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Jonathan S
| Gender: | Male |
|---|---|
| Height: | 5' 8" |
| Weight: | 145 lbs |
| Shoe Size: | US 9.00 |
| Skier Type: | Type III+ - Expert |
| Ski Frequency: | 100+ days / year |
| Learn more about me at: http://nerandorace.blogspot.com/ |
|
My Skiing
I grew up skiing at a small local NY hill (where Max Taam also first skied!) and eventually was an NCAA alpine race coach for (too) many years, although my SL & GS skis now get almost no use, and I even sold my SG & DH skis.
Since 1999, I've become increasingly into self-propelled skiing, and for the past six years I've been averaging over half a million vertical feet for earned turns each season.
Given the fickle NE natural snowpack for backcountry powder, I often train at local ski areas and organize a multiple-venue skimo race series.
But my favorite time of year is when the wx and avy danger clears up for long 10k+ multiple-ravine tours in our Presidentials range, plus of course late spring and summer PNW volcano trips.
The best ski tours though are out our back door for xc w/ my wife & our daughter!
Too much gear?
Boots = Scarpa Alien 1.0 for most training & touring, but Dynafit RC1 for racing & really long tours
2016-17 quiver (all w/ Plum & Dynafit race bindings, including some "mixed" setups), perhaps even to stay the same for 2017-18 (even Skimo Co doesn't tempt me too much):
La Sportiva Nano 172 (deep unconsolidated snow)
Dynafit Denali 168 (winter powder & resort sidecountry)
Volkl VTA 88 Lite 170 (winter ski mountaineering)
Dynafit Cho Oyu 166 (mixed days of compacted ski trails & glades-- impulse buy!)
Trab Magico 164 (late-winter & early-spring ski mountaineering)
Movement Big Fish-X 160 (late-spring & summer ski mountaineering)
Hagan X-Race (both current rockered version & prior traditional-camber version)
And for very low-snowpack conditions, old Movement Logic-X 169 (still light, but no rocker)
Recent Posts
9/13/2017
Purists might scoffingly assert that any mechanical advantage raising/hauling system should be built exclusively from biners and prusik cord. But the Petzl Tibloc is so trivially small and so trivially light yet so incredibly useful for building such systems (especially for crevasse rescue) that it rates Five Stars for sure.
The picture shows one caution and one tip:
- As also illustrated in the user manual, be sure to clip through the body of the Tibloc and hence also through the rope, not just through t...
9/13/2017
I've been relying on these for many (many) years (nearly two decades by now) for all my spring & summer ski tours (plus my occasional camping or hut-based overnights).
Typically I start off on an all-day (and then some...) tour with just a medium-sized externally carried water bottle (e.g., CAMP Action Bottle) then rely on quick refills and water treatment throughout the tour.
A few usage notes:
- The packaging is hard to open by hand, so before I take them into the field, I cut a tiny slit into the side of...
9/13/2017
I dutifully read the 1996 original edition of this book when I was first getting started with backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering around then.
Searching around now online, I see that this version for sale here was "Revised" in 2007. Reading some online excerpts, the "Even Better" claim is true in the sense only that it is no longer quite as outdated and inadequate as the original version.
I've given it three stars only because some of the tips on cold-weather winter camping can be useful to newcomers...
8/31/2017
Checking back in now after ~134,000' vertical, this is one of those skis that I loved at first and since then have grown to love even more!
The only drawback is that I've mainly been reserving them for very long tours where they also have to spend some time of my pack, given that they're barely heavier than a race ski, and noticeably lighter than other ultralight skis in my quiver.
(Picture attached of an overnight hut tour this past May -- the lack of snow in the background provides a hint at how much time...
7/27/2017
I've had a unit since the new design first came out in Fall of 2013. At first I thought it was just a new housing of the original "Old Yellow" DSP model, but instead Pieps really put a lot into new tweaks and improvements behind the scenes.
My favorite improvement upon "Old Yellow" was the flagging feature: Pieps was the first to introduce any sort of signal suppression into a beacon, yet even with firmware updates over the years, "Old Yellow" never flagged reliable for me compared to the competition. Bu...
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