A lot of folks don’t understand how to use hiking poles on ascent/descent to their fullest potential. Those straps are more than just for looking good or to avoid dropping them – they’re for leverage and to help pull yourself up hills and ease yourself down descents. You can hike with your arms as much as your legs and save your knees.
It is incredible how many seasoned hikers bring compasses, and yet cannot even use them. There are a few things to learn, but shockingly easy once you know.
The Map Reading Company channel has the best video I have seen on the subject
Don’t have time for pesky weeks of acclimatization when you want to climb Mt Everest? How about doing the whole thing in under a week. All through the wonders of Xenon gas.
A small group of Furtenbach Adventures clients plan to fly to Kathmandu this spring and try out a new climbing method. After arriving, they will receive xenon therapy in a clinic before flying to Everest Base Camp for an immediate summit push. The plan is to climb Everest in three days, with full oxygen and sherpa support.
How? Xenon, an inert gas occasionally used as an anesthetic, has been observed to have the side effect of radically increasing the body’s production of EPO (erythropoietin, a hormone that regulates a healthy level of red blood cells). Xenon helps red blood cells multiply without acclimatizing or injecting a synthetic version of the hormone. Furtenbach became a believer in xenon therapy after it was suggested by Michael Fries, a German anesthesiologist. It was tried by Furtenbach to great success on a climb of Aconcagua in 2000. Medical studies show it doesn’t have any of the harmful side effects of other similar medications.
The hope is to reduce HACE and HAPE deaths, reduce the dangerous up and down traversals through the Khumbu ice sheet, as well as reduce the life-threatening effects of frostbite and high altitude degradation. It is causing a stir in the climbing community that believes this just reinforces the idea of a more tourist-like behavior of bagging a summit for Instagram over demonstrating real climbing skills or embracing the hard-fought values of the climbing community.
The method may be fast, but it won’t be cheap. Furtenbach will charge his xenon climbers $154,000. Xenon gas treatment is extremely pricey: A 30-minute session costs $5,000 per person.
Articles:
I love, love, love being in alpine environments. I’ve never climbed to the summit of Mt Rainier – but have gone up to Camp Muir at 10,000ft for a fun day hike.
Ryan Mitchell went the whole way up the Kautz Glacier route. They do a great job capturing the adventure of a perfect weather late climbing season ascent by an experienced climber helping a competent learner. Slog slog slog!
There’s lots of great stuff to talk about here for climbers to learn from. His other videos offer lots of other climbs (with references to local climbers you can learn from like Justin) as well as a good approach to life in general.
Gear Patrol reported on a new four-season capsule tent that assembles in under five minutes, can sleep four, and fits into a backpack. It’s called the Air Station Pod-01 and it’s made by Exod – a company that also makes the Monolith inflating tent.
The shelter supposedly takes just five minutes to assemble with the included hand pump, and once set up, it offers a self-standing design with 4.2m² of floor space. The exterior of the capsule has two tunnel doors, a pair of windows and multiple ventilation points. All four walls can also be easily lifted up to create an open-air shelter. It weighs 18.7 lbs and can be disassembled by one person in five minutes, including the time it takes to stuff it into the included 25 x 35 x 64cm carrying backpack.
It’s claimed to be rigid enough to stand up in four seasons – but I’m curious how it would do with 3″ of snow on it (4.2m² = 6430in² * 3″ of snow = 19,440in³ or 11.25 cubic feet. Snow weighs about 12 pounds per cubic foot, so 3″ snow would weigh roughly 135lbs); or if its tie-down system could stand up to 20-35mph winds on a ridge.
At $2,679 (now $1930 at their website) it’s not cheap, but it certain is cool looking and would likely be right at home at a Burning Man style festival where wind/snow might not be a problem.
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Colin Haley only has 6 videos on his channel, but they capture the essence of alpine climbing like no other. Definitely not the spit and polished videos you see from Red Bull or the perfect climbs you see from Hollywood style productions.
These are very real videos that capture the beauty and beasts that are alpine climbing – and why I fell in love with this. I could only hope to visit one of these amazing places in my life and have the skills he has.
Luno makes a lot of cool car camping gear. Pillows, window covers, camp fans, organizers and other upscale tidbits for your #vanlife. Now they’re offering their AIR+FOAM custom fitted car camping mattresses. They claim to be better than a standard air mattress because they use air and perforated open-cell foam sandwiched between protective layers.
Each set is custom fitted for your specific vehicle. You put in your make/model/year and it’ll find the set that perfectly fits your vehicle (if available). It looks like they charge a flat $499 for most vehicles.
For the more budget minded, they have cheaper pre-owned/upcycled/returned products.
Car camping is fun, but something you should always keep in mind is that these pretty much take up all your cargo space (unless you use only one – which is a nice feature). So, if you’re bringing any other gear/food it better all fit in the front seat or it’ll sit outside all night (in the rain/snow/elements and with critters or bears around to nibble on anything edible). Some other tips for car camping here – like always sleeping with your head pointed uphill (since it’s been shown being inverted for long periods has even led healthy people to death).
Amazing Mavic drone footage of the climbing route up Mt Everest.
The Ulakhan-Sis Mountain Range is in the Sakha Republic, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia. This range is one area of Yakutia – which is one of the most isolated and distant portions of northern Russia. This area is largely unexplored and uninhabited – only being first mapped in 1870. It’s nearest inhabited neighbor to the south is the infamous Kolyma area of Russia that served as Stalin’s brutal gulags.
They’ve been getting a little more exposure lately with climbers and visitors making the treacherous thousand mile trip to the range. What makes it interesting is that the area is marked by fascinating baydzharakhs rock formations. Kigilyakh rock formations are also found on this range, some of them quite impressive.
Baydzherakhs are formed by a cryo-lithic process in which polygonal ice-wedges thaw within the permafrost and reach heights of 15-30 feet. They form a landscape of unearthly spires. Not that different than the Penitentes in the Atacama desert.
Hoshizora Camping demonstrates a cool way of making your camp stove super cool. He first angles the holes in the secondary combustion layer and then adds a fire ring to an ordinary, boring camp stove. With some tweaking, the flame coming out of your stove will be tornadoed into a cool braid-like effect. I like how he shows how he experiments with different configurations to get the best effects.
I think this would be a great way to add a luxury touch to your camp stove and give you something cool to watch at the end of a long day of hiking or climbing.