Ade

You should really go try them on before buying. I bought my last pair of crampons mail order and it was a mistake.

Saw your TR, nice! Kelly isn't flying this year, he's hoping to get someone for next year.

this thread Says that it's probably not that fat right now. But that doesn't mean you can't go climb it.

Sleds are aid. One of the great things about the Cascades in winter is how big and remote it feels. Leave the sled at home and have an adventure.

I've been drytooling with my '04 Quarks the past couple of weeks. One of the reasons I bought them was because I wanted to tool that was a bit easier to use leashless but was still an ice tool. Unless I move to the Rockies there's no way I can splash $400 notes on a set of Ergos for "modern" mixed or whatever you want to call it. I've been pretty impressed with the grip rests. I was climbing leashless today and wasn't having any problems with them at all. Seemed to pretty much do the job. Obviously not as good as a true leashless tool but better than, say, my old Quasars - which required some real holding onto without leashes.

I'm looking for the equivalent of the BC Base Map Viewer for the Yukon.

Seems that there isn't anything equivalent for Canada. You can search the map DB and it'll produce computer generated topo maps but there doesn't seem to be anything for downloading the equivalent USGS map data. http://maps.nrcan.gc.ca/search/mapsearch.html Anyone got any better ideas on this one?

This TR would be your best bet: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/433321/an/0/page/0#433321

So I tried a pair of these on and bouldered around in them for a bit. The sole on the XT seemed incredibly soft. Standing on the toes I could completely deform the front edge of the sole crushing the bail groove. The seems to be because they don't have a thicker sub-sole so give more rigidity. Ended up going with the Nepal Extremes, largely because I could get a better fit out of them and they're built to keep out the wet. Never did find a pair of Cumbres to try on. The few days ice I've had out of the Extremes so far they've done really well so we'll see. Incidently BD are selling FXs cheap at the moment. http://www.bdel.com/php/specials.php?gear=alpinism&id=298

They're aimed at different uses. The Dart is trying to be a lighter ice and mixed climbing crampon. If used for that you might well wear out the front point(s) without doing much damage to the rest of the crampon. The Sarken is a mountaineering crampon. No other manufacturer is any different. They'll all sell you replacement points for their technical mixed/ice crampon and not for mountaineering crampons. There's no technical reason for this, someone in product planning looked at the likely demand for replacement parts and based their production runs on that.

They're reprints from Summit magazine issues 19 (Fall 2000) to 26 (Summer 2002). A complete list can be found here: http://www.thebmc.co.uk/services/summit/backissues12-20.htm

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. How is that shattered helmet going to keep the rock from hitting your head? Helmets shatter because they've encountered a force they weren't designed to withstand - they are designed for low force impacts. Not BS at all. Depending on the type of helmet it'll deform and then crack/delaminate to absorb energy. These might be useful reading: http://www.thebmc.co.uk/safety/tech/articles/issue19_helmet1.pdf http://www.thebmc.co.uk/safety/tech/articles/issue20_helmets2.pdf http://www.thebmc.co.uk/safety/tech/articles/issue26_off_centre.pdf

I agree that building the experiment in the Icicle is a poor choice and there seem to be lots of other big ugly holes in the ground elsewhere which could be used. It also seems that they're going against the spirit of not the letter of the Wilderness Act to build it. However. Those of you who say "why do I care about Neutrinos and such" and "it's not going to improve my life" should consider how fundamental science is ultimately a building block for everyday technology.

When the C-M Quark first came out Charlet at a bit of difficulty making picks so I suspect that it's not completely trivial. In addtion C-M has to pass the CE T/B standard which adds cost. What sort of forces did the manufacturer quote? There's also the liability issue. Did you ask how big a minimum batch was? How many replacement picks do you think C-M or Grivel sell each year. I can imagine $4 per pick on a batch of 100,000 but I suspect that these things are manufactured in much smaller numbers and the retooling cost is a big, possibly the biggest, factor.

The MoS gave me this contact at the U of Alaska: Peggy Asbury, Archivist Alaska & Polar Regions Dept. Rasmuson Library UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS P.O. Box 756808 Fairbanks, AK 99775-6808 Phone: 907-474-6595 Fax: 907-474-6365 Web: http://www.uaf.edu/library/apr/index.html It's that or PANOPTICON and there's no way I'm dealing with those purveyors of overpriced yuppie adventure porn.

I don't really see what your issue is here. I'm with you on the Monster thing but alpine crampons have never been designed to have replacable points. If you make the front points replacable, like say a Grivel G-14 or C-M M10 then it adds to the weight making them unsuitable for alpine use. In this case replacing the whole front section of the crampon represents well over half of the whole item. If you've been alpine climbing with them it seems odd that you've trashed the front points but nothing else. I have a pair of BD Sabretooths that I've pretty much worn out and the points are gone all round. In addition with that much use I'd start to worry about fatigue issues and replacing the whole unit would see prudent. Alpine crampons are designed to be light, not to last forever.

Don't say we didn't warn you! Good effort getting all the way in there at all by the sounds of it.

"This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get"

I agree Photo Maps is better. All I'm saying is that you can use the coverage map on the homepage of the Terraserver site to figure out if it's worth going to the trouble of installing Photo Maps to get photos. It's still a great tool for stitching together USGS maps though. It's like having one big map of the US! I also played with NASA's World Wind program. This also does USGS maps and LandSat images and a bunch of other cool stuff as well including 3D terrain views. Again the issue is data; the SRTM terrain data coverage is patchy for AK. Denali for instance appears completely flat! Both these are really cool applications that make using the USGS and other data much easier now all we have to do is convince someone to fly the space shuttle over AK a few times.

A long time ago I was aboe to buy one of Brad's pictures as a 10x8 for research purposes when I was planning a trip to the Yukon. I'm pretty sure I got this from the Boston Museum of Science. Does anyone know where his photo archive lives these days and if it's still possible to buy pictures. I mean access to the whole catalog and purchase of 10x8s not selected images in large format for large cash like Panopticon sell.

Needless to say the sat imagery is limited to only some regions of the US. You can find out what Photo Maps will be able to get images for here: http://www.terraserver-usa.com/

The Photo Maps link is messed up. Its http://www.jdmcox.com/

Looks like it might just be getting colder for the weekend but things must be well and truely soggy by now

So in theory you can download all those nice USGS maps for free. But only if you know what you're doing. As with any bureaucracy the trick is knowing how to ask the question. You can use the National Map Viewer to zoom around Alaska. In the right hand column turn on Topographic Maps > USGS Quadrangles to see the maps and Topographic Maps > Index/Status to get the names of the individual sheets. Once you have the sheet name goto the Alaska Digital Raster Graphics and download the TIF file for the sheet you want. This comes as a compressed file using GNU Zip. The built in Windows ZIP program doesn't seem to handle this (maybe WinZip does). You can get gunzip.exe for Win32 from SourceForge's GNU utilities for Win32 Project. Download the ZIP. You only need to unpack \usr\local\wbin\gunzip.exe to be able to unzip files. Have fun. Ade