Nick

I know of Tele skiers who love Shuksans, which were specifically designed for Randonee . . .

I had second degree frostbite in all my toes some 25 years ago. After extreme blistering the toes turned black; later all the skin and toenails dropped off. I spent a week in hospital. I was treated with IV fluids, vasodilators and oxygen. I think they rewarmed my feet with a water bath, but I don't remember for sure. This was after dehydration and 2 days delay in a storm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Tight snowshoe bindings over soft boots were the main contributing factor. My feet felt fine while I hiked out of the mountains. I drove myself to the hospital and didn't know anything was wrong with my feet until I got my boots off in the ER. This case was bad as it gets without loosing digits, yet I had no problems in the ensuing years, until getting bad frost nip/ trench foot in all toes and fingers this year. In this recent case it was also storm delay, dehydration, cold and wet conditions that did the damage. In the recent case dehydration and days of wet feet and hands were the main contributing factors. On the morning of the last day of this epic, rock climbing in wet snow wearing wet aproach shoes and wet shoeller gloves, my hands and feet were very numb. I had symptoms of frost nip and trench foot for two or three weeks on this occaision. All did to treat myself was rest for a few days, eat well, hydrate, and take aspirin. My advice is to hydrate well, carry a light stove if there is any chance you might need one to get water. Eat well. Carry extra gloves and something like gore tex socks to bolster up your foot gear if the weather gets ugly. The biggest gloves in the world won't help if you stand around at a belay in cold weather too much. Hydration is critical, even on day trips. Aspirin can help keep your circulation going. If any body parts go numb try to keep the circulation going by moving, hydrating, drying, insulating, putting feet or hands against a warm companion's torso (inside their parka) etc. If you have full on frostbite don't rewarm and then re freeze your body parts. If you need to get out of the mountains walk out on frozen feet and go straight to a hospital. If you thaw your feet (perhaps by walking out on them) and they don't blister at all, you probably only have frost nip and don't have to worry. If you do have blistering or black flesh (or are in doubt about how bad it is) then get to a doctor.

Oops, I meant Wild Country.

Wild Things hexes on Dyneema work best. Lighter, curved shape cams better, sling less prone to wiggle hex out.

Read Gadd on leashes.

All stoves produce deadly CO. Keep your face near a fresh air source while cooking inside a tent and DON"T go to sleep with a stove burning. In the old days they used to make tents with a little zipper door in the floor so you could have a little snow pit in the middle of the tent for cooking. It would be easy enough to add a cooking door to the floor of your tent. This would also allow you to use a traditional technique from Lapland; dig a small tunnel under the tent to bring fresh air to your cook pit so the stove can get oxygen from somewhere other than your personal space. The stove will still produce CO though!

With the Bibler I-tent (only one door) I have had good luck with the door shut tight and vents open. With two people in the tent body heat pumps the moist air out the vents. I have had more condensation with doors open than when they have been closed.

I use the Scarpa Alpha ice plastic boots with stock liners. I love them. I have had frostbite twice (with other boots) so warmth matters to me. The alpha liners are not bulky, but are closed cell foam so they are always warm. They are light and they climb very well. Good on vertical ice and good on long hikes and great for french technique. They have a very low cut at the back, with a flexible padded band that allows very good ankle mobility. In winter I take the liners into my sleeping bag at night so they'll be warm in the morning, but I don't wear them in bed. The stock liners for alphas have a nice thin rubbery sole that allows you to wear them like warm slippers for walking around, and the rubber helps the sole work with the boot for more precise climbing movements. Beware of getting plastic boots that are too big for you; they won't climb well. I know, I used to have a big heavy pair of plastic boots. The Alphas seem ridiculously light and low cut at first, but once you try them on steep ground with crampons you will find that they are plenty supportive and fairly nimble as well.

Silvretta 555s and the new Silvretta Pur will work with a number of plastic climbing boots. The Silvretta 500 fits even more boots. The rest depends on how well you ski with bad boots. Most times I would rather climb in rando boots than ski in mountaineering boots, but it would depend on the route.

Climbing Ice, Yvonne Choinard. Mountains of the Coast, John Baldwin.

Make sure your shells are wind and waterproof, top and bottom. I prefer synthetic everything, except for wool base layers. If you use down make sure you have the shells and stuff sacks to keep it dry! In case you get your down wet it is good that you will be carrying fleece as a backup. Bring a warm balaclava, much warmer than a ski hat. You should bring at least two warm and water repellant pairs of mittens or gloves. Even if you somehow keep one pair dry it is easy to loose a glove in the wind; you want spares. If you will be using fleece pants you will need to wear your shell pants all the time to keep the fleece from becoming full of snow. High gaiters are very good idea as well. I assume you will be using double boots. If not you should carry extra socks and plastic bags or gore tex socks that you can wear over your socks, inside your boots, to keep them dry. Better yet, rent double (plastic) boots. Snowshoes or skis and an avalanche transciever should be part of your clothing. It is good to have a pocket or some other arangement for carrying a water bottle or bag inside your garments to keep drinking water from freezing. Drinking tubes always freeze up, even with the insulated cover.

I skied up to Muir last week. When I took my skiis off in rocky sections I was postholing in deep snow; snowshoes are a good idea. Crampons were not needed. There were some icy patches up high, but they were not too bad. Snowshoes will give you plenty of traction.

There is no rockfall on the normal route to Muir. You really need an altimeter to know where to turn when navigating by compass in a white out, particularly on the way back down from Muir. The later you start the more you'll have to hurry to get back by dark. I think they are closing the gates at 6 pm now.

Mark your map with the compass bearings for the trip up and back ahead of time, and note the altitude where you have to change direction (to a new compass bearing) part way up the route. If you do this carefully at your well lit kitchen table you won't have to try to figure out the bearings in howling wind and snow later. I have made it up and down to Muir in a white out and it took careful compass work. The best technique is to send someone out ahead of the person with the compass (not too far, you don't want to loose them). The person with the compass yells to the advance person to move left or right until the person out ahead is right on the bearing line. Then the compass catches up and sends out the front person again. This ensures that cumulative error won't send you off track. I usually send a slower party member ahead. Instead of making them wait for me I'll jog to catch up and can maintain an acurate course without going terribly slowly this way. The tendency on the muir snowfield is to get sucked down the fall line and onto a glacier if you don't stay on your bearings. Don't count on following tracks back, they vanish in minutes. Even wands can be very hard to find on the way down.

Sometimes you may make the belay anchor itself serve double purpose as the first, omni directional, peice of pro for the leader. Think about what will happen if a leader fall pulls the belayer up into the first peice of pro; will the belayers hand or belay device be sucked into a biner? If the belayer is yanked out of position, what forces may be placed on the anchor? It is often faster to put in a good directional to hold the belayer down than to think about all the angles that might be involved.

I think it is important to match twin ropes exactly, but less important to match half ropes. The twins get clipped together and are meant to stretch the same amount so both ropes catch you at once if you fall. Half ropes are clipped independently and are likely to be varying in length and friction when they catch a fall anyway; this is why half ropes each have to be able to hold a fall by themselves. It seems to me that it would be less important for half ropes to have precisely matched characteristics, though it may be best.

The Edelrid ultralight is the only one that fits my head right. It fended off a shower of small rocks nicely this season. It is lighter and less warm than the Petzl ecrin roc, but whatever fits best and will hold up to repeated blows is best.

Pro Ski Service mounted my dynafits on some extra tall risers for my fat skis. They came out great and are a big improvement. I am a craftsman, but I still would rather pay a pro to get the bindings on dead right than experiment on an expensive pair of skiis. That said, I had dynafits mounted on my old skiis, then switched to a slightly smaller pair of boots which theoretically no longer fit the bindings, however the location of the existing holes made it impossible to move the bindings to the new location. I left the bindings alone and skied with the bindings a bit too far apart, and they worked fine. They never released prematurely. Make sure you really like your boots before having dynafits mounted though!

I ski with the Cold Cold World Valdez pack. Skis are carried in the compression straps. This pack has burly daisy chains down each side of the back of the pack. It would be easy to strap on a snowboard with a couple of quick release straps. It is 2 pounds and fits everything you need for day trips. The bigger CC World Chernobyl weighs 3 pounds, but would carry a heavy snowboard more comfortably and has room for overnight stuff too. Both packs are great climbing packs with everything you need, no bullshit, strongly built and not expensive.

Skied the Muir snowfield on 10/12. There were some icy patches and some rocks to ski around, but the snow softened a bit at lower elevations. Reminded me of New Hampshire, great skiing! We skied all the way to the parking lot. Should be some new snow after the weekend.

I use a Bibler I-tent (no vestibule) a lot because it is so light. I use synthetic sleeping bags and have few problems with condensation. It helps to close the tent up fairly tight; opening the door can make condensation worse. The single wall tents vent moisture best, through the walls, when body heat can build up inside the tent and drive vapor out through the walls of the tent. Whatever tent you pick, make sure it is light! I use the i-tent for alpine climbing and ski mountaineering. For regular back packing I am likely to use a bivy sack and a tarp.

Light randonee gear is as light as light Tele gear. The lightest rando bindings, dynafit, are not compatible with mountaineering boots. Some of the lighter, more touring oriented, rando boots climb pretty well; they are fine for steep snow and easy ice. If I will be climbing something hard I will use mountaineering boots and ultra light snowshoes, especially for carry-overs. Skis are always the best choice if you need to cover a lot of snowy terrain. Nothing else can touch them for level ground and traversing. Wintertime days are so short that skis are often the only practical way to get to and from a climb in a day. Descending by moonlight on skis is great fun. My ski bindings don't work with mountaineering boots, so I am never tempted try skiing with them.

I've tried a lot of systems. What I like now for alpine trad routes is to put biners, cordelettes, etc. on the harness and gear on a sling. I use a short sling and clip two or three cams each to a single large wire gate biner (grouped by size and type). All the nuts go on one keylock biner. A few hexes go on another biner (hexes slung on webbing with the webbing pulled halfway through the hex and doubled so the hex stays close to the biner and does not tangle other gear). I organize the gear this way so that it stays easy to find and does not tangle. I clip aliens and DMM cams to their biners by the loop in the cam's stem cable(s) instead of letting cams dangle by their slings. Cams and hexes clipped short this way stay high up on my rib cage and do not get in the way of climbing, and do not block the view of my feet. As I am used to the system, my fingers can quickly ferret out the right bunch of cams (big in back, small in front) and then it's easy to find the right one by feel, slide it up the biner gate and push it through the gate. This has turned out to be the fastest, cleanest, most compact and tangle free system for me. I usually carry about 5 aliens and 4 to 8 larger cams, two or three hexes, and 9 or so nuts, so this is a very compact rack with the aliens all on two biners and the larger cams bunched two to a biner. I like the flexibility built in to placing gear this way: 1) find the right peice 2)place the peice 3)choose the right length draw 4)clip the draw This system is biased toward alpine routes where you use a variety of long draws and seldom clip the rope directly to the biner on the cam's short sling. I often climb with a pack on and this has a strong influence on racking methods as the pack tends to push a bulky shoulder slung rack around in front of your body.

I am a big fan of the CC world packs. For big loads I use the Ganite Gear Alpine Light. I have carried over 60 pounds in comfort with this pack (no frame, no pad on waist belt). The only fault of the granite gear pack is that the plastic clips are too small and weak (I break them when yanking the side straps tight). It would be possible to replace all the clips with a bigger size. The secret of making a frameless pack carry well is getting the right size pack, and packing it just right and cinching the compression straps down to make the whole pack stiffen up and become its own frame.

I thought about using a cookpot as a helmet but had a vision of hearing someone yell "rock" and suddenly having to wear a helmet full of mac and cheese.