one tough trip- snowshoeing across the Bob Marshall

[TxxAgg]

Well done

 

[brian wagar]

Incredible true grit!

 

[Steve O]

Retirement suits you well. Very cool!

 

[mtwarden]

Thanks Gents!

Excellent report with great pictures. Glad you all (including Pepper) made it out mostly intact! We are so lucky to have these wild places to roam. I’d guess more time and packing more food was on your mind. I initially thought maybe an alpine touring ski setup with leather boots would be more efficient but skis suck in blowdown. I still might do that instead, but admittedly I hate snowshoeing and my default is skis… even when snowshoes might be better Plus the frequently changing conditions would make it so you’d have to constantly put on and take off skins. I’d love to hear what you’d do differently if you were going to do the trip again.

we originally were going to go with skis, but I'm confident we made the right choice with the conditions we had- blowdown would have been nightmarish with skis; possibly worse was all the steep side-hilling- would have been tough with skis and I'm not that proficient of skier to begin with

definitely at least a full days food more than what we thought we'd need; a spare set of tops/bottoms would have been great to have, but not sure I'd bring them

What an adventure! Falling in the creek sounds pretty scary. Thank you for sharing

Definitely spooky given the weather; fortunately I think we played that one pretty well despite being swept

Wow awesome trip. I did a similar but shorter trip half way across the San Juans a few years ago. We used similar tactics taking turn breaking trail etc.

Kevin- your pack saved my bacon I got lax when shedding layers and not putting them in their dry bags; my mid-layer was stuffed into the main bag and it was bone dry when I put it on; my zip off bottoms were stuffed in one of your Talon pocket- it was also bone dry!

 

[sneaky]

Well done. Pretty ballsy taking the dog through the middle of wolf country. Bet the heater in the truck felt good after all that.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[Z Barebow]

What a trip! Jealous, until I heard blowdown. Awesome report.

 

[woods89]

I feel the word "epic" is grossly overused these days, but I think it's appropriate here. I feel like a wuss after reading that!

 

[grappling_hook]

Really neat, thanks for the pics and write-up. And congratulations!

 

[Gutshot007]

Amazing story. You guys are animals. Pretty impressive hike .

 

[3forks]

Fantastic trip and report!

Is your pack a 1st or 2nd generation Flight?

Also, if it’s not much trouble or time consuming - I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to hear what gear you used.

 

[Shraggs]

So no golf in your retirement then…

 

[BAKPAKR]

What a fantastic trip! I think you made a good choice with snow shoes. One of my friends and I crossed the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in March several years ago. We had skis but we also had hiking boots as we knew there would be a lot of hiking. Had we had something like Altai Hok skis available, that would have been another good choice as we wouldn’t have had to carry ski boots.

 

[MaraviaDave]

Congratulations on your accomplishment. Thanks for sharing. I think the most impressive part is that you did it using snowshoes. I can’t imagine snowshoeing much farther than a mile. To travel as far as you did shows true grit. Using skis would’ve reduced a lot of the challenge, required a lot less effort and probably felt like cheating, in comparison to snowshoes.

 

[jdmaxwell]

Hats off to both of you ! Way to grind.
Great example.

 

[orionsbrother]

Fantastic pics!! Great story. Glad getting swept didn’t become uglier.

 

[dakotaduner]

What a great trip. Thanks for sharing, great photos

 

[mtwarden]

Thanks Guys- much appreciated!

Fantastic trip and report!

Is your pack a 1st or 2nd generation Flight?

Also, if it’s not much trouble or time consuming - I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to hear what gear you used.

It's actually a Divide (I do have a gen 1 Flight though, but needed more volume for this trip)

sleep system was a FF Flicker w/ 3 oz of overfill- closer to 10-15 degrees; Thermarest XTherm, 40" section of a Z-Rest pad that doubled as sit pad, S2S pillow- also Goosefoot down booties and a Black Rock down beanie- I find if my feet and head are warm, it's half the battle
shelter is a Tarptent Stratospire LI- was a worthy shelter, but jealous of Tom's Locus Gear Djedi- which could be pitched in about 60 seconds. Brought both regular stakes (8" nail ones) and snow stakes- only used the regular stakes on night one
cook MSR Pocket Rocket w/ the copper strip for colder temps, MSR Big Titan pot (had to melt snow for water a couple of times)
clothing top- lightweight hardshell (never used), Montbell Alpine Light down parka, Patagonia Nano Air Light (mid-layer), Sitka Core Lightweight hoody, Black Diamond Alpine Start windshirt, bottom- Smartwool boxers, Kuiu Peloton 97 zip off bottoms, Sitka Ascent pants, Kuiu Yukon gaiters, 3 pairs of Darn Tough boot socks, Crispi Thor boots; hats/gloves Patagonia thermal weight beanie, BD lwt grid fleece liners, BD heavy wt fleece mitts and eVent overmitts
misc first aid kit, repair kit, fire kit, tp, maps/compass, iPhone (w/ Gaiagps loaded), avy shovel, microspikes, charger, headlamp w/ spare batteries, toiletries, etc

my pack with food for 6 days and 80 oz of water (32 oz Nalgene and a 48 oz Nalgene Cantene) was 33 pounds

 

[LaHunter]

Thanks for sharing. Great photos. So much for ‘taking it easy’ in your retirement! Keep getting after it.

 

[Pony Soldier]

I think that story pretty much puts the boundaries on "suffer index". I rode the western half of that in Sept of 93. It sucked then and I am surprised you survived.

 

[3forks]

Thanks Guys- much appreciated!




It's actually a Divide (I do have a gen 1 Flight though, but needed more volume for this trip)

sleep system was a FF Flicker w/ 3 oz of overfill- closer to 10-15 degrees; Thermarest XTherm, 40" section of a Z-Rest pad that doubled as sit pad, S2S pillow- also Goosefoot down booties and a Black Rock down beanie- I find if my feet and head are warm, it's half the battle
shelter is a Tarptent Stratospire LI- was a worthy shelter, but jealous of Tom's Locus Gear Djedi- which could be pitched in about 60 seconds. Brought both regular stakes (8" nail ones) and snow stakes- only used the regular stakes on night one
cook MSR Pocket Rocket w/ the copper strip for colder temps, MSR Big Titan pot (had to melt snow for water a couple of times)
clothing top- lightweight hardshell (never used), Montbell Alpine Light down parka, Patagonia Nano Air Light (mid-layer), Sitka Core Lightweight hoody, Black Diamond Alpine Start windshirt, bottom- Smartwool boxers, Kuiu Peloton 97 zip off bottoms, Sitka Ascent pants, Kuiu Yukon gaiters, 3 pairs of Darn Tough boot socks, Crispi Thor boots; hats/gloves Patagonia thermal weight beanie, BD lwt grid fleece liners, BD heavy wt fleece mitts and eVent overmitts
misc first aid kit, repair kit, fire kit, tp, maps/compass, iPhone (w/ Gaiagps loaded), avy shovel, microspikes, charger, headlamp w/ spare batteries, toiletries, etc

my pack with food for 6 days and 80 oz of water (32 oz Nalgene and a 48 oz Nalgene Cantene) was 33 pounds

Thanks for taking the time to advise on what you used!