ryanb

Great find John! "The truth that remains from all of this is that the best way to make large gains in fitness is to do the least fun, least glamorous, most boring kind of training: Long-Slow-Distance." -Steve House

I commute on a old cannondale cycle cross bike with fenders and touring tires and love it. Advantages of cycle cross: designed to be light and strong, almost as efficient as a road racing bike (with the right tires) but with slightly more upright body position better for going over bumps, better brakes. Some touring and hybrid bikes will provide similar advantages but some will be designed more for comfort and not be any faster then your mountain bike with a set of thin road slicks on it (have you tried that?). Surly has made some nice bikes but they aren't the only game in town. They used to be made in the usa but they have since moved production overseas and gotten adopted as the brand of choice of the hipster crowd. My suggestion would be to go to a few of the decent bike shops in town and test ride cycle cross bikes from a few different brands. Maybe throw in a few of the more performance oriented hybrid/touring models. If you really want to go fast get a proper road bike.

Lots of people have this problem. You simply need to take better care of your skin. Gyms build big hard callousses fast and big hard callousses slide around more, split more easily and generally suck. Get a pumice stone (sold in the hygiene aisle for sanding callouses off your feet) or some sand paper or similar and some good hand salve designed for hard dry skin (Badgers, Burt's Bees, Climb On all seem to work well for me...). Consider avoiding metolius super chalk or other chalk with drying agents in it in favor of pure magnesium carbonate (black diamond, frank endo etc...) More information: http://leashlessblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/dealing-with-bad-skin.html http://www.nicros.com/archive/faq/Round-23.cfm http://www.nicros.com/archive/faq/Round-3.cfm Edit: shoot for a flexible smooth layer of callous.

Why? That shit gets climbed so much its just as solid as any granite. I guess I was up there in early spring but there was much loose/frost wedged flakiness in evidence and not much continuous crack climbing. But hell, do what you want.

All of the methods short of immersion are based on averages which don't apply as well to people with athletic body types. You could probably figure something out with a spring scale and a garbage can full of water though if you really want to be cheap...

Not necessarily true, I have had a lot of days there where it has poured on us near Monroe on the drive in and then been a fine day with nothing worse then a few menacing clouds visible down valley. My theory is that the LTW can sit in a mini rain shadow depending on the direction the weather comes in. That said, we usually come prepared to continue on to leavenworth or go hiking if it is wet...and we are probably going to ski tomorrow.

I think hawk berry toped it out in something ridiculous like 40 minutes from the car in a pair of vans skate shoes, don't remember too many other details or round trip time. Looking at the big mountain talent in Seattle i wouldn't be surprised if it has been done in less. Shaving it down much beyond 10 minutes on that rock would be a fools game. Go find some solid granite.

Those super burpee's look pretty cool. The floor half is kind of similar to what the yoga crowd call a Vinyasa (see second definition here: http://yoga.about.com/od/howtospeakyoga/g/vinyasa.htm ... the Mixed Martial Arts crows call this a "hindu push up" ) but with the hop up to mountain pose (standing) included. I've been doing sets of vinyasa's alternating with sets of reapters ( http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/Grip-article.htm ) on the hand board, might have to try alternating them 1 for 1 burpee style and maybe throwing in a short toe touch stretch before hoping back down to plank yoga style ... pausing in plank with elbows at 90 degrees and body held off the floor adds a lot of intensity. In general I don't like to do a lot of pullups because my form tends to degrade and i feel like my elbows start to suffer from it so I like to do more holding off static lock offs like in repeaters. Also been working on the one arm lock offs this winter. Gene, definitely start taking the three year old out as early as possible. My dad started doing light scrambling/top roping with me when i was quite young and I am forever grateful. I'm off to the gym...

John, Lets try and keep this a productive discussion and not another flame war...I do believe that training for climbing should involve almost as much talking about training as actuall training to make sure you are doing the best stuff. Note that the training links I posted are from Will Gadd and Dave Macleod, too of the best mixed/ice climbers climbing today and Dave is no slouch on the gear either having done or established pretty much every hard rout in Britain including stuff well into the 5.14 r/x range. The programs they advise aren't specific to sport or bouldering or really any other discipline...they are simply great ways to increase grip and core strength in a fairly climbing specific way. Training like this alone won't give you success in every discipline but it will give you the basis you need no matter what discipline you focus on. In my own limited experience following a program inspired by theirs enabled me to start climbing 5.11 on gear at index and start thinking about the 12's. I'm not much of an alpine climber or an ice climber but I have lead 5.11 at washington pass and followed some hardish routes in each discipline including the passenger on sews and the cable at banks lake (actually my first ever ice climb)... Circuit training certainly has its place but technical climbing is simply much easier when the holds/tools feel huge compared to the tiny wooden edges you've been hanging off all winter. Perhaps the ideal home training program would be one that used state of the art circuit stuff like you advocate combined with free climbing specific stuff advocated by people like macleod and gadd?

Hangboarding Frontlevers System wall In fact ditch most of the rest of the circuit... http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/training%20page2.htm http://gravsports.blogspot.com/2009/03/training-sickness-not-good-kind.html http://www.davemacleod.com/articles/trainingforclimbing.html http://www.onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/

On behalf of all of us desk jockeys who have been franticly searching the net for a glimpse of these things, thanks. What did you think of the orange one? Are the new parts compatible with old tools?

Helmet? yeah... Geek? well... I'm a fan of the foam all the way around the head bike helmet/special needs child style. I feel like little I do on the rock compares to winter bike commuting in terms of danger...

Dane, interesting information as always. I guess I had assumed that patagonia was not a candidate for military use as (some of?) it is manufactured overseas? I didn't mean to imply that the DAS was the best parka out there, but you can't deny that it has been proven to work in challenging situations and can be had for a good price this time of year. My worry is that a lot of climbers will see this thread, and think all this eb gear is the best deal out there and end up with gear that looks good on paper but may or may not be that great in the field. I have done similar things many times in the past...Remember when people online were really excited about rock empire cams first intro to the US? I bought two sets. Petzl ropes? I dropped too much money on one of those... I would like to save others from similar wastes of money. There is no doubt in my mind that the most cost effective way to buy climbing gear is to buy proven stuff from reputable manufactures when it is on sale...you are probably right about the XV. If you are still raving about the it in a year or two I will know you are definitely right, but at the moment its performance over time in the field can only be guessed at. As too how long I have been climbing, I asked my dad over x-mas when he got me started and he wasn't quite sure. Something over 20 years anyways. He learned in the late 50's and 60's in CA and Italian alps and kind of got out of it for a while till he started taking me out on trips to my grandmother's in california. Meaning I learned to climb on twisted rope with hip belays and dulfershitz rappels and homemade gear and eventually got up to speed with modern gear and technique.

I keep thinking those white marks could be chalk... BTW, any snow free rock our there yet?

Has petzl done orange handles on the nomic before? I can see the black being tape but not the orange. It does look like the current nomic but if i squint at the grip enough it looks like it might have rubber on the upper shaft instead of tape and some kind of orange accents on the handle. My (wild) guess is that the nomic and quark will see minor updates (upper match and better tether attachment point on the quark) and the old style fusion looking thing (joke) in the pic of euli will be the new ergo ... The pic of euli made it look like the shafts will still be standard instead of hydroformed like bd's new stuff.

News said it was at milepost 98, putting it near the labyrinth boulders/clems holler etc. Anybody know if anything climbable was affected?

On the front page of petzl's site... Nomic gets a new handle as well?

Rockcreek has the new das on clearance for 195 though they just sold out of the smaller sizes. It will be available for less then that next time patagonia does a run of military green ones (anyone know why they do those...outfitting steve house and a team of elite commandos for alpine style missions in pakistan???). I have no idea if its a better jacker or not but it has proven itself and has a dual zipper and big inner pockets for trying to dry out gloves etc ... The deals I have seen on eb gear are just ok compared to deals you can regularly find on reputable gear using spadout.com or google shopping. The xv may be something special being quilted and all but I still think you guys will be much happier if you do your research and go with something that has been proven and refined over the years.

Hey Dane, Thanks for the thorough response, I should have made it clear that I have a hugh amount of respect for your opinions on gear based on what I've read on cc.com. But i still think a guy who regularly redesigns his gear with a grinder getting mad at someone using a jacket for something besides his chosen style is funny. One of the designers may have had alpine climbing in mind, but its a piece of gear designed and produced for the mass market and it will get used for all sorts of things by all sorts of people. I'll be interested to see how you think the compressor compares to the DAS. I honestly have a hard time imagining someone doing some of the winter climbs you have posted in something a bit warmer then a micro puff. But I mostly try to climb dry granite in the sun so maybe i'm just weak.

Don't get that mag but I assume the review was bad? I don't see anything wrong with writing a bad review of free gear ... in fact journalistic ethics would demand it and I'm happy to see the mags actually still give out bad reviews... I do find it interesting that the two people we have heard from who got this jacket for free (the dude who had it fall apart in the wash and bishart) and have actually used it didn't like it for one reason or another. Have you used yours yet? Your reviews generally seem well thought out but I find raving about a jacket you got a week ago and haven't climbed in pretty objectionable. I also think your dismissal of sport climbing and your statement that down jackets shouldn't need to be washed are pretty funny. I'm just a weekend warrior but I do get out most weekends and for half the year, I basically live in my poofies. Maybe my comfort range is way different then yours but I've been freezing in just my (web special olive drab) DAS over r1's + jeans sport climbing in some dripping cave in the middle of winter when it is above freezing. I hike in the poofy, i cook in the poofy, i eat in the poofy, i spill food on the poofy, I climb in the poofy, I warm shoes in the poofy, I scramble through brush looking for new boulder problems or late season chantrell's in the poofy, I sit around the fire in the poofy when there is one. Maybe all you alpine hardmen will mock me for it, but I routinely layer the DAS over a hooded micro puff I got used at second ascent ... on bouldering trips (and lend my gf my old montbell down to layer over her poofy)...I laugh pretty hard when I here you say coats like the DAS are too warm for the cascades. My point is, while you may be in a place where you can spend hundreds of bucks on a jacket to sleep in a few times in the far north lots of us find coats this warm useful on a regular basis and expect them to last, to stand up to occasional washing and even have a few features like mesh pouches and double zippers that make our lives that much easier. Spring bouldering. Sport Climbing. Descending from rarely forming winter classic last january.

Most people on this site seem to walk right by the best TR crag in WA

Agreed on montbell, I have one of their old down coats and my girl friend has the thermawrap parka and they are both really solid LIGHT pieces that cost way less then the equivalents. though I think they use their own insulation that sounds similar to primaloft 1: "Exceloft insulation uses 8-denier polyester threads as a structure to intertwine with extra thin 0.7-denier threads that add more air pockets and resilience. As a result, Exceloft products rival the warmth and weight of down products. Exceloft excels in wet conditions: because the fibers used in Exceloft retain less than 1% of their weight in water, Exceloft will keep you warm even when wet." from http://www.montbell.us/products/techinfo/material/ Also be aware that they use japanese sizing.

5 gallon buckets at smith? The veneer on some of the stuff in the smoke bluffs makes and 11worth polish seem down right rough.

I'm a type I diabetic (meaning I take insulin and check my blood sugars more then ten times a day) and have found that getting breakfast right is the most important thing I can do to keep my blood sugars regulated throughout the day. Of course, because I take insulin my body works differently then any of yours but here are the rules I follow: 1) Absolutely NO sugar or simple carbohydrates at breakfast. No fruit, no white bread, no granola, no sugar in your coffee, no juice, no granola, no high sugar instant oatmeal, no cereal. Any of these things will mediately spike my blood sugar then wear off too quick and leave me out of rhythm for the rest of the morning. My doctor literally told me to stop eating granola. 2) Always eat a fair amount of protean at breakfast. 3) Check my blood sugar and possibly eat a small to medium amount of sugar/simple carbohydrates as a snack around the time or just after I start to work hard (example: eating an orange while walking down the tracks to get to the upper wall trail). 4) Many small, easy to digest snacks through out the day if hiking or climbing lots of easy stuff (trail mix in pocket + camel back can keep me hiking through most anything) less needed for climbing harder stuff. Breakfast is usally toast with peanut butter at home, organic instant oatmeal (doesn't matter that it is organic but the organic stuff seems to have lower glyclemic index then the normal stuff) with peanut butter in it if camping, or a hippie style breakfast sandwich from pcc (whole wheat english muffin...) if heading out of town via car. And coffee with milk but no sugar. Morning/start of activity snack is usually fruit/trail mix/bars/cookies/a pastry/juice/cliff shot depending on how healthy i feel like being that day etc.

Camping is free in the closed (snow covered) camp grounds in leavenworth in the winter (just make sure you park off the road and bring a shovel to dig out your car if the plow comes by during the night) and the drive should be about the same in terms of time and elevation.