Zach Lazzari March 11, 2026 Katmai Sky Lodge Limited Openings Have you ever dreamed of being dropped off in the middle of a national park, surrounded by millions of acres of pure wilderness? This type of place is extraordinarily rare and somehow, my good friends Skylar and Chapin put a roof on the main lodge last fall before winter locked them down. Think Yellowstone sans people. Actual solitude. The property has several finished cabins and you can literally walk (or fly) into a giant...

Zach Lazzari March 8, 2026 Worn Cork: Testing the Limits of a 6 Weight Caleb swapped from the rowers seat to the front of the raft, making the awkward transition as we crawled over coolers and stacked dry bags, all while trying not to spill open cans of beer resting on the frame. I passed off my rod and grabbed the oars, catching currents and pulling back to set a line for the next fishy river bend. He motioned into a cast then stopped and stripped in some line, taking a moment to look over...

Zach Lazzari March 2, 2026 Papa Fernandez Camp - Back in the Baja I skipped Baja last winter and ran around Argentina with a backpack/packraft setup instead. This past summer and fall, I landed a good deal on 1999 Astro Van and decided to make a simple camper build and send it back down the peninsula. This time, I think she will live south of the border for a few years, making it easy for me to fly in and out. I don't mind the drive but it's not exactly convenient and timing is everything for...

Zach Lazzari Feb 12, 2026 A Recent Obsession with Hunting Packs + Wilderness Pack Specialties Review When I graduated high school, circa 2003, a wonderful friend gifted me a Kelty backpack. It was a heavy duty rig, made to haul an old school amount of backpacking gear. Cast iron pans, canvas tents and a few small children could easily have been stuffed into the thing. It saw little use in the early days. A trip to college, life in a closet. Eventually, I found my footing in life and starting...

Zach Lazzari Feb 4, 2025 Processing Season: Sorting Out the Freezer Running water would make the post hunting season a bit easier. I have a well dug but nothing plumbed to the tiny home just yet and dishes are a pain. It's still better than the full nomad years. A few years back, I butchered an entire deer on a pizza box in a my popup truck camper during a massive snow storm while parked at a truck stop. Each cut was neatly wrapped in butcher paper and dropped into a plastic tub under the...

Zach Lazzari January 5, 2026 Banditos & Bucktails: Skirting Danger in Chiapas, Mexico Shale dog hung her head out the window gulping for any semblance of a cool breeze where none existed while I traded glances between the van’s temperature gauge and a lowland Gulf of Mexico highway. The air was so thick I could taste wafting black fumes of oil refinery smudge on the tip of my tongue. We pressed hard south through Veracruz and Tabasco regions, sharing narrow lanes with a nonstop stream of semi...

Field Notes: Weekly Round Up Sept.17.2025 The barrage of assaults on public lands and conservation policy is unending. After fighting to remove the outright sale of public lands from the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, I found myself a bit jaded and exhausted from the need to constantly call on my representatives. Conservation groups were quick to celebrate but lawmakers certainly weren't discouraged. Now we are facing the push to rescind the Roadless Rule, to reverse the Public Lands Rule and...

Zach Lazzari Field Notes: Weekly Round Up Sept.9.2025 The heat is cooking my tiny home, forcing me outside by mid-afternoon most days. It doesn't feel like fall has fully arrived but Montana archery season is about to kick off. With low water and stressed Trout, I'll be focusing on high elevation hunts until the rivers cool off and hoot owl restrictions are lifted. It's a bad year for water up here but we should cool off a bit in the coming month. Fall is all about staying close to home and...

Zach Lazzari Sept 3, 2025 Unintended First Descent: No Name Creek, Alaska "Ya know, I don't think anyone has actually been through that canyon. You might be the first…" Skylar noted as we bushwhacked and traced a bear trail to the river. I wasn't overly concerned considering the moderate volume of water. I assumed anything difficult would have the option for a clean portage. The group was planning to wade fish upriver while I ran 8 or so miles through a canyon stretch before hiking a...

Next Level Passion Projects: An Alaska Lodge in the Making I've worked at plenty of fishing lodges and am intimately aware of the labor required to keep these places running. They are often in remote places where logistics are anything but simple, weather and harsh elements deliver a constant beating and the overhead of keeping your house in order is significant. This was my first time working on the actual construction of a new lodge. I'd argue that most new operations are built on outside...