WHAT HAS YOUR GEAR BEEN UP TO LATELY?
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Most recently my Southwest 70 was on a backcountry trip in Yosemite with my young family. Love the size of the 70 as it allows me to pack everything my daughters are not yet able to shoulder on their own.
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@rpigatto That is some good stuff right there. - Mark
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Best use of equipment yet! Beautiful!
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@slipperybill looks like a fun trip. Do you know what kind of bird (raptor?) skull that is?
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8/27
GOOD for you taking your young family out! GOOD for you and good FOR you. Awesome! You and your bride are great parents and excellent role models. Wow.
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Oh the places an HMG pack can take you! A couple of pack shots from the past year or two:
Southwest Pack - backpacking and packrafting across the Talkeetna Mountains
Porter Pack hanging out Novarupta - the site of the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century - in Katmai.
Porter Pack - at work guiding a trip in Gates of the Arctic National Park.
Porter Pack - getting swarmed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!
Southwest Pack - out for a backpacking trip near Denali National Park
Porter Pack shlepping skis and camping gear up to the Harding Ice Field.
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Although it's been smokey here in the West Kootenays, there has still been some nice weather. A couple weekends ago we went up to Kokanee Glacier Park and did a quick overnighter. The smoke did obstruct some of the views and I could feel it in my lungs but it was still great to be up in the alpine as our season is very short (2 months), and go for a few swims while we were up there!
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I just faced a cyclone with my Ultamid. It was the first real use, really boombproof tent.
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A little something from the Southern Hemisphere. The Larapinta Trail in Australia where a lot of it looks like this,
No doubt the Ultamid 2 meant my partner and I had plenty of room for our 8 nights and as a bonus the mice shadows as they ran over the tent at night were pretty cute. We got a perfiect pitch even when big rock/little rock was the only option.
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This past weekend I took full advantage of checking out the beautiful larch trees as they are just starting to change. It was around a 3-hour drive to the trailhead and a short hike (around 10km) so we decided to make the most of our time and stay the night. It was a chilly night with lots of frost on the tent but seeing the sunrise with the backdrop of countless glaciers and blindingly yellow/gold larch trees made it all worth it.
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@AustinHager You made very smart decisions that time around, Dude. Dang, that's beautiful.
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My first trip with my Southwest 70. Three days in the Two Medicine area of Glacier National Park.
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My Hyperlight packs have been with me climbing frozen waterfalls, skiing in the climbing throughout Pakistan and Nepal on 6 x 8000m in the past 6 months ....
more here:http://mountainsofmymind.com/gallery/
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Perfect sunny October day in Washington. Set out for a 10 mile day hike- little smokey but not bad! 75 degrees in October? I’ll take it!
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We have just come back from Mallorca, we decided to escape the rainy UK for some Spanish sunshine and hiked the GR221 trail across the island!
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My friends and I just did The Subway. This is a canyoneering route in Southern Utah in Zion Nation Park! We had a ton of fun and I used my Porter to carry the rope and all of the other items I needed!
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More for the words, but of course I wanted to include a photo as well.
Not my story, but a friend's. He was on the PCT in 2017, and got to the end of a brutally cold and wet day. His fingers were so immobile that he had to put his hands in his armpits for a bit in order to warm them up enough to undo his hip belt and sternum strap. Once that was taken care of and he got into his pack, he was disappointed to find that his sleeping bag was pretty damp and it would have been uncomfortable to get inside of. So when it was time for bed, he put on his rain jacket, got INSIDE his 3400 Windrider, and THEN got inside his sleeping bag, figuring that somehow this was the option that would keep him the driest and warmest. He made it through the night, and by the time he got up the next morning, his body heat and air flow had almost completely dried out his sleeping bag. Maybe not the intended use of the bag, but some interesting functionality if you're in a pickle.
I also wanted to share a short anecdote of my own, and thought this would be the best place to include it.
My dad's preferred reading material for most of the '80s and '90s was the newsprint Campmore catalog, that he would diligently study and make notes in every night before bed. By 2018, I had begun to follow in his footsteps, and spent many evenings researching all different kinds of camping gear online. I had a 4 pound pack, but was eye lighter options. One evening, my wife asked what I was doing. I was stoked to tell her about these cool products I was looking at, and started with:
"So there's this company called Hyperlite Mountain Gear, and they make..."
"Let me guess," she interrupted with a smirk.
Little did I know what I was getting myself into at the time, but I'm not complaining.
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@bugglife THERE'S NO GOING BACK NOW! Thanks for sharing these stories!
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Ramblings from a recent adventure with my Hyperlite gear in the Grand Canyon in pursuit of a remote summit:
Climbing in the grand canyon feels like a completely improbable task from start to finish.
The approaches typically average over 30 miles round trip. And that’s not to say walking a ton of miles is a huge deal. But traversing and scaling layers of geologic time and space through the vast expanse of the canyon is really something else. Always keeping tabs on your last water source, navigating dense thorny vegetation - a delicate dance amongst a landscape that could kill you however it pleases.
When you identify a canyon summit from a distance, you really can’t tell if a break in the rock even exists for manageable climbing.
In this place, the closer you get the more you see. Step after step, layer after layer. Tapeats sandstone, bright angel shale, muav and redwall limestones, then the supai group, hermit shale, and alas, the coconino sandstone summit cap. Then, something that felt improbable at the beginning, even in the middle, and also at the end, begins to shift from imagination to reality.
The canyon begs you to be patient. To explore and problem solve. To feel awe, magnificence, fear, pain, and love all at once. I really wasn’t sure if my body could pull this one off, and it barely did as I shuffled slowly over the rim overwhelmed by complete physical and mental exhaustion. Only to be met with the same question that prompted this adventure in the first place, "what's next?"
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Wow, @amykbannon - I enjoy your perspective!
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