montypiton

re: bear fence question -- Alaska Fish & Game has a video online describing several options. the one I've used is the Eagle Enterprises "Electro Bear Guard Fence". total kit with poles, wire, batteries (I lied, it uses 2 AAs) weighs about 2 lbs. on three different 7-10 day long trips, has performed flawlessly. also, I would second DanO's comments about non-permeable rain gear for long trips in truly sloppy weather. decades ago, I taught 21-day long Outward Bound courses in Oregon's Sisters Wilderness in May. typically we'd get 15-20 days of rain on these trips. I actually carried rubber fishermans raingear for these trips - hideously heavy, but worked better than any lightweight option. when moving, I'd wear as little as possible underneath, and layer up with thermal pile underneath for sitting around. I still used goose-down sleeping bag, but I would not recommend that unless/until you've had a LOT of experience caring for down on shorter wet-weather trips. a word about the pile - I havent seen the old-style pile fabric much in recent years, except at fabric sources where you can find "sherpa pile". what folks call "fleece" these days is not the same, retains more water, doesn't dry nearly as well. I've had the misfortune to SWIM in the sherpa pile on shoulder-season river trips, and can attest it helps keep ya warm while in the drink, and when you get out, you can wring the water out of it, and it will truly function as insulation while it dries the rest of the way with body heat. I am totally baffled why this stuff ever went out of fashion. if you can't find it in a finished product, its worth making your own or having it made.

I'd have to check with my brother-in-law to check exactly where he got his -- I think LLBean or Cabelas. All I know is I was skeptical as hell but they damn well work! I''ve only done a few Alaskan rivers, but two stand out for me: The Ivishak (north slope Brooks range) is fly-in drive out - you end the trip at Prudhoe Bay. Not having to fly at both ends makes it less expensive. no native villages to float through, small water - may have to drag boats in places.... bears, caribou, fish, birds... Kobuk - done in September/October, you can hit the sheefish ("tarpon of the north") run, and the largest caribou migration in North America. sheefish only exist in maybe a half-dozen arctic rivers in Alaska & Siberia, and the Kobuk has the worlds largest population of this delectable treat. This is the "lazy" river: enough water that you never have to drag boats, ("kobuk" translates "big river") and the fishing is great even if you haven''t timed your trip for the fall sheefish run. but do try to go for the sheefish- afficionados describe their meat as a hybrid of crab and halibut --- must be tasted to be believed.

impressive body of work. I'd offer a few options for your assessment. 1) Since the 1970s I have carried a pressure cooker on any trip longer than a few days. Sounds heavy, but on a trip of a week or more, I save more than its weight in fuel. I can cook "real" food if I so choose, and its a small bear-proof food container. It's especially nice at altitude when water boils away at too low a temperature to cook rice or regular noodles. 2) electric bear fence - about the weight/bulk of a modern tent-pole, this item runs on a single AAA battery, and is utterly amazing. on fly-in Alaskan river floats, I use one surrounding the cooking area, another surrounding sleeping area. it doesn't look like much - flimsy poles and a couple strands of wire - but I've risen some mornings and found BIG (Alaskan brown) bear tracks circling our undisturbed kitchen... FAR more protection weight:volume than any "bear canister" or bag. 3) I generally don't carry a spoon if I'm going light. When I need one, I carve one - obviously not in places without wood 4) speedy-stitcher sewing awl - I load it with 20lb spectra fishing line. if you ever have to make a significant repair on a shoe, a backpack, or a loop on a tarp, you'll be glad you have it. I take a different approach to sleeping systems: when going ultralight, I don't carry a sleeping bag or quilt - sleep in whatever insulated clothing I'm carrying- usually enough in a light bivvy-bag. A half-length ridge-rest pad functions as the "frame" for my pack as well as for sleeping. When I do carry a sleeping bag, I carry an ultralight (1-lb down) bag for three-season use, a light (2-lb down) bag for colder shoulder-season trips, and the two bags layered (the 2 pounder is a feathered friends bag that I ordered "extra girth") for extreme cold (I've used the combination comfortably to below -30). On the truly cold trips, I also carry a full-length foam pad to double with the half-pad.

pm'd you about ropes. -Haireball

40+ years - everything from Chouinard's original straight-sided cord-slung units to various editions of brass from rp's forward, and the current roc-style versions. specify size range and numbers of duplicates desired and I'll match what I can. $1 per nut, I'm in Leavenworth. -Haireball

update: the buried faceted layer appears to have failed to survive two weeks of rain & warm weather. last week the Cascades had rain up to 7000+'. trips to the Funnel in Icicle Canyon, and to Chair Peak show little evidence of that layer surviving below about 4000'. haven't been higher, so don't have data for higher altitudes... but NWAC reports significantly moderated avalanche hazard...

wait - I can hang a couple of my 40-year-old retired stoppers on a forty-year-old carabiner, call it a key-chain, and somebody will actually buy it!?!? I might have just funded my retirement!!!

some thoughts from a retired professional - I spent twelve years as a professional avalanche "hazard mitigation" ( a far more accurate terminology than the typically used "control") worker at Stevens Pass, Squaw Valley, and Mammoth Mountain, as well as forty years ski-mountaineering in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, & Alaska. This winter presents conditions rarely encountered in the PNW. NWAC reports a 1"-2" thick layer of faceted snow (surface hoar) currently buried under more than 4' of newer snow. A layer buried that deep is very likely to persist for the remainder of the winter. As the snowpack above this layer consolidates, it's morphing into a 4'+ thick hard slab, which will trigger unpredictably, and on many slopes will run in historic volumes. Historic volume slides have already been reported at Mission Ridge and Crystal Mountain, indicating that even explosive-controlled and ski-compacted slopes must be considered at risk. I have personally witnessed slides of such volumes destroying stands of mature timber - even areas historically considered reliably protected may not be so this year. Such conditions also present a hazard most of us never consider: those of us who use snow pits to assess travel hazard know to dig them in "representative" locations - sites that approximate a starting zone, but with a "safe" runout. My favorite pit protocol is the ruschblock, for its viscerally impactful interpretation protocol. But this year, preparing a "representative" ruschblock would expose the digger to working below a ski-length-wide column of 4'+ thick hard slab supported on a 1"+ thick layer of facets - a probable collapse of enough snow to bury the digger -- sobering prospect... this may be a season when the only slopes we may consider "safe" are those that have already slid on that buried layer... just sayin... -Haireball

okay - second issue for this season of Haireball's Ass-Clammin inventory - Icicle & Tumwater canyons, and Stuart Range. As of December 2, there is no lowland ass no place. the Funnel on hubba hubba hill is a wet streak. a hike in to Millenium wall reveals damp rock with a dusting of melting snow. in Tumwater canyon, there are random blobs in the general vicinity of Drury falls, but no other sign of ass. a hike in to Colchuck reveals thin smears of snow plastered on edges/ledges on the alpine faces - nothing that would constitute a "line", although the triple couloir is beginning to fill. there is a fat two-or-three pitch flow a couple hundred feet up the approach gully to Colchuck Balanced Rock - looks like fun climbing if you feel like making the nine-mile approach from the Icicle road. One trip report on this site reveals decent mixed conditions in the ne couloir on Argonaut - suggesting that Sherpa & Stuart might be worth a look... forecast is for temperature to drop into the 'teens in Leavenworth mid-week, then warm again into next weekend. I'm hoping to make another trip in to Colchuck next weekend, and will take my tools this time. think frigid thoughts... no word yet from my colleagues in the coulees... -Haireball

Keenan, for a guy your size with your energy, theres no such thing as a "durable" ski pole. Hell, even a little guy like me has broken at least one of every pair of trekking poles I've ever owned... so I focus on buying poles whose components are compatible with my leftovers. I probably have a lifetime supply of components now... -Haireball

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as others have suggested above, ice up to I-5 or so can be climbed with a short (60cm) "standard" ice axe and an alpine/north wall hammer. most any axe you can buy today will have a pick that will perform equal to or better than the original Chouinard piolet, which pioneers used to push standards to WI6 in the 1970s. I am partial to DMM's tools, which are highly regarded worldwide, but hard to find in the US. The DMM Fly has been a popular all-rounder over thirty years - modest bend, removable trigger-rests, at home on waterfalls or caning/ice-axe-belay. My all time favorite has been the DMM Rebel - a full-on leashless waterfall tool with geometry and grip that still permits caning and ice-axe-belay. Unfortunately, DMM discontinued the Rebel a few years ago, but I'm fairly sure you can still find them... a further advantage dealing with DMM is their company policy of continuing to supply replacement picks for every ice tool they have ever manufactured. If I were in your position, I would also look closely at what CAMP/Cassin has to offer. I have had excellent performance from tools of theirs that I have owned, and although I have not climbed on their current offerings, acquaintances who have are raving about them. I do not care for tools with exaggerated bend/arc in the shaft; such geometry makes the hammer/adze practically unusable, and makes self-arrest virtually impossible. -Haireball

Rad - I also like the hip belay, for the same reasons you do - however I recognize that a novice must practice it more than most novices these days are prepared to before it can be counted on to be effective. I have witnessed a paid (lets distinguish between paid and professional) instructor drop a top-roped climber on a hip belay. I suggest leaving the belay brake threaded because doing so offers the same advantages of seamless switching from simulclimbing to formal belay as the hip belay, without requiring a novice climber to master a different belay technique. I agree with you that taking in and feeding rope is slower than a hip belay, but I suspect that for climbers with less than forty years experience, its likely to be far more trustworthy/effective. -Haireball

I've used the boulder-x and like it. In past years I used "big-wall" shoes (I used a pair of original galibier robbins boots for decades until the uppers finally dissolved). I believe boreal still makes such a shoe - sticky rubber, supportive, with a lugged sole. fit them large enough to walk in - I didn't start using those robbins boots for alpinism until after about four years of stretch. I've also glued stealth half-soles on running shoes, but these usually last less than a seaon as the shoes dissolve.

in my experience, climbing short roped and making use of terrain belays is often faster than climbing unroped because the protected climbers are less hesitant and do not waste time overthinking sequences. I've also found it efficient to leave belay brakes threaded - huge time-saver when switching between simulclimbing and the formal belay.

not a woman, but I'm told I climb like a little old lady -- does that count?

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I'd agree with the above, adding that in 1982 I used an ultralight backpacking tent on Denali -- more critical is how/where you pitch your tent. Whether you go with an ultralight or expedition weight tent, I'd carry shovel and snow-saw (I carry a big folding pruning saw - cheaper and more readily available than an "official snow saw"), and be prepared to construct substantial windbreaks, or even pack up the tent and get under the snow. A consideration that hasn't been mentioned is the typically larger amount of room in a "four-season" or "expedition" tent, but if room is not a factor, and you're comfortable in your hubba-hubba, and are ok with building snow-walls, you should be fine.

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snow went off quickly this year. should be good to go now. -Haireball

great topic! speaking from the perspective of 40 years (yes, you read correctly - I'm OLD) of mountain rescue work, both professional (USNPS) and volunteer, I'd offer that in my experience, having a helicopter on site within five hours is actually somewhat quicker than the norm. Often the chopper doesn't show till the following day, and that is weather permitting - some days you can't fly a helicopter in the mountains. those unfamiliar with mountaineering may expect response times like you see for highway accidents, but such expectations are utterly unrealistic. When I was avalanched off Colchuck Peak eight years ago, it took nearly twelve hours just to locate a helicopter that could perform the evacuation. I was lucky to have well-qualified responders (four Afganistan vets) on site to keep me alive until the bird arrived. this report also illustrates how even md's and paramedics can miss "sleeper" injuries that can be pretty much invisible, but suddenly go bad in minutes - like the example of cardiac tamponade mentioned above. bleeds in the brain can do the same thing -- no indication until suddenly its too late. A professional ski patrol I worked with back in the eighties once got a call from an e.r. MD asking why we'd sent him a perforated kidney with no warning. We hadn't identified the injury or warned the doc because the woman had shown no symptoms of such abdominal injury (she'd hit a tree). we'd thought we were sending him a spinal injury. She did not die, but it was close. one trouble with this kind of lawsuit is that if the suit is won, it means that money that might be used to buy/maintain helicopters, and train/retain personnel, gets awarded to the successful plaintiff. and even if the suit is unsuccessful, that same money gets used to defend the agencies being sued. seems like a lose/lose proposition to me... I'd also like to hear more comment on whether a ground evacuation might have been attempted. with a number of medics and first responders on site offering to help, why weren't they moving him down towards Timberline? for me, that's a bigger question than the delay of the helicopter... but I wasn't there...

sent you private message -Haireball

forget the feds. pick an abandoned trail. hike it with a pair of loppers, a pruning saw, and an entrenching tool. convince acquaintances to do the same. poof! free trail.

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