In the past couple of months, there are rumors flying around that this Canadian company known for its great outdoor clothing and gear is working on a new avalanche airbag device. And in true Arc’Teryx fashion they are doing it in style.
One revolutionary invention Arc’Teryx went on to patent is to inflate the air bags with surrounding air with help from an electric motor rather than to inflate the air bags with compressed gases from a small cartridge, like all current avalanche airbag manufacturers do.
But that is not the biggest surprise yet!
Arc’Teryx is thinking way outside the box on this one. Instead of following suit and supplying the market with another heavy avalanche airbag backpack they are reinventing the game with their new Adrenaline Dragonfly Jacket.
With this avalanche airbag jacket you don’t heave to carry a pack to be protected. This is especially convenient for in-bounds skiers. But even for backcountry touring because when you sit down for lunch you are likely to take off your pack but not your jacket.
The airbags are positioned on the back sides of the jacket, like dragonfly’s wings, in a way that your backpack does not interfere with the system.
Arc’Teryx usually thinks through every detail of their gear to make it maximally functional. And as you can see they made sure that even colour plays its role – highly visible hues make for faster rescue.
The price is not known yet but we will likely be over $1000 dollars, in line with the rest of Arc’Teryx products.
Stay tuned for more and in the meantime check out the new Scarpa Alien Revelstoke boots.
Archives for May 2012
Chasing an old dream at Duffey: skiing Joffre, Matier, Slalok in 5h 58min
I believe everyone has their mountain dream missions whether it be a ski traverse with friends, a steep line descent, or a new climbing route. Everyone has dreams and everyone gets inspired.
One of mine came to life when I first skied off Mount Matier about 10 years ago. That evening, I and Miki (good friend of mine) imagined skiing the summits of Joffre, Matier, Spetch and Slalok in a day. We planned to have a camp on Matier glacier to allow an early start and a place to return for a nice dinner.
We never went for it.
And in the years since I only skied the N ridge of Matier and Aussie Couloir on Joffre. I never summited or skied Slalok, nor skied the NW face on Matier.
But as time passed the dream was still there, however, taking on a different shape.
I realized that if we ski Slalok then it has to be its north face, otherwise, there is no point.
Then as we progressed it became clear it would be possible to do it all in one big day – starting at Cerise Creek, finishing at Joffre Lakes.
Finally, in the past 3 years, I twisted the dream further as I became more inspired by what ski mountaineering racing was teaching me and seeing how our Canadian skimo racing team was progressing. More came from John Baldwin’s exploratory spirit, Kilian Jornet’s running quests and Ueli Steck’s speed climbs.
The dream was the original but I wondered how fast it could be done.
And an integral part for me is always to do such missions in an unassisted way – you carry all you need, otherwise, there is no point.
The route
At the end I decided to leave out Mt Spetch. Its north face is nice and around 40 degrees but it is only 200m high, and the whole peak is kind of small within its spectacular surroundings.
The final route became – start at Cerise Creek, summit Joffre, ski Aussie, summit Matier, ski its NW face, summit Slalok, ski its N face, finish at Lower Joffre Lk.
The challenge
The most fun but somewhat intimidating part of the whole thing was that I would be skiing the NW face of Matier and the N face of Slalok for the very first time. I liked the unknown element.
Planning
For bigger speed missions I like to plan well because I hate coming out short-handed. By that I mean either not being able to pull it off or not being able to go as fast as I would like to.
I didn’t know whether it was still possible this year. I didn’t know anything about current snow pack and temps as I have not skied at Duffey Lake since early February. So I dug up some recent weather stats, and started to follow temps and weather about 10 days prior.
I knew data knowledge is good but a personal experience would be the best. On May 13th I went up Cayoosh Mt to get a feel for snowpack, and what temps and sun were doing. Also, that I could snap photos of Slalok’s N face so I could study where is the safest to ski it should the day be very warm.
Final piece of my puzzle have not come together though – a ski partner. However, there was no time to stress about it as it fell through at a late stage and the right conditions (snow, day temps, weather, desire…) were/are running out.
I decided to go through with it solo as I did in the past when I couldn’t agree on conditions with a friend over a speedy Spearhead Traverse mission.
Some facts and the day’s route
I started a bit after 6am (May19) from the bridge over the first creek below the Duffey Lk road at Cerise Creek. The start gave my mission “a bigger life perspective” as there was no bridge/log over the second creek. But quickly I managed to find a log crossing it about 100m down.
In 5h 58min I finished on the bridge over the creek that drains the Lower Joffre Lk, after some summer trail and forest navigating as all Joffre Lakes were unfrozen on their perimeter and couldn’t be skied over.
3 summits, 3 classic descents. What a day 🙂
Further inspiration
There was one thing that struck me during the day – I crampon boot-packed from the bottom of Aussie to the summit of Joffre in about 35min (400m), and I feel couple of weeks behind my fastest this season. That means that someone much more skilled can surely boot it up in 20-25, maybe Steck even faster, that would be something to watch!
Here are some route points and times that further inspire me and can serve anyone as a reference if they want to repeat it:
- Start point – bridge at Cerise Cr below the “parking lot” at Duffey Lk road
- Up the Cerise Cr drainage, up the right moraine (close to the hut)
- Up Anniversary Gl to the col [reached in about 2h]
- Ski down to the bottom of Aussie Couloir
- Crampon up Aussie and to the summit of Joffre Peak [2h 45min]
- Ski off Joffre summit and down Aussie [3h 15min]
- Skin and crampon up the North ridge and over the summit of Matier [4h]
- Down climb to the top of Matier’s NW face, ski it and down the Matier Gl
- Skin up (with a short boot-pack) over Slalok’s Northerly rib to its summit [5h]
- Ski down the Slalok’s North face to Upper Joffre Lk
- Ski down to Lower Joffre Lakes mostly via the summer trail
After getting it done I believe I can do it quite faster, and it likely could be done under 4h30 by the fastest skimo racing Euros. But not while going solo, skiing two first time lines and visiting new places. That only could have happened in a more balanced way 🙂
Mount Cayley TR: long day, spring skiing, gong show, and supernatural Thunderbird
Have you ever heard of Mount Cayley? Because I haven’t until two weeks ago.
Mt. Cayley is a stratovolcano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Cayley) in the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt that managed to elude my good friend Tomas on two previous attempts.
It’s not a high mountain, only 2377m, but it’s far away enough that lots of things have time to happen before you even reach the foot of it – weather goes bad, equipment fails, motivation fades…
According to the Squamish natives Mt. Cayley is called “Landing Place of the Thunderbird”, and that the mountain have been burnt black by the supernatural Thunderbird’s lightning – bird of power and strength.
I didn’t know this when going up there but now the whole trip borders legendary missions.
7h in, 3h back, great skiing – May 12, 2012
I don’t think anyone but we goes to ski Cayley on a day trip. Even Tomas on two previous occasions would try it only as a part of multi-day trip.
The day before he said “it is 8k one way”. Looked more to me. We didn’t to plan to move fast but starting at 9am in mid-May is a bit pushing it, and I was on Tomas the whole day for being too lazy to wake up earlier.
At the end his argument was proven right: “we could ski corn at 10am when SE face starts melting…..or we could ski it at 5pm as it starts refreezing.” Love your friends and be happy, I guess. 🙂
Thanks to lots of snow this year we had to park our car quite far out, at around 900m. And the day began.
First, we conquered a boring forest road full of snowmobile tracks by obsessing about skiing Mt. Fee. Then to avoid a narrow valley bottom, smeared by avalanches, we gained the SE shoulder that took us to Brandywine Mountain. From there we went up-and-down-and-traversing couple of shoulder bumps that run W of Brandywine, finally reaching a big glacier below Cayley that connects to the Powder Mountain icefield on its southern end.
The skiing was excellent despite my worries over a very warm day. It was getting a bit mushy but still on the good side. We skied right off the cornice between the two summit spears following our way up.
After 2550m of climbing and skiing we were back at the car around 7pm.
It’s great to have a friend that gets obsessed with peaks I don’t even know about.
Gong show
I think I was the gong show of the day. Always remember to check your bindings after you lend your skis. Mine were too big, so the first downhill and a traverse were without heels. Then a Swiss knife safe the day.
Also, it is worth buying a real map instead of looking at one on a camera, especially, when a photo of that map was taken off a computer screen. Tomas eh…
Day’s score:
Stano -1 + Tomas -1 = 100% day
Route map and photos
Cool environments
More than half of the photos in this TR are from Tomas Cernicka. If you want to copy any off this page please contact me.
Cayoosh Mountain – the next day
If anyone is heading up here are the subjective facts (from May 13, 2012):
Since I wanted to check out conditions on Duffey Lake I headed up to Pemberton in the evening. Slept in the car and went up to Cayoosh Pass for a solo mission the next day.
I did only a quick up-and-down the mountain as it was supposed to be very warm even up high. And it was, but I was skiing off the summit around 11am. The top 150m was quite slushy with sluffing but below that great skiing.
Surprisingly, in the whole Duffey Lk area the slopes looked quite pristine, not many signs of avalanching. That’s likely due to only very recent warm days, otherwise, around this time you can see some huge slides over there.
