Tag: snow

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

.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.

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trip report: El Chaltén – Fitz Roy and Huemul Circuit, March 2017

.Reading time 108 minutes.

Two years ago, we found a cheap COPA fare down to Santiago de Chile for spring break. Of all the places available to us, we went for Patagonia and it has remained one of my favorite trips. Crossing over Paso John Gardener to the magnificent glacier grey was beyond words, though I tried my best. It was my favorite viewpoint among all the places I’d seen to that point. There was also something so simple as getting off the plane and hitting the trails for a week. That feeling was especially strong for me this past spring after the mega planned New Zealand trip a few month before. All these factors combined to motivate me to head back to Patagonia once again when we found another sale to Santiago de Chile, this time we were headed to the Argentinian side. At the end of it, I came out with a new favorite trek.

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trip report: segmented Walker’s Haute Route, June 2014

.Reading time 85 minutes.

Recently, airfare between Europe and United States have been on an all-time low driven by budget airlines like WOW, Norwegian, and Level even in the summer high season. With the ease of the trans-Atlantic commute and the beginning of summer hut to hut trekking season in Europe, I thought it was appropriate to jump back in the time machine to June 2014 and write about the time we did a segmented Walker’s Haute Route trek. As with my previous report about the past, my information might be dated now. Please cross check all the trail information with reputable sources.

Before I get started on the report, a key aspect to keep in mind is that the Walker’s Haute Route is really sections of different hut to hut hikes that was put together to fit the 2 week holidays Europeans, especially Brits, have by Kev Reynolds and the Cicerone guide books. There are many, many different alternatives you can take or loop together. The number of trails in Switzerland is pretty astounding, though it fits since the entire country is pretty much just glacier carved valleys.

A unique aspect of our trek was that we started the hike in mid-June, which was before the official Walker’s Haute Route season that year. So we had to mixed and matched different sections of the trails around, hence the segmented nature of this trip.

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