mountainmandoug

There are numerous devices designed to hold a fall on a rope. This idea is commonplace in both commercial rope access and rope rescue. None of these devices use a toothed cam, many of them are designed to slip at a certain load (usually around 4kn). They area all stronger, more reliable, and will do no more damage to a rope than a prusik. They are much easier to use. The Petzle Rescue Ascender/Micro Ascender are some of the better examples of such devices. Look at the work section of Petzle's website to learn about the others. I have some experience top-roping with a Rescue Ascender and it works flawlessly for that purpose, requires pretty much no tending going up and locks right away if weighted. It cannot come off the rope if it is properly installed. The only downside is the weight, and the Micro version helps that.

I looked at one of those in a shop the other day. It looks quite applicable for it's intended purpose and I don't think it's sketchy at all. The webbing is still fatter than on my CAMP Air CR, let alone my ALP 95 harness. I'd say safety is not an issue at all with the harness, hanging comfort will be; but it's not a harness to take somewhere you will hang much unless it's in a crevasse. I guess that will be your motivation to prussic faster. It does look like an good upgrade to the Alpine Bod. Much lighter, still adjustable, gear loop set-up looks pack friendly. The harness looks like it will be fairly comfortable under a pack. The belay loop is there, but if you don't want it you can just cut it off. About what mountaineering harness should be.

If you can afford it there are a whole host of devices designed for commercial rope-access work that might fill the bill.

I don't camp in tents much, but I hang out with people who do so I'll pass on some comments that I've heard. Those BD Epic fabric tents don't get all that good of a report for the PNW. One friend has told me that they have more condensation than the old Bibler fabric, and they do have somewhat of a reputation for leaking in prolonged rain. I met some guys who were bailing off the Ptarmigan Traverse after four days of rain and they said that there Epic tent had let them down. The old-school Bibler tents with that Toddtex fabric have a very good reputation, many people say they are better than any double-wall tent, although I've never talked to someone who compared them to a double-wall tent of similar cost i.e. Hillberg. I believe Integral Designs up in Canada makes some single-wall tents that have longer floors, for you tall folks. Check out there website for specs. Finally, two other tents to mention. Stephenson's Warmlite is a small company that makes some fantastically light but strong tents. Not many people use them but I have hears some good reports. I've also heard that they can have some condensation issues if it's not windy. They are darn light thought. The Terra Nova Voyager Superlite is a 3.5lb double-wall four-season tent with a vesebule. I recall years ago reading a review of earlier models claiming it was the best high-wind tent on the market. It is certainly intriguing. Good luck

I've been pretty happy with mine. Some of those peaks don't get climbed very much. I've seen summit registers where the last signature was over ten years before. You want to entertain some skepticism about the comments on rock quality. "Good rock" in the Olympics is not "good rock" in the cascades. A friend and I joke that sometimes 3rd class in the guidebook just means there is no possible anchor potential, so there is no way to use a rope... Great book for daydreaming of long, cool trips thought.

I'm thinking about exploring some of the not-well-traveled southern parts of the Twin Sisters Range. Searching old threads on the topic implies that people used to get a key to get in a gate on south side of the range from Crown Pacific. Google-ing revealed that that company no longer exists. Has anyone been in there in the past couple of years and have any info on roads and gates and such?

I have used an early model of the Titanium Goat Bivy for several years now, mostly with a tarp. My two-person tarp, stakes, guy lines, and bivy all add up to about 22oz. Less than most of the bivies discussed on this thread, about the same cost, and much more comfortable in pretty much all weather conditions. If you need a stand alone bivy for dealing with whatever weather on some little ledge or other situations where setting up a tarp is going to be difficult or impossible, the lightest and probably the best on the market is the Mountain Laurel Designs Alpine Bivy. 12.5oz Event top, silnylon bottom, half-circle-around your head opening like the OR bivies (as someone who has spent a lot of time using bivies by themselves, including some serious rain, this is the best design imho) and I think there is a bug option.

I've mostly liked Mammut and Sterling ropes. My Stearling Nano 9.1 is far and away my favorite rope, I like it much better than the other skinny ropes belonging to friends that I've used. It has a very smooth sheath and is stiff enough to reduce friction but not so stiff as to ever be a problem.

The clearest picture I can get from this thread is that skill seems to matter more than equipment choice, because the highly skilled climbers are climbing stuff on a pretty broad variety of gear. I guess I'll just try to get more skilled with the crampons that I have.

Either alcohol or a gun, I like that idea. I to see the problem with that combination, it's a lot like alcohol and control of a vehicle. I think that might be the most practical gun-accident protection legislation idea I've heard.

Awesome pictures! I nominate Wolfie for some sort of canine mountaineering award.

Personally I think there is much less need to carry a gun in a national park than in most other places, as I regard humans as pretty much the only sort of threat that it's necessarily appropriate to arm oneself against, and in my opinion not all that often.... I think that there are some people who carry guns out of un-reasonable paranoia, but some that don't. I have a friend who is retired law-enforcement who has survived multiple encounters with criminals only through the use of his pistol, both on and off duty. It is simply his habit to be armed at all times and his personal statistics seem to support that idea. Before this he had to go to some trouble to go into a national park, as he would have to un-load and secure his weapon while doing so. Now he just doesn't have to bother. And I think in the grand scheme of things that's all that this law will amount to. Everyone on this board probably encounters dozens if not hundreds of people every day who are carrying a gun concealed, and if you ever research the statistics on concealed carry and crime you would be happy about that. In Washington all this really means is that people who already carry guns will no longer have to un-load them when entering a national park. There may be some problems with people going target shooting in some national parks and leaving litter, however litter is already illegal so hopefully such irresponsible folks will be prosecuted. I think this whole thing is mostly much ado about nothing. I always thought this law existed to make it easier to arrest poachers trying to hunt illegally in national parks, and I don't know if that will turn out to be an issue or not. I think Washington, as well as most other states, already has adequate laws on the use of firearms and killing animals that any actual mis-use of firearms is already illegal, and in reality it is not that people carry a gun around is a problem, it's how they use it that's the problem.

Check out http://www.pakrifle.com/ for all you wishing to log first armed ascents and first shots fired from summit records.

Talk to Jim at Promountainsports about grey hardman pads.

So it's a sunny weekend in B-ham and I have a new harness to play with. Anyone want to hit up Mt. Erie Sat. or Sun. Give me a call 360-301-4153.

Sorry to hear about the medical issues, best of luck with that. I'd be quite interested in getting together with people to practice these skills. I work some guiding on glaciers and I think that most climbers are really short on practice with pulley systems and rigging and I have my doubts about most parties actual ability to preform a rescue under adverse circumstances. For example most people have never practiced rappelling into a crevass to remove an un-conscious subject. I think in winter, practicing in-doors or at a park could be very helpful, that's actually one of the better circumstances to work on the details of pulley systems and such. As spring progresses it would be good to go play on an actual glacier, because there you get all of the rope-entrenchment problems, and the issues of lying in the snow in self-arrest, and all that. I like to go brush-up on this annually, since I seem to successfully keep clients and partners out of crevasses otherwise. I'm in Bellingham, and I have some freedom mid-week. Drop me a PM.

It is a difficult issue, even though the discussion of what happened often isn't very polite, analyzing accidents is beneficial in avoiding future ones. At least in theory it is. Personally, what I would like to see, is that there isn't any analysis until after the situation is resolved. I think it would be best if the thread for news and well-wishes went on all thought the rescue process, and a different thread was started to discuss what went on. I have two reasons for this. One is that we actually don't know what happened until afterward pretty much ever. It seems like usually once the whole thing is over we get posts from rescuers and/or climbers who were directly involved, and these usually correct all of the mis-information that has come through the media. Personally I don't think all of the speculative discussion is nearly as helpful as the factual discussion, so I would rather wait until we know more to start trying to figure out what happened and how to avoid it next time. Even if we don't get any first-hand reports at least we can comb through all of the news reports at once, rather than getting them one at a time. The other reason to wait has to do with family and friends of the people in trouble potentially reading what's on the site and possibly being offended or hurt by people's remarks. This could be a very real issue, based on my time in SAR it is easy for distraught family members to mis-understand even well-intended remarks, and let's face it on here there are often remarks that aren't even well-intended. I suppose there is also some risk of the greater media reading the site and than mis-representing it to the world at large, I'm not sure if that's ever happened or not. But once accidents are resolved, most likely the rest of the world stops paying attention, and we could carry on here without having to worry about them so much. Even if a family member does decide to look at CC.com after there loved one has been found/or declared un/findable or self-rescued or whatever happens, they will probably not be in as sensitive a place as if the situation were not resolved. And of course our conversation would probably be less harmful simply for the reason that it would be based more on fact and less on speculation. Personally, I've never seen much point to idle speculation during the process of people being over-due in the mountains. We used to do it all the time in SAR, mostly for our own amusement, but we were always careful to do it in private, not even to some outsider we came across and definitely not where the media or family could possibly hear. I think if people want to speculate during an incident they should do so over PM or E-mail, and keep it out of the public conversation. Hopefully afterwards it would be safe to talk in public. So that's my two cents, spray on.

The pack you saw was undoubtably the "Alpine Attack Summit" that Lowe used to build. I have one that is about ready to disintegrate. It is very similar to a Serratus Genie, and it has been an awesome pack to carry on multi-pitch rock climbs. The only place I know of where you can get one, other than to find a used one is at NOLS. http://www.nols.edu/store/product.php?productid=16402

Amen to that!

For camping at Muir, I think you would be happiest with a four-season tent. It will always be cold and usually windy, which will keep air moving through the tent and reduce the condensation problem. It will sometimes be really windy with lots of blowing snow, the conditions where three-season tents seem to fail. The solid inner tent will be noticeably warmer as well. The condensation issues are mostly a problem in warmer, still, wet weather. I don't think that ever happens at Muir. For these conditions, I hear good reports about Bibler single-wall tents with the Todd-Tex fabric, I also hear good reports about Hillberg tents.

Hmmm, I don't actually own a proper tent, but it is on the list of things to own. I find that floorless shelters such as a Megamid work best for camping in most conditions, especially a lot of rain, and they are pretty light. With something like a Megamid it is much easier to get in and out of the shelter in wet raingear without getting your sleeping gear wet, and you can cook inside much more safely and easily. With the right anchors they will take a lot of wind. That said, they will not do well in a bunch of blowing spindrift and truly fierce winds. You can find that weather anywhere above treeline in the winter and potentially hign-up on the volcanos in the summer. In this weather you really want the strength, anchoring options, and spindrift protection that three-season tents tend to lack. That's what good four-season tents are all about, and when you need them you need them. In the summer I'll happily take a megamid up Ranier, knowing if the weather sucks to bad I'll probably just leave, or in a really desperate situation I can dig a snow cave to survive. I wouldn't take one up Ranier in February though. Generally four-season tents have a lot of condensation in warmer-wet weather, so I tend to avoid them in the summer. I think the best summer shelters are tarps or pyramids without floors, although bugs and mice can be a real problem. A tent with an all-mesh inner is usually the driest in three-season conditons. A four-season tent, if it is truly necessary, is a piece of survival gear. Generally people who use them to there full potential regard it as worth spending a lot of money on rather than skimping.

It's striking to note how silly this whole piece looks. It says that you have to "use" the signaling device. So does that mean that on every trip you must trigger your PLB. Are there legal definitions of "mountain climbing" or even "mountain" or "climbing". Is an ascent of a volcano entirely on skis "climbing", does an alpine rout not qualify as not "mountain climbing" if you don't plan to tag the summit but just descend after finishing the technical part? The section about guiding actually has some bad implications. In the guiding world we mostly carry satellite phones, meaning we have the ability to give detailed information to SAR if need be, which makes rescues both a lot quicker as well as usually less expensive. If this passes probably guides will end up carrying both. My experience in SAR would make me think winter mountaineers are the least in need of carying a PLB. They usually either make it out on there own or die. I think it would actually help SAR more if hunters and mushroom pickers (both sports I have engaged in just for the record) carried PLBs, as it's really easy to get lost doing them and usually there are searches each fall for people out trying to get something to eat out of the woods. Does anyone have contacts with Snohomish SAR? It seems like they might care about what there representatives are up to, and would be in a good position to respond in public. You know, when I can scrape together the money I am planning to get one of those new, small PLB's and carry it all the time. And I would never consider guiding without a compass, altimiter, map, and some means to communicate. So I guess I agree with the practices being legislated here, but I'm not sure they should be legislated, and I'm sure that this piece of legislation is poorly concieved and will be utterly ineffective. It's a wast of our representatives time and our tax dollars.

I would mostly say winter is all about the art of sweat management and not getting things soaked. It seems like there is a lot of dampness though. I primarily focus on using warm synthetic puffy clothes and mild activity to dry out my damp layers. This seems to be working pretty well and I don't usually carry any spare clothing other than socks and gloves. Speaking of gloves they seem to be the exception. I've given up on dry hands and gone to neoprene paddlers gloves for any time I really need to use my hands. They work very well when they are wet, which is good because there is no drying them in the field. I usually put them in a plastic bag and take them to bed so they don't freeze.

One way would be to tie an Alpine Butterfly with both strands of cord wherever you want the master point to be, than clip the loops of the butterfly and the resultant loop "tail" of the butterfly with at least one 'biner. I think I've actually done that a couple of times.

I recognized the name Cal Folsome, a quick check of AAJ reveals that he did the first rout on Big Four's north face in winter, and it looks like some FWA on Dragontail. Both back in the 70's. Did anyone here know him?