Dane

Hey Graham, I intentioanllly left off the details of our transcaction simply for your benefit. When some one feels the need to start a Pay Pal complaint because of a lack of communication it is obviously a problem. To your credit you did take care of it. I'll give you a call today.

Graham was difficult to get a hold of and slow to respond when he does answer. I would not call it whining if you aren't getting emails and phone calls returned. I was actually getting a bit pissed.

pm sent

Thanks guys. Yes, what I was looking for is a UIAA dbl rated rope but something you'd be willing to use as a single. I have 7.8 twins and not willing to use one of them as a single, too skinny and scary. But in comparison to my Joker they are really light. Thought something in the mid 8mm range would work for what I have in mind and still keep the weight down and some piece of mind. Some good suggestions to check out...thanks!

Sorry, forgot...needs to be a dry rope. If anyone has a lighter rope than a Joker...that is single rated, that would be even better.

I'm looking for the best dbl rope out there. Gotta be lwt weight, stiff flex if it is available. Need a 70m and bi color would be nice but not a deal breaker. For others that might do such a thing I am looking for a 8mm/8.5mm, rope that is dbl rated. The intended use is as a single rope on a ice route with a bit of hard mixed. Not UIAA approved of course but that is where it is going so if you have any experience with dbls or one particular brand/model you like let's hear it. Got a Joker already and want something lighter as the approach for this one is a beeeeeeaaach

try Zappos

Shit! When has anyone on the Internet actually told the truth about how hard they climb or how often they get laid?

Oh shit! Now I see the problem, it is the ho-hos. Most everyone I know who cranks 5.13 and WI6 can crave a ho-ho now and then.

I undertsand it is the internet and all but would think it really hard to suggest a "moderate" until you have actually got up the route Re: Slipstream? No one including the 1st ascent party ever thought Slipstream to be cutting edge or extreme, even in 1979. They took 3 days to get up and off the climb in Dec '79. Couple of NW punters did the second ascent in Jan of '81. With a 8:45 climbing time and way less than 24 hrs car to car while coming down the Athabasca in a white out. Lauchlan called it "classy". Anyone who has seen it will admit to it being a classic. No one who has ever been on the climb would doubt just how dangerious it can be. Moderates? Cascade-Yosemite Rock: Catapault/Winter Soltice Gonzilla/ Sloe Children Nut Cracker Central Pillar of Frenzy Serenty Crack- Sons Rockies waterfalls: Cascade Sniveling Takakakaw Rockies Alpine climbs: NW Ridge of Sir Donald East Ridge of Edith Cavell East Ridge of Temple

Any update on the road and trail?

Really nice thing to say Steve but in reference to Cooper and crew not in the same ball game. Guys like Bill Fix, Ron Niccol, Gordon Thompson, Jack Miller, Joe Hieb, Vin Hoeman, Leon Blumer and others climbed more than most of us ever will. The original East Face line on Chimney is "the" obvious line on the face. Done in 1961 @ 5.8 A1...with wool and cotton clothing, tennis shoes, funky ropes and hardware and a really big set of balls. Dave Hiser and Ed Cooper had those. Another line even harder than the 1961 East Face was Copper's and Don Bergman's climb of the NE Face...in 1959 @ 5.8 A2, which started on what is now the free line "Eye of the Tiger". Bill Fix's comments on his ascent with Jack Miller's of the NE "ridge" also in '59 is a classic. And I would suspect Cooper's original line done the month before. This in 200 vertical feet of Chimney that I have climbed all over and you'd be hard pressed to find a move under 5.8 and most of it much harder! Sandbaging and down grading in 1959? Who've thought Sure there were a few points of aid on all these climbs "back in the day" but I suspect not as much as you might suspect given the ratty gear these guys worked with and their free climbing standards. I know many a modern day "hard guy" who has pulled through all three climbs at A1 in sticky rubber and a big rack of cams Having repeated Boothe's 1935 solo from the lake in modern running shoes in '84 I can tell you it was harder physically/mentally than my solo of Illusions/Free Friends in '87. The NE face done in '59 puts the modern "technical" climbs into perspective for me. Scary? Ya, pretty much Haven't seen the programs but will make a point of it, thanks!

GoLite Ion...basic as it gets, perfect for what you are wanting, super light (9oz @ 25l) and will hold everything you have listed but not a whole lot more. Mine takes a XL LTW belay jacket, the new MSR, 2 liters bottles, some food, 2 headlamps and two pair of heavy winter gloves with a little room to spare. Couple pair of size 12 runners and the rest of your gear wouldn't be a problem Most importantly to me it actually comes in sizes. The Ion has botha useable chest and waist strap. So if you have to climb with it, it won't feel like a monkey hanging on your back. In the last 3 months I have used a BD 30L (the heaviest of the bunch), The Kharzi 35 (a fav), the Cilo 30 and a Grivel Rock Lt sack. Grivel's Rock lt is also a very slick climbing sack, but no sizes. The Go Lite Ion is made from super durable Dyneema® gridstop fabric, 9oz with nothing to strip and a retail under $50. That is a hard combination to beat.

The TD, ED, EDsup thing is Euro grading. These guys are Amurkins And someone was sure to ask them, "how hard!?" But a 8000 meter peak with a 12,000+ foot face is something all together different. No translation past "alpine" needed. 4100m, M5/5.9, WI4 really translates to very high, very long, very cold and very dangerious up and down. No sleep for days, dehydration, little food and not a whole lot of air for the last 10,000 feet of the climb. So 12,000+ vertical feet, M5-5.9X, WI5 and I would suspect thousands of feet of both difficult rock and ice all in big boots, crampons strapped on, lots of clothes but never really enough to be warm and a pack carrying all that is needed to survive while out and about for 8 days. It should be a given on this rouute but that X means if you fall you'll most likely die, rope or not. I have done a couple of the "easier" Rockies alpine climbs @ 5.9 WI4 and had way, way more fun than I really wanted. I have no idea what these guys have done or how to apply that rating past..."damn hard, really scary and really, really long". Pretty cool route isn't it? http://www.russianclimb.com/nanga_house_2005.html Hard to get a rating in the Rockies past 5.9 A2 or the newest version the Rockies "standard" M6 WI5. Best way to appreciate any alpine rating is get up one and then "study" your thoughts on the accomplishment.

Hey GB, no I didn't. By the time I hooked up with Martin I had actually forgotten that the stock inner could be heated and molded. What made me nervious (and forgetful) on that was Sportiva didn't have an authorised fitter in the US and even less info on how to do it right. I climbed a bit of ice in the stock inner boots and could have used them as is for easy climbing and slogs. But what I really wanted was a tight fitting inner for technical terrain. The Intution inner solved that for me with the added benefit of some more warmth and no need to crank the inner laces.

Sorry I can't offer anything on that one. I added the liner for fit, not warmth. Guys are using the stock boots in Canada's winter conditions, on Denali in the spring without over boots and all over the Himalaya. FWIW the Spantik is the warmest dbl boot I have used by a good margin. I wouldn't have added the extra liners if I had a better fit.

My second picture shows the angle of the picks when the handles are lined up as in your last model. It is an apples to apples comparison. Instead of being such an unpleasant prick how about adding something to the discussion past more erroneous info, personal attacks and rehashing the same info?

This is real.. When you line up the handles this is what the picks look like.. BD has a good deal less drop in the pick and the resulting sharper radius in top reverse curve. The BD pick in your over lay shows a good bit of Petzl pick below it. The overlay is not accurate but gives a reasonable view. Reverse your overlay and I suspect you'll see how the angle of the picks differ in use. Sometimes it is a lot easier to just use the real thing. Funny that, currently three engineers, two machinists and one metallurgist fine little fault in what I have posted or my thought process on how to better a pick, any pick. Most of that same info has been common knowledge in the climbing community for the last 20 years, so no big surprise.

tvash, I would disagree on most, if not all, of your comments and conclusions on this thread. But then I have a lot more detail on the tools than I have bothered to publish in this thread so it should be no surprise. One thing we can agree on is that Petzl makes a nice line of tools. I own and climb on several versions myself. If your cut and pastes efforts are intended to champion the Petzl as a superior tool you won't get a rise from me. If you can't visually verify the obvious design and finish differences in the two company's picks, how can you hope to add anything useful to the discussion past the "atta boy" for Petzl? My pictures show the true pick angles and are taken to highlight the differences in angles between the two tools. 30 seconds with the actual tools in hand will clearly show those differences. Your over lay is not correct. More importantly actually using both tools as intended will quickly show you there is a difference in performance. Outside the photos, most of my comments are no more than personal observation and my own speculation, YMMV of course. Take a look at an actual over lay and decide for yourself if the differenece at the shaft and pick angles will be important to you. Climbing, like many things is life, is all about the details and knowing when they are important and when they aren't. For most of us none of this will matter climbing ice. To figure out how to improve the design, BD or Petzl, it is the details that will count. When you line up the shaft on each tool this is the position of the picks.

I’ve done a little more research over the past week. Obviously it is going to take a lot more. I’d believe, as Bill Belcourt mentioned, that the Petzl Cascade pick is somewhere around 20% more durable than the standard Laser on the BD tools. A choice BD intentionally makes for higher performance on the Lazer pick. Look at the BD Titan pick and strength is simply added by using more material. BD doesn't give away anything in durablity with the Titan. We can all argue that BD performance edge but until any of us start doing those cutting edge routes our personal choice in tools isn't really important past our own pocket books. I’d also guess that the number of failures we have seen on this post are time in market and market share issues more than having a bad product @ BD. But it is only a guess and any product can be improved. But how strong is “strong enough” and where does a pick need to be? The current perception in the market place alone says BD could improve their pick durability. Although the picks seem very similar in design they are not. The current version of the Quark and Cobra handles, however, are.. So you can leave the older handle designs and past pick failures out of the equation. Lets look at just the newest tool/pick designs. Some of the most obvious of my observations: The BD Lazer is thinner and shorter in height at the front of pick than the Petzel Cascade. That alone should make the BD Lazer less durable. The BD picks also have a much deeper bevel on the upper side of the pick, again less material, less durable. But the flip side, every thing being equal, the BD pick should have better penetration just by having less volume. The BD picks all have fewer teeth on the underside of the pick. That should make the picks more durable because they have less stress risers from the teeth being cut. Petzl has more teeth and because of it more stress risers. But the Petzel picks are using a bigger diameter cut at all the pick teeth so the stress riser is smaller on each tooth notch. Petzl is grinding the lower edge of the pick at a sharper angle and again lowering the influence of the tooth grind on durability. BD makes a light grind in the same area with little or no influence on the surface area of the teeth. The bigger the grind here, the less the teeth bite, the easier the pick cleans and the less leverage/force the pick will see. And then there is the steel used, both picks are Rc spec’ed between 40/44. BD is lazer cutting from 4340 plate and Petzl is forging from (unknown to me) Chrome moly. Both are using various levels of hand finishing. My observations and price points would seem to confirm Petzl is doing the most hand finishing. From what I have seen even with all the nuances on the pick material, manufacture and design I think the most telling difference is the angle of attack on the BD pick compared to the Petzl Quark. The Quark has a much steeper pick angle than the Cobra. That makes for a slightly different swing between the two. There are people at every level of climbing who prefer one manufacture’s design over the other. BD is intentionally addressing differing skill levels and conditions by handle design in their tools. My take is Petzl is intentionally addressing differing conditions more than skill level with their line of tools. Each is a sound marketing plan. Skill level also needs to be considered in any survey results. If you have the largest market share, with dbl the service life as your competitors and you have a huge margin of failures over your nearest competitor on a list like this but your R&D team's feed back shows almost zero failure over a 4 year period something else is obviously happening that has not been identified yet. More research, field documentation and some finite element analysis to come I hope. Everyone has used a claw hammer to pull a nail with varying degrees of success. IMO the tighter arc on the BD reverse curve is causing a fulcrum point in the area of tooth 3 to 6 where upward leverage will break the BD pick sooner than the straighter angles and less leverage of the Petzl pick. Add bigger stress risers in that same area and less material and the end result would seem painfully obvious. But just how strong is “strong enough”. I’ve had email exchanges with some of the sponsored BD climbers and quizzed them on their own pick breakage. The newest BD tools with current production and unmodified picks are just not breaking with that group of climbers. Yes they are wearing out picks by climbing a lot of mixed. But I have yet to hear of a broken pick from that small group. If that changes I'll post the info. Hard to believe just how complicated our little "battle axes" really are But a closer looks shows there is a lot going on.

In the past I had spent a few years working retail in ski and climbing shops. After my FF experience I had the impression the Intuition would work if it could be fit better. All it should take is some serious hands on experience, additional fit kits, insoles and tools to do it right. Far as I know Sturtevants is the only place locally with the shop tools and fit kits that a good boot fitter would require. I have a foot that is difficult to fit..long feet and a really narrow heel, so nothing drastic if the fitter knows what they are doing. On my first visit to Sturtevants the place was jammed and it took three hours. That visit got me $100 custom insole and some fit parts. Pretty much like the FF experience I knew it wasn't going to work after walking around in them a few minutes at home. Thankfully I met Martin on the second trip and he was able to take the time required to get it done right including a new insole. The price of the original insole was refunded in full as well. All the local shops, FF, Marmot and Sturtevants have great staff. FF in particular has fit up many, many pairs of Intuition inner boots over the years for happy climbing customers. We all spend serious time in our boots. Just wanted to point out Martin as the guy if want your boots fitted perfectly.

I don't get the best fit in Sportivas but wanted the best dbl boot I could find. The Sportiva Spantik solves the second problem with some aplumb. A decent fit for me takes some extra work. I first had a young lady fit me with Intuition inner boots @ Feathered Friends. The fit ended up so bad I couldn't use them and they were returned with no hassles. Several months later I tried again at Sturtevants in Bellevue. Turns out that Martin, who is the boot fitting manager, is a climber and skier. He took the time (well over an hour) to give me a perfect fit in the Spantiks. They also are the largest seller of Intuition inner boots in the country, fitting something like 600 pair a year. I am not the first to come up with the idea of an Intuition liner in a Sportiva Spantik I had the chance to talk gear with "Big Wall" Pete Takeda yesterday. He has been using that same combo to over 7000m and highly recommneded the same combo. If you are like me and have fit problems in any climbing or ski boot I can't recommend Martin @ Sturtevants in Bellevue highly enough.

I have no clue what the costs to BD were on the AerMet picks, just repeating the numbers I was given. They may not be exact but I have no reason to doubt the big price differences. Or BD underwriting a pick no one would buy at the actual manufacturing price. I suspect we'll see an AerMet pick return (from some source and may be not BD) with a justifiably healthy price tag attached.

Hi Paul, This is worth addressing and good to see someone remembers;) I'm familiar with the issues of manufacturing from AerMet 100 and 310. So that was part of the discussion with Belcourt. The production/tooling costs are extremely high for such exotic steels and the material costs are also higher than the norm. Bill's comment was the cost of the AriMet pick to them was $110...which wholesaled to dealers @ $60. Easy to see why that social service program didn't last long. But then that was the days of $20 picks and now the going rate is $35 from BD and $45 from Petzel or Grivel. So I suspect there might well be some room at a much higher price point for the right customer. If sales can justify it. Bill's comments were something like this: "AriMet produced a pick with incredible durability. They would stay sharp a long time no matter the climbing terrain, and because of that get used in harsh conditons even longer. Right up to the time they broke. But no question they did have a longer life cycle." (I bought the last dozen BD AriMet picks ever produced yesterday, Gladd's returns I hear ) "They also were so hard that none of our guys liked them for hard mixed climbing. The steel would skate off holds, instead of "grab", which the current steel and heat treat does." Remember the swing to hard mixed was just getting started in 1999/2000/2001. Ice tool sales were about to boom. But a pick that wouldn't mix climb well was a dead horse...no matter the cost. New steels and current R&D might well give us another chance at a pick that will do "everything". Oh, and Trash...ah, never mind...

So many questions and so little actual data posted in the comments. We are touching on so many issues and none of them in the detail they require. First off the numbers posted are relavant. 20 years of picks that go on a current Cobra means (like some of the posts here) that older picks are clearly still being used and broken. BD owns the majority market share in the US. Take a look at 2nd Ascents used wall if you want to see just how true that is. Belcourt discussed quite openly with me the design changes of 2000/2002. I wrote a more detailed post about that last night and still missed some of the details. It is in quotes at the bottom. The actual failure rate for BD and Grivel is less than 1%. For the reading challenged, and to Belcourt's credit, he readily admitted that Petzel picks were up to 20% more durable than a BD pic, becasue BD has intentionally designed their picks to a higher performance standard. Again...BD has decided to use a smaller cross section and width than Petzel. No secret why the Petzl picks are more durable, first and formost, less metal on them. IMO another factor is BD cuts their picks from plate instead of hot forging. But forging can be argued as well over current steel quality and heat treats. We're all climbers here, we can debate "performance standards" all day long. Maybe Trash and Will Gladd want the ultimate in performance. Trash's performance might well be different that Gladd's newest M12. I'm willing to make a few trade offs every time I pick from my quiver. Key here is we all have a "quiver" to choose from Trash, let's not be obtuse, any metal part can be tested to failure even if you go outside the design spec to do so. Testing to failure is part of manufaturing. But modern tools are designed to have disposable picks, so breaking one isn't outside the design is it? Charlet/Petzl and Quark pics and their date of manufacture? Again so I don't send every minute writing about picks, read between the lines here. Quarks have been around since the winter of 2001? The Quark design came as a redesign from the other Charlet/Moser tools that were great tools but less than durable in some instances. Broken handles/heads were a probelm at Charlet/Moser (later Petzl) during that same time (2000/2002) as they were problems for BD and lesser so for Grivel. No ten year old picks being sold as new and getting bolted to a Quark. So you get the Quark in 2001, T rated shaft and a hot forged pick in both B and T ratings. The Quark was the state of the art IMO as a water fall tool until the newest designs from Grivel and BD show up most recently. But by now the sport has changed a lot at the cutting edge. State of the art could be argued by those same guys actually at the cutting edge of ice tool use. Take a look at what Twight, Backes and House took up the Czech Direct back in the day. Curved handles on an alpine route..who would have thought? Take a look what Slawinski, Gladd, House, Anderson, Owens and Walsh use now. Those guys are climbing as hard as anyone on alpine and mixed. Trust me they can be climbing on free tools from any company they choose. I would suspect they all use what they know will get them up climbs. But in the current climbing industry I've no doubt there is at least a small finacial incentive as well. Three tool suppliers and all have been up some "state of the art" routes. It is public knowledge that Grivel and BD has broken picks with sponsored climbers I haven't heard anything on the Petzel side. Might well be just the fact that Petzl isn't as high profile. But who knows...our survey doesn't seem to show that. Finally my comments on BD picks partly from the conversation with Belcourt yesterday and some pure speculation on my part about the previous generation of shaft and pick angles (not pick design). Only time will tell if the current shaft designs help the picks hold up any better. Next comment I'll have on the subject will be after some field testing next week.