportunity.  The cost is of course partly to further limit the number of people who are interested in any given year, and partly to finance the permit system itself.  Paying to play on public lands may be a necessary evil, but as the years have passed I find it no less offensive that things like running a given river or hunting a given species requires years, perhaps decades, of planning and waiting.  With the way sheep preference points are heading, someone who only starts building points today may never have more than a couple thousands of a percent chance to hunt in a given location.  As a country whose wildlife model values access and was specifically founded against the kind of European lands regime which spawned Robin Hood, this is simply unacceptable.

Answer to the river access problem is obvious; shut down the roads.  Demolish the Lee’s Ferry road and make everyone carry their stuff down a goat trail from the highway.  Close the Magruder road to motorized traffic and cease any maintenance which isn’t human-powered, forever.  Give the Salmon River road a similar treatment 10 miles downstream from North Fork.  Democracy of opportunity does not mean opportunity of mode, and in this day and this age experiencing true Wilderness should require hard work and sacrifice.  Boat-rampers have the Lochsa, Payette, big pieces of the Green and Colorado, and countless others.  As a general rule, today we need less access, not more.  More opportunity, measured in time and impulse, not less.  More quality, in every conceivable respect.

Hunting should be the same way, though the variegated nature of the discipline makes the management issues more nuanced and challenging.  Broad guidelines should seek to maximize the range of opportunities available for hunters, as measured by economics and range of opportunities.  Tag prices need to go down for non-residents, and for the more esoteric species for everyone.  At the same time, to control numbers without requiring more draw-only units, road access needs to be severely curtailed.  The Henry Mountains in south-central Utah is managed as a trophy unit for Mule Deer, both in terms of antler size and experience.  The odds of drawing a rifle tag there last year were .0007 percent.  If you get such a tag you will be mostly alone, and unless you drop dead or go blind you will shoot a big deer.  How popular would the unit be if all the roads between 24, 95, 276, and the Notom-Bullfrog were closed to any form of non-human powered travel (including stock)?  I think such an approach would go a long ways towards maintaining the integrity of the experience while providing proper opportunity for just about anyone who cared to cultivate the proper skills and fitness.

A few basic ground rules would have to be put into wide application to make such a system work nationwide.

First, close a bunch of dirt roads, as mentioned in the example above.  Bomb out culvert, bulldoze in trenches and rocks, enact laws which mandate the confiscation of any ATVs caught where they shouldn’t be.  This is the most contentious and most essential step.  It will necessarily lead to less pressure and more integral habitat, which will in turn necessarily lead to more robust populations of sensitive species such as mule deer, elk, moose, and sheep.  (Whitetails are the rats, or more charitably coyotes, of North American big game.  We couldn’t get rid of them if we tried.)  Which will lead to more hunter opportunity.

Second, private landowner rights must be significantly reshaped.  A good first step would be regulations requiring private holders to provide thru-access to public lands, so this and this will never happen again.  Abolishing the ability of landowners to sell ther landowner tags for anything beyond the cost of a standard tag is another step which, frankly, should have taken place 40 years ago.  Eventually, the rights of the most extensive landowners to limit public use of their land, including hunting, will need to be curtailed.  Perhaps anyone who owns a parcel more than 5,000 acres would have to give out 2 free access permits per 1,000 acres each hunting season.  This last is of course a long way off.

It goes without saying that raffle tags, Governor’s tags, and anything of that sort will disappear never to be seen again.  State wildlife agency funding will be divorced from tag revenue.  Again, how do we live in a country which does this?  (Answer; Lehmen Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the demise of Glass-Steagall, etc.)

Third, abolish for-profit guiding on public lands, and any requirement that a non-resident must have a guide to hunt certain species (AK and WY, you should be ashamed).  I have no issue with the disabled hiring logistical assistance, but guiding in modern American has come to mean, more than anything, that folks with lots of money can buy their way into better opportunity.  If you want to hunt wilderness the only honest way to earn it is with skill and work, things which can be cultivated largely apart from economic opportunity.

Let the cost of the camera and spotting scope be determined by a truly free market, and the cost of the walk in to and out with a goat be divorced from anything but sweat as far as is possible.

The big picture here, and the reason why so many people find these ideas so offensive, is that American capitalism has for it’s whole life equated monetary success with merit.  If you make a lot of money you must be a good person.  Good people deserve more hunting (etc) opportunities, ergo tags and hunts which cost a lot are fine, in fact probably a good thing for society.  As Abbey said of those engineers staking out the Arches entrance road; this is a powerful and historically weighted argument with centuries of cultural inertia behind it.  It is also utterly insane.  Anyone who looks at the last twenty years of American history and sees a direct correlation between virtue and affluence, does not see wealth in adulthood as given mostly by historical privilege, who does not in short see many compelling reasons for a 100 percent estate tax on wealth beyond a few hundred thousand dollars (certain businesses excepted), is a fool, a willfully, blind, fool.

Outdoor recreation, including hunting, is as good a metaphor as any for the health of our nation moving towards the twenty-second century.  The way we will generate spiritual, intellectual, and economic capital will have everything to do with the things beyond humanity we managed to not screw up, and little to do with GNP and the CPI.  Put another way, we’ll finally figure out that happiness is only created by money insofar as basic needs plus 20% are met, and given all the potentially happy things left in this country, hopefully as a culture we won’t figure it out too late.

The sandfly is a fact of life in New Zealand. Forrest McCarthy called them the countries top predator, which is in a sense quite accurate. The “bloody sandflies” are both widespread and annoying, and coping with them requires a few special preparations.

Thankfully, sandflies are no where near as obnoxious as mosquitoes. Yankees familiar with early summer blackflies will find that their experience will transfer well, and the sandfly is merely a small variety of blackfly. Sandflies live around water, but dislike rainfall, as well as significant wind and intense sun. Humid, still, overcast days are their playground. They like to fly, silently, around humans until they find a bit of exposed skin for bloodsucking. Their bites cannot generally be felt until it is too late, if at all. These bites generally swell up in the typical fashion 12 or so hours after being bitten, and persist for a week or two. While the strength of individual reaction varies, I found them extremely itchy for 10 or more days after the fact. Salves provide temporary relief, and are especially useful right before bed.

Unlike mosquitoes, sandflies cannot bite through thin layers of clothing, so things like gossamer woven shirts are quite adequate to keep them at bay. Long sleeves and fingerless gloves are a good idea, as are long pants. These pants must be tucked into gaiters or socks, as sandflies delight in flying up to gnaw on your shins. Knee-high socks are a good back up in case your pants become untucked from your gaiters (while fly fishing this happened during almost every river crossing). Lastly, a scarf or buff which can be tucked into your shirt and pull up over the back of a hat to cover ears, neck, and chin will be welcome during heavy sandfly pressure.

DEET is effective against sandflies, until it is washed or sweated off.

As with most bugs, my favored strategy is to avoid sandflies as much as possible. The eastern drainages in the southern Alps are primarily rock, very windy, and under heavy orographic shadow. Pretty much my favorite kind of terrain anywhere, and not coincidentally a mostly bug-free zone. The sandflies in Fiordlands were pretty bad in camp, but they didn’t really follow us out on to the water while kayaking. They were present most places on the Heaphy Track, but cooler and generally windy weather kept them mostly at bay. The trailhead in Kohaihai was just enough off the beach to be sheltered, and the sandflies there were apocalyptic. Thankfully we didn’t have that anywhere else on the hike.

I got 80% of my sandfly bites while fly fishing, for several reasons. First, I had arrogantly dismissed the need for gloves. Second, the DEET washed off my hands constantly. Third, my pants came untucked in the river. Fourth, the fishing was so absorbing and difficult that I ignored the flies and had little idea how bad I was getting it. Lastly, fishing puts you rather inevitably in ideal sandfly habitat. With a few extra precautions, I would have suffered much less.

In conclusion, sandflies should be prepared for well, especially if you’re visiting the wetter and more verdant parts of New Zealand.  Thankfully, they’re not as well armed as mosquitoes, and don’t produce a maddening buzz, so if you’re properly equipped they’re somewhat easy to ignore.

I’ve been putting this writing off for months, because putting fingers to keys and pixels to ‘net admits that there are things which need to be said about keeping public lands public. Today, there absolutely are, and that admission is in itself a sad statement.

I remain acutely skeptical that the current movement to transfer federal lands into state custody will ever come to anything substantive, but the opponents are sure taking the whole mess seriously, which has produced more than enough dialogue to frame the debate.

Sadly, this has mostly taken place on economic terms. The heirs of the Sagebrush Rebellion maintain that state governments and local towns are loosing potential revenue due to federal complacency, while the heirs of Roosevelt trot out vague statistics to demonstrate why states would not be able to shoulder the management burden.

“US federal land.agencies” by National Atlas of the United States – http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/fedlands.html, “All Federal and Indian Lands“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, all this discussion is very much besides the point. Federal land was, starting in the late 1800s and more rapidly in the first quarter of the 20th century, set aside specifically against obvious economic motivations. Preservation was the word when the Adirondacks and Yosemite became state parks, and Yellowstone a national park. Long-term economic arguments about how tourism is superior to extractive industries only followed. That tourism is the most economically use of public lands is a fait accompli, as demonstrated by the states-rights rhetoric being restricted to only wanting a little more logging/mining/roads while maintaining or increasing tourist infrastructure. The problem is that these pro-states arguments are almost identical to those made a century ago. It’s an obscure and uncommon thesis, but the conservation/preservation, public lands ownership and use debate made the Republican party what it is today, and the zenith of that debate between 1910 and 1912 is when the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and started to become the party of Reagan.

TR left the White House in 1908, denying himself a certain third term. Given that he had assumed office after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Roosevelt had a strong claim to a second elective term, as well as the sort of popularity which would have guaranteed him a win. At the national convention, Henry Cabot Lodge had to intervene multiple times to prevent TR from being nominated by acclamation. William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War, was TRs hand-picked successor, in no small part because Roosevelt thought Taft the most likely to continue his policies, Unfortunately for Taft, once elected he proved too malleable or indifferent to stand up to industry, and supported either outright or by default significant erosions of TRs conservation work. Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, and made moves to undo the designation of the enormous and visionary Tongass National Forest. TR valued these things, and the ideals they represented, so much that he was compelled to run against Taft in 1912. He failed to win the Republican nomination, and as a Bull Moose candidate in the general election outperformed Taft, splitting the vote and guaranteeing the victory of Woodrow Wilson.

The presidents who followed Wilson have mixed records on conservation, but the overarching narrative is universally in support of conservation and the value of federal lands. National Parks came to be called America’s best idea, Alaska still has a robust salmon fishery, old growth forest still exists in pockets of most western states, and free or cheap opportunities for recreation of all types could as of 2015 occupy many lifetimes. There are many particulars which could be improved, especially wildfire management, but it’s hard to see arguments against the current regime of federal land management as anything other than variations on Cliven Bundy; ahistorical, myopic, and selfish.

Folks are hesitant to say this out loud, and even more hesitant to state what I see as the central point in the debate: the states are too hasty and subject to the winds of public opinion to be good custodians of public land. This is especially true of states like Montana where term limits and biannual legislative sessions have maintained a tradition of true citizen legislators. Like the US Senate, experiencing federal land management in real time can be frustrating, but is the least-worst option. Ecosystems dwell in extra-human time scales, and thus government must be stretched a fair bit to suit it. Land conservation has in the past century been one of the largest success stories in North America. The pushback against it is probably the last kick before the death of a 20th century view about the unalloyed preeminence of the western human, an ideology about which conservation only tells a small part. Insofar as it’s a coherent entity, I can’t take it seriously, but it would be foolish to underestimate it’s advocates.

The legacy of the 21st century will be rewilding littoral areas, and cultivating a less adversarial relationship with the wild which will make it easier for predators to reassimilate. But it will not come easily or with good grace. Be patient and, where necessary, make your voice heard. In the western states that probably means now.

Disclaimer: I bought these shoes with my own money at full retail, and for the past six months have not used them as the manufacturer intended. I make no apologies for asking a lot from my shoes, nor for emphatic feelings about this most important item.

Altra is about to release version 2.5 of their Lone Peak trail runner, a shoe which has been quite influential since it was released. It was probably the first of what is becoming the latest, and I think the best, trend in light outdoor shoes: zero drop, moderate cushion shoes made of durable materials. Based on my experience with the 1.5s, the notoriety is justified. There is a lot to like, really like, about these shoes, which makes the less desirable things stand out all the more.

The best thing about the 1.5s is the midsole.  The level of cushion, stiffness, and the zero drop are for me perfect.  There’s enough beef for carrying a 40 pound pack in difficult terrain, while still being flexible and low enough to not loose the sleekness and speed for which light shoes exist.  They are quite simply the most comfortable hiking and backpacking shoe I’ve ever had.

The problem with the 1.5s, which dampens the aforementioned virtues considerably, is the poor durability of the mesh fabric.  Aware of this issue and wanting to protect my investment, I put on a coating of aquaseal before wearing them on the trail, and have added more on four different occasions since.  As shown here, this has kept pace with wear, but only just.  I expect mesh to wear before anything else, but the Altra mesh quite simply sucks.

To go along with the zero drop approach, the Altra toebox is wide and anatomic, which is easily seen in the above photo, which shows a more traditional trail shoe (the La Sportiva Bushido) at right.  The wide toebox is more comfortable, and only sacrifices a small amount of agility and precision in technical terrain.  I have a middling forefoot and a narrow heel, and found the Altra to fit very well throughout.

The toebox does not hold the 1.5s back in rough country; that task is unfortunately accomplished by the lackluster tread pattern and the absolutely awful rubber, which manages to both wear quickly and have poor traction.  On wet rocks the 1.5s are nothing short of frightening, and I hope that in the new versions Altra has simply discarded both and started over.

Altra does get the rest of the details right.  The velcro gaiter trap is a brilliant feature which is well done.  I’ve never found a glue-on gaiter patch which didn’t eventually fall off, and this solves that problem in a low-profile way which you’ll never notice when it is not in use.  Other good stuff includes the laces, which stay tied well, and the burly rubberized fabric used in the toe bumper.

Will the Lone Peak 2.5 (due in July) improve upon these glaring flaws?  I really hope so.  I bought the Bushidos above right before we left for New Zealand, strictly because I was worried that the Lone Peaks would not last the whole trip, as well as some dis-ease about taking their poor traction fly fishing and mountain hunting.  The Bushidos have the unmatched rubber and tread which Sportiva does so well (they’re probably 2-3 standard deviations better than anything else on the market, including Inov8), but after using the Lone Peaks all fall even 6mm of drop feels weird, as does the narrow toebox.  If Altra put good rubber on the Lone Peaks, I’d be willing to put up with bad mesh, even at 120 dollars a pair.  If they also fixed the durability issue, I’d be in shoe heaven.

Polartec Alpha was developed for the military, as an insulation which would form the core of a garment that would, as an insulator, better straddle the divide between static and dynamic warmth.  Alpha does this by being more air-permeable than synthetic fill insulations such as Primaloft and Climashield, and at the same time more svelt (and thus better suited to shelled jackets) than fleece.  Polartec says, “By placing patented low density fibers between air permeable woven layers we created a more efficient fabric for regulating warmth and transferring moisture.”

The Strata fits fine, and has the well shaped Rab hood which I quite like.

Warmth in the outdoors is often understood as an overly simple concept.  Static warmth for a dry, stationary body requires only decent fueling and hydration and enough layers.  Dynamic warmth, where said body is in various states of motion through varied environments, is governed by the same rules, but they are interrupted by the need to protect from external, while venting and moving internal, moisture.  Achieving a balance between external protection and internal insulation is, most of the time, the key to sustainable activities in the outdoors.

Passable solutions to the various permutations of the moisture problem have no doubt existed for millennia.  Pretty good ones have existed in the modern clothing paradigm for decades.  What continues to be an occasional complication is finding a way to balance protection and insulation across a range of settings with minimal items of clothing, and with minimal alterations within the items carried.  It is in this area where Alpha might make sense for some outdoor uses.

Alpha is not as warm for a given weight as the down and synthetic fill insulations to which we’ve become accustomed.  The Rab Strata Hoodie weighs about a pound in size medium, 3-4 ounces heavier than the almost identically featured Rab Xenon X.  The Xenon not only has a lighter weight (60 g/meter v. 80 for the Strata) of warmer Primaloft One insulation, it has a lightly lighter and far less air-permeable shell and liner fabric.  One of the marketing saws for Alpha jackets, and the Toray-made clone used by Patagonia and Kuiu, is that the structure of the insulation does not demand the densely woven nylons which have become standard for Primaloft.  This may or may not be the case, but I tend to believe that for an Alpha jacket to function coherently as a unit the liner and shell must do what they can to keep pace with the insulation.  If Alpha can breath better and wick faster than the liner, moisture will stay stuck inside, against the wearer.  If the liner and insulation can move moisture faster than the shell, or at least much faster, water vapor will become trapped inside, and in cold enough weather, freeze solid.

The neon material is a solid, uncoated nylong ripstop.  They grey fabric is mesh.

The Strata Hoodie does not do any of these things, and the liner (zoned mesh and light nylon ripstop) and shell (nylon plain weave with a textured inner face) seem ideally matched.  The Strata moves moisture several times faster than the Xenon X.

I’m not sure the little mesh panels in the neck and hood make much difference, but they are impressively well designed and executed.

This comes at a cost, and that cost is static warmth.  The outdoor garment industry has taken a enhanced interest in breathability in recent years, one result being the many more, more air permeable garments available.  Polartec Neoshell in the hardshell realm, woven windshirts like the Alpine Start, and Polartec Alpha are all examples.  Breathability happens via moisture transport, and moisture within clothing systems happens via evaporation, which necessitates evaporative cooling.  One of the reasons the Xenon and Xenon X jackets have made their reputation as the warmest garments of their class is the very air impermeable Pertex Quantum liner and shell.  Summit a windy ridge after a sweaty climb and throw on the Xenon X and you’ll get immediate and considerable shelter from the wind.

The disadvantage is that the Quantum shells will also hold that sweat inside, and it will take time and often an external heat source of consequence to dry the jacket out completely.  It is in these circumstances that I’ve become enamored with the Strata.  It often provides enough extra warmth and wind resistance to serve as a resting or skiing-down jacket, while still moving moisture.  The difference between how dry the Strata will keep me over the course of a day skinning and skiing laps compared with the Xenon is considerable.  Similar things can be said when hiking slowly in moderate cold, or hard in serious cold.  Worn over appropriate base and wind layers, these combinations are very effective, and impressively free from the need for constant adjustment.

The disadvantage of the Strata is in turn the lack of warmth, which is not due entirely to the increased air permeability.  Patagonia hyped their Nano Air (which we can safely view as darn close in function to Alpha jackets, just with stretch), as the equal to Primaloft coats provided a very wind resistant shell (i.e. hardshell) was put over it when needed.  My anecdotal experience is that this is not the case.  80 g/meter Alpha is significantly less warm than 60 g/meter Primaloft One, even when the two are compared strictly on terms of static warmth.

All this of course begs the question of whether the performance gains of the Strata could be united with a shell which is more wind resistant, or an insulation which is warmer.  Would a partial mesh liner work with Climashield Apex, which is more robust than Primaloft and almost as warm?  Would a chest and shoulder area with greater wind resistance significantly hamper the moisture transport of Alpha insulation?  There are a number of such intriguing questions which might be answered by new garments in the next few years.

As a matter of backcountry policy, the Strata is often a very useful critter, but in most circumstances requires an additional insulating layer.  What will best serve as a companion here, providing enough warmth without too much additional weight, bulk and complication, I have not yet decided.  Fleece works well enough, but does not directly address the need for additional wind resistance, and insofar as both are bulky and suited to use on the go this combination is duplicative.  Another, more traditional synthetic fill shell makes sense, but results in a heavy and bulky system.  My hope, for spring hunting, hiking, and skiing, is to use a down vest in and outside the Strata.  I will report back.

Discussion about the Bob Open is heating up over at BPL, as is appropriate for this time of year.  It’s just about late enough in the winter to use what resources are available to make meaningful extrapolations concerning what things will be like out there in two months.  With that in mind, I want to talk a little about the most useful virtual resources for wilderness route planning (at least in the lower 48), Snotel sites.

The National Resources Conservation Services website got a big upgrade this past fall, making the interface faster to use and more informative.  Not all Snotel sites are created equal.  The best ones have the full spectrum of real-time data and are in a useful location.  Snotels are handy for a snapshot of conditions, but much moreso for giving you an idea of how a winter and spring are evolving over weeks and months.  The best way to build that picture can be had by checking the same Snotels daily or weekly while comparing them to the weather forecasts, and the most realistic way to do that (especially if you don’t live nearby) is to focus on a few of the most representative sites.

The individual site pages feature Lat/Longs, which are often inaccurate or not exact enough, but the new page allows you to zoom in on locations which in my experience are accurate.  I don’t find the NRCS basemaps as good as other services, so I prefer to use the former to zoom in and examine site detail on another mapping service.

My favorite site in the Bob Marshall complex is Badger Pass.  My most frequently used mapping site (because I’m using it for hunting trip planning so often) is the Montana Sportman’s Atlas.  The Badger Snotel site is at 6900′, in a shallow but forested north-facing bowl just west of the Continental Divide (above the double “RD”s in the center of the map).  It gives a good severe-case scenario of snow depth and conditions.  The top photo is the wilderness boundary on the map above, which is the red line which divides the ranger districts.

The altitude, aspect, and especially forest cover of the Badger Pass Snotel makes it particularly useful, as does the fact that it’s quite a ways from any road.

For winter trips snow depth and snow density (which can be figured by dividing the depth by the snow-water equivalent) are the most important items, as taken together they tell you how hard the trail breaking will be.  For that you’ll want daily figures, not the monthly averages I’ve screen-shot above.  For spring and early summer trips, snow depth and the various air temperature figures become more important.  What you’re looking for in May is how much snow will be left, where you’ll find it, and how supportable it will be (read: do you need snowshoes).  At some point every spring the snowpack will reach that horrible spot where it’s deeper than 3 feet and warmed all the way through without overnight temps which are low enough to freeze it back up.  Add rain and you have the most horrible wilderness travel condition known.

In mid-March many things could still happen at Badger Pass, but a trend is certainly emerging.  Snow accumulation started strong, especially in December and January, with the depth falling off a bit faster than the SWE when both are compared to the seasonal averages.  What that disparity tells us, when unusually high February temperatures are taken into account, is that a fair bit of melting and a lot of solidifying took place in the past six weeks.  Even if snow depths continue to dip lower as spring wears on, we know there’s a very solid base of dense snow which would presumably provide good and fast travel now (perhaps too fast), but will probably take longer than expected to melt.  Just how this effects the actual weekend of the Bob will not be known until the week prior, and that will mostly come down to precipitation and temperature, but the foundation is being laid for a low snow spring.

Most gear is something to which I pay little attention.  Packs are a fascination and thus an object of consistent experimentation, even if for example I currently have five very solid 3000+ cubic inch ones in the closet right now.  Most other things, such as stoves and shelters, are boxes to be checked once before moving on.  So long as I have a few which work well, interest is largely absent.

August: baselayer t-shirt, Alpine Start hoody, running shorts.

The glaring exception is clothing, towards which I put too much time and money.  Outdoor clothing is hard to get right; why else would there be so much of it?  Even when we can avoid the impulse to merely pursue the novel and fashionable (the answer to the previous question, as well as to why most outdoor brands and shops are able to stay in business), it is easy to build up a seemingly redundant closet in the quest to have an ideal system.  Andrew Skurka recently took a good swing at cutting through the noise, asserting that one could backpack in all 3 seasons (read: outside deep winter) with only 13 items of clothing.  It’s a good departure for discussion, as well as a way to stay the madness of excessive clothing acquisition.  In the following I’ll look at Skurka’s suggestions, and make a few comments of my own.

Before I get started, I need to mention the first rule of being an intelligent consumer of outdoor clothing: pay attention to fabric weight.  I’ll reference it constantly below.  Good clothing companies today make fabric weight a prominent part of their web and marketing copy.  If they don’t, I approach them with trepidation.  If they won’t or can’t tell me over their chat or via email, I don’t buy their stuff.  (Get your house in order First Lite.)

Skurka’s 13 items are as follows. with links to the relevant posts:

1. short sleeved shirt
2. long sleeved shirt
3. bug shirt
4. running shorts
5. pants
6. underwear
7. fleece top
8. insulated jacket
9. insulated pants
10. rain jacket
11. rain pants
12.  sleeping shirt
13. sleeping bottoms

The first or core layers of 3 season clothing serve to protect externally from sun, bugs, and abrasion, and internally from chafing and temperature regulation issues.  The first six items on the above list all fall into this category.  In his various posts, Skurka highlights the extent to which these objectives can conflict.  Short or long sleeved baselayer shirts are a good example.  In this application merino wool has, in the last decade, become the fabric of reference due to its superior moisture managing properties.  Merino is not inherently warmer than various synthetics when wet, despite frequent claims to the contrary, but it does manage evaporative cooling by absorbing sweat into the wool fibers and releasing them in a moderated fashion.  Merino also does an excellent job of resisting odor, though given enough use between washings it is not immune to bacterial growth.  The only reason, aside from cost, merino has not taken over completely is the difficulty of balancing performance and longevity.  Thicker merinos (>150 grams/meter) have too much fiber and hold too much moisture too long.  I’ve written them off for anything aside from casual, town use, and know exactly no one including cold-blooded light sweaters who having used sub 150 gram wool have any desire to go back.  The problem with thinner merino is poor abrasion resistance, something to which Skurka aludes both in writing and in pictures.  The latest and best solution is to blend polyester with the wool, two examples being Rab Meco 120 and Patagonia Merino 1, both of which are 65% merino and 35% polyester, and 120 grams per square meter (3.5 ounces per square yard).  These shirts are identical in function and appearance, and blend the characteristics of modern merino and polyester fairly well.  They dry fast, but not as quick as the lightest pure poly fabrics, while still having a modicum of moisture buffering.  They resist stink well, but not as well as pure wool.  They’re tougher than the pure wools of comparable weights, but not as durable as pure polyester.  They are currently my preference in shirts for all conditions above 20 degrees F, at which point I swap over to the warmer Capilene 4.

Also August: same short, same t-shirt, and a 70/30 cotton/poly shirt for sun and bugs.

Skurka does an excellent job encapsulating the problems with bug shirts, and I have nothing to add, other than that I dislike heavy bug pressure more than any other adverse environmental factor, and go out of my way to avoid them both by altering my routes to camp in suitable places, and not visiting certain areas at certain times of year.

For 3 season backpacking, Skurka correctly identifies that pants are more often used for leg protection than for warmth.  I could see making due with one pair for everything, though two would be better.  A ~200 grams/meter pair with a bit of stretch (less than 10% lycra content, such as the Black Diamond Modernist Rock jeans) are good for colder weather and abusive applications, while warm weather pants are ideally in the 120 grams/meter range.  Fabrics this thin are not inherently strong, so they should be built as tough as weight requirements allows: 100% nylon plain weave or taslan.  Pants like these are not easy to find, fishing pants seem to be the most likely candidates.  Aside from gloves and socks, pants are the garment which wears out first and most often.  Light nylon pants won’t last forever, perhaps 2-3 years for me, but their ability to dry fast and not cause swamp ass when it’s 85F out more than justifies the cost.

Lace closure from a destroyed pair of Patagonia board shorts added to BD Rock jeans.  The best pant/short closure, in my book.  I also removed the belt loops from these pants to eliminate all possible pressure points.

Now, a brief digression concerning pant features.  As with just about anything, less is more, though not absolutely.  Waist bands should be wide and slick.  I see no reason for belts (under any circumstances).  Buttons are a good way to close pants, the Patagonia ones which are sewn on with a length of 3/8″ webbing are the best, as thread always seems to wear out.  I really like the closure system on Patagonia board shorts; the lighter, shorter Minimalist Wavefarers are great if you can find them on sale.  Plain stretch waist bands are good if done properly, but most companies integrate too much stretch into these pants  and they end up sagging under heavy packs, which is no good.

Rise through the crotch of pants (and shorts) should be low.  The old style of waists up by the belly don’t actually add more protection, they just add an extra 2 inches above the natural waist for the pants to sag.  This often co-occurs with the aforementioned excess stretch.

Back pockets on pants are useless, except insofar as they function as a double seat (which is something I’d like to see more of, a la the old Patagonia Stand-Up pants).  Front pockets in the jeans model are fine, though I could do without them for the rest of my life.  Cargo pockets are the best, so long as they’re baffled or pleated just enough but not too much, and places up high so your snickers and knives aren’t knee-dragging all day.  Most importantly, cargo pockets should zip forward to open, and back to close.  That almost no clothing designers have had buskwacking unzip their zip-back-to-open cargo pockets is something I cannot understand.

Off trail in the Grand Canyon: thanks to harsh undergrowth and rock scrambling light, quick drying pants are mandatory.

Skurka and I disagree on the particulars of layer 7, though we agree on the principle that folks often need a fourth layer beyond the basic trinity of baselayer, insulated jacket, and rain jacket.  I’ve long been a fan of a light softshell windshirt, something which both functions as a light insulating layer and provides a degree of wind and precipitation resistance.  The issue with early iterations of this idea, like the Patagonia Traverse and before that the Cloudveil Veiled Peak anorak, were fabrics which were too thick and had too much lycra, thus holding too much water and drying too slowly.  The Black Diamond Alpine Start has been a favorite since it came out.  There are a few things I’d change, but the fabric is simply amazing.  It breathes well enough to be a bug and shade shirt so long as you’re not moving too hard, and at a very light 80 grams/meter is astoundingly tough.  Skurka casts aspersions on the traditional tightly woven nylon windshirts for having a narrower window of proper use, and I agree.  The Houdini et al. are on the verge of irrelevance.

There is a lot to be said for a plain 100 weight fleece shirt or vest.  Classic microfleece is great because it traps a ton of air for the weight, and has no lycra, so it dries super fast.  Simple is best, as mesh backed pockets and lycra binding trap water.  You can get these super-cheap from places like LL Bean and Target, but my favorite currently is the Rab Micro Pull-On.  The Micro uses particularly light fleece (160 grams/meter versus the more common 200), and fits incredibly well, especially through the shoulders and arms.  A fleece shirt is a key second layer for cold rain, packrafting, and people who get cold easily. I can’t see myself doing without either the windshirt or the fleece shirt, and not infrequently use both on the same trip.

Cold rain in the mountains; good rain gear and nice fleece shirt under it are both vital.

Insulated coats aren’t too complicated, down for dry places, synthetic for wetter ones.  I’ve only had a limited amount of experience, but thus far I’m not impressed with the types of dri-down.  Alpha and the other more breathable synthetics are very promising.  My main advice here is to pay attention to insulation weight, and not be too much of a gram counter in this area.  If I’m bringing a warm jacket, I want it to be warm.  60 grams/meter synthetic fills are summer weight, 100 is more versatile.  200 weight fleece is roughly as warm as 60 grams/meter Primaloft, which is roughly as warm as a hooded down sweater with 2-3 ounces of 800 fill.  I disagree with Skurka about needing insulated pants for 3 season stuff; I haven’t used my Primaloft pants at all for over a year, including winter.

Insulated jackets should have a nice big, adjustable hood, and plenty (3+) of pockets.  I like internal drop pockets for drying and warming gear on all such coats.  BD Stance Belay hoody shown.

Rain gear is a frequently misunderstood subject, such that I’m done having sympathy for people who don’t understand how it works and then complain about it “failing.”  Modern WPB fabrics are not breathable enough to keep up with perspiration most of the time, but you can overwhelm just about any garment under all but truly cold conditions if you try hard enough.  Anyone who’s worn a totally unbreathable parka under a variety of conditions will know just how breathable Goretex et al actually is, and hopefully quit bitchin’ about how it doesn’t work.  Skurka is absolutely correct to highlight the importance of DWR, and the extent to which it limits the utility of WPB garments on expeditions.  However, most of us with rarely if ever do a trip long enough and far enough between towns to truly make this an issue.

I remain a fan of Goretex, including the oft-maligned Paclite 2.5 layer laminate.  Goretex seems more durable and more consistent than eVent or PU coatings, and I think the rigorous and innovation-stifling certification process Gore insists upon does result in better face fabrics, which overall improves durability and DWR performance.

Hoods are vital, and the Haglofs Ozo remains one of the best ever.

Rain jackets need phenomenal hoods, nothing less is acceptable.  Big stiffened brims, three point cinches which don’t gutter rain into your face, and enough room for hats and hoods are all must-haves.  There are lots of seemingly good rain coats I’ve rejected out of hand due to bad hoods.  Aside from this and nice long articulated sleeves and a long hem, all other features are optional.  I can do without any pockets just fine, prefer anoraks to full zips, and dislike pit zips (though the to-the-hem cagoule-style zips OR and Arc’teryx use works well).  Rain pants need knee-high or higher side zips so they can put on with shoes on.

I don’t wear rain gear unless it’s raining, I’m in a packraft, or I’m walking through high and soaking brush.  This promotes rain gear longevity.  Pant fabrics should be a bit heavier than jacket fabrics.

I used to regard sleep clothes with disdain, and still hardly ever bring them, but they do have a place, especially for folks (like M) who don’t produce as much body heat.  She has convinced me fairly recently that there’s a massive difference between the two of us in this regard, and that damp clothes at the end of a day take a lot out of her.  So I’m learning things and getting a heavier pack as I age.

Women, especially women with low body fat, need more warmth and often more layers.

Clothing systems will always be evolving, especially given that we’re is a period of legitimately rapid innovation in fabrics.  Neoshell and Gore Active are two things I’d like to try and haven’t yet, among many others.  That being the case, the following are what I use today, with parenthetical substitutions for those items no longer in production.

1. Rab Meco 120 short sleeve
2. Rab Meco 120 long sleeve
3. ExOfficio Impervio (haven’t used, deferring to Skurka)
4. Patagonia Minimalist Wavefarer or Patagonia Strider
5. BD Modernist Rock jeans or Patagonia RPS or BD Highball (haven’t tried last two)
6. Patagonia Capilene 2 boxer-briefs
7. Rab Micro Pull-On
8. Rab Strata Hoodie or Montbell Thermawrap Pro
9. BD Stance Belay or Patagonia R1 tights
10. Haglofs Gram Comp II pull (haven’t used, yet)
11. BD Liquid Point
12.  Patagonia Capilene 4 crew
13. Patagonia Capilene 2

Everyone will have their preferences, but function shouldn’t be subservient to fashion or sentimentality.  In the end only experience will tell you what works