crackers

they've got vince anderson, kelly cordes, a bunch more...and everybody who drinks the juice! I drank it, and i'm going to go have more right now!

I also have the tang MEC belay parka. Very very warm...the outer is dryloft.

I think it's pretty standard. The smaller the store, the less willing they will probably be to potentially get stuck with the product. I think a lot depends on the relationship between the store and the company, but as was said, the warranty is from the company not from the store. just my $0.02 as a manufacturer...

I have DC in both hands. I am 31, and honestly its not a big deal yet. I highly recommend massaging them a lot, which i was told to do by our relatives still over in norway/sweden. Take your thumb and massage the area from the base of the hand to the finger with deep massage. I do this every couple of days. You will know pretty damn quick when it's gone bad. You'll have a twisted lump of a hand. Your skin will seem to make a little twist and your two fingers at the end of your hand will be ratcheted down. They won't extend any more, and it'll be really painful. Just before that, you'll do something with lots of vibration--run a chainsaw or go mtbiking--and you won't be able to open your hand for three or four hours. DC sucks. hope for a misdiagnosis. It tends to be hereditary, so ask any living relatives if they have it or remember somebody who had it. My mother, her brother and sister, her father, his father and his brothers all had it. Sorry dude.

Check out fight gone bad or any of the videos on gymjones.com ... I do stairs with pack twice a week, as a rest day morning thing. I don't go for time or anything, just at a comfortable pace, for about half a hour to fourty five minutes. I take the stairs up and the elevator down, and I do about a hundred flights. Last summer I was working as a mover and trying to crossfit at the same time. It was pretty fcking brutal at first, but then it got okay. The problem is that crossfit uses a lot of the same muscles and just enough different muscules to kill. I'm having a real hard time doing hypertrophy crossfit and climbing gym on the same day.

I think the old Nike's were Timex. I got a Nike a few years ago that was a total waste of money POS. I threw it out and then got another one that was just as bad. That was three years ago. I haven't even considered them since, but i've also been too broke to think about buying a new one.

If you use tmobile or cingular, you can get your phone unlocked as long as it is either a triband or quadband GSM. Either company will do it for you if you've had a contract for more than 90 days and you're in good standing, you just have to call them and ask. If you have a sprint/nextel/verizon phone, you're SOL. Nokia 6610's are fine cheap phones. There is a cell phone card place in one of the airports in Ukraine. I bought one, it worked fine for me. I wish i could remember more about which one I flew into, but it was three years ago. I have no idea how much a phone rental would be, but the SIM card was like $25 and i bought $25 of time which was enough for me to call turkey and the usa a bunch over a weekend.

Wow, there are some amazing shots there...congrats to seeing the results of all the hard work.

The thing is, this time i'm trying to do it with a minimum of effort (which i describe as the limit called TIME). Its not an easy path, its the most rational path: I'd rather work out for an hour in the climbing gym than hang out socializing for three hours. Therefore, for the first time, i am trying to train while climbing in the gym rather than just climb without structure and hanging out. I want to achieve the best results with a minimum of waste and without injury. People on this board talk about crossfitting, and I was trying to find out whether they blended crossfit with their climbing workouts, or fit those climbing workouts into a system. thanks.

For the julian alps in slovenia, there are three guidebooks for the 'classic routes' alone. Slovenia is probably about the same size as most counties in Washington or Montana.

this is a list of specialty fabric retailers. You might try making a more or less disposable outer, with the seams necessary to make it work as a pack, and then a silnylon or ultrex inner with just one seam. how tall are you?

Honestly, as a pack manufacturer, I think you're nuts if you want to sew together a pack that will carry a climbing load and function as a bivy sack yourself. Unless you are a very experienced machine operator, with access to a walking foot sewing machine, I think you're going to have a lot of problems. You will be hard pressed to make a lighter pack than you can buy with the same durability for any given cost (because you buy fabric retail...) That said, here's some thoughts...just remember, its your fault if you die, ok? You really want a laminated fabric or keprotec. If its laminated, say dimension polyant vx21, it'll have the bare minimum of abrasion resistance necessary for a climber while being waterproof. Keprotec is waterproof, so you'd just have to figure out how to get it from schoeller. Either fabric is going to cost you at between $18 and $40 a yard depending on how good of a deal you get, and you'll need 2 yards i'd bet. You'll also need about 15 yards of webbing, either 3/4 or 1" depending on how you set up your compression system. Your problems are going to be the shoulder straps, bartacks and design. Honestly, i think you'd be better off buying something. You're going to spend about $150 on the materials, and to sew those materials, you really do want a walking foot sewing machine or you'll fry the motor and gears. Further, I doubt you have a significant weight savings over what you could buy.

I found that mike anderson posted his training strategy over on rc, and i think i'm going to use that for the climbing aspects. Now my question is whether i should do xfit hypertrophy stuff on the same days that i'm doing fingerboard hypertrophy or do those on alternate days...

i am not a phan of cell phones in the woods. that said, i'd use an aloksak to carry my, um, wallet in a waterproof bag.

Oh sorry, I meant that crossfit IS my power / GAET training, and i was looking for specific exercises to work out climbing specific recruitment... thanks for your thoughts...

No, I am not interested in doing 5.9s in the mountains. That's either too hard (Grey Thompson and his 5.9A2 routes in glacier come to mind) or too easy... While I have spent much of the past two years in a factory making backpacks, i did get out everyonce in a while to climb. I'm hoping to be back to leading 11 in the gunks again this spring and hopefully bring a good strong level to the mountains as well. I do my WODs but I know --from over 10 years as a competitive athelete of one type or another-- that i need to bring specificity in to play or I won't develop the necessary recruitment. I actually have been doing the all the V0s, followed by 3 minutes off, all the V1's type of stacking, but I really lack the understanding about the specific physiology of climbing to comprehend what I'm after in movement. For example, Performance Rock Climbing would have me doing 3-6 move problems to develop my recruitment. Is that enough? Honestly, I hate pulling on plastic when I'm in new york because i don't enjoy the gyms here. So I am looking for the most efficient regime to balance my power training and GAET training with a recruitment and climbing GAET foundation to build on as soon as it gets drier. Any other ideas downfall? Thanks in Advance...

Okay, I'm going to take it seriously this time. First off, I am a manufacturer. And I think my packs are totally superior to everything else, and they dance badly just like me. I make the lightest practical packs in the world, the most durable and the most adjustable and they're so cool, you'll have a better sex life if you buy three! Second, I think that pretty much only the desperate bastards are going to anonymously or similar post about their product. There are quite a few people representing the climbing industry on the web, from folks at petzl and trango to madrock and fiveten. I think there are several people making a good effort, but I hear a lot of folks in the industry slagging off forums and being generally scared of the internet. Its kinda strange to me. In larger markets, it might be worth it to hire some college students to make the type of raah rahh post that's under discussion here, but I don't think there is enough money in making climbing gear to make it worth while. Third, there is no shortage of spectra any more, and there haven't been for some time. DSM opened a new plant in North Carolina over a year and a half ago, and it just isn't true that there is a shortage of spectra. On the other hand, the mill that makes the fabric for certain pack companies charges a couple of grand just to think about making fabric. So, before you spend $15-20k on fabric, you want to make sure you can sell as much of it as possible. Cheers, Crackers edit: left off the last 's' for shthead! thanks wanker!

can't spell today. sorry. Anybody have any bright ideas for integrating climbing specific--ie climbing gym--workouts with crossfit? I'm just doing my crossfit either after or at another time of the day, and matching my endurance climbing to power crossfit. Any thoughts / comments?

The best sources of climbing information in turkey are only available in turkish. I need the following to answer your question fully: 1) style: FA's, sport, limestone trad, alpine, hard alpine, snowslog? 2) time of year. 3) amount of time. There are some existing multipitch sport routes near nigde. map of the regions shows a little about Nigde. I don't know if its available in the english variant. The stuff on 8a is pretty old and crappy, imho, and it covers an area called geyikbayiri which has two climbing camping spots, one run by germans and the other by a turkish/belgian (? on whether zulehya is belgian or what) couple. These are the germans. The Turks are here. Both of them are really really nice people. The germans are german, the turks are much more bohemian, but both are doing there best to develop the area in the best possible way. There is amazing potential for safe* alpine climbing both in the aladaglar (that's near nigde), and in the northeast near trabzon in the kackar. Unsafe first ascents--if you can get a permit which is highly unlikely and if you don't have a permit you will get arrested--can be had in the Cilo-Sat mountains. (one guess for how my company got the name...). For skiing, I have to assume you go b/c and that you'll bring a friend or two. There are only 10-15 transceivers outside of the military, and the folks who have them probably won't have time when you do. There are three ski areas currently under development or construction (one is near antalya, one is near izmit, and one is somewhere else.) If these open, they will add a lot to whats there. Palandoken is kinda cool, but the development sucked--a frequent refrain throughout the country. There are three areas that are *almost* worth trying: uludag, erciyes and kartalkaya. Each of these areas has some really really worthwhile backcountry that can be fcking scary. Are they worth leaving baker for? not except for part of a larger trip. There are amazing unsupported traverses that you can do though. And some amazing backcountry that takes a lot of logistics and a lot of patience. Let me know which direction you're thinking and i'll post a specific long version.

The thing about the patterns that ems uses in my experience is that they are not forgiving for technical users: they fit perfectly or not at all. Its like its made to fit 1 particular technical user and then 99 couch surfers, and you'll never know if you're the lucky one unless you try it on. I prefer schoeller fabrics over their gore tex competitors across the board.

I agree about packing efficiency, but there is a limit. If you're six inches shorter than me, your sleeping bag will be smaller than mine. It's funny to me, because the variability is really rather limited. Half a tent is still half a tent, you know? A 1 liter pot is the same size as a 1 liter pot... There are some good reasons, speaking as a pack manufacturer, not to include the extension in the 'named' volume of the pack. I try to include all the 'normal' possible volumes of the pack in my propaganda, but I have to guess that 85% of my customers don't regularily use the pack with the extension totally full. I would say that my 60 liter pack is 60 liters, not the 90 liter capacity it is when you stuff it up to the extension collar. I argue this because the suspension and the compression are designed around the bottom 60 liters, not that top 30. There are actually a few brands that I've measured that include the extension without telling anybody. I don't like that.

1) There is an ANSI standard on how you're supposed to measure the volume of packs. Honestly, I think it's a bad standard because it's expensive to do and a bit silly. I wish we could all measure volume with Petzl bags or ropes or something... 2) If you're 6'2", do not under any circumstances buy a small pack and try to make it fit. Your clothing and sleeping bag are on the border between enormous and gargantuan. I'm over 6'4" and I just can't use smaller packs under the conditions you describe. My sleeping bag is just too big for a 60liter pack...I have to use a 90 liter to fit that puppy in (western mountaineering large bighorn sdl).

Hold on about four hours and I should have that fixed. I think you tried to email info@cilogear.com which I screwed up when I set up the site on my new host. I use cilogear@gmail.com because, honestly, gmail is a far better solution for me than using my webhost's pop servers. I doubt that whidbey tried that email because I haven't gotten it. The info email address will be ciloinfo@gmail.com. It should be all ok by tonight.

I emailed the guy from RC.com when this whole thing started. He wrote me that he was trying a hard lead (for him) and wanted pictures because he'd fallen there many times on TR before trying the lead. So one of his friends was clicking away with the digital... Its pretty common to put a small but distinguishable mark on each jig/person/workshop 's product to track who's doing what (im)properly. I do it with my packs.

One comment. I ship stuff all the time to and from Europe. I am shipping (often but not always) to and from New York City, so your mileage may vary. DHL sucks donkey poo in delivering in the USA. It's fantastic in turkey, but for some reason, their setup especially here in NYC sucks sucks sucks. UPS is totally superior in delivering in the USA in my experience. (if anybody cares, in my experience they're comparable in Europe.)