crackers

Um...he's the president of Grivel North America; while he might not be on the phone at his desk every day, he writes the copy for the website and does that whole "I'm Mark Twight, and I approve this message" thing.

pm me. do you still have the buckles? is it 1" or 3/4" webbing on the shoulder straps?

i'm in for it. how about ruth lake?

Once you start spelling Rainier correctly, we'll start spelling CiloGear correctly. mmkay? http://www.cilogear.com/60lws.html Huh? Looks okay to me. You might not like that line at the bottom... you guys are making me crack up today!

C-I-L-O-G-E-A-R not C-L-I-O!!!

The patagonia bag weighs about 2 pounds. And the TNF, WT, Mountain Hardwear bags all weigh more, ranging from WT at 4 pounds to almost 10 pounds for the MH or the TNF bags. I'd rather have 8 pounds of gear, or save the $$$$ from the excess baggage costs.

sales manager...not owner...

Two weeks: I've been using the solio magnesium as my only charger for my i-pod touch. So far, so good. I leave the solio in the sun, outside every morning. It's been working, but honestly, I don't use my i-pod constantly...it's mostly being used to surf the internet at home when we don't feel like turning on a computer. I don't blame solio at all for my one real complaint, but it is something that's annoying me right now. I don't like how the solio tells me how full it is: 1 blink for 25%, 2 blinks for 50%, 3 blinks for 75% and 4 blinks for 100%. It makes sense, but it doesn't translate at all into i-pod touch charges. When I've got a better idea of how the two interact, I'll feel a lot better about it.

Thanks Kane. Kane (and a few others) got lucky with some repairs that they needed doing...the repairs, the arrival of the new packs and my wife's surgery all came up at the same time. So Kane and a few other folks got new packs because I just didn't have the time to keep up on everything. Thanks to everybody for their patience, understanding and continued support. And if you ever destroy your ankle totally and you are forced to consider the far fringes of surgical practice and modern technology, please feel free to get in touch with us about ankle distraction and collagen rebuilding.

Go someplace you won't be tempted to go climbing. We went to hawai'i; visited friends; it was awesome.

I climbed on doubles a bunch over six years when climbing relatively low grade routes at the gunks, which tend to follow weaknesses and perforce wander all over the place. I would say that using doubles is pretty simple, but using them well takes much more practice than most things we use in climbing. The below are my opinions about climbing fun trad routes with doubles and aren't about doing alpine stuff... I think your tip #4 is a bit foolish. You shouldn't have much if any twistage of the ropes if you're doing a good job with your runners and your game plan for the ropes. You will have incredibly bad twistage your first couple dozen pitches, and you're right that you should come up with some coping strategies. I'd recommend making it simple: tie off on rope to the anchor, fix the Cluster F*ck and repeat the process. I would add some additional advice: the person who's really going to make everything into a mess is actually the leader. The leader of the first pitch really needs to have a good method of organizing both ropes and keeping it everything safe and tidy. You've got to decide how to cope with two very different situations: swapping leads or one leader. I highly recommend using an autoblock above the belayer (situations change, blahblahblah) for both situations, especially when you're starting out with doubles. I use a plaquette magique and the leader just steals it when they leave the belay. If you're swapping leads, just anchor yourself in with clove hitches on the anchor with both ropes. After adjusting the cloves to keep you tight and provide enough room, you stack each rope on its anchor strand. You'll either steal your partners belay device to belay their lead, or you'll have a second one to belay with when they pass you. I'd recommend figuring out rack switching strategies as well, but I'm sure you're good at that already... When one person is leading, I do something a bit strange and clip into the belay with two slings with biners, not hitches. I stack the rope onto the slings. My partner comes up, they clove hitch into the anchor, we transfer the ropes over to their ropes and away we go. I really think this is where you'll have the most problems starting out, or at least, here and that pesky rope drag. Falls on doubles are interesting, and you should be aware of how much more rope stretch there is with such thin ropes. I'm pretty sure that I've had my ankles saved at least once by using doubles, and I think they're a really great tool to have for pushing your limits in varied terrain or routes that wander back and forth. Good Luck!

There's a new guidebook coming out for Adirondack Rock... I've used the beta version a bunch and I'm really really impressed with it. Here's the link: adirondackrock.com

plug one in with a USB cord, it should work like a charm.

Call the waaambulance! Oh snap! Wait. Do you mean that we're paying the same in taxes as the rest of the world to keep our highway and bridges from collapsing? Oh good. Glad to hear it. I thought we were giving the money to the wahabi's to buy our bid’a weapons that we'll have to break with our force of arms sooner or later. thanks for clearing that up! ------ I am better off. i got married. nothing to do with anything else...

Scurlock shoots with an XTi. 'Nough said, huh? I would love to use a G9, but it feels all wrong in my hand. Better than the G5 ever did, but my clumsy broken hands still find the G9 a bit hard to use in the store. Hugh, how big are your hands? Sausage fingers of tradmaster? Did you think it would be a problem in the store? Here's Lou Dawson's review of two canon P + S's from the perspective of a glove wearer.

I've got a solio magnesium charger. I honestly haven't used it for beans yet. I have been using it as my primary iPod and GPS charger, but mostly plugged in. How about I set up an experiment with my iPod Touch and my solio in the sun and report back in three weeks? But the thing does retail at $199...

Thanks Muffy. All is going well.

Um, Bob? Ever heard of Thurgood Marshall? I think that anybody comparing the Justice Thomas to Thurgood Marshall wouldn't really be able to find much nice to say about Justice Thomas...

Not what I meant at all. Your second post, about the durability of your 20 year old pack, is more on target... I'm confident in the strength of our product, our customer service and our ability to compete. While we do have patent protected intellectual property, I think it's the fact we've focused on a very small niche that allows the company to survive and even grow. From August to January, something like 35% of all the alpine climbs written up on the Alpinist blog were done with our packs, and almost all of the packs were purchased by the user who did the climb. What I mean is that starting a gear company is an idea that sounds good, but you'd make more money more easily delivering pizzas for Domino's or working for BD or Petzl. You'll have better hours, you'll go on more trips and you'll have an easier life at home with your significant other. If you don't believe me, call Mal Daly at Trango... If somebody thinks of getting into a manufacturing business because of the "lifestyle" of the sector, I think that person is insane. If somebody is going into a manufacturing business without a couple hundred thousand bucks or more than 10 years of experience in the particular industry or both, I think that's great, but from my personal experience, it's really really hard or insane or dumb or all three rolled into one. If I was doing this again though, I'd really give a strong look at other outdoor activities where there is strong growth and there isn't the strong tradition of getting stuff for free (aka dirtbagging...). There's nothing wrong with being a dirtbag, but if you want to stay in business you need to sell stuff. Finally, I think it's really good for the market to continue seeing small businesses come up and develop. Maybe one day CiloGear or Mtnclimber's business will be as famous as Patagonia, as profitable as Patagonia, and with the impact that Patagonia really has had over the business of selling stuff to climbers. But there's a LONG way between where we are now and that point, isn't there? As I wrote above: Good Luck!

Are you sure that's what you meant to say? I would hope that most of the cost will be for materials and labour. Isn't this the business model of Cilogear? There seem to be a lot of supporters for them here. There's always a market for affordable quality gear. Everyone would love a pack that was lighter than air, would last a lifetime, could be adjusted to work in all situations and came for free. What compromises do you have in mind? It's easier to answer more directed questions. Sorry for being difficult but I TA first year physics and am easily frustrated with open questions. Howdy, I'm Graham and I own and operate CiloGear. We started out with more or less the above described model, and we have been relatively successful at it. Randy Rackliff does something similar with Cold Cold World, another well respected pack maker for climbers. There's also a whole bunch of folks making packs for hikers with a similar business model. Honestly, I would recommend rethinking your plans though carefully and honestly. AFAIK, there are less than 20,000 members of the American Alpine Club. Even the largest subscriber base for a climbing magazine in the USA is only 70,000. On the other hand, the Outdoor Industry Association does claim that something like 9.2 million folks used climbing walls, but that doesn't make them potential customers... Excluding the operations of really large companies, most of the cost of backpacks made or sold to climbers is overhead, whether it goes to the store, to the company or directly to folks like Randy and I to continue our operations. It turns out that even if there were 70,000 people who were hard core climbers and they wanted a pack, most of them want it for free or as cheap as possible. Climbers are not exactly folks who want to spend lots of money... I wish you the best. I hope you've got the money to support your business for the three to five years that it's going to take to turn a profit. But I really have to strongly caution you to consider the costs and benefits of focusing on the climbing market.

They should clear customs tomorrow...I'll post on my blog around noon with an update.

I do now... wife's foot on my blog.

The TR is linked to over in the TR section. We've had a horrible time getting these packs into the country. The V3 packs are currently in Turkish customs, and we've been working to get them released for almost two weeks now. Since the materials arrived in Turkey for the production, we've changed our official address here in New York, and the Turkish customs folks have been extremely hard to deal with: they want to have the invoice made out to our old address, and of course, US customs will not accept any shipment made to our old address. That said, I actually do expect that the packs will make the flight tomorrow or Thursday. When Layton writes "65" he means "60"....

Unfortunately, that's what society expects from sports stars these days. I will tell you that he's already gotten a ton of flak for that comment on our local TV and sports radio shows... Here's a picture of me and my new friend Rashawn getting some of the 50 tons of confetti blown down onto us. It was great.

THE GIANTS RULE! and my hangover was pretty bad. My friends and I -- and from what I saw about 20 million other folks in the NY metro area -- were bouncing up and down after than 9:59 first drive. That gave me hope. The 2nd quarter gave me expectation. The 4th quarter was just crazy. Strahan is going to the Hall of Fame. No doubt. The rest of the D was incredible. And Tyree's catch will go down as one of the most amazing ever. Now I have to collect from all my friends who trash talked the Giants and Manning all year... :grin: