Instead of collecting new feathers, Neokdun recycles down that has been sterilized from old duvets in its special processing plant. The Spanish company Ternua works with Neokdun to process the down in their 800-fill power Loughor jacket.
Eric Klimt, a climber, teacher and videographer from Baltimore, Maryland, passed away in a climbing accident in Zion National Park on March 9. His family remembers him as an adventurer who projected routes around the globe. To remember Eric and his adventures, the Klimt family will hold two services.
The rope is the single most important piece in your pack. During alpine climbs, the rope is subject to needle-sharp crampons, errant ice tools, rock and ice fall, and abrasive terrain while climbing and descending. For me, the most important qualities to look for in a rope are: durability, minimal weight, ease in handling and a permanent, obvious center mark.
In 1904 the artist Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh wrote of the landscape that became Zion National Park: “Never before has such a naked mountain of rock entered into our minds!… There is almost nothing to compare to it. Niagara has the beauty of energy; the Grand Canyon, of immensity; the Yellowstone, of singularity; the Yosemite, of altitude; the ocean, of power; this great temple, of eternity.”
During the mid-1980s, Steve Hong was finishing his medical studies at the University of Utah, but he wasn’t yet done with his youthful antics. On weekends, he and his partners explored Indian Creek’s arid landscape of silent towers, crimson walls and grazing cattle. There, they found fissures that would eventually rank as iconic desert climbs. One was a 160-foot crack leading skyward up a smooth panel of maroon and orange varnish
Maybe Jerry Seinfeld said it best in one of his stand-up bits when he said that the helmet is designed “to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it’s in.” As climbers and skiers, we embrace some risks while seeking to minimize others, and wearing a helmet seems like the obvious way to continue doing both.
ONLY A FEW CLIMBERS have seen Mt. Chobutse, the 6686-meter mountain above my village in the Rolwaling Valley of Nepal. In Tibetan scripture, the original name of the peak is Khang Tagri. Although the north and south ridges rise in gradual arcs, the west face looks as sharp as an upturned axe.
