Spring is a new beginning and with that comes another chance to chase brother bear around the countryside. Me and my buddy, Brandon, did just that over the Memorial Day weekend. We love the Hells Canyon country on the border between Oregon and Idaho and spring bear season gives us an excuse to hike in there and soak up the wildness. With our eight trusty packgoats, we headed into the mountains.

This was our third spring bear hunt in Hells Canyon. Spring weather usually means you get a little bit of everything. This year it meant we got a whole lot of rain, snow, and freezing cold. Being the geniuses that we are, we setup camp the first night in a place with the word “freezeout” in the name. It was cold and windy in Camp Freezeout, but as they say, “even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while” and I just happened to bring along my new Kifaru tipi and stove. If you’re into backcountry living, Kifaru is bad ass. They make packs, stoves, shelters, and a variety of other gear in Colorado for backcountry adventure and military use. The tipi shape is extremely stable in high wind. The stove comes apart and folds down to the size of a phone book for packing. It will burn any type of woody material and puts out fantastic heat. The stove and tipi together weigh in at about 10 pounds and the 4-man tipi is the perfect size for two people plus gear. So we setup camp, the goats settled in for some browse and cud chewing and we started “glassing” the hillsides looking for bear.

Coming up next: searching for ursus americanus