elliottwill

Size L, black. Brand new with tags still on it. I need XL. Retail is $450. I would like $250 or your best offer of cash or trades. Looking for leashless ice tools, bug proof lightweight 3+ person shelter, hardshell bibs L or XL, packraft / splitboard stuff, Baruntses 47... or this same or similar parka in an XL! Thanks!

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.

Thanks for looking. Stove is no longer for sale but still have the boots. They're 46.5.

I won't have access to these items 'til August 6 (flying home to the folks') but wanted to give a heads up. For a while I've been dividing my time between AK and CA; now having moved back to AK I have some redundant gear to sell. La Sportiva Nepal Evos, 46 (about 12.5 US, fits wide feet). One boot to rule them all. $510 new. $200 yours. Great condition. Key seams were coated with seam grip when new to make these bulletproof. Selling because I have 2 pairs. http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Mountaineering-Boot-Reviews/La-Sportiva-Nepal-Evo MSR Reactor 1.7 L. $189 new. $85 yours. Selling because I have two of these. http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Backpacking-Stove-Reviews/MSR-Reactor Grivel Tech Wing ice tools, with Horns (leash less grips) and Cascade picks. Awesome tools but I am not climbing steep ice any more. These are similar to the new Tech Machines coming out this fall, but with a modular head (adze & hammer) and a straight lower grip for plunging if you remove the Horns. They still make picks for them. They were $480 new plus I think $50 or something outrageous for the Horns at retail. Make offer. I have the leashes somewhere too. BD angle pitons, >1". Free if my wind chime experiment doesn't work. BD rope bag w/ tarp. $15 Mountain Hardwear Hooded Subzero Jacket, XL, with no hood. Baffled construction (not the sewn through one). Lost the hood. Contact MH for a replacement or sew on your own. $100 Have other random climbing and outdoor gear— just ask. WANTED: 3L hardshell pants to fit me at 200 lbs, 34x34, <$100 Open to offers on everything. If you have a packraft or beater vehicle in Juneau to sell, I'd do trade + cash.

Hi all, I'm looking for a hood for the mountain hardwear subzero parka / jacket. I lost mine. I contacted MH; they don't have separate hoods. If you never use your hood, I'll buy it off you! Thanks

Second in line for the Silo 50!

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

Hi all, I have a pair of these that don't fit, new with tags: www.backcountry.com/stoic-welder-trigger-mitt I have big hands; these fit without the liners but not with, so they've got to go. I'd like to trade for similar gloves suited to ice climbing, in XL, or biking / climbing gear. Thanks, Will

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?

Title says it all. 58cm air tech racing would be ideal. Would also consider a raven ultra. Thanks!

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?

These are the over-the-cuff version of the Punisher gloves. $109.95 retail. http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en-us/shop/climb/climbing-gloves/specialist-glove/ Used for about an hour, no rappels or any wear. Good as new. Sweet gloves but they don't fit me. Yours for $75 shipped, or make an offer. I'm looking for a small BD Deploy shovel. Thanks!

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?

Still got it? I'm interested!

OK, Mat— shoot me a message after the 14th. I'll be back in AK then and can put them in the mail. What's your offer? I'm looking for XL shell bibs, 50L pack; could do cash + trade.

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.

I have a full set but I won't be back home for 2 weeks. PM me if you are still in the market then. They are all in good shape— fine to climb on.

I'd like to take a look at the Alpha shell, the WT bibs, and the Cobras. Thanks!