Dawn Patrol

Inspired by tales of back country ski fanatics in places like SLC, Utah, getting up in the dark for a dawn decent before work, I set my alarm early on Sunday morning. Too much to do to go climbing, but with a fantastic forecast, it seemed the perfect opportunity for my own Dawn Patrol.

I got up at 5.45 had coffee and toast and set off in the dark to the Roaches. By the time I was there it was light, and dry. Getting out of the car at 7 am to total tranquility was wonderful.

I spent a couple of very happy hours bouldering at the Lower Tier Boulders with only a sheep for company. Then I had coffee and fruit bar second breakfast overlooking the quiet mist wreathed landscape, before heading down to the Spring Boulders for a quick slab session.

Then I was on my way home having seen just one pair of early birds heading up to the crag, just before I left.
FANTASTIC!

Climbed some great problems with the crag all to myself, and was back home by 10.15. I will definitely do this again...

Sunrise over New Mills, on route.

Self timer shot. Problem solved after working out the undercling hand swap sequence.

A polished performance in Bavaria

Just back from four days in Germany.

Some 40 minutes south of Munich and nestling in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps lies Eurasburg, where our German distributors are based. Yes it sounds idyllic...and yes it is!

After months of seemingly endless rain in North-West England, it was utter indulgence to arrive in Bavaria to warm Autumnal sunshine. It could not be more different than our offices on the edge of Manchester. A small village of some 4000 people, surrounded by meadows and the backdrop of Bavarian Alps with the Austrian Alps in the far distance. Cool fresh alpine air, no noise (other than the odd Cow mooing) and not a traffic jam in sight.

The A-Team ready their packs

In addition to trade launches we usually head out to Germany a number of times during the year, as our biggest export market we take what goes on their very seriously and so we have spent the past few days visiting retailers in Munich and Garmisch as well as going through detailed plans for our Spring / Summer 2011 collection. Yes its that time of year again, starting work on another collection which seems so far away!

The tongue is out....must be pulling hard

But you can't work all of the time so as soon as we had lost the will to talk about new products any longer it was off, in the A-Team inspired Mountain Equipment van (it just needs a spoiler and some rotating leather seats) to a nearby crag for a spot of climbing. A quick hour or so of bolt clipping and teetering up blank slabs in the fading light capped off a great first day.

Watch out for car-sized chunks landing on your head

The following evening and we decided to head to a nearby bouldering venue as time was short. Lying some 30 minutes south of Munich, this venue despite initial appearance is worth a visit and even without a car easily reached via the S-bahn with the station only a short walk from the bouldering. Yes, the glaciated conglomerate looks like a loose shale bank about to collapse and yes, it does bring a new meaning to the word polished but there are plenty of nice traverse lines and a quiet forest to soak up.

Bringing a new meaning to the word 'Polished'

And just as were settling into the Alpine mood, it was time to come home. Another great Salami sandwich courtesy of Lufthansa and an unexpected meeting with James Pearson and it was back home. Perhaps that Autumn sun is infectious, it seems to have followed us home.

A change of focus

I’ve spent most of the summer focussing on my running, a decision I’m pretty pleased with as it has yielded some good results – sub 4 hours in my first Ennerdale, 13th in a British champs' race, 8th at Wasdale in an English Champs' field, getting the Snowdon Horseshoe record and a monster run I’ve wanted to do in France for ten years or so. But in a month’s time I’ll be Patagonia bound for a four-week trip with Mick Fowler, so it’s about time to change focus.

Patagonia has never really been somewhere I’ve been that interested in going to – besides the atrocious weather it seemed to be too much about rock climbing and aiding than the more alpine-style mixed objectives I’ve preferred for trips in the past (last year’s trip to Greenland being the exception). However, as might be expected from Fowler, when he suggested Patagonia, he wasn’t thinking of the famous Fitzroy or Paine groups, but a remote mountain that nobody seemed to have heard of and that he hadn’t even seen a photo of. I said yes.

A few months of research later it would appear that, true to form, he has picked a whopper – Patagonia expert Rolando Garibotti described the unclimbed south-east face of Cerro San Lorenzo to me as a “phenomenal wall with endless potential (almost 2000 meters high, 10 kilometers long), very remote considering the short approach” while Patagonian pioneer Yvon Chouinard told me he could think of no face bigger than this one outside of the Himalaya. Psyche levels are certainly rising.

I’ve got one more thing I want to do with my running this summer, a fast traverse of the Welsh 3000s, a run I’ve done twice before but never when properly fit (best time 6 hours and a few seconds). I’ll hopefully get that done in the next two weeks, then no more running (maybe just the odd local race) just climb climb climb for three weeks. Oh, and there’s the small matter of an Msc thesis to be getting on with...

After the trip with Mick, my girlfriend is coming out to meet me in El Calafate for another three weeks. We hope to do a week-long tour round the Fitzroy massif on skis along with some more leisurely and luxury touristy stuff, which by then I’ll no doubt be craving!

The winter that was

A typical wet summer coupled with a now nearly sorted knee injury means climbing seems a distant memory at the moment. So I figured a look back at the winter and start thinking about the one to come was the best way to keep the psyche going.

It wasn’t the most productive winter, but for the quality of the climbing and skiing certainly made up for a lack of quantity. The alps saw one of its best snow years for the last decade and with endless storms through late January and early February making pretty hazards conditions up high around Chamonix the trees of Courmayeur offered the safest bet. An almost daily commute through the Mont Blanc tunnel along with most of the Chamonix locals brought you to the land of good coffee and an endless supply of powder to be hovered up in the trees.

(photo – Pete Benson)

As well as an amazing snow year many of the classic valley ice lines formed this season, the highlight for me was along with Nick Bullock and Pete Benson climbing a friendly formed Tequila Stuntman. The final pitch is the meat of the route with Nick quickly dispatching the 10m of dry tooling before a hard couple of moves over to the hanging ice and a quick blast to the top.

Fast forward 2 ½ months (yes skiing is as hazard’s as ice climbing....) and the draw of the mountains returned. Wanting to do something a bit different Nick and I decided to have a look at the Grand West Couloir, a Gabarrou route (who else!) from the mid 70’s. With only a handful of ascents and all requiring a bit of aid not much info is to be found on it. After a very comfy bivi at the Plan de Aiguille and packing a Compressor Vest each, by-passing the initial pitches and following what looked like the obvious start, Nick torque his way up a short, hard crack to reach a snow slope that lead up into the couloir proper. Three steep sections separated by steep snow slopes brought us to the headwall where 4 long pitches of quality mixed and ice climbing on sound Chamonix granite saw us on the easy final snow slopes 9 hours after starting.

(photo – Nick Bullock)

With the route over the crux of the day was the 5 ½ hours of wading through waist deep snow reversing the classic Midi-Plan traverse leading back to the Aiguille du Midi station and a previously stashed bottle of wine... (alpine climbings all about been prepared!)

A week or so later saw Nick and myself wandering down from the top station Grand Montets to the base of the north face of the Aiguille Sans Nom, this time joined by Ian Parnell. The plan was to do the Russian Roulette start and finish on the Gabarrou-Silvy through the head wall. A few years ago having found the top of There Goes The Neighbourhood bone dry Nick and I had traversed over to finish up the Gabarrou but somehow managing to miss it and finding ourselves at the other end of the face finished up the British route instead.

No mistake this time and after some poor climbing on the Russian start, a 5 star bivi on the median slope and 7 pitches of quality ice and mixed with a crux 95^o section leading us to the final 200m of calf burning ice slopes and the top. With no bottles of wine awaiting us this time, instead a cold bivi just over the other side and around 15 abseils the next morning saw us in Chamonix for a refuelling session on Midnight Express burgers.

(photo – Nick Bullock)

Earthrise™ - Jumping off the fence

Asked to name a company that is raising its commitment to producing products that are more environmentally friendly or that are produced to higher ethical standards and Mountain Equipment may not spring to mind. Perhaps you would mention Marks & Spencer and their Plan A programme or Patagonia and their Common Threads policy

Yet as a relatively small company, and one whose staff use and love our natural environment, we are trying to make changes where we can; genuine and measureable changes that affect our environment and not simply sitting idly by.

For us, its part of our Twenty Things To Do programme, an internal programme to make changes to how we work that will impact on the environment and the people involved in everything to with our products. A wide ranging programme that includes everything from taking a personal interest in community projects such as cleaning a crag, collecting litter or repairing footpaths, to reducing energy consumption in our offices, reducing the amount of product or waste that goes to landfill, reducing the amount of products we ship via air to ensuring any animals involved in our raw materials are reared to humane standards and ensuring all our factory workers are treated fairly and paid a fair wage.

Making our product line more sustainable and more ecological is part of a wider long-term goal. It is not a sudden crusade to change everything we do, but about making incremental changes that will have a genuine impact on the environment around us and the people within it.

The development of the Earthrise™ Sleeping Bag has been about doing the very best we believe it is currently possibly to do; having a product that minimises the use of raw materials, that reduces energy consumption, that reduces Co2 output and that can be recycled afterwards, reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill is a real step forwards.

More importantly it does all of this whilst still performing in terms of warmth, weight, compressibility and longevity and that highlights what remains our primary focus, to produce products that perform and that are built to last in the often demanding conditions we know our customers choose to use our products in.

Of course there remain real challenges to the development of products that have high ecological and sustainable values as well as transparent ethical standards. Studies have shown that even for brands who are considered to champion the environment and ethical standards of their manufacturer, price and quality remain the most important factors that affect their customers decision to buy. And so in order for these types of products to become mainstream requires joint action from suppliers, manufacturers and retailers to help minimise the additional costs to the consumer and for customers themselves to ask more questions of purely low price-driven or short product life-span consumerism.

At present we are simply trying to do the best job we think we can, when we can.

The Earthrise™ I & II sleeping bags will be available in stores from March 2010.

Not one but TWO awards for Innovation

Well we've just won two OutDoor innovation awards at the 2009 OutDoor trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. What's more we won these awards in two entirely different product categories - for sleeping bags and clothing, something which really highlights our strength across all areas of our product line.

The Earthrise® II sleeping bag, the world's first sleeping bag to be part of the Eco-Circle® programme. Some people may think that we do make much of a deal over Eco-friendly products, but we are trying to do what we can, where we can and a sleeping bag seemed the most logical place to start.

Earthrise II Sleeping Bag

Nearly all recyled and recyclable, in fact other than the tiny zip-head puller, drawcord and shockcord there is nothing which cannot be recycled. To put that in perspective, by weight that is less than half a percent of this bag. And with the shell, lining, insulation and side-zip all being fully recycled to begin this bags drain on finite natural resources is minimal as well as using less energy and having a lower C02 output than if we had used a virgin material. It won in the category of ' Products of High Ecological and Sustainable Value'. It will be available from Spring 2010.

The second award was for our Shield Jacket, the next step for us in terms of lightweight, versatile softshell insulation and protection. And the best news? It will be in the shops in around 6 weeks time!

Shield Jacket - Shown in Black / Citronelle Zips colourway

The Shield Jacket uses a hybrid fabric construction, combining a new lighter version of GORE® WINDSTOPPER® as well as POLARTEC® Powershield®. Other than that what makes this jacket special? Well it uses a combination of seam sewing methods to improve mobility and fit, the hood (which is designed to accomodate a helmet) has a water resistant lining to prevent the hood absorbing moisture from spindrift and drizzle when worn down and it has an anti-wick hem lining, again to allow this product to perform better as a shell.

It won in the 'Apparel' category, will cost around £200 in the UK and is available for this winter.

2010 beckons

Well its been a long and busy week at Mountain Equipment's offices this week as we launched our product line-up for Spring / Summer 2010!

Obviously we cant give too much away at this early stage but we have some completely new ranges of sleeping bags, a couple of new tents and lots of new technical clothing for next year. It is now upto our sales team to convince the retailers to buy it and if all that goes to plan you will see it in the shops from the end of February next year!

And it has been one of our busiest summer launches ever. With distributors and agents from across Europe and the world attending including Germany, Norway, France as well as further afield places such as Korea, Japan and Taiwan. An awful lot of nationalities and different markets in order to please and look after.

Everything kicked off on Tuesday evening with some business updates followed by a marketing presentation. The latter part is a fantastic round-up of the past 12 months activity; looking at all the editorial coverage Mountain Equipment has received, awards our products have won as well as a chance to focussing on what our sponsored athletes such as Dave Macleod have been up to.

Wednesday was then the big day, a whole day of product presentations starting at just after 9am and lasting until just after 6pm - a huge number of products to run through and I for one was very glad to be able to have a beer after all that talking.

And Thursday was the chance to digest it all, for our distributors to decide what products they will range in their countries and for us to start the huge task of pulling together final editions of the new workbooks and start planning for the sales campaign and tradeshows.

And when all of that is over we can start working once again on the new Winter 2010 ranges, which are now well underway. It never stops......