gear we like, part 6: winter odds and sods

So, the winter season is well and truly upon us, and I’m still too ill to take any real advantage of it. Great. That said, the past few of times I have been out (both in Wales and a recent trip to the Cairngorms), I have been trialling and contemplating some very simple gear ideas, and it’s time to tell the world!

• Cycling Glasses

Ok, what the hell am I on about now – cycling glasses for winter climbing? Oh yes. Check me out!

Ok, I look stupid.

So why am I wearing them? Well, since I started wearing contact lenses to climb, rather than just wearing my normal glasses, I’ve realised that I feel a little vulnerable in the face area, which is especially relevant to me as I seem to be a magnet for falling ice. I contemplated using a helmet visor, but the one available for the Grivel Salamander is more of a peak than a visor, and not what I was looking for, so the thought of ‘safety glasses’ struck me next, and hence, on a recent trip to Decathlon I found myself looking at clear cycling glasses, admiring the amount of face coverage they provide, and also feeling stunned by how cheap they were (£8 I think). They are now a constant companion on the winter hills – ace for protecting eyes from falling ice, spindrift, or even just the wind. They’re no replacement for goggles when the sh*t really hits the fan, but I’d say a good 90% of the time a pair of these are a great thing to wear as they’re comfortable enough that you forget you’re wearing them and provide you with a nice protective barrier to boot.

• £9 Casio Digital Watch from Argos

Another slightly revolutionary concept here – a cheap but tough digital watch, but not to wear on your wrist…

When winter climbing you’ll inevitably be wearing multiple layers and gloves, which means that wearing a wrist watch is either not an option at all (i.e. if you’re like me and find the watch plus glove cuff combo excruciatingly uncomfortable), or you wear one but it is underneath your many layers and a total pain to actually be able to look at.

Really there are three main options for telling the time on the hill in winter: 1) wear a watch normally and suffer the consequences, 2) wear a watch over the top of your clothing layers and suffer the consequences, or 3) don’t wear a watch at all (rely on your partner, or have some form of clock stashed elsewhere).

So far this year I have chosen varieties of option 3 every time – usually either relying on my partner wearing a watch, or digging my phone out of my pocket, neither of which are particularly good options really. My latest notion, is to use a watch permanently attached to my rucksack strap, mounted upside down so I can simply glance down and see what the time is, no hassle! Now, obviously this won’t work if I’m not climbing with the bag on, but most of the time I spend out in winter I will be wearing my rucksack, or it will be close by, so theoretically this could be a great solutions, only time will tell (sorry!).

So there we go – as you can see in the picture, my new cheap retro casio fits onto the webbing strap of my Berghaus Arete perfectly – they’re almost made for each other! All I had to do was remove the watch strap, and refit the pins around the webbing (so the webbing is effectively just a replacement watch strap). I will admit that it was a touch fiddly, but the result is stunning – no cable ties or duct tape in sight!

The reason I chose this watch (I think the model is an F-91W or something), was because it was a) cheap, b) digital (don’t want an analogue watch as it’ll be more fragile with all the moving parts), c) water resistant, d) long proven to be pretty much indestructible (I know people who have had these for years, put them through hell and they just keep on and on working), e) low profile/thin/small and f) has a replaceable strap and not a built in rubber thing. In other words, it is perfect for what I wanted here – it even has the added bonus of having a light and functionality as a stopwatch or alarm.

gear we like, part 5: guidebook covers

Have you ever found yourself half way up one of several pitches on a route, looking up at two crack systems running in different directions, trying desperately to remember which way the guidebook said to head to find the belay stance?

Or have you ever sorted your gear at a stance, prepared to head off up the wall but then realised that you can’t remember which way the damned route actually goes, and nor can your partner (this is especially relevant if, like me, you enjoy climbing in the Moelwyns).

Have you ever simply guessed which way to head and been wrong, finding yourself stuck out on a blank wall in the middle of nowhere with no gear to be found, wondering what on earth you are going to do as you valiantly fight to hold your sphincter closed?

If you can relate to any of the above scenarios, my guess is that you often don’t bother to carry the guidebook with you on routes. There are several reasons why carrying the guide can be a total pain:

• They can be quite heavy
• They are generally pretty bulky
• Fitting a guidebook into a pocket is usually insanely uncomfortable and sometimes impossible (if you don’t have a pocket big enough for instance)

Having experienced a number of ‘route finding challenges’ over the course of my climbing career, the notion of actually taking the guidebook with us on routes that could be more involved than a single pitch ‘follow the crack’ type jobby, had started to become more and more sensible in my mind. I still hated doing it mind you, as I never had a pocket big enough to fit the damned thing in and always had to shove it down my shirt, which, as you can probably imagine, isn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world (especially if it has sharp corners and you’re climbing a chimney…)

One day one of my climbing partners turned up at the crag with a DMM guidebook cover. My first thought was one of ‘great, just an extra thing to carry’, shortly followed by ‘hmm, interesting, looks like you can just clip it onto your harness’.

In case you haven’t yet grasped why guidebook covers are a truly brilliant invention, it is for one reason and one reason alone:

• You can clip them to your harness.

Ok so this doesn’t get around the weight issue, but the bulk and lack of suitable pockets suddenly doesn’t really matter – you can simply hang the thing out of the way at the back of your harness.

Brilliant.

So when you’re stood at that belay stance you can simply grab the guidebook and have a read to refresh your memory, rather than relying on a vague and distant mental image of the crag topo that you spent all of about 3 seconds looking at before you started the first pitch 3 hours ago. All of a sudden, when you’re staring up at those two opposing crack systems, you can fumble the book into view and read which one you’re supposed to take (or even better, you can leave the book with your second and get them to read it out to you!).

Oh, and you can leave it attached to you whilst you read – no more risk of fumbling the book out of an ill fitting pocket and then dropping it down the crag into the undergrowth of oblivion.

Here you can see Patrick carrying the guidebook on his harness – I’ve highlighted it to make it easier to spot

Several companies make guidebook covers, off the top of my head I’ve seen ones made by DMM (the one I use), Outdoor Designs and POD. There are probably others too. They all do the same job and all look good, the DMM is made of Neoprene and therefore stretches to fit slightly chunkier guidebooks (such as the Ground Up North Wales Rock book), but from looking at the likes of the POD which is made from Ripstop Nylon, these are sized brilliantly to accommodate books of varying sizes anyway.

I have never used a ‘larger’ cover for guidebooks of the RockFax size category, simply because these really do seem to be getting too big and bulky to have dangling from your harness. I could be wrong, and they could be fine, but to be honest I haven’t found any need to ever carry a RockFax guide up a route as they generally tend to cover mostly single pitch routes where using your memory shouldn’t be a problem. That said, I can foresee a cover for my new Pembroke guide may prove useful as you need to abseil in to the routes and will almost certainly need the guide at the bottom…

gear we like, part 4: headbands

Ok so this one is going to be a touch controversial as not everyone looks good in a headband…in fact some would probably say that nobody looks good in a headband, but I would like to offer some evidence to the contrary, take this picture of my friend Matt, doesn’t he just look lovely?

Seeing as it is just a tiny bit unfair of me to use Matt as my sole [mildly embarrassing] example of headband wearing (sorry Matt!), here is a picture of me wearing mine to balance things out:

You’re probably now wondering why on Earth I am singing the praises of fleecy headbands now that I have managed to establish that they aren’t exactly the height of fashion (unless of course you wear one with sunglasses too, then you get points for the ‘French Alpine Guide’ look – after all, as everyone knows, French Alpine Guides are all about looking chic whilst p*ssing everyone else off with their lack of consideration or manners…but I digress…), so here we go.

Advantages:

• Keeps your ears warm (especially good when there is a biting cold wind)
• Don’t make you overheat as much as a hat when working hard (so fantastic for hill walking and walk-ins to climbs when it isn’t super cold, but still cold enough to want something on your head)
• Fits well under a helmet (doing pretty much the same job as a hat, bearing in mind your helmet will cover the top of your head anyway)
• Can be worn underneath a hat to give even more protection to your ears (great if your hat doesn’t quite cover your ears, or if it is really, really cold)

Disadvantages:

• Not as warm as a hat (duh!)
• Makes you look a bit ‘special’ (unless you’re in the Alps)

I must comment though, my head is obviously slightly smaller than the average circumference as it took me ages to find a headband that actually fit and didn’t slip down (thank you to Patrick and his trip to Millets of all places!!), so whilst they may well mostly be labelled as ‘one size fits all’, I can assure you, they don’t!

Also, in the UK outdoorsy headbands only seem to be available in black, which is arguably the best colour for most things, but I can’t help but think a funky brightly coloured one (or even one with stripes?!) would be great, after all you’re already choosing to look a bit odd by wearing one, so why not stand out properly!

gear we like, part 3: flasks and hot drinks

• Flasks

Not a part of everyone’s gear loadout I know, even in winter there are a number of people I know who still prefer to take a bottle of water or squash out, but for me the flask is the king of cold weather hydration!

(Note: lots of people carry both a bottle of water and a small flask of hot drink, I only tend to do this if I am doing a big big day where I will be needing lots of fluid – i.e. days where I pack the camelbak as my primary source of hydration, and the flask becomes a luxury morale booster.)

Anyone that knows me, knows that I drink alot of tea. I can’t stand coffee, I do partake of the occasional good hot chocolate, but primarily I am a tea drinker. Funnily enough I never used to drink all that much of the stuff, but working in an office meant I learned the time-wasting value of a trip to the kettle (especially if you were making drinks for 5+ other people, but I digress…), oh and of course Phil (my dearly beloved) is apparently addicted to the stuff. I should really run a tally of how many cups he averages a day – could prove quite interesting. Anyway, I seem to have digressed again, so back on topic: flasks and hot drinks on the hill.

Nothing is quite as morale boosting as a nice hot cup of something after you’ve spent the previous hour or so freezing your butt off on some god-forsaken belay half way up some frozen crag. Using a flask to carry a hot drink is also the best way I’ve found of ensuring the fluid you’re carrying is still drinkable when you need it (i.e. it hasn’t frozen as can be the problem with simply carrying a bottle or a camelbak when it is really, really cold).

I guess I don’t really need to say much more do I? Hot drink on the hill – big thumbs up. Still fluid fluids? Humungous thumbs up. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the flask!

(Of course flasks are also great in summer, but winter is for me when they really come into their own.)

• Hot drinks for the hill (aka ‘what to put in the flask’)

Right, so I’ve dug my flask out of the cupboard, ready to fill it with warm goodness, but what exactly should I fill it with? Now I know that everyone is going to have a different opinion on this and many people will go with something coffee related, but as I’ve already mentioned I can’t stand the stuff.

Some people I know go with a hot squash type thing (usually either orange or blackcurrant), and this is far from a bad idea. Personally though, I steer away from these types of thing as I just find them too sickly sweet which then puts me off drinking when I really should.

Hot chocolate is not the most successful of drinks to choose for a flask, simply because you end up with alot of grit in the bottom (I’m obviously talking about simple drinking chocolate powders, I have never experimented with proper hot chocolates in a flask because firstly, it seems like a waste of good hot chocolate, and secondly, because it is again a very sweet drink option and probably not that great a source of hydration anyway).

Tea. You’ve probably already guessed this is where I was heading, but you might be surprised yet!

I’ve already mentioned that I drink alot of tea, and this is bog standard builders tea for the vast majority of the time (for any non-British readers, ‘English Breakfast Tea’ is the stuff – none of this ‘Early Grey’ nonsense). At home our tea of choice is Twining’s Everyday Tea – loose leaf (the only place you seem to be able to buy the loose stuff is Waitrose currently, but the tea bags are everywhere and equally good – we just prefer loose leaf for its cost and waste advantages…anyway…), always with milk but no sugar, thank you.

Now, standard tea with milk is a great drink at home, but is utterly crap from a flask – the milk means it goes all grey and nasty, oh and it stews. If you don’t mind drinking it black, then this is better, but it does still stew, and isn’t entirely pleasant when cold or only lukewarm.

I’m not into herbal teas, but I do like Green teas and White teas (and by White tea I don’t mean tea with milk – White tea is essentially unfermented Black tea). Last year I was using alot of Green teas in my flask as it doesn’t stew anywhere near as much as Black tea and is still actually quite pleasant to drink even when mostly cold. Winner! This year I discovered White tea, which has all the advantages that Green tea does in a flask, but for me tastes even better on the hill (it’s slightly more like standard Black tea in taste I feel, although not by much).

(One additional note about Green tea and White tea, is neither contain caffeine, which can also be an advantage on the hill as caffeine is of course a diuretic.)

All drinks are a matter of personal taste, but if you’re like me and are looking for a good flask drink that is still drinkable when cold and isn’t coffee or squash, I recommend you try some Green or White teas, but for goodness sake only leave the bag in for a few seconds, because if you brew them strong they taste absolutely vile! Green and White teas need to be weak to taste good. Trust me.

So my pick of the drinks, currently, White tea:

gear we like, part 2: belay jackets (and duvets)

I get cold very easily. I’m not sure why, but compared with many of my climbing partners I really do suffer the cold, so for me a piece of kit that can stave off the chills and yet not cause any encumberment when I’m climbing is going to be high on my list of favourite items, and to this end I own two such items – primarily known as belay jackets.

The principle is simple, I want something that isn’t going to get in the way when I’m climbing (so something that I don’t actually wear to climb, but can quickly and easily put on at belays and rest stops, the times when you actually get cold – hence the term ‘belay jacket’), is super warm and goes on on top of everything else I am wearing. There are a vast range of products on the market nowadays that can fulfil the belay jacket type role, and I’m not going to get into the who’s who and what’s what of it all, I will simply talk about the garments I own and have used (extensively).

Firstly, once we’ve gotten into the concept of a jacket you can just throw on over the top of everything else (the last thing you want is to have to take off your shell, put on your new insulation layer and then put your shell back on – this is a faff and a great way of getting even colder, and if it’s snowing or raining, a great way of getting everything else wet!), we get to the question of ‘what type of insulation is best?’, with the two options basically being down or synthetic.

Down

• Super warm (if you buy something with high quality, high fill down)
• Very high warmth to weight ratio
• Very small pack size
• Next to useless when the down gets wet (saturated down loses something like 90% of its insulating capability, but most jackets nowadays have a water-resistant outer of some description to try to prevent this)
• Can spew feathers everywhere if damaged.

Synthetic

• Hard-wearing (and no feathers to come out if you rip the outer material)
• Retains most of its insulating properties even when wet
• Less packable and a lower warmth to weight ratio than down

I’ve probably missed a few point from my lists, but I shall summarise my view of the two types of insulation: down is best when you need to be as small and light as possible, it is also much warmer than synthetic (or should I say, my down jacket (Rab Neutrino Endurance) is much warmer than my synthetic one (Rab Belay Jacket)), but not so good if you anticipate things being particularly cruddy and wet, i.e. when Scottish winter climbing.

My Rab Belay Jacket has been used on many occasions in Scotland and has been a real god-send – it’s big enough and slick enough to literally yank out of the bag and throw on in a matter of seconds – minimal faff. It has good pockets to stick gloves and snacks in, and a huge hood to fit easily over a helmet – the zip also does up to above your nose, essentially sealing you into a cocoon against the elements. Superb. I have even climbed in it when it has been really cold (I also wore it on my ascent of Mont Blanc where it performed admirably).

My super lovely, snuggly, sexy purple Rab Neutrino down jacket is a fairly new aquisition and as such got its first real testing (other than cragging in North Wales and the Peak District) on my recent trip to Norway, and I must say it was fabulous. Ok so ice climbing isn’t exactly the driest of activities (but with it being permanently sub-zero out there the typically British type dampness was not a problem for the most part), with some icefalls still running water in places, but its water resistant Pertex shell meant that the down stayed dry and the jacket stayed snuggly warm. It packs down to be really rather tiny considering its impressive performance (and yes, it does actually pack smaller and is lighter than my synthetic Belay Jacket, despite being massively warmer).

So in short, a belay jacket is something I heartily recommend to anyone heading out climbing in cold or wintery conditions. Oh, and down jackets are pretty much essential if you want to look cool when out bouldering in winter (don’t forget the beanie hat!).

gear we like, part 1: helmets

I’ve been trying to come up with some new ideas for the blog, to keep things fresh and interesting, but sadly have yet to have any real inspiration. As such I’ve had a little think about the blog entries I’ve made that have proven the most popular and useful (ok admittedly I have no real way of knowing which have been most popular, my only means of measuring this is by looking at the number of comments I’ve been receiving. Anyway…), and in my mind, certainly amongst the portion of my readership composed of climbers, the gear reviews, experiments, advice and general witterings seem to have been most popular. Hence, I am beginning a little mini-series, on simple pieces of equipment I have an irrational attachment to.

So here goes, part one of Lauren’s, ‘gear we like’ column.

• Helmets.

Ok I really had to start with this one didn’t I? I mean, this is one incredibly simple piece of gear that may actually have saved my life on occasion (read back over my little rant for a re-cap of one little story).

Now, I’m not going to be specific about which model of helmet I like better than another (although the particular model to which I am hugely grateful was a Petzl Meteor III that sadly now lives on the shelf of horrors, waiting for me to decide whether or not to send it back to Lyon for them to consider its dent!). To be honest, pretty much any helmet designed for climbing will be brilliant at protecting your noggin. (For the record, I am now the proud owner of a very swanky black Grivel Salamander, sorry Petzl, but none of your hard plastic shelled helmets fit my head properly!!)

I should probably mention that the falling ice incident isn’t the only brush I’ve had with head injury, and as such I am probably more inclined to be what some might consider to be ‘overly paranoid’ about helmet wearing. See, my poor skull still hasn’t completely recovered from my alpine incident, leading me to now believe that perhaps the rock did indeed produce a minor hairline fracture…ho hum!

Ok so helmets in winter really are a no-brainer (err, excuse the rather inverted pun there…err…). Falling ice, snow and occasionally gear are all part and parcel of the winter experience, so really you’d have to be pretty silly not to wear a helmet! Summer (aka simple rock climbing – be it in Summer/Autumn/Spring or even Winter on occasion) climbing is a different matter – whether or not you choose to wear a helmet whilst bolt clipping in Kalymnos or climbing easy grit routes in the Peak District or Yorkshire is a matter of personal choice. I’m not going to get into the whole helmet debate on here as a) it is insanely tedious, and even though I’m a bit anal about helmets there are still times when I choose not to wear one, and b) if you really want to get into the helmet discussion, the best place to go is UKC where it has been done to death, multiple times.

So there we have it, gear we like: the humble climbing hard hat!"