Month: February 2015

May Creek Trail

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May Creek Trail (cross-country skiing)
Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest
January 17-18, 2015

Beauty and Pleasure. Indifference and Power. Nature seems to have the inimitable ability to demonstrate these concepts in their most pure form; in their essence. While I’d dipped my toe into this notion on previous trips over the years, I experienced complete submersion on this particular cross-country skiing trip in the mountains of Montana. I can speculate on reasons why, but an accurate definition or explanation is beyond my combined abilities of observation and expression. Maybe next time. Maybe never. No harm in the pursuit. Ski along . . .

Mill Creek Canyon

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Mill Creek Canyon Trail
Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Bitterroot National Forest
January 10-11, 2015

Another weekend, another canyon. I had ambitious plans to hike five miles up Mill Canyon on the Mill Creek Trail, then connect with the trail leading to Hauf Lake, which is described in a guidebook as being “a brutally steep trail 2.0 mile long trail that is better suited for mountain goats than people”, and camp at the lake. I didn’t end up making it Hauf Lake, but my consolation prize was spending my first night in the 1.3 million acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Head down the trail . . .

Blodgett Canyon

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Blodgett Creek Trail
Bitterroot National Forest
January 3-4, 2015

Shortly before noon on the first Saturday of the new year I found myself at the trailhead for Blodgett Creek Trail. Unlike my last trip, I wasn’t skiing in to a luxuriously rustic cabin for the night. Instead, I was hiking into the mouth of a canyon that stretched over a dozen miles to the Continental Divide. This would be my first time camping in such a large amount of snow, so I came prepared. Snowshoes strapped to the pack, snow shovel stowed inside, extra-thick top and bottom wool layers for camp in addition to my usual mid-weight wool baselayer, thin fleece pull-over, hooded down jacket, liquid-fuel stove and a back-up canister stove, water filter and extra fuel to melt snow . . . you get the picture. So much for “lightweight”. Continue reading →

Trip Report Repository

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full size trip report pic

After years of posting trip reports and commentary on outdoor recreation to various internet forums, it seemed like a good idea to collect those various writings in a central location rather than leave them scattered across the internet.  As the title suggests, these pieces of writing are focused on backpacking, hiking, bicycling, or a combination thereof.

I would like for this blog to primarily serve as a repository for past and future trip reports, with occasional opinion and commentary pieces. Past trip reports are located on the “Trip reports” page and and past general opinions and commentary on various issues related to outdoor recreation are on the “Commentary” page. This will be done whenever I get the time and inclination to copy and paste the content from the various corners of the internet from which they currently reside. Right now, 2014 is the only complete year. Commentary will be a bit slower to come, as a lot of my commentary was located on Backpacker magazine’s “old” forums which are no longer available.

New trip reports and commentary will be posted here (“Basecamp”) as well on the appropriate subpage.

The majority of past trip reports and commentary are related to the Southeast in general and the Cumberland Plateau (specifically the Red River Gorge) in particular. All of these originally appeared on kywilderness.com or the Backpacker magazine forums and are re-published here with minor edits and revisions.

Future trip reports will most likely be from the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and nearby locations.

The “Gear” page consists of me waxing nostalgic about various pieces of gear and clothing with some comments on their technical merits.

The “Photoessays” page contains photoessays about various landforms and landscapes.

For general background information, please check out the “Bio” page.

It is my sincere hope that the pieces of writing on this website will be entertaining, inspiring, humorous and perhaps even intellectually stimulating at times.