tips & tricks

climbing / tips & tricks — No Comments
5
Mar 12

Re-slinging Camalots

Slings, and cams, and har­nesses, oh my!

Just went through my climb­ing gear to start prep­ping for some upcom­ing spring/summer trips. The peak of the sea­son will be here before we know it!!

Though it’s good to always check your gear before each use, a care­ful inspec­tion prior to the sea­son will help you get ready & stoked for the days to come.

Here some things I look for, but def­i­nitely check your man­u­fac­turer rec­om­men­da­tions & use your own judge­ment. Remem­ber, these are life-safety items, so when in doubt replace it! You are worth it!

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geek-o-rama / tips & tricks — No Comments
25
Aug 11

Discover Peaks through Peak.AR

Hello world! The ‘ol blog is a lit­tle dusty, but I’m still alive and enjoy­ing the sum­mer. New posts com­ing soon, but in the mean­time, I thought I would share this inter­est­ing phone app I recently heard about.

It’s called Peak.AR and it’s avail­able for iPhone or Andriod. Through aug­mented real­ity (AR) you can hold up your phone and it will list the peaks in the dis­tance. Pretty cool idea. Check the FAQ for infor­ma­tion on how to work offline.

Peak.AR - Find mount peaks using augmented reality on your phone

http://peakar.salzburgresearch.at/

climbing / geek-o-rama / tips & tricks — 1 Comment
14
Apr 11

ClimberBeta — A guidebook in your pocket

New iPhone App for Climbers: Rock Guidebook

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climbing / geek-o-rama / tips & tricks — No Comments
31
Jan 11

Create Your Own Climbing Topo Maps

Hey Rock Nerds!

Have you ever read route descrip­tions and wished there was bet­ter beta? Or maybe you have a project you’re work­ing on and want to share the route infor­ma­tion? … Check out this free tool from “Betaflash” which allows you to dia­gram your own topo maps for climb­ing routes. So cool!

Make route topos with free app Betaflash

Screen­shot of Betaflash

Con­tinue read­ing “Cre­ate Your Own Climb­ing Topo Maps” »

climbing / geek-o-rama / tips & tricks — No Comments
14
Jan 11

Windows Phone 7 Users — Get NWAC forecasts

Some local pow­der buffs at Microsoft have devel­oped a trial ver­sion of a Win­dows Phone appli­ca­tion called “Peaked”. The appli­ca­tion will deliver NWAC fore­casts directly to your phone. It saves data retrieved from the web and saves it for offline viewing.

Screenshots of Windows Phone 7 App: Peaked

Screen­shots of Win­dows Phone 7 App: Peaked

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climbing / tips & tricks — 1 Comment
11
Nov 10

Colin Haley Cliff Notes

Sunset on Mount Stuart

Colin Haley is one of the most accom­plished young alpine climbers. He grew up climb­ing the Cas­cades and since has moved to climb­ing moun­tains world­wide. If you are not famil­iar with him you can start by view­ing his blog and some videos of him on youtube.

Last night Colin Haley spoke about gear & win­ter travel at the Moun­taineers in Seat­tle. I cap­tured some notes and wanted to share them for those that didn’t attend. Con­tinue read­ing “Colin Haley Cliff Notes” »

climbing / tips & tricks — 4 Comments
28
Sep 10

Personal Anchors: A Closer Look


One of the con­tin­u­ing top­ics I see come up in climb­ing classes is the use of per­sonal anchors: should you use them, what you should use, what is com­mon prac­tice. This is an age-old debate which I can­not do jus­tice describ­ing in a blog post. There are entire books and papers writ­ten on each topic, and depend­ing on how deep you want to go, you can spend all your days buried in sci­en­tific data.

Most of us just want to know how to be safe and get out­side! So, let’s dis­cuss some areas which are inter­est­ing to con­sider when look­ing at these safety sys­tems. From here, you can start to think crit­i­cally about the dif­fer­ent options and dig deeper as you wish. 

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climbing / tips & tricks — No Comments
9
Sep 10

Clove, Munter, Clove

Just fin­ished post­ing KAF Adven­tures’ lat­est tech tip on how to tie a clove and a munter off a biner.

This tech­nique is very use­ful for multi-pitching in the alpine envi­ron­ment where you may be belay­ing and/or attach­ing your sec­onds to the anchor. Have that nailed? Try con­vert­ing from a munter to a clove — one of my favorite tricks!

Have other ideas for tech tips? Let us know!

tips & tricks — No Comments
4
Sep 10

Rime Ice

Check out this vid I helped cre­ate for KAF Adven­tures. Our team was turned back from Mount Rainier’s sum­mit due to 60 mph winds. Jason took the oppor­tu­nity to talk about Rime Ice and how it’s formed. The audio is obnox­ious, but so was the wind. We wanted to keep the audio in there so you could get the effect of what it was like. We will be post­ing more of these type of videos in the future. Enjoy!

 

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tips & tricks — No Comments
2
Sep 10

Water Treatment 101

Recently I was asked about meth­ods to treat your water while in the back­coun­try and thought it would make a good blog post. Here is the quick and dirty:

  • Fil­ters — The main advan­tage is they will remove all dirt, con­tain­ments, and organ­isms. How well the fil­ter works will depend to the phys­i­cal size of the pores in the fil­ter medium. If you have a fil­ter you should under­stand the level that you are fil­ter­ing to. Fil­ters are gen­er­ally heav­ier of the options. Dif­fer­ent fil­ters will have dif­fer­ent attrib­utes such as fil­ter rate, method (pump, grav­ity fed), etc. You should under­stand how to repair the fil­ter in the field.
  • Chem­i­cal sys­tems – Gen­er­ally lighter and can kill most micro-organisms given appro­pri­ate time. Chem­i­cal sys­tems are affected by tem­per­a­ture. Chem­i­cal sys­tems will not remove dirt/debris or any other con­tain­ments. Each chem­i­cal sys­tem has lim­i­ta­tions and advan­tages. It’s worth­while to under­stand the pros/cons of each or at least your system.
  • UV kills organ­isms by shoot­ing UV light into water given appro­pri­ate expo­sure time. With the steri-pen, you are lim­ited to 1 liter at a time. UV is sim­i­lar to chem­i­cal sys­tems in that they do not fil­ter dirt/debris or con­tain­ments. Its effec­tive­ness can be impacted by the con­di­tion of the water (muddy may not be as effec­tive). For that rea­son, Steri-pen rec­om­mends use in clear water. Over longer peri­ods or fur­ther in the back­coun­try, it may be good to have a back-up in case your device fails.

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