Camping and Backpacking GEAR thread

Granite Mountain past Snoqualmie got me twice before I made the summit. Was not prepared for the last 100 meters of steep, slick snow.

 

Turning around isn't anything to be stressed about. I've done it. All my partners have done it. Climb smart and get out if conditions go to shit.

Speaking of quotes. This is one of my favorites. Guy was a true bad ass.

 

Thanks for that. "The Climb" a great book.

I had a wiff of something in Hackberry Canyon in '06 when the wind shifted. My neck hair went up. I do not know what it was but my core went nuts with it. Oh, I was solo.

 

I mean, that whole area around Bryce Canyon is chock full of kitties. From what I know, cougars don't really have a "smell" to them though. Black bears have an aroma pretty often, at least the Virginia ones did. Could have been that.

 

My wife and I climbing the Zugspitze, the tallest peak in Germany.
A reminder of the many reasons why I married her.
Truly an unforgettable experience.

 

Mine was a slight musty smell. I just has the primordial feeling of being watched by something that wanted to eat me, but did not see anything on the small cliffs surrounding me. My thought was bobcat, but cougar makes more sense.

 

We've got a bunch of bobcats at our place
View from our bed one morning



Below our guest bedroom window


the baby outside our kitchen window

Mama was near by watching over them

This is one of the reasons I see more wildlife at home than on the trails. Between the lil cats, javelina, coyotes and rattlers we get our fill

 

If i'm going anywhere solo, i'm way more conservative in my choices. My family may disagree and others may think i'm being too cautious when describing the choices made. I also give myself a 'bingo' time (understanding time is but one of the litmus tests), where regardless how far is left to go, its time to turn around and return.

 

It was. I don't know if you followed the whole 96 Everest controversy. Krakauer made it seem Boukreev was careless that day. Boukreev saved more people that day then anyone in mountaineering history. Solo. Why Krakauer hid in his tent. It still pisses me off.

Every distinguished high altitude mountaineer wrote letters to the AAC supporting Boukreev and praising his dedication to saving others even while putting his own life in peril. In 97 he was awarded the David A Sowles Award by the AAC. It's the Medal of Valor in the mountaineering world. He died 3 weeks later in an avalanche on Annapurna during an early winter ascent.

I've been climbing a long time and have very few people I wish I got the chance to rope up with. He's one of the few on that list.

Turn around times aren't only a good idea but there almost required for big objectives. Not having the daylight to do a descent you've never seen can result in serious epics or worse. I'm very critical in my thinking when climbing. I plan to keep climbing for a very long time and I find being critical helps a lot with reaching that goal. Not to say I couldn't be taken out by rockfall tomorrow but at least I'm hedging the things I can control.

 

I didn't mean to convey that Krakauer should have been anywhere but his tent. He wasn't fit enough nor did he have enough experience to effectively rescue anyone. He made the correct call at that time. Where he went wrong was in the criticism of Boukreev in Into Thin Air for Outside mag. I fully understand perspective and revisionist history. And you are correct that a simple phone call probably would have changed his perspective of the events. That never happened and the article was published.

As far as "The Belay" goes, it's legend. It's amazing that Schoening always downplayed it as luck. Sure luck was involved but the skill to arrest that full played a larger role IMO.

 

Not bad making it to Camp 3. 68 years old and he still got up to 23000'. I'll be happy to get up 5.8 at 10,000' in my late 60's. lol

 

We must have met somewhere. I'm late (extremely late) 60's in Durango

 

https://youtu.be/BXBQkOGc3yU

 

Good read on how the illusion of easy access, nearby support and deferring planning to others can lead to disaster. As is typical multiple errors stacked up in this one:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2329041/chamonix-zermatt-alps-haute-route-disaster

Gear/resources related takeaways:

• Have redundancy for route finding (in this case also actually having the route on redundant devices)
  
• Have redundancy for emergency comms, at the very least check the batteries!
• Use in place resources to the maximum extent possible (in this case a phone call to check destination weather)
• Have some sort of bivy appropriate for the conditions (in this case extreme wind)

Of course in this case as usual the biggest failure was down to lack of planning and not sharing planning among the group.

 

Did any of you enter the Hyperlite giveaway? $1,000 for use in their web store

 

The single biggest error was not listening to the weather forecast. Lots of people have died from that one.

Same situation with all GPS related apps going dead in good weather and they are alive today to tell the story.

I few years ago I made plans to do a big ridge traverse in the Sierra's with a really good buddy. We only get to climb together once a year nowadays so we always make it a worthy objective. We choose the Palisades and planned on two days on route.

The week before we left a monsoonal pattern set up. It rained up high everyday. I live in Bishop and got to watch some impressive storms roll through the mountains.

Us, being pig headed idiots, decided that a little rain never killed anyone. We parked at South Lake and shouldered our packs at 7am on a Saturday. It was already cloudy as hell and the wind was howling at 10000'. We made great time up Agassiz and headed over to Winchell. After Winchell all hell broke loose. We where way up high and had to bail on our plan to head over to Thunderbolt.

From our position it made more sense to drop down towards Sam Mack Meadow. We choose the best looking chute down the face and punched it. By this time it was raining hard enough that we where basically in a bowling alley. Rocks broke loose every 2-5 minutes. We quickly gained a ridge. That's when we realized that the wind was so bad we could barely stay upright. We pushed on and eventually made the moraine above Sam Mack. After finding a boulder to stay dry under we waited it out. And waited. And waited.

We finally said f it and got back to hiking down to Sam Mack. We arrived at a suitable camp site and had some very wet dinner. The next day it was still raining. We hiked from Sam Mack down to Third Lake. We figured the Palisades where a bust but we might get a window to tag something on Temple. We spent the whole day walking around like ducks. It was pretty funny in hindsight.

The third day was supposed to be our exit day. Third Lakes only about 5 miles in and Temples only about 1000' high. We awoke to very, very grey skies. It wasn't raining though. When your pig headed idiots that don't get to climb together as much as you used to you go for it. We grabbed a super light rack and took off for the start of Moon Goddess Arete. It's a 5.8 I've done a bunch of times. It's just plain fun. Usually.

We get about 500 feet up and the skies start dumping. Hail, snow, rain the size of golf balls. You had to be there to appreciate how truly shitty the weather was. One of my thoughts, other than this is so frikking dumb, was at least it's not lightning.

Fast forward 1 hour. Where about 100 feet shy of the end of the route. It stops short of the summit on the back side of Temple. I was leading the last pitch when the hair on my arms and neck stood on edge. Oh, shit. Two seconds later a huge strike hits the ridge. I literally felt it. Then two more hit way to close. I flew up that last 100 feet like it was an Olympic speed climbing wall. The whole time I'm yelling at my buddy to just get ready to move. The whole time it's also still throwing lightning bolts that make the hairs stand up.

I hit the ridge and started running. If there ever was a case of a "running belay"( google Stone Mountain running belay) this was it. As soon as the rope came tight my buddy also made a very Olympic dash to the top. We both started hauling ass down the back side of Temple towards Contact Pass.

Now, you have to picture this. Two very able climbers, still roped together, are running down the back side of a mountain. I didn't picture it and soon ended up on my ass. My buddy had caught up to me. There was 230' of rope between us. That rope caught a boulder and stopped me dead in my tracks. I quickly untied to prevent that again. In hindsight, it was pretty damn funny.

Once we dropped about 700' in elevation the lighting strikes no longer made my hair stand up. We decided to coil the rope. We both knew just how lucky we got. We both just laughed at the situation and made it back to camp. We packed up quickly and jogged the 5 miles to the trialhead. Then we hitched to Big Pine where I called my wife to come pick us up. It was truly an epic few days.


So, what's the moral of this long winded story?

We had a shit weather forecast and ignored it. We both could have easily been killed by rock or lightning. We got lucky. I should have stayed home and worked on the rig. lol

 

Today is just full of great news. Woke up to a puddle of gas under the wife's Mariner and a $1500 repair bill. The one guy who was going to hike AZ Trail with me just text me that he has to have his ankle replaced and bailed thus making section hiking that much harder with no guaranteed 2nd car for shuttles. It also greatly increases my need for a buying a SOS device in the next week or two if I am going to be solo. Still leaning the In Reach Mini as I cannot see anything else with better reviews???????????? Anyone suggest something different?

 

InReach is the best option

 

InReach Mini is definitely still the best option. BUT - be aware that it seems to be able to drain its battery much faster than anticipated if you leave it on with poor sky coverage. It seems to drain itself by trying to check for messages way too often and try for too long when there is poor sky coverage. I'd recommend turning it off and manually sending messages as needed to ensure you've always got plenty of battery in a real emergency. Alternatively if you want to use it for tracking make sure you have a USB battery pack along in case the Mini drains itself somehow.

Lastly I've seen complaints about the GPS. Says "Wait for GPS" for way too long sometimes. Based on my limited testing I think there may be a firmware bug in there which causes the GPS to end up disabled even though the interface indicates it is trying to get a fix. No idea how it gets into that state but mine appeared to end up there. Couldn't get a GPS fix for many many minutes under a completely clear sky. Power cycling didn't help since these things really don't ever completely turn off but just go into a deep stand-by. What finally made it happy was forcing it to send a message. GPS got a fix in a handful of seconds after telling it to send the message. The insidious thing here is that if you try to send a message with no GPS fix the device warns you it may have trouble sending the message since it can't see the GPS satellites. (It knows that if it can't see GPS it is unlikely to be able to see Iridium). It suggests you wait for a GPS fix before trying to send the message. But it appears there is a bug where it things the GPS is active when it isn't so you'd wait for ever in this case! It gives you the option to send the message anyway, which is what I eventually did in that case and right away it got a GPS fix.

Anywho, I think they still need a little work on the firmware and the manual could be way better too. Despite the flaws it is more robust than Spot and more useful than a PLB.

 

You're a good storyteller. I pulled up Google Maps sat view to follow along as I read. Thanks for that.