This looks to be an incredible journey! I look forward to following Ryan on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure!

Ryan Jordan is the co-founder and Publisher of Backpacking Light , on a 120-mile packrafting / trekking expedition in the Great Bear-Scapegoat-Bob Marshall Wilderness complex, and he’ll be blogging from a satellite phone, which is really very cool. You can follow Ryan and his team and learn more about the trip via Twitter or Ryan’s website, and you can also view their geolocation updates sent via SPOT.

Another very useful from South Cox on the all important “backpacking stoves” selection for backcountry hunting.

Adding extra weight to your pack is something we all try to avoid.  If a piece of equipment can be omitted from your pack and it doesn’t affect the outcome of your hunt, then it takes a pretty strong argument to carry the extra weight.  For some, the stove is one of those items.  Many make the argument that they’d rather just eat MRE’s and ditch the stove.  While I’d agree that we’re hardly out there trying to have a resort experience, keeping your body fueled is a very crucial part to your success in the field.  I’ve written more in depth about the weight trade-off for MRE’s vs. [[freeze dried]] in past issues of Eastmans’, and Cam Hanes included a couple of those pieces in his book Backcountry Bowhunting.  The jist of it is, you can carry heavier food (MRE’s), or carry a stove and lighter freeze dried food and oatmeal.  If you have ever lived off of MRE’s for a week, you’ll certainly feel for our troops.  While some of them aren’t bad at all, the diet gets old pretty quickly.  A hot meal from the wide variety of freeze dried meals available, plus the bonus of coffee or hot chocolate in the morning pretty well seals the deal for most of us backcountry hunters. 

Read the full article here.

The backcountry bowhunter who wrote this article is extremely knowledgeable on the “bivy” style hunting. Here is a teaser from last year’s first post on his blog.

South Cox’s goal in his blog is to help us learn the ropes of backcountry hunting. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or have never spent the night out in the wilderness, I think there will be something for everyone. I invite your questions, comments and critiques. The first several entries I plan on covering gear choices in greater detail than I was able to cover on the podcast. After that I’ll go into some specifics about mule deer hunting in the alpine. As I get input and feedback, the blogs will likely take off on other tangents of the readers’ interests.

Read the full article here.