The official name of this jacket is the Sierra Designs Microlight Jacket. To me, it is The $30 Jacket, because you will find thousands of them during REI's annual spring sale for about $30. It is not waterproof, nor is it advertised as waterproof. It is, to quote an old friend of mine, "uh, water-resistant." It is a wind shell, and lots of companies make wind shells. A friend of mine, who would wear Patagonia condoms if they made them, spent some time haranguing me trying to get me to buy one of these instead.
"$100?" I said. You've got to be shitting me. I'm going to beat on this layer, which isn't waterproof, and probably rip it at some point in the next year, likely on the granite of some multipitch route. I think I'll save $70 and buy a just-as-water-resistant, somewhat-as-windproof, Sierra Designs jacket at REI in March, and when I tear a hole in this thing, I won't cry. I'll just pick up a new one at the next REI sale. Zipper breaks, new jacket next spring. Get too close to the campfire roasting marshmallows, new jacket next spring. Decide it makes your ass look big? Chuck it, it was only $30. Minimal tears.
This is a thin, pretty lightweight layer (weighs the same as the Patagonia wind shell, but has a hood), best used for protection against the wind when you're belaying your buddy on a somewhat chilly day. Stuffs into a little stuff sack, which is small enough to clip to the back of your harness or stuff in one of the shoes you're hauling up for the descent. If you don't live in Seattle or Portland, it's also a good layer to throw in your bike commuting bag for a night where you stay out a little later and you need a little protection from the cold air, or a light rain. I'm telling you, at this price, it's practically disposable. Click around the Internet and you'll find someone selling them for $30. Pick a couple up for the family.
It's more likely that a Monster Truck champion would come out of U.C. Berkeley than three Ray-Ban-wearing spies. The three American hikers who accidentally wandered into Iran while hiking in northern Iraq are either already on trial or will go on trial very soon for charges that the Iranians won't release. By all accounts the trial will be very short, and we should find out the fate of the three sometime very soon. If they're being tried for espionage, the punishment could be death. The trio has already been held in Iran jails for 150 days, and Red Cross workers have described them as being in good health. Their fate has been very different from the five British sailors who accidentally strayed into Iranian waters and were detained but released shortly thereafter. If Iran's judiciary only knew how dumb they look for accusing Berkeley grads of being spies.
Sometimes, and I have said in the past, this blog just writes itself. For some reason, Alec Meyer didn't just shut up and consider himself very lucky to have survived an avalanche with no avy gear, knowledge or intelligence. The Summit Daily published another story about him causing and riding out an avalanche on Loveland Pass last week -- I assume he called the paper and asked to talk to a reporter after he felt the first article made him sound like a moron. This one just makes it worse -- i.e., his avalanche beacon would have helped him, but Santa Claus hasn't delivered it yet (forget the fact that his friend didn't have one on her either); he plans to take an avalanche Level I class after four years of backcountry skiing, etc. Sometimes it's best to just fade away into memory, kiddo.
Though Meyer said he's ridden the Loveland Ridge area extensively over the past four years, he was lacking essential backcounty gear. But he said it wasn't for lack of knowledge.
"they inspected the snow for cracks."
“I ordered a beacon and shovel for Christmas already,” Meyer said. “I just didn't have it on me yet.”
Meyer — who is already singed up to take an avalanche safety class in January — said he'd encourage anyone to sign up for a workshop.
“We tried to go in there as well-informed as we could,” said 25-year-old Alec Meyer. He said he still plans to backcountry ski, but that he “would more than reconsider” snowboarding on similar slopes in similar conditions to the site of his accident.
SKI Magazine just did a story on "Crested Butte: America's Last Ski Town" in its November issue, about how the resort was hoping to get its expansion OKed by the Forest Service so it could add some blue runs. Then last week, the Forest Service did something very strange and actually denied a Colorado ski resort an opportunity to take up more land. Crested Butte is, as most folks will tell you, the "last ski town" in Colorado, having an actual soul compared to places like Vail and Breckenridge. Who knows what's behind the decision, but as Lou at WildSnow points out, it sounds like the Forest Service just didn't want to deal with the paperwork and the pain in the ass.
Studies on skiing and snowboarding always seem to be excellent at stating the obvious. The last study we wrote about, for example, found men were 2.2 times more likely to suffer an injury on the slopes than women. Gee, really? This latest study isn't much different, though it does flat out contradict some assumptions driving ski resort policy. Say drinking, for example. The British government is convinced that the 30 drinking related deaths on French ski slopes last year could have been prevented, so they've started a major drinking & skiing prevention ad campaign. Despite the fact that a study, ironically published in the The British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that "There was more self-admitted drinking among the control group of uninjured skiers." Seems like the British government has it all wrong, they need to be encouraging Brits to drink more, not less. Dope on the other hand, dope is the real killer another unpublished survey found:
Drug use, on the other hand, contributed materially to injury risk. (A
related, unpublished survey of injured snowboarders produced “similar
risk factors” for accidents, Dr. Benneker says, including the finding
that “smoking dope while boarding is a bad idea.”)
So where does that leave the average dope smoking, beer swilling skier and snowboarder here in the United States? Confused, we say. Confused. BTW, why is it that everywhere Brits go they're known for just getting shit faced drunk, and every place with large populations of British tourists from Prague to Ibiza to Greece, are trying to get rid of them.
"They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit," said Konstantinos Lagoudakis, a mayor on Crete. "It is only the British people – not the Germans or the French."
I almost forgot that I dropped by this event that everyone else blogged about a couple weeks ago. Burton unveiled their new Olympic snowboard outfits at a party in their SoHo store. I stopped by for a few minutes and several free beers. The bulk of my time there was spent knocking on the bathroom door, shaking the door handle, and waiting outside the restroom. One of the helpful clerks finally unlocked it and let me inside.
They only had PBR and a couple boxed wines. No one wants to get too showy during a recession.
There were a lot of people there who dress just like me.
I finally got in the restroom. If you're ever in SoHo and need to steal toilet paper, I highly recommend stopping at the Burton Store.
I waited for awhile to see if the Burton/Gore-Tex ice sculpture would fall over and crush anyone. It did not.
Dec. 1: A talented young man writes about this POV avalanche burial video in the December issue of the Mountain Gazette, saying "It’s a good clip for anyone who’s ever hitched rides to get free turns on Loveland Pass, Berthoud Pass, or anywhere else, without any avy knowledge or equipment."
Seems we're getting a lot of visitors about this because of our coverage of the last accident on Mt. Hood. It's not looking good for the search as bad weather moves in. The AP is reporting that a storm has grounded the helicopter and SAR efforts for missing climbers Anthony Vietti and Katie Nolan. A third climber, Luke Gullberg, was found Saturday. He had apparently succumbed to hypothermia after surviving a fall.
I immensely dislike almost any environmental protest or stunt done to raise awareness about the plight of the earth when those protesters rely on dressing up like rocket ships or scaling Mount Rushmore. These people only succeed in making those in the middle realize that there's a lot of morons on our side.
But this is one stunt that I can squarely get behind. A filmmaker named Richard Pain will attempt to swim across the Pacific Ocean while enclosed in a 20-foot-long plastic bottle being towed by a boat that his wife will captain. He'll take it straight through the massive plastic island in the middle of the ocean; one piece of global real estate that no country is willing to war over. The journey will cover about 5,500 miles and take up to 45 months. His plan is to make a movie on par with something like Supersize Me, in the hopes of raising, yes, awareness about the dead chunk of land in the middle of the ocean.
Here's a video by a dirtbag climber/filmmaker entered in the Nikon "Your Day" contest. Help a kindred spirit win over the likes of entrants like, gulp, Ashton Kutcher -- all you have to do is watch the video and leave a comment on the Nikon site. More information here.
SKI Magazine just did a story on "Crested Butte: America's Last Ski Town" in its November issue, about how the resort was hoping to get its expansion OKed by the Forest Service so it could add some blue runs. Then last week, the Forest Service did something very strange and actually denied a Colorado ski resort an opportunity to take up more land. Crested Butte is, as most folks will tell you, the "last ski town" in Colorado, having an actual soul compared to places like Vail and Breckenridge. Who knows what's behind the decision, but as Lou at WildSnow points out, it sounds like the Forest Service just didn't want to deal with the paperwork and the pain in the ass. 
Studies on skiing and snowboarding always seem to be excellent at stating the obvious. The 
