Nick

I climbed the Emmons route last year with the same trip leader. We got to the summit by 7 or 8 am and were back at Shurman by 11:30 am. I think this year's group was slowed down by windy conditions, and perhaps by bad snow conditions. I do know that the PI article has the times wrong; the group descended from the summit at 12:30pm. The 4pm time is actually the time that four of the seven team members descended from the site of the fall, returning to Camp Shurman. The team leader remained with the injured climbers. The injured climbers were each splinted and placed in sleeping bags dug into the steep snow slope, but the leader had only a bivy bag. By 2 am, when the rangers had the injured climbers established in a tent, the team leader was too cold to down climb safely, so he spent the night warming up in the tent with the injured climbers and walked off the mountain after the helicopter removed the injured climbers in the morning. I know that, where the fall occured, there was a weight-bearing icy crust over deep soft snow. This surface crust was not conducive to self arrest; it allowed the climbers to slide but provided little grip for the pick of the ice ax (or the knees) in trying to arrest. Fortunately the low man on the rope that fell got himself well planted and held the whole team. I suspect that the full length of a dynamic rope is a big help in stopping this sort of fall; I would also imagine that the impact of the three falling climbers would come on the rope in sequence, rather than simultaneously. but I am just guessing. Either way, this was a great belay. The team members I spoke to were using steel crampons. I believe that the broken leg was due to catching a crampon. The above is second hand information, so it may not be entirely correct, but it is more useful than a bunch of wild guesses. The route up the Emmons this year seems to be a beeline for the crater rim. This is a route that crosses more exposed terrain than last years route, which made a long northerly traverse around to the true summit.

I am just under 5'10" and 165 pounds. I have used various skis over the years and am now skiing on BD Havocs with Diamir bindings and the new K2 Shuksans with Dynafit bindings. Both skis are close to 180 cm in length. The K2 Shuksans are by far the best all around AT skis that I have found! Shuksans ski great on all kinds of snow. The Havocs are also effective on a wide range of snow conditions, but the Shuksans are much better for making lots of quick tight turns in the trees or in steep narrow gullies. Also, the Shuksans are lighter and are narrow enough under foot to work perfectly with the light Dynafit bindings. I tried to use dynafit bindings with the Havocs, but the lower bindings made the wider ski kind of a handful, too tiring when I skied run after run (lift served skiing). The Diamir bindings help tame the Havocs, but add a lot of weight to the package, and you still can't turn the Havocs on a dime the way you can with the Shuksan's. I use Garmont Mega ride boots, which are also superb. Get K2 Shuksans; they are superb skiis for mountaineering! Quick and easy to turn but still plenty stable and floaty in the deep wet stuff.

Aid has more uses than soloing to the rescue. A bit of impromptu aid can be just the thing when a rainstorm catches you on a hard pitch, or when forced to climb in spite of an injury, or in any other situation where you must climb past obstacles that became harder than anticipated.

Tuna dude, if the straps are plenty long you will not often need to thread them through the rings. What is a "long comp strap"? I am also having a hard time with the image of your bottom creeping down your back.

I enjoy Marc Twight's writing. He seems to me to have his tongue in his cheek most of the time. Whatever.

Yeah, wool is best. Snug without restricting movement. Comfortable over a broader range of conditions. Doesn't stink. Expensive wool is not scratchy.

One problem I have had with a pack that had 3/4 inch webbing instead of 1 inch is that the 3/4 inch plastic buckles are too weak; when I yard on the compression straps the buckles break. AArrg. 3/4 inch webbing would be fine with a different buckle. Why not use two small stainless rings instead of a buckle (you know, like on Charlet Moser crampon straps). I have made these two-ring buckles on home made sailing harnesses and they work great. Make those compression straps really long so you can strap a tent or a full size sleeping pad on the sides of your pack for approaches.

Holy Cow Timcb, that must have been one turgid Chernobyl.

I am a metalworker, looking at an Alien, and I don't see any welds anywhere in the Alien. I see swages, collars, machined press fit connections, and maybe some epoxy, but no welds. The main cable is brazed into a sleeve at the axle joint, there are no welds in an alien.

I carry upwards of 60 pounds in a Granite Gear Alpine Light frameless pack, with no padded hip belt, occaisionally and find it to be as comfortable as any internal or external frame pack I have used. If the frameless pack fits right and is packed right it works fine. I try to keep my loads much lighter though; comfort is less of an issue than speed of travel. I have carried 45 pounds comfortably in my CCW Chernobyl as well. I am only 155 pounds, but my long torso fits a size large pack.

The Chernobyl pad is a nice thick square one, good to sleep or sit upon. I have the Valdez also, and love it. It already has crampon straps like the Chernobyl, and the ice axe loops are fine; no need to add the weight of tool tubes to this nice, smaller pack. The Valdez also has a pretty good sized extension sleeve, which is handy for the extra volume of a rack, rock shoes, etc. on approaches. The Bora 80 is a radically differrent pack. The Bora is over-complicated, much heavier, and has a frame which makes the climber wearing it much clumsier, restricting movement.

I don't find that pants need to be made of the most breathable fabric. I use Marmot full zip precip and oracle pants a lot and they are fine. If you are too hot, take your pants off! On the other hand, pants that are not really waterproof are very disapointing when it is cold and wet. Schoeller pants are great, but won't keep you dry in a downpour or in deep wet snow (but they do dry fast after the rain). I have a gore tex pac lite shell jacket that breathes quite well, and the new "Mithril"soft shell from OR breathes very well, but is a bit heavy at 24 ounces for a size large jacket. The only time I have real problems with any WB shell is when I wear too much clothing. Have not tried e-vent yet. Is it great?

NOTE, I edited my original post above because I had mislabeled my compass bearings "Magnetic" when they were in fact bearings based on TRUE north, not magnetic north. You should always check your own map and not just believe what some clown on the internet asserts!

I didn't look that closely at the Nisqually, but I am sure it had a lot in common with the Muir snowfield ridge. There is a lot of water ice on surfaces from the paradise parking lot right up to the vertical surfaces around Camp Muir, where the steep pinacles around the camp are coated with an inch or two of plastered on water ice. This ice must have built up durring spells of freezing rain and is probably found all over the place at least up to the 10,000 foot level. At the same time, the little snow we have had since the rains has been scoured off high points and dumped into hollows by the wind, so there ought to be a lot of bare glacier ice as well. I can't vouch for conditions higher up. There may be a more snow, and some bad wind slab, at higher elevations. There was some fresh snow on the Nisqually, but I am sure it was a thin layer. We should be getting more snow this weekend.

CCW Chernobyl is a great pack. I like the fit and fabric better than the ice sack. I use it on overnight alpine climbs and find that it carries and climbs well even with fairly heavy loads. It is super strong and the design details are just right. It carries skis very well and has super long side compression straps that make it easy to strap a tent and full size sleeping pad to each side for approaches.

Climb: Mt. Rainier-Paradise to Camp Muir Date of Climb: 1/30/2005 Trip Report: Sunday Greg and I hiked up to camp Muir and set up my 4 season mountain tent right in the pass, near the hut. The snow was unconsolidated, on top of water ice, so there was no way to build a wind break. We dug out the entrance to the hut at Muir. A wind came up at dark, but we preferred the tent, and it is supposed to be a bombproof expedition type tent. 45 mph winds were predicted for Muir. I had the tent staked down with 8 snow stakes at the edges and vestibule corners. There is a lot of water ice, and shallow windslab drifts, around Muir, so I chopped slots in the ice and buried the stakes as dead men. What I did not do was use lengths of cord and extra dead men to guy out the tent from loops up high on the side of the tent (I didn't have any extra stakes or pickets, but could have used ice axes or ski poles). We thought, what the hell, lets see how the tent does. We cooked and brewed up inside the shelter. The wind blew like hell all night, drifting snow around the tent. It was hard to sleep and very noisy. Towards morning it got so windy, with very powerful gusts, that we decided to get dressed and pack up in case the tent couldn't take it. We took some time going over the descent route and putting lanyards on all of our navigation aids because it looked like we would be descending into headwinds gusting well over 60 mph and a whiteout. Greg had marked the route up with a tiny Geko GPS. This GPS has no eye for a lanyard, so we duct taped some cord to it. When it got light I got out of the tent and had to don crampons to cross the wind scoured ice between us and the shelter. As Greg sat in the door of the tent, putting on his crampons, two poles broke and the tent caved in, the poles ripping through the fly. Greg thinks that with the door open the lack of internal air pressure let the tent collapse past the point of no return. I don't know. The strongest gusts were well over 60 mph, maybe as high as 80 mph or more at the peak of the gust. The narrow pass at Muir creates a venturi effect, accelerating the winds. I felt that even my ice axe was in danger of blowing away. We were very methodical about hanging onto our gear, packing and lashing our packs inside the tent before going out, so we lost nothing. We got our packs over to the shelter (and I felt that the gusts could even have taken my relatively light pack away if I had let it go), then we went back and broke down the flattened tent, carrying the pieces back to the shelter to pack them into our packs. Without the shelter this winter camping experience would have been a lot more awkward! Next we had to get set to descend into what seemed to be a solid white out blizzard, but was in fact mostly yesterday's powder snow being blown up the mountain by the winds. There were patches of blue above from time to time and the visibility seemed to open up and get better every so often. We figured that the winds would decrease as we went down, but we expected to be descending in the kind of white out I experienced on another trip to Muir, with about 50 feet of visibility. Our plan was for Greg to go ahead using the GPS (he's still learning how it works) and for me to follow, checking that we were on the right compass bearing. This worked very well. The GPS took us right down our route of ascent, past the 8 waypoints Greg had marked on the way up as a breadcrumb trail. I was able to confirm that my compass bearing, and Greg's course, were both correct for the best winter descent route (about 168 degrees True from Muir to McClure Rock, staying right of the intermittent rocky ridge crest between the Muir Snowfield and the Paradise Glacier. In the Pass at Camp Muir the wind was from the south, but as soon as we got below the pass the wind was actually wrapping around the mountain from the west. The west wind tended to push us to the east, toward the Paradise Glacier. Without the GPS, or without carefully leap frogging compass bearings between two people, it is very easy to get pushed off course and end up descending on the Paradise Glacier, with danger of crevasse falls. As we descended visibility improved dramatically, though the wind didn't stop knocking us around until we got below Pan Point. The compass course from McClure Rock to Pan Point is about 212 degrees True and you make the turn at around 7200 feet elevation, but it is hard to know exactly where to turn because the contour lines meander in this area. The tendency is to turn too early and end up nearer to Pebble Creek than to Pan Point. The GPS was dead on. In the course of two days we had to change the batteries on the GPS twice. It was very hard to push the tiny buttons on the Geko GPS with big gloves on; Greg had to use the pick of his ax to push the buttons. By the time we got to McClure rock the clouds cleared and we could see the whole mountain. The route, which had a few inches of new powder on it on Sunday, was now very icy, with large areas of water ice. On Sunday we climbed to Muir in boots. On the descent we were glad to have crampons most of the way down. There are a fair number of wands on the route. If you are using a GPS to navigate in this kind of situation it is best to mark your waypoints along a consistent compass course as you ascend so that you will be able to use a compass to navigate on the way back, should you loose your GPS, or should it's batteries fail. Gear Notes: Needed crampons, ice axes, compass, GPS . . .could have used a few ice screws for tent stakes and guy lines for the tent. Approach Notes: The Muir snow field is very icy.

Using heat shrink tubing on webbing might be a bad idea; heat weakens webbing significantly.

Carrying a shovel and transciever is a great idea; the transcievers make it a lot easier (and less risky) for SAR to find the bodies, and beacons do save some lives. On the other hand, carrying this gear may actually encourage risk-taking by engendering a false sense of preparedness. Statistically speaking it is people with some avalanche knowledge, and who are probably carrying beacons and shovels, who are most likely to be caught in an avalanche. When a ski area requires that skiers show that they are using beacons and shovels before entering the back country the ski area is making sure that the skiers realise that they are risking their lives. It sorts out the skiers who know there is risk involved from those who may simply be ducking under the ropes on the spur of the moment. What would be even more useful would be for the ski area to post current avalanche forecast information at the top of lifts that provide access to the back country (or at the ski area entrance). Special warning flags could be displayed durring times of particularly hazardous conditions (sort of like small craft warnings).

Soon you serious climbers will have to stomach the sight of Homer Simpson strolling past you on Yosemite big walls, a six pack under his arm. . .

I have used tape to mark middles, but who knows, maybe the tape goo is bad too. . . .

I survived several nights of wintery weather in August with a 21 oz Integral Designs "bag liner" synthetic bag inside a tiny goretex bivy sack. My companion's down bag got wet inside his bivy sack and was wortheless.

Synthetic can save your life and some brands are nearly as light and compact as down. One synthetic jacket that can handle wetness weighs less than a down jacket plus a fleece back up. Two or three layers of fleece may equal one layer of insulated parka, but several layers of fleece are hard to move in, and they are a pain to get in and out of every time you stop and start. A synthetic belay jacket that you can throw on when you stop and shove in the pack when you move will save you time on those short winter days.

I have the same crampons (with steel toe bail) and have no problem with the heel piece. If you got it so tight that it bent the plastic It was way too tight. The heel piece should hold the boot on very firmly without screwing it down so tight. Perhaps the crampon just doesn't fit your size or type of boot well enough, or perhaps you don't have the crampon length adjusted right for your boot. If you bent the plastic enough to weaken it you may need to cut those nubs off, or replace the whole plastic part, to get a firm connection. I find that if crampons fit the boot right you should not need to make the heel clamp extremely tight. I use the G14 cramps with Scarpa Alpha Ice boots (smallish ones) and they work great.

I have always thought the Chaos pack would be perfect if the crampon pocket was replaced with the crampon strap system used on the other CCW packs. Great to know they can make custom modifications like this.

I just traded a pair of Boreal Ace rock shoes in at second ascent. They're probably still there. They must be roughly mens size 8 (they might be a size bigger or smaller). They are in good shape but have new home-applied soles that never had the edges sanded down. I liked them, but they were too big for me.