crackers

Thanks HC. Wife is interviewing for a seniorish job in her field. I would bring my company with me. For my company, it would probably be a wonderful change of scenery. I've heard you can buy a decent house for $500k, which won't pay for a 1 bedroom condo here in NYC.

I don't think I own gear that's big enough...i've got doubles of everything up to red alien, and almost nothing bigger...anyway. is there actually climbing in ptown?

Well, I'd love to clip bolts again for awhile...Climbing in the NorthEast, you don't see many bolts except at rumney. But I'm not sure I'm cool enough for Smiff. Will they let me in? I kinda doubt it...

How's life in Portland? My wife's got a job interview out in Portland in two weeks. So we might move...Any thoughts?

welcome back, iyi yolculuklar!

Good luck.

I've got a couple thoughts here. I've led pretty hard alpine rock on a single beal ice line, and i was more scared thinking about the rope than i was by the climbing. It's 8.1 and feels skinnier. It would save you almost two pounds, which is substantial. It might have been a lot less ball clenchy on ice, but on sharp limestone i'd much rather carry in the heavier rope. In my mind, to have a worthwhile weight savings, I would need to save a pound aka 495 grams. If you've got a 53 g/m joker, and it's a 70 meter rope, then the rope has to be under 46 g/m. There ain't much there. The Sterling nano feels like a real rope, but it's 1 g/m lighter. nope. Same deal with the Serenity. The only ropes that make the 46 g/m cut off, well, except for the new sterling 100 meter ropes (biathlon and bipolar) i think we've mentioned them all... So you know that already. Here's the rub in my book: you're going to be leading, you should go into the local shop and touch them. Then I'd get the shop to call, or call yourself, and get in touch with the distributor of the rope you want. I know for a fact that sterling, mammut, and bluewater at the very least have been known to have 70 or 80 meter ropes available by special order. Good luck! You could also throw two pounds into an exercise belt and carry it around with you all the time until your approach...

I'm not sure I buy this explanation totally, but I'm too tired and dumb to actually look up the synthesis mechanism and the structures. Nylon and Perlon are both trademarks for fibers, Nylon is polyamide 6,6 (patented and trademarked by DuPont) and perlon is polyamide 6 (trademarked by some incomprehensible german organization) afaik. In our terms though, I know from buying it that it's all the same raw material, and perlon is how brits say webbing or (less frequently) cordalette. I think that after wwII, there were no crackers (ha ha ha) in the UK, and the raw stuff came from either the US (but not in quantity after we geared up for Korea=>Vietnam) and from Germany.

Howdy folks, This is something I've posted over on rc.spew and I also sent out an email. But in case people don't know... As you know, I own CiloGear. This is basically a thank you to our original customers. If you bought a V1 CiloGear pack, I'd like to extend you a substantial discount on a new pack. Email us, and we'll send you the details. Basically, I used a V1 the other day, and I was stunned by how much the packs have improved over the years. I felt a bit bad about it really, as the folks who bought and loved their V1 packs made our reputation and made our business. As it happens, we're transitioning to a lean production operation here in Brooklyn, and I thought that maybe I could do something that would benefit our first customers and our business. Thanks. Graham Crackers.

He's made the mature decision to get a lift after more than 300 days at sea rather than keep drifting towards the typhoon season. He might have made a tough decision, but what a trip!

Some thoughts. France is easier to set up residency for a year than italy. Supposedly, it should be the same, but it's not. Even though the french bureaucrats go on strike all the time, it's still easier there than in italy. That's according to 3 or 4 guys I know who're over there for work in the past four years. Kalymnos is frigging hot in summer and cold and rainy in winter. I'd say that was a horrible idea. Have you considered Slovenia? Ljubljana is a fantastic little city, and the country has amazing climbing and some decent skiing. Not cham type skiing, but not bad. Your kids will be eternally grateful to you for providing them this opportunity to become fluent in another language thus getting higher paid jobs and to learn another culture as well. Tell your wife it's for their education that your family is doing this...

Anybody other than BillCoe have or have experience with a Big Wally haul pack? I'd love to hear what you think of the pack...or any observations about them or anything. Thanks.

happy birthday you sicko!

I don't think my wife would be so into that...

Except that folks actually doing sport specific training crush CF folks in their events. I believe that Rob and MFT know and like each other...it's possible that Rob did courses at GymJones and brought his own special sauce to the recipe. After all, it's about doing something, isn't it? I've got some more conclusions to offer for $0.002 so...

Here's a copy of my letter: Howdy, I graduated from the University of Montana in 1996, and I return once or twice a year primarily for weddings and to take advantage of the recreational opportunities available in western Montana. I recently learned that the Ravalli County Commissioners decided to mine around one of the best sites for rock climbing in all of Montana. I'm pretty shocked, as last year a strong showing of support for maintaining the recreational value of Lost Horse seemed to convince them not to wreck the canyon beyond the current quarry scar. I took classes from Tom Power, and I make my living here in New York City selling backpacks to people who go climbing all over the world. That said, I'm not a silly idiot opposed to mining. Some of my best friends make their livings running mines all over the world, and our economy demands the harvesting of extractive resources. None of us could live without mines. It is that simple. However, the sly approach of the county commissioners, the lack of any release of planning documentation and lack of public comment appears to embody the worst features of local government in Western Montana. Lost Horse has the potential to be the most significant and popular climbing destination in Western Montana. Does anybody really want to lessen or destroy that economic potential? Does anybody really want to revisit the range wars as experienced over the McDonald Mine project on the Blackfoot back in the mid-90's? If the county commissioners are to be believed, 1,000 cubic yards or 43 trucks of rock are required for a bridge. Is there really nowhere else in Ravalli county that this rock can be found? Getting this rock from Lost Horse Canyon only furthers the degradation of a hugely popular climbing recreational area, and could easily wreck its future as a destination climbing area, as well as obliterate the area's value for hunters and create another lost landscape for the local economy. It strikes me as stupid to intentionally destroy a viable, growing economic resource of expanding importance, especially when immense public opposition remains and gathers more stength every minute. Yours, Graham

where did you get all my home videos? why are you all making fun of me? WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Dane, FYI we're in and out of telephone reach right now. I'm spending most of my time in the basement cutting and doing QA. The phone does not work down there. As I mentioned during our conversation, your return got screwed up, and as a result I made some adjustments to how we receive packages and track repairs and returns. I screw up sometimes, I own up to it, and I don't really feel like hiding anything for my benefit or not. I would rather lay out the laundry, listen and learn from people's critiques, and make CiloGear a better business. Just as a general head's up, CiloGear's business hours are generally from 9am EST to 4:30pm EST Monday through Friday. We are closed on weekends, major holidays and when we're closed for other purposes we post on the blog. As of the 1st of May 2008, this is a one person business in terms of most things. For instance, when a machine breaks, I leave the office to deal with it. This occurred on Tuesday, and I was out of the office from 10am until the next morning. This meant that nobody was in the office at all on Tuesday. Wednesday was spent entirely catching up with Tuesday, which means today...you get the idea.

BTW, for all concerned, if anybody I know of on this board has valid reasons to be pissed with me and CiloGear, it's builder206 who waited six or seven months for a lid(!), and JaredJ who's been waiting for like a year for an accessory we are going to try to actually make here in New York next week.

Dane, as I said on the phone when I became aware on Monday that you had made our fourth ever return, I'm sorry that you felt that you received bad customer service. Since you've decided to tell me that you were getting a little pissed on this forum, I am taking the probably maniacal liberty of responding. Dane made our fourth ever return; long story short, the pack he had a look at didn't work for him. That's fine, and the comments that me made during our phone conversation on Monday the 21st of April provided some definite points to consider for the next generation of packs. That said Dane, you did not get an RMA# as our policy dictates (it's on our website), nor do I have any record whatsoever from you giving me any heads up that you're returning the pack. Your box come in on a Wednesday and got put into the repair queue without being opened or examined. That was my mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. As I mentioned to you on the phone, I've changed the procedure for tracking the process with returns and repairs. An email after we close on Friday was the first communication that we received about it being a return. When I got in on Monday, I find the first email, a second email and I try to issue a refund after inspecting the pack. However, since Dane started a paypal dispute over the weekend when we're closed, and I can't issue him a refund. I call you in the morning Pacific Time, we clear it up, and you get your refund. It was less than one working day from when I became aware of your desire for a refund to when you got it.

\ What? Um? Repeated emails on the 23rd of April about where to ship the pack? A pack that got shipped out to YOUR NEW ADDRESS AS YOU REQUESTED? I have to imagine that for some reason you are not getting my emails. As I wrote on the cilogear blog last week, UPS totally screwed us up, and I can't give out tracking numbers for packs shipped from the 23rd of April to 28th of April very easily right now. I called UPS and after about twenty minutes, Ian's tracking number is K107 586 2920. Everybody and their brother can track it. Why it went out from Maspeth on Monday when I shipped it on the 23rd is something I will never be able to explain but is no doubt associated with our UPS accounts screw ups.

John, the manu pictured above is 18L, not 13L, and is the black one to which I referred. The new one is what I called "yellow" and is smaller. I must have big shoes. Trust me, I've taken them apart and put them back together again... If you look at where the zipper is on the old ones versus the new ones you can see where the Manu lost volume. FWIW, the black one's fabric seems more robust to me.

The old style black Grivel Manu is slightly smaller than the CiloGear 20L WorkSack. The new style yellow Manu is much much smaller. I don't think you could fit two pairs of size 12 running shoes in any 20L packs. Also, the padding used in current CiloGear 20L and 30L packs falls into the "squishy" category. I would mention that other than the CCW, all of the packs mentioned are made from relatively hi-tech and definitely much much lighter materials. Unless you have an extremely light touch, don't expect them to last anything like what your old Klettersack did...Honestly, the Cierzo 18 was the one new piece that dead bird did that I was really impressed with and I thought it is super cute, but the materials on that pack and on packs like our 20L or even the 30L worksack just aren't the same 500d or more Cordura used on that old TNF beastie.

Just a brief response from Graham at CiloGear. I do have the pack, we are working on repairing it, and we have been hard to get in touch with for the past ten weeks. We did not have the fabric to perform the repair, and we needed to order it. As you may or may not be aware, I've been doing my best to run this company by myself while dealing with my wife's disability. She can't walk, can't feed herself, and has been at home since mid February. I'm doing my best to balance taking care of her with taking care of my business. I've been pretty up front about this, posting on my blog and places such as here. My wife's health comes first. In terms of the repair of the pack by the OP, I did try to get the pack done in time for the OP's trip. If my supposition about the identity of the OP is correct, I recall that due to a shipping error, I received the pack more or less the night before it had to get shipped. I did what I could, but it turned out that I needed to order some fabric to get it done. The fabric arrived last week. In the mean time, I received about 300 kg of new backpacks. During the QA process, I discovered that they all had to be rebuilt substantially. I hired a sewer and together we are working as fast as we can to fix these new packs, finish other custom orders that have been substantially delayed due to my wife's disability, and work through the (free) repairs that we have piled up. I've been working 12 to 14 hours a day for the past three weeks, and I've barely spent more than half an hour a day in front of the computer. For the past two weeks, CiloGear has been a two person operation in our office. From one perspective, that means we substantially doubled our capabilities from three weeks ago; from a more realistic view of how much time I've committed to keeping my wife healthy and fed, it's more like tripled our capabilities. We currently have 6 packs in the repair queue, and when our "staff" gets into work in about 7 minutes, we're going to try to knock the repairs out this afternoon. The fabric necessary for all but two of the repairs should be here today. To date, CiloGear has repaired 47 customer packs, and replaced more than a few at little or no charge. Prior to this February, when my wife spent four days in the hospital, the average time for a repair was two weeks. I don't really know what warranty or repair policies other small companies producing alpine climbing packs offer, but I am committed to standing behind our packs. CiloGear tries to balance light weight with some durability; we also seek to minimize our impact on the earth by offering repairs. VX21, whether it's used all over an Andinista, in a BD Predator or in the bottom side panel of our 45L WorkSack, is still just 210d Cordura. It might be magic "Sail Cloth", but it is not magically stronger than the underlying components, and it is a balancing act between durability and weight. We will fix the OP's pack, and it will get back to him. We are not going to accept any more repairs for the time being. When we've cleared our backlog, we will start doing repairs again with a substantially different process management system. I will do my best to hire somebody here in Brooklyn who can take care of it... Apologies all around, and thanks for your business and support.

We managed to get Sealed Air and DSM Dyneema to develop an entirely new fabric for us! It's so cool! It's lighter and stronger than anything else, and there are no tradeoffs at all! You can read about a bit about this incredible material and our testing process on our blog.cilogear.biz While we have to modestly admit that Google's new Gmail Custom Time effort will have longer and larger impacts on the world we all share, we are confident that all real alpinists will need to have Boga Bok material in their packs.