Simplifatico

High Uinta Alpenglow with the Olympus E-P1

Photo: Alpenglow reflected from Notch Mountain and into Clyde Lake in the Western Uintas. Olympus E-P1, m.Zuiko 14-42mm, f/22 1/2.5 sec @ 14mm.

Wilderness Water

Little waterfalls are pretty whereever they are found, but they seem to be just a little more special when encountered in the context of a wilderness trip. This one is south of Mid Creek, on a tiny tributary of the South Fork Flathead. It might be Henry Anderson Creek, or the creek just south of it.

Photo: Ryan Jordan, Sigma DP2, f/14 1/6 sec.

Pine Tree Bivouac

I'm really addicted to bivy-sackin'.

My bivy sack of choice for most of my trekking is the Integral Designs Micro Bivy. I put a custom floor on mine, so it only weighs about 12 oz, and it has the ultra-breathable eVENT top on it, so you don't fester in your own humidity quite so bad.

Perhaps my favorite thing about bivy-sackin' is the ability to just about sleep anywhere.

When we got out of our packrafts for the day near the confluence of the White River and South Fork Flathead River a few weeks ago in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, I found this perfect pine tree: the right slope, a little overhead protection from raindrops, low dead branches to hang stuff on, and an awe-inspiring full perimeter view of the mountains and river.

It reminded me of the old trappers from yesteryear, like Jim Bridger. I bet they unfurled their blankets below pine trees like this one.

Photo: Ryan Jordan, July 2009. Sigma DP2 f/2.8 1/1000 sec.

Proof That Inov-8 Shoes Are More Versatile Than Originally Believed

I love my Inov-8's. I use them for trekking, packrafting, off trail in the mountains, with heavy packs, buzzing around town, driving, typing, porch-swinging, and lawn mowing.

I'm pleased also to report that they are quite effective in the stirrups as well.

Photo: Ryan Jordan, July 2009, near the Stadler-Hoadley Divide, Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Sigma DP2 f/2.8 1/250 sec.

Eating Trout

I have this thing about trout.

I love to eat them when I'm in the backcountry.

There isn't anything real complex or philosophical about it (like returning a piece of the living earth back to my soul, etc.). I simply love the taste of trout.

I grew up eating fish. My dad fed our family with steelhead and salmon caught in the rivers of western Washington when I was a kid, and his love of fishing - and cooking fish - sort of rubbed off on me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I release a lot of fish, and I'm a big advocate of catch and release trout fishing. If I wasn't, I might get kicked out of Southwest Montana. Catch and release is like religion here.

But when I'm trekking, I like to eat fish.

I poach'em, steam'em, bake'em, fry'em, and now, with the 0.9 oz Zia Titanium Grill, I grill'em.

This 11.9 inch cutthroat was caught on a Syl Nemes' Soft Hackle Gray Drake spinner, then grilled on the banks of the South Fork Flathead River in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. We coated it with spicy breadcrumbs, drizzled olive oil on it, and let 'er rip over a little fire - and WOW - yeah, it was real good.

Photo: Ryan Jordan. Sigma DP2 f/2.8 1/5 sec.

Tenkara is Not Limited to Small Trout, or Small Creeks

If you are a backpacker and don't yet know about Tenkara, learn about it, because it's one of the most progressive concepts in fly fishing, and you need to know what it is, and why it's important. Stay tuned for a full review (including some fun video I took with a GoPro helmet cam) at BackpackingLight.com soon.

In particular, don't pay too much attention to the rumors that Tenkara is limited to small streams and small fish.

This fat cutthroat was taken from the South Fork Flathead River near the terminus of the White River in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

Photo: Ryan Jordan, July 2009. Sigma DP2 f/2.8 1/40 sec.

Wilderness Camping

I get excited about trekking in the wilderness, but sometimes, I get even more excited about camping in the wilderness, especially at spots like this one:

One photo of course cannot give a sense of place to this location, but it captures a little bit of the essence of where we were: a wild, off-trail location protected by towering cliffs above and below. We camped on a pretty narrow bench between the cliffs, carpeted with soft tundra. Waterfalls and marmots provided soundscape, pine and wildflowers the aroma, and cliffs and new avalanche swaths the drama.

Check back here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at mid-morning for the next four weeks, for more photography and anecdotes from my recent trip in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and stay tuned for information from this packrafting trek at BackpackingLight.com this fall.

Photo: Ryan Jordan, Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, July 2009. Sigma DP2 f/8 1/40 sec.

Gear List - Bob Marshall Wilderness Packrafting / Trekking

In a few hours I'll drive up to Great Falls, pick up my pals at the airport, and drive to a tiny community in the foothills of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem; from where we'll start a 120-mile circumnavigation of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex by foot and packraft (and only a little bit of cheating).

Here are the highlights from my gear list.

PACKRAFTING GEAR

I'll be packrafting in a number of major and minor drainages, ranging from easy going Class I rivers to (hopefully!) a few rumble-tumble PR4-5 creeks.

• Alpacka packraft w/spray deck (80 oz)
• Inflatable type III PFD (15 oz)
• 5-pc packraft paddle (30 oz)
• Helmet (9 oz)

TREKKING GEAR

• Dry bag backpack (40 oz incl. 65L dry bag)
• Woven nylon l/s trekking shirt and long pants (8 oz combined)
• Full zip hooded wind shirt (3.5 oz) 
• Merino wool long johns and pullover hoody (11 oz)
• Waterproof-breathable anorak and knickers (10 oz)
• Inov-8 RocLite 320 Shoes
• Combination of Steri-Pen Adventurer and Aqua Mira ClO2 Tablets for treatment 

CAMPING GEAR

• eVENT bivy sack
• synthetic fill quilt (prototype, 22.0 oz)  
• no pad (use pack, packraft, other gear) 
• no overhead shelter (use packraft, crawl in with friends, trees?)
• synthetic fill hoody (prototype, 7.5 oz)
• 750 ml ti pot, silicone muffin cup, ti spoon, firestarting kit, alcohol stove & windscreen, fuel bottle, ti grill, and fuel (14 oz)  

OTHER GEAR

• Fly fishing gear (Tenkara rod-based kit, 6 oz)
• Small HD Video Cam, Sigma DP2, SPOT, GoPro Wide Helmet Cam, Iridium 9555 (gear for media journalism)
• and all the other usual assortment of little junk that goes into assorted kits like foot care, repair, toiletries, etc.

This, and about 20,000 calories of food.

I weighed my pack and it's 36 pounds (no water). Which has me a little worried since my gear list says it should weigh 38.6 lbs, so...what did I forget?

I guess we'll find out.

Talk to you (via Twitter and SPOT) tomorrow night, I suppose.

Godspeed / RJ

MORE:

• Follow the geolocation of this expedition on a SPOT map at ryanjordan.com/weblog/spot.html.
• Follow SMS updates send from sat phone at twitter.com/bigskyry. 
• Stay tuned at ryanjordan.com for audioblog updates sent every day or two - or three.

Maps!

When I weighed the definitive trail map to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex (which includes the Bob Marshall, Great Bear, and Scapegoat Wilderness areas), the 1:100,000 scale map published by the USDA, it made me feel queezy: 3.7 ounces - that's almost worth 500 calories of food!

So I set out to hack it up and trim out the areas that we didn't need (oh wait, I mean -- didn't THINK we'd need)...

But this is a two-sided map, so it was tough to trim much off of it - I only got it down to 3.1 oz. Plus, it lacked any sort of meaningful lat-lon grid for navigating, no shaded relief (not a deal breaker, but I think it's pretty to see it when you step back from the map and look at the landscape), and it would be quite tedious to pre-plot our route and key waypoints on it.

So I decided to make my own with NG Topo! and our friends at Speedy Print in Bozeman.

Because 1:24k maps are huge and largely unnecessary for summer hiking (even most cross country travel), I settled on the 1:100k scale, which usually provides more than enough detail for long routes.

So I picked off a square area of about 3,190 square km, crammed it into 392 square inches of real estate by shrinking the scale down a little (to 1:126k). I plotted our proposed route with a bunch of little diamonds spaced every few miles, put some key waypoints on the map (possible camps, trail junctions, packrafting portages, etc.), added a UTM grid with 3km spacing, exported it as a big PDF, and had it printed on a single, 20-inch square sheet of Epson color paper on a fancy pro color sheet printer.

The final weight was 1.6 oz and it's gorgeous - a work of art with eye-popping sharpness. Not bad for a 200km route. The same map printed on lighter paper in B&W came to 0.7 oz. My hiking companions will each carry one of these. We also have some small 1:24k sections of areas we know the trails to have been ... compromised ... since the big fires there a few years ago, and some tricky off trail sections along the top of the Chinese Wall, where we'll attempt 25 miles of off trail travel - those sections weigh about 1.5 oz.

The paper accepts a fine point rollerball without smearing (I like to use the the Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine, 0.3 oz), and folds precisely and perfectly into a size that fits right into my favorite map case - a 12" x 12" Aloksak (weight 1.1 oz, nice to contain all my journaling stuff, and protect the map in case I flip the packraft or get bombarded with a deluge, although by itself, it's water-resistant enough for most trekking).

And my favorite part: I left big enough margins on the map to write a lot of notes, and I plan to journal on the backside - which is entirely blank ...

... which means I can leave my 0.8 oz notebook behind.