Ali Hall and her husband Chase live in Steamboat, Colorado, where Ali is a photographer and Chase manages the Yampa Valley Ranch. They run cattle and have breeding, training and horse operations as well.

“So much of my photography is in the backcountry,” said Hall. “My tools need to fit into my camera bag, and Silky’s Pocketboy does just that. Whether it’s in my ski pack or on the back of my horse, it comes with me on all my shoots.”

Last fall, a client invited them on a horse-packing elk hunt in Wyoming. The trip was ambitious–a nine-mile hike into the Bighorn Mountains near Gillette, WY, with five people, seven horses, and three elk permits in hand.

It was an overnight drive with the horses to get to Gillette, which is surrounded by verdant prairies–lush and green with plenty of water. But in fall 2024, the area had been suffering a drought for months. The only running water Ali and her party could find was in stock tanks for cattle.

The nine-mile trek to their basecamp quickly turned into 13 miles. “The mountains around Gillette are craggy,” said Hall. “We would walk out on rocky fingers that would cliff out on every side and we’d have to backtrack. It was hands down the hardest terrain I’ve ever navigated.

When darkness settled in, the party pitched a tent where they were. “There was water for the horses, so we didn’t dare move on,” said Hall. “The next morning we hiked another three miles to get back on track, hoping to camp where we found a good patch of dried grass for the horses. But that site was occupied by a group with llamas, and horses hate llamas, so we moved on.

Eventually, Hall and her team found a suitable camp spot, though it was a mile round trip to water the horses.

“It was an awesome and really hard adventure,” said Hall. “There wasn’t anything to keep the horses inside the fencing. One morning all seven horses were gone. The team fanned out a mile in every direction to find them. That happened twice. We thought we might have to pack out. Another horsepacker returned our horses after one of them escaped. We got our asses kicked by Wyoming. But the trip was super rewarding.”

We used the Silky Bigboy Outback, Pocketboy, and the Ono Hatchet every day.

“For us, Silky is the most important tool we can take into the backcountry,” said Hall. “The saws are light, durable, and they can be used in so many ways. I take my Pocketboy on every photoshoot, and when we go horsepacking, we always have both the Bigboy and the Pocketboy. When we’re horsepacking, there are often trees blocking our route. On this trip, there were an insane number of downed trees we had to get through. Silky saws let us travel light and handle the deadfall blocking our route.”

In the Bighorns, Hall and her team used their Silky saws to create better facilities for the horses. They also used the saws to quarter the elk they harvested to pack it out. “The Bigboy made it easy to take out the skull plate and to quarter the elk,” said Hall. “It cut through bone with ease.”

On this trip, Hall says that the Bigboy was the star because it’s big enough to get serious work done. And the Pocketboy was a staple in the kitchen and the team used it for other odds and ends.

“When we were out hunting, I always had the Pocketboy in my pocket,” said Hall. “I used it to open packaging. It was a dual purpose knife. We brought steak from the ranch and I used the Pocketboy to cut it up. I even used the Pocketboy to spread peanut butter for a sandwich."

Deep in the Bighorn mountains, Hall and her crew employed the Ono to clean up trees so the horses’ lead ropes wouldn’t get caught. They pounded tent stakes with the Ono too.

Hall says the Wyoming horsepacking hunt was a whirlwind of chaos, but sometimes the trips where you come out with 100 different stories are the best kind of trips. And lucky for their team, while they didn’t fill all their tags, they did harvest one elk that will fill their freezers this winter.

See more of Ali's photography at alihallphotos.com.