DOWN BOOTIES

It's getting to be Down Bootie season out east, and though I find myself wearing these around the apartment more than I do at a campsite, they really are good for both. Weighing next to nada, there are several brands that make these ugly things. Clockwise from top left: Sierra Designs, Western Mountaineering (that's what I've got), REI, and Feathered Friends.Anyone have an opinion about these thangs? Other than the fact that they'd sell better/be more acceptable if they weren't called "booties?"

POLER NAPSACK

It was a few years back when Benji Wagner first sent me a box of his hand warmers to my office in Columbus Circle, NY. I was working for American Park Network, writing and collecting information for a collection of 25+ guidebooks to our beautiful public lands. Benji and the Poler team have since become great friends, so it's pretty spectacular to see what waves they've been making since they branched out into backpacks, tents, headlamps and of course, their famous Napsack. Check out their latest video above and help support two majorly lovely guys working their ass off in the Pacific Northwest.

Mount Everest Special

There's an article on the NYTimes website today, written by Dwight Garner, about the peanut butter and pickle sandwich. If you read this rag regularly or know me personally, you're hip to the fact that peanut butter is quite the obsession in these parts, so these idiot articles get me a little excited. In his intro, Garner references Ernest Hemingway's favorite sandwich, peanut butter and onion on white bread, a recipe I've been meaning to write about on CS for many moons. The sandwich, which I've consumed more than a few times, though unfortunately not on white bread, is a real time. And of course, like always, chunky is king.Hemingway references PB&O in Islands In The Stream and it makes its way into The Hemingway Cookbook as well. The Mount Everest Special:

"Well, go down to the galley and see if that bottle of tea is cold and bring it up. Antoni's butchering the fish, go make a sandwich will you, please?"Sure. What kind of sandwich?""Peanut butter and onion if there's plenty of onion.""Peanut butter and onion it is, sir."He handed a sandwich, wrapped in a paper towel segment, to Thomas Hudson and said, "One of the highest points in the sandwich-maker's art. We call it the Mount Everest Special. For Commanders only.

And in honor of the weird Lyle Lovett reference in the NYTimes article, here's a hell of a Tuesday morning tune:Youtube: Lyle Lovett - If I Had A Boat

Key Log Rolling

I met the Sisters Hoeschler at Outdoor Retailer this summer, and after a few minutes of chatting about their company, Key Log, we realized we had a laundry list of common friends from the northern regions of Vermont. Small world, I suppose. In any case, Abby, Lizzie and the rest of the Hoeschler family are all log rolling champions (amazing) and have developed a lighter, more portable synthetic log rolling log that you can use to spar while out on the water. I've never set foot on a log to do something like this, but after watching the video above, it sure does make you wanna try. Maybe.

Biolite CampStove

A few weeks back, I spent some time at the BioLite offices in Brooklyn, talking to their team about the camping stove they've developed and the bigger picture goals they have in the coming years. And it certainly isn't all camping...I've taken the BioLite CampStove on the trail a few times now, and a proper review of the stove is-a-comin, but I can tell you now that Cold Splinters and fellow hiking companions have been wildly impressed.Any users out there? What do you think?

DeChristopher Released From Jail

Tim DeChristopher, who has been jailed for the past 18 months at Herlong Federal Prison in California for disrupting federal oil and gas exploration auctions, will be released prison on October 24th. That's good news to a lot of people's ears. He'll spend the rest of his two year term (six months if my math is correct) at a Salt Lake City halfway house, employed at a Unitarian Church under a work-release program. Peaceful Uprising, the activisit group that Dechristopher founded, has this to say about the whole situation:

Obviously his friends, his family, his community is excited to have him back here in a halfway home, but we are going to respect whatever time he needs. We will honor that he is still serving time until April 2013.

For those of you who don't know who DeChristopher is and why he matters, well, I'll give you the short of it. In 2008 DeChristopher, a climate control activist, entered a federal oil and gas exploration lease auction. The BLM was selling 116 parcels of land in Utah red-rock country and DeChristopher bid on 14 of them (22,500 acres) for 1.8 million. He won, and at the time, had no money to pay, so the feds picked him up for misrepresenting himself. Months later, the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, deemed the auction illegal. In addition to the auction being deemed illegal, DeChristopher had raised the funds for the land and the BLM refused to accept the money. The Jury wasn't allowed to know either of those little fun facts during the trail and he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.Be happy about this one. It'll be a good thing when he's done with church work.MP3: Bill Evans Trio - My Man's Gone Now

John James Audobon

John James Audobon is best known for The Birds of America, the book that contains his illustrations of all 435 birds that were known in the United States around 1827, the year the book was first published. But - according to this PBS article - "he lived in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina and New York – traveled everywhere from Labrador to the Dry Tortugas off Florida, from the Republic of Texas to the mouth of the Yellowstone – was a merchant, salesman, teacher, hunter, itinerant portraitist and woodsman, an artist and a scientist."Listen to New York Public Library Curator, Michael Inman, talk about Audubon's early life and the process of getting TBOA pusblished in a two part podcast from Stuff You Missed in History Class. It's worth your time, I promise.Youtube: Weather Report - Birdland

Smokey Branch Chore Coat

It's been many years since I first purchased the Hickory Striped Pointer Chore Coat, and while it might not be the most "technical" coat to put in your pack, it still finds its way into mine more often than not.For the past few weeks, the hickory's been replaced by the Buckshot Sonny's version of the classic (Thanks, Max), and while it's no lighter or warmer than the blue and white stripe version, it is camouflage, which just makes a little more sense when you're out and about on the AT. Sorta.Pick one up here. They're as handsome as you want them to be. Promise.MP3: Loudon Wainwright - I Am the Way (New York Town) [Live]

John Wayne: A Love Song

In 1965, Joan Didion went to visit John Wayne and the cast of The Sons of Katie Elder while they were shooting down in Mexico City. Later that year,  "John Wayne: A Love Song," was published in the Saturday Evening Post:

...there with the pepper trees and the bright sun outside, they could still, for just so long as the picture lasted, maintain a world peculiar to men who like to make Westerns, a world of loyalties and fond raillery, of sentiment and shared cigars, of interminable desultory recollections; campfire talk, its only point to keep a human voice raised against the night, the wind, the rustlings in the brush.

Mikael Kennedy in NZ

While Cold Splinters jetted off to California for six weeks this last month, our partner-in-crime, photographer Mikael Kennedy, was out at the edge of the world in New Zealand taking photographs for Burton. Until Labor Day-ish, we hadn't seen Mikael for some time, so it's exciting to be able to share some of his photos from his time down under. For your viewing pleasure and ours. From the man himself:

I tattooed a world map on my wrist last year, right before I headed out to cross the United States for for an adventure called Ramblers Bone. I told myself after that run that I was gonna start looking beyond our borders for my next adventure. I was ready for something new.Later that spring, Burton Snowboards called and asked if I'd like to travel to New Zealand with them to photograph their team and winter collection for 2014. I stopped and stared at my tattoo for second in disbelief, and next thing I know, I'm strapped in, shooting out the open door of a white Eurovan called 'the pale horse' as we tore down the switchbacks through the mountain chasing the light. New Zealand is another world, this is just a glimpse.

Much more after the jump...

Patagonia and MG

If you've had the pleasure of reading the 40th anniversary edition of Mountain Gazette, I'm sure you noticed the advertisement on the inside cover. It's one of the best I've seen in a long while (who makes custom ads like this anymore?), so hats off to you, Patagonia. Well done.Excuse the Instagram photo (cold_splinters) but the pages of MG are too big to fit on the scanner. Scorpion paperweight courtesy of El Cosmico.

RIVER RECORDINGS

I've spent a good amount of time in Portland, OR this last year working with Danner, and whenever I'm in town, it's impossible not to have a few this and thats from Deschutes Brewery. I got an email from those kind beer-makin' folks yesterday with a link to their latest and greatest, the Deschutes River Recordings video series. First up is Eric D. Johnson of the Fruit Bats singing The Byrds' "Ballad of Easy Rider." If you have a few minutes, which I know you do, watch it. It's a real humdinger.Learn more about the project here.