Mainsail
Member
As I do a fair bit of hiking, I thought I would post up some pictures of the handguns I’ve carried over the years. I live in Western Washington and hike the Cascade and Olympic ranges. We have a lot of open wilderness out here (unlike my home state of Connecticut) and there’s no shortage of trails. I also enjoy hiking off the trail system to get to remote peaks and lakes.
In the summer of 2006 I hiked solo to a remote forested summit called French Peak. There are no trails and it took me three attempts to reach it. Since I was going alone I decided to pack the gun I owned that was best suited for the task, which was my Taurus model 85. In the first picture you can see the steepness of the terrain, and that was how I spent more than half the ten hours it took me to get there and back.
On top I took a self-portrait which shows the little .38 in a paddle holster on my pack belt.
I didn’t carry again until a couple years later when I bought a Ruger Alaskan in .44 Mag. I carried it in a chest holster thusly:
The problem was that the .44 was a freaking boat anchor, and in hiking or backpacking weight matters. I always get a good chuckle out of the advice given in the various gun forums where people with little or no real hiking experience recommend a shotgun or .454 for the lower 48. The weight of the gun caused me to leave it behind on several solo off trail hikes, the very time I would most need a sidearm. So I sold off the .44 and picked up a Glock G20SF. I carry it with ten rounds in the magazine, and while not light by any means, it’s a lot lighter than the big Ruger.
The other advantage of the G20 is that it’s not too pretty to get dirty, and I still have confidence that it will work even if the slide is full of fur tree needles (it has been) dirt (yup), or snow (that too). Here are a couple pictures of a hike I did last Saturday to the top of Mt Townsend in the Olympics. The hike is pretty short, about 8½ miles round trip, but the first half of that is a 3000’ elevation gain. Conditions on the summit were brutal, with gale force winds and swirling blowing snow. The Glock rode on the pack belt and even though the holster protects it, it still took a beating that I would never want to punish a beautiful Smith & Wesson family heirloom with.
Here’s the summit:
Here’s my pack after I took it off to zip up my coat and eat some lunch. The G20 is hard to see.
Here’s how it looks when I’m hiking:
And later when I stopped to pull my microspikes off:
It’s beautiful country out here, and if you’re ever visiting let me know and I will try to arrange a hike to suit your desires or abilities. This was a pretty rough hike in terrible weather, but it sure beat the rain they were getting down in the lowlands.
In the summer of 2006 I hiked solo to a remote forested summit called French Peak. There are no trails and it took me three attempts to reach it. Since I was going alone I decided to pack the gun I owned that was best suited for the task, which was my Taurus model 85. In the first picture you can see the steepness of the terrain, and that was how I spent more than half the ten hours it took me to get there and back.
On top I took a self-portrait which shows the little .38 in a paddle holster on my pack belt.
I didn’t carry again until a couple years later when I bought a Ruger Alaskan in .44 Mag. I carried it in a chest holster thusly:
The problem was that the .44 was a freaking boat anchor, and in hiking or backpacking weight matters. I always get a good chuckle out of the advice given in the various gun forums where people with little or no real hiking experience recommend a shotgun or .454 for the lower 48. The weight of the gun caused me to leave it behind on several solo off trail hikes, the very time I would most need a sidearm. So I sold off the .44 and picked up a Glock G20SF. I carry it with ten rounds in the magazine, and while not light by any means, it’s a lot lighter than the big Ruger.
The other advantage of the G20 is that it’s not too pretty to get dirty, and I still have confidence that it will work even if the slide is full of fur tree needles (it has been) dirt (yup), or snow (that too). Here are a couple pictures of a hike I did last Saturday to the top of Mt Townsend in the Olympics. The hike is pretty short, about 8½ miles round trip, but the first half of that is a 3000’ elevation gain. Conditions on the summit were brutal, with gale force winds and swirling blowing snow. The Glock rode on the pack belt and even though the holster protects it, it still took a beating that I would never want to punish a beautiful Smith & Wesson family heirloom with.
Here’s the summit:
Here’s my pack after I took it off to zip up my coat and eat some lunch. The G20 is hard to see.
Here’s how it looks when I’m hiking:
And later when I stopped to pull my microspikes off:
It’s beautiful country out here, and if you’re ever visiting let me know and I will try to arrange a hike to suit your desires or abilities. This was a pretty rough hike in terrible weather, but it sure beat the rain they were getting down in the lowlands.
. I wonder if revolvers don't make "more sense" as wood-protection guns (against big animals), as they can't be put out of battery with a muzzle contact shot, nor jam if the slide is in contact with something when fired.
by using close by water streams. I was also able to save some space by carrying high calorie MRE packets instead of huge energy bars. I also cut my cordage from 100ft to 50ft. I decided not to cut my first aid supplies but drop splints and use branches instead. Instead of a survival mirror I decided I could use the reflective thermal blanket which has a much larger surface area and folds down to a small size.
