Colonel Foster gear report

• Posted on July 17, 2009 at 4:47 PM
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The offending ropes in a rare moment of cooperation.

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“Mount Colonel Foster Summit Traverse”

Two very full days of mountaineering (click here to find out more) is a good test of a lot of gear. Here are my thoughts on some of the gear that shined and some that almost broke our trip.

Garmont Vetta Light They may be bright red, but these approach boots were perfect on the snow and rock. Moves up to 5.8 went smoothly with the sticky toe grip. I could have used chunkier grip and a more pronounced heel during the slippery bushwhacking at the end of the trip, but I happily trade a slight loss of security with two feet on the ground for lots more with nothing but air between my legs.

Valendre Mirage Not only is this sleeping bag ultra light, 680 grams, but it was pretty darn warm. Valendre says it's good down to -5. I don't know about that, but on an exposed night at 7,000 feet that dropped near zero, where I had very little metabolic warmth working with me, I was toasty warm. The quarter length zip is a bit of a pain - I had to wiggle to get out every time. But overall it was the perfect bag for a light alpine effort.

Mammut Genesis We bought two of these 8.5 millimetre half ropes specifically for the trip and immediately regretted it. Every time we wanted to use them we had to carefully unravel and unravel and unravel them because they were so twisted. They tied themselves in knots. Seriously. On belay one person had to continually work out the knotted messes. And tossing them down rapels was even worse. They started to behave themselves a bit better by late on the second day, but we're pretty sure they cost us an hour or two. In the future I would not go on a trip with brand new ropes, but these were twisted beyond what I consider reasonable. As a half rope, meaning you need two ropes to climb a pitch, they aren't going to be as tough as a thicker single rope. Indeed, with lots of rockfall we put some not-so-nice-looking notches into the sheath of one rope. No big deal, but they did make for exciting speed bumps while rapping.

ProBar and Clif Bar I don't think we would have survived without our stash of goodies. With only a big day's worth of food for two long days of climbing we needed every calorie and these snack bars did the trick. They kept us energized and relatively focused for the life and death task at hand. ProBar is new to Canada and is organic and vegan. It's like a raw food lunch that tastes good. Cliff Bar is a long time stand by and also organic-ly sourced. Yumm. Neither are hard on the stomach like I find PowerBars. They're great, packing a serious energy whollop. But I can't eat them without water and water was in very short supply.