Michael Lanza

Gear Review: Sierra Designs Flash 2 Tent

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Sierra Designs Flash 2
Sierra Designs Flash 2

Three-Season Tent
Sierra Designs Flash 2
$340, 3 lbs. 15 oz.
sierradesigns.com

As a violent thunderstorm ripped the skies open in Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, on the second day of a five-day August family backpacking trip, I had to pitch this tent in a hurry. It was one of those moments when I really appreciate good gear design. With the Flash 2’s “external pitch” integral rainfly attached to the interior canopy, I was able to keep the interior dry while pitching the tent in a downpour. And thanks to having clips instead of pole sleeves, it goes up very quickly.

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Gear Review: Arc’teryx Altra 65 Backpack

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Arc'teryx Altra 65
Arc’teryx Altra 65

Backpack
Arc’teryx Altra 65
$475, 5 lbs. (men’s regular)
65L/3,965 c.i.
Sizes: men’s and women’s regular and tall
arcteryx.com

Most packs have one or two strengths or features that stand out; I find few that actually deliver everything I want in a pack intended purely for backpacking. Then along comes the Altra 65. I carried it loaded with up to 40 pounds on a three-day backpacking trip with my nine-year-old daughter in Idaho’s Smoky Mountains, and with up to about 35 pounds on a weeklong family hut trek in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park, and judged it just about perfect, from fit and comfort to organization and durability.

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La Sportiva Ultra Raptor hiking and trail-running shoes.

Review: La Sportiva Ultra Raptor Shoes

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Hiking/Trail Running Shoes
La Sportiva Ultra Raptor
$130, 1 lb. 10 oz. (men’s 9)
Sizes: Euro men’s 38-47.5, women’s 36-43
backcountry.com

This new-and-improved rendition of Sportiva’s Raptor, one of the best trail-running and low-cut, light hiking shoes I’ve worn, lives up to its heritage. On numerous trail runs in the Boise Foothills ranging from five to 10 miles, on typically dry trails of packed dirt with some steep, gravelly sections, these non-waterproof low-cuts shined by any measure, but especially for stability and traction. The EVA midsole with a nylon shank, plus a TPU harness on the uppers that’s integrated with the laces to wrap around the foot, deliver superior torsional rigidity for a shoe this light: It has the lateral stability of a lightweight boot. But the shoe still retains the forefoot flex and the rocker and toe-off of a nimble, ultralight hiking and trail-running shoe.

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When a Good Adventure Goes Bad

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Anything Worth Doing coverBook Review
Anything Worth Doing: A True Story of Adventure, Friendship and Tragedy on the Last of the West’s Great Rivers
By Jo Deurbrouck
197 pgs., Sundog Book Publishing, $15

Those of us who pursue adventure and challenge in nature sometimes cross a line into a place where life becomes fragile. But as the unfortunate who have stumbled inadvertently into that dark space learn, the threshold is never actually a distinct line; it’s a gray zone where we make a series of fateful decisions and are never granted the foresight to know what awaits at the end of them. In Anything Worth Doing, former whitewater rafting guide Jo Deurbrouck takes the reader on a riveting journey into the lives of two semi-legendary Idaho river guides, showing how a life lived well can sometimes end too soon.

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Backcountry skiing below Mt. Heyburn, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Hidden Paradise: Backcountry Skiing Idaho’s Sawtooths

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By Michael Lanza

At a pass just below 9,400 feet on the north side of 10,229-foot Mt. Heyburn, in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, the wind that has been steadily turning the dial upward for the past hour reaches full volume. Another snow squall bursts upon us, spraying white bullets sideways and dropping a veil over the rocky, snow-spattered, serrated ridge just overhead.

Six of us have labored 2,000 feet uphill on skis this morning in search of a doorway into a secluded mountain paradise of sorts, a high basin known in some circles as the Monolith Valley, though not marked as such on any map. A slender gash between Heyburn and another 10,000-footer, Braxon Peak (which I’ve stood atop in summer), the Monolith exists in the topographical shadows, easily overlooked. Most of our group have only seen tantalizing photos that revealed legions of rock spires towering above untracked snow. The images inspired visions of marking up deep powder on slopes rarely inscribed by skiers—like Zorro, but leaving many “S” signatures instead of a “Z.”

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