Looking back, the country got me first. Spending countless miles driving through the West was intoxicating; an obsession that only worsened after years of snowboarding remote backcountry slopes and fly fishing the world’s most beautiful rivers. Once you experience that type of recreational solitude, nothing...
The trout-filled limestone canyon of Montana’s Smith River — twisting through the Big and Little Belt mountains — would have made a magnificent subject for America’s best Western landscape painters and photographers, visionaries like Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, William Henry Jackson, and Ansel Adams. And...
The temperature gauge in my truck reads 1 degree Fahrenheit as we pass through Roosevelt’s Arch at the northwest entrance to Yellowstone National Park. A full moon hangs low to the west over Electric Peak, opposite the trajectory of the rising sun. The reflected sunlight...
Who made your shirt? I’m not asking about its brand or the country where it was manufactured. Who was the actual person who put in work to make your shirt? I don’t know who made mine, not to mention any of the other shirts I...
The sun is starting to set behind Wyoming’s Rendezvous Mountain as the last and most committed skiers descend to the base area after a beautiful bluebird day at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. As ski patrol sweeps the mountain to ensure no one is lost or...
Architecture Brechbuhler Architects Construction M Squared Construction Bridger Canyon holds a rare beauty that sticks with you, even in a place as majestic as southwest Montana. Close to downtown Bozeman, the canyon is accessible, but walk a half mile off the road, and you’ll find yourself in...
At the end of last winter, with the final days of the ski season fast approaching, there was a mad dash for tram rides at Big Sky Resort in Montana. The ski area’s iconic lift — installed at the top of 11,166-foot Lone Peak in...
Some 20 years ago, I met David Quammen under unusual circumstances. He had written an essay about cougars for a wilderness advocacy publication to which I subscribed. The piece included some disparaging comments about cougar hunting, largely based on the assumption that lion hunters are...
Maps hold a promise of roads untaken, the allure of the exotic, and adventures yet to come. For James Niehues, a legend in the ski world for his bird’s-eye maps, his works are much more than renditions of place. They combine panoramic views of the...
Driggs, Idaho has always been a little eclectic and esoteric, a place called home by extreme athletes, artists, and Mormon families who migrated to the valley. In a full showing of this sense of identity, Teton Valley melds long winters and bone-rattling temperatures with its...