Climbing in the Alps all winter, I put the Terra Nova Quasar pack and its “Ultra” fabric through an ice-and-granite gauntlet. While the pack is a little worse for the wear, it’s come out on the other side still capable of holding my gear.
Birth is Dukkha, aging is Dukkha, death is Dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are Dukkha; association with the unbeloved is Dukkha; separation from the loved is Dukkha; not getting what is wanted is Dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are Dukkha.
With slim webbing straps, light weight and, of course, the ponytail hole, the Elia offers women-specific features that suggest it may have even been designed by a real she-climber (or at least a man on good terms with his feminine side).
The social climate of the Caucasus was rocked politically and economically by these measures. “The area is still dangerous may be even more than before…due to the year-long economic blockade, the local people became more desperate and chance of being robbed or killed for the reason of robbery is very obvious,” writes Alex Trubachev, a guide based in Moscow whose company has halted their Elbrus tours. “Locals have lost everything–two seasons of nothing,” agrees Myasnikov.
