crackers

Awesome guys! I'm stoked you guys pulled it off, and awesome props to mr homebuilder for the discipline to stay fit to pull this trip off! (and of course, i love that sexy white pack) BTW, I would not make any plans that are contingent on fighting off Doug's wifey. She is fierce.

Couldn't agree more, even if I did have to edit the text just a bit...

Check out this idea... to deal with those pesky targets.

It wasn't terrible. I was pretty surprised by how un-bad it was...

Oh cool! I hope it all goes well and it's better already!

If it's not bone on bone --and oh yes, you would know-- but it feels like it's in the joint, try to find a real ankle doctor to talk to... sorry. best of luck!

comeon man! BD is redoing their ski touring poles! I creamed my pants at that thought! And just think - skins with a ball joint to break in the middle of your tour! Woohoo! And the colors...the new colors of all of last year's products! Although I have to confess I sort of covet one of these "tents" from MSR, but why, well, I am not sure.. The totem cams actually look nice now. When I first saw them they looked worse than the first packs I made, and now they look very nicely made indeed. I'd buy one for $62, which is what they think they can sell them for...

Mammut or sterling. Maybe Pmi or bluewater. I'd never use a putzl rope..

Actually snoboy, I was told "under $500"...

I actually think that two shows a year is the only thing that makes sense. Some specialty retailers don't bother coming in the summer; others feel that way about the winter. If it was once a year it would literally have to be seven days long for the same number of reps to meet their stores and show the winter and the summer products. That would be insanity bordering on stupidity. I am confident that anybody pushing for an annual show has never been on the sales side, and has never written checks for a store. I would also say that SLC is pretty much an ideal location for the show. Vegas would be idiotic: SIA will be in Denver next year for a reason. As far as I know, there isn't a single roof venue in Denver that can accomodate even the smaller winter OR. And west of Denver and you'd lose 60% of the market from the east coast. At least in SLC, you can go twenty minutes from the show in a car and get backcountry turns or alpine rock... Then again, I like SLC and think it's a pretty fine place to live. Layton's lucky: great ice, great snow, great rock. And no three months of gloomy rain to live through... Other than the umbilical from BD and (shameless plug) the awesome new cilogear packs (/shameless plug), I didn't see any totally new product at all, but the mammut belay device looked more polished and interesting. As for inflatable ballons, ABS is going to sell their ballons to OEM pack companies. I think that somebody is going to try to sell one for under $500, but I honestly didn't get the full story. Obviously, ours will be made from Dyneema and cost almost as much as a new car.

Anybody?

Alpinist Mountain Standard for the on sale 60L WorkSack. Don't ask me how I missed the review when it went up , but I've got to say that it was awesome to read that review last night. For the VP of AMGA to be drooling over the packs, I must be doing something right, huh? This year has sucked donkey balls, with my wife's surgery, our move, and trying to set up back here in Portland. I think we'll emerge from it stronger, as long as the economy doesn't just kill us off with the car companies or we don't freeze to death in the "killer storm" here in Portland. We're currently working on finishing a pack that was paid for by an extremely patient customer almost a year ago. When that's done, we're going to do the first of the new packs, and some crazy stuff for the guys going down to Argentina. But to read that my pack is "PERFECTION", well, it made me smile. Thanks to everybody for the support this community has given CiloGear! You guys all

Hey folks, We just ordered a small keg from Lucky Lab, so I hope somebody else comes to help us drink it! We'll be here from 3pm to 7:30pm. We will have some packs on sale, beer, we'll have new wacky packs to check out, and we'll have unreleased stuff to examine. And that beer. Here's a Google Map showing our location... See you here!

Just my $0.02 here... Who cares what they've done? I'd care what athletes coached by them have done; I've been coached by some of the best athletes in a particular discipline and by some of the best coaches. My experience leads me to conclude that the best coaches are very rarely the best athletes. In terms of the knowledge set that the MtnAthlete crew has to offer, a number of the guys that I work with pretty closely have had a great deal of extremely positive things to say about Rob's knowledge base as a trainer, working out at his gym, and by extension public events like this seminar. Those guys include Kelly Cordes and Steve House. I took the seminar back in September, and I would highly recommend it. YMMV. What counts is getting out. Which is why I'm so bitchy right now: my staff is ice climbing, and I'm stuck here working...

Right on dudes! The last few pics of wayne's really put the voyage into the vertical in perspective.

i met the dude cragging in slovenia one day. He was doing laps on a hard twelve in those neon green koflach double boots...without a rope. Just going up and down and up and down and up and down. The kicker for me was when he came off, he stopped to chat with us, and he was not breathing heavy or looking like he had exerted himself at all. I never managed to redpoint that route... I believe the guy. BTW, his two sons are badasses...

Thanks Wayne, but it's definitely NOT a store! We are working to set up a good relationship with a good store here in Portland to be our "local", much as we've got good relationships up in Seattle. Our office is for manufacturing and for doing customer service stuff. We will have office hours, and some events like this party, but we are generally not open to the public. We've cleaned it up a bit since this picture was taken, but ... We'll have all of these in the different sizes available to try on, check out, fondle and even buy for discounted prices at this party. We'll also have the new, V4 30L, 40B and 45L packs. And the duffels and the BigBillWally's... And FREE BEER!

CiloGear is opening up our doors to YOU! December 19th from 3 to 7:30 PM at our office: 6635 N. Baltimore Ave, Suite 234 in the scenic St Johns neighborhood of Portland. We made a google map of where we are... We had to wait till BillCoe went off to Thailand, or I'd spend the whole night talking to him about the wallies We'll have beer, packs to play with, beer, whiskey, feats of strength, and probably a slideshow or something (any volunteers?). More details and a beautiful invitation to follow...

Thanks bill, but that stuff is all gone... There is some other stuff up, but more importantly, we're having a holiday party on the 19th at our office. come visit.

I have to chime in with my $0.02. I tried a system as you've described and it wasn't the cats meow for me. It just made my back soggy. Then I tried a pearl izumi mesh backed vest, and I was much much happier. It might be worth a try...Mine is like this one, and but not in such a nice color.

The unstated major premise here seems to be that $25-$50 billion will prevent, rather than merely forestall, their bankruptcy. I had no premise. Sorry. That's y'all's premise. If I was going to offer one, it might be something like "my gedanken experiment suggest to me that it might be cheaper to pay $25 billion now for companies that fail slowly over a long period of time rather than all at once right now". But I'm not offering any premise... i'm just looking for hovercatz on flyin carpetz.

Too bad the US Government insures those pensions and associated health benefits, huh? The bill for paying for it in the event of the big three failing is more than the mooted bail out monies...and somehow, I just can't see the house of representatives voting to terminate the PBGC or the FDIC... Thanks for the humor everbody, please carry on... btw, retooling means throwing out or selling as scrap old tools to buy new ones...it's kinda expensive.

See you there! I'm bringing a ton of wild stuff...

I think you'll see a lot of interesting stuff coming out of mtnathlete now, and I more or less expect rob's idea structure to be dominant for alpinists. a) on a scale of 1-10, how structured your personal training regiment is? Historical values ranged from 10 to 2. Right now, I'd say I'm around 4+. b) if youve seen a payoff from "periodizing" your training schedule? Historically, for bike racing, absolutely. For alpine climbing trips -- and i've never climbed alpine very hard -- yes, definitely. For rock climbing, I couldn't provide a really good answer. c) do you use a modified version of periodization, don't use or even disagree with the traditional "linear" methods of training specific aspects of fitness in different phases? Rob at Mtnathlete provided some very compelling observational arguments about conjugate periodization and methodology in his seminar in Portland back in September. It's what I'll be doing in the future. These days, I train mostly for general health and fitness, but the only way to stay in the gym is to orient my training towards vacation goals...Random periodization kills my desire to go to the gym and bores the pants off of me. Just my $0.02.

Two weeks ago...more this weekend if we can manage: That's my wife. That's her climbing only 6 months after her ankle distraction. It was our first time climbing together in four years and change. It made me SUPER happy! The walk out from East ship to the top of the path was the crux. It took us about an hour and a half. She was done! But we're planning on heading back...