Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Stoves are the heart of any expedition, as without them, you are not going to be melting snow for drinking water or cooking food – at least not very fast.  No food & no water equals no movement. Within the grand stove category, there is really only one that matters, the Mountain Safety Research (MSR) XGK.  This is the Grand Master of all stoves as it is incredibly hot, durable, capable of burning all sorts of fuels and works well at altitude.  Critics will say that it is noisy and doesn’t simmer, but when you are melting two gallons of water per day, so what.  Hearing aids are cheap and the Zen Master XGK user can get a simmer by adjusting the tank pressure.  Delicately browned pancakes?  Pfft – no problem.

There's a stove in there somewhere... The XGK set-up in action while it melts snow, dries socks and forces hot air through a wet pair of liners.

By itself, the XGK kicks ass, but with a little extra help, its efficiency goes into the stratosphere.  Starting with an aluminized stove board (future posting), add the standard-issue heat reflectors, a big black pot, MSR Heat Exchanger and a Backpackers Pantry “Pot Parka” and now you have the backcountry equivalent of a Viking stove and central heating.

Oh, and of course, cooking in the tent, or the vestibule is the only way to go.  :)

Edited to add: With this set-up, I plan on 6 fluid ounces, or .18 liter per person, per day for “heavy burning” winter camping, ie: melting snow, lots of cooking, etc..  For reference, the official MSR recommendation is 15 fl oz pppd, or 11.25 with a heat exchanger, so about half as much fuel and thus weight is needed.

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Placing wands in the mountains is a bit of an art.  On one hand, you only have a limited number of them, so you don’t want to over-place them, and if it is clear and sunny, there is a temptation to skip placing them as the way up and back is obvious.  Because of this, I’ve often summited peaks with a full stash of wands.  But, when you do need them, like in a whiteout when you are lost, cold and the sun is going down, coming across a well wanded trail is a total godsend.

Prime wanding terrain on Mt. Bona, AK. We are going down, so we have cleaned the ones we placed on the way up. Crevasses and bridges and cracks - oh my!

Through constructing flagging for ski mountaineering races, I’ve ended up making far more wands/flags than I ever would have thought possible (2,000 or more) and learned what does, or more often, doesn’t work for flags or wands. It is actually a little harder than it looks (or I’m a really, really slow learner).

These wands looked better than they actually worked. The flagging was too big, so the wind either snapped it off or they got tangled up among themselves. Still, it was fun to place a DANGER wand right near a big crevasse, just in case you were thinking of falling in it or something...

For mountaineering, you want a long staff and relatively small flags.  The long staff helps as it can handle a snow storm without getting buried, will sink further into the snow if need be and doesn’t require you to bend over as far to place them, which is a big deal with a heavy pack.  On the flagging, if it is too big, it will flutter excessively in the wind and either break off or pull the stake out. 

Tools of the wanding trade - 48" tomato stakes ($2.57 for a 25 pack) and duct/duck tape ($3.34 per roll, which will do about 50-75 wands). Total cost of about $.11 per wand.

My current wand construction of choice is to buy a few 25-pack bags of 48″ bamboo tomato stakes and some bright duct tape.  The duct tape needs to be the burlier cloth back stuff, not the vinyl, which looks like duct tape, but will crack in the cold.  For some reason, WalMart is the colored duct tape capital of the universe, and they happened to have bright orange “Duck Tape” brand tape, as well as the tomato stakes.

At the risk of insulting your intelligence, constructing them is very easy.  You pull off about 8″ of tape, fold it neatly over, slip the skinner of the two ends of the stake in the loop and squish it shut.  Repeat 50 or so times.  How many you make will depend a lot on your route.  Some routes, like Denali, could use quite a few (long route, lots of cracks), but then again, so many people climb it that it is already pretty well wanded.  Wanding is really only helpful if you plan on retracing your steps (like shuttling loads, or for a ski descent), but if you are just moving on, then placing wands is kind of pointless.

A wad of wands.

Since most people leave their wands with an air taxi service or outfitter when they are done, you can often get them that way as well.  I prefer to make my own as the air taxi service may not have them (good luck finding tomato stakes in Chitina, Alaska), they may charge for them, or they may be the ratty Euro versions.  Another good reason to make & bring your own is that they will hopefully be a distinctive color, which can be important if you inadvertently start following the wrong wanded route. 

As a final wanding thought, beware that everyone tends to place wands a little differently.  I try to find big, obvious, open spots for them and mark crevasses with X’d wands, with the idea being that if I am lost, I’ll go from wand to wand.  But, some people use them to mark hazards, which which can be exciting if you are not use to it, as every time you come across a wand, you almost fall into a crevasse.

Okay, one more wand item – they make great supports for drying out socks on a nice day.  And, you can cut them in half/quarters if need be and bury them as T stakes for tents.

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A written proposal acts as the statement-of-intent for an expedition and a formal starting point. I got into writing proposals after filling out a few grant applications, and whether I won the grant or not, I liked the way that it forced me to think way ahead of time in terms of trip logistics, dates, costs, partners and the goals of the trip. Since then, I write proposals for almost any large trip I go on for three main reasons; to organize the trip, to help attract partners and to help attract sponsorship.

Front page of a 2008 trip proposal covering "What, Why & Who"

Having been on a few grant review committees, I’ve found the two key features of a good proposal are clarity and brevity. I recently read a 50 page proposal and at the end still had no idea what the trip was all about. The great explorer H.W. Tilman once said “Any worthwhile expedition can be planned on the back of an envelope.” The modern-day equivalent of an envelope is a two page (max) pdf file which covers the five basics of reporting (who, what, why, when & where), plus how much.

I look at trip proposals as living documents which are subject to change. The dates, costs and even partners can be approximate. If somebody has expressed remote interest in the trip, I’ll put their name down on the proposal with the understanding that it isn’t binding. The dates are the same idea – take your best guess, then as the trip starts to come together, they can be adjusted for peoples schedule.

The second page covers "when, where, how much."

The beauty of a two-page pdf file is that it can be easily e-mailed around, or printed off on the front & back of a single sheet of paper. Limiting each category to only 2-3 sentences also forces you to define exactly what the point of the trip is. Trips seldom go as planned, but a concise statement-of-purpose can help keep them on track when options A, B & C don’t work out and you start getting down to options R, S & T.

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John Ryan from “The Lonely Planet” describes the travel cycle as “dream, plan, book, go, come back,”  This covers it, but it is easier said than done.  To me, the “plan” part is the most important, but before that, you have to have a dream of where you want to go skiing.

I get my expedition inspirations from all over.  If I’m eating Greek food, I wonder if there is skiing in Greece (no).  If I hear a rumor of some remote range in China that gets insane amounts of snow, I’ll look for photos of it.  An excellent source of inspiration is going to mountain climbing slideshows as climbers tend to have a lot of wide angle photos which show possible skiing terrain.  I talk to other skiers, especially experienced travelers, about where their favorite places are, or more importantly, where they wished they had gone, but hadn’t.  Mountaineering books are great sources for steep skiing, especially the British versions as the Brits are well traveled and like moderate alpine climbs, which are often excellent ski descents. 

Fred Becky may not consider himself a skier, but he knows of a lot of places with wild skiing. Talkeetna, AK 2003

Completing “projects” like skiing on all seven continents or repeating Chris Landry classic descents is a good way to think of places to go.  Lou Dawson’s 14′er Project (skiing all of Colorado’s 14,000′+ peaks) is a classic example of this strategy.  Skiing all the volcanoes in Washington, California or Oregon.  Skiing the top ten descents in a mountain range in ten consecutive days.  Skiing in the mountains of two countries who are at war with each other (especially good for cultural perspective). Skiing the highest peak in each country/state/country.

Another prime source of inspiration is to go on somebody else’s trip.  I’d guess about 2/3rds of the trips I go on are my idea, but some of the best ones ever have been other peoples expeditions which I happened to get invited on.  The important thing here is to practice saying “yes” as if you always turn down trips, people will stop inviting you.

Skiing in Iran was not my idea, but it turned out to be fantastic. Dylan Freed crossing between snow patches on Mt. Damavand, Iran.

I don’t have any more or better expedition ideas than any other skier, but I do employee a cheaters trick – when I think of one, I write it down.  The legendary American Alpinist, Fred Becky, is rumoured to have a little black book of unclimbed peaks all over the world, which is probably why he is still climbing at age 85 – he has ten lifetimes of climbing to do and is just getting started.

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