hafilax

Looks fine now. Thanks for fixing it.

The thumb loops will suffer less damage in a hard fall with the original slings. They went with those nylon slings over dyneema or doubled dyneema because they weren't satisfied with the drop test results. That's also why the dragon cams have that funky sling double bit in the stem. That said, lots of people direct clip them aid climbing so it's probably fine.

Is it just me or are the images unmagnifiable?

I've been doing crossfit for a couple of years now. I did a grand total of 5 days of climbing this past summer and have to say that I'm no worse than I ever was not that I have ever been a strong climber. Bouldering OTOH dropped a full grade. I did a 'Paleo Challenge' and quit after 3 weeks. Hated it. It's great for people to discover if they have sensitivities to grains, beans or dairy but it's over the top for most IMO. The biggest thing missing from crossfit for the alpine is pure endurance training. You really can't train for full day efforts with 10 minute workouts. It's better than nothing but I run out of energy on a big day after a few hours. I am definitely stronger than when I started although I've plateaued recently since our coach hasn't been programming a lot of pure strength days. Being sore doesn't have much to do with warming up or cooling down. It's purely a matter of overdoing it. Too much volume too soon will make you sore regardless of what you do before or after. Warming up will prevent acute injury.

It's often easiest to start with an oversimplified model and work from there. To begin with, imagine the zero friction case where all of the energy is converted into heat in the rope. The fall factor is then the fall distance over the length of rope between the belayer and the climber. In the second case imagine infinite friction. Only the rope between the climber and the last piece will stretch during the fall. The fall factor would therefore be very close to 2. This would maximize the impact force on the top piece for the given fall distance. To generalize this to intermediate cases it seems reasonable to assume that rope friction between the belayer and the top piece increases the impact force on the top piece.

I ended up getting and Acto and also picked up an Osprey Variant 52. Hopefully they will be the last two pieces of their kinds that I buy. Next on the list is a cheap light hardshell.

I went to the Arc'teryx factory store on Sunday and they had very little selection especially in a medium. A few Atoms and the only softshell was the Firee which is "Ideal for alpine/urban transitions". I'm not sure if it's just bad timing on my part or what but I rarely find much of interest there. I think I've narrowed things down to something like the Ferrata 2. I stopped by MEC today and they only had a size small and there doesn't look to be much in the online system. I like having a hood for tree bombs and spindrift. The Marmot Uptrack looks similar but with their M3 softshell and non-MEC brand price http://marmot.com/products/up_track_jacket_fall_2011?p=182

That's what, $1000 in jackets (retail)?!

My Javelin actually works OK with two glaring exceptions: it leaks like a sieve at the seams between the hardshell and softshell; when I sweat I get nice soaked stripes under the harshell parts. I actually don't mind getting wet in it because I generally dry off quite quickly since I kick out so much heat. The annoyance is the water literally running into the seams. I figure that something made entirely out of a similar softshell material will do me pretty well. I can't figure out what kind of material it is though. Thanks again for all of the discussion. It's definitely helped me figure out what to look for. I realized that my description of how I will use it was probably misleading. I rarely wear a shell on the way up unless it's cold enough that I'm not sweating like crazy, including in the rain and snow so the jacket doesn't have to be on the far end of the breatheable spectrum.

Kind of off topic but any opinions on Polartec Neoshell? Westcomb Apoc or Marmot Zion for example.

I think the Acto would be perfect if it wasn't $300. I'll go check out the Prodigy (power shield o2) and Fusion (Schoeller) hoodies at MEC. I'll try to track down a TNF Kishtar or a Marmot Pro Tour which are made with power shield pro to compare. Those jackets are also $300 so A'T isn't alone there. Thanks for the suggestions.

Hardshell is pretty useless for me doing anything other than standing still. I overheat like crazy in it. I can wear the right softshell 90% of the time.

Now that I have a real job it's time to update my worn out gear. At the top of the list is a new softshell jacket for ski touring and mountaineering. My current softshell is a shitty Dead'bird experiment gone wrong: the javelin. Water runs through it in the rain. I have Patagonia Alpine Guide pants that work pretty well for me. I am a hot person and sweat heavily and tend to wear a softshell like most wear a hardshell. On the way up I'm typically in polypro and maybe a midweight fleece. When I get chilled the softshell goes on. Softshell isn't well defined any more and there are so many variations that go from snow shedding fleece to basically a hard shell. I've lost track of which fabric does what. My requirements are good snow and rain shedding and not fully wind blocking. For full on wind or rain I will put a light hardshell over top. So what are my best options?

Cat Parkour 2 [video:youtube]XfyyLLUbrdI

The Catar-Yeowian, free solo. Quality knob pulling, steep climbing. The crux is pulling through the roof. [img:left]http://i.imgur.com/GiTYW.jpg[/img]