Nick

I don't know about lenses, but Black Diamond makes LED headlamps with four (or more?) led "bulbs". Instead of using an LED bulb in the heavy Petzl Zoom, why not save weight and achieve redundancy by strapping two or three Tikkas to your head.

One of the Scarpa randonee boots fits the dynafit binding.

All you bolters and anti bolters need to step back and get some perspective. Bolts and rap slings are minor details. If you want the mountains clean you should quit driving all over them in polution spewing automobiles. Why waste your energy fighting over a few tiny bolts when there are so many roads that could be returned to the forest, so many trees to plant. . . .

Litterbugs.

I know a guy who coats his feet with vaseline. He never gets blisters. I prefer liner socks under smartwools.

I have been back country skiing for a season in a used pair of the Dynafit Tour Lite Tech 3 boots. Those are the lower, simpler, softer, two buckle boots. They are just about as light as my plastic climbing boots. They are relatively comfortable to hike and climb in. My crampons fit them well. I have not climbed any steep ice in them. I wish that they were more supportive when I ski down the mountain, but I am very pleased with how they perform on the way up the hill. The Tourlite Tech bindings are great. I cannot imagine having any problems with the pin holes or the bindings. Many experienced skiers have told me that Dynafit bindings are bombproof. Until you get used to them getting the little pins lined up with the little holes can be a bit irritating. I marked the boots with a sharpy to help locate the holes. I think you should get these bindings. Nothing else is anywhere near as light. The release mechanism works well. The Dynafit boots are light, warm and comfortable. I gather that the taller three buckle boots are more supportive than mine. People I ski with seem to like them a lot. You can probably climb in any of them, but if climbing is your primary goal then pick the lightest, smallest and most comfortable randonee boots (perhaps not the best for skiing down). If you can afford it you might want the fancy liners that are thermally molded to your foot (they are very very hot for spring skiing, but they cannot hold water, so they never get cold, even on long expeditions, or so I have been told). Scarpa also makes a boot that works with the Dynafit binding. There are still some Dynafit boots like mine at the REI Outlet site. I am sure that Randonee boots will climb better than plastic climbing boots will ski!

Yeah, the Technica Ascende is the boot I have. I got mine from Pro Mountain Sports in Seattle. They are truly comfortable and light on the trail, but still seem stiffer and more supportive than other comfortable boots. It is easy to over-tighten the laces on these boots. If they hurt your feet, just loosen the lower half of the laces a bit and they will feel good again.

Cheap good gear can be had at Second Ascent on Ballard Ave in Ballard.

Try on some Technica Bio Flex boots. They are crampon compatible heavy duty hiking boots which I use for general mountaineering. They are great, great, great.

We climbed Dome on the 19 of August. The weather was great and the hike in is indeed very beautiful. The above description of the route seems very good to me. The only changes I would note is that there were a couple more crevasses open, but we easily zig zagged between them, and the steep gully that you describe as oozing mud was dry but with a lot of very loose rock to scramble precariously over. We met four parties coming off the Ptarmigan. One party included a dog. From the summit of Dome Peak we watched the dog lead a rope of four across the Dome Glacier. This was a wonderful trip.

Can anyone report on the normal route up Dome (via Dome Glacier)?

I have Granite gear's Arete and Couloir packs. They are both great packs. I use the couloir for back country skiing. It has a shovel pocket and is generaly very well designed, comfortable and body hugging. The Arete is one of their lightest packs and makes a great climbing pack/day pack / ultra light overnight pack. Something about the tailoring on the granite gear packs makes their side compression straps function better than any other pack I have used. They cinche your gear into just the right shaped firm wad for a ballanced carry. The hip belts are compact, padded, and ride just above my harness, out of the way. The alpine pack looks excellent, though I wondered if the bare strap hip belt might not be a tad harsh with 35 pounds in the sack, but it would be easy to sew tiny padded sleeves for the straps. All the Granite Gear Mountain series packs are extraordinarily well designed and many are lighter than most other packs. They are cheap too. Second Ascent in Ballard carries Granite Gear.

We took the same route to Eldorado's summit as EJohnson above. Four of us left our car at 6 pm June 25 and hiked up to bivy at the "rock island" by dusk. The next day we got up at 5 am and cruised up to the summit. The snow arrette was sharp edged with fairly soft new snow. We found snow flukes to be useful for running belays in the fresh snow. We were back at the car by 6 pm, so we did the route in 24 hours from car to car. We had good firm snow to walk on for the whole route above the bivy site. If a lot of that snow has melted then the route will be a good deal slower and more laborious. On the descent, the lower boulder fields seemed to go on forever. This was one of my favorite climbs ever.

Nothing beats plain neoprene gloves (less than $10 at Chubby and Tubby) for digging snow caves. No matter how wet you get they stay warm. They would wear out in no time if you tried rapping or climbing in them, but you can spend hours burrowing in the snow and keep your climbing mitts dry if you carry a light pair of neoprene gloves.

I got a pair of BD dry tool gloves on sale at REI last year and used them a lot. They soak through, turn my hands black, the leather fingertips are wearing out fast, and they cost way too much BUT, they are warm and allow very good dexterity.

Check out the lightweight climbing packs and simple daypacks made by Granite Gear. I have two of them and I think they are exceptionally well designed, very comfortable, and among the lightest available. Ospreys are another favorite brand. Arcteryx stuff is execllent too.

The La Sportiva Eiger is a lot more comfortable than the Makalu. It has a bit more flex and a tall soft tongue that make it better to walk in. I chose the lighter Technica Ascend Bio Flex boots. Either of these boots will be good for all around three season mountaineering in the Cascades. If you are not front pointing up vertical faces you don't need the most rigid soles, but a fairly stiff sole is good for kicking steps in steep snow. I use plastic boots in winter because they stay warm day after day. You will not want to climb much rock or make long summer aproaches in plastic boots though.

I have seen a new product (one brand is called the "sweetie pie") that is a wedge shaped insert that zips into the zippers of a single mummy bag to widen it for two people. The insert weighs much less than a second bag. This probably works great. When you zip two single bags together you end up with a huge bag, with enough room for three people. Most light single bags will not zip closed with two normal sized people in them.

Stubai also makes an excellent version of the flexible 12 point crampon that is almost exactly the same as the Grivel and the Charlet Moser with two small differrences that made me choose it. I am talking about the "newmatic" type of binding with the quick clamp at the heel and the plastic toe loop held by a single strap. The Stubai seems to have a better buckle on the binding strap, easier to use with gloves on and less likely to ice up than the double ring type of buckle on the others. Also, I talked to one person who has a pair of the Charlet Moser crampons who complained that in certain snow conditions ice balls would form and wedge open the heel clamp, or the heel clamp would catch on hard snow as the foot was lifted, because of the shape of the top of the clamp (it slants up and away from the boot at the top). Both the Stubai and the Grivel have heel clamps that slope up and Towards the boot, so that they will not tend to catch or wedge open. I believe all three of these crampons have an excellent tooth design, with a lot of forward angle on the secondary points in front to give support in front pointing up lower angle and softer snow as well as allowing a more natural, pronating sort of gait when walking. The price on the steel version (there's an aluminum one too) of the Stubai recently dropped below $100 at Pro Mountain Sports in Seattle.

There is an excellent and very clear exposition of these differrent kinds of rope, how they are used, and why, in Mark Twight's book "Extreme Alpinism". Everyone should read this book right now.

The Petzl Ecrin Roc is noticeably heavier than all the others and, in spite of the fancy adjustment system, it doesn't fit my head as well as the Edelrid Ultra-Light does. Get the lightest hard shell helmet that clings firmly to your peculiar head and won't get knocked out of position too easily.

A number of the Granite gear packs are worth a close look. They carry and function extraordinarily well, they are very light, and cheap too. I have been using the Couloir all winter and it is an excellent pack. I like the tool tubes on my old Osprey Zealot because you can grab your axe in a jiffy without taking the pack off, even when you've strapped other suff to the back of the pack. The Zealot is a great alpine pack when you have a heavy/bulky load to carry. Too bad they quit making it! Nick

I use and like two shovels. One is the old "teaspoon" type (mine is an original Choinard) which can be mounted on the shaft of most alpine ice axes (it fits my new Grivel) and it also fits beautifully on the Charlet Moser tubular snow pickets. This is the shovel I would take when climbing and trying to go as light as possible. Look for a used one. My other shovel is a Black Diamond ascension shovel made of some very tough black plastic (Not lexan). This shovel is a bit on the heavy side, but I believe that it is harder to break than any of the aluminum or lexan shovels.

Mountaineering boots make poor ski boots. I have an idea for converting alpine gear for back country use. I don't know if anyone has ever tried this, but I used to do something similar to make sleds out of old alpine skiis. Here's the idea: Put your alpine boots in your pack for the uphill stretches and wear old leather double nordic boots (cheap, warm, comfortable) which you attatch to your alpine skiis by means of three pin bindings which are bolted to a strong peice of wood that has been shaped to lock into your alpine bindings. The disadvantages of this idea are that you don't have a good boot for climbing with crampons, and you have to change your boots as the terrain changes (and this might be impractical on traverses of steep or rolling terrain). I wonder if you could attatch a silvretta binding to an alpine binding by bolting the silvretta to a length of wood? In the end I am sure you'd be better off with dedicated Randonee or Tele gear. I was able to put together a set of randonee gear for half price by buying used and sale price stuff (boots first, then bindings, then skiis). You can put crampons on the randonee boots, and the ski boot liners fit in my plastic climbing boots, so I could carry just the plastic shells if I wanted both types of boot.

Everyone, what is the best avalanche beacon, and why? Which ones have you used?