Skin Waxing Kit

This past trip up Copper made me think about about how going from sunny snow to shaded snow can really ice up your skins. It's not even like the springtime mush that clings to them, this is full-on ice frozen to skin material. But it's easy to remedy if you are carrying a simple, and I mean simple kit.

It's nothing more than a gift card and a broken off chunk of skin wax. My favorite is Black Diamond Glop Stopper Wax. There are other products to help treat your skins, but they are less portable.

When you get your chunk of Glop Stopper, put it over a sharp edge and break off about a 1" section. There is no need to carry the full bar and grams accumulate! The next component of the kit is a gift card or expired credit card. You could carry an actual wax scraper, but it would be heavier.

When you start to feel resistance, STOP! You might be able to kick off some of the ice as you skin, but it's a losing battle unless you stop and wax. Take off one ski, and scrape the total length of skin with the gift card. You're going for a "squeegee" effect. Once you are satisfied, take your glove off and rub the skin wax the length of the skin. I usually give the portion underfoot a good back and forth rub. Click back in and repeat for the other ski.

Stopping and waxing is a pain, but it's like the deal with the guy cutting a tree down with a dull axe. He doesn't want to take time to fix the problem, so the work is even harder and even more time is spent.

Copper Traverse Trip Report

John and Bob have done this traverse before and I was very grateful to have the opportunity to follow them. Chris and I left town at around 6 a.m. on Sunday in his Trooper and decided that we would take the way through Horseshoe Bend. His wife had gotten hit a few weeks earlier so the rig has some body damage. As we drove down Eagle Road we passed a cop and since we had only one headlight (with a marker light on the side that's out) he whipped around and pulled us over. We were glad that he let us go, I theorized that you could probably get a ticket in Eagle for driving an undetailed vehicle, and without shiny wheels we would have really been in trouble! We were also thinking that we should have said that the vehicle was fine when we were leaving the bar. Which would have been appropriate, since the cop asked if we were aware of the body damage. "Well no officer, we were unaware that the fender fell off. I guess we should go look for it." Finally we were in the woods! We were rewarded with a sighting of a mountain lion in the road. We stopped and watched her meander down the hillside. We arrived at the parking lot right at 8:30 a.m. I amused myself by throwing snowballs at the restroom while John was in there and then gear was donned and dumped and transferred to the shuttle vehicle. Bob and I took off, with Bob breaking trail. A short while latter, John and Chris caught up.

We made it onto the ridge of the first peak and started up. The conditions were very good for skinning. It was nice and cold and the snow was not too deep.

After about two and a half hours we were on the summit and eyeballing the terrain. Oh! The terrain! Don't even ask me where some of this stuff is. Well, you can, but I'll lie! We ate lunch. I had my usual; whatever anyone didn't want. Which was a score since it was one of Chris' most excellent turkey wraps. First rule of Mooch Club: Don't feel guilty about taking what's offered. After lunch we skied some most excellent terrain!

After gaining the saddle again we continued up to another peak and skied off the ridge and onto a flat traverse that gained another saddle. We skirted around a peak and onto Copper's face and up to the summit.

Once on top, with light fading and energy running low we were moving with purpose. Bob and I were going to ski from the summit since there is a glitch in our brains that makes us crave directisimo. John says it's lack of intelligence, but I think it's really just a mild case of blissful ignorance.

I transitioned from skinning to skiing and stomped a gap in the summit cornice to access the chute. Chris and John skied down onto the shoulder and took a sweet looking line down. I slowly slipped down through the gap and cut a small windslab loose. After that is was one turn to the right, then another to the left and so on. Bob boarded through the gap and was next to me in no time. We then survival skied out to the shuttle vehicle and ended a most excellent day!

Copper Traverse Video

Yay! YouTube is up and running. I posted a video from this Sundays traverse of the Copper ridge. It was great to go with John and Bob. They knew right where the best stash was. I am still in awe that the stability was what it was in February! I will post a trip report as soon as I can. Platt has his trip report up on his website.

Here is a link to the Copper Traverse video. Sorry for the poor quality of Bob's run. I had zoomed the camera in thinking it would be better, it wasn't.

Soldier Mountain Backcountry

Just a quick post to drop the link for the video from Saturday. I'll post more about the conditions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDMnovLQWSY

Christmas Eve Dawn Patrol

We have skied Freeman a couple of times and other than the brushy skin track down low, the upper section is great. There is some instability on the steeper angles, but we have had no problems on the ridge or lower angle glades.

We have also constructed an igloo to serve as a warming hut for all that tour up there. It is located on the main ridge at about 7200'. The entrance is on the North side and in line with a dead tree, in case it is snowed over. The first video is the construction of the igloo and the second is Christmas Eve's dawn patrol. Click on the video twice to open it up in YouTube.

Hell's Canyon

I wanted to get out and do some climbing this last week and wanted to get out of town. So we went to Hell's Canyon to the limestone and solitude.

There are so many routes here on the beautiful limestone. You can show up with about 20 draws and a 60m rope, everything is bolted. We set up camp with a great view of the river and the limestone.

We went up and climbed on Glass Wall. It's a great place to start since it's close to camp. The weather was nice, but cold. If the weather would've been about 15 degrees warmer, we would have gotten in more climbing.

Glass Wall

Glass Wall has about 8 routes on it. They start at 5.9 and go to 10c. The arete on the right is a classic 10b, which we didn't get to do. The climbs are about 60 feet and are bolted and have great anchors.

On Sunday, we climbed on Big Bar Buttress. It was very cold and I knew we wouldn't be there long.

Big Bar Buttress

Climbing on Big Bar

Chillin' (literally!) while I set up the anchor

Alex Lowe Duathlon

Steve House said that in remembrance of the passing of Alex Lowe on Oct 5th ten years ago, that we should do something difficult. So I planned a "duathlon" on Sunday. Then I recruited another glutton for suffering, Chris. I wanted to do Heinen and Kepros in the same day. Heinen is a 10 mile hike/run with 3,000' of gain and Kepros is almost 10 miles with a lot less gain. The plan was to hike/run Heinen and mountain bike Kepros. Everything went according to plan, since we had figured that we would have to "hike-a-bike" on Kepros.

Heinen has many false summits and a large headwall to start. Once you make it onto the ridge, the going is very pleasant.

We made it truck to truck in 5 hrs 15 min. Not a great time, but we knew that we would only be half done so we tried to pace ourselves. The downhill didn't do my knee any good, either. We fueled up on Chris' legendary turkey-tortilla wraps. Then we drove to Blacks Creek summit to start the biking leg.

Kepros in the distance

The start of Kepros was as expected with us taking the bikes for a hike. On the top of the ridge where it splits to Three Point, it became rideable. Well, somewhat rideable for me. Chris is really good on the bike and teaches me a lot. He was able to ride down some of the stuff I had to walk. He was giving me a good lesson and by the mid-point of the ride, I was doing a lot better on the downs.

Terrific single track!

The ridge turns into a road in a mile and a half. We met a jeep scouting for deer. The jeep drove all the way to the summit.

Trail meets road (me pointing back to start)

Looking at Heinen from Kepros

The ride back went even better because we found a trail that went around the ridges we had ridden over. We made it back to the truck in 3 hours 30 min. So the total time for our homemade duathlon was 8 hours, 45 min. The real purpose was to feel a little enlightenment through exertion...