guest trip report: Bob Marshall Wilderness – Prairie Reef & The Chinese Wall, September 2023

May 8, 2025.Reading time 22 minutes.

Adventures with Richard is always amongst the most challenging backpacking trips on my calendar. I’m assured plenty of bushwhack and boulder hopping. But it’s all worth it. To provide another viewpoint of our backpacking trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, this report was written by Richard (themountainrabbit.com) in 2023 on the backcountry post forum. With permission, his writing was edited by site editor and owner John (me) and published here. It is also supplemented with my pictures and video. This was the third trip I’ve done with Richard and all three were epic.

Richard:

I’ve been trying to get out to the Bob Marshall Wilderness for a number of years now – I’m happy to say I finally made it. For the third year in a row, I was able to join up with John and we had a fantastic trip. I will say, despite my love for September/October backpacking, if I go back to do any high traverses in “the Bob” it will probably be earlier in the year – there’s very little water above treeline by September. I suspected this and planned for it, but it definitely affected our route.

I’d told John that I hoped for a bit of snow and shoulder season conditions and I wasn’t disappointed on that count. The weather did convince us to make a few alterations to the route – including missing a traverse of the Chinese Wall itself – but I’ll be back, so it’s all good. And we did get to do the section I was most excited about – it didn’t disappoint in the least.

trip video: Bob Marshall Wilderness – Prairie Reef & The Chinese Wall, September 2023

May 1, 2025.Reading time 1 minute.

This is a companion video to an upcoming backpacking trip report (at some point).

Richard and I teamed up again for a late season backpack into Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. The Bob Marshall Wilderness is just south of Glacier National Park in Montana and is known for the 15 miles long feature called the Chinese Wall. Unlike the typical hike to visit these Walls, we had plans to be on top a couple of them. What do they say about plans? Regardless, my 3rd team up with Richard was again a Wild adventure, with a capital “W” as he says.

You can our full detailed report of our hikes below in the index as they are posted.

trip video: Yellowstone National Park – Hellroaring Creek, Yellowstone River, Black Canyon, & Blacktail Deer Creek, June 2021

December 23, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

As a companion video to our first backpacking trip into Yellowstone National Park, we saw green rolling hills and rushing rivers that part of the early backpacking season. Along the way, we saw plenty of animal carcasses and bones under an unseasonably hot sun. We were also visited by a way too friendly black bear to round out our trip.

You can our full detailed report of our hikes below in the index as they are posted.

good ideas: three road trips out west

July 21, 2015.Reading time 13 minutes.

the idea

Seeing how this is the first real post, I thought I’d start it off with excitement and hope for the future. That is a few road trip ideas out west. Additionally this is also an example of the kind of research that goes into planning my trips. There are a few elements that came about to creating these three specific trip ideas.

The first element is that I have the southwest companion pass until the end of 2016 and 70k miles left to blow through (more to come about it in the future). Since southwest is mostly a domestic carrier (though Costa Rica for Spring Break ’16 is possible, anyone want to join?), I started to think about places in ‘merica I wanted to visit.

The second element is that despite having lived in California, there are still a lot out west that I have not explored. I took to google maps a while back to create a list of places I’d like to visit or would like to return. Additionally, it’s been three years since I’ve gone back to Cali to hang out with the gang there (where we’ve had a few pretty awesome trips) and I’ve recently had a few messages with them about heading out there again.

The last element was hearing a podcast about roadtrips on The Extra Pack of Peanuts, especially since they’ve mentioned a few I’ve done. Anyways, that got me thinking. With great hanging out and camping with Kevin two weekends ago (post to come), we’ve identified three trips. Since these are ideas, feedback would be great.