Category: Gear

Trusting Your Gear

Posted by Frank – April 22, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we, as ski mountaineers, rely on our gear to perform flawlessly and get us home safely. The failure of an AT boot, and the injuries caused by that failure, really drives the point home- if your gear fails, you’ll get hurt, or even killed. Granted, your ski gear isn’t the only thing you rely on, your car is another obvious one, but your bindings better keep you attached when you’re skiing something exposed, and your beacon better work if you get buried.

I have already experienced one injury caused by equipment malfunction. In the 2004 Crested Butte Freeskiing contest, my binding pre-released in my Superfinals run. My buddy Ian took this photo on my first run, and I prereleased in about the same area, going REALLY fast.

Pre-releases happen, especially when you’re really pushing it, so I don’t begrudge my Salomon bindings at all for failing me. I broke a bunch of branches with my back, one of which was 4″ in diameter. I was wearing a spine protector at the time, which really saved me, but I still missed about a month while doing PT.

You’re less likely to push the limits in the same way out in the backcountry versus at a freeskiing comp. But of course some of the other hazards are greater. I’ve been out with people who were using the old Ortovox m1 beacon, which was a horrible beacon which only occasionally worked, even after Ortovox “fixed” the battery issues with them. Since I couldn’t get a signal, and my buddy couldn’t reliably search for me either, we turned around and called it a day.

Just the other day on Little Bear, Pam lost a ski and almost lost her ski over some pretty big exposure, but thankfully Brittany was able to grab it. Dynafits are fickle bindings, and she thought she was in them properly. She wasn’t. Locking the toepiece in a situation like that will help ensure that you’re really in the binding, in my opinion.

So what can you do? Well, beacon checks are always a good idea. Check your gear for excess wear and tear, micro-cracks, that sort of thing. Check the screws in your bindings for tightness. Lube and clean your bindings. Sometimes, you’ve just got to bite the bullet and replace gear, too, even if it seems fine. In the end, though, there’s still a lot of trust in your gear. Anyone have some good maintenance tips?

Potential Problem with Salomon’s New Quest AT Boot

Posted by Frank – April 19, 2010

Let me start off by saying it’s too early to tell- this could be an isolated incident or a major design flaw with Salomon’s entry into the AT world. At this point it’s simply something to keep in mind for those of you shopping for new AT boots next year. Salomon makes a great boot, so I’m sure many of you were interested in their AT offerings, which just came out mid-season.

On Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, a skier on exposed terrain fell and severely injured his leg. Doctors are hoping to save the leg, but he may never be able to ski again. The worst part is that he and his companions are insisting that the fall was caused by the dynafit-compatible “tech fittings” in his boot ripping out and causing the fall. For more information on this, go here and here. It also seems that at least one product tester also experienced a problem with the fittings not staying in the boot.

This isn’t a great photo, which is all I could find on the internet since Salomon doesn’t even have the boots on their website yet, but here it is:

I haven’t gotten a look at these boots in person, but some folks are wondering if there is enough material surrounding the inserts to keep them in place, or if there is a defect within the inserts themselves. One other thing to perhaps take note of is that the injured party weighs 260lbs- that weight, combined with big skis and aggressive skiing, may be more than the dynafit system can handle at either the binding or boot end, in my opinion.

In any case, we certainly wish the best for Dalton and his recovery, and if this is an engineering defect, lets hope it’s fixed before next fall when they will be more widely available. Also, if anyone knows of other failures in this boot, please get in contact with Dalton and leave a comment here, as these are things that need to be known.

EDIT 4/22/10 Lou did a great service by buying a set of sole blocks and quickly and easily blowing them up. That post is here. Really sad someone had to get so severely injured to prove that these things are shoddy. Yeah, they’ll probably be fixed by next season, but I’m not sure I would want to have anything to do with Salomon after seeing the lack of engineering put into these sole blocks. Buyer beware indeed.

Skin Glopping: Helpful Tips and Techniques

Posted by Frank – March 31, 2010

We’ve entered that time of year when the dreaded “skin glop” begins to make its appearance. Frozen snow sticking to your skins can make for an incredibly tiring and frustrating day. For the past couple of seasons, I’ve been able to largely avoid skin glopping, even when my partners have been having trouble, which I can partly attribute to some hard work refining my skin technique. (Having said that, Murphy’s Law states that I’ll be suffering through glopping of epic proportions the next time I head out.) For those of you who have never experienced the joys of glopped up skins, it looks something like this (photo found off the internet):

Glopping occurs when skins go from a warmer, moist environment to a colder and drier one. Glopping is often a problem in the springtime because a skintrack may go from a sunny slushy slope to a shaded powdery slope (such as in the shade of a tree or on a more northerly aspect). Other ways glopping may become a problem include getting skins wet while crossing a creek, which is easy to avoid, and downhill skinning, which may warm the skins enough due to friction to cause glopping as well. To avoid glopping after a downhill skin section, simply keep moving, which will let your skins gradually readjust to a colder temperature and thereby avoid glopping.

Avoiding glopping in the sunny/shady springtime snowpack is the hardest glop scenario to avoid, but there are still a few things to do that make it less likely.

1- Stride and Glide. Like many skiers, I learned how to skin using Alpine Trekkers. Trekkers are both heavy and awkward, and they promote poor skinning technique more suited to snowshoeing than skinning. The correct skin technique leaves the skis on the snow surface, shuffling your way up the hill. Bad skin technique involves picking the ski up every step, more like walking than skinning. Leaving the ski on the snow not only takes much less energy because you don’t pick up the weight of your skis/boots/bindings/skins with every step, but it also helps avoid glopping. Every stride on the snow surface acts like a squeegee- the snow tries to stick to your skins, but it gets wiped off with every stride. Like I said, proper skin technique takes a lot less energy anyway, so it’s not a bad thing to constantly work on.

2- Don’t. Stop. Until you reach the top. [Sing it Fleetwood Mac style] This is similar to the first tip, Stride and Glide. Stopping allows time for cold snow to bond to your skins and glop up. If you continue moving, the snow simply may not have time to freeze up on your skins. If you want to talk to your partner or eat something, consider slowing to a crawl rather than coming to a complete stop. If you must take a break, choose your spot carefully- stopping right after a sunny slope enters a shady one is a near guarantee of major gloppage. Think of it as nature’s cruel personal trainer, much like the flies and mosquitos of summertime hiking and biking.

3- Choose your skintrack wisely. As I mentioned before, glopping occurs when you skin from warm areas to cool ones. If you can stay entirely in either shaded snow or sunny snow, you can avoid glopping problems. Sometimes, there simply isn’t a route choice that doesn’t go from shade to sun to shade again, as in a dense forest. However, in a sparsely treed area you might want to stay on sunny snow the entire time, putting in the occasional extra switchback to avoid the shade of a tree and the powdery snow that may lie in wait there, ready to glop up on your skins. Of course, other considerations, like choosing an avalanche-safe route, take precedence over choosing a glop-friendly route, but it’s still something to keep in mind while skinning in the springtime.

4- Use Glop Stopper. This product from Black Diamond will help stop glopping from starting, just as the name implies. It is best applied at the start of the day, rather than after glopping has started, although it is still beneficial even after glopping has started. It’s basically just wax for your skins. This product stays in my pack year-round, you never know when you’ll need it, and it also increases the glide of your skins. Weight weenies split the block in half in order to save a few grams. Here it is:

Finally, it may be time for new skins. We recommend Black Diamond skins, and would also recommend staying away from G3 skins which have been problem-prone over the years. They’re on sale right now, so springtime might be a good time to buy a new set.


Climbing skins from backcountry.com, on sale now. Free Shipping over $50.00

Anyone else have some helpful hints to avoid glopping up in the springtime? Let’s hear them…

Meow!

Posted by Frank – February 7, 2010

14erskiers has a new access vehicle, and we’re excited to set up a good ski carry system and get out there. I won’t be spending the $ on a Cheetah rack system, so I’ll try to make my own. I’m not sure which way I want to go, so if anyone has some good mod suggestions, I’m all ears.

TR: Carbon Peak 12,079′ 1.9.10

Posted by Frank – January 10, 2010

Carbon Peak sits in the headwaters of picturesque Ohio Creek and is one of the more distinct peaks from the town of Gunnison. With the current snow conditions remaining less than ideal, We started brainstorming ideas for a good weekend outing. Since Carbon is one of the few local peaks I have yet to climb or ski, and I feel a lot better about South faces than other aspects, we decided to give the Spoon route on Carbon a go.

The Spoon:
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On this trip, I was sporting the newest beta version backcountry poles from Black Diamond.

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Lets take a closer look at these new poles. They feature the newest in moldable grip technology, which they have dubbed the “washcloth grip system”. I found them to form-fit to my hand very well, thumbs up!
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By moving the pole to its’ sideways position, the pole doubles as a snow picket. Top-notch versatility!
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The beauty of their new system is that each pole is different, to better cover a wide variety of uses. The other pole featured BD’s new patented “goggle brush”. Faceshots are a thing of the past, as this pole allows the skier to quickly wipe their goggles whenever an annoying vision-stealing faceshot occurs. Brilliant!
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Finally, the other end of the second pole is designed to chop steps in ice, the way mountaineers used to do it. What a weight savings, not having to take crampons anymore!
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14erskiers gives these new poles a big thumbs-up! They can now be purchased at ImjustjokingIforgotmypolesandhadtomakedue.com

On to the action… We started off from the Carbon Creek trailhead and headed up the road to avoid private property:
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Finally we were able to leave the road and make our way up the southeast side of the mountain:
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Does Gear or Skiing Skill Equal Backcountry Safety?

Posted by Frank – January 6, 2010

This is a bit of a continuation from my last post, when I mentioned a highly geared-up skier having a rough time descending Schuykill. Rather than ridicule this skier, I’ll just compare two hypothetical skiers. Their avalanche skills and knowledge and routefinding skills are all the same for the sake of this argument.

Skier ‘A’ has all the gear: avalanche beacon, ABS backpack, SPOT personal locator beacon, avalanche cords, helmet, body armor, avalung, nose plugs, etc. Of course, skier ‘A’ hasn’t put any time into getting good at… skiing. Every turns this skier makes in an adventure- he may fall, he may not.

Skier ‘B’ has a beacon, but that’s about it. Skier ‘B’, however, has put a lot of time in on the lifts and is an expert skier in any condition or situation.

So which one is safer? I’ll venture to say that skier ‘B’ is the safer one, by a lot. Stories abound of skiers falling and creating a slide, or a snowmobiler getting stuck highmarking and starting a slide while trying to dig out. If a slide were to start, skier ‘B’ would have a fighting chance of skiing out of it, while skier ‘A’ would almost certainly be stuck in it.

Which isn’t to say that skier ‘B’ couldn’t be even safer with all the gear, it’s just that skier ‘A’ should consider investing in another safety item with a big bang for the buck- a season’s pass and a few lessons.

Misadventures in Snowmobiles and More Pow… 12.31.09

Posted by Frank – January 2, 2010

Let’s start this post off on a good note, with Rob’s helmetcam footage from 12/30:

Obviously, it was good and we went straight back to the same spot the following day. My snowmobile was really running poorly and stalled a couple of times so I put it back on the trailer and decided to ride Brittany’s sled, at least down the road to Pittsburg. Unfortunately, I forgot to do something very important as I started off down the road, as I would soon discover. Since I haven’t ridden Brittany’s sled very often, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t running normally, and kept going down the road. Soon enough I started to smell and then see smoke coming out of the hood, so I hit the kill switch and lifted the hood to find… flames! I started scooping snow up and throwing it on the flames, which only made the flames go higher, now 2 feet high. I kept throwing the snow on the snowmobile, wondering if it was time to start running away. Tom was behind me and had accidentally driven off the road, so he didn’t know what was going on, while Rob, Trevor, and Sydney were up ahead, also with no idea of what I was dealing with. Just as I thought the snowmobile might be a goner, the flames went out under the mounds of snow I had piled on it.

As I sat on the snow waiting for Tom to catch up, I tried to figure out what had happened. The fire was centered around the brake rotor, which was odd, I thought. My first thought was that the brake was iced over from the day before, but then I came to the sad realization that it was my fault. My snowmobile doesn’t have a “parking brake” for lack of a better word. Brittany’s sled does. Long story short, I never thought to undo the brake, and drove it like that. The disc got red-hot, burned a hole through the oil reservoir, and started it on fire.

Tom caught up and since there really wasn’t anything to do at that point, we tandemed up to make some turns before dealing with the dead snowmobile. I’m not sure how many times I’ve not enjoyed powder skiing, but skiing after ruining Brittany’s sled is probably the only time. Beautiful day, though:

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This might be one of my favorite scenic shots ever:
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Trevor:
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Tom Runcie took some nice shots as well:
Sydney:

Frank:

We tried towing the snowmobile out after skiing, but the brakes were welded together, so we couldn’t do it. So Trevor, Tom and I headed out on New Year’s day, armed with a plastic kid’s sled. We stuck that under the track, bungeed it down, and we were out of there before I even had a chance to take a photo. It was amazingly easy, thanks to the help of my friends. I rode the dead snowmobile, and couldn’t see a thing as the spray came up off of Tom’s sled. It was actually pretty entertaining. With any luck, the old Cougar only needs a new brake and a new oil reservoir. It could definitely be worse, that’s for sure.

The Hunt For GPS

Posted by Frank – December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas everyone!

So, Brittany and I decided that our Christmas gift to one another would be the purchase, together, of a GPS. Our preliminary search at REI back at Thanksgiving left us underwhelmed with the choices, features, and prices of the units we looked at there. So, the question for you 14erskiers out there is this: Which GPS should we buy? Help us out here, throw out some choices for us…

Thanks!

A few more thoughts on the Hidden Gems

Posted by Frank – November 9, 2009

Not to beat a dead horse here, but after looking at the Hidden Gems website one more time, I wanted to point out a couple more items.

First, there is the issue of ranching and cows on Wilderness lands. From their website:


The Hidden Gems Campaign has a vital interest in sustaining local ranching operations, because ranches preserve critical winter range for the wildlife that inhabit the public lands that the campaign is working to protect. Indeed, we see ranching and wilderness as mutually beneficial, in that cattle utilize the public lands in summer and wildlife utilize the private lands in winter.

For this and many other good reasons, the campaign is working with all adjacent property owners and holders of grazing allotments to ensure their needs are fairly accommodated in any Hidden Gems wilderness legislation.

We affirm grazing allotment lessees’ rights to continued valid existing uses for allotment management. We uphold the 1980 Congressional Grazing Guidelines, which state in part:

“[W]ilderness designation should not prevent the maintenance of existing fences or other livestock management improvements, nor the construction and maintenance of new fences or improvements which are consistent with allotment management plans and/or which are necessary for the protection of the range….

“The maintenance of supporting facilities, existing in the area prior to its classification as wilderness (including fences, line cabins, water wells and lines, stock tanks, etc.), is permissible in wilderness. Where practical alternatives do not exist, maintenance or other activities may be accomplished through the occasional use of motorized equipment. This may include, for example, the use of backhoes to maintain stock ponds, pickup trucks for major fence repairs, or specialized equipment to repair stock watering facilities…. The construction of new improvements or replacement of deteriorated facilities in wilderness is permissible if in accordance with those guidelines and management plans governing the area involved.”


In my view, Wilderness is land where a person might visit and wonder if any human has ever been there before. These lands are, by definition, wild. There is nothing wild about walking through several hundred head of cattle and clearing a campsite of cowpies before bedding down to the distinctly unnatural sounds of cows. Fences and backhoes aren’t exactly wild either, now are they? If Wilderness supporters truly had the courage of their convictions, they would be pushing for Wilderness areas to ban all existing grazing allotments and have actual Wilderness. Instead, knowing the political support for such a move doesn’t exist due to the power of the ranching lobby, they engage in doublespeak that would lead someone who doesn’t know better to believe that 500 cattle is somehow better than one bicycle.

Speaking of bikes… (From White River Wild once again)


The Hidden Gems proposal is a win-win for mountain bikers and wilderness lovers. While mountain biking isn’t allowed in wilderness, [blah, blah, blah.] * Does anybody really buy the wilderness-advocates-vs.-mountain-bikers, us-vs.-them thing? Mountain bikers love wilderness too, and a lot of wilderness advocates love to mountain bike. We don’t have to choose between one or the other.


It amazes me that someone could actually write something this audacious with a straight face. There is no win, none at all, to lose trails that can currently be ridden, and lose the ability to ever create new bicycling trails in these proposed Wilderness areas. Yes, mountain bikers are, by and large, conservationists. We don’t want these areas destroyed any more than anyone else. But it’s asking a awful lot to support an idea that completely excludes us as MTB riders. Since the Wilderness act has been defined to exclude “mechanized” transport, the question in my mind will always be, “What makes a bike mechanized, but but not an AT ski binding?” An AT binding has mechanical parts and gears (so to speak, in the heel risers) and mechanical advantage just like a bike does. Just as a bike allows a rider to cover more ground than they could on foot, an AT or Telemark ski set-up will do the same. Are the skiers the next target? Finding a middle ground that allows conservation-minded recreationalists, like MTBers, to enjoy our land while protecting it from development will be the key to “Hidden Gems” ever receiving much in the way of support from the MTB community.

Making Woopy

Posted by Frank – October 28, 2009

Is this the next big thing?

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From woopyjump.com:


Since 1995, Laurent de Kalbermatten has experimented inflation systems for all types of wings, in order to obtain the lightest and least cumbersome flying machine possible.

With the Woopy Fly concept and it’s a blowers inflation system, the goal has been reached. The concept has been validated by no less than thousands of successful flights, free or motorised, high speed tests, charge tests, and computer simulations.

With the precious support of his test-pilot Guy-Bertrand Jaquier, new ideas and applications have been developed, towards outdoors sports. The idea: use the inflatable wing concept to extend the range of ski and snowboard jumps

I guess the best way to describe it is a small, inflatable, packable hang glider of sorts. At least that’s what it looks like to me. The website translation to English is pretty bad, but I think that the basic idea of the Woopy can be seen on this page, where it shows the entire set-up process: Woopy set-up I’m not sure how fast it goes, or what winds it can handle, but it could be a fun addition to the ski quiver, so to speak. It sure would make descents of Capitol a lot easier ;) Or would a Woopy descent get a big fat asterisk next to it? tough call. I wonder what it weighs, too- I couldn’t find that on the site, but it’s probably there in garbled English. I’ve often though about getting into hang gliding, and I wonder if this would be a cheaper, simpler way of getting into it. On the other hand, it looks like a small gust of wind would crush it, so maybe it should stay in the hands of the Euros. Hopefully the Woopy makes it to the states soon so I can give it a try. Otherwise I guess I have one more reason to go to Europe.