Gear guilt, ski-touring, and falling in love with Hilleberg.

Buying gear feels indulgent. It feels like I read about gear too much, which seems consumerist and shallow. My cynical view is that I buy whatever accoutrements needed to live out the little fantasy I have of myself, like Barbie doll accessories. Which at the very least was once true, I went through the adolescent search for an identity with a costly and varied path; rugby, karate, football, fishing etc. All hobbies dabbled with for an intense moment, and then left behind, piles of flash gear growing dusty in the wardrobe. I kind of feel that's why the Irish economy has fallen apart, I've moved out and nobody's buying shit anymore. Now that I'm a little older, I'm kind of allowing myself to not be so cynical about buying gear. I've picked up a few hobbies that resonate enough with me to stick. BJJ and climbing both feel like long-term partners that have much to offer over the next couple of decades. And all BJJ needs is a cup, which is optional depending on how delicate your balls are. On the other hand climbing can be a gear-addicts wet dream.

Skiing is something that has really challenged this gear cynicism, because without the gear, there is no skiing. Ever since I moved to Sweden I started to pick up XC skiing, because without it Sweden in Winter is a morass, and people that can't ski are looked upon by the locals as being a bit shit. Ski touring was a related skill that seemed a little more complex to get into, but I enjoyed the idea of it so much that I spent a lot of effort investigating every aspect of touring. Books on touring and free-heel skiing were bought, and a whole stack of data about gear assimilated. And I felt guilty, because here I was, thirty years old now, still wanking over shiny new toys I would never have the tenacity or patience to master. I still had a dream though, mental pictures of myself skinning up a mountain, pathfinding in a white-out, sleeping through a blizzard, skiing down terrifying slopes…

In the end I got annoyed at my day-dreams ending with "Maybe some day in the future". So in a fit of mental haphazardness I spent way too much money on a ton of incredibly expensive, incredibly beautifully engineered touring gear.

Then I pushed myself into picking up this shit, putting it on and learning how to use it. And within a few months I had toured up and down a mountain or two, navigated across the mountainous Swedish-Norwegian border in a dizzying, nauseating white-out, slept through a few blizzards and skied down some extremely terrifying slopes. This whole transformation in my skill set/experiences happened over just a few trips. So I thought it would be cool to scribe out my journey into free-heel skiing, because if you, my dear reader, want to take that journey, I want to encourage you very much to do it. All you have to do is spend loads of fucking money.

The first three times I downhill skied, was in 2010, January 2012 and February 2012, at a very gentle Swedish resort called Romme Alpin. It is not very alpine. I rented some gear, and an incredibly patient German coworker took me from being unable to stand on the skis, to being able to get down a red slope in one piece, despite the occasional ass slide.

At this point I realised that if I wanted to progress to touring, I would have to choose between Telemark or Randonnée. Telemark skis have a free heel all the time, and you have to be very skilful to ski downhill with free heels. Randonnée makes the gear skilful instead, you have free heels when touring, and press a button to fix the heels for conventional downhill skiing. Telemark takes a long time to master, whereas I thought I could now handle the fixed heel downhill, alpine part of the Randonnée tour. The equipment was way cooler too. So on the fourth round, at Kungsberget, a more jump orientated ski resort, I had my own Dynafit skis and boots. Words cannot describe how beautiful the Dynafit gear is.

I was just about starting to get the hang of the skis that day, when one of our party took a bad fall, got a savage concussion and I had to take him to the ER. And on the way, I couldn't help but notice how warm and sunny it was. And how little snow was on the ground. The season was over for 2012. Boo!

However in Sweden we are lucky enough to have time machine trains, that can transport you back to Winter for around 150 euro. So the fifth ski-time took place 200 km North of the Arctic circle, at Riksgränsen, a sprawling complex of lifts that cling like cobwebs over the massive shoulder of a raw, boulder strew mountain straddling the northern reaches of the Swedish-Norwegian border. I spent a lot of time skiing downhill off-piste, and did my first real Randonnée tour (and saw my first avalanche!).

The sixth and most recent ski trip took place at Katterjokk, near Riksgränsen. This was definitely a break-through for me. I took a half-day of private tuition, learnt how to really make the skis work while saving my energy, and after that I didn't feel exhausted after a long off-piste bash, I felt in-control and capable. This was also total exhilaration, from a dizzying height with what felt like ridiculously steep drops, to travel with tight jump turns down a pinched couloir at breath-taking speed. An instant heroin hook.

These long trips in Norrland were done with a guy I climb with, Nisse. And this dude is the same in skiing as he is in climbing. Last year I would go to a crag and find routes I could do, and then do them. After I started climbing with Nisse, we would go to a crag, and find routes we wished we could do, and then do them. It took a hell more blood/sweat/tears but I saw my skillset grow in leaps and bounds. It was the same with skiing, instead of practising on pisted slopes over and over, I tagged along with the bad boys and terrified myself down, what seemed to me to be, vertical drops. After a day of 'ardcore, heading along a pisted route back to my tent in the evenings seemed horribly tame. It felt like going XC-skiing in prepared ski-tracks, mindless and predictable.

The most recent trip was also notable for having constant storms, almost from start to finish, four days later. Almost non-stop near-gale winds, with non-stop wind drift and heavy snow. I was prewarned though, the last trip had been pretty terrible at times. Then I had had a tidy snow-cave to retreat to, but this time I had Michi's Staikka. It was my first time in a Hilleberg, but by Pluto's beard it won't be my last. Fucking incredible from erecting to packing away. OK, 3.6 kg is ridiculous for one person, but it was very much a base camp tent so the weight was less of an issue. I set it up on day one and took it down when heading home.

The Staikka has three crossing poles, is self standing, and was tied down with a load of MSR blizzard stakes, which I stamped almost a metre down into the snow. I dug a hole in the vestibule to have my boots in, and at night would string a few extra guylines out to my skis. Plenty of room for digging a little kitchen into the second vestibule, and loads of room to lounge around reading, while the wind went apeshit outside.

Rock solid, unshakeable in non-stop screaming wind. Day one I had built a wall of snow around one half of the tent to shelter it, but in the middle of the second night the wind shifted and the bowed walls woke me up. I was too exhausted to care, and in the morning the storm had built its own wall of snow on the exposed side. I never really got Hillebergs before, but now I do. It's a storm shelter you can put up solo, in two minutes, and it's bombproof. Funnily enough one of the rare Hilleberg staff was with my gang of skiers, but he stayed in a hostel. For SHAME!

I can't justify 3.6 kg, but as I'm heading to the states in June I plan to pick up a bargain USD priced Unna or Soulo for these kind of horrible winter conditions. There are lighter options out there that might possibly handle this kind of weather, but 1.5/1.6 kg for a 'fire and forget' gale-proof tent is well within my guidelines for reasonable. Probably useful to have something self-standing for kayak trips too.

More fucking gear though. Gear-guilt is an annoying feeling, it seems so unjustified! I just wrote about the ColdAvenger recently, without it I would have had a much less fun time out in this rough weather (during one particularly harsh moment a huge crowd of skiers were hunkered down behind a huge boulder on the summit, trying to protect their faces from the horizontally blown, diamond sharp hail, while inside the ColdAvenger my baby-soft skin was as safe as a bank Volvo). All this pricey touring gear made me feel guilty, but without it I would never have had these amazing trips. Six months ago I had a little more savings, but if six months ago me had seen what I was doing on these skis, he would have shit himself out of jealousy (that's my go-to reaction for jealousy). The price of all the gear and all the travel and food was hefty, but still a bargain in exchange for the experiences I've had. So surely it's silly to always feel guilty over buying gear, when it allows us to partake in these fantastic adventures? Fellow hiking blogger Martin Rye puts it nicely here, when he says "Get trip focused and not gear focused.  Gear is a means to an end." Wise words, and for me, the Staika and Dynafit gear made a hell of a means to a hell of an end.

Feel free to reply in the comments and tell me that I'm not a consumer whore for buying all this shit. 

Fixing the Talus ColdAvenger

Feel free to skip the adulation and bitching, and head straight to fixing the fogging.
I've been using the Talus ColdAvenger for about two years now, and it's been a bittersweet relationship. You know those write-ups after trips where people go through gear that worked, and gear that didn't work? The ColdAvenger is Schrödinger's cat for those lists, it both works and doesn't work. In Winter it's something I consistently use and rely on, and yet it regularly annoys the shit out of me.

You can see both parts of the USA made 'Expedition balaclava' above, the ridiculously large balaclava (90 g), and attached to it by velcro wings, the face mask with polyurethane ventilator (50 g).

It doesn't have so many decent competitors, although the insane helmet/goggles/face mask/Stormtrooper getup from Ruroc stands out. The ColdAvenger has its kinky surgical rubber, air warming and moistening niche pretty much to itself.

The good points about the mask are that it does everything it claims to. When sitting on your face, moist and tight like a facehugger from 'Aliens', it doesn't matter if the temperature is -10 °C, or -30 °C, you get to breath comfortably and easily as your exhalations warm and moisten the incoming air. There is an adjustable ventilator in the facemask that can be rotated to change the amount of outside air that comes in, although it's something I've never played with. Even when boot packing up steep snow-covered hills, with burning lungs gasping for air, the mask feels open and easy to breath through. It gets wet and drippy, but mostly on the rubber part itself, so it's not as disgustingly soggy as you might think.

The softshell balaclava keeps your head warm, and is windproof enough that you rarely feel a draught. It has a long flowing neck that can sit snugly under your jacket. Velcro is something I try to avoid (short lifespan, easily clogged with hair and dirt, annoyingly catch on other gear and rip it up, etc), the velcro attachments to fix the mask to the balaclava work pretty well though. Together with the usual winter gear (base layers and insulated jacket/mittens), the ColdAvenger with some goggles forms a perfect cocoon around you. It feels a little like being in a biohazard suit, safe and armored against the outer environment. It's nice to be able to just lounge around in killer weather without a care in the world, and without getting horrible dry skin that really cold air always brings.

There are two major flaws, the fogging and the fit. Fogging is caused by the mask part of the ColdAvenger allowing a little moist air to blow up from where the top of the mask meets your nose, this moist air condenses/freezes onto the goggles/glasses/eyelashes. This is infinitely frustrating, constantly having to stop and try to fine-tune your goggles with freezing digits, invariably with little success. Once the fogging starts, it never fucking ends, and the bastard ColdAvenger loves nothing more than fogging up your goggles.

It comes with a little piece of foam that if fixed on the inside of the mask will reduce the air leaking out, but it didn't work and got lost fast.

The fit of the balaclava is also so woeful that it's almost comic. I have a large head, 61 cm, and the top of the balaclava sits relatively well. It then billows out to the long, droopy sides, and the part under the chin was obviously designed for bloodhounds. The neck part would probably double as a sleeping bag for the ultra-obese, and the fit around the eyes was apparently cut for rabbits, or some kind of animal with eyes on opposite sides of its skull. When putting it all together the mask-part can pull the balaclava tightly around my face, but what inevitably happens is that folds of the balaclava material get mushed around my eyes/mouth, or else causes a long gap between the bottom of the mask and the beginning of the chin of the balaclava. The fit is shit.

That all sounds a little negative, but I meant what I said about how well it works. The fit doesn't matter so much, my winter clothes are often hooded over the ColdAvenger, keeping that misshapen abortion under wraps. The fogging is a pain in the ass, but has now been cured.

I work around the shortcomings, and despite these niggles the ColdAvenger is just indispensable. I remember thinking it was expensive when I bought it, but if I look back at how often I use and appreciate it, and how during Winter trips it gets put on as I leave the car park and stays on until I arrive home, the cost seems absolutely negligible.
I use it when cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, long skating, or just for wandering walks in Winter when the wind is blowing, and even sleep with it on during skiigloo trips (it works perfectly with a quilt). So great value for money despite the flaws.

Fixing the fogging
Ignoring the fit is relatively easy, however the fogging is a pain in the ass. And unlike the fit of the balaclava, you can't adjust during a trip to stop fogging. Once the goggles get fogged, it's a nightmare to get them totally clear again. So I decided to try and mod the facemask a little to prevent this problem.

I spend a lot of time in a lab wearing face masks. There's no fogging in the lab, but I get really annoyed by the feeling of vented air blowing up into my eyes, so I've become very good at bending the little wire piece in the mask to make an airtight seal. To fix the ColdAvenger, I took out one of those little metal pieces and threaded it into the mask.

The stitches on the mark were simple to pop out, it was a very heavy thread and only around three loops needed to be pulled out.

Then a metal piece from a face mask was cut out and slid into the ColdAvenger. I think it's basically the same metal piece that you get in freezer bag ties (two malleable metal wires on either side of a stiff white plastic piece), so that could be used instead. I just used one from this mask because it was a nice width.

That was it! I was expecting it to be more difficult. The stitching was clumsily redone, and the wire bent savagely as a test.

This was done before the Easter ski touring, and over that trip the ColdAvenger was as indispensable as ever. For the first time ever though, there was no fogging at all. I bent the mask into a decent fit on day one, and that was it. As underwhelmingly easy as the modding itself. I am just back from another ski trip to Norrland, and on that trip I noticed the little metal strip was sliding along the seam, so the final edit involved putting little 'stop' sewing pieces on the seam on either side of the strip to keep it in place.

On this second ski tour the weather was abysmal, and I've never been so happy with the ColdAvenger. While other people shielded their faces from the screaming wind cutting across the mountaintop, I felt comfortable without ever having the slightest hint of fogging. Beautiful.

The next job is to work on sewing the balaclava to have a little more form. Or I might just start a deep fat fried lard and mayo diet to get the necessary jowls to fill it out a little. If I was buying a ColdAvenger today I might just grab the mask part (which is sold separately) and use it with one of those much better fitting Röjk 'Coolclavas' instead. 

The ColdAvenger facemask is highly recommended to any dear readers who dig winter camping, and hopefully there will soon be a version 2.0 of the balaclava that isn't modelled to fit Easter island statues.