Got Stuff?

Got Stuff?

by Tara Flanagan September 20, 2010 Cartographic

Technically speaking, gear is gear as long as it is actively useful. After that, it becomes stuff. At a certain point, it becomes certifiable crap, such as the 25-year-old randonee boards taking up space in a certain writer’s garage. Or that single climbing skin. Or the abandoned blades used in a cross-country ice-skating experiment. With the [...]

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High at Low

High at Low

by Michael Brady September 20, 2010 Mountain Notebook

Why the highest summits are at low latitudes By M. Michael BradyAmerican and European mountaineers have long known that, if you want altitude, go south. After Alaska became a State in 1959, Americans could add “or north” to that rule, as the elevation of the summit of Denali (Mount McKinley) is more than a vertical [...]

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Monsoonal

Monsoonal

by M John Fayhee September 20, 2010 September 2010

It’s a strange and wonderful thing when the first few trickles of (hopefully) imminent monsoon season (like mountains, seemingly predictable weather patterns are well capable of displaying false summits) hit generally fairly parched Gila Country. That joyful cli- matic circumstance is exacerbated by the fact that those first welcome splats of precipita- tion follow what [...]

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Panuelo

Panuelo

by Nathan Boddy September 20, 2010 Features

Douglas Adams may have taken it a bit too far in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” when asserting that a towel was “the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” He was certainly onto something, but I’d argue that it’s hard to discretely wrap up a chunk of hair-studded pig fat for quiet [...]

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Why Our Gear Represents Our Personality

Why Our Gear Represents Our Personality

by Devon O'Neil September 20, 2010 Features

Looking back, it makes sense that I found the jacket the day after college. I had just gotten my psychology degree and was ready to try and figure people out. Myself, for starters. The jacket was hanging in our living-room closet: a high-end red North Face coat, lined on the inside, with Gore-Tex on the [...]

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Anchored, But Never Tied Down

Anchored, But Never Tied Down

by Elizabeth Miller September 20, 2010 Features

When my boyfriend gave me my personal anchor system, it came in a series of Christmas gifts wrapped in newspapers, positioned so a photo filled one side of the box, with humorous thoughts and proclamations written over the heads of the people depicted. On the box with the PAS inside, a grinning woman in aviators [...]

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Gear Mania Comes Home to Roost

Gear Mania Comes Home to Roost

by M John Fayhee September 20, 2010 Features

Illustrations by Keith Svihovec Two years ago, just before Mountain Gazette senior correspondent B. Frank and I embarked upon a two-week pack-shlepping trip to Mexico’s rugged Copper Canyon, I did something I had not done in almost 20 years: I bought a whole slew of new backpacking gear, most of which I test drove on [...]

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Calendar September 2010

Calendar September 2010

by Dawne Belloise September 20, 2010 Features

Ooom pah! Billings, MT, Sept. 4-6. Can you dance for three days and nights? Youíre in luck if you like to polka, because the Big Sky Polka Festival keeps you three-steppiní high with, yes, beer, and German food and several fine polka bands, including Julie Lee and Her White Rose Band, Matt and the Dakota [...]

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