Author: Nate Bender

I had the good fortune here to run the 55-mile trail along Idaho’s Selway river, joining a group of friends as they kayaked the river. My girlfriend at the time and I were hanging out in my kitchen, chatting and making dinner. She mentioned that in a couple days she and a small group of … Continue reading Selway river trail – June 6-7, 2020

The Flathead range seems pretty under-appreciated in the western Montana mountain scene. You just never hear people talking about it. It’s like the nearby Swan range, Missions, and the Bob Marshall wilderness the Flatheads sit within dominate everyone’s imaginations. I think part of the reason too is that the meat of the Flathead range is … Continue reading Flathead range partial traverse – Aug 9-10, 2020

In the words of its creator Dave Chenault (website: Bedrock and Paradox), the BMWO is “an unsupported traverse of a big wild place in the tradition of Bob Marshall and the Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic.” Each spring since 2012, a small group of folks gather to traverse the Bob Marshall wilderness by whatever self-powered and … Continue reading Bob Marshall Wilderness Open (BMWO) 2020 – May 25-26, 2020

I’m working through grad school right now, and the covid-induced remote learning environment makes everything harder than it ought to be. After August through November of feeling like all I was doing was staring at a computer all day and fitting in short runs around town on the margins of my schedule, I felt tired … Continue reading Grand Canyon R2R2R alt – Dec 12, 2020

Once or twice a year I get the itch to go do something big and stupid in the mountains. Sometimes it’s a race, sometimes it’s just coming up with an idea and going for it. Someday I’d like to traverse the entire length of the Swan mountains, from Columbia mountain at the north end to … Continue reading Swan Crest partial traverse – Aug 22-23, 2020

The High Five traverse links up the five peaks — El Capitan, Lonesome Bachelor, & the West, Middle, & East Como Sisters — along the headwall of Little Rock Creek canyon in MT’s Bitterroot mountains. These peaks are some of the highest in the range, and the route takes a striking, intuitive ridgeline visible from the … Continue reading Bitterroots High Five Traverse – Sep 5, 2020

The stars above shine brighter than seems possible, the Milky Way interrupted only by the silhouette of Granite Peak’s north ridgeline to one side and the Froze-to-Death plateau on the other. I lay shoulder to shoulder on the cramped, rocky platform with my friend and first pacer Sam, shifting occasionally to find the least-uncomfortable position … Continue reading Across this house of sky – a short story on linking the Montana highpoints

Swan Range – Full Traverse N-S traverse of the full Swan range, from the northern terminus of Columbia Mountain to the southern terminus at the Morrell Lookout near Seeley Lake. Or maybe the southern terminus is farther south? Another logical possibility for the southern endpoint would be Lake Mountain, just before the range runs into … Continue reading Bucket List

(AKA Chuck Norris’s Scenic Death March) On July 14 I took a stab at connecting the Norris and Scenic Death March traverses in a day, starting and finishing at the Saint Mary Falls trailhead. Except for the section of trail from Gunsight Lake down to the car towards the end of the day, I’d never … Continue reading Norris – Scenic Death March traverse (GNP)