crackers

Again, I am Graham, I own CiloGear. 21" Torso? You're a large. Unless you've got the body of a offensive/defensive lineman or you're a 120# string bean, there is relatively little variance in the arc of human shoulders.

As most of you know, I am the aforementioned Graham, and I own CiloGear. I am more than willing to offer my thoughts, but I hesitate for the hard sell, especially online where miscommunication is so easy -- Dane or anybody else, please feel free to call us at 503-305-3858 for the hard sell. Dane bought a V2 30L pack from us when we were still making packs in Turkey. It didn't work for him due to his torso length and some quality control concerns. That transaction was one of the final straws that drove me to make the command decision and then the massive investment of time and money to move our production in house on premises. I took the time to write this ridiculously long response because of this history with Dane, his excellent involvement in our little community, and because I feel that we are doing incredible work. Yesterday was CiloGear's fifth birthday (yay!) in terms of sales, and in the 15 months that we've been in our current office, we have come to consistently make excellent packs quickly. I'm very proud of what we've achieved, and I am confident that anybody who has seen or used a pack we've made in the past six months will agree that CiloGear packs are very well constructed. The one construction aspect I want to improve is to have a bartack instead of an overlap stitch on the shoulder straps, but I don't have the $8k for the necessary bartack machine. First off, at the Feathered Friends Rep Dayz event I used the phrase "work in progress" casually when I shouldn't have spoken so lightly. Basically, I meant that we are constantly looking to improve the product. I really believe that we are making the best alpine climbing packs in the world right now. Making them here in Portland means that we inspect every single pack as it comes off the line and goes out the door. We discuss how to improve our production system in a Kaizen event pretty much every week, but the discussion on how to sew them faster or better is pretty much done. In my mind, when I said "work in progress" I was actually quoting Taiichi Ohno, the developer of the Toyota Production System, which we base our current manufacturing system on. Unfortunately, it is a prime example of saying the right idea the wrong way. As Dane knows and everybody else should know, I've got total respect for Randy's stuff. I think he should improve his ice tool attachment system. Some of his idiosyncratic design choices don't work for me very well, but I'm also sure that some of CiloGear's idiosyncratic design choices don't work for everybody. Heck, I'm even thinking of offering a variant of the 60 and the 45 with two fixed straps in addition to all the Dee-Clip stuff. Titoune no longer owns Wild Things. The owners of Wild Things, The Walnut Group and the Consumer Growth Partners, say that they are focused on transforming the company "into an elite consumer brand over the next five years." In english, that means "stop making loss leading crap for climbers." I'm sure that Titoune as manager will still do what she can to serve her original customers and will try to grow the company well, but I think she's probably between a rock and a hard place in managing everybody's expectations. Now onto actual pack stuff... I'm going to outline as briefly as I can manage why I am confident that CiloGear's packs are far superior to any other alpine climbing pack for the vast majority of climbers. I will add some details specifically about our Dyneema fiber materials. 0. Obviously the below is my opinion. I own this company and I believe in our product very strongly. I also know there is no one solution for everybody. Ultimately, in our game of climbing, a pack is a pack. It's what YOU do with it that counts. 1. CiloGear packs carry better than our competitors packs. Our radical wedge design works better for carrying heavy loads over rough approaches and works better when climbing with a bulky but relatively light load. 2. CiloGear packs are significantly more versatile. Our Dee Clip system doesn't take much to learn how to use, and once you've spent the time to learn it, you'll be able to do more with less. It's not for everybody. Then again, neither is driving a car which is a lot harder than putting a strap on a pack. Many people report that CiloGear packs carry extremely well just using the internal compression strap without any straps at all on the outside. 3. CiloGear blends materials of many different weights and of soft and harder hands (ie flexibility). This makes better load transfer, better durability and a better pack. We use a material called VX21 on a lot of our packs. It's a laminate of 210d Cordura. There is nfw that it belongs on the bottom of a pack that is going to be used climbing. And yet many of our competitors use it for just that purpose pretending that because it's laminated it's stronger across the board. That's marketing bullsh*t. It is significantly more rigid and does a fantastic job transferring a load, but VX21 has a tear strength that maxes out at 28 pounds versus 50 odd pounds for the VX42 on the bottom of the 30/45 WorkSack or 66 pounds on VX51 found on the 40s/60s/75s . Plus, because it's more rigid, the material is prone to getting caught on rocks and abraded. This is just one concrete example of how using different materials results in a significantly more robust pack. 4. CiloGear packs are really light. If you compare apples to apples, our packs are lighter than any of our competitors. For instance, I have never gotten decent load transfer out of a dinky hollow Y tube of aluminum with a climbing load. I find that the foam we use outperforms such fake frames -- your mileage may vary, but it's something to consider in making comparisons. Our framesheet is a heavy, dumb, 100% recycled HDPE sheet with a huge heavy bar of Oregon made Aluminum because I haven't found anything within $15 of our cost that outperforms and outlasts this old technology. Our pads are made from the stiffest, most resilient foam available. The packs come with enough straps to use extras tying up your laundry, keeping your shower head attached to the wall, or anything else you might try out. Most packs come with two compression straps per side, but in the bigger packs you could put 5 straps on each side of a CiloGear. If you're comparing the weights, I'd request that you think about that... 5. CiloGear packs carry modern ice tools and would carry historical examples from Dane's collection better than any other pack on the market. Loops suck with tools with pinky rests. We separate the flap from the buckle, give you enough to double the strap around the tool shaft if desired, and have enough of a daisy to move the upper retention strap up or down to fit your tool. For a mountaineering axe, you could always put a retention loop on one of the other loops on the pack. In the words of John Race in his 5 Star Alpinist Mountain Standard Award giving review : I "appreciated the security and simplicity of the ice ax attachments." In the words of one of the many AMGA instructor pool folks using the pack: "The tool attachments made it easy to store and access tools -- even access them while I was wearing the pack." Onto Dyneema / Spectra... We currently use three different kinds of woven fabrics made from Dyneema fibers. CiloGear also make packs from a variety of non-woven fabrics that use Dyneema fibers to achieve their incredible strength to weight ratios. Our NWD packs are mostly made from a material with abrasion resistance similar to 300d Cordura (ie more than 210d whether in VX21 or in our 210d Dyneema Ripstop Cordura fabrics...) that has a tear strength of 262 pounds. That's 9 times stronger, oh yeah, and the material is less than half the weight of VX21. To the best of my knowledge, CiloGear is the only company in the world making real high volume, real load carrying packs out of non-woven Dyneema. We use two different laminations of a 210d 87% Dyneema X-Pack fabric that Dimension Polyant made for us. The material uses some Dacron in the weft. One of the laminations is super stiff, the other is more flexible. We use these to achieve the same load transfer that we get from the X-Pack materials in the regular WorkSacks. (Did I mention that AAI awarded our entire line the Guide's Choice Award saying that "we are pleased to say that the CiloGear WorkSack is the best carrying and lightest line of packs there are.") We also use a ripstop pattern 420d Dyneema fabric. This provides better abrasion resistance than the VX Dyneema, but doesn't transfer a load as well due to it's super soft hand. As such, we are currently using the 420d on the sides of the pack and on the harness side (back panel) where you need a ton of strength. I wish I could use it on the bottom, but using a material like any Dyneema or Spectra fabric I've seen without the X-Pack on the bottom of a pack turns it into a turgid sausage and it carries like crap. We have all of these materials in stock and we build packs out of the stuff every week. We do some light customization on our NWD and Dyneema packs, like leaving off the crampon pocket or whatever, and we work closely with these customers to make sure the pack fits. If you buy one of these packs, we will make sure it fits you. Because of the cost of materials, we can't offer refunds or returns once we've started making the pack, but I'm perfectly happy to send out a loaner pack to make sure the thing fits before we build it... As I said at the beginning, if anybody is still reading, call for more details or the hard sell. 503-305-3858. But I'm taking the dog out for a walk for till 1 PM pacific time today, the 7th of December. (And here's a toast to those who gave their lives for my country...)

While I mostly agree with the above, as somebody who's spent way too much time on many of the climbing websites in the world, I have to take a bit of exception to the above. I know that some of the more or less regular posters there include the correspondents for Alpinist and/or the AAJ for Antarctica, the Eastern Alps, Chamonix, CIS, and parts of Spain & France. Of course, when they give good advice, nobody listens to a word they have to say, but ...

How can the Sith Lord be bought and paid for?

Oh My God. Thank you Joseph, Thank you. I can't believe how bad people in this town are at driving on snow and ice. I ended up going commando rally style on my drive from St. John's to Mt Tabor yesterday because every idiot on the main roads was managing to lose control going five miles an hour. Luckily, the "PDX Drivers" are generally scared of going down side streets, so i was able to keep up my speed pretty much the whole way. I taught one of my sewers how to drive into skids last night in the parking lot. It was pretty obvious that she had never even considered practicing driving in any conditions other than dry roads. I think that PDX Drivers are incompetent because they never try.

1) personal responsibility. I woulda dropped the dude in camp. You chose to act like a guide for him. You made that choice whether you realized it then or not. To be perfectly honest, I've been dragged downhill whimpering like a fat wanker by friends, and toproped upwards by new friends whining like a scared, incompetent spraylord caught out. I've also been on the other end of the rope, dragging good friends up stuff. In all of those cases, the responsible party made and stated the conscious decision to do it. I'd say that your lesson is to be absolutely clear. Don't shy away from 'the mountain talk'...it's part of climbing. 2) Directly outing him on the internet probably isn't going to help much. Instead, a great trip report where you tell a fable of a crappy partner, bad choices and then make a good conclusion with a teaching moral at the end of the story would probably do better. If you write the TR well, and post it on an 'gateway' site like summitpost, it will get read for years. Many people will learn and maybe even take the lessons to heart. I think that spraying all over the Internet that Real Name is a disaster waiting to happen will have two results. A) There will be a limited number of regulars on the Internet who will never climb with that person. For the next six months. B) It will make you feel a little bit better, but it will not help you develop. A story to illustrate points 1 and 2: Just before I got into climbing, I knew a guy who was totally into whatever he was doing. I watched him one night as he totally focused on figuring out the best letter combination for his then phone number (542 DOOR). As somebody with ADD, I couldn't do that and still can't. It was amazing to watch. We were in Missoula, Montana. I was in college, and this guy was a grad student in the human performance department. He was super fit. He doesn't remember this example of his focus, but I've got two witnesses. One day, I offered him a ride to the airport. He declined politely, stating that he was going to run the 7 miles to the airport so he could get some exercise in. We went to breakfast, and then, on the road to the airport, we saw him running down the road with his frigging suitcase. Running with a damned suitcase. Anyway, this guy decided that climbing was really cool. He got out from the basement room that he lived in next to the furnace for less than $200 a month, and he went climbing. And climbing. And with his focus and his fitness, he compressed years of experience into one season. Even as a non climber in that small town, I knew that Yllek's new name was Sketchy Yllek. It was alleged that he'd taken 1, 2, 3, 15 ground falls leading on ice. People thought he'd done some miracle boxing training cause he didn't die even though he hit the deck at least a million times. All sorts of crazy stories popped up, and I'm quite sure that some of them were actually true. But a lot of the stories were out and out slander. I don't know if or how the community ever benefited from all the Sketchy Yllek stories. I never learned a damn thing from them, other than that some people tell better stories than other people. But Yllek managed to fill up his bag of experience before emptying his bag of luck. Yllek is now a Hard Man. He climbs hard, he climbs innovative, and he climbs a lot more than anybody who posts on this site. Now, I'm not saying that Blano is going to be a climber like Yllek. Instead, I've got to ask what calling out Yllek as a Sketchy Yllek actually did for anybody. People still climbed with him. I know for a fact that it didn't enter into his hard head to care about what people were saying about him. Several times, Yllek did get the sit down 'mountain talk' as described by Bill Coe above, and I gather that did slowly help him learn. As we so often say on the internet, it is my humble opinion that the world would be better served by a good story that provides global lessons than a bit of payback shitslinging that I really doubt would have much effect. Of course, shitslinging sure can be fun sometimes...whatever you decide to do, enjoy it! And provide links!

Just a coffee? cheerz

Sweet shots John! Hope the ride back was fun.

I was in Bozeman for the Festival. John Frieh was actually in the invitation competition, but was miles away in the back of the drainage. I'll let him write anything more for himself when he wakes up or feels like it. People do this competition by running around the entire drainage of Hyalite canyon -- it's more area than Smith Rock -- and climbing as many routes as possible. As many *hard* routes as possible. Much of Hyalite canyon was loaded with wind blown snow, but I think that it surprised everybody how unstable it was. After finishing one route, Guy and his partner were moving uphill to another climb. The snow they were walking on released. It carried Guy over the (two pitch) climb that they had just finished. When first responders got there, they found him dead.

My condolences.

I have the X-Zoom and I've used the Ultra. The X-Zoom is a really bright headlamp. The Ultra is a car headlight attached to your forehead. I don't really seem them as competitive in the same space. Serenity, when you get the thing, don't shine it in anybody you like's eyes...its bright enough that they will see spots for at least 5 hours. I'd say that it's bright enough to jacklight a human.

Serenity, work or play? I've used one a little bit. It's really really bright... For work, you might try to track down the tactical belt version. For play, belt or normal. It's DC. Waterproof doesn't matter nearly as much for things that are running all DC all the time. Just dry it when you're done using it and you'll probably be okay.

Amazing! Nice Work!

I couldn't agree more. The bulgarian teams from the '80s/'90s -- and I actually know one of them from my life overseas -- couldn't pass a modern piss test to save their lives.

There are two ways to make things if you have the budget. Find the absolute best person in the world to figure it out for you, or spend tons of money by yourself confident that you know more than anybody else about it cause you're a climber or cyclist or whatever. IMHO, the second option is idiotic. No offense to anybody, but the new Fusion is clearly a result of BD deciding to hire a real world expert in hydroforming. It's much like Trek's decision in the '90's to go outside the house to hire the guy who came up with OLCV bike technology. Now, those picks, hmm...do you think they called somebody who *really* knows aermet or do you think they decided they know better? I've got my guess...

I never wouda thought dru...never. jeez...

I'm afraid that in my humble opinion, the above is total BS. It's really not that hard, but there is a bit of a paradigm shift involved. And I am right, with little to no room for argument. If I was wrong, companies across the value spectrum from New Balance to some cheap yoga clothing companies that I know of would not be bringing their production BACK onshore.

Lest you think the Bastard is up to making shit up like other folks in spots on this forum, please allow me to offer an image of him climbing as a reference:

If you don't want to read the .pdf, two bottom feeding private equity fund bought wild things in July of '08 for about $3 million dollars. Not what I would call a great deal for Marie, as I suspect a lot of the cash went to debt service. Anyway, you should really expect that: "Wild Things will sell consumer outdoor apparel, such as backpacks and jackets, aiming to turn its military name into a household consumer name." In other words, RIP as a company that makes real gear...

Shoot, in part I started CiloGear because I wanted a pack I couldn't afford. And I certainly do applaud Marie for getting her $6 million slice of government work over the past eight years and selling the company*. It was the smart thing to do. I only hope that she was compensated very well for all her work. I also agree that those serving our country deserve the best, but of course, I reserve the right to have a different opinion on that point vis-a-vis backpacks. Seriously. Think about something like MFT's dream of an action suit with a nonbreathable back or a mesh back where your pack is. Just cover the upper back, shoulder harness and hood-over-helmet. Maybe the arms too... It will be warm toasty and absolutely warrantied to make you glad you already reproduced as all chance of that occuring in the future will be over.

There is some truth to that in terms of large contracts, but look at how the NASA work glove thing is starting to transform glove manufacture or the strange growth of wool long underwear after the Army expresses interest... Anyway, Dane, I think you want a synthetic knit dicky with a hood. I used to see those back in Montana, but perhaps a talented seamstress could work one out. You could probably just call the 3M technical support line and codge a sample yard of the material you want out of them, which would probably be enough for a small thing like this. And then it would fit John's Vader helmet.

I suspect that EastCoastBastard's vitriol is directly related to his experiences watching it be sunny while he delivers baby cows and raining when he tries to go climbing...

That is something I'd agree with. To the OP: the absolute best way for a pack to be comfortable with 50 pounds in it is for you to train with a small pack with 60 pounds in it. Like a dumbbell or a similar. I'd recommend you do it on a stair master, others will tell you that's crazy, but it works and it saves your joints. Then drink the juice for more training happiness!

No doubt! How did you get a hottie to model for you? Free adjustments? LOL! Congrats Mike! now it's time to buy a house and have a real baby!

Rich is a badass. He's also hilarious. And still climbs at a pretty high level, especially considering that he took an almost fifteen year hiatus while his kids grew up. I got worked by a 10d that he did the FA of that was much harder than many 11b climbs in the same area. I asked him what he had gone through when he did the FA. He told me that it was the week after he returned from Yosemite where he did the second ascent of some (then) 11a offwidth (now solid 12) and that he couldn't believe that he was strong enough to put up an 11 at that time. Every time I read spew on this board, or hear it in the vapor, I think about that humility. Or perhaps ego?