Built For The Mountain Life

Relics: In Search of the Southernmost Native Brook Trout in the World

MK Ambassador Zach Mathews developed and manages the fly fishing forum The Itinerant Angler, is a freelance writer and photographer, and finds some time to practice law in Georgia as well.  Here he reports on a recent adventure:

August 16, 2008

With Gerogia's lengthy drought showing no sign of giving over and the dog days of August well upon us, I decided to seek a little solace and solitude high in the Appalachians.  My target was native Georgia brook trout, part of an ongoing project I am pursuing, born of my fascination with the southernmost native brookies in the world.

Science tells us that in the deep freeze of the last Ice Age, brook trout (technically and arctic char known as salvelinus fontinalis) were able to extend their range as far south at the 34th degree latitude, give or take a few clicks, which means they petered out a few miles south of today's Blairsville, Georgia.  Common sense says the brook trout must have swum upstream from larger rivers in the bottomlands.  Further, those larger rivers must necessarily have flowed north, toward the rivers draining the Arctic, rather than south to the Atlantic.  Thus, the logical place to search for the southernmost remnant of this Ice Age holdout is on the north-facing streams of the Blue Ridge.  Or in other words, for AT through-hikers seeking brookies, look left.

Today the trout are cut off - marooned by hotter waters in the lowlands - from their ancient bloodlines.  Until an Ice Age comes again, these brookies must evolve in isolation, slowly becoming more unique with each passing year.  They are precious, they are rare, and they live on the knife edge of global warming.  A few too-hot years, and their lines will retract even further.

On the Road with the Coordinator of Karma

MK Ambassador and Team Jackson Kayak paddler Jez Blanchard is currently traveling the world, with his boat, teaching and competing.  Get some!

Over the past few weeks I have been teaching at Camps in NC, spending a fair bit of time instructing at Falling Creek Camp. Now here's the thing, I guess I am a bit selfish, but the rewards of teaching are some of the best times I have had in a kayak. Seeing a kid nail his roll, with a look of sheer excitement. Awesome!

Over one day, I was fortunate to be a part of 5 kids dialing in their roll. After seeing EJ's effort of teaching someone how to roll in less than 15 mins, I am happy to say that I have blown that out of the water by getting a kid who has never been in a kayak before to roll by himself in less than 10 minutes. Yea, I know that seems ridiculous, especially since it took me over 2 weeks of consistent trial and effort, almost close to 10 years ago to do the same. The entire class came together to cheer for him, which drove the rest to do better and complete their rolls.

What an amazing day! Thanks to Brian Mangum for the pics.

International Climbers Festival - Recap

MK Dealer Services Rep and recent road warrior Jessica Hoffmann steps in with a recap:

After visiting some great MK dealers in the area, I got to attend the 15th Annual International Climbers Festival in Lander, Wyoming.  This was my first time climbing at Wild Iris, which at about 9000 feet elevation, is some of the most beautiful and remote-feeling sport climbing I have done.  We chased the shade as much as possible on pumpy, pocketed classics amidst buff climbers sporting MKs, and attended the festivities in Lander put together by the IFC crew, and many folks from NOLS and Wild Iris Mountain Sports. 

10 Days, 2 Continents, 2 Pairs of Pants

MK Dealer Services rep Joey Norman reports on his recent international study trip to Chile:

First of all, Chile is an amazing country, with wonderful people and beautiful sights.  I got to spend 10 days in Santiago, Chile doing humanitarian work for Un Techo Para Chile, studying the Chilean economy, and rock climbing in the Andes.  Luckily the good folks here at MK let me go as long as I blogged about my experience.  So here goes...

In total 15 of us from the McColl Graduate School of Business participated in this trip.  We spent two days in Penaflor, a small village outside of Santiago, where we built houses with Un Techo Para Chile.  Un Techo is a great organization that works with people living in campamientos to find them temporary shelter first and then permanent shelter.  Along the way these families are required to seek eduacation and better themselves.  My Original Mountain Pants performed especially well here, from climbing the roof to digging the foundation.

Skiing Teewinot, East Face - Photo Essay

Sunday May 4, 2008 - Teewinot Mountain - Grand Teton National Park

Starting Elevation - 6800'  End Elevation - 12,200'

Photos by J. Malman

5am start sunrise over the valley and Jenny Lake booting up from The Apex

Teton Canyon Ski Pics

The occasional ski-related blog post never hurt anyone, right?  These goodies come from the backyard, Teton Canyon, WY, just outside of Alta, Wyoming on the west side of the Tetons.  Rarely see tracks up there, and certainly no bootpacks, speed bootpacks, or fist fights.

Skier: J Malman  Photo: W. LandonDescending Boyscout CouloirSkier: J Malman  Photo: W. Landon

MK in the Blue Ridge

The Buddy and I recently took a brief excursion up to Fancy Gap, VA to escape the confines of the section of urban jungle known as Charlotte, NC.
    For anyone that's never been on the Blue Ridge Parkway it's one of the most amazing drives in the country and stretches 469 miles through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Shenandoah National Park.  All along the road there are overlooks, picnic and recreation areas, as well as historical museums, monuments, vineyards and wineries, etc... The rich culture stems from a history of music, beautiful scenery, and booze! 
    There are some great trails alongside the parkway at just about any point, all very accessible and well marked. We did an 8-mile loop and were lucky that the clouds and weather held out long enough for us to complete the trip and appreciate the scenery (the OMPs are a GREAT cool-weather trail pant).
    Having grown up in Colorado surrounded by the Rocky Mountains, it's difficult to draw any comparison to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  They're both completely unique of one another (except they have 'Mountains' in their names).  There's no way, however, you could convince me that the Rockies are inherently better.  Unless you've had the privilege of spending time in each, it's impossible to appreciate just how amazing, and how amazingly different, both ranges are.

Written by Jordan Hauser - MK Sales Representative with contributing input from The Buddy, road-warrior-extraordinare.

Trip Report: MK in Kathmandu

This trip report is from David, a happy MK customer who just returned from Nepal.

My wife and I and 9 other family members traveled to Nepal to enjoy a couple of weeks of getting to know the Nepalese culture.  One of the major purposes of the trip was to work in a small village outside of the town of Damauli.  We arrived in this village after a 4 hour drive from Kathmandu.  The village consisted of around 1500 people.  We were there to help with a service project of enhancing the village's existing water system.  We spent our time digging, trenching and repairing the system from the source (a waterfall) approximately 7 miles to the village below where we built a reservoir to help eliminate the ineffeciency and dependence on the one existing watering hole.

Search for Surf: RV'in Cali

In the early morning hours of December 26th, while others were polishing off the eggnog and figuring out how to get the tree out of the living room, we were busy shmoozing the Delta flight attendant at the Norfolk Airport into waiving the $400 fee for bringing 6 surfboards on the flight to San Diego. 

We set out for Southern California in search of a little adventure and a few head-high barrels to lie about with friends back on the East Coast.  Charlie, Mike and I picked up our RV in San Diego, which would serve as our rental car and hotel in one, and had a ball exploring the Southern California coastline from San Diego up to Huntington Beach.  The new MK Cord Shorts proved to be the  favorite post-session baggies, as they were the easiest and most comfortable slip-ons after a 4-hour morning surf in the 58 degree Pacific.  From the wide open beach breaks of Del Mar and Pacific Beach, to faster points of Upper and Lower Trestles, we surfed until our arms fell off and ate tasty breakfast burritos up and down the SoCal coastline. 

One miscalculated right turn that lead to a tennis-ball sized tire blowout and an interesting campsite in mountian lion country couldn't damper our spirits as we pushed the ole rig to the limits and took full advantage of the Northwest  swell.  The weather couldn't have been better and we all enjoyed the laid-back California surf culture.

Written by MK Dealer Services Representative and resident hang-loose, surfs-up Bro-dude Doug Ellis

Team River Left Tackles Pringle Run - Cheat River Tributary, WV

Written by Art Barket, Team River Left Kayaker                    Photos by E. Bradtke

The weekend starts as it always does, staring at the gauges, precipitation forecasts, and weather predictions.  Northern West Virginia had a healthy six inches of snow on the ground, and with the weather for the weekend shooting to the upper 50’s and rain on the way, I predicted a good weekend for creeking. 

We drove out Saturday night so we could strike out early on Sunday to get a full day in.  This means paddle as many creeks as possible.  Our first stop for the day was to check the gauge of Roaring creek, a tiny steep class 4+ tributary of the Cheat River.  This was running, but on the low side.  This ruled out some of the smaller creeks that were on the target list such as Greens Run, Bull Run, and Daugherty.  I figured we still had a chance to get Pringle so we headed there next.  At the takeout you can see one of meatiest parts of the run, a continuous series of boofing over the tops of boulders.  The level looked to be medium-low.  By the time I decided I was going to run it Kevin and Sam were dressed heading up the hill.  There is no shuttle for this one, you just shoulder you boat and walk up to a bit above the falls. 

Retro-Post: MK on Youtube.com

Welcome to the first in a series of retro blog-posts.  We will occasionally take posts from our Built Tour blog and repost them.  We took some amazing photos, made great movies and attended fun events during our lengthy tour, and we want to keep those memories fresh.  Enjoy!

Originally posted on March 3, 2007:

Your source for Builttour.com video clips:

Mountain Khakis on YouTube!

Built for the Mountain Weekend

Below are some photos from last weekend, in chronological order:  Fishing the South Fork on Saturday, Skiing on Sunday, sunset on Monday

notice bald eagles in tree

Props to Two Old Men

Lower Mesa Falls

Last weekend I had the pleasure of having my dad and uncle in town to do some flyfishing.  Unfortunately, they were only here for three days and it snowed and rained for two of them.  However, I was impressed by their toughness and willingness to go out anyway.  We fished two days, both of them in temperatures around 40 degrees or less.  Friday afternoon we hit the Teton River, outside of Felt, Idaho.  We went to a beautiful section of the river, didn't see one other person, and we all caught a few Cutthroat trout.  Saturday it was around 32 degrees all day, with lots of snow.  Therefore, we opted for poker and college football instead.  Sunday the precipitation ceased and we again went out in very cold weather and fished the Henry's Fork River.  I caught a lot of fish, while my dad and uncle didn't do so well.

The point of the story is that I was impressed on their toughness and ability to get out in the cold and  have some fun.  Both of them live in Colorado, so flyfishing and cold weather are nothing new.  However, neither of them do much fishing in this type of weather.  Good for them.  Talk about being Built For The Mountain Life.  Many folks around here consider themselves pretty tough regarding the activities or adventures that they partake in.  But the real tough guys are the old school warriors, the ones who don't care how they look or how well they do, but get out and do it anyway.  Props to these two old men, both 60+ in age.  And here's to the hopes that I can do what they do when I am 60!!

MK hits Yosemite!

Jessica Hoffmann, part of our MK Dealer Services Crew, recently spent nine days in Yosemite with her husband Phil and some climber friends from North Carolina:

I was the only one on the trip who had never been to Yosemite and it was certainly everything and more than what had been described. It is incredible, inspiring, humbling, at times terrifying, and chock full of visitors from around the world. While we did climb every day of the trip, I can’t say we climbed anything hard enough that you will be seeing us in the magazines soon. The Yosemite granite is famous for spitting out 5.12 climbers on supposedly straightforward 9’s and 10’s. Our campsite was lively at night thanks to bear visits and subsequent bear patrollers, who literally patrol the campground and set off firecrackers at the bears as needed. By the end of the week, I barely noticed the booms and the sniffing of large creatures outside my tent.  Talk about living the mountain life, gotta love it! 

Our longest route was a Yosemite classic called Royal Arches and I think everyone’s favorite climb was Serenity Crack, a busy but beautiful crack near Royal Arches. We had climbers from France, Spain, and even Jackson Hole on our tails as we jammed and finger- locked through the incredible routes. We had fabulous weather most of the week, and loved watching parties’ progress on El Cap. Maybe next time….

                        

"The Stoke"

If you were to ask him to describe his blog in one word, this is what Steve Romeo would use to describe tetonat.com; he would say, “it’s all about the stoke” and he is right. It is all about the stoke. 

Steve Romeo was born with a pair of skis so the step to highly technical backcountry ski mountaineering is only natural in his progression. He has been skiing the backcountry in Jackson since he moved there in ’93. His skis touch places where only sun and snow touch all winter and he has the pictures to prove it.  His pictures are phenomenal; they are a testament to the beauty and awe of the untouchable and inspiration to those who thought it never could be done. So if you are ever feeling like you need to get “fired up”, check out tetonat.com. Chances are Steve Romeo has probably just skied some super gnarly line in a remote location that is beautiful and there is a chance you will get chills when you see some of his pictures and read some of his tales. So check it out, get fired up, and remember—It’s all about the stoke.