Presenting… Frozen Limestone Gear!
When I first came up with the idea of printing a new guidebook to select ice and mixed crags in the Rockies, I thought that might be a stepping stone to more and more guidebooks… and thus Frozen Limestone Publications was born. And while I am still working on the next guidebook (and if you’ve been coming to talks and talking to me you’ve probably gotten an idea of what that will be), books as a whole tend to take some time to produce. Gathering information on routes in the Rockies tends to involve lots of hiking long distances with a heavy pack full of gear, and while on one of these long, slow, heavy approaches my longtime climbing partner had a suggestion.
Our first prototype, made out of an old crampon bag
We'd been talking back and forth about cutting weight from our packs for a while, but neither of us really loves climbing with a minimal rack of gear.
And after we dropped some grams by using the lightest carabiners, cams and screws we could find, the next step was to figure out what else could go. And Greg hit upon an idea. Commercially available ice screw holders were pretty heavy, but we didn’t want to just throw fragile aluminum screws into our bags without protecting them. Right there we had an opportunity to save a couple hundred grams using lighter material.
A slightly more refined version in field tests
Greg had experimented with these before, and his early prototypes used ripstop nylon and foam. Unfortunately, these were relatively fragile and a bit clumsy to load - and while we might use them, they definitely wouldn’t see a wider audience. We got to work making a model out of a single layer of higher quality ripstop nylon, and knew we had hit upon something great the first time we tried putting screws in it. We’d already seen the material proven out in commercial crampon pouches, so the next natural step was to make our own crampon pouch to shave another few grams off.
Now it’s time to share these products! This is more of a passion project than a commercial undertaking, with products being made by us, in Canmore, but our hope is that other gram-conscious climbers will appreciate a lighter pack as much as we do. Stay tuned for the crampon bags and screw wraps to come available shortly!
