crackers

yeah, since the details are hazy in the extreme and everybody is bawling, it felt terribly wrong to say it in public but i needed to share the void in my heart and the source of my tears.

ivan, i'm afraid it's not my news to share yet. but i needed to scream in public in an area where people would understand.

a warning: as a climber, you will feel like absolute shit for shitting on this thread and my sorrows. or you're a callous fucking hiker.

and the fucking fog of international travel makes it impossible to know any fucking thing about it which precludes me from saying any fucking definite word about what i've heard. fuck fuck fuck.

no. a good friend was taken away. i'm crying.

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. god damn it there is no why but that doesn't mean its okay. fuck fuck fuck. i fucking hate this.

Word. And make sure you have two or three witnesses and a notary public when do do the medical power of attorney... Thanks for listening folks. I needed to vent, and I appreciate y'all reading it.

One of my best friends built a dream home with his life partner. It took them two or three years to find the property, get it permitted and another year to build the house. My friend left the a very successful career running his family business and totally enjoyed building this dream home with his life partner. They finished it in May. They invited us to a mega house warming party in October. On July 13, his life partner was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Diagnosis of pancreatic cancer rarely occurs before metastasis to the lymph nodes and liver. Your liver hurts, you go to the doctor, and they try to cheer you up by telling you that chemo can help. If it hadn't spread, they can do surgery, but usually cancer is already all over your body... At that point the mortality rate is about 100% at six months. I feel so fucking bad for my friend. Even though my wife and I have had a few pretty big fights this year, I simply can't imagine being told that she would be dead and then watching her die in the following six months. Especially after all the stress that went into just building out our kitchen...if we were still married after building a dream home, and then she died, I'd fucking torch the place. I wish they had been able to just get palliative care from the beginning. They had the urge and the need to fight; now she is dying in a hospital bed far from home, their friends and their community. Life sucks. Write a valid living will. Learn about what palliative care is.

heh heh heh...I actually have been stopped by costs before! When we tried to reorder woven Dyneema last year, we were quoted $350k for a production lot. We pay over $70 a yard for the NWD, we were paying $55 for some and $112 for other woven dyneema, and I think this new stuff will be stupidly expensive! We'll see if the weavers ever make it though...

Cubic. CiloGear doesn't offer a warranty on the NWD packs either. Just accounting for it on our balance sheet would put us out of business. The CT5K.18 is really surprisingly durable in the rock/alpine world, but it's too easily destroyed for something you sell. We've made packs made from featherweight materials for our athletes, but we stopped going down that road because you didn't really win that much weight for all the durability you give up. I've got to remind the world that we've been working with CT very closely to get this stuff right for over four years. We tried more than 25 different stock materials before getting to where we were two years ago. Basically, it outperforms anything else at the same weight. Period. It is a monstrous pain to get the manufacturing dialed in, but now that we developed a how-to book, I think you'll see more and more of it in the market. Folks using our NWD packs have won Piolet D'Ors, golden piton awards, done many many many first ascents in AK, WA, CO, Argentina and the himalayas. IMHO, our solution is totally superior to a nylon scrim. Our scrim material -- used in the crampon pouch and the front panels of the packs and a few other spots -- offers superior UV degradation, better abrasion resistance, doesn't absorb any water (nylon scrims definitely do), and better load transfer. Oh, I did try nylons and corduras, but they kinda suck in comparison to what we use. Good luck. You probably won't. AFAIK, the best weaver of Dyneema/Spectra doesn't do anything thinner than 140d. We actually are working on a really light something, and you might see it next spring. But don't hold your breath! (The cost of the damn stuff is probably going to between insane and inappropriate.) We're also supposed to get some samples of a 40d ish Dyneema that's not a traditional woven. Oh, and it's pretty much impossible to get Dyneema and Silicon to stick together without an encapsulation...

Hey, I appreciate it, but I don't see CCW as competitive to CiloGear at all. Randy makes packs that are durable over light. We do crazy stuff, and strive to balance weight with durability. I think that the lightest CCW pack is 2x the weight of the heaviest of our packs in each size range. That's huge and that says a TON about how the two companies see the world. The two mentalities are, if anything, complementary. Or at least that's my $0.02.

Of course, that's why CiloGear does returns and offers a warranty. But good luck!

No. I don't have the time for your silly questions. Just Kidding Layton. The low down is really frigging long, but the super short version is that when we started selling the NWD packs after three.five years of testing them, the manufacturer of the material had just gone through an acquisition/spin off/reorganization and had absolutely no frigging clue what a) their name was b) what the name of the material was or c) what day of the week it was*. Cuben Fiber is a restricted trade name that is only supposed to be used in reference to sails and sailcloth made or sold exclusively through North Sails. Cubic Technology is the company responsible for ongoing development and non-maritime marketing of the same sh*t. CTF3 was last year's name for the above referenced material sold on the non-maritime market. It comes in about a bazillion flavors -- about 190 different weights in Dyneema, the same in Kevlar/Vectran/whatever, four or five common scrims and lots of exotic stuff. We use it in colors, in patterns (AOR1 anybody? hi serenity!) and in different weights. To my very brief inspective eye, the Terra nova looked like a CT.5K.05 or CT1K.08 with one side breen and one side clear while the brooks range looks like a CT2AK.18 with one side aluminized. If I was right, the material will turn to very expensive garbage in a short period of time in the alpine environment. Those darn pokey ice screw things will devastate those materials. The Z Pack looks like CT5K.18 in the green, and I'd say that he's losing money with every pack that he sells whether he knows it or not. CiloGear uses three different variants in every NWD pack. It took us about sixty five packs tested to destruction to get to the understanding of how to work with the material. I literally wrote the book on how to make packs with the stuff. And there is always more to learn. I'm working on shaving off about 1/5 of the weight of the NWD packs right now, while increasing their durability, strength and load carrying capabilities. *It was a Thursday.

FF, Marmot & Second Ascent should all have a bunch of CiloGear packs in stock.

Get what Randy recommends to you. A) It will make his life a bit easier and B) he knows what materials fit his style. Randy is a good guy and makes solid packs. You won't go wrong.

text me if you want me to follow up on this with liberty tomorrow...

XPac? VX21 is 210d cordura in a X Pack laminate. vx42 is a 420d cordura in a x pack laminate. vx51 is a 500 x 1000d cordura in an x pack laminate. x pack is a trademark of dimension polyant. 1000d and 500d corduras come in many types with many coatings. some are more abrasion resistant and some are less. some have good coatings and are incredibly water-resistant, some fabrics have terrible coatings that fall apart. no offense, but I suspect that you'd have a much more cost effective solution just pro dealing a backpack. treat it reasonable well and learn to love seam grip. good luck.

Oh, I feel your pain! When I was onsighting 10+/11 in the gunks, I studiously avoided all climbs below 5.9 that were done when the grade was hard: I've experienced few things as challenging as climbing routes that were among the first of their grade. The gunks has quite a few of the damn things. Arch/Wrist kicked my ass when I first climbed it. It was just so bloody awkward and 'yerk' while i was leading...but it felt great at the belay!

Yellow Ridge is one of my favorite climbs in the world. A 5.7 with that exposure and the different moves...ah. From the roof crack at the beginning to the traverse under the roof, to the airy moves into the exit corner, I love that climb. Arch was 5.4 until 2004 when Dick (no relation) released the current Trapps guidebook. Now it's 5.5. For next time, when you're doing that awkward traverse thing, look around your feet for places to put gear. As I recall, the first pitch of Arch takes #1 camalots by the feet or orange metolius sized cams at the top during the traverse. It's incredibly awkward when you're my size and I am afraid it's one route I'll never forget as a result. The second pitch of Arch is crap compared to the second pitch of Wrist. Most folks bear left at the top of the first pitch of Arch and finish on Wrist. The first time I did the second pitch of Wrist was also the last time I even thought of doing the second pitch of Arch. I loved reading your TR and it made me smile in memory of hot sweaty days. Thanks. The gunks is definitely one of the best climbing areas in the world for moderates.

rubber bands.

Just quickly, as I'm a) sick and (always) stupid and b) waiting for an appointment. I don't know anybody in Seattle who might sew what you're looking for, but I do here in Portland. I'd say that "reasonable price" would be about $25 an hour for 2 - 3 hours of work plus materials. YMMV. Sail cloth could work, but it will be heavy and potentially very noisy and expensive (if the fabric is new) or of unknown durability and utility (if the fabric is used). The person will have to take your pack entirely apart. This will take about an hour for most folks. Then they'll create patterns from what was your old pack. This will be another hour or so. They'll cut the material and then sew up the pack. Forget about using the existing shoulder straps and hipbelt (if it's removable)...doing so would probably (but not definitely) add an hour or so of work while making brand new ones probably would take less time. Just as a FYI, almost all of the materials we use here at CiloGear had their birth in the sail cloth world. If you want to get in touch with my friend down here, shoot me a PM and I'll get you in touch. Good luck!

I hate being sick. But at least the weather sucks. yuck...

Bill. Respect? Peers? LOL!

No doubt it was the yellow hard man pad that made it all worthwhile! Good work and get back to work! You're bartacking slowly!

I spent two days to thinking of a come back or add on to this, and there isn't one. Drew, respect! you disgusting canadian!