More Thoughts on Why We Love Gear

As I was on a bike ride yesterday trying to rationalize why it was absolutely necessary for me to shell out $120 for a heart rate monitor, I inevitably came back to pondering my last entry when I put it out there that men love shopping just as much as women do. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to clarify my thoughts a little more.

First, why is it that it's so much fun to buy gear? The way I see it, gear is the adult version of toys. While it may help professional athletes perform better and earn more money, for the rest of us, it just helps us to play our games better and to one up our friends. Just as getting a supersoaker squirt gun instantly made you a force to be reckoned with in the neighborhood squirt gun battles when you were 9 years old, the $5000 carbon fiber road bike gives you that much more of an edge over the other guys you ride with.

Second, I think the reason that the belief persists that men don't like shopping is that we really don't like the act of shopping. We like spending the money for the new gear. But whereas women will spend an entire day shopping for one shirt, we like to make each shopping trip a quick in and out mission. We research what we want to get, find it, and buy it. We don't try on 30 other jackets or go to 10 other stores to see if we can save $5. Generally, we don't just go to REI just for the sake of seeing if there's anything we're interested in. If we're going to go, its for the purpose of buying one specific thing that we've decided on before we get there.

Women Love Gucci, Men Love Gear

We men are always bitching about women and their shopping. We are flabergasted at how they could spend so much money on shoes and handbags. But I have to admit that the truth is, we men are just as bad. Women's weakness is clothes where as ours is gear. I have to admit that I am very fond of it. I'm in to my hobbies (skiing, bicycling, travelling, etc) and I love buying all the gadgets that go along with it. I often tell my friends that the quality of your bike or your skis only makes a small difference as to how good you actually are. I firmly believe that. However, I still enjoy splurging and treating myself to a new sleeping bag or pair of gloves. Last year was a particular good year as I was updating my alpine ski gear for the first time in 7 years and just buying all of my backcountry gear for the first time. November's credit card bill was absolutely horrific. It's looking like this year is going to be a little easier on my mastercard. The past few weeks have been especially fun as I took advantage of the Sierra Trading Posts' 20th anniversary sale and got some black diamond gloves for $19 and a Sierra Designs Down Jacket for $55. The biggest items I plan on buying this season include a new fleece jacket, GPS device, and altimeter.

Lessons Learned from Last Weekend

1. Bring a Repair Kit: A number of articles I've read have said to always bring a repair kit with you when going into the backcountry. I have yet to bring one. But this weekend, my buddy Carl was evidence of wisdom of those articles. On the first day out, the loop at the front and the tail clip of the same skin broke. Luckily, we had some duct tape. But Carl was reduced to attaching his skins to his skis by wrapping the front and back with duct tape. So if I don't want Murphy to strike me, I guess I'll have to be responsible and put together a real repair kit before I go out for another tour.

2. Never Feed Carl Whole Heads of Garlic: One of the side dishes at dinner Friday night was whole heads of roasted Garlic. Apparently, one of garlic's side effects is bad gas. Carl was farting at a rate of once every 10-15 minutes throughout the entire day Friday. Because Carl was graciously letting Nellie and I break trail, it didn't affect us too much. But at one point Carl told us that he really wished he was in better shape because when he'd fart, he didn't have the energy to speed up and escape the smell. As we were heading back to the car at the end of the day, I let Carl go ahead of me at one point. Sure enough he let one out and I realized what he meant. It smelled like I had just been doused with some sort of garlic mist. I was in awe...not sure whether to be disgusted or to admire Carl for his amazing powers.

What Boots to Use: Alpine vs. AT

I just took up backcountry skiing this season. When I was buying my equipment, I really didn't ponder the question of whether to use my alpine boots (Solomon X-Screams) or to buy a pair of AT specific boots. With all the climbing involved, I knew that I wanted boots that were much lighter than my alpine boots.

I've realized that for most people, the question of what type of boot to use is not so clear. A number friends who have been talking about taking up AT have said they want to use their downhill boots. They figure that if they are going to expend so much energy going up a mountain, they don't want to be limited by their boots while going down.

I can understand where they're coming from. If I had asked that question in January (after my first time out with my new Garmont G-Rides), I probably would have said that alpine boots were the way to go. My trip to Sequoia over MLK weekend was my first time out in those boots. Going up hill in them great. They were warm, fit well, and I really liked how much the boot flexed in the walk mode. However, going downhill those first few times was a completely different story. I was used to big, stiff boots. So after I pointed my skis downhill and my AT boots started flexing like crazy, I didn't know what to do. I was either too far forward or too far back on my skis and the skis just didn't want to turn (or at least not when I wanted them to). I fell as many times that first day as I normally do in a year. So at the end of that first day, I was asking myself if I made a mistake buying AT boots.

But since that first day, the boots have really grown on me. Just because the boots are softer does not mean that you can't ski aggressive terrain with them. It just requires you to be softer and subtler in initiating your turns. You have to pay more attention to staying centered on your skis rather than leaning forward. When I used to hear people say that you don’t need stiff boots to ski powder, I never really believed them. After all, I had stiff boots and they were great in powder. But I understand what they mean now.

Getting back to the original question about whether to even buy AT boots, I see a couple of big questions that need to go into the decision. First, how far do you have to skin before you can ski downhill? If you have to skin for 2 hours before you even begin going uphill, the lighter AT boots are hands-down better. On the other hand, if the parking lot is at the base of the mountain, then the added comfort of AT boots going uphill wouldn't be so important. Secondly, how steep of terrain are you talking about skiing? The way I see it, unless you're going to be hucking big 30 footers, a good pair of high performance AT boots (like the G-Rides) should be able to handle anything. I've skied a couple of 35-degree chutes with them and they were great. So like all complicated questions, I guess it depends. But I'm plenty happy with my G-Rides.

If you have an opinion on this subject, I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Note: If you do end up buying AT boots, contrary to what I did, I'd recommend taking them out for a few days of lift serviced skiing before heading out into the backcountry. There will be an adjustment period. The last place you want to go through that painful adjustment is on a beautiful powder filled bowl that you just spent 2 hours climbing up.

Backcountry Ski Trip Report: Red Mountain and Panther Peak

Last weekend (1/28-29), I again made the trek up to Central California to do some backcountry skiing. I'll be honest, the skiing wasn't very good. In fact it was pretty bad. But like all difficult things, it was a formative experience and I learned a lot. The story is best told by breaking it down into lessons learned.

Lesson #1: Avoid Parking in Grandma's Front Yard: On Saturday, we were planning on skiing Red Mountain, which is located between Shaver Lake and Sierra Summit on Rt. 168. So we drove up most of the way the night before and decided to sleep in the back of John's Explorer. We parked on the side of the road around midnight and figured everything was fine. I guess we were a little close to Grandma's house because her dog got wind of us around 1:45. Grandma decided to come out and find out if we were ok. She was actually pretty cool. She had no problem with us sleeping there for the night. It just took away from the little sleep we were getting in the comfy confines of the Explorer.

Lesson #2: Bring Toilet Paper: I've gotten too used to staying in places that provide you with toilet paper and of course forgot to bring my own. So shortly after waking up, I had to go and do my business...toilet paper or no toilet paper. Unfortunately, there were no leaves on the ground and all the trees were evergreens. I decided that they wouldn't be too comfortable or effective. The best solution I came up with was to grass wrapped with an old REI receipt.

Lesson #3: Get a Hide a Key: We arrived at the Red Mountain trail snow park around 7:15. We then had breakfast and put our gear on. To keep us entertained, we had the Sirius satellite radio blasting tunes from the "Hair Nation" station. A minute later, John shut his door and realized that he had locked the keys in the car (they were still in the ignition) with the radio still on. So we were presented with a dilemma. Do we go on the ski tour or do we get the door opened? Rather than getting a professional, we decided to try and open it ourselves. Picture John standing on top on the roof of the Explorer using one of his skis as a lever to pry open the door with me trying to jam my ski pole into the opening John created in a sad attempt at hitting the automatic lock button. As expected, it was completely ineffective. I was really surprised that no one driving by stopped as it looked like we were trying to break into the car. Once we gave up on doing it ourselves, we decided to go on the tour and deal with it later.

Lesson #4: Usefulness of GPS and an Altimeter: Neither John nor I had ever been out to Red Mountain. John had heard about it from a friend and had read a description of it on the Sierra Club Ski Mountaineer's website. But that was about all the knowledge we had. On the positive side, we did pick up a topographic map of the area. But unfortunately, none of the trails were labeled on the topographic map, the trails themselves weren't labeled very well, we were stupid and talked ourselves into taking the wrong trail. Not wanting to waste time, we decided to take what we thought was the geographic straight line to the trail we wanted to be on. We eventually made it onto the trail. But we were really never sure where we were on the map or how far we had left to go. We only realized that we were on the right trail when we reached West Lake at the base of Red Mountain. For me, the hike wasn’t the hard part. It was only 6.5 miles and the climb was very gradual. Most all of it consisted of following Snowmobile tracks. The hard part for me was the uncertainty. GPS would have obviously cleared that up. But as long as you have a topographic map, an Altimeter would also have given you a good idea of where of you were by telling you which iso line on the map you were on. (Note: This is similar to the technique we used on the sub where we would use ocean depth to fix our position.) If you want to do this tour without getting lost, just follow the signs at first for the Red Mountain trailhead and then for Red Mountain. (We errored in thinking that we were already on the Red Mountain trail as soon as we left the parking lot and that the first sign for the Red Mountain trailhead would loop us back to the parking lot)

Lesson #5: Bring Basic First Aid: About halfway into the hike, I got a pretty good sized blister on the back of my left ankle. When it first started hurting, it made me wish that I would have brought some mole skin with me. Luckily, John had a role of duct tape, which turned out to be an excellent temporary fix. We made a small duct tape square by putting folding one strip of duct tape in half (sticky side to sticky side). We put this against the blister and then taped that to my foot. So now you know one more use of duct tape. Despite the fact that this wasn't very serious, it did make me think about what I would do if something more serious happened. In the future, I'll definitely bring a basic first aid kit along with me and I might take a wilderness first aid course.

Lesson #6: The Skiing at Red Mountain is not worth the hike: Even if you don’t get lost, it’s a 5 mile hike to get to the top of the mountain. So it’s not easy to get to. The west facing ridge has a nice steep 400 ft vertical ridge. But it’s west facing. The north facing bowl we heard so much had a nice rocky steep section that last for about 30 vertical feet. It was followed by several hundred vertical feet of boring low grade crap. The snow at the top was very wind packed and slick while we did find some powder in the woods below.

The trip back to the car was easy. It took us 1.5 hours. Its not all downhill. So you’ll either have to put your skins back on or carry them like we chose to do. Thanks to the grumpy front desk guy at the Tamarack Lodge (just up 168 from the snow park), we were able to get AAA to send someone out to open the Explorer up for us. Amazingly, the battery was still full of juice with the radio going at full blast all day.

The next day, we skied Panther Peak at Sequoia National Park. The tour leaves from the Wolverton parking lot (just like 9979 which we did over MLK weekend). You just follow the yellow trail markers and it will guide you there. It only took us about 2 hours to reach the summit. The skin up was made easier by following John’s skin track from when he went up the previous weekend. The run down Panther Peak gives you about 700 vertical feet of low grade, north facing trees. The first 100 feet at the top is more exposed and we found it to have a very heavy crust. While not great snow down below, we had about 8” of heavy, creamy powder. You definitely had to have some speed to help you turn in it. But it was fun! By the time we went up for a second lap, it had warmed up substantially. This caused the snow to stick to our skins. In the future, I’ll be sure spray some of the Black Diamond Free Glide spray onto it the night before. Since we didn’t spray it on the night before, we used some Globstopper wax. While not totally fixing the problem, it at least allowed us to make it back up for a second run.