Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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lucky lucky
Looks like we have some serious testing to do fellas. I’ll head over that way this week Lou. Should have taken my TNF Himalyan Parka down to the Sangres yesterday. It was -11F at the TH, oh well.
Very exciting. I was in Ute yesterday fondling the new sabertooths, they look much nicer than my old ones. Stainless steel, and the balling plates look much better integrated.
I bought my Dynafit FT 10’s just before the Dynafit FT 12″s came out. I really wish I had the 12’s because I am a big guy and usually ski right around 10 or 11 DIN. Anyway, there looks to but very little difference between the two models. So, I was wondering if you know if it is possible to convert the FT 10’s to FT 12’s by changing the springs and whatever else that needs to be done? Will Dynafit sell the parts?
Nice gear-o-mania. What skins are you testing for Denali?
Gear-o-rama! We’ll probably be using some skins from BD, as well as K2 and Dynafit. I’ll probably stick with mohair due to the huge amount of low angled touring.
Is anyone out there using mohair for “regular” skinning? Like steep, switchbacking skintracks? Am I just going to be frustrated with them on the steep stuff even though I might save a little time and energy on the 2 or 3 mile slog in? I almost always skin in powder in SW Montana, not bragging, just not much warm weather crusts or well traveled skin tracks!
Mason, I use mohair as much as possible, but I don’t use it in places where the local culture creates the ultra steep skin tracks. It grips ok when new, but once worn in (which makes it glide better) it doesn’t climb as well as nylon.
I won’t get into the debate about skin track angle, but I tend to like slightly lower angle with mohair, so long as the track is broken. When breaking trail, I take the shortest distance possible!