Feathered Friends Blog
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.
Join Patagonia Climbing Ambassador Colin Haley for an evening presentation about his last season in Patagonia. He’ll talk about the record-shattering climb he completed with Alex Honnold of the Torre Traverse; a 20 hour, 40 minute traverse of Cerro Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger, and Cerro Torre. Get inspired, drink a cold one, and score … Continue reading Store Event: Torre Traverse with Colin Haley and Patagonia
The post Store Event: Torre Traverse with Colin Haley and Patagonia appeared first on Expedition Tales.
Our Seattle store just received the new Suunto Spartan Ultra watches! Over the last week we sent one out in the field to gather some top-level beta on this new multisport GPS watch from Suunto. Keep your eyes out over the next few months for more in-depth reviews of specific features.
Over the last week I got to take Suunto’s Spartan Ultra HR on a few field tests. Here are my initial impressions. Keep your eyes out for subsequent follow-up reviews after I have gotten it on some backpacking trips, tracked data longer, and explored the upcoming software updates.
Out of the box
The Spartan looks and feels great. I got my hands on the All-black HR with the steel bezel, and it looks clean, sharp, and streamlined. In the box is a very simplified instruction manual, a connector cable, a HR monitor, and a sticker (I am a sucker for stickers).
Putting the watch on was a pleasant surprise. The first thing I noticed was how light it felt. As a woman with quite small wrists, I have tried on most GPS watches on the market and disliked the feel of all of them. All of them looked huge on me and would not wrap properly around my wrist; at best they would flop around when I ran, and worst would press on my lower arm bone quite uncomfortably. While the Spartan does look big on me, it is actually comfortable for a long day of hiking. A big part of the comfort for me is the slightly curved back face of the watch and the siliconized straps that hold the watch in place without having to be tightened uncomfortably.
While the watch is likely too big to be my all-day every-day wearer, I can easily see it meeting this need for someone with larger wrists or someone who is used to a larger device.
This summer we released a kid’s version of our popular Flicker sleeping bag. Ben Popper invested in one for his son, and recounts why he chose the bag and what it was like on their first trip. Words and images by Ben Popper.
The Flicker changed my night’s sleep in the backcountry for the better. Feathered friends says it is filled with goose down. I’d argue it is full of magic unicorn hair and clouds. My Flicker started coming on our family backpacking trips this spring and almost immediately our five year old took a shining to it. I sleep with it as a blanket and a month ago in the Goat Rocks Wilderness after waking up, he crawled underneath it with me to reiterate how “soft and warm” it is. His words not mine, I swear. His bag is good enough, but even compressed it was larger than his torso and takes up nearly half of my 65l pack. He’d made it through the summer without any of the dreaded backcountry overnight “accidents” so I pitched the idea of the new kids Flicker to my partner and then him. Purple like mom’s or blue like dad’s? Purple. We looked at the options available and surprisingly there are not many kids down bags available. It was decided we get out enough with him that it would be worth it. Being local to Seattle, I gave the store a call.
Two members of the Feathered Friends staff recently welcomed new additions to their families, so we are sharing a blog post written by the Washington Trails youth Programs Director Krista Dooley about hiking with a new baby (originally published on WTA’s awesome Signpost Blog). Kris shares what it was like to recuperate from birth, and how hiking has changed for her and her husband now that they’re sharing the trail with a third little hiker.
While I was pregnant my husband and I dreamed of being an outdoorsy family. We talked about the outdoor adventures we wanted to share with our new baby, and how we would do monthly family outdoor adventures. We’d start with hikes, then go camping, fishing and more adventurous outings.
We each have our preferred activities. I like to hike, backpack, camp, run, and bike, while my husband enjoys rock climbing and mountaineering. We share a love of fly fishing. I’ve seen many families on trail and always imagined the day I would hike with my own child and how amazing those shared outdoor experiences would shape her view of the world.