Field Notes

Essential gear, history, and all things Filson, broken down by experts in the field.

A wooden halibut hook, hand-crafted by Tlingit Master carver Jon Rowan of Klawock, Alaska.
Field Notes

Halibut Hooks of the Northwest Coast

Traditionally, a náxw, or “halibut hook” in the Lingít language, was carved out of two pieces of wood attached with cordage (natural fiber) to form a V-shaped hook. A piece of bone (later metal) would also be wrapped to the bottom piece of wood and angled towards the inside to create the barb. The upper piece of wood might be plain or carved, with a fishing line attached. The line would run to the surface, where it would be affixed to a wooden float or inflated buoy made of seal stomach, while the fishhook could be weighted at the bottom with a simple stone sinker. The finished assembly was designed to keep the hook near the ocean bottom, where large halibut feed.

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5 Min
view from the deck of a working sailboat that has gear and a motorcycle strapped to the deck while a woman looks out to the snowy mountains
Field Notes

Sailing The Inside Passage on The Raven

We ran into Naomi Spar on the piers of Sitka, AK, while they were driving their adventure touring bike over the dock onto the worn deck of their sailboat, a Sloop named “the Raven”. The scene was so unique that we had to ask them their story and how they came to be cruising the coast of Alaska with a motorbike strapped to their foredeck. They gave us a tale of navigating the Inside Passage, a lawless mystery ridden trial ground that so many prospectors had concurred before them.

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2 Min
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Profiles

Mississippi Solo: Eddy Harris

In 1988, Eddy Harris published his first book, Mississippi Solo, an account of his canoe trip down the entire length of the river. Thirty years later Harris canoed the Mississippi for a second time, to see what changes had come to the river that “symbolizes who we are as a nation and as a people.”

“When people learn that I’ve canoed the length of the Mississippi River twice, they immediately want to know why,” Harris writes. “Why would I want to canoe the river in the first place? And then, why in the world would I do it again?”

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5 Min
Vintage photograph of a moonshine still.
Field Notes

Make Mine “To Go”

Moonshine (often corn liquor from a still) was a prime source of income for many in the southern Appalachian mountains. Its history partly derives from Scots/Irish immigrants to the United States who settled in the region, and brought with them the recipe for a popular drink called uisce beatha or uisge beatha – a phrase that literally means “water of life.” The practice of making moonshine was illegal during the Prohibition years of the 1920s, but continued to flourish in part thanks to distillers hiding their stills in underground caverns (for example, in the Great Smoky Mountains they used the Forbidden Caverns in Sevierville, Tennessee).

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3 Min
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Profiles

The Graduate – by T. Edward Nickens

“I’m gonna ferry across the river,” my guide said. “Some pocket water I want you to hit.” “Sounds good,” I replied. I gazed downstream. Montana’s Bighorn River is big water, but it was flowing higher than usual, and I hadn’t seen much of what I’d call “pocket water” yet. But I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut. It was too early in the float to question the guide. What I did see, however, was a dark gravel bar rising under the drift boat and a plume of water pouring over the ledge into a deep green hole the size of my front yard. I didn’t want to scuttle the guide’s float plan, but I wasn’t going to pass up a giant fishy-looking lair either.

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Field Notes

Airboats: Remote Access Watercraft

Airboats—known also colloquially as swamp boats or bayou boats—are a relatively straightforward design for a watercraft, yet have been employed for a wide variety of transportation uses on rivers, marshlands, and other shallow water areas worldwide. Said design is based on a flat-bottom hull, most commonly made of wood, aluminum, or fiberglass, and propelled by a propeller mounted on the stern of the vessel. Such a configuration avoids the need to have a submerged propeller on an outboard engine.

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3 Min
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Field Notes

Boundary Waters: Endangered & Irreplaceable

There is something spiritual about packing a canoe with everything you need to survive and launching into a WiFi-less world. The coming days will be filled with thickly wooded shorelines and silent, starry nights. Your shoulders will burn from paddling. Your boots will be muddy from portaging. You’ll likely have mosquito bites in unseemly places. And despite all that—or because of it—your trip into the backcountry of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness may just be one of the most enchanting adventures of your life.

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5 Min
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How-To's

Filson Fundamentals: The Anatomy of a Knife & Choosing the Right One

We reached out to local knife maker, Robb gray of Graycloud knives, to give us the full rundown of the anatomy of a knife and how to choose the best for one’s intended use.
“I’ve made over 3000 knives in my shop and I get a lot of the same questions from my clients. “I want a knife: I’m just not sure which one I need!” To help them answer that question, I first ask them to describe what they want to use it for and how they want to use it.”

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5 Min
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Field Notes

Filson Food: Dutch Baby with Morel Mushrooms

The months of April and May are prime mushroom season. But morels are particularly fickle, requiring conditions to be just right before making their grand debut in spring. Our friends Food for Hunters whipped-up a savory version of a Dutch baby, sometimes known as the German pancake, topped with a handful of freshly foraged morels. Golden and crispy at the edges, it’s warm, tender, and just a little bit “eggy” in the middle.

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3 Min
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Field Notes

The Amazonian expedition that nearly killed Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt’s epic journey was sparked by an invitation to speak in several cities on the South American continent in the fall of 1913. Before setting out from New York, the trip turned into an expedition of the Amazon River basin, at the behest of the American Museum of Natural History, of which Roosevelt was considered a good friend and beneficiary. The museum was sending two naturalists – George Cherrie and Leo Miller – who specialized in mammals and birds, respectively. Roosevelt was to accompany them as the expedition’s leader, given what many people (and especially Roosevelt himself) considered to be his extensive experience in the wilds of the world, including on the African continent.

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3 Min
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Field Notes

Filson in the Field: Packrafting the Remote Waters of Alaska

The state of Alaska tends to breed ideas larger than life. There is just something about the sheer amount of untrammeled wilderness there that seems to spark a fire in folks. So, when we decided we wanted to put some of our newest gear to the test, we reached out to some of our favorite guides for outing ideas. Eschewing more traditional adventures, we decided to spend five days exploring the rivers surrounding remote Chelatna lake just outside of Denali national park and preserve. This is the story of that trip.

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3 Min
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Field Notes

Exploring Denali: a wild & rugged wilderness

Denali is a land that quite literally ebbs and flows with the seasons. Spring and summer snow melts down from mountains that climb to the roof of the Alaska Range and swell the Toklat, Savage, McKinley, Sanctuary, and other rivers that ripple across Denali. Harry Karstens, who became Denali’s first superintendent in 1921, was one of the early explorers who navigated the basins of frozen rivers and streams while delivering mail to distant roadhouses and checking up on desolate miners’ camps. More than 100 years later, the waterways of this rugged wilderness are now the playground of well-experienced pack rafters, self-reliant thrillseekers who inflate their portable craft to run a river, then pull the plug, pack it away, and hike over a mountain to reach another headwater.

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3 Min
person in silver helmet and black jacket riding a motorcycle down a rocky embankment in the high desert of the Utah Canyonlands
Field Notes

The Utah Traverse

It’s often easy to get lost in the severe beauty of southern Utah in the high desert lands of the Colorado Plateau. The parched and arid red sandstone landscape is unforgiving, mountains and ridges appear everywhere shimmering in the distance, and plunging canyons seem to materialize out of thin air. While it can take your breath away it also demands respect from anyone journeying through it.

So, when four friends decided to take their off-road motorcycles on an epic weeklong trip across this region, they knew that things could and would probably go crooked quickly. But that is the beauty of doing the Utah Traverse.

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5 Min
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Field Notes

Overland Moto Checklist from Radius Offroad

“As a professional motorcycle racer and passionate off-road rider, I’m always in search of longer more adventurous rides every time I’m on the bike. I’ve learned from years of riding trips and racing multi-day events around the world that anything is possible, so you better be prepared. Being properly equipped is a key component to having a successful trip. Following these packing basics and tips will ensure that you have a successful trip in your future.” — RORY SULLIVAN, OWNER OF RADIUS OFFROAD

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3 Min
two people riding motorcycles on a dirt road with a pine covered hill in the background
Field Notes

Washington Backcountry Discovery Route

A massive volcanic mountain range, the Cascades, bisects Washington. Along the flanks of this iconic range, national forest land offers intrepid motorcyclists a network of backcountry roads and trails through some of the most adventurous terrain in the Lower 48. In 2010, Washington local Paul Guillien was part of a team of four riders that first traversed a long-distance route through the Cascades, starting at Washington’s southern border with Oregon and ending at its northern terminus at the Canadian border. Guillien and his mates dubbed their 593-mile off-road adventure the “Washington Backcountry Discovery Route.”

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3 Min
metal bust of caribou
Field Notes

Forever on the Move: The Isolated Existence of the Arctic’s Caribou

By the time that they have lived out their life cycle, a caribou of the Alaskan herds will have traveled enough distance to have circled the globe. Like so many of their other animal brethren, humans included (though are more sedentary in modern times), movement is what they are designed to do. They live their isolated existence, far from human eyes, forever on the move, forever on the hunt, as they have been forever.

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5 Min
person in white parka looking out over a vast snowy plain with mountains with rifle over his back
Field Notes

Ski Hunting the Alaskan Arctic

For untold millennia humans have been strapping skis to their feet and heading out to hunt prey. In the Altai Mountains of western China, 10,000-year-old rock art depicts paleohunters engaging in the practice, while 4,000-year-old rock carvings in Norway show the same thing. Its DNA is even found in the biathlon of the Olympic Games.

Hunting for game on skis is not easy. It requires commitment. The weather is often harsh, the trails challenging, and the quarry difficult to find. It’s a more organic way of stalking prey. The advantages that the modern hunter has are fewer. It’s more akin to times past when hunting was much more rugged and dangerous. Skiing into the backcountry off the highway can be deadly, especially in the spring. Storms can blow up unexpectedly, the temperatures often top out at twenty below, equipment fails, and there is no lifeline. You are on your own.

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10 Min
wolverine walking on snow
Field Notes

A Wild Idea: The Attempt to Train Wolverines for Avalanche Rescue

Alaska has always seemed to be a magnet for dreamers and schemers, pirates and poets, a place where one could live a life less ordinary and challenge the status quo that most people follow in their lives. So, when four-years-ago word trickled out of the state that a gentleman was trying to train wolverines how to do search and rescue for avalanche victims, something that dogs usually do, it did not seem that far-fetched.

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5 Min
Hunter in high visibility vest with shotgun walking through snowy grassland with river with mountain backdrop
How-To's

Winter Upland Hunting Guide + 5 Game Birds

Many game-bird seasons in the Northwest, Midwest, and Northeast extend well into winter— those cold, even icy days can be great times to hunt. Upland birds often fall into fairly predictable cold-weather patterns, and vegetation and other cover have dwindled. Further, cooler temperatures mean ideal conditions for vigorous walking and dog work. That doesn’t mean winter bird hunting is easy, though. Weather conditions can be challenging, and some species of birds have been hunted for weeks or months, leaving the survivors adept at avoiding human predators.

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5 Min