Tip top on top of the world

The life and times of Alex the snowboarder (cough cough splitboarder) are on hold at least until Christmas in Verbier, however the fun has definitely not stopped. Given my run of fairly serious head injuries this November rather than moving to Canmore to train for the Boardercross season I packed up and headed for Nepal. My gear including one snowboard, bindings for a splitboard (to be purchased after breaking my old one last day of the season at Bogong), hard boots, crampons, harnesses and a sturdy pair of hiking boots to wander up to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and then do a little mountain climb up Island Peak (6200m). 

With an unplanned 24hour stopover in Guangzhou, China - apparently there is this massive city of 15 million people I had never heard of - the holiday was off to a fairly predictably unpredictable start. Some sampling of the local cuisine later I was off on China Southern to arrive in Kathmandu for three hours sleep before I would fly out to start the trek. Hectic. 

Farming in the city - Guangzhou

From the hill in Guangzhou.

The trek itself was a fantastic experience. The trekking wasn't overly challenging, due to the altitude it is only possible to climb around 600m a day, meaning most days were only 3 or 4 hours. The conversations with porters and guides along the way and at tea houses very illuminating of the culture of Nepal. I was pleased to learn to sing a little in Nepali and even managed a basic conversation by the time I was leaving. I learnt many a nepali card game and the jokes about the kanchii didi (little girl big sister) playing with the porters were many. Other pleasures included meeting like minded people from many countries, the delicious dahl bat that was consumed every night and the thousands of cups of "hot ginger." Plus that piece of chocolate cake in Namche Bazaar on the way down and the last night at this bizarre Irish Pub in Lukla with 3 crazy germans were pretty fun too.

My group started with 4 able bodied tourists, one guide, one assistant guide. By the end it was just me climbing Island Peak with the wonderful Sherpa Pema from Khumjung. I could explain the joys of seeing literally the biggest mountains in the world, of losing my jacket as I put my crampons on with frozen hands at 5 am in the morning, but I feel the pictures really do explain it better.

This is a runway - Lukla (google 10 most dangerous airports in the world).

The guide, Ram, and Roshan plus my 3 other fellow group members. Charlie (centre) left with lack of sleep in Namche and poor Damo (second from right) had to be helicoptered out with his Dad Michael after reaching EBC.

Leaving Namche.

Cricket in Khumjung.

That's definitely Everest out my window from Pangboche!

Solar Power in Thukla, combustible things are rare above 4000m and the sun is strong!

Memorials to those that have died on Everest, there are literally thousands on them. 

On the way to base camp - the survivors thus far!

"Boot Skating" on glacial ice - stealing icicles for Roshan and Tetz.

At base camp with my amazing card playing buddies Tetz (left) and Roshan. Oh and these guys carried up everything too. I felt particularly slack the entire walk and would probably carry my own gear next time but I enjoyed the porters company so much it definitely made it worth having them around!

Making it to Kalapathar (5545m) for sunset with a new found friend David from San Diego.

Everest, Lhotse right (looks bigger). I'm pretty happy and a little cold here).

Yep, Everest is pretty cool...

Then after all the shenanigans up near Everest we walked down and around to approach Island Peak from Chukung. Here are some photos from the Summit and on the way down. No going up photos as we left at 2 am and it was dark and bloody cold. I managed to lose a jacket at the crampon point and my head torch wasn't working - I was the ideal climber really! However, Sherpa Pema managed to push and pull me up first on the summit for the day just as the sun was peaking over the mountains!

Unfortunately the Lens didn't open properly in the sub-zero temperatures but this gives you an idea of the sheer number of mountains that were at our eye level. AH-MAZING!

The team happy (and bloody cold) on top of the mountain, my right big toe is still a little tingly!

Apparently we weaved around these crevasses in the dark. Glad I had my Sherpa to show the way.

Ice-Axe shot for my touring buddies back home, Watkin and Jock.

Good times! After a few days in Kathmandu it was off to London to see my big brother and his fiance. I've had a great week here and am about to train and ferry to Amsterdam. Expect an update on the joys of going to slow way across the channel.

How it all fits together

On request from my good friend in Telluride I'm posting some pictures of the binding set up in close up. My next top sheet needs to be something that allows the bindings to stand out more!

Uphill/touring mode. The plates off to the side are popped into your back pack for the walk up.

The very lightweight dynafit toe piece - you can lock in with or without releasing options (though as I haven't skied them really I'm not sure how good the release would be).

These lightweight voile race style (hard boot) toe and heel pieces screw into the normal voile sliding plates that use a pin to secure to the board. A number of men have commented that this really stripped down model wouldn't perform well enough for them. However, I've been really happy with the performance - getting a close fit on the boots is probably the most important/difficult aspect.

Boots strapped in and ready to ride, I was amazed about how easy it was to carve on a very wobbly splitboard as soon as the hard boots came into play. Note that the Dynafit toe pieces are really light, haven't noticed that they are on the board when riding downhill at all.  

I enjoy that the hard boots are a lot closer to the board than a SB binding would be when mounted on the voile plates. This adds to the improved responsiveness. In this vein a better set up would be to prototype a binding that has the required toe/heel loops straight in the slider plates (with no need for the grey plastic you can see). There are a number of splitboarders out there developing this and I'm excited to say what they come up with. However, whether they can customising the size of those bindings to fit a wide range of boots (especially small girly/low in demand size) remains to be seen.

All the gear on my board. As DJ Eddy commented - it's so low profile!

Many ideas for future modifications keep popping up and there is still a lot of room for improvement. I'll keep you posted!

My Splitboard Revolution

The word is in, the new boots are the bomb! I've taken my purchases on two trips thus far and loved the CRAZY CHANGES to my touring performance and riding sick-ness.

About a month ago now my faithful touring man Jock and I took up a friend to the Main Range (or Snowy Mountains), NSW for some exploration. After failing to fill up with petrol before every country service station decided to close on Sunday night we had to sleep a sneaky night in Khancoban. We finally made it to Deah Horse Gap just on the Victorian side of Thredbo.

Life felt rather North American as we stepped straight into skis out of the car. Hell Yeah to foregoing the usual Victorian hike to the snowline!

Such a low profile set up. 

Setting off from the car!

I was mocked for my enthusiasm at the "frictionless" touring mode in my new boots. It felt amazing to be able to raise the heel with so much freedom. The classic line for gloating telemarkers is "free the heel, free the mind" however I'm pretty sure those teleskiers have never felt the absolute freedom that comes from the Dynafit pin system. MIND BLOWING!

The weather on the first day meant that our trip from Dead Horse Gap was rather slower than we wished, therefore we ended up calling it stumps and setting up a pretty epic camp on North Ramshead peak. Check this out...

Home making.

Ski In - Ski Out!

Cooking up a storm in the cave.

Day 1 skiing entailed getting up to "Mt" Kosciuszko for lunch. I italicize the Mt, as Australia's highest mountain, being situated on an unfortunately high plain is more of a hill than a mountain. We Australians sure know how to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Skin-sition on the way to Kosciusko, the pimple in the left background.

At lunch we met a lovely father and son who had old school touring skis to tramp around the high plains. My favourite piece of information gleaned from them was that although they had forgotten tea, coffee, hot chocolate or anything else warm to drink they had fallen in love with hot powdered milk mixed with golden syrup. I'm not sure they will still be loving it back in Sydney.

Getting ready to shred Australia's highest mountain!

Although it might be a bit of a molehill, the 2 turns down under the Kosciuszko cornice was however mighty fun! Jock put in that nice swopping track in front of me. I was happy to get the extra turn in! 

The big ski led us down to Cootapatamba Hut.

This is the smallest hut I've every seen and truly an emergency shelter with little else but two rudimentary bunks. The second story is a ladder access entry in case of high snow levels... Oh the optimism of Australians.

Taking the opportunity to clean my face at the Cootapatamba Creek.

Another chilly night in the snow cave meant lots of sleep. We thought this was meant to be balmy spring skiing, but conditions were decidedly August-like!

Jock is artsy... Thanks for capturing the amazing skies.

Day 2 we decided to go ski South Ramshead and head on out down through the tree line and out to the car.

Chatting + skinning + sunshine = happiness. 

We ran into the father and son couple and tried to induce them to ski with us but they thought that their gear was more suited to the more mellow creek line. Some shared chocolate later we all cruised down through the trees. This was a test of my skills as a true split-board skier. As the terrain was undulating and snowboarding with a 30kg pack is somewhat difficult I decided to use my splitboard without skins on to negotiate the journey to the road. The asymmetry of the board when used as "skis" is somewhat challenging, as is tight tree skiing with a pack on. I was pretty proud of my epic Stem Christies and only had one serious run in with a tree!

After about 30 mins we were back at the car peeling off stinky layers of clothing and socks. I had developed an awesome blister which I swore over a bit in front of the tourists up in the mountains for some tobogganing. Not my best moment!

We wanted to make a cheeky side trip to Hotham on the way home and so braved the Benambra-Corryong road a two hour dirt extravaganza. The road was in much better condition than September 2011 which was a relief. Arriving at Hotham at 7:30pm on Wednesday I was pleased to have a couple of curries in the freezer ready for an end of season a dinner party with extra Hotham friends and a glass or two of schnapps at the pub.

What a trip!

Thanks to Jock Gunn for most of these photos yet again, I love having someone so handy with a camera who will cart it around at all times!

Life is precious

So many sunsets. 

 So much air to breathe. 

 So much to smile at. 

Life is good. 

Embrace each precious moment.

Bumps! Boots!

So after the visit to that little mountain in Victoria... (see the post) the idea was firmly implanted that I needed to get sorted to hardboot if I was going to take splitboarding seriously.

One of the two awesome backcountry gentlemen we ran into for lunch was was rocking a dynafit set up. This is an alternate and fairly recently developed alpine touring set up. It's main advantage being that it is extremely light. It is a compact pin system that pinches the front of your boot to lock in rather than a traditional style touring binding.

Lightweight Dynafit System

A traditional style touring binding

The Dynafit company mission statement says it all - this is a company dedicated to making the uphill as easy as possible while allowing good downhill performance. I thought it must be possible to install the toe piece and leave it on the board whilst riding. This would create an amazing uphill mode and solve part of the slow skinsition issues I was having.

I wandered into Bumps one Thursday morning after visiting my Great Aunt in Elsternwick looking for a new toe strap for my Burton soft boot bindings (which I had lost whilst carrying the splitboard uphill because I couldn't get an edge to traverse). Whilst trying to see if Bumps had Burton stock I noted that they did have a small section of touring gear. I thought I would just ask what they had in the way of touring boots. On getting talking to Byron, a lovely Canadian, I mentioned why I was looking for them and that I would really prefer if they were Dynafit compatible. After overcoming the initial shock that I wanted to snowboard in the boots Byron was totally professional - despite retaining a rather quizzical expression. We determined that it would be possible for him to order in some boots in my size that may work. The price kind of shocked me - I could purchase 3 pairs of regular snowboard boots for the same amount - but I knew ski boots would last a lot longer than soft boots. I left assuring Byron I would call back with my answer on whether I really wanted him to order them. I think he thought he had heard the last of me.

On getting home I decided to do some internet research.  I knew I wasn't the first snowboarder to feel the pinch out in the backcountry. I had seen my coach in Canada set up his board with hard boots, but not with dynafit toe pieces. The internet proved to be a wealth of knowledge yet again. I put a post on the Splitboard Forum looking for advice on how to go about making the switch. I was pretty shocked to get a few responses within 24hours. These Splitters sure are friendly people! It was indicated that the key was getting boots that fit well. So I knew it was time to call back Byron.

Trying on the boots for the first time was amazing. Who knew ski boots could be so light? My Dynafit TLT5s are only 1065g. Whereas an alpine boot advertised as being amazingly lightweight weighs nearly 2000g!!! Furthermore the sole is rockered (like a semicircle) and extremely squishy, I was actually enjoying walking around the store! I was sold within a couple of minutes and had them to take home before you could say splitboard!

My new boots - check them out hanging out in some Nidecker bindings I had borrowed from a friend to confirm the concept would work! I love that they are mauve and white - so feminine for such a macho environment. 

Next stage was getting the right hardware - Dynafit toe pieces and a light weight hardboot binding. This proved fairly simple when Adam from Firstlight Snowboards, a fellow Australian Splitter, introduced himself on the Splitboard Forum and explained which Spark R & D (located in Bozeman, Montana) pieces of hardware I would need. I ordered them and just had to wait for all the right pieces to arrive. It's funny how quickly you can become a local expert in a particular area when you get into highly specialised gear like this.

I'll update you on how it all looks and rides very soon but I had a pretty awesome trip up to Bogong on my old gear recently. So wait for photos of that first!