Modern gear vrs old. George Mallory and everest

[frans]

Read an interesting article on the gear worn by these explorers who attempted to summit everest in 1920.
Garbadine slacks, wool worsted coats, argyle socks, they looked like victorian gentlemen at a social club!
As it turns out those fashionable articles of clothing were very effective and in some cases performed better than todays polyester high tech clothing

 

[MasterBlaster]

Motley crew!!!

 

[Altissimus]

Have a Ski Patrol buddy , big time climber. Summited Everest twice ! He said you hike right past Mallory , well preserved he is.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Wow, that's kinda weird.

 

[flushcut]

Natural fibers are just plain better.

 

[No_Bivy]

I'm sure it hurt a lot more back then......

 

[flushcut]

lol probably

 

[Mick!]

Ooooh, chance to roll out one of my favourite sayings.

 

[kevin bingham]

love it!

 

[MasterBlaster]

Haha! For sure!!!

 

[flushcut]

That's awesome!

 

[stig]

Natural fibers are just plain better.

Ever spent a wet, cold night at high altitude in a down sleeping bag?

No effing way am I ever going back to down.
Synthetic all the way.

 

[Altissimus]

Wow, that's kinda weird.

... Learned some about the Sherpas as well from Dave. If the price was right they'd haul Mallory down.

 

[frans]

Lots of dead bodies up there, but even more garbage. Whole crevasses filled with air bottles and other junk. It always surprised me that the type of people who do this just dumps their crap everywhere. Everest has turned into a place people go to then have bragging rights. 1000s per year of tourists
But actually made the post to point out that all this tricky gear may just be advertising

 

[Bodean]

Ever spent a wet, cold night at high altitude in a down sleeping bag?

No effing way am I ever going back to down.
Synthetic all the way.

When I was a rookie OC firecrew bagger...
the USFS gave us paper sleeping bags.

Try that at 6k feet in the rain. Haha.



Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[cory]

... Learned some about the Sherpas as well from Dave. If the price was right they'd haul Mallory down.

Cool stories, love to hear even more from/about Dave.

 

[Altissimus]

Dude worked Ski Patrol in Vermont w exceptional skills. You can Google him w Dave Watson Mt. Everest or something and it would come up. Has many great stories and pics for sure. My favorite is second trip where he killed it for pace ... Way ahead of the group and broke out all the fixed lines (was way ahead on the way down as well but that's another story). Summited alone a full twenty minutes ahead of anyone including Sherpas ... Up there on top of the world and what do you suppose he does ? Calls his parents on the East Coast !

 

[frans]

I remember those old army mummy bags. Super warm but terrible when wet. In the sea scouts my friend tied his hammic from the dock to the boat. Middle of the night he rolled out. Almost drowned because he had it zipped up tight. Those bags weigh alot when wet he sunk down immediately lol. We all had a good laugh

 

[Altissimus]

Lots of dead bodies up there, but even more garbage. Whole crevasses filled with air bottles and other junk. It always surprised me that the type of people who do this just dumps their crap everywhere. Everest has turned into a place people go to then have bragging rights. 1000s per year of tourists
But actually made the post to point out that all this tricky gear may just be advertising

... Sad but true , there is an organized effort to get everything but the corpses out eventually. Base Camp is heavily trafficked and the waste management as well as who goes up further and when is organized and administrated. Sherpas do recycle quite a bit of gear left on the Mt. plus some good gimmees from departing groups.

 

[Raj]

I remember those old army mummy bags. Super warm but terrible when wet. In the sea scouts my friend tied his hammic from the dock to the boat. Middle of the night he rolled out. Almost drowned because he had it zipped up tight. Those bags weigh alot when wet he sunk down immediately lol. We all had a good laugh

We used to get pissed up, zip up in those sleeping bags and have slug fights. That was best!

 

[pantheraba]

I remember those old army mummy bags. Super warm but terrible when wet. In the sea scouts my friend tied his hammic from the dock to the boat. Middle of the night he rolled out. Almost drowned because he had it zipped up tight. Those bags weigh alot when wet he sunk down immediately lol. We all had a good laugh

That's gotta be a very bad feeling, confined in a bag and sinking. No thanks. I bet it took awhile before he was ready to laugh.

I was working on a commercial dive job a few years back and was in about 5 (yep, five) feet of water under a bridge that was at water level. As I transited under the bridge to the other side a protruding bolt snagged my dive gear. That's inconvenient. Then the current had increased under the bridge since my first transit (as the concrete guys above filled in voids in rocks around the bridge the current was increasing with each void fill). Anyway, about the time I was working to un-snag my gear the current started ripping the mask off my face. OK..you can breathe thru a regulator without a mask, have done it plenty. But snagged, mask ripping off and in a confined space...still plays with my head sometimes when I think thru it. I wasn't smiling a lot when I came up after I got it all sorted out. It was a good lesson in how a few inconveniences combined together can spell clusterfack in a hurry.

I bet your bud does not remember that dunking fondly.

Here are a few pictures of the bridge we worked under. The PVC pipes are where we had ID'd voids and they pumped fiberglass reinforced concrete into the voids to anchor the big boulders into place. This was part of a whitewater project in Columbus, GA..they created a controllable mountain whitewater venue in the normally very mild Chattahoochee River.

 

[flushcut]

Ever spent a wet, cold night at high altitude in a down sleeping bag?

No effing way am I ever going back to down.
Synthetic all the way.

Umm yeah no, but I have tent camped in -20 F with my hollow fill mummy bag. You are lucky to be alive wet down kills same with cotton. I was kinda referring to the clothing like wool and animal skins.. fur and similar.

 

[SeanKroll]

I hear that The North Face had a new faux fur line. Blending old and new!

 

[flushcut]

It's not polar fleece but real polar bear fir. lol

 

[No_Bivy]

fibers are over rated..
https://vimeo.com/123870988
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