by CAMERON McPHERSON SMITH
copyright 1996
EQUIPMENT MODIFICATION, INVENTION AND REPAIR
You can extend the life of your expensive clothing and equipment by employing a lot of imagination, a stubborn refusal to replace poorly-made gear and a little thread and duct tape. I have found the tips below to be very useful as a climber living on a realistic budget. I lived for a number of years in England, where the climbers I met were living in what Americans would generally call 'awful' conditions, using 'out-dated' hardware, patched and patched-again clothing and yet doing excellent routes in great style in the most abominable conditions. It was a humbling experience. Don't get hung up on the hardware and all the tricks of the trade. Remember that a lot of great climbs have been done with 'out of date' gear and that it is the person wielding the materiel that does the climbing. Also consider that if you modify all your gear, adding straps and duct tape and other contrivances ad nauseam, you may easily end up with unnecessary complexity and weight; precisely what you're trying to avoid.
Maintaining Your Ice Tools
Maintain your ice tools with diligence. Inspect picks and the head assembly for hairline cracks. Keep the tools free from rust. Replace tattered slings and lanyards often. To sharpen your tools, you should always use a HAND file. Electric and hand-grinder tools eat away too much metal too quickly, can be difficult to control and can ruin the temper on your tools, making them softer. A hand file allows you to go slowly, plan what you want to do, and remove precisely the amount of metal you want to remove, from exactly where you want to take it. Some ice tools will require sharpening before the first climb (particularly crampons, see below). Your ice picks don't have to be pointed (though it can help for thin-ice and rock hooking), but they do have to be sharp viewed from the working end. See Figure XX for sharpening suggestions. Do not sharpen your crampon points so much that they will actually impale or slice rope or slings if you step on them. You should be able to press on the crampon point pretty hard with your thumb before it really hurts. If it's too sharp, the rope will not roll away under the point, but will be impaled. I sharpen my pickets as shown if Figure XX. I suspect that this makes them easier to place in really hard snow, but it's hard to verify. A Cheap Gear Harness and Gear Carrying Tips
I have made a double-gear harness from a pair of old pack straps, some spare perlon (never throw away 'scraps' !), tubular webbing and a few buckles with straps. My partner Chiu has also made a harness like this for technical routes and has modified it (so that it's better than mine, of course) such that it can also be used as a chest harness while jumaring. Figure XX illustrates the basics here. Stitch with nylon webbing - cotton will rot and some day your harness will disintegrate, dropping your nest of hardware to the glacier below. These harnesses have proved their worth on big walls, but in alpine terrain as well; when we went to the Bugaboos for a few days last summer we were able to take small alpine packs rather than monsters. This is because we loaded the packs with food and clothes, I carried a jerry-can of white gas in my hand and we kept the hardware on our racks, just worn under the pack. Figure XX illustrates such use of the harness and backpack. You can also secure a lot of hardware, boots and a rope to your pack, so that the chamber can hold food, clothes and your sleeping system. It's a drag carrying pickets. If hung on your harness they ceaselessly bang away and can trip you up. For the approach hike you can fix them to the sides of your pack as shown, but then they're difficult to reach if you only have one hand available. The best solution is to rig some shock-cord on the bottom your backpack so that you can slide pickets in and out one-handed. This is shown in Figure XX. Just be careful when leaning on rock not to dislodge a picket and lose it down a slope. Deadmen are also a drag, but can be rigged as shown in Figure XX so that they stay out of your way. For short periods you can carry them slung around your neck and shoulder (as on a lead, or seconding), but this can be a nightmare if the cable is too tight. Whatever you do, especially in glacier travel, be sure you can get your pickets and deadmen from your rig without taking off your pack. For most other gear - pulleys, screws, rock protection - you can rig gear loops to your harness as shown in Figure XX. This will save you the money of buying an extra racking kit. Clothing Modifications
Do yourself a big favor and tie some extra-long mitten-grabbable pulls to your zipper sliders. This will save you precious minutes of groping when it gets dark, cold or both. O the wonders of duct tape ! It is waterproof, flexible and durable. You can patch holes in your shell clothing with rounded or circular patches of duct tape. The rounded edges tend to snag and work loose less than corners. See Figure XX. You can also reinforce stitching on your knees, elbows or the seat of your bibs with long, 3/4" wide strips of duct tape. These can be particularly good if you tend to do a lot of mixed climbing, and can save you from buying new clothes too often. Gloves and Socks
After experimenting with a number of glove systems and finding nothing to be waterproof in the wet of the Cascades, one night I finally got out the duct tape and completely covered my Black Diamond gloves (except for the palm and under-sides of the fingers) to form a totally protective seal. This works very well, and I don't seem to sweat any more than usual, or at least I don't notice it if I do. For warmer conditions I wear a pair of Patagonia Bunting gloves inside the shells. These have turned out to be as warm as the Patagonia Capilene gloves, and far more durable. On colder climbs I wear a pair of no-brand wool gloves under the shells. I almost never wear, on a real climb, the expensive pile liners that came with the shells; they're so bulky that they make it very tiring to grip the shaft of my ice tools. I currently have them pressing under a heavy weight, which may compact the pile a bit. Hopefully this will solve the problem. After a hard season of use your thin liner gloves (perhaps Capilene, bunting or thin pile) can end up rather worse for the wear, with big holes in the fingertips or thumb. Don't write them off, though. A pair of these blown-out gloves can be turned into cold-weather fingerless gloves simply by snipping off the very ends of the fingers (not far down at all- a little too short is much too short). Sew the seam-ends so they don't unravel. Later you can add another pair, sewn onto the first pair, for extra warmth. Some people use VBL socks, with the same reasoning as VBL's for sleeping systems (see above). You can buy these (best for really serious winter situations) or just use plastic bags. Plastic bags are less durable, but a heck of a lot cheaper than VBL socks. Backpack Modifications
In trying to buy a light, frill-free alpine pack you might have to sacrifice some good features. You can add these to your taste, however, and decide for yourself how they should be arranged and how heavy they should be. One easy modification is to make the top of the pack by cutting it off and re-attaching it via two or three straps with sliders. This is shown in Figure XX. This is an excellent way to balloon your pack out for longer-than-usual adventures. If your pack has a snow collar, you can just extend it with that. If not, you can very easily sew one to your pack with quadrupled nylon thread, as shown in Figure XX. Another easy modification is to tie easy-to-grab loops to your zipper pulls, as you may do for clothing. I find it useful to sew two daisy-chain lengths of flat webbing to the pack, to which I can clip hardware if I need to. If your pack does not have straps on the side to hold pickets, you can attach tied lengths of inner-tubes or bungee cord (eliminates buckles and sliders) which can firmly hold the pickets on the pack, out of the way. Going really wild, you may want to add a pair of ski-pockets; these are used in conjunction with the picket-holding bungees. All of these possible modifications are shown in Figure XX. Be creative; start with a good pack and add what you require. Crampon Modifications
The main reason to modify crampons is to make them more secure on your boots. After a couple of seasons you may find that the wearing down of your boot soles effectively 'loosens' your crampons, so you may simply have to tighten them as the manufacturer intended. As for loose nuts, you can secure them with a thin plastic sheet stretched over the bolt before screwing it in, as shown in Figure XX. You can also apply some super-glue to make a really bombproof lock. From personal experience I know that super-glued bolts can stay locked even in sub-zero temperatures and under tremendous, sustained jarring from front-pointing and mixed climbing. If you need to adjust a super-glued bolt during the climb, you're going to regret it, though - so glue with care. At home you can carefully heat the glued joint with a flame to break the bond and re-adjust the bolt as necessary. Some step-in crampons which attach only with a toe bail and an ankle strap can work their way off of your boot rather more easily than you may expect. To prevent this, I have often secured my crampons with a pair of plastic ski-straps, as shown in Figure XX. This method can make you breathe easier on really horrendous pitches. Harness Modifications
You may modify your harness by tying a runner-strength sling to the back, to which you can now clip to your anchors. This way a load will come onto your harness and then straight onto the anchors. A rear loop is particularly good for snow belays where you need to be some distance down-slope from your anchors to take full advantage of their potential. You can save the rear straps of your harness, and the tie-in loop, a lot of wear by wrapping them with duct tape. Be sure that you do not conceal any weaknesses in the system, however, and be sure to check under the duct tape occasionally for new weaknesses in the webbing. You can sew a pair of axe holsters to your harness, adding only little weight and providing aa good place to stow your axes for rappels or long sections of free-climbing on rock. Use 1" flat sling, nylon thread and see Figure XX. You can place the holsters wherever on your hip you like them, but I suggest that they be situated so you can holster your axes without looking at the holsters. An Improvised Alpine Haul Bag
For really technical alpine climbs where you expect to do a lot of hauling, a haul bag may be nice but just too bulky and heavy to carry on the approach; it may also be an unnecessary expense and, finally, overkill. You can make a serviceable haul bag out of any large canvas sack equipped with a number of strong grommets as shown in Figure XX. The grommets can be threaded with a long loop of 1/2" webbing tied with a water-knot. A bag such as this can accept two alpine packs, or you can empty their contents into the bag and use the packs or insulation mats to pad the sides. Though the bag may be tattered after a few climbs, it is small enough to fold and place in your pack on the approach, cheap to replace and you don't have to fret about treating it too gently, as you may with a $200 ready-made wall bag. It is not waterproof, however, but if your 'non-wetable' gear is packed in thin plastic bags beforehand, this shouldn't be a problem. One general tip for really cold, difficult climbs in which the belayer will be forced to sit still for a long time; take a single down or heavy pile jacket on the climb, and let the belayer wear it. Down is good for a 'belayer's coat' as it is light and compressible, and you'll scarcely notice it in your pack. If this seems too much, consider at least a down vest. Only take down, though, if it's too cold to reasonably expect wet snow or rain. If you do encounter these chances are, even with a waterproof down jacket, it will get wet and lose it's value, probably when you switch it from belayer to leader. If it might get wet up there, take an extra-thick pile jacket.
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