elliottwill

Could you say a bit about carrying your camera gear? I've used a LowePro holster with a hand warmer in it clipped onto my shoulder strap because I can't stand carrying it around my neck. I guess Luc Mehl (thingstolucat.com) uses a dry bag style holster clipped across his chest. What did you use? I was curious about blowing snow being forced through the zipper, or fogging, or other issues you encountered over the long trip.

I'll buy a slider off anyone who doesn't like them.

Makalu Pro is a great pack for what you describe. To boost the capacity, get a little ladderlock buckle slider thing and swap it for the fastex buckle on the rope strap. Then thread another piece of 1" webbing through that ladderlock: now your rope strap is as long as you want. Put the fastex buckle back on the end of the new rope strap, and use your new elongated rope strap to strap down a 30L dry bag. The pack lid will help hold it too. I say this because the Makalu is one giant bag with no pockets, and the dry bag gives you both extra volume, which I think you will need judging from my two AK range trips with that pack, but also an extra place to stash stuff for easy access.

Thanks! Any good cragging spots as well, besides those around urban Spokane?

I'm getting married near Colville, north of Spokane, in July. Any good moderate trad climbing around there? Is it best to go toward Liberty Bell or should I look for something closer? Thanks!

"So explain why no one yet makes rock shoes for wide feet..." Because we need an economy of scale! Ha ha. My question is just How do we build that market? Do we take the cosmetics industry route: "you suck, you're ugly, buy this?" The cycling industry route: "you suck, that other guy is better, buy this?" The present outdoor industry route: "you won't have any fun and will die if you don't buy this?" Like, what is our new narrative going to be? We focus a lot on technical limits: how modern ice gear opened up a whole new world of climbing, for example. I'm wondering what psychological limits new climbers impose on themselves under the influence of the industry's promotional rhetoric. I'm not talking about pros, experienced people, or people that just don't care and are climbing in bunny boots, but the newcomer or casual users who make up the bulk of the market. I like my carbon poles, my 3 lb tent, my leashless tools. I just don't want a pernicious consumerist ethos to be the necessary evil behind them. Marketing can be good. It can clarify our desires to be better people. So how do we market climbing so successfully that in a few years, you can buy your wide rock shoes?

"I haven't yet been able to decipher the original thesis here, but..." No thesis, just questions. We're not saying use hemp rope and bongs, just asking if the industry can progress without relying on a consumerist ideology of "you need this to look good, you need this to be competitive." I don't know what the alternative looks like. I'm just suspicious when I hear that there is no other possibility than the way we happen to be doing things right now. Finley brings up another great point, though; if we're worried about sustainability, and the direct ecological impact of gear sales, etc., pales next to the political impact of a culture more invested in the outdoors, then perhaps Mountain Hardwear at Nordstrom and Patagonia at Urban Outfitters is great because it builds a constituency for conservation. That's a weird thought, and I'm grateful we're having this discussion because I don't think I would have ever considered it otherwise. Maybe proof is in the pudding Patagonia's cooked up with their eBay store for used gear, and new marketing approach of "buy less stuff (but buy it from us)." I'm curious to see whether they'll stick with it.

Woodcutter: I like it. Now we're making some headway. It's very strange to hear people argue that we shouldn't make quality, sustainable products because then they would be too expensive to overconsume. That's not the problem, that's the point, right? We're starting to have two discussions here, though. One is about what climbers should do (buy cams or not). The other is about how the industry presents itself to people who are getting into the sport: do they present mountain sports as an expensive, highstakes competition where you need to spend lots of money, each year to "increase your performance" relative to that of professional athletes— so, the very rat race to which the outdoors provide an alternative —or something else? And is that something else commercially viable not just on the margins but as a mainstream? I don't mean necessarily in terms of production. I mean more in terms of ethos. I think the "increase your performance" / 'performance anxiety' mentality is at the heart of this. Let me give an example from biking and then swing back to climbing. It's gotten way worse in biking than climbing. One encounters those shameful, helpless fools on the trails who don't understand that bicycling is about being fast. Without a heart rate monitor, how will they know if their ride was strenuous? Without a GPS on the handlebars, how will they know if they rode a long way? Without a Strava account (a website where you upload all data), how will they know if they had fun, or if they should feel bad about themselves because someone else rode his bicycle faster? So there's been a backlash, recently, with brands like Salsa shifting emphasis from exacerbating customers' performance anxiety to customers' potential to go out and discover or do something fun. If you want to be competitive, get a trainer, all the rest of it, that's great, but that doesn't have to be whole ethos of the sport. Because at stake here is the possibility that riding your bike, like going into the mountains, can offer you some perspective on the world you go back home to, a world where the supremacy of competition makes everything disposable: products, people, cultures, species. The kneejerk reaction here is "you have a liberal arts degree!" or "you're talking about communism!" Not exactly. I'm just looking for a way that the industry can stay in business and keep progressing, keep improving and inventing, without losing sight of why we go into the mountains in the first place.

Hi all, Thanks for sharing your thoughts; Finley & Bsatch, I understand where you're coming from. For the sake of argument: -it isn't the case that I have an economy of scale to thank for getting me into the mountains. Where did that economy scale up from, after all? -But more important, I don't think it's accurate to say either that everyone has the latest and greatest gear, or that a minimalist ideal doesn't exist if it's pursued by privileged people. (I sympathize on that last point— I hate to hear about how an iPad is so 'minimalist' —but I think we need to put pressure on it, below.) On the subject of latest and greatest gear: My dad homesteaded in Alaska in the '60s. People are still running their traplines today with the same 'technology' they were wearing back then: wool shirts, wooden snowshoes. Likewise, I see climbing guides in leather hardware store gloves and raggedy old backpacks, NOLS students in patchwork rental gear seamgripped and K-taped together. My question, basically, is whether you can encourage that phenomenon and stay in business. It's a phenomenon worth encouraging because it's empowering— gear becomes a tool to create an experience, but neither the price of admission to nor a readymade reification of that experience. And it's also more environmentally sustainable. That's something I feel like we have to pursue despite our first world hypocrisy. We're the ones who have to change, after all. On the subject of ideals and hypocrisy: yes and no. It seems pretty clear that on the one hand, there is no moral high ground here from which to point fingers at 'naive consumers.' I'm in as deep as anyone else. On the other hand, it's equally clear that our days are or at least should be numbered as a society that can import lots of cheap, fragile stuff, throw it away, and export the garbage. So how does one stay in business making outdoor gear specifically — not merely on the margins, but actually be significant —while shifting away from this model? I don't know what that would look like. But we know, from how recent a phenomenon consumerism really is, that what we've got now isn't the only option.

I'm curious to hear others thoughts on the socioeconomic relationships into which we're inducted as users of climbing and outdoor gear. This comes to mind principally on account of the us outdoor industry's corporate maturation (MH, TNF), but also by BD's forthcoming outerwear line, which they described to investors as a recognition, basically, that if you make good gear that's built to last, you aren't going to make very much money. We see a movement away from outdoor gear as tools, in other words, for people to meet technical needs, toward outdoor gear as stimulus to multiply people's needs: a movement away from doing to having, and needing to have more. Just the way we talk about people as consumers, as if people weren't defined by what they produce or accomplish, but by what they consume, comes to mind as well. We could say much about what might have precipitated this shift, but I'm more interested here in what it would look like to swing things back around. In other words, by what business practices or brand identities could gearmakers shift focus from hawking a consumerist surrogate for meaningful accomplishments (a surrogacy evident not least in the bland appeals to vanity made by jackets with 'serious,' 'technical' sounding names) to empowering people to go out and have transformative outdoor experiences? I don't know. But I'm curious who you think is living up to this ideal, who isn't, what economic realities constrain their freedom one way or the other, and what influence people outside the industry-- 'normal' users --can exert. If climbing is about doing more with less, if its supposed to be the opposite of going to the mall, these seem like significant questions. What do you think?

Hi all, Thanks for the suggestions. This weekend I finally tore the seams out of my six year old Houdini, Incredible Hulk style. I ordered the new Gamma LT hoody on warranty; at 5x the weight of the Houdini it's probably overkill but we will see. At this point I think the Houdini can't be beat for an all-year, all-the-time, do-everything mountain shell. I'll post a review of the Gamma LT hoody if I'm wrong.

I just ordered and received their Chocklite Anorak. Typical non-climbing fit: huge in the torso, lifts way up when you raise your arms, short sleeves. Compare to the R1 Hoody I'm wearing underneath it, same size: What should I replace it with? What's light like a windshirt but a little tougher for scraping against rock? Any suggestions? Anyone want to sell a Houdini Jacket?

Hi DD, Thanks! The TR has details; 179 photos and videos here: https://plus.google.com/photos/114863960044082131321/albums/5650773394179867921 [img:right]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-afsouMCd-wk/TmuXxPVNUzI/AAAAAAAABS4/LXG8yRsbgV8/s1207/IMG_0283.JPG[/img] No crack problems on the Muldrow, but lots of up and down on huge moraine hills. Spent some time dumping stepping stones into glacial sloughs. Traleika was a flat, compacted highway of shale. This highway has big, like 10' tall berms, like rings on a tree, from rockfall. Some are found miles from the head of the valley, so I'm guessing they occurred hundreds of years ago? As you get to the head of the valley, they are only a few yards apart. Geological time made visible. Every so often, the big face will dump a pile of rock and then it travels down this highway to the Muldrow. Never seen anything like it. Anyway, glacier going up to Silverthrone was crack free-ish almost to the descent gully, after which it was a terrible everywhere but along the west (right) side. That side is great going but is littered with serac debris. This was in September; during the normal season you could go up the middle.

Yeah, this and December are the only months I'm home from school in CA, so gotta go for it while I'm here. Great thing about September is that even if the climb's a bust, the berrypicking's great!

MW— thanks! I'm surprised the approach dissuades people; we kept saying on the way in that even if we didn't make it up the Traleika, at least we got to hike through some beautiful country. On our recon day we saw I think 4 serac avalanches pummel the approach, and as we rushed up the morning of the climb, found that the debris area was much wider and took longer to rush through than we thought. I think your lower route is probably the smarter one. Definitely we were lucky with the warm temps and break in the clouds for our getaway. The only long climb I'd done before this was Pioneer Peak there along the highway, so I was a little bit freaked out as we headed down. My partner tried to get a photo on the summit but couldn't because I was literally towing him downhill. Anyway, that was a sweet face you guys explored; I hope more people get to check out the solitude in that area. Hope we get back there soon. Much thanks to Jan, Anne & Camp Denali for the unexpected showers, dinner and ride out.

Success. Thanks again for the info. NPS didn't want to let us in because "the climbing season ended in July." Just posted a TR.

Trip: Mt. Silverthrone - West Face direct couloir Date: 9/4/2011 Trip Report: Hi all, Thanks in part to your helpful suggestions we walked in 30 miles from Wonder Lake to climb a new route on Mt. Silverthrone's 4000' west face, following a couloir Joe Puryear and Mark Westman attempted in 1997 before turning back in bad weather. They later made the first ascent of the face via a different couloir and followed the north ridge to the summit. The 'new' route takes a straight line from the glacier to the summit, and descends the north ridge. [img:center]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-VQHqoOYxPM8/TmuwKsnmrvI/AAAAAAAABXc/5GJci0enPEg/s512/IMG_0759.JPG[/img] We left camp on the Traleika at 6am and hurried through the runout zone of the seracs at the head of the glacier's east fork, where the route begins. The climbing was uninterrupted 50 to 60 degree snow and ice, which we simulclimbed with pickets and ice screws. We weren't faster than the weather and lost visibility in the afternoon, but continued up to escape. One of us was sick from altitude and recovering from a 30' fall off a knife-edge ridge we wandered onto somewhere on the face below the summit, so we moved slowly. We topped out in a whiteout and storm at 7pm. We dug a snow cave at 13,100-something feet, 10 or 20 yards south of the summit, and waited there until morning, listening to the wind and unsure whether we would be able to leave. At 6am the wind and blowing snow was still bad but visibility had improved so we hurried down the north ridge. The easy descending ended at Peak 11,270 and we simulclimbed down the steep ridge, arriving sometime around 12pm at the descent gully noted in Puryear's book. Full story in photos at Picasa . Gear Notes: four alpine ice tools four ice screws three pickets 60m 8mm rope shovel stove foam pads Approach Notes: 1 day driving, etc., from Wasilla. 2 days to McGonagall Pass. 1 day to the head of the Traleika. We camped on the medial moraine, 3 miles from the route. 10 hrs up, 6 hrs down (not counting hiking to and from camp; we could have camped closer but liked the moraine).

Yes! Thanks so much. I feel a lot better about wandering in there out of season, now that we have some good info. Now just have to dry a lot of salmon and bake a lot of cookies. Will let you know how it goes. Again, really appreciate the advice.

Confused. Sliders and Triggers are different. I got the yellow slider for my Matrix Lights.

No, I don't know much about it at all. I grew up on the other side of the Susitna north of Talkeetna and was always more interested in walking in than flying. I think we'll take 4 tools, 4 screws, and 2 pickets, then. From your description, it sounds like we'll have pretty good going across the glacier up to the cirque, then 1K+' of dirt, 4K' of snow & ice, up to 60 degrees, then a ridge walk to the summit (assuming we get that far). Then cautious downclimbing or rappelling off v-threads to the dirt? Sounds fun— even if the climb is a bust, at least we get some good tundra hiking, scenery and peace and quiet.

Great info! I'm more optimistic. Other thing we've been wondering is tools. I've heard two ice tools, and I've heard a tool and a mountain axe. I'm inclined toward the former, especially late in the season. Any reason to favor the less technical combo?

Thanks!

I searched and searched on here but didn't find much info. A friend and I have 2 weeks off at the end of August and wanted to hike in and climb something from Wonder Lake. Silverthrone's west face looks/sounds cool but I've heard that the crevasses are horrible getting up there, and I expect they'd be even worse late in the season. Has anyone been up there in the fall, or on the west face of Silverthrone at any time, or wants to recommend something better in the area?

Ha! What's next depends on if I can find people to climb with. I'm going to school out of state so I'm home for such short periods. So, ANYONE, feel free to PM.

Trip: Mint Glacier - Triplemint North Buttress Date: 9/3/2010 Trip Report: This route is so close and cool-looking from the Mint Hut I thought it would be worth posting up here so more people can experience it (and figure out a better way of descending Go up the glacier to where you see a gully of loose, light colored 3rd class rubble that goes up to the skyline. Bring crampons and an ice ax. Snow gives good footing for crossing the bergshrund and getting onto the rock. You have to get off the ice and onto the rock up-glacier of the gully, then traverse / climb up to it, to avoid the cliffs and crevasses directly under it. Start climbing at the top of the gully, following the skyline east toward the summit: 1) blocky stuff to a mossyy ledge with a nut and sling anchor. 2) first, a system of low angle thin cracks, then more blocky stuff over and out of sight of the belayer, to a little saddle. 3) more blocky stuff. I don't remember this one well but you go to our two nut rappel anchor on the downridge side of a big bump. Then belay your second over this bump and down just a bit into the next saddle with a huge boulder, and set up the next belay there. 4) climb and traverse along the north side of the ridge on light colored rock to get around the steep pillar in front of you, and continue to a smaller saddle— or notch really. 5) an almost vertical (like a climbing ladder against a house) 5.6 pillar with a truly monstrous detached flake at the top. You need a #4 cam to protect the last 12' because you have to sort of stem / lieback up the crack / corner offered by the flake. Continue above that monstrosity to an au cheval ridge, extending a #3 cam to avoid lots of rope drag as you go sideways to the last 6' before the sunny (hopefully), mossy summit. to descend: 1) Rappel the route. Look for our nut and sling anchors. Our ropes got stuck twice. 2) Walk down the gully. About 40m from the ice and directly above where you probably left the glacier is a boulder slung for a rappel. Rappel the last 3rd / 4th class part of the gully, rappel over the bergshrund and crevasses, and get as far down the glacier as you can. It would be tricky to downclimb all this but possible; we came down in the dark and didn't want to downclimb over the crevasses, etc., w/o crampons. 3) step from rock to rock, frozen in the ice, to get down to the middle of the glacier. Continue directly across the glacier. Eventually in the dark (or sun, hopefully) you'll see the other side. It has nice rocks and no crevasses. Walk down these rocks, rubble, sand, and boulders 'til you are off the glacier, then head on to the Mint Hut. Gear Notes: gear: 2 ropes, nuts including little ones and giant ones, cams including a #4 if you have it, lots of cord for rappelling, crampons and ice ax. We didn't sling many horns because most were loose. We started climbing at 10am and were on top by 4pm, so that's probably the maximum it would take. Despite the loose stuff, this was really fun, with a very memorable last pitch. It's 5th class from top to bottom and the last pitch is exposed down to the glacier. Approach Notes: see photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/elliott.will/NorthButtressTriplemint?feat=directlink