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Posted

A jacket with a heating element; more finely honed crap from the good folks at North Farce. I can't claim to be an expert on this, but isn't there an acknowledged health risk from these types of gizmos? Check out the fine print on your parents' electric blanket. Electromagnetic leakage from heating pads has been tied to various forms of cancer...even the manufacturers of these gimcracks admit it , and advise minimizing exposure.

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Posted

I was just testing the waters. Personally I feel this jacket is a great idea. Now all I have to do is pull out the fillaments and wrap them around my food, I can leave my stove at home. Seriously though, its obviously a matter of ethics and style. My personal defintion of style is to open the world's highest hair salon at 26,000' on the SW face of Everest, just like Eric Idle. Then I'm going to hook and beak my way up that A4 route on Georgia street in Vancouver. Monty Python figured ethics out over twenty years ago.

Posted

Reality is we whine about the new technology and that we'll never use it, then eventually we give in. I remember scoffing at the idea of using ice screws with the turn knobs, now I wish all of my screws had them. I am not sure I would ever use a 'heated jacket', but mainly because I would be worried about powering it. I think I will stick to burning calories to keep myself warm, at least for now.

Dan E.

P.S. - Can't wait to pick up my Cobras this season, they are another piece of gear that took sometime for me to embrace. Actually I was sold after the first swing in the store! wink.gif

[This message has been edited by dane (edited 10-23-2001).]

Posted

swore I'd never use a GPS when they first hit the market. Now I use it regularly. Swore I'd never carry a cell phone into the mountains. Now I sometimes I do. I'd rather be alive than adhere to some arbitrary set of rules laid out by the mountain nanny purists.

Posted

Technology is the crutch on which you support your incompetence. One of my dearest memories is of the time I tied a boline around my ass and climbed one of my hardest on-sight's at Smith, with a group of wiener heads yelling beta (from a full day of sequence miming/rehearsing on the same route). Funny thing was, when I found a rest after the crux, I looked down at my girly friend to see about ten feet of slack sitting on the ground!

Posted

Pope,

re: "technology is a crutch...."

If used as a substitute for experience and and competence, I agree with you. For example, using a GPS without posession and knowlege of how to use a map/compass/altimeter is stupidity. Using waypoints instead of wands in a whiteout is foolish. I do feel that technology can provide convenience and enhance safety without detracting from the mountain experience. Its different for everyone.

Slightly off-subject: I say an OLN show on these guys who crossed the Patagonia Ice cap using skis and being pulled along by para-kites! Any thoughts on this? While certainly not "unethical"....they weren't motorized or even mechanized...but did they really "do it on their own"?

 

Posted

I think the resolution to this debacle is the retorical question "Who cares?"

1. Does someone owning this jacket, a handwarmer, or a fancy piece of gadetry interfier with your enjoyment (or not enjoyment as it would seem) of the outdoors. If your answer is yes, then I think you should reconsider why you climb. I'm not in climbing to compare myself to others. If your answer is no, drop the issue.

2. Note this is different than snow machines since snow machines do signifigantly interfere with my enjoyment of the outdoors (note: i'm still a fan of snowmachines....) Here I think the noise much more obtrusive then someone audasity in artificially "conquering" nature.

3. This isn't to say that the jackets do seem a bit silly. But this doesn't mean I'll call them wrong or say people shouldn't use them.

4. As an analyst, I can't help but take offense at the claim

"The heating element can keep pumping 105 F of warmth to you for five hours. . . "

Everybody nows "105 F of warmth" is not a quantity (it's a rate) and therefor can not be pumped.

Posted

You guy's should read Chouinard's view on the difference between Style & Ethics. It's in "Voices from the Summit" and im sure has been published elsewhere.

Basically, Style is a personnal choice that does not effect others. Climing naked is the only pure style. Wear shoes, dock a style point. Wear sticky rubber dock an additional point.

Use a snow mobile, dock a thousand.

Ethics enfringe on other climbers.

I have a lot less problem with some yeahhoo wearing heated jackets than I do with people using chalk on wild rock. (Before any feathers get ruffeled; I have no problem with chalk in established areas)

Snowmobiles are another thing entirely. If I had to smell the exaust and listen to the noise in a wilderness area I might just be forced to pull out my lightweight plastic subcompact 9mm...and settle the matter.

Posted

Dru. Do you drive to the crags or mountains? Your air-pollution doesn't wash off. Do you wear nylon-based garments? Oil is used, a non-renewable resource. Do you use wood products? Old-growth forests will really never be as they once were. All of these affect the air we all breathe. Do you eat cow? (Are you not proud?) The methane produced by cow-farming significantly increases atmospheric methane, which increases global warming, and meat production also increasing net-suffering on the planet.

The effect of bolts pales in comparison.

PS. A strong enough acid would wash those bolts right off....

 

Posted

quote:

Originally posted by max:

4. As an analyst, I can't help but take offense at the claim

"The heating element can keep pumping 105 F of warmth to you for five hours. . . "

Everybody nows "105 F of warmth" is not a quantity (it's a rate) and therefor can not be pumped.

 

Max,

What the heck kind of analyst are you? smile.gif 3 Credits of suffering in any engineering thermodynamics course will demonstrate that temperature (ie. numbers with the letter 'F' behind them) are a relative measure of thermal energy. Temperature has nothing to do with the rate of energy influx or loss of a system. It just describes the instantaneous amount of thermal energy a system has.

 

TNF should bring out an ad that says: " our jacket will deliver an astounding 18.6 Watts of energy to your torso, enabling you to clip that bolt you would have otherwise been to chilled to reach, and take lots of pretty summit pics with our logo in it"

 

Calm down sport climbing fans, I was just kidding.

smile.gif

Happy tuesday everyone. I am off to Thermo.

------------------

Put a high price on your own head, or rest assured, no one else will.

[This message has been edited by Ibex (edited 10-23-2001).]

Posted

quote:

Originally posted by Brian Rybolt:

OK Chocolate,

You're the one trolling so I'll take a bite:

1)"Your air pollution doesn't wash off"...actually it does, minus some CO2.

2)"Old growth forests will never be what they once were"....sure they will, if left alone for a few hundred years. (And by the way, a replanted clearcut actually absorbs more CO2 than an old growth forest)

3)"Do you eat cow (are you proud)"...yes, occasionally. It is delicious. As for the "suffering"...better the cows than my hungry children.

4)"blah, blah,blah....increases global warming".....Last year the Academy of American Scientists put forth a document stating that the Earth IS in fact warming. 6000 members signed a statement to the fact that humans are to blame. However, 15,000 signed a letter stating that NO conclusion can be reached at this time regarding any human causation. In other words...probably just a natural cycle. Global warming is a fact. Those who blame humans for it may have an agenda. (they think we're "living too well"??)

 

1. Yeah it washes off, after the deleterious effects have already been suffered by many. Ever been to Mexico City? Bangkok? Hell, choose one of our own cities during rush-hour. Even in Seattle, we have smog alerts where sensitive types are advised to stay indoors, lest they have an asthma attack or somesuch.

Wait wait wait I just realized your response to me was nothing but a crock, and honestly, I don't even think that you believe anything you said. If you actually do, well then....

Poor feller.

Posted

And remember that the practice and existence of one transgression does not mitigate another. Obviously there are a number of environmental evils in this world. How do we get logically from this to "Therefore, bolts are O.K."?

Posted

What if bolts were invisible? Like, we couldn't see them? Would that still bother people? And you had to wear special glasses while climbing, which made them visible? Otherwise, no bolts!

Do you think pope would wear the glasses all the time, just to bug himself?

 

Posted

quote:

Originally posted by lambone:

Hey TG,

I bet you'd be singin' a different tune if you had a sled! How bout some ice tools, how many points will they dock you!!???
wink.gif

Okay, Lambone. You caught me...you're right I don't have a sled, I don't have a jet ski either. But I have had fun on both. I think that there is a time and a place for every outdoor activity as long as it doesn't have permanent harm in a wilderness area or doesn't preclude the enjoyment of others.

I think that style is a personnel choice. I have only climbed naked once. Free solo of some little 5.3 70 ft piece of shit at J Tree at night; drunk. But I was wearing a head light (lost a point). I think most would agree that if you climb succesfully with less techno stuff the sense of acomplishment is better. But climbing an 11 with a rope and sticky rubber is more of an accomplishment than a 5.3 naked.

I own five ice tools; Two of which are the original Lowe Hummingbirds and even if it means losing a style point for me I think that I will feel more accomplished if I can climb harder ice by buying more modern tools.

[This message has been edited by Terminal Gravity (edited 10-23-2001).]

Posted

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything left to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

--Saint Exupery

Posted

Not to let a perfectly good climbing discussion tech out.. I just have to defend myself...

two approaches:

1. Temperature = molcular speed = rate

2. heat transfer is proportional to temperature implying temp is a rate

And you'll notice we both said the same thing: you can't quantitfy heat with the units of temperature1.

smile.gif

 

Posted

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything left to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

--Saint Exupery

Amen Brother.

[This message has been edited by Figger Eight (edited 10-23-2001).]

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