While I’m all for hopping out of the car and immediately catching big trout, the ugly truth is you miss a lot of good stuff if you don’t occassionally hike away from the parking lots, beer cans – even the big fish. Around here, that means heading into the mountains.

Some call it the backcountry, and if that suggests big swatches of the world that haven’t been completely chewed up by humanity, then I’ll accept the definition. Gladly.

Mt. Shasta looms large over everything the Underground does
Kinda makes you want to sing a John Denver song, eh? No? Good. Don’t do that.

I used to fish alpine lakes more often, but got out of the habit. This year, my backcountry adventures with the L&T Nancy reminded me why I go where there are more fish than people. The fish haven’t been big. They haven’t been plentiful. And I can’t wait to hike up and try it again.

Tom Chandler dragging a float tube into the backcountry
I’m carrying a float tube in a poorly fitting pack. Don’t do that either.

A 15 minute hike with a fly rod isn’t hard for most. But when you’re talking about multi-day trips miles from the trailhead, there’s more to the deal than throwing a pair of jeans in a pillowcase.

Alpine lakes are pretty, pretty thingsYou’d think the word-slingers at GetOutdoors would have a “fly fisher’s primer to the backcountry” already assembled on their site (they do have this article on trip planning and this on boots), but sadly, no dice.

Undergrounders, we’re on our own.

And that’s not good. As fly fishers we’re used to reigning atop the food chain while in the water, but while hiking, we’re slow, clawless and largely defenseless.

Thus, a few survival hints might be in order – lest we become a partially digested link of the food chain.

But that’s Ok. There’s loads of information out there on sites like Two Heel Drive and the WildeBeat audio blog (these guys take their hiking as seriously as we take our fishing). You’ll find everything you need there to get started, including a few bazillion links.

Sold? Ready to hike so far into the backcountry that the animals don’t have cell phones? Want to spend a ton on hiking/backpacking gear? Try HikerDeals.com and the ultimate one-at-a-time deal site (wish we had one of these in fly fishing). In the meantime, see you in the backcountry, Tom Chandler.

Backcountry's beautiful
Shoot this in town, and you’d have four telephone poles, an airplane and a couple cell towers in it.

[tags]hiking, backpacking, backcountry[/tags]

Posted in Backcountry, Fly Fishing, Writing.