crackers

Another thing about the standby time thing is that the sat phone i've used tended to use a heck of a lot more juice when it was searching for coverage than when it was happily connected to the satellites. By a lot, I mean the battery died in 1/2 to 1/4 of the time.

I'm willing to spewguess that a guy named February was involved and that he knows more about climbing that you or I do and that he also knows how expensive it is to buy climbing gear outside of the USA. No real offense intended, but...Have you ever heard of Table Mountain? Anyway, I doubt that they intend the routes to be "global" stars...as is often the case for areas that aren't really worth visiting, people have been known to give "local" stars.

oh lover of the paris, my apologies. I have never looked for women's XS stuff, and apologize for not looking before peeping. About the stocking / selling thing, i've spoken with more than one buyer at speciality stores who believes they could move the product if it was available...

word.

Huh? Back up a second. What is the reality? What percent of Patagonia's production is XS out of each of those products? I'm willing to bet that it's less than 5%--the US apparel industry standard is about 3% for women's XS. IMHO, if a product is not available easily its just about the same as not being made. What the OP was complaining about was that the product season's do not mirror the activist season, and the OP is absolutely right about that. In August, summer OR will be all about selling next summer's clothing, for delivery in March-June of 2007. The OP is absolutely right that the availability of technical garments suitable for the upcoming mountain season is 0 from the manufacturers right now. sorry about the ranting tone, it's the rest of my day infecting my online personality today...i'd better go and relax a bit.

Planches, front L sits, front levers, muscle ups...do you know what windshield wipers are? Also wall ball: take the medicine ball and do crunches on a pilates ball while you throw the medicine ball at the wall. Just don't miss. I really like kettle bell twists and squats if you've got weights to integrate the tamale.

I hate pack belts. I don't climb with a pack belt on except for glorified snow slogs. If I have to have a belt, 2" webbing... I forgot something important in my earlier post. I climb almost exclusively on thin overhanging faces and roofs. I am pretty close to being able to say "i've never climbed a crack in my life", and well, my experience to date might be totally worthless with long cracks. YMMV.

yeah, they lost like a 1/4 to 1/3 of their rack when their gear sling untied...whoops! silly homemade gear. That said, I haven't even gotten up to the point where they dropped the gear, and well, i guess they didn't really need that stuff cause they finished the route and came back alive.

IMHO, no. The thing that makes for fast changeovers is a clear and well understood system shared by partners. It doesn't make more than one or two minutes difference to rack on the harness or a gear sling in my experience. With most of my partners, we clean the gear and put it ready to use on our harness. I, and most of my partners, rack on my gear loops. From front to back gear gets larger, with our smallest nuts in front. For quick quick changeovers at belays, take all the gear off of the far side of your harness and have it clipped into a strand of the rope. You switch all the close side hardware onto your partners harness, while your partner takes the hardware off the rope and clips onto their far side of their harness. It shouldn't take more than three minutes.

It was a weird bit of weather. Currently, it's sunny and 62 degrees... The best bouldering in the southern end of the park is at Rat Rock which is currently closed for reconstruction of the area. Cat rock has some interesting eliminate problems, and a nice arete. But that is the VERY first time I've ever heard the rock called "good"...must have been exquisite stuff prior to your climbing!

I am having a posting problem right now, but let me briefly say that I emailed the following to Chesterboo, and PM'd it to another person, and I guess I might as well post it here too. As always, I welcome questions. As the pack designer, let me talk about the weight thing to you in tedious detail. The pack ships with ten straps. Total, these ten straps weigh, on average having weighed 300 sets of straps, between 8 and 10 ounces. You can put all ten straps onto the pack at the same time, but I can't really understand why in hell anybody would really want to do that. In fact, I almost never use more than 4 straps at the same time. I believe that the point of these bags is that they are modular: you can and should remove the parts you don't need or arent using. You should also modify the parts to fit your needs. Because I wanted to make it very cheap to buy these bags, I didn't spend money on cleaning up the threads left over during production or cutting the PE sheet into the most elegant and lightweight form. I encourage all the users of these packs to modify them to fit their needs. Personally, I cut about half of the PE sheet off, and I know that many of my customers have done similar things as recommended in the manual. I save about $10 off the retail cost by supplying what is basically a straight cut sheet of PE and leaving it to the end user to shape it. Eventually, I want to have the machinery to press out nice shapes without raising the cost of the bag, but right now, it's user custom. average weights as shipped: the pack bag weighs just under two pounds.* the lid weighs about six ounces the hipbelt weighs about 7 ounces the framesheet and stay weigh 14 ounces unmodified. My framesheet & stay weigh 9 ounces, and i only use them with 50+ pound loads. (ie guiding) If you do use everything the pack includes, yes, you can make it weigh a lot. If you use a reasonable (aka normal) set up, or spend a bit of time modifying your gear, you will have a remarkably versatile, durable pack that can be very light in the mountains and live to tell the story. Please remember what Ken said in his post (and in his emails to me) "it's too light for me to trust it." As the product changes and develops, I plan to make 'updates' available to all of my original customers for cost + S&H. The first update will include the following options: new lighter lid, new lighter hipbelt, 1.5" webbing hipbelt, and red simple straps. The total cost of this update will likely be about $40 with priority mail shipping. *The first twenty five weighed a lot less, but i used two lots of fabric in the construction, and guess what, the second lot of fabric was/is significantly heavier than the manufacturers' specifications.

Blake made me think about my experience with biners and price, and then i found out that i actually have DMM Shields, not prowires. I got them for under $4 each, and I would not pay $12 each for them. No way...they're nice but not $12 nice.

I'm terribly sorry, but how the FCKCKCKCK could anybody think that 'declassifing' information leading to the identification of somebody working for the CIA is legal, ethical or a good idea for building a strong national intelligence agency? I'm terribly sorry, but i think that any chief executive who even comes close to violating the terms of the Espionage Act or breaking the trust and confidence of the people working in the intelligence community should be shot at dawn. I have a lot of friends who really reconsidered their work and their chosen profession as a result of this.

i've got thirty or so DMM prowires. I love them. They've got a big gate opening and a clean nose. I have no idea how much they weigh.

the late peter jennings climbed. the publisher of the nytimes climbs. susan sarandon's children climb.

I have bialettas in a number of sizes and i love them. the one real cup sized one weighs 14 ounces. the two real cup sized one weights 15 5/8 ounces. the three.5 real cup sized one weighs 2 pounds 1 ounce. the thing i like about them is that they are pretty near industructible. i much prefer them over the bernice's coffee press cup things, even though those were invented in missoula montana by a friend of a friend. i have no real experience with the GSI ones.

have you ever heard of valandre? they make really awesome stuff. My top three are valandre, western mountain and feathered friends. But, i've never really seen or used a mont-bell...

I am actually rewriting the manual this weekend because it has come to my attention that the manual needs improvement. I am sure that anybody who has a cilogear pack will say that I am more than willing to answer any question that I can or discuss things...

marnix onsighted two or three routes in a row on the doctors wall at skaha without working too hard...while complaining about how he wasn't fit. marnix's word for the people you describe was 'bandits'.

sorry, ML, yours is a little odd because (i think, but then again, i am often wrong at midnight) the center front panel is made from VX21 instead of VX42. Basically, the material where the crampons and axe blades hit is a bit less durable than the material the standard production packs. It's also a teensy bit lighter...

If you want to climb poi, my friend marnix has done a few routes on it...marnix grew up in kenya, yet described the trip into poi as 'interesting bordering on difficult'.

my friend eddie wants to buy the house when it goes on the market...says he's got good plan for how to use it...

ML's got a 60, but the one she's got is a bit odd...i'll let her fill in the details if she cares to. Oly's got a 40, as does distal. There are some up in the hands of the canadian contingent here, and a whole bunch in seattle.

Randy Rackliff owns and designs the packs at Cold Cold World. I've only met him once, but from what I've heard about him, he stands behind his products and is a decent guy. If i was trying to get a custom made pack, i'd call either him or mchale.

Well, i would say here are the top 4 differences: 1) Partial compression. As we use dee-clips instead of zippers, you can, for example, just close down the top 2/3 of the pack instead of closing down the side. The result is a much better carrying pack. 2) We give you a al stay and a framesheet. Use them if the load is heavy. leave them at home if its not heavy. 3) User defined strap configuration. You load the pack, you put the straps where you need them. There is no other pack in the world capable of this. 4)No tool tubes and a crampon pocket. This might seem silly, but if you use taa-k-oons or similar with pinky rests, you can't use packs with tool tubes. how's that for starters as far as differentiation? you can buy the packs off of the website now. many people have bought them from the website... and i contribute to cc.com. in fact, i am even considering advertising! (oly?)