How to Build Wands
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 clean and generally work well. I like the combination of both a small duct tape flag and a ribbon as if it is a total white-out, you can often still hear the ribbon flapping in the wind.
1. 48″ tomato stakes – 25 pack. I like starting with long stakes (4′ versus 3′), but will cut them down if I’m going somewhere that requires a lot of maneuvering in and out of planes or boats as the long ones are a pain in the ass.
2. 2″ Fluorescent Duct Tape. There is actually some disagreement over where or not fluorescent tape shows up better, but I think for low or flat light conditions it does. Maybe not in bright daylight, but then again you don’t really need wands in bright daylight.
3. Barricade Tape
… also available in humorous options…
You can often times find all of these ingredients at a home store, but if not, they are easily available on line.
Once you have all of the required parts, the construction is brainless. Rip off a 5″ ish piece of tape, fold it around the wand, tab in about 1/2″ of ribbon and squish it all together.
A pile of wands in action:
I like carrying them on the right side of my pack so I can reach back and grab them like an arrow from a quiver and place them without stopping (if you are going to get lost, you might as well do it as fast and efficiently as possible).
90% of the time I carry wands I’m not actually placing them, so I stitched up a “wandom” to slip over the flagging to help keep them organized and cut down on the flapping.
The author achieving wanding nirvana on a trip to Antarctica.
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Category: 02 Gear, 10 Navigation, Projects
“I know – the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Both of you.”
So who’s my fellow traveler here?
But seriously, even though I have no desire to ski on glaciers so heavily crevassed that I need wands, this is perfect for marking hazards on our one 100% backcountry rando race out here, to supplement the ISMF-style wands (green = skin, yellow = boot, ski = red) — many thanks for the idea!
im the other one reading this, in north sweden(and norway).even though our glaciers are often werry safe and our mountains smaller so wands are not often needed, i still realy need to read stuff like this to get me trough the waiting for snow. so thanx! in swedish wand could meen what thes guys are doing,in a werry positive way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0CS-T1HUQ
This right here is why I check your blog. Actual, practical advice born out of years of experience.
Wanderful!