Outdoor Skill + Advice: Winter Layering System Basics

By Contributing Writer Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin, faculty member and Diversity & Inclusion Manager and Casey Dean, writer-editor at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)

As fall starts to give way to winter, the season’s dropping temperatures slowly add layers to the list of items I take on my adventures, be it climbing, camping, or backcountry skiing. Extra midlayers, such as fleece hoodies, have entered the scene, as have warm hats and down jackets.

My neighbor and fellow NOLS employee Casey Dean came across a layering lesson recently on an outing to Wild Iris, a popular local climbing destination. “I ended up donning more clothes to belay and shedding them before taking to the wall on sunny climbing routes,” said Dean.

Some tips to layering:

(1) A layering system should be a comprehensive unit; unless you’re trying to “go light,” no one article of clothing should be expected to serve multiple purposes.

(2) Proper layering should allow you to be comfortable through fluctuating temperatures and precipitation, as well as whatever activity you choose to enjoy.

(3) Plan for the worst. “You don’t want to put on all the clothes you’ve packed into the backcountry and still feel like something’s missing,” says Casey.

Excellent layer-by-layer recommendations and tips on the best materials can be found in this video by our experts in the NOLS Teton Valley issue room.

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Q+A With Pete Whittaker on Free Climbing Century Crack, Canyonlands, Utah

Photograph by Alex Ekins.

See more great images in our Extreme Photo of the Week.

"You climb upside down with your legs inverted inside the crack above your head the whole way," says British rock climber Pete Whittaker about completing the first free climb of Century Crack, the longest and hardest known roof crack climb in the world, in October 2011. Here he is seen upside down 200 feet above the floor of the canyon near the White Rim in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

Whittaker and his climber partner Tom Randall trained for two years for the offwidth crack, meaning the gap was too wide for fist-jamming techniques and too narrow for chimney techniques. Instead the climber must fill the space with a combination of body parts to make slow, grueling progress. "Tom built a small replica of the climb in the cellar of his house. We did continuous training laps on this to prepare ourselves," says Whittaker. "We also did thousands of hours of offwidth-specific abdominal, bicep, shoulder, and leg conditioning."

While across the pond from home, the Brit duo hit every difficult offwidth crack they could find.

Adventure: What was going through your mind at this moment?
Pete Whittaker: At this point of the route I am just approaching the crux. The climb becomes very technical as you go from being upside down in the horizontal plane to getting the correct way up in the vertical plane. A lot of different techniques have to be used at this point. So I was just trying to picture the sequence of moves that I had to execute, whilst I was still climbing and approaching them. I knew if I could get past the next 10ft of climbing then I would be able to complete the route.

Mountainfilm Comes to New York This Weekend

Last night we bumped into David Holbrooke, mastermind behind Mountainfilm, the world-class film festival that explores adventure, exploration, the environment, and world issues each Memorial Day Weekend in Telluride, Colorado. He gave us the skinny on what to do this weekend in New York City: Check out the incredible films and adventurers who have arrived in Gotham for the very first Mountainfilm in New York.

Here's our short list of film picks:

Kadoma - A tribute to Hendri Coetzee and a must see. The legendary expedition kayaker was killed by a 15-foot croc in the Congo last year. A film by Ben Stookesberry, kayaker and former Adventurer of the Year—who will be there in person.

Spoil - A new film by NG explorers Trip Jennings and Andy Maser about the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, home to the spirit bear and teeming with wildlife. Also potentially the site of new oil pipeline....

Cold - Photographer/mountaineer Cory Richards shows what's it's like to climb an 8,000-meter peak in winter. And get caught in an avalanche. 

Alone on the Wall - Our favorite free soloist Alex Honnold on climbing without ropes. A true adventure classic. Alex was also an Adventurer of the Year.

Towers of Ennedi - The North Face climbing team—Renan, Alex, James, Jimmy—takes on the sandstone wonderland of Chad. We first covered this expedition in our Extreme Photo of the Week.

Learn more about Mountainfilm. See the New York schedule here.

 

Bridge Day BASE Jumping Accident - Steph Davis Says Parachutes Don't Fail

Last weekend was the annual New River Gorge Bridge Day Festival in Fayetteville, West Virginia. Thousands converged around 876-foot bridge for fall camping, river adventures, live music, and viewing the pilgrimage of BASE jumpers. This year, Christopher Ryan Brewer, a 27-year-old Florida resident, was among hundreds of BASE jumpers who jumped from the bridge. A You Tube video shows Brewer in a wingsuit making what looks to be a 800-plus-foot belly flop into the river. His parachute did not ease his entry into the water. He's currently being treated for serious injuries. The National Park Service is investigating the incident. 

We asked rock climber-BASE jumper Steph Davis to give us some insight into what went wrong.

Adventure: What did you think when you heard about the accident during Bridge Day?
Steph Davis: It's obviously really sad—hopefully the guy will fully recover. Mario [Richard, Davis's fiance] did the tandem jumps there. I have never been to Bridge Day. I tend to not like huge, staged events with giant crowds of BASE jumpers. It's just really chaotic. It feels like an accident waiting to happen.

It's being reported that the man's parachute did not work?
SD: It seems like every time there is a BASE jumping accident that gets reported to the non-BASE jumping community, they always say the parachute failed. But that doesn't really happen. There's always some sort of incident of pilot error. Or weather conditions. Or a judgment call. Then what will happen, as a result, will be that the parachute does not function as it's supposed to.

It would be kind of like in climbing, ropes don't just break. A climbing article would say something like, the climbing rope failed. Then climbers would say, well, ropes don't fail; climbers put the rope over an edge and then the rope gets cut. So I feel like there is a real verbiage problem in the media.

Gear Reviews: The Best New Cameras

By Contributing Editor Steve Casimiro, editor of Adventure Journal. See more of Casimiro's gear recommendations in our Gear of the Year 2011 - Fall/Winter.

Retro Camera

Photograph courtesy Fujifilm

Fujifilm’s X100 

At last, a great-looking retro camera that shoots as good as it looks. Fujifilm’s X100 is the runaway camera of the year, thanks to its 1950s rangefinder styling. But this is one digital model that backs up its pretty facade with dynamite performance. Photos produced by the 12.2-megapixel CMOS sensor are stunningly true to life, with the strong color accuracy, great skin tones, and a minimum of noise even in low-light situations. The metal body feels rugged but not heavy, the flash results look natural and blend nicely with ambient light, and the viewfinder displays all the settings you need. Oh, and the operation is nearly silent. Its best application might be for travel shooting, where being unobtrusive counts. Keep in mind its fixed focal length lens (f/2, 35mm equivalent) can’t be swapped for a telephoto ($1,200; www.finepix-x100.com).

Rugged Camera

Photograph courtesy Nikon

Coolpix AW100 

It has to be said: What took you guys so long? Nikon was the second-to-last major camera manufacturer to make a rugged point and shoot, but the very tough Coolpix AW100 was it worth the wait. The Nikon is packed with high-quality specs, including full HD video at 1080p, and it cranks out top-shelf images in challenging conditions. It’s drop-proof from five feet, waterproof to 33 feet, and freeze-proof to 14ºF. ($380; www.nikonusa.com)


Compact Camera

Photograph courtesy Olympus Imaging America Inc.

Olympus E-P3 

The first versions of the compact Olympus E-P series performed as if they had a Celica engine in a Corvette body, but no more. The E-P3 is a hot rod under the hood. Critically, its autofocus is blazingly fast—it evaluates focus 120 times a second—and combined with 3.0 frames per second shooting rate you get a compact camera that’ll grab action like a much bigger DSLR. There’s a new built-in flash, too. And with the Micro Four-Thirds format, you can swap lenses for a bigger zoom or better light gathering, depending on whether you want to pull in the big game or shoot after sunset—the versatility is incredible ($900;www.olympus.com).

 

Outdoor Skills + Advice: A Challenge to Parents: Go Outside With Your Kids Every Day

By Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin, Field Instructor and Diversity and Inclusion Manager at the National Outdoor Leadership School; Photograph by Julie Hwang

I had the trip planned for months. Reserved two llamas from Lander Llama Company. Made and remade my packing list ten times. Took my Deuter Kid Comfort II pack on some test runs. Mapped out the route and got permits. We would spend a night in a spot I call “Beaver Meadow,” where the Popo Agie River oxbows and creeps through beaver lodges and willow stands, the perfect evening snack spot for moose. Then a few nights in Stough Creek Basin, a high alpine basin on Roaring Fork Mountain. Then we would wander over to Deep Creek Lakes for a few days, leaving the llamas down at camp for the day, to summit Wind River Peak.

All in all, it would be eight days in the mountains with my husband, our four-year-old, and two llamas packing our gear. Not a hard-core adventure ... by any stretch of the imagination. Without the kiddo, Jamie and I could probably hike the whole route in a couple of days. But we knew better than to be ambitious. We would go at Kieran’s pace. If that meant stopping for an hour to admire a bug, or throwing rocks in the river for another two hours, that would be ok.

Kieran was beyond psyched.

“Amma [mom in Tamil]? Are we going into the Wind River Mountains with the llamas tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow. Four weeks from now.”

Same question the next day. Similar answer. The clock was ticking down to go time.

But that is when life got in the way, as it often does.

Video: In Spain, Climber Chris Sharma Preps For the World's First 5.15c and Settles Down

Chris Sharma: A Sense Of Place from Prana Living on Vimeo.

We checked in with the indefatigable Chris Sharma, known for rock climbing the hardest routes on Earth. Once a world-wandering rock hound, Sharma has now put roots down in Catalonia, Spain, the limestone epicenter for sport climbing. Far from resting on his laurels, the 30-year-old is quietly training for the world's hardest rock climbing route—a 5.15c—and marveling at the golden age of rock climbing that is upon us. —Mary Anne Potts

Adventure: Are you still deepwater soloing these days?
Chris Sharma: I am here in Mallorca [Spain] doing some deepwater soloing right now. I haven't been here for a while. I've really gotten into sport climbing over the last few years. I actually have some good friends from Santa Cruz, California, who are visiting. I've been giving them a tour. And we've been doing some deepwater soloing. It's really cool for me to come back to Mallorca. 

What does Spain have to offer a rock hound like you? 
CS: I live in Catalonia, the province of Lleida, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It's a really special place right now. In the 1990s southern France was the epicenter of sport climbing. Everyone around the world would go to the south of France. That was where the best competitions were. That's were the standards were being set.

And now that has moved to Catalonia. That has to do with me living there, establishing a lot of the hard routes. But then, just in general, it's really an international epicenter. Everyone goes there. It's where all the hardest climbs are right now. The grade 5.15, which is pretty much the highest level out there, there are a handful of these routes around the world. But 90 percent of these routes are in Catalonia in Spain.

Climbers Anker, Chin, Ozturk Claim Meru's Shark's Fin Summit, One of World's Most Challenging

Tents at Tapocan base camp glow in the Himalaya night.

By Samantha Cook; Photographs courtesy The North Face

For more than 40 years the Shark’s Fin, a route on the northwest face of the 20,700-foot Meru in the Garhwal Himalaya, eluded the attempts of some of the world's top alpinists and remained one of the last unclimbed features of the region. Not anymore.

The North Face athletes Conrad Anker (right), Jimmy Chin (center), and Renan Ozturk (left) reached the summit today, nearly week ahead of schedule. Their feat is notable. Shark’s Fin is considered on the world's most challenging climbs, as its terrain is diverse. The lower third is a classic alpine snow-and-ice route, the middle a mix of ice and rock, and the final section is an extremely difficult, overhanging headwall.

The trio was well aware of the difficulties they would face. They had attempted the route in 2008, but were forced to turn around when they were just 100 meters from the summit.

“It’s some of the most technical, high-altitude climbing on Earth in unimaginably punishing conditions,” said Anker. “This time we came back to settle some unfinished business. We all had something that kept us motivated.”
The team was determined to not repeat their previous experience. They spent three weeks at the base camp of Tapocan acclimating, sorting gear, and studying the precarious climb that lay ahead of them. Their fortitude paid off, and the Shark’s Fin was completed in just six days, unhindered by any sort of setback. Besides their familiarity with the route, the climbers credited favorable weather conditions and the strength of each individual team member to their success.

“We all complement each other well,” said Ozturk, who participated in the expedition just five months after fracturing his vertebrae and skull in a ski-mountaineering accident in Jackson, Wyoming. “Conrad is the ice- and aid-climbing master, Jimmy is strong on aid-climbing and steep, snow trenching, and I’m more tuned for the free climbing required on the climb’s middle section.”

For Ozturk, the reward of the climb was less about being the first alpinists to complete it, and more about the cultural experiences and stunning landscapes him and his teammates were able to experience together. “Climbing with such close friends in one of the most visually stunning parts of the Himalaya is the kind of adventure that fuels my soul,” he said.

Travel Tech: Air Display App Adds Instant Screen Real Estate on the Go

By Contributing Editor Steve Casimiro, editor of Adventure Journal. See more of Casimiro's gear recommendations in our Gear of the Year 2011 -  Fall-Winter >>

The Air Display ($9.99) app solves a problem of the modern world: Not enough screen. Even on a 15-inch laptop, real estate is lacking. Processes as simple as emailing can feel constrained and if you’re working on something more involved, say, bouncing between Power Point and a spreadsheet, forget about it. But Air Display turns your iPad (or iPhone, but let’s get real) into a second display and, while we aren’t talking about magically adding a 30-inch big screen, it does improve the situation dramatically.

Gear of the Year Fall-Winter 2011 Awards Are Here

Gear is close to all of our hearts. It keeps us dry and safe. It renders "bad" weather harmless. It helps us explore new places and challenge ourselves in ways we couldn't otherwise. And it just keeps getting better.

For our Gear of the Year Fall-Winter 2011 awards, longtime Adventure contributor Steve Casimiro scoured the best of the best new gear to shape a collection of products that says something about where we are today. Besides core responsibilities to keep us warm, dry, and safe, we've evolved to also expect quite a lot from our gear these days—which is obvious from this spread. So check out the goods. You're sure to find a thing or two you really, really need. 

—Mary Anne Potts