genepires

placing the picket while in self arrest skill is a skill needed for teams of 2. assuming a middle person fell in, the 2 people on either side of the victim hold the weight while the remaining end person self belays his/her way to the nearest person. The person standing builds an anchor right below the person holding the weight and continues with the rest of the recon, assist and/or rescue. for steeper ground, this may need to be changed to fit the situation but the basics is the same. But the need to build an anchor and hold the weight is not needed unless 3 of the team members fall in. (this assumes that all members of the team have at least basic skills) I would rather pound in a picket into super strong snow than try to build a t slot. It is really hard to hold the weight with feet only (the holding is the easy part) and use the axe to carve out a t slot deep enough to really hold. try it sometime. If the bridges are weak enough to fall in, the snow is weak enough that vertical placements are questionable. Digging a t slot deep enough with one hand is very hard to do. So the concept of placing a picket one handed while holding the axe is questionable.

a couple pulleys per team is fine. a couple pickets per team is fine too. If the person in the hole has a picket, you can bury a axe to replace. I would suggest those runners be double length to allow enough space between anchors for strength. good job with the preparation by learning the right skills.

one gets what they paid for. $90 might be in your price range if you think about owning it for 10 years vs a piece of crap that needs to be replaced after a couple years. I am not dissing the costco jacket but I do not own one. I think Dane spoke well about it though.

costco has softshell jackets for fairly cheap. relatively. something like $50 or so.

you can increase the friction of any belay device by using more carabiners between the rope and your belay device. I have never heard of dynamic cordelette. The common stuff of the spool is static. If weight is the issue, then maybe it is wiser to evaluate the length of your rope needs instead of diameter so much. For typical mountain travel, a 60m is pretty long and unneeded. 40 to 50m maybe a better choice.

rap wall? (the mixed climbing area)

Why would you not stay in the habit of tossing the skinny and rapping on both so the "right end" will always be clipped. Just a theory to answer your question. The skinny ropes are more susceptable to being cut over edges. It seems like every rap involves the rope laying over some kind of edge. With time, the probability is high that your skinny rope will cut taking you down. If you are lucky, the rope knot will jam and you can single rope rappel down but without a means to retrieve the rope. PLus then there is the unequal rates of flow of rope through the rappel device which causes the ends to not be even and the possibility of burning the rappel anchor webbing if there is no metal rings.

I have used some screws that look just like those almost 20 years ago. They were complete crap and worthless in waterice. It cost only $10 each but they were worth that for alpine ice were they went in by hand if it was warm. Assuming that these are the same, then they are a complete waste of money. They also dull very quick.

I agree but with slight modification. If a picket can be placed vertically by hand, I don't trust it. If it takes many whacks with a hammer or top of the axe, I trust it.

march is a bad time of year for snow protection. I have pulled out deadmaned pickets in march but had good success with pulling tests in july through august with vertical placed pickets. It has been strong enough that 4 guys pulling hard could not pull it out. Even a dynamic pull with 4 guys. One time, I even deadmaned a 2 inch rock and could not pull it out. It is all about the snow pack and time of year. -If the snow is strong, then chances are the steps are hard to make and the need to simu is there. A fall here will get fast quick and self arrest is undoable. (classic example of this is denali pass about high camp) - If the snow is weak, the steps are big, deep and easy and the need to simu is not there. A fall here will stop with very little effort due to friction. to discount vertical placements is not look at the year round picture.

I feel a little sick reading this.

catching someone who is falling on 45 degree snow is not as hard as one might think. Between the usually thinner dynamic rope, some friction and the assumption that the falling person is trying to stop, the forces are much lower than a rock climbing situation. Two people should be able to catch one person falling. Unlikely that one person can catch two people falling. would I want to catch a fall? no way. but the forces involved are not enough to warrant a choice to solo the face.

pack your stinky rock shoes with the rack to give them a surprise when they rifle through your carry on bag. Couple of times I did what you are asking about, been searched but no problem.

might not be a great tool for crevasse rescue as it might have too much friction for that system. worth trying out on a practice session though.

LEader is belayed on two double ropes normally. Each of the other climbers is tied to one of the double ropes. Leader belays up both followers with a auto locking belay device so that the climbers can climb at their own pace. Gotta clip both ropes into traverses for preventing swings of followers.

+1 for sir donald and ingals. (My only solo ventures)

Is keeping the masses away from the wilderness a bad thing? (I am kidding of course...sort of)

No doubt you read some negative comments on the durability of the SS but there must be thousands of crampons out there performing well. Maybe you should reconsider the ditching of your sabertooths and just check them regularly for cracks if that is your concern. If it does get a crack, then BD will do you right. Now if you got lots of spare cash....... I prefer the sarken to the sabertooths. No detailed reasoning as I have never worn the sabertooths. But I did not like to do wi4 in the sarkens. I thought the front points were to long for winter waterice. So either you kick in extras hard for full penetration or you needed more calf work to keep foot level. But for alpine ice, I really like the sarkens.

way too much thread drift. Won't someone sell this guy some SS hangers!

shove a stopper down the throat, have the nut impact on the small intestine orifice and shit out the swagged cable. Shoelaces do not stand up to UV radiation like metal cable and dead squirrels.

The women are unaffected by this I hear. Welcome back anyway Mike. there is one finger unaccounted for in the photo. Maybe it isn't a punch?

I only use twiggy weeds and dead squirrels for pro. They will have perma draws on them though.

how about attaching perma fixed draws on dem lines to?

unknown. It was a bit of an experiment on my part. Maybe I just got lucky.

did that at the stuart lake TH on a busy weekend with no tickets. The sign was all of 50 yards from the TH.