the summer weather has broken which means it is finally under a hundred freaking degrees.  whoa, where is my insulation layer?!  truth is, i almost moved the whole fam damly to coronado or denver or seattle this summer for good.  i have offices in all three cities and it would be just a matter of packing our stuff and short selling my 60% devalued house, right?  admittedly, i go through this every summer then we start glassing for whitey and the urge subsides but this year it took a lot longer than anytime before.  somehow though the arizona backcountry makes everything better. 

hiked to the top of a very obscure mountain that gave me a perfect 360 degree vantage point of some of the best whitetail country on the planet.  awesome.  lowa rangers continue to rock, still the best all around boots i have.  arborwear stretch tech pants are the most comfortable easy to hike slash climb in light weight pants i have tested.  yates instructor belt, long sleeve under armour heat gear shirt, my black diamond trekking pole, a camelbak HAWG pack with 100oz of water, kuiu chugach jacket and the hill people gear kit bag chest pack with my essentials.  i have really taken to the kit bag because it allows me to carry my most important gear all the time whether i get separated from my backpack or not.  what do i carry in my kit bag?  just the bare essentials-fire, medical, signaling, comms, navigation and a zeiss mini quik monocular.      

cody and i had a great morning.  always see something new and different.  what at dawn looked like venus, although it seem like it was in the wrong place in the sky, ended up to be a weather balloon illuminated by the sun still below the horizon.  strange that it just hung in the same place but it was there the whole morning.  we saw a very nice buck and a few other deer.  cody was using the big kowas and i had my swaro 15s and the vortex 6x32s for the close in stuff underneath us.  on our way off the mountain two very shootable bucks came ripping over a ridge and down the same drainage we were in.  instinctively we both shut up, crouched down and froze.  they got to within 10 or 12 yards of us, winded us, slid to a stop then crashed through the tangles getting away from our smell in opposite directions.  they never saw us and we never did see what spooked them.  pretty cool though. 

headed to northern idaho.  can't wait to get on the lake do a little fishing and also chase some bear and elk.  beautiful country.  maybe i should open a sandpoint office.

cabellas came out with a bunch of new items i thought were promising.  teewinot primaloft jacket, polartec power dry ecwcs military base layers, mountain sherpa jacket, titan windshear collection (pants and jacket), woolrich territory half zip sweater shirt, ecwcs thermal zone polartec power dry base layers, the north face burke pants.  check them out, they are very similar to higher end pieces  i recommend for a lot less dough.

polartec power dry is awesome stuff. 

vortex now makes the 6x32s in an hd version.  still the best compact, neck glasses i have used and they work with the outdoorsmans tripod adaptor syustem.

have recently rediscovered patagonia and nunatak.  the later makes an outstanding 950 down jacket with a snap on hood (called the kobuk and its bigger sibling is the torre) which  might just be the very best on the market and it only weighs 22 ounces in the light weight fabric option.  the former has two solid performers that i sort of took for granted and forgot about.  the 12 ounce nanopuff and the 18 ounce micropuff, both are insulated with the most excellent primaloft one synthetic insulation.  between those four jackets and your other two layers you could handle just about anything in the lower 48. 

brooks range also makes a nice light weight primaloft one jacket liner.  funny that we were short on those kinds of jackets a while ago, now everybody makes one, just wish they had pit zips like the ems mercury version and my old moonstone cirrus jacket. 

pretty much switched over to arbor wear pants over my old carhartts.  just fit better, easier to move in and they don't pinch the figs when i sit down. 

checking out crispi boots and the salomon quest 4d gtxs. 

iridium has a new sat phone out called the extreme that is ruggedized and has some sort of a plb function built into it.  can't wait to give that a try.  sort of a spot messenger with voice capability which, if it works, would be superior.

acr, makers of my favorite strobe light (the firefly III), improved their rescue-link plb by making it smaller, lighter and adding features similar to competitor spot.  we will see how good it is and where it falls in the pecking order.  competition benefits the end user.

just about done with my article on the new batch of waterproof vapor permeable camouflage hunting jackets.  i know some of you are waiting on it before you place your orders.  i am working on it.  i guarantee that it will be better and more information than anything you may have seen in a recent hunting magazine article on technical outerwear.  that was pathetic.  poorly written, incorrect, unauthoritative and a thinly veiled gimme for the adjacently placed advertisement.  actually that is pretty standard fare for the  magazine crowd but at least they usually get the product spelling right.  it's stormfront boys not storm front.  stay here for good information on great gear folks, i will never sell you out, i will always tell you the truth as i understand it to be and if i don't know what i am talking about, i will admit it up front.

switching from the motorola droid 2 to an iphone4.  it allows me to have my primary camera, cell phone, itunes and all my email accounts, including my corporate one, all in one outstanding device.  always looking for ways to eliminate waste and duplication, maximize efficiencies, and upgrade capability.  staying with verizon though, they are still the best in my opinion.

am also switching completely out of pc computers and going all mac.  i am tired of the pc hassle and up keep.  anybody want a $4000 paperweight, it has openly been replaced or repaired by dell four times to the tune of $1500.  love the imac 17 and macbook pro 15 so far.  next is a macbook air and an ipad2 with cellular connectivity.   

that is about it for now.  cheers from 35,000 feet via soutwest airlines onboard internet access.