Trivia:
Inclinometers are used in aircraft to show magnetic dip or the angle from the horizon.
Clinometers are used by surveyors in order to measure an angle of inclination or elevation.
Goniometers are instruments that either measures angle or allows an object to be rotated to a precise angular position.
Regardless of what you use or what you call it, being able to measure slope angles is one of the best avalanche defenses available. I’ve been skiing around for the last week in considerable, high and even extreme avalanche conditions without seeing or triggering any slides as I’ve been keeping my angles loooooow. Like in the 20-30 degree range at the most.
For years my goniometer (I usually call it an inclinometer) of choice has been the classic Life-Link plastic card with a dingle-bob on it. After a few seasons, the plastic breaks and you are left with a shard of plastic and a stuck dingle-bob. Still, they were kind of cheap, lightweight and compact enough that you could whip it out, pull an angle and get on with life. With this in mind, I was overjoyed at the recent Outdoor Retail Show to see that Pieps had come out with a bitchin’ new digital unit that mounts to your pole and also includes a thermometer. Continue reading ‘Pulling Slope Angles’
I love the idea of regluing skins, not just because it is all eco earth friendly and vegan approved, but because a pair of moderately worn nylon skins have such a nice feel to them – they glide, climb and fold-up like butter. With this in mind, I stripped the old glue off of a pair of skins last year and carefully documented my first outing with Black Diamond Glue Renew strips in eager anticipation of a KILLER BLOG POSTING. Yeah, well, it turned out like crap as I have the patience of a two year old and once again forgot to read the instructions until after I finished the job. Continue reading ‘Glue Renew Guru’
It’s about time the Wasatch got some snow, dammit. It was a mixed blessing to open my garage door this morning and find that the overnight snowfall was thigh deep and over the top of my snow-thrower hood, which necessitated a double pass, which in turn made me late, which led to getting stuck in the Cottonwood Canyons traffuck, and once we finally got to the trailhead almost an hour later, I pulled my beacon out to find that it had been left on and was reading “00″ as a power level (details below). It wasn’t a great start to the day, but it soon improved, as photo Exhibit A shows below: Continue reading ‘Deep Snow and Shallow Batteries’
The Outdoor Retailer Show is in Salt Lake City and the Sundance Film Festival is getting underway in Park City, so Utah is hopping at the moment. A bit more snow would make it even better.
I’ll add some updates from the OR Show over the next day or so.
As a crusading Dynafit Evangelist, I’m loathe to say anything bad about them, but will admit that many times the brakes hang up and don’t deploy. This happens often enough that some of my Dynafit buddies skip the brakes altogether as “they never work anyway.” It seems that this is more common with skis that are right at the brakes limits, like using a 92mm brake on a 91mm ski, which technically should work, but seldom does.
Rather than yarding on the brake legs, (which only makes matters worse as they require a certain geometry to retract and deploy well), I use a Dremel tool and grind off the inside of the plastic tabs. Continue reading ‘Dynafit Brake Modification’
A little video we shot this morning while waiting (and waiting…) for it to finally snow in the Wasatch. This technique is a slo-mo variation on a racing strip and it takes about one and a half minutes. Out of habit, I like to strip my skins right when I get to the top of a climb just so that I’m all ready to go. After that, I can, and usually do, dink around for a while, but first things first.
The “Up There” Ski Film Fest is taking place on Jan 14-15 in Bozeman, MT. It is being presented by the Yellowstone Club Community Foundation and benefits my all time favorite ski mountaineering organization, The Hans Sarri Memorial Fund (<– which happens to have a new website, check it out). Not only are they showing two cool films, “Swift. Silent. Deep.” and “Skiing Everest,” but they are raffling off some killer prizes, like three days/two nights at Aspen, three days/two nights at Jackson, a men’s AT package, women’s AT package and a day with Scot Schmidt. I suspect you can order raffle tickets through Drew Seessel (406.556.1275) and arrange something if you can’t be present at the actual event, but still win. Continue reading ‘“Up There” Ski Film Fest – Bozeman, MT’
At times when you want to do a ski cut, but there is no island of safety to ski to, a belayed ski cut comes in handy. Prime candidates for belayed ski cuts are narrow, steep couloirs with no hiding spots, or the opposite end of the spectrum, wide open faces.
For this type of ropework, simplicity and expediency is desirable as if you get too complex and time consuming, you might decide that it’s not worth going to the effort of pulling out the rope, and thus skip it. For this reason, I keep ski cutting belays as basic as possible – skip the harness and tie the rope directly around the cuttee’s waist, and then use a hip belay from above. Total ingredients – one rope and about 60 seconds. Continue reading ‘Belayed Ski Cuts’
Along with cornice stomping, I also do a lot of ski cuts before skiing a slope. Ski cuts are quite a bit dicier than cornice stomping as you have to actually get down on the slope and try to trigger a slide. Because of this, I am usually fairly confident that a slope won’t slide before I give it a ski cut, but do so anyways as a matter of habit. You never know.
If there is no “island of safety” to ski to, it might be better to find another slope rather than ski cut your way into the middle of an exposed slope and stop. Another critical element of ski cuts is to do them as aggressively as possible, like, really down-weight on the slope as you move over it. This is akin to bounce testing aid-climbing gear where the idea is to load it up as hard as possible so that if it is going to blow, you want it to go when you are expecting it, not as a surprise later on.
In the photo below, the “X” marks show where I’d really bounce on the slope. Notice on this slope I’d lose quite a bit of vertical with this ski cut (probably 100′ vertical feet), but it is important to both keep your speed up AND bounce as hard as possible, which means you are going to blow some vert in the process. The ridge at the end of the red line would form a so-so island of safe – not bad, but not great either. I’d prefer a cliff or rock to hide under. Continue reading ‘Ski Cutting’
