Beck

Ya, these may NOT work very well in the Midwest, if you are heading up to Grand Marais for ice climbs, or anywhere around the Laurentian Shield up thataways, back in my youth, mucking around the wilds of the north Country, we'd use 10x50 inch Alaskan snowshoes for multi day trips, and still sink in under backpack loads... best to use those in the spring,as Jhamaker recommends, you'll more than likely need more flotation for the typish snows found by climbs(?) back there. Say, do they still make "Sprecher" brew?

Snoboy has it right on about the shell fit and space needed. TLG may think Sturtevants has the goods, but I doubt they've got people who have done custom fits with a decades' worth of experience- check with Marmot or the Ballard boot fitter if you want the right fit.

to put it in laymans' terms; avy beacons are, essentially, radio transmitter/receivers. a straight analog beacon receives the target beacon signal just like a radio picking up radio stations, and a digital beacon will have less range and sensitivity, just like having a digital radio tuner on "seek"- they never can pick up as many stations than when you flip thru the channels manually. Having a digital processor do the "listening" for you limits the sensitivity, and hence, the range.

Regarding post: The VE 25 can be pitched w/o the inner tent; get a footprint,and it will function the same as the grommeted straps mentioned by mcnut. Alternately, you can make similar thangs out of cording; small loops in each end with a two-half hitch adjustor strung in the thing, lets you tighten the fly somewhat from inside- I had a North Face Westind back in the eighties (damn that was a fine tent) and it came with those grommetted straps attached to the vestibule. Me, brainiac that I am, said "WTF are these things, they don't help to pitch the vestibule any) so I made some adjustable cords to string the bottom of the poles togther for the fly only pitching, it took me 10 years to figure out what those straps were for! but the cords always worked great! As to a tarp type pyramid tent, a BD BETAMID would be a much more storm worthy system for higher altitudes. These are canterary cut (i.e. tensioned in graceful curve upon pitching) have a circus tent-like look that's much lower profile and is supported by two poles (I got two megamid heigth poles for a snow pitch, you get a six foot high tent with a little digging in) and would probably take it at thumb rock just fine. Adding a snow flap would probably be beneficial; additionally, sewing a couple of tube vents at the peaks will improve ventilation. Check out the BD BETAMID if you want to keep the weight down and have a stormworthy option. 2.2 pounds (w/o poles) and $99. And, as to "why have two tents?" that's kind of a stupid question. I bet most here have several, (as well as a bivy bag,with the exception of Mattp) and find different tents for different conditions a big plus- no way am i hauling my double wall four season in for a summer climb of Baker, no thanks!

intuition liners do not pack out nearly as much as traditional foam liners; additionally, you can rethermoform them to "unpack" the liner a couple of times without causing the insulation value to suffer. if you are planning on getting them thermoformed, go to a bootfitter at Marmot; they know all the tricks for supreme comfort from a thermoform liner.

a vote of confidence for the Hilleburgs; they are stout tents for their weight, some have a massive vestibule, the fabrics are incredibly strong for the weight (three different weights), and for the weight of a bibler bombshelter (which, by the way, weighs in at over a pound heavier than mfg's weight) you get a double wall (i.e. WARMER) tent with a bigasss vestibule. Check them out. The distributor is here in the Seattle area, and she has most every tent set up in the showroom, so you can dig around in figure out which one will work for you... I'd give them strong consideration for a Denali trip.

If it's a new addition, perhaps the legislature is gearing up to close all climbing areas under their jurisdiction to cope with the burgeoning budget crisis! SCARY!!!

sounds like they are covering all the bases, Matt... when did that get into the RCW? does this affect many places like, Frenchmans' Coulee? Or Darrington? I can never keep track of the land jurisdictions. I am of the opinion that the more climbers following the OTHER rules of state land; I.E. parking passes, no litter, no nuisance, no illegal camping (right!) the better picture to the community we present of climbers. "can't we all just get along?" kind of cordiality can go a long way, and look what happens when it goes the other (I.E. Coulee access)

Okay, i'm thinking this thru and wondering if you all are, as well. sure, a GPS with 1cm accuracy will tell you where YOU are, but is it going to tell you where the Victim is buried? The units would still have to communicate to each other, and satellite transmission technology to allow for satellite bounce isn't anything that's going to be inexpensive, compact, or run on AA batteries... to do short distance communication, a radio wave is the way to go, and it is going to be a LONG TIME before there's even this type of GPS cross communication thing going on... what will probqably happen in beacons, is a CPU capable of transcecting the flux lines, correlate it with a grid, and get you right to the victim without the user following a flux line. I doubt GPS is functionable under a snow load. there is still going to be an offset factor on deep/steep variables, so keep in mind to dig uphil of where you think the victim is buried....you should try for a probe hit before digging anything. remember, practice with your Beacons. "Run, run, run the grid; then pace, pace,stop, sweep, sweep- follow the flux, repeat."

Uh, Mountain Rescue volunteers who are available 24-7 to go haul ass to mountains to save yours, are pretty cool. They also are trained in urban SAR, and are pretty ready to help out in all sorts of scenarios. There are all sorts of SAR volunteers, 4x4 rescue, mounted SAR, snowmachine SAR, dogssearch SAR, and they are READY TO GO and get people out of trouble. If you guys want more "hotshots" on Mountain Rescue squads, go out and volunteer. You might have a helluva good time! During my stint on a Mountain Rescue squad, I got the chance to dangle beneath a Chinook helicopter on a cable on a flight around Rainier, also rode the damn thing back from Mount Bachelor once till I puked, the pilots were doing some low altitude "terrain avoidance" flying. We're talking friggin' ROCKIN good times! It's a very worthy thing to get involved in. Say, freeman, do you guys do Mount Adams searches for Yakima Co. sometimes?

hey snow boy, no offence, i'm just trying to help. I stated both the tracker, and the barryvox would be easy to use for inexperienced user, referencing the digital dual antenna directionality of them (in a previous post ) but when i go and try the barryvox, i find it confusing. It must be related to me being stupid, but i find in confusing. simple as that. but you say the Barryvox doesn't NEED to be confusing. Does that mean it CAN be confusing? I'm convinced that in the urgency of an emergency situation, a beacon with a lot of options may confuse the user. for the last five years I've practiced extensively with beacons, taught buddies how to search, trained in rescue scenarios, run drills several times a year with beacons, and have found, even in a practice scenario, simple mistakes are made by the coolest of heads. (you must be upset when you encounter opinions different from your own,boy) People forget all sorts of things. People screw up. What if a user of Barryvox, looking for his wife in an actual slide, gets mixed up on what the heck the options were to begin with? I've tried x-1 and the Barryvox out in the gear store i work at, and they both seem to have some issues, but i am reserving my opinions until i test them both , maybe the day after christmas, if anyone wants to go. Again, however, i think there are some problems with the processor speed of the ortovox x1. X-1 still has twice the range, and I'm betting a skilled user who practices with it will get a grip on how to use it. But, it may continue to be problematic in the ways Dr. Telemark describes it. Grid search to define parameters, solid signal, then "step, step, Stop in track, sweep,sweep, redirect. repeat." maybe the F1 is still the way to go, or the tracker for a second for someone who wouldn't have practiced much with one. but i need to bring them out in the field. I am of the opinion (only an opinion, but based on lots of field testing) that a beacon with the greatest receive range is desirable. I continue to use the F1 and probably won't replace it until the beacon does the digging for you!

hey Sisu, merry Christmas...the UP's getting hit with snow good this season, i remember skiing to school many a time as a kid, and as a college student...skiing on top of the banks, over the sidewalks, or in the roads when it was just foul out! "Santa got run over by his reindeer..." Da Yoopers

I didn't know where to post this, or how to post it in a sensitive matter, but felt it needed to be pointed out. Has anyone seen the latest Climbing mag issue? There is an obituary for Goran Kropp, including a picture. He has a hank of rope on his shoulder. Taking a close look at the photo, it raised questions to me as to what brand of rope that was. It looks black, coarse sheath, and stiff. My condolences go out to all of his friends and family, i feel awful to be pointing this out, but wanted to mention this to the climbers in here- we are all wondering as to the nature of this accident- this seems to be possible information into the nature of the accident. It will be in the Accidents Annual next year, so a deconstruction of what led up to the event will be forthcoming. I'm sorry if this brings out any emotional or illogical posts over this tragic event.

practice, practice, practice... The X-1 has the greatest range of any of the digi processors out there, the Tracker is the easiest to use with little praxctice, the F-1 is an industry standard. I think the Barryvox would be EXTREMELY confusing while in the adrenaline of a real live accident, buttons/options may work well when you've got a cool head of "this is only a drill" but when your spouse or buddy is at the bottom of the pile, your head is going to have a lot of freakin' static going on! I've practiced in the field with everyone except the Barryvox and the X-1. In the field, i've watched people with trackers miss a burial at 25 meters. looks like shooting a flux line with the x-1 will work good if you know the "Two steps, sweep, sweep, redirect" style of searching, same way you want to shoot any flux line search, versus the "same alignment" positioning in a classic long range grid to define your search area. My two cents, if i ever get a day off work i'm going up with a barryvox and an x-1 and a couple burial beacons, see how they compare. Will post a day, if people want to join me up at Snoqualamie for some beacon work and a bit of touring.

a couple comments about bivy sacks/foam pad issues. Yes, carrying a second closed cell foam pad, half to three quarter length, is beneficial in a couple of ways. 1: you can widen your sleeping footprint a bit to allow for some toss and turn 2: you can use one out of the snowhole, and have your bag on one inside, lofting up while you sit in comfort while making dinner. 3: and most important to me, you can use the two pads like a mini dryer by sandwiching gloves, socks, coat, shell pants between the two, it keeps them from freezing solid overnight. putting on frozen mitts in the AM is not a fun prospect, keeping them between the two pads also increases your insulation from the snow (where you will lose more of your heat if you are inadequately insulated below you) carry a light ground sheet to use as a floor for snowhole or tarp tent to help sort gear, and keep drier. As to bivies Vs. synthetic overbags, or just a warmer bag. All waterproof bivies will condensate on the inside. The fabric does not have a high enough transpiration rate. But it is usually manageable for a couple days in down. Longer trips, you need to rethink the system. Adding an overbag, like Mattp is suggesting, keeps your inner bag drier for two reasons- the outer bag will grab the moisture from outside, and keep it off the inside bag, and also, the dew point where your perspiration vapor condensates as liquid is now moved OUT of your inner, down bag, and into the outer bag. Moving the dew point into the outer bag keeps your transpiration in a vapor state, and moving through the inside bag in a vapor. This is preferable to just buying a warmer down bag. The new encapsilated nylons found in some sleeping bag shells will provide great weather protection, but you still have the dew point in the bags' insulation if you just carry one, heavier sleeping bag. As to styles of bivy. the OR bags are tight, the bibler and integral bags are more roomy. I use a Bibler big wall in Long, it gives me enough room to store some gear inside, boots in the foot area, gear alongside me for added insulation, and the hooped area is big enough to read a paperback book in or eat some snacks (as long as you know there are no snaffles around!) The first Bibler tripod bivy i checked out was a POS, the poles were so taught in the pitch it looked like the damn thing was gonna blow, plus the foot hoop wasn't very secure in the foot area. Better might be the bibler Bipod, but as stated earlier, the standard hoop bibler bivy gives you enough room to read and eat. Oh, ya, and don't zip yourself up all the way into a bivy !

glad you got a copy, Allison... mine is Mac... and Iaan, the Publishing Industry Standard for TEXT heavy documents IS Pagemaker, the print house I send to ONLY accepts documents on Pagemaker V 7.0, and they are big commercial offset press house. they run 15,000 copies of an eight page newspaper for us every month, as well as run virtually all the other community papers in the Seattle area, and they'd laugh if i suggested they switch to Quark or some other program.

Plain. Mount Terror. Three Fools Peak. Mount Forgotten.

stubbies will stick around, for all the reasons the above posters have mentioned, thin ice, adequate hold, faster placement. The Ushba "Ice Sphincter" will probably stay around as well, there is no getting rid of marginal placement pieces (look at RURPs and new, smaller, zero cams) but the technology in design is what is driving the sale prices. BD is leading the way in ice screw technology, the new "turbo" express vs express is largely a matter of thread pitch/depth/ spacing and a modified reverse taper on the interior, outplaces the other manufacturers way bad! faster placements, (relatively)solid hold, easier core removal. i'm betting the BD designers are running computer simulations on some super Artif. intell./artif. real. computers to find better equipment designs, before even thinking about producing a prototype.

Dudes and dudettes, do you not remember Shultzys' ? NO PITCHERS, NO DRINK SPECIALS... how the F... do we wind up at such lame places on a repeated basis, next time we'll be going back to the pig and whistle, geesh!!! I can go to shultzys, but WHY? Why not just do the Big Time Brewery? Cheap food, pizza, beer, no "go across the street" for food Bulls..., or solely sausages and no pitchers? Why not a bar with $7.00 pitchers and free popcorn? Can't we come up with cool places to go, instead of sorry excuses for a more plebian pub? This recycling of uncool places is definetly just that, uncool. And Dave Schuldt, yes, the prima facie determination for pub club should NOT be if you can bike ride to it, you're the cheapskate that has money in the bank and chooses not to buy car.

hence, French Technique... the art of moving up ice without the use of front points. Standard moves with either crampons, or tricorns, i'd imagine. But much easier with a cramp vs. hobnails. Aditionally, when the scots were faced with dicey moves, sans crampons, there are anecdotal tales of taking off boots and climbing in wool socks, to get better grip in the steps, as oppossed to keeping boots on.

It's was raining pretty solid up at both Crystal Mountain and Stevens Pass today, i'm waiting for a little more wintery weather before a beacon session, at which i intend to do multiple beacon practice. Will try out the new x-1 versus the Tracker, maybe even bother to try the Barryvox (to become convinced of their complexity) then go to old standby, the f-1 and see how they compare. Everyone should do a beacon refresher afternoon on a tour early in the season. Pick a nice day, scale back your objective, then after you eat lunch, spend an hour or two practicing with your ski buddies. It's fun, it's a lot less work than skinning another two hours, and you get to see how competent your buddies are at potentially digging YOU out of a slide. try it on slopes of 30-40 degrees if you want more realism to scenario, but check the avy danger before you start an avy drill in avy terrain. The reality of beacons is, most people don't practice regularily, the majority of us haven't practiced more than once, since the first time we got our beacons, whenever that was. Every year, get good at it early in the season, then try again every couple of months- practicing with your ski partners helps ensure YOUR OWN safety. And, If you can educate people how to "shoot" induction lines , or RUN that grid pattern, you'll be that much more popular when the cookies are passed around.

one ups cost $5.00's in March of this year. Haven't checked this season yet.

and memorize this number- 526-6677 called on Thursday for conditions, still got the fall avalanche "forecast" from October, I'm glad to hear Mark and Garth have got the forecasts on board for this year, I got news Martin Volken was kicking off slabs Thursday AM above Alpental. 526-6677

Don't hold your breath for G3 skins anytime soon. Wurd from the factory says they won't be shipping out ANY new G3 skins until after Xmas and maybe later- it sounds like they are having a manufacturers delay. Pick up some Ascensions with clipfix, set them up right and you will be good to go. One advantage to having straight skins is the ability to swap them amongst different skis with a quick adjustment in length, and no worries about overlap issues- also the skin management in windy conditions, and keeping shaped skins gunk free, already mentioned in above posts. I'm recommending against shaping skins for the above reasons. If it's icy, a ski crampon is a great backcountry tool that works well to provide ski "bite" on everything shy of blue boilerplate- there is a readily available skicrampon that can adapt to many telemark bindings well- IM me if you want more info on this cramp. " Keep the nap nat', don't trim the skin."- Beck

hey freeclimb, get your facts straight, are you sleeping with Rush Limbaugh again, or are you just an ignoranus? If they contributed to the ruckus society in the past, they didn't this year. 1,800,000 bucks to envirnomental groups all over the world, think about it.