Tag: wands

How to Build Wands

How to Build Wands

| October 22, 2014 | 4 Comments

I know – the moment you’ve all been waiting for.  Both of you. As detailed in my previous post, I’ve built a lot of bad mountaineering wands before arriving at this solution.  I like this design as they stay put in deep snow for weeks on end, withstand wind, are easy to place, easy to […]

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Ski Mountaineering Wand Making – Greatest Fails

Ski Mountaineering Wand Making – Greatest Fails

| October 21, 2014 | 1 Comment

According to Malcom Gladwell’s theory that a person can only achieve true mastery of an activity by doing it for ten thousand hours, I’m almost a wand building prodigy. This is nothing to be proud of (except if you are my mom) and came about accidentally when I was building wands to mark ski mountaineering […]

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Wands for Ski Mountaineering – Part One

Wands for Ski Mountaineering – Part One

| October 15, 2014 | 1 Comment

Wands are an obscure and trivial part of ski mountaineering, which makes them a perfect topic for straightchuter.com.  I’ve carried thousands of wands, placed hundreds and actually used them for emergency navigation about five times, which made it all worthwhile.  It’s hard to describe how calming and reassuring finding a wand can be when you […]

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