A Day With Oliver Lee

I’ve seen a bit of the interior West lately. The middle of March found me finishing up wolverine work in the North Cascades of Washington state. By early April, I had performed the reverse-migration of driving south to the Sacramento Mountains of southern New Mexico. To put it another way—I used to be 60 miles [...]

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Salt Creek Canyon

Peekaboo Spring is the end of the road. And I suppose I could have driven there, save for the fact that my truck was heavily loaded with belongings. Instead, I took a walk from Squaw Flat Campground and five miles later found myself at a trailhead, complete with parked trucks and loud visitors. The biggest [...]

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Island in the Sky

Well, I sat down over the last few days to write up a bit about my visit to the backcountry of Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, and to my surprise, what was going to be a quick write-and-post has turned into a 3000 word or more behemoth. So instead of unloading a novel on you [...]

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Farewell to an Old Friend

In 1995, just graduated from college, my father was kind enough to buy me a pack as I looked forward to a trip West and the first step of my after-college life–a job surveying for Mexican spotted owls in southern Utah. It was an expedition-size Lowe Alpine pack that turned out to be much bigger [...]

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Flapjack Lakes, part one

It wasn’t until mid-afternoon on the 4th that I suddenly realized it was a holiday. Camping has a way of doing that to you. But I was on my way out. Each step bringing me closer to a truck, to cell service, to stores with cold beer, and yes — to fireworks. I almost didn’t [...]

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