Page 7 - Outdoor

Snow, snow, snow around here.  I normally take the week off between Christmas and New Years to spend some time with my family and do some winter fishing, however this year a "White Christmas" went a little longer than anticipated.  Actually a lot longer, as in: about 18" of snow with temps hovering around zero most of the week. I was plenty busy pushing my Yo-ho snow shovel around most days. This is the snow shovel you'll want in your arsenal when the work gets serious.  In between snowstorms the boys and I found some time to go play in the snow with an Otter sled and the new GoPro Hero 4 Black. January sees these Otter sleds in our stores mainly for calving and ranch work. These sleds are big and the edges tall, making them ideal downhill sleds that are stable.  Most runs we were coming down the hill faster and went further than... Read more

The story of Glacial Lake, Missoula and the ancient flood that forever changed the landscape of the Pacific Northwest has always intrigued me. This landscape feature is in one of the areas we serve at North 40 Outfitters, so I figured I'd go learn about it, and see for myself. Several thousand years ago, a finger of glacial ice moved through near present day Lake Pend Oreille damming the Clark Fork River and creating Glacial Lake Missoula. Imagine a giant buildup of ice creating a glacial lake the size of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. The pressure on the ice continued to rise until the water level reached its maximum elevation of 4,200 feet causing the ice dam to fail, exploding the water downstream at a rate of 10 times the combined flow of all the current rivers in the world, moving at speeds up to 50 mph on its 430 mile journey... Read more

Who is the YETI cooler NOT for? Me. Full disclosure: I don't own a Yeti cooler, probably for the same reason a lot of people don't... the price tag. But check out their marketing (the video below)--it's incredible, and I watch all of their new short film releases regularly. So why don't I own a Yeti? Yeti coolers are designed for serious outdoor enthusiasts, guides, backpacking families and just all-around outdoors people... and while I'd like to consider myself "a serious Montana outdoors-man," the truth is--I have two kids, one is just turning 6 and one is recently 3. Our "outdoor trips" consist of single day outings to accessible, fishy water where my kids can wear their life jackets, throw some flies around... and I can sneak down river a few hundred yards and try desperately to catch fish before my youngest comes and throws tiny,... Read more