Feathered Friends Blog
Winter is coming which means the door is open for many fantastic outdoor activities. If you’re just getting into winter sports it can be a bit intimidating to plan your adventure, so here is a basic list of items that will make you much more comfortable and safe along the way!
Words and Pictures by Meghan Young. Meghan is an avid outdoorswoman from Washington and a founder of the Pacific Northwest Outdoor Women’s Group. You can follow her adventures on instagram @missmeghanyoung.
Ten Essentials
The ten essentials are a must-have for backcountry travel during any season. In the winter this list becomes even more important due to the more severe temperature ranges. Online you will find a few versions of the list, but I like the one created by our friends at The Mountaineers the best.
1. Navigation (map and compass)
2. Sun Protection (sunscreen, hat, sunglasses, and clothing)
3. Insulation (always bring a variety of layers)
4. Illumination (headlamp/ flashlight AND extra batteries)
5. First aid supplies
6. Fire (butane lighter and waterproof matches)
7. Repair kit and tools
8. Nutrition (extra food for one additional day)
9. Hydration (extra water and a purification method)
10. Emergency shelter
A trip report from AMGA/IFMGA Mountain Guide Jediah Porter.
Human adventures are like caribou antlers; born soft and fuzzy with hope. Really, both start as just an idea, deep in one’s DNA. As they take shape, before they even take action, they are gentle and virtually unnoticeable. The promise of their power and prominence is there, but the scratched, hormonal, prideful reality is yet to be revealed.
For us, the climb and ski of Alaska’s Mount Sanford started as just a tiny, incubating idea in a teenager’s soul. In Wildsnow, the definitive tome on North American ski mountaineering, guru (and now mentor) Lou Dawson mentions the Sheep Glacier route on Mount Sanford as perhaps the ultimate mid-difficulty ski run on a giant peak. I stumbled across that literally 20 years ago, and the idea has simmered since then.
My wife Meagan and I booked some guiding work in Alaska in the spring of 2016, and looked to tack on a personal adventure. The time was right, the team was right, Mount Sanford was the call.
Earlier in the summer a Feathered Friends staff member embarked on a five day backpacking trip through one of the most spectacular regions of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Her goal was to document the trip through daily sketches of the scenery she encountered. Here is an account of what it takes to paint and draw while exploring the backcoutnry. Pictures, paintings, and words by Claire Giordano.
The light shifts continually, playing across the face of the massive andesite rock walls rising from the crystalline lake at my feet. I work quickly, my paintbrush dancing between my sketchbook and the watercolor palette. Between strokes, I swat at the mosquitoes that hound my ears and bite my hands. It is just after dawn, and the alpenglow of sunrise has already changed from the palest of pinks to brilliant yellow. Soon, the light show will be over, and I hurriedly try to capture it’s colors before they are gone.
In July I had the lucky fortune to be invited on a backpacking trip to one of the most beautiful and highly regulated areas of wilderness: the Enchantments. Thousands of permit applications are sent in each year to visit this zone of alpine lakes, towering peaks, and fragile meadows. With so few chances to visit this area, I wanted to make the most of my experience and immerse myself in the landscape. My strategy was to bring a sketchbook, pens, and watercolor paper to record the things I saw each day that inspired me.
After two weeks of amazing submissions, the results are in for our #NPS100 and #FeatheredFriendsGear Instagram photo contest. Enjoy the pictures below, and check out the rest of their instagram galleries which are full of adventure inspiration. Thank you to everyone who submitted their pictures and memories!
First Place: @mountphillip (Phillip Rodriguez).
A trip report by Mark Pugliese on climbing in the Central Alaska Range.
As the plane banked my heart started racing and I thought “This is where the big stuff goes down.” We were flying into the East Fork of the Toke and the mighty West Face of Huntington dominated the window. I was seeing for the first time how truly massive this terrain was. Unfolding below us was an immense alpine playground of endless peaks, lines of ice, and crumbling glaciers. It would be a place to test ourselves and to find what we were both looking for in our climbing; a great adventure.
In late April of this year Nik Mirhashemi and I flew into the Central Alaska Range with plans of climbing some commonly ascended classics as well as hopefully establishing some new routes of our own. With a pattern of warm and unsettled weather we decided to fly into the Tokositna glacier at the base of Mt. Huntington to attempt the Harvard route as a warm up for the trip.