Red Yeti's Blog

First one of those sidebars that appear at the side of magazine articles:

Edit July 2010: I now use the excellent and very light Paramo Quito jacket in summer (it replaces the separate windproof I used to carry) – but still use the Glamaig for winter!

At the moment I don’t have a Paramo jacket but I’ve been bowled over by the Paramo Cascada trousers so I’m getting a jacket based on Parameta for the winter. People on the Gear Forum of OM talk about the “Paramo religion” because “converts” to Paramo are so amazed by what they discover they get very evangelical. It took me ages to pluck up the courage to spend the money on something that, to be honest, looks like it won’t work but I’m very glad that I did. Because it simply does.

Even then I still can’t get away from the feeling that a winter jacket weighing nearly a kilo for a large size is too heavy. But a company called Cioch Outdoor Clothing on the Isle Of Skye seem to have the answer

Cioch make their waterproof clothing out of Parameta, the fabric that Paramo use, since Paramo is owned by Nick Brown who developed Parameta, and Nikwax (Nick Brown – Nikwax – geddit? ;)

Their Glamaig jacket is intended for summer use but since both LB and I are happy with a summer weight eVent jacket in winter for skiing in the French Alps and Norway and wandering about in the Cairngorms I started to wonder why the Glamaig wouldn’t work.

At an average weight of 510gms its heavier than a lightweight eVent (which are more like 370gms for a similar size) but not by a huge margin considering the potential comfort advantage. Price is about the same and Cioch even make to measure for a very reasonable fee. Which looks to be a service worth having once you measure yourself and try comparing with the off the peg measurements.

I emailed Cioch and Neil Urquhart (pictured on their site) replied very quickly. We ended up discussing it on the phone and I found that I’m not the first to have thought of this. Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team have also decided that the Glamaig is right for them in winter. They had the Cioch Harta jackets a couple of years ago and when they came to order a new set they decided on the Glamaig instead.

As Neil said in an email to me “A guide friend of mine uses his thru’ the year in the Cuillins and I know of a member of Cairngorm MRT who uses his for ski-mountaineering. If your happy without the extra protection a full mountain jacket affords- why not?”.

But what is that extra protection?

It’s essentially two things. Firstly the Glamiag has no storm flap over the zip but a baffle inside instead. I have no problem with that and Neil says no one’s ever said it leaks.

Secondly the Beechcomber shell fabric used in the Glamaig is lighter than the fabric used in the Harta, the Harta being the equivalent winter jacket, having a storm flap and heavier shell fabric. A lighter fabric could potentially “flap” a bit more, become plastered to you in high winds and cause the infamous “pumping effect” that pushes warm air from inside your layers. That’s a potential issue but I personally feel that the layers I would wear underneath would be resilient enough to prevent that and wouldn’t be greatly helped by a stiffer shell fabric. Besides, having it made to measure will mean that there’s far less spare material to flap about.

Obviously I can’t yet recommend them from personal experience but I have just ordered one each for LB and myself plus some trousers for LB so obviously I’m feeling confident that they’ll work as I expect.

We requested a couple of alterations, fully lined sleeves, higher volume hoods to take helmets and some allowance for wearing more than summer layers underneath.

I would have liked to leave posting something about them until I’d tried them out for a season or more but in the mean time I thought it worth mentioning in case anyone reading is looking for a new winter jacket. Especially if you were considering a Paramo type jacket anyway.

Back to an outdoor related topic. But this one might be new to most people reading…

We had a shorter than planned stay in Sweden over the Xmas holiday but whilst we were there I had my second try at Tour Skating (Långfärdsskridskoåkning).

It’s ice skating using big skates on natural lakes and covering quite long distances. If you can skate even reasonably well then 30 or 40 kilometre trips are easily doable, but double or even treble that distance is mentioned. Unfortunately I can’t skate very well at all and the ice thickness was marginal so we stuck very close to the Sommarstuga (Summer Cottage).

What made me think it was particularly worth a mention was that, rather like winter mountaineering and walking, there are changes afoot in the gear.

Up until recently you’ve needed a pair of specialist boots that clip or slot in to the bindings on a pair of touring skates. But now with a simple addition to the front binding along with a back binding just like that on a snowboard, they can be fitted to standard walking boot. You can see the additional part in the picture. It is the top section with the grey EVA padding to hold the toe in place. Standard skate boots clip under the two black prongs that you see low down against the toe, stopping side to side movement.

I used them with just a pair of Montrail Stratos XCR (pictured). Although as a novice I could probably have benefited from stiffer boots I could still get about on them and they had no problem staying in place in the skates. Even when I fell over and put a dustbin-lid sized set of cracks in the ice with one elbow.Which certainly added some extra excitement to the day. Might have to get some elbow pads for next year.

It’s tempted me into buying a pair since it made more sense than buying specialist boots and borrowing a spare set of skates (borrowing footwear is tricky with my size eleven and a half feet). The simplicity of them appealed very much.

The other essentials are things called Isdubbar (which I notice the Wikipedia article has as “Ice Claws”) and throw line.

These are for emergency use, should you manage to elbow your way right through the ice.

Imagine floating in a hole in the ice, and trying to claw your way out back on to it. Pretty tricky eh? But using the Isdubbar that you cunningly hung around your neck, you take one in each hand and jam one spike into the ice and pull yourself up a bit. Stick the next one in a little higher and slowly hand-over-hand your way to safety. The throw line is a little more self explanatory and is simply thrown to you by a friend who pulls on the other end – just the same as in kayaking.

Things much like ski or walking poles are usually taken but these are more like James Bond’s ski poles. Instead of a hard, blunt tip these things have a shiny metal spear that’s enough to despatch any henchman with ease. They’re used partly for balance and propulsion and partly to check the quality and thickness of the ice ahead of you.

Finally you make sure you have a change of warm dry clothing in a properly waterproof bag inside a rucksack. This is partly to act as a float if you fall through (hopefully a rare event). So the specialist skating sacks have groin straps to prevent them floating up from your back. And partly it’s to give you something warm to change into pretty sharpish!

I’ve been experimenting with alcohol stoves for a little while and to be honest, of the four I’ve tried, only one puts out enough heat for two people’s food: The White Box

Named for the white box that it comes in, it’s a very simple and robust little stove. There’s plenty of information about them on the Internet already so I’ll concentrate on how efficient they are and how I’ve been able to use mine down to -10 Celsius (14F). It’s often said that you can’t use an alcohol stove in freezing conditions, but with a little care, you can.

I’ve wanted to replace my old faithful MSR Whisperlite Internationale with a lightweight alcohol stove for a while but to be honest I’ve so many other things going on, I don’t have time to fiddle around making my own. Besides, from what I’d read, unless you get your design and build dead right, they can be rather inefficient. So I thought I’d buy a couple from people who make them all the time.

I tried a beautifully made Penny Stove from The AC Aircraft Company (Bill doesn’t seem to show them on his site now for some reason). But the heat output never managed to boil the 900 ml (about two pints) of water I want to use for porridge + tea in the morning or rehydrating buckwheat pasta + soup in the evening.

I then tried a Sith from Tinny at MiniBull Designs (his blog is always fascinating). It struggled to maintain enough heat in the presence of a cold pan of water to even stay alight. Tinny and I never did get to the bottom of this – it may be that “normal” methylated spirits in the UK haven’t got as high an alcohol content as something like Heet in the USA (I am just guessing here – anyone know for sure?). Even holding the pan above the stove a couple of centimetres never allowed the water to boil before the fuel ran dry.

So I ordered an Atomic from him. And with its pot-stand it managed to pack enough of a punch to get the water hot, but still not boiling.

At this point I gave up for a while. But listening to Bob on one of his podcasts singing the praises of the White Box made me decide that it was worth one last go.

And I’m very glad I did. The White Box is very small, tough and light; 68gms. 30 for the stove, 10 for the aluminium square it stands on and 28 for the wind-shield.

Critically, it can boil my required amount of 900ml of water in about nine minutes from sparking up to rolling boil. Slower than the MSR, but a lot less dangerous for cooking in the porch of a tent.

I’ve cooked in the porch with the MSR, but no matter how much the rain was falling and the wind blowing, I’ve always sparked up with the door wide open and only zipped back up once it’s settled to it’s usual fearsome jet of blue flame. LB has had to hold on to the sides of the tent to stop wind damage caused by leaving it wide open in a hooley a couple of times. (I know I could light it outside and carry it inside carefully – but where’s the fun in that?)

Great – so it works and it boils lots of water. But how do you get it working in the cold?

The critical point is to make sure that both the alcohol and the stove itself are warm by keeping them within one thin layer of your skin for about ten minutes.

I keep the alcohol in a small MiniBull Fuel Bottle (the AG fuel bottles that Winwood stock look very similar). It’s important to have a small amount so it’s easy to heat.

When I wake up, I grab the bottle from the tent pocket I put it in the night before and stuff it inside the sleeping bag but outside the silk liner. At -10C that’s a bit of a wake-up call but with a quick fumble you can keep it away from you whilst it warms-through enough to allow it to come closer to your skin.

Once I’ve got most of the cooking stuff together, but before I fill the pan with water and get out the porridge, I throw the stove itself inside the sleeping bag to let it warm-through as well. It doesn’t take as long since it’s a small hunk of aluminium.

In the evening it’s similar, keep it between your down jacket and your t-shirt. Though when wearing a 260 weight Icebreaker long sleeved T (expensive – but worth every penny) I have to finish by keeping it right next to the skin. Otherwise the merino just wouldn’t let it warm up enough.

Once you’re completely ready to start cooking, pan filled and fire-steel waiting, whip them both out, fill the stove and spark up.

Then, hold the pan of water (or ice slush if you have it) a couple of centimetres above the flame. That way you’re letting the stove prime as usual whilst also “priming” the pan of cold water. Otherwise, even though the stove might have blossomed to its beautiful chrysanthemum of flame, the cold pan can suck the life out of it.

Nine minutes or less later, a couple of pints of boiling water enthusiastically fills your porch with steam.

As a relatively recent convert to hydration systems, or platypi (it seems Platypus is to hydration what in British English, Hoover is to vacuum cleaner) I’ve had to learn how to look after them when they are not being lumped about in my pack.

It might sound strange that they need any “looking after” at all, but they do. Or else you end up sucking mildew flavoured water through a black spotted tube.

The usual handy hint to prevent that is simply to store them in a freezer. But in a small kitchen, with a very small freezer, the food has to get first priority. So no freezing for our platypi except in-use on the hill (for which a neoprene cover, that covers the bite-valve, combined with blowing back into the bag, works very well for preventing a freeze-up even at minus-a-lot Celsius).

So I’ve got in to a very simple routine for making sure they stay mould free:

When you get home, fill the bladder with really hot water from the tap. Not from a kettle. It might work, I’ve not tried it, but I have a feeling that boiling water would damage the bag (anyone know different?). But use very hot water never the less.

Hold the bag above the sink and squeeze the bite valve until a lot of really hot water has had a chance to clean out the tube. It needs to run for a good ten seconds I reckon, since the first run through the pipe will cool by the time it gets to the bite valve.

Then drain it out and shake out the excess drops of water.

The last trick relies on having a bite valve that will pop off easily, or at least dissemble without too much of a struggle (like the Source variety – whose bite-valves I favour) and a bag that opens at the opposite end from the tube (like a Platypus Big Zip or Source Widepac): Remove or dissemble the valve to get a good airflow up the tube, stick the tube out of a window (perhaps a second floor window, in case you forget its open and leave the house!) and prop open the bag with something.

The breeze blowing through the window will get pushed up the tube, and usually dries the bag in a few hours even on a still day.

With a bone-dry bag, there’s nowhere for the black mould to grow – and you get a happy, healthy platy.

LB, Chris and I caught the last of the snow this weekend in Snowdonia. At least I expect it to be the last of the snow we catch but I’ve expected it to end for the last couple of weekends away and it just keeps on coming.

We did a nice route up across Carnedd Dafydd but were beaten back from the ridge leading to Carnedd Llewelyn by a fifty mile an hour blast of snow that occasionally hit sixty-five (according to the Kestrel). We dropped into the cwm and camped at the foot of the Black Ladders. It was beautiful with the brilliant snow covering parts of the black rock forming the massive amphitheatre of Cwmglas Mawr.

Sunday saw the usual long slog out of a cwm. This time all the way to the top of Carnedd Llewelyn and back along the ridge to Dafydd. With the wind doing the same sort of speeds as the day before.

But what of the bionic legs?

Chris has super-human, bionic legs. He out-walks everybody. Whenever you walk with him, he disappears off into the distance and sits on a rock waiting for half an hour whilst everyone else catches up. Except for this time. This time we were ahead of Chris at almost every step. We couldn’t understand it.

We asked a couple of times if he was okay and he said he was fine but just finding it heavy going. It took a while to realize that of course Chris was wearing full winter boots, a B2 crampon fitting. Whereas we were carrying Kahtoola crampons and therefore we are able to wear lighter footwear. Mid-height approach shoes in my case and summer leather boots for LB.

So although we never actually had the crampons out, we didn’t need to carry as much weight in the pack. Also, critically, we had very little weight on our feet compared to Chris. And post-holing your way up the side of Llewelyn in those boots is just plain painful.

Intuitively it’s obvious, but to see such a graphic demonstration of the enormous difference that lightweight footwear really does make was very interesting (and quite gratifying, after spending the money!).

We just have to make sure Chris doesn’t get any for next season…

These things work, really, really well.

They are waterproof. They are comfortable across an astonishing temperature range, meaning you don’t carry them in your pack very often so the fact they are heavier than eVent doesn’t matter. We’ve been wearing them the whole winter, since just after I first mentioned them.

To give you some idea, LB and I started a day just after dawn, clear and bright and -2.5C/27.5F with wind chill taking it to -12C/10.5F (according to the Kestrel). It rained, it snowed. We sat and had lunch for half an hour, we sat for ten minutes and grinned as we disappeared under a blanket of wet snow.

So? Well, all through that, neither of us changed clothing. At all. We didn’t take an item off or put one on.

All the rest of what I’ll say is detail that might answer some questions. The main questions; Does it work? Is it comfortable? Is it worth the money? Does it, in short, perform better than eVent/Gore in the Winter? have been answered to my satisfaction. This is very impressive kit.

The hoods are excellent. The brim-stiffeners might look a bit large but they’ve kept a great deal of high-speed snow away from our faces in the last season. Our hoods are actually from the Harta which is the winter-cut and winter-weight equivalent of the Glamaig. We had ours made larger to take a boarding/skiing helmet which worked well. There’s a small flap of material to allow the hood to be rolled up. It’s not very large, and with hoods this big, I think it’s worth having it to stop them flopping about when we aren’t wearing them.

The weights look heavy at first but when you realise that you never really expect to carry them it makes much more sense. They form part of your insulation rather than just being a waterproof shell. We didn’t have to carry them (as opposed to wearing them) from December up until mid May. The temperature comfort range is just so broad.

Mine weighs in at 696gms (slim waist but fairly broad shouldered and about 6′2″/186cm) and LB’s is 594gms (slim, long back for her height and 5′6″/167cms tall). Bear in mind that, leaving aside the fact we had them made large to accommodate winter layers, there is no excess material here. They’re made to measure after all.

Some of that could be saved by not fully lining the sleeves (I hear it works fine), using normal hoods and not having the map pocket. I might go for unlined forearms if I were to buy them again but the hoods and map pocket would stay.

So what’s wrong with them?

Well, not a great deal.

The cords that adjust the opening on the hood can flick at your face in a very high wind (40+mph / 65+kph) but I reckon the ends of them could be sewn on to the hood to prevent that (I must mention that to Neil at Cioch).

The map pocket that I was originally unsure of is something that I have found myself using again and again for maps. It’s handy for putting a RFID ski pass in allowing you to glide through the barriers. Would I have one again? Yes.

The hand pockets are the one thing I don’t like. They’re too low and are restricted by the rucksack waist belt. But that’s not at all uncommon in a jacket.

One thing to note when ordering – the arm length on the site says “B: Measure from top of collar bone to…”. That’s effectively wrong – it needs to be from the base of the neck. See B in the diagram (which is accurate) and tell Neil that’s where you’ve taken the measurement. All the other measurement instructions seem spot on.

Overall, I expect to be wearing Parameta based waterproofs in the winter from now on. I would look at Paramo since some of their new range looks good, but more than likely return to Cioch for the excellent custom fit and option to specify exactly what you want.