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camping

Marc29
Featured

Grit: Marc Warnke’s Pack Goats

Goats are one of the earliest animals domesticated by humans. While they’ve been utilized for countless purposes, it’s still oddly uncommon in America to use them as pack animals, but one man hopes to buck the trend.

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5 Min
four people on snow machines in the early light of day driving across an ice sheet in Alaska
Field Notes

Filson in the Field: Searching for Muskox in the Alaskan Arctic

As a company founded on equipping folks headed into the frozen desolation of the Klondike goldfields in 1897, we knew that we needed to do something that was a bit off the beaten path. With this in mind, we decided to head to the western edge of Alaska, above the Arctic Circle to tell the tale of the remarkable rebirth of an animal that was hunted to extinction in North America over a century ago, the musk ox.

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4 Min
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How-To's

Filson Fundamentals: The Anatomy of a Knife & Choosing the Right One

We reached out to local knife maker, Robb gray of Graycloud knives, to give us the full rundown of the anatomy of a knife and how to choose the best for one’s intended use.
“I’ve made over 3000 knives in my shop and I get a lot of the same questions from my clients. “I want a knife: I’m just not sure which one I need!” To help them answer that question, I first ask them to describe what they want to use it for and how they want to use it.”

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5 Min
person in white parka looking out over a vast snowy plain with mountains with rifle over his back
Field Notes

Ski Hunting the Alaskan Arctic

For untold millennia humans have been strapping skis to their feet and heading out to hunt prey. In the Altai Mountains of western China, 10,000-year-old rock art depicts paleohunters engaging in the practice, while 4,000-year-old rock carvings in Norway show the same thing. Its DNA is even found in the biathlon of the Olympic Games.

Hunting for game on skis is not easy. It requires commitment. The weather is often harsh, the trails challenging, and the quarry difficult to find. It’s a more organic way of stalking prey. The advantages that the modern hunter has are fewer. It’s more akin to times past when hunting was much more rugged and dangerous. Skiing into the backcountry off the highway can be deadly, especially in the spring. Storms can blow up unexpectedly, the temperatures often top out at twenty below, equipment fails, and there is no lifeline. You are on your own.

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10 Min
stylized painting of people sitting around a campfire in spooky looking woods
Field Notes

Filson Community: Campfire Ghost Stories

Cheers to everyone who wrote in with their scariest campfire ghost stories. Read on for our favorite submissions, and be sure to commit one to memory for your next night around the campfire…

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10 Min
woman in an outdoor bathtub with a piece of wood with a rainer beer on it balancing over the silver tub in a grassy field
How-To's

DIY Stock Tank Hot Tub

In this how-to, we show you how to make your very own wood-fired hot tub with simple materials you can get right at the hardware store. You’ll be up and running in just a couple hours for about $200.

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10 Min

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roasted pork shoulder with foraged asparagus & wild spring onions in a cast iron skillet with charred lemon
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Pork Shoulder with Foraged Asparagus & Wild Spring Onions

Spring onions are truly wild and much more abundant than asparagus. They can be found in drier climates in open clearings and among sparsely treed Douglas Fir forests. The challenge is that the green onion shoots often look just like grass. Look for clumps of 4–6 green cupped or folded shoots that all meet together where they come out of the ground. Use your fingers or a knife to dig out the root slightly before pulling them out as a whole cluster. Once you get an eye for them you will notice them absolutely everywhere.

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3 Min
silhouetted man paddling a canoe in a river
Profiles

Why We Must: On Diversity in the Outdoors by Eddy Harris

“It’s easy to imagine that Black Americans don’t ski, don’t fly-fish for trout, don’t camp out, don’t kayak or surf, and don’t appreciate nature – don’t do a lot of things. Somewhere along the way, the Black experience, at least in the eyes of so many people – Blacks included – became an urban phenomenon, as if living in cities precludes the desire and possibility of re-creating in the great outdoors and appreciating the natural environment.

I have done all of those activities, and then some. I fish, I camp, I hike in the woods, I hike in the mountains. I even like opera. I have canoed the length of the Mississippi River twice. If there is a reason we don’t see Blacks taking part in a lot of those activities, perhaps it has more to do with economics and exposure and less to do with the activities themselves.” – An excerpt from Why We Must, by author and storyteller Eddy L. Harris.

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5 Min
man pouring water into a measuring cup from a camp travel cooking supply box
How-To's

DIY Camp Chuck Box

One of the biggest challenges of any camping trip is having a proper cooking loadout. The solution is one that dates back to the 1800s Oregon Trail: the chuck box.
A chuck box is essentially a kitchen in a box. It stores your cooking stove, fuel, pots, pans, utensils, and food. When open, it offers a flat prep surface for a proper fireside meal and helps keep all of your kitchen items neatly organized in one place. Since a chuck box is portable, it’s very versatile as you can leave it the trunk of your rig or set it up on any flat surface. In this how-to, we’ve teamed up with Peter Capar to provide you with a full build design for a simple, customizable, chuck box using a single sheet of plywood.

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10 Min
smore with bacon on a wooden plate
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Drunken Bacon S’mores

You know what a s’more is. They’ve been a camping staple around the fire for as long as any of us can remember. But what we have here today is a clever and boozy upgrade on a camping staple. Read the Recipe on the Filson Journal for Drunken Bacon S’mores These s’mores are irresistible thanks to their sweet and salty combo. Bourbon, bacon, and chocolate are the stars of the show and make for a campfire treat that upstages the classic version.

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5 Min
bone in steak with diced herbs, roasted halved tomato and potato hash on a wooden cutting board center text
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Campfire Steak & Hash

One of the challenges in the backcountry is pulling off cooking a meal without all the equipment we are used to in our home kitchens. This challenge also makes it a lot of fun and forces you to get creative. The magic of cooking outdoors over a fire is hard to replicate at home. The food won’t usually look as nice, but somehow it seems to taste that much better. Maybe it’s something primal about cooking food over a campfire as our ancestors did, or maybe it’s the fresh air and big vistas. Whatever it is, it makes cooking in the outdoors very much worthwhile. One easy way to cook over a fire is by using a flat rock like a hot plate. Choose a dry, flat rock and clean it well before using it. Avoid rocks that are sitting in water as they have a tendency to explode when heated. Heat the rock thoroughly before cooking to make sure it can take the heat.

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5 Min
blueberry pancakes with crumbled walnuts on a white plate with syrup drizzling from a tin
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Cast Iron Blueberry Pancakes

This recipe works equally well camping, as it does on a lazy weekend morning. Pancakes are pretty perfect already, but this version takes it to whole other level, topped with ice cream, homemade streusel, and spices.

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5 Min
woman in brown and gray flannel shirt blowing through the side of a rocket stove sending sparks out of the central hole in the log
How-To's

How to Create a Rocket Stove

Simple, compact, scalable, the wooden rocket stove uses itself as fuel. named for it’s likeness to the business end of a rocket, this method produces an incredibly efficient cook-top when a hot meal or some potable water are a must.

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10 Min
Screen Shot 2020-04-15 at 11.35.16 AM
How-To's

How to Make a Backwoods Steam Tent

Life outdoors is taxing on the body. In this very barebones demo, we’ll run through how to recover with a DIY steam tent.

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5 Min
man driving atv splashing through puddle on dirt road in a mossy forest
How-To's

A Guide to Overlanding the North Cascades

The North Cascade Mountains of Washington attract all types of recreationists during the spring and summer months, from locals to tourists, from hikers and climbers to high mountain anglers and bird watchers. But one type of recreationist gets overlooked and even sometimes gets a bad rap: the overlanders.

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4 Min
knife cutting venison sirloin held by hand next to a hasselback potato on top of a wooden cutting board with sauce in a small bowl
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: Santa Maria Venison Sirloin

When we think of American BBQ, we tend to think of Southern BBQ: slow-cooked brisket, pulled pork, pit beans, coleslaw, etc., but there are a lot of other BBQs to be found around the U.S. Case in point, California BBQ.

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2 Min
pile of split firewood stacked with a red building behind it
How-To's

How to Stack Firewood

Follow these easy 5 steps for proper stacking and storage of firewood. This easy guide will provide a safe location to protect your wood from the elements while keeping out any unwanted pests and ultimately keep your home or cabin warm during the colder months.

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4 Min
cast iron pan on a flaming outdoor grill with browned steak, halved red onion, whole garlic and sprigs of thyme
Food & Recipes

Filson Food: The Perfect Cast Iron Steak

There are many ways to cook an amazing steak, but none beat the simplicity of a cast-iron seared steak basted in herbed brown butter. Try it once and you will be convinced.

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3 Min
an illustration of a wood log burning from the inside out with a cast iron dutch oven on top
How-To's

How to Build a Swedish Fire Log

When the Swedish army jumped into the Thirty Years War to invade the Holy Roman Empire, the soldiers developed a highly efficient campfire that required only a single log, commonly known as the Swedish Fire Torch or, in the Great White North, the Canadian Candle.

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3 Min
drawing of coiled rattlesnake with head and tail highlighted
How-To's

Snakebite Prevention and First Aid

While snakebites are a relatively rare occurrence, knowing how to prevent or treat one is a potentially lifesaving skill. This is especially true for those of us who spend a lot of our time outdoors, whether for work or recreation. The more you know, the better you can prepare if something should ever happen to

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5 Min
forest service cabin in the snow
How-To's

How to Rent a Forest Service Cabin

If you’re looking for a vacation rental that is slightly more adventurous than usual, it’s worth looking into renting one of the USFS fire lookout towers or backcountry cabins. Learn how.

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3 Min
building a tarp shelter among dead grasses and logs near river
How-To's

How to Build a Tarp Shelter

With a simple tarp and a few lengths of 550 cord, you can make a quick shelter to ride out a storm should the weather turn bad on your next trip into the woods. Alaskan sheep guide Casey Barton shows us how. Step 1: Select your site and gather a few sticks. You will want four

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2 Min
hiking along the river with fishing gear
How-To's

What to Pack for a Backpack Fly Fishing Trip

Backpacking is a great way to re-familiarize yourself with the often-elusive feeling of spare time. With a little extra planning, you can turn a backpacking trip into a fly-fishing trip. We asked Sage Elite Pro and backcountry fishing expert Seth Blackamore about what he packs for a minimalist backcountry fishing kit.

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2 Min
Wind River bends through canyon with sheer white rocks
Field Notes

What Is The Land and Water Conservation Fund

For more than 50 years, LWCF has been called America’s most important tool in conservation. But all that was subject to change last September when authorization for the fund faced the legislative chopping block

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5 Min
claire portrait in black raincoat with orange hat
Profiles

In Print: Claire Jenck’s Road to the Ocean

Winter brings the best northwest waves. When friends find out I surf in Washington, they are usually incredulous. “No, what? In winter? But it’s so cold” they say. I should try to persuade them otherwise. I should tell them how wild the peninsula is, how uncrowded and pristine, about how last year I surfed with

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5 Min
jessie with horses drinking from river in grassy field with pine trees
Profiles

Jessie Allen: More Than Miss Wyoming

“Jessie manages her family’s guest ranch and outfitting business in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. She guides pack trips for fly fishermen, rock climbers, backpackers, yogis and big game hunters, both archery and rifle. At 9,200 feet with no electricity, cell service or internet, the Diamond 4 Ranch is Wyoming’s highest elevation guest ranch.

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8 Min
biking near the river
Field Notes

After Wildfire

A bike-pack fishing trip through a scorched landscape was not the trip that Ashlee thought she was going to take – but the things she saw and the experience she had left an impression about how we interact with the landscape after wildfire. “Lucky for you, all the goat’s head burned too,” someone said, smiling,

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5 Min
Smokejumper s enter red and white plane in full gear
Field Notes

The Life of a Smokejumper: Wait. Jump. Fight. Repeat

When it’s fire season, you don’t buy concert tickets. You don’t make dates. You miss your kid’s birthday. When you’re at the top of the jump list, you don’t go out of range of the alarm. You stay on the base. Send friends to pick up your family at the airport. You don’t take your

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7 Min
night time sky with milky way visible
Profiles

Camping at Enchanted Rock with Asher Moss

Camping in Texas is like camping in the fiery furnace of hell. Scorpions, spiders, red ants and mysterious creatures of the sky that appear as the sun drifts off to the edge of the horizon. The stars out here will literally take your breath away. They may also shut you up or make you think

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Travis Gillett picture of body of water from pine lined hilltop
How-To's

Filson Field Guide: Spend a Weekend in the Olympic National Forest

One of Filson’s favorite destinations from Seattle is the Olympic National Forest, and with it the promise of old-growth hemlock and fir, as well as awe-inspiring and unbounded views of this indescribable region. Our 4 tips for a weekend in the Olympics.

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