Mountain Man Rendezvous 2015

Since Kareena is typically the one writing the blog, I feel I should preface this with a warning that I, Chris, I'm writing this post.

So this year, Christopher Gomm (buddy) and I went up to Fort Bridger to the annual mountain man rendezvous. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is basically a commemoration of the settling of the west - Fort Bridger being one of the intersections. As a part of the celebration, you'll have people decked out in completely period correct apparel. And when I say completely, I mean completely. In fact, one man forgot his pants, but remembered a loincloth and chaps around his lower legs (bright white thighs were commando - i'll spare you a picture of that). 

We spent the entire day at this rendezvous event going from tent to tent to all of the traders. Each trader was dressed up in his or her own period correct apparel. Period correct means from 1820 to 1840 era. So we got to see a lot of cool things being sold in these tents. For example, a typical tent would have several different types of furs like raccoon, badger, bear, Buffalo, coyote, skunk, beaver, mink, and others.

They would also have various types of household goods such as utensils, pots and pans, cookware, and cups and mugs. They would also have all sorts of beadwork and jewelry of the day. Personally, my favorite part was watching all of the people. You do you aren't required to be dressed up in order to attend this event, however, in order to get free admission you do need to be dressed up. So I would say that a little over 50% of the people were dressed up in period correct clothing.

After the cool Native American powwow dancing, we spent most of the morning checking out the trader tenants and all of the little trinkets and things being sold.

Entertaining powwow dancers

Then we decided to check out the Tomahawk and knife throwing range. This was one of the main reasons I wanted to come and look at this event because it would have a lot of my ideal customers for HatchetsandAxes.com attending.

A few practicing their throwing skills at the range. Check out the long line of stations!

The range was actually really neat. They had very creative targets lined up in a row about 10 different stations. Each station had a different type of target for the Hocking knife throw competition. After doing a little bit of practicing with our Tomahawks we headed towards the food area to have some lunch. After downing a couple of "authenic" hot dogs we headed back over to the Hocking knife throw stations where they were going to have their first competition. The competition that we participated in was called a blanket throw. The blanket throw was where everyone participating would put an item on the blanket that is put into the pot. The highest scoring individuals get first dibs and it goes down the line by score.

Buddy throwing in the competition

But we realized very fast that we were required not only to do Tomahawk throwing but it was a Hawk and knife throw, which meant that we needed to have a throwing knife in addition to throwing Tomahawks. Neither of us have any experience throwing knives so it meant for a fast learning experience. Having never thrown knives before we did pretty good. Buddy and I got the same exact score and ended up in the middle of the pack of participants. Someone instead of putting a period correct item of five dollars value or greater onto a blanket ended up putting a five dollar bill as their donation to the pot. 

I chose the five dollar bill and Buddy chose a pretty cool Buffalo horn to add to his outfit.

After the competition was over we slowly made our way back through tenants in the areas that we hadn't covered yet and then got in the car and came home.

Lessons learned for next time:

1. To the guy with bright white thighs that don't ever see the sun - keep it that way next time!
2. In addition to Tomahawk throwing learn how to throw knife before entering the competition
3. The shorter the handle of your Tomahawk the shorter the distance you can be to your target and therefore the more accurate

Special Thanks to Buddy Gomm for hooking me up with this awesome get up