Backpacking in the pecos
Went backpacking in the pecos wilderness the other weekend with some friends. This is only my second time back to this area (for backpacking — I've skied here plenty) since I was at Philmont as a boyscout. One thing I love about this part of the country is that you can hike for five minutes and the trees and other plants will change almost completely (but not as much as I love the fact that there are essentially no mosquitoes).
Aspens with almost bare ground:
Evergreens with lots of ground cover:
Back to Aspens, but with ground cover this time:
Almost looks like a boreal forest with evergreens and lichen:
A beautiful alpine meadow:
Although I think it's gauche to carve one's name into trees, I sometimes think it's pretty cool. This one is so old that it's almost completely illegible. The date appears to say "39". My grandparents weren't even married yet. The guy who carved his name probably isn't even alive anymore. It's pretty amazing to think that people have been hiking this trail for at least 71 years.
We camped just outside of a huge meadow that was marbled with little streams.
It was covered in white clover and what I'm 90% sure was yarrow.
Very convenient, since these are two of the only plants whose uses I'm familiar with. I ate some clover — tasted a bit like baby greens. One of the guys I was with cut himself kind of badly on a knife I had given him the previous night (He and his wife organize a lot of great trips, like this one, and are always generous with their gear, so I made them a couple of knives). We had enough first aid supplies that we didn't need to use any wilderness medicine, but it was comforting to know that we would have been okay anyway (yarrow can be used in a wound dressing).
I wanted to spend a lot of time this trip practicing my whittling skills on this trip. I carved my first spoon with my Kephart knife, which was my belt knife for this trip. It was my first spoon ever, but my kephart did a good job of it (it did a good job of processing firewood, too):
Ate my breakfast with it the next day. It proved to be very comfortable to eat with, and the burnt flavor improved my oatmeal:
I actually whittled all of my utensils for this trip. I also made some chopsticks for my meal that night.
I tested out a new neck knife for this trip. I call this one 'paramoura':
It weighs 3.5oz in the sheath, and 4.8oz with the lanyard and firesteel. The blade is 3". I'd like to get a smaller firesteel for this rig to reduce weight, and possibly have a loop for it so I don't have to take off the whole lanyard to start a fire. But this is what I happen to have right now. My philosophy for this knife is to be for fine carving. If I'm carrying a larger belt knife, it may not be perfect for carving. This fills the same niche that a folder did for nessmuk or kephart. I like this a lot better than my previous neck knife design:
The paramoura is FFG, which I am liking, but I want to experiment with a scandi grind on this type of knife, too. One nice thing about the FFG is that it's lighter because more steel is removed.
I made a small try stick a la Mors Kochanski:
I also did one with my kephart, but I forgot to take a picture.
While my friends were making mountain house meals on their gas stove, I was roasting sausage and bread over the fire:
Toggle for getting my bottle out of the fire:
I prefer jutte twine for camp gadgets like this because there's no litter — toss it in the fire and it's gone in an instant. In my experience, people used to modern backpacking and camping are impressed by little things like this. Hoping to get a couple more backpacking trips in this year. One of them is going to be a minimal bushcrafting trip that I'm real psyched about.
Thanks for looking.
- Chris
Went backpacking in the pecos wilderness the other weekend with some friends. This is only my second time back to this area (for backpacking — I've skied here plenty) since I was at Philmont as a boyscout. One thing I love about this part of the country is that you can hike for five minutes and the trees and other plants will change almost completely (but not as much as I love the fact that there are essentially no mosquitoes).
Aspens with almost bare ground:
Evergreens with lots of ground cover:
Back to Aspens, but with ground cover this time:
Almost looks like a boreal forest with evergreens and lichen:
A beautiful alpine meadow:
Although I think it's gauche to carve one's name into trees, I sometimes think it's pretty cool. This one is so old that it's almost completely illegible. The date appears to say "39". My grandparents weren't even married yet. The guy who carved his name probably isn't even alive anymore. It's pretty amazing to think that people have been hiking this trail for at least 71 years.
We camped just outside of a huge meadow that was marbled with little streams.
It was covered in white clover and what I'm 90% sure was yarrow.
Very convenient, since these are two of the only plants whose uses I'm familiar with. I ate some clover — tasted a bit like baby greens. One of the guys I was with cut himself kind of badly on a knife I had given him the previous night (He and his wife organize a lot of great trips, like this one, and are always generous with their gear, so I made them a couple of knives). We had enough first aid supplies that we didn't need to use any wilderness medicine, but it was comforting to know that we would have been okay anyway (yarrow can be used in a wound dressing).
I wanted to spend a lot of time this trip practicing my whittling skills on this trip. I carved my first spoon with my Kephart knife, which was my belt knife for this trip. It was my first spoon ever, but my kephart did a good job of it (it did a good job of processing firewood, too):
Ate my breakfast with it the next day. It proved to be very comfortable to eat with, and the burnt flavor improved my oatmeal:
I actually whittled all of my utensils for this trip. I also made some chopsticks for my meal that night.
I tested out a new neck knife for this trip. I call this one 'paramoura':
It weighs 3.5oz in the sheath, and 4.8oz with the lanyard and firesteel. The blade is 3". I'd like to get a smaller firesteel for this rig to reduce weight, and possibly have a loop for it so I don't have to take off the whole lanyard to start a fire. But this is what I happen to have right now. My philosophy for this knife is to be for fine carving. If I'm carrying a larger belt knife, it may not be perfect for carving. This fills the same niche that a folder did for nessmuk or kephart. I like this a lot better than my previous neck knife design:
The paramoura is FFG, which I am liking, but I want to experiment with a scandi grind on this type of knife, too. One nice thing about the FFG is that it's lighter because more steel is removed.
I made a small try stick a la Mors Kochanski:
I also did one with my kephart, but I forgot to take a picture.
While my friends were making mountain house meals on their gas stove, I was roasting sausage and bread over the fire:
Toggle for getting my bottle out of the fire:
I prefer jutte twine for camp gadgets like this because there's no litter — toss it in the fire and it's gone in an instant. In my experience, people used to modern backpacking and camping are impressed by little things like this. Hoping to get a couple more backpacking trips in this year. One of them is going to be a minimal bushcrafting trip that I'm real psyched about.
Thanks for looking.
- Chris
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