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profile

hands holding an olive green colored fish above the surface of the water
Profiles

Matt Mendes of Spin the Handle: Chasing Reservation Chrome

Before Matt Mendes guided on the Deschutes River, he drove the Green Monster. It was 2002, and Mendes was 13 years old; the job was his first on the river. The Green Monster, an old Ford F350, nicknamed for its paint job, belonged to his maternal grandfather, Al Bagley, a revered fly-fishing guide and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. The tribe governs the 1,019-square-mile Warm Springs Indian Reservation, located in Oregon’s high desert and bound to the east by the Deschutes, one of the country’s premier steelhead and trout destinations. In 1997, Bagley became the tribe’s first fly-fishing guide, capitalizing on its exclusive access to 22-miles of the Deschutes’s west bank, per an 1855 treaty with the United States government. The business was gangbusters from the get-go.

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5 Min
man holding oars while standing in boat
Profiles

Lael Johnson – Olympic Peninsula Fly Guide

Lael Johnson is a fly fisherman and guide on the Olympic Peninsula. His passion for the anadromous fish of Washington’s coastal rivers is contagious. He loves these fish, these rivers, and the people he is lucky enough to experience them with. Filson Contributor Ben Matthews spent a few days on the river with Lael to ask a few questions about guiding, steelhead, and life in general. If you’re interested in heading out on the river with Lael yourself, check out his website and book a trip. You won’t regret it.

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5 Min
grizzly bear in river trying to catch fish in running water
Profiles

Return of the Icons: Grizzly Bear Reintroduction

Grizzly bears. An icon of the West. A keystone predator that can weigh up to 600 pounds. Their thick, lush fur can range from dark brown to nearly towhead blonde. They are capable of surviving the harshest of conditions, if allowed to. They once ranged from Northern Alaska to Central Mexico, but while Alaska and western British Columbia still have large numbers of bears, their southern range has shrunk dramatically to just a handful of areas in the lower 48, including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming, western Montana, northern and eastern Idaho.

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4 Min
team of vets and forestry service personnel inspect an animal on a towel on top of a table with a breathing apparatus attached to its face
Profiles

Conservation Northwest: Keeping the Northwest Wild

For the 7.5 million residents of Washington state, most, if not all, have used or will use I-90 at some point. This interstate connects the two largest cities in the state: Seattle to the west and Spokane to the east. It also runs right through the southern end of the North Cascade mountains, home to great populations of blacktail deer, Roosevelt elk, coyotes, and black bears, among other species. As you drive east from Seattle, you might notice a bridge with no roads connected to it that spans the interstate just before you get to the city of Easton. This bridge is a wildlife crossing that will help keep these animals safe from vehicles. The bridge is there thanks to a Seattle-based organization, Conservation Northwest, and is just one of many projects this organization has helped fund, design and implement in this region.

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2 Min
rocky mountainside and snow on mount rainier amongst low lying clouds
Profiles

The Glaciers of the North Cascades

North Cascades National Park counts more than 300 glaciers along this northwestern spine of mountains—and that’s just inside the park boundaries. The North Cascades are the most glaciated place in the country outside of Alaska, but this ice-clad range has remained relatively under the radar compared to places such as Montana’s Glacier National Park or Mount Rainier in the South Cascades. The landscape here feels wilder, at the edge of things, with a mystical feel of vastness and geologic time lent by the presence of these relics from the last ice age.

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5 Min
North Cascade mountains dusted with snow rising out of pine forest
Profiles

North Cascades: Bastion of the Wild

Sitting like stone guardians just below the Canadian border, the North Cascade mountains are keepers of the wildness that once roamed unchecked across North America. Soaring high into the skies, their stony and snowy peaks seem to scrape at the clouds that pass overhead demanding tribute as they float by. Sparkling like scattered gems, glacially fed lakes brilliantly reflect the sunlight while, through deep green valleys, bright, blue-gray rivers run down to the surrounding flatlands. It is a spot where a person could quickly leave behind all of the trappings that attach themselves to our modern daily existence and transport to another existence entirely.

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4 Min

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black and white portrait of man wearing a puffy coat standing in a rocky field with a large sheer snowy cliff in the background
Profiles

Climber Fred Beckey: Spirit of the Mountains

If you listen hard enough, you can hear Fred Beckey’s spirit whispering among the towering peaks and hidden valleys of the Northern Cascades. Around campfires, bar tops, or anywhere that people gather, his name tends to pop up. He is an outdoors urban legend, the mythical mountaineer who spent eight decades solely focused on one thing and one thing only: climbing.

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3 Min
black and white image of hands holding a sketchbook with sketches of people, boats, and camping equipment
Profiles

Rick Myers: Profile of an Illustrator

In Rick Myers’s garage sits a hand-built dingy—shiny with newness, waiting patiently for water. Adjacent, the oars that will propel it lie unfinished across two sawhorses. The illustrator holds a bench plane. With both hands, he runs the razor’s edge of the tool across the oar blade, and curly ribbons of red and yellow cedar fall in a fragrant pile around his feet.

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3 Min
image of eclectic decor of the backbar at the salty dog saloon, human skull, old pinup portraits, and money hung everywhere
Profiles

The Salty Dawg Saloon

In the Middle East and Europe you can visit places built over 2,000 years ago. In Alaska you are unlikely to see anything older than 50. That’s what makes the Salty Dawg Saloon in Homer such a rarity. It possesses a history that goes back to 1897, when the first building was built, and it holds onto it.

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2 Min
Large green and red ferry vessel in open water with mountains in background
Profiles

Bay Weld Boats

The shop is loud. Metal screams on metal. Chop saws, band saws, air saws, table saws, skilsaws, drills, grinders, and welders all sculpt, slice, and meld aluminum plate and extrusion into boats for Alaska’s most discerning captains.

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4 Min
chest up view of person in scuba gear standing above water
Profiles

Zech Bennett: The Undersea Tradesman

When you meet Zech Bennett, he seems like a pretty ordinary guy. Not too tall or too short, he seems somewhat in shape but is not a chiseled gym rat. The brown hair sticking out from underneath his baseball cap is slightly askew, and his face breaks into an easy smile. He is the type of person you could share a few beers with at the bar while swapping stories about ferrying kids to events or catching up on the latest scores. It’s only when you hear what the 32-year-old Homer, Alaska, resident does for a living that you realize there is more to him than you see at first glance.

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4 Min
portrait of middle aged woman with tinted glasses in a fleece vest
Profiles

Kate Mitchell – NOMAR

An old homesteader once told Kate Mitchell, “That was about the year you figured you weren’t going to starve to death.” By then, much of the community enjoyed wanton luxuries like electricity and indoor plumbing. That was also the year Kate moved to Homer.

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4 Min
Kathy Burek in green overalls gathering organic material from a beachhead
Profiles

The Puzzle Master: Kathy Burek

Anyone who has ever spent hours huddled over a puzzle knows the joy of finally figuring it out. Whether it’s an obscure image coming together piece by piece, that head-scratcher of a rhyme finally making sense, or completing the last box in a crossword, the endorphin rush of finally getting the right answer makes all of the effort worthwhile. But imagine devoting your life to untangling complicated mysteries but rarely knowing if you have solved the puzzle correctly. Most people couldn’t handle it, it might even drive them mad. But, Kathy Burek has done this almost every day for the last twenty-five years, and she loves it.

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5 Min
Man draws in a sketchbook at an aquarium
Profiles

Renowned Artist and Activist: Ray Troll

Ray’s Alaska adventure started in 1983, when he moved here to help his sister open a seafood retail store in Ketchikan. Ray soon turned to art to document his experiences in the unique fishing culture that permeated the town.

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4 Min
man working under the deck of a wooden ship being built
Profiles

For the Love of Wooden Boats: Port Townsend’s Shipwrights Co-Op

Southeast of Port Townsend is a gravel yard where large boats balance on blocks of wood and slender steel stands. Removed from the water, the vessels reveal pleasing, functional curves. Inside massive sheds, deliberate Lilliputians in warm and dusty clothing crawl in and out of the leviathans to a symphony of hand and power tools.

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3 Min
black and white image of boats anchored in a harbor. Small double deck fishing vessel named
Profiles

Western Flyer: The Vessel of John Steinbeck

On the morning of Monday, March 11, 1940, writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts boarded the sardine seiner Western Flyer at a wharf in Monterey, California. Both men were moving slowly because a fiesta to celebrate the end of fishing season had gone on late into the night after a boat parade, a barbecue, and seine skiff races. Steinbeck and Ricketts were well-known on the waterfront—and elsewhere—so their departure on a six-week expedition drew a raucous crowd. They didn’t get away until that afternoon, and as the Flyer eased from her berth, Steinbeck noticed that the whiskey they’d loaded for medicinal purposes was gone. “Good,” he thought. “A lot of people I know won’t be getting sick for awhile if the booze does its job.”

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7 Min
orca swimming just beneath the surface of the ocean
Profiles

The Ocean’s Top Predator: Puget Sound Orcas

Black fins sliced the water and rose higher and higher, close to our boat. With a puff and a blow, the orcas surfaced: members of J pod, the southern resident whales that frequent Puget Sound. The whales blew mighty breaths. They are mammals,
like us.

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4 Min
man on boat in red plaid shirt and tan apron prepares a halibut stomach as bait on a wooden surface
Profiles

Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union

Back at the turn of the last century, a hardy group of men roamed the wooden docks of Seattle. Grizzled and gruff, they would spend days out on the unpredictable and often dangerous waters of the Salish Sea and nearby Pacific Ocean.

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3 Min
three members of Puget Sound keepers, a middle aged man and two 20 year old women pulling aboard ocean trash
Profiles

Puget Soundkeeper: On the Water Every Week, Stopping Pollution Every Day

On any given day, Puget Soundkeeper’s boat patrol team can be seen monitoring the waters of Puget Sound for illegal pollution and activities that violate the health of our waterways. The signs are often masked and hard to catch but, if you know what to look for, you can find them.

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5 Min
image from afar capturing the landscape of a Puget Sound ferry crossing the water with mountains towering overhead
Profiles

WSDOT Ferries

Twenty thousand years ago, a glacier tall as six Space Needles whittled the valley between the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, leaving a complex inland seascape. The First Nations people who followed the melting ice observed the freshly carved Puget Sound and concluded a canoe would be mighty handy.

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3 Min
a dock view of a black hull and white maritime academy boat
Profiles

Seattle Maritime Academy – 50 Years of Training Seaworthy Mariners

Long before Seattle was a tech town, or even an aviation town, it was a maritime town. In fact, it still is. And although some brag that Seattle has more pleasure boats per capita than any other city in the country, it’s the working vessels—and the men and women who serve on them—that make Seattle a maritime powerhouse. For the past 50 years, Seattle Maritime Academy has played a key role in training the professional mariners that keep this powerhouse running.

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4 Min
a view from behind a mounaineer scaling a large mound of ice with a metal ladder wearing black and red snow gear and a blue backpack
Profiles

Leif Whittaker: My Old Man & the Mountain

My Old Man and the Mountain is Leif Whittaker’s engaging and humorous story of what it was like to “grow up Whittaker”―the youngest son of Jim Whittaker and Dianne Roberts, in an extended family of accomplished climbers. He shares glimpses of his upbringing and how the pressure to climb started early on.

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6 Min
man with mustache wearing a red and black plaid flannel, grey vest, grey cap and tan gloves standing on a trail in the woods
Profiles

Paul Roberts – the Man Behind the Mustache

Father, husband, firefighter, engineer, hockey player, Black Belt, personal trainer, and grave digger—just some of the titles that Paul Roberts has or currently holds. We caught up with Paul to hear more about his tireless work serving his community and why he’ll never get stuck doing something that makes him unhappy.

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5 Min
912, location, sundance, resort, mountain, rescue
Profiles

Avalanche Dog Noses: Your Best Chance of Survival

Up in the mountains, avalanches are part of the territory. If you’re lucky, you might only see or hear one. But on the off chance you get caught, there’s little even the most experienced can do to escape. Bright gear, and a beacon, shovel and probe are key to survival.

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5 Min
dark cloudy landscape with four horses and riders on the crest of a hill riding towards the left side of the image
Profiles

The O’Hair Ranch

Before there were O’Hairs, there were Armstrongs. And like most homesteaders, the Armstrongs arrived at Paradise Valley, Montana, by way of misfortune looking for fortune. In 1878, Owen T. Armstrong (“O.T.”), aged 27 years old, and Mrs. O.T., aged 26 years old, decided it was time to up and leave Missouri, where they had hewn out a meager existence.

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7 Min
Maine Guide by campfire
Profiles

Maine Guides

Maine Guides are an institution just as iconic in the Northeast as lobster fishermen. They’re stitched into Maine’s landscape—a mythical place of famous coastline and rivers, as well as vast swaths of undeveloped woods (a rarity in the crowded East) that teem with wildlife.

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5 Min
Filson Life - Wyoming Cowboy with bandanna, tan hat, and sheepskin
Profiles

Trade Stories: Phillip Lee McGinnis, Sublette County Cowboy

Raised in a small town in Illinois, Phillip Lee McGinnis grew up working for a horse trainer and knew early on he wanted to become a cowboy. After a tour of service in the United States Marine Corps, Phil spent time in Hawaii roping wild cattle and starting colts, then moved to Montana and lived

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Aleph Geddis - stands at doorway with flat brimmed hat and filson jacket
Profiles

Trade Stories: Aleph Geddis, Wood Sculptor

Aleph Geddis, a wood sculptor from Orcas Island, WA, has spent the last four months in his carving shed working on a one-of-a-kind piece of art for our flagship retail store in Seattle. Utilizing hand-made tools and an unique style formed through an appreciation of Northwest Coast Native Art and travels around the world. We took a trip to visit him at his carving shed and find out more about his creative process, and what exactly went in to this particular piece.

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Filson-Ebbets Field Flannels-11
Profiles

Jerry Cohen, Owner of Ebbets Field Flannels

Ebbets Field Flannels has been a Pioneer Square mainstay for over 25 years. The iconic Seattle company manufactures historically inspired athletic apparel, ranging from wool baseball flannels to 8-panel caps, right here in America. Filson had a chance to catch up with owner Jerry Cohen and find out what separates Ebbets from the rest.  

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