Alan Trick

I've been up there in May and it was steep ice/snow. there were rocks visible but the ice would have made them pretty dodgy to climb. Apart from the fact that we were in a snow storm it was actually a lot of fun.

The article also mentions an interview he did with them earlier that week where he mentioned his love of climbing and quote him saying that he regrets nothing from his life. Then it goes into speculation about his alcohol problems. It probably wasn't a climbing accident.

I haven't been on the Baden Powell trail before, and I'm not sure what the exact conditions are in the North Shore mountains, but I would bring crampons and snowshoes. I've heard that some portions of the trail are pretty steep and if it gets frequented by hikers you could have packed, slippery snow. I would expect conditions something like this: a raining mudfest at low elevations and about knee/waist deep snow above 1500m.

Here's a link to the specific article: http://www.mammutavalanchesafety.com/2012/10/mammut-pulse-457-send-failure.html (the above link just links to the blog and the actual article will end up several pages back eventually).

I think CaleHoopes was referring to something a bit different. Packs often fit differently when carrying a light load vs a heavy load. This distinction isn't really noticeable for small packs because you can only fit so much stuff on them. Where things become more awkward is when you get something like a 45L pack with no suspension and then you try to use it as an overnight pack.

Can I be your friend? I will happily take care of your retired ice hardware.

More specifically. Micro-fractures do exist, but they have about as much relevance to climbing safety as being hit by an asteroid does. I believe micro-fractures have been a very rare issue with aircraft or spacecraft.

It's probably because the ice-climbers are in such miserable conditions most of the time, we have to take out our rage on the skiers who just float in pow all winter. Source: I'm an ice climber.

Even though this is an older post, I was curious about the difficulty and I didn't quite understand Google's translation. So I did an attempt myself. --- Hello Mr. Sors, First, excuse me for the late response. Due to a misunderstanding between the headquarters and us, the French distribute, the response was delayed because we both thought we had responded. We have received your message, and every question deserves a response, so it was not our intention to not give our opinion. We have been making the X-monster since 2005, and in these last 7 years, the design has not changed. According to statistics, some tens of thousands of copies are used in all the world's mountains (about 7000 of those in France) with increasing satisfaction and success each year. Many amateur alpinists and professionals, including some well known ones, make a great deal of use from the X-monster. Obviously with all ice axes there are compromises. An ax with a sharp angle, like dry-tooling axes, are very good for changing hands, but are hard to place in the ice. On the other hand, an ax with a slighter angle will be very effective at placing, but much worse for switching hands or moving hands to the high hand position. When using the the x-monster, it's important to be aware of these tradeoffs. so you get a very comfortable, offset grip, an excellent angle on the ice in a low position, on the other hand, watch out for its disadvantages because as you can see the higher your hand is along the shaft[1], the more likely the ax is to come out. The more curved the handle is, the less important this effect is. This explains the sharply curved handles of dry-tool axes where the hands are frequently placed higher along the shaft On ice, the most important thing is to place your ax with efficiency, a lesser curve is better at this. FYI, you can take the second (higher) handle of the x-monster to different levels: with the index finger, with to fingers, or with the whole hand. I hope I have answered your question. On our behalf, we think it would be best if you relayed our response to all the forums in which you put your message I remain at your disposal. Cheers, Bruno Robert [1] I think that's what it means, it's slightly ambiguous to me.

I don't know what effect the dryer would have on them, but you should be fine just hanging them up to dry.