French technique with harscheisen

A few weeks ago I started a different approach for climbing on skins with
harscheisen on firm snow. (For some reason most of my partners use the
German word "harscheisen", though actually I like the French work
"couteaux", and some English-speaking folks are happy saying "ski
crampons" -- but my English-language proposal would be "cutters").

My old approach was to "edge" the ski into the firm snow -- angle my knee
and tilt the ski into the slope.

My new approach with harscheisen is to flatten the ski against the snow
surface as much as possible, allow my knee to hang out down the slope. Seems
to work pretty well for me -- I think this is why:

* flattening the ski puts more climbing skin into firmer contact with the
snow.

* making the harscheisen "blade" penetrate the snow nearly perpendicular to
the surface of the snow (instead of in the vertical line of gravity),
enables the blade to penetrate deeper into the snow, and intersect a larger
cross-section of snow -- which tends to provide a stronger support for the
blade -- less danger of the snow shearing away and releasing the ski for a
fall.

* often the second harscheisen blade (downhill side) can also penetrate
into the snow, which provides further support to keep the ski from shearing
off into a fall. (I got this idea from the "French" approach to climbing ice
in crampons, "flat-footing" instead of the more obvious front-pointing)

* relaxing the knee outward down the slope helps "save" the specific edging
muscles to be strong in situations where they're really needed.

Seems like this flatter-ski approach is mostly for climbing with
harscheisen. Sometimes I also also tried flattening the ski on firm snow
without harscheisen on the ski. But this often was a bad idea, since the ski
slipped down without enough edging. On the other hand I think it's also
possible to over-edge without harscheisen -- and especially when combined
with leaning the upper body into the slope -- can lead to sliding falls.

Ken

Ken Roberts wrote:
A few weeks ago I started a different approach for climbing on skins with
harscheisen on firm snow.

Interesting post Ken, I will have to think about this next time I'm out.
I was both cutting and cramponing on Saturday and it is true, on
crampons you do flatten your feet to the slope when traversing which you
don't do so much when skiing with couteaux as you want the edge grip too.

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In article ,
davidof wrote:
Ken Roberts wrote:
A few weeks ago I started a different approach for climbing on skins with
harscheisen on firm snow.

Interesting post Ken, I will have to think about this next time I'm out.
I was both cutting and cramponing on Saturday and it is true, on
crampons you do flatten your feet to the slope when traversing which you
don't do so much when skiing with couteaux as you want the edge grip too.

_ Most ski crampons are a lot more flexible than even aluminum
boot crampons. They are designed to support a vertical load,
not a lateral one. Ken's approach works until it doesn't and then
fails badly when the crampon flexs out[1] and you have neither
edge or crampon in place, your knee is at a odd angle and
reweighting the ski is difficult. If you don't catch yourself
with the upper unweighted ski, you're likely going for a ride.

_ Personally, I think that the best stragety is to pretend that
you don't have ski crampons on and just climb as you would
without them. If things start to feel sketchy, then it's time
to switch to regular crampons and carry the skis.

_ Of course, the point at which the crampon flexes and pops out
will vary greatly with design, materials and mounting method.
However, of the two I've personally used ( Rainey superloop
crampon and Silvretta 500 ) both did this eventually. In
particular the aluminum Silvretta 500 crampon does this quite
easily. Both of these mount to the binding rather than the
ski, so you might get much better results with Petzl and
BD[2] crampons that mount directly to the ski.

_ The other problem is that most ski boots make any kind
of French techinque with either boot or ski crampons fairly
painful.

_ Booker C. Bense

[1] This most often happens when you have only the crampon
in contact with the snow.

[2] http://www.bdskigear.com/index_files/Page1362.htm

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In article ,
Booker C. Bense bbense+rec.skiing.backcountry.May.04.05@telemark. slac.stanford.edu wrote:

_ Most ski crampons are a lot more flexible than even aluminum
boot crampons. They are designed to support a vertical load,
not a lateral one.


_ That's poorly phrased, what I really meant is that the ski
crampon is designed to work with the ski on the snow and the
crampon fully in the snow. If the load is focused on the end of
the crampon rather than distributed along it's depth, most of
them will flex badly. You are much better off having one side
fully in the snow than two sides partly in the snow.

_ Booker C. Bense


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Booker C. Bense schrieb:
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In article ,
Booker C. Bense bbense+rec.skiing.backcountry.May.04.05@telemark. slac.stanford.edu wrote:

_ Most ski crampons are a lot more flexible than even aluminum
boot crampons. They are designed to support a vertical load,
not a lateral one.



_ That's poorly phrased, what I really meant is that the ski
crampon is designed to work with the ski on the snow and the
crampon fully in the snow. If the load is focused on the end of
the crampon rather than distributed along it's depth, most of
them will flex badly. You are much better off having one side
fully in the snow than two sides partly in the snow.

Booker,

may be i'm not getting here correctly something -

We' re using ski crampons until you can ascend with skis. If it's
getting too steep (i think that might be around something like 40° or
so) one would put the skis on the rucksack in any case, even with fresh
snow and deep powder. That can be hard, but ...

And if, on the other hand, it is snow icey (we would say "ghiaccio vivo"
i think in english blue ice would give an idea), the ski crampons won't
work safely anymore, i'd reflect a little bit about how to do this faces
after then with skis ... ;-))

Greetings,

Ulrich

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In article ,
Uli Hausmann wrote:
Booker,

may be i'm not getting here correctly something -

We' re using ski crampons until you can ascend with skis. If it's
getting too steep (i think that might be around something like 40° or
so) one would put the skis on the rucksack in any case, even with fresh
snow and deep powder. That can be hard, but ...

And if, on the other hand, it is snow icey (we would say "ghiaccio vivo"
i think in english blue ice would give an idea), the ski crampons won't
work safely anymore, i'd reflect a little bit about how to do this faces
after then with skis ... ;-))


_ In the California Sierra, you often climb up when it's hard and
icy and ski back down when it's soft. We call it the "magic
hour". The snow goes from boilerplate crust to a foot of slush in a
few hours once the sun comes up. Timing is pretty important to
getting in a safe and fun day of skiing, so you need to climb
early when it's still hard. If you hit it just right Sierra corn
can be the next best thing to powder skiing... If you get it
wrong it's a glop filled leg busting sufferfest through a
foot or more of wet cement.

_ Since I'm old and slow I tend to climb at an angle a lot and
ski crampons help quite a bit in traversing across steeper
slopes. Also, skins don't always grip as well as you would
like on the hard stuff. Depending on the terrain, I'll often
ditch the skins and ski crampons altogether and just put the
skis on the pack and use aluminum boot crampons. At 5 am the
crust will be so hard that you have to stomp the crampon
points in, by 2pm or so you'll sink in well over your boot tops.

_ Booker C. Bense

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Booker C. Bense schrieb:

_ In the California Sierra, you often climb up when it's hard and
icy and ski back down when it's soft. We call it the "magic
hour". The snow goes from boilerplate crust to a foot of slush in a
few hours once the sun comes up. Timing is pretty important to
getting in a safe and fun day of skiing, so you need to climb
early when it's still hard. If you hit it just right Sierra corn
can be the next best thing to powder skiing... If you get it
wrong it's a glop filled leg busting sufferfest through a
foot or more of wet cement.

That sounds to me a little bit like our south (or southwest/southeast)
face skiing in spring. It's correct, that in the morning early the snow
can be so hard, going up sometimes might be more similar to ice-climbing
(although, obviously, not as steep).

But, more spring is going on, more you tend to do the northfaces and
there, the difference is not that much extreme. It's easy you find (save
exceptionell summers like 2003) powder or at least soft snow over 2.500
m up to middle of June or so - at least in gullies and similar.

My problem, as mentioned several times, is mostly related to telemark:
I'm addicted to, although i'm aware it's less efficient than alpine
randonee (but for health of my knees - and for intrinsecal pleasure -
i'm exclusively free heel now). But with tele, you (me) cannot risk with
hard or blue-ice snow. So, if it's too hard *AND* really steep with kind
of no-fall sections, i renounce ... :-))


_ Since I'm old and slow I tend to climb at an angle a lot and
ski crampons help quite a bit in traversing across steeper
slopes. Also, skins don't always grip as well as you would
like on the hard stuff. Depending on the terrain, I'll often
ditch the skins and ski crampons altogether and just put the
skis on the pack and use aluminum boot crampons. At 5 am the
crust will be so hard that you have to stomp the crampon
points in, by 2pm or so you'll sink in well over your boot tops.

Probably, i'm even older than you and therefore, i see the use of the
crampons more or less in the same way. But, to change within a tour to
boot crampons i try to avoid for the hassle (i'm using old Salewas with
bends, because they're working well with teleboots) :-))

Greetings (and still nice touring),


Ulrich

Thanks for the detailed analysis, Booker.

You are much better off having one side fully
in the snow than two sides partly in the snow.


That makes sense to me, if by "fully" is meant "as fully as possible given
the current position of the heel elevator".

But there is a third option: One side as fully into the snow given the
current heel-elevator position, and the other side partially into the snow.
And it's the third option that I've been experiencing most of the time when
I've tried flattening my foot.

Actually I would suspect that some harscheisen are designed to be used
without full penetration into the snow -- because like for the Fritschi
Diamir binding, the harscheisen points simply do not penetrate into the snow
much like "fully" when I use them in a typical 3rd-position elevated-heel
(which is lower than the 4th-position elevated-heel for the binding, where
the percentage of snow-penetration is a long way from "fully"). As far as I
can tell in my usage, the only way to get "full penetration" would be in the
lowest 1st-position (no heel elevation). But most people I've watched use
the Diamir harscheisen in that heel-elevation position only rarely. But
perhaps a real expert on the Fritschi / Diamir binding will correct me on
this.

Ken
_______________________________________
Booker C. Bense wrote
. . . what I really meant is that the ski crampon is
designed to work with the ski on the snow and the
crampon fully in the snow. If the load is focused on
the end of the crampon rather than distributed along
it's depth, most of them will flex badly. You are much
better off having one side fully in the snow than two sides partly in the
snow.

Booker Bense wrote
Ken's approach works until it doesn't and then
fails badly when the crampon flexs out[1] and
you have neither edge or crampon in place, your
knee is at a odd angle and reweighting the ski is difficult.

I have not used the models of harscheisen / couteaux / ski crampons that
Booker cited for possible problems, but I'm glad he warned about it. So far
I've tried this "flattening" approach only with the Fritschi Diamir binding
with its harscheisen, and I have not yet encountered this problem of
"flexing out".

(Maybe that's because the Fritschi harscheisen are made of steel? Most
experienced people I know are giving up on aluminum and switching to steel
for the parts that you really must be able to count on to bite into hard
snow/ice. The general comment is that aluminum points and edges are good,
until you really need to depend on them. I noticed this spring that several
serious mountaineering shops are no longer stocking "light skiing" ice axes
with aluminum heads -- instead their lighest axes have aluminum shafts and
steel heads).

Anyway, I'm not saying that "flattening" is the "right" way to do it all the
time -- just that it's an approach that could help in some situations.

most ski boots make any kind of French techinque
with either boot or ski crampons fairly painful.

OK, how about let's call it "semi-French" -- I rarely if ever get the
fullest possible penetration with the downhill harscheisen blades. I use
Scarpa Laser boots a lot, and I loosen up most of the buckles and
power-strap when I'm climbing, and I definitely do not find this
"semi-French" approach to be painful. (but maybe I just have more flexible
knees and hips than some people?)

I think that the best stragety is to pretend that
you don't have ski crampons on and just climb
as you would without them.

But I definitely think the better strategy is to climb differently with
harschiesen. Here's why: On hard snow there's a tricky optimization
trade-off in the choice of ski-edging angle: between getting the metal of
the edge to bite into the snow, and getting the friction of the edge of the
skin to grip on the snow surface. (and with the shaped skins, there's a
prior trade-off in how close to the ski edge to cut the skin to fit the ski
base).

Putting harscheisen on the ski gives lots of help with the edge-bite side of
the problem, but very little help to the skin-grip side. Therefore the
optimal ski-edging angle must be different. Also there's the mechanics of
crampon-point/snow-shearing interaction -- where clearly planting the
crampon-point perpendicular to the snow surface is stronger against
snow-shearing than planting the crampon-point vertically -- which is the key
point of why "edging" is a dangerously bad idea with ice-crampons. This has
nothing to do with how many points you get into the snow: it's about the
mechanics of perpendicular versus vertical angle with the exactly the same
crampon points.

Ken
___________________________________________
"Booker C. Bense"
bbense+rec.skiing.backcountry.May.04.05@telemark. slac.stanford.edu wrote
in message ...
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In article ,
davidof wrote:
Ken Roberts wrote:
A few weeks ago I started a different approach for climbing on skins
with
harscheisen on firm snow.

Interesting post Ken, I will have to think about this next time I'm out.
I was both cutting and cramponing on Saturday and it is true, on
crampons you do flatten your feet to the slope when traversing which you
don't do so much when skiing with couteaux as you want the edge grip too.

_ Most ski crampons are a lot more flexible than even aluminum
boot crampons. They are designed to support a vertical load,
not a lateral one. Ken's approach works until it doesn't and then
fails badly when the crampon flexs out[1] and you have neither
edge or crampon in place, your knee is at a odd angle and
reweighting the ski is difficult. If you don't catch yourself
with the upper unweighted ski, you're likely going for a ride.

_ Personally, I think that the best stragety is to pretend that
you don't have ski crampons on and just climb as you would
without them. If things start to feel sketchy, then it's time
to switch to regular crampons and carry the skis.

_ Of course, the point at which the crampon flexes and pops out
will vary greatly with design, materials and mounting method.
However, of the two I've personally used ( Rainey superloop
crampon and Silvretta 500 ) both did this eventually. In
particular the aluminum Silvretta 500 crampon does this quite
easily. Both of these mount to the binding rather than the
ski, so you might get much better results with Petzl and
BD[2] crampons that mount directly to the ski.

_ The other problem is that most ski boots make any kind
of French techinque with either boot or ski crampons fairly
painful.

_ Booker C. Bense

[1] This most often happens when you have only the crampon
in contact with the snow.

[2] http://www.bdskigear.com/index_files/Page1362.htm

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Uli Hausmann wrote:

We' re using ski crampons until you can ascend with skis. If it's
getting too steep (i think that might be around something like 40°

If you are using Dynafit Bindings be careful above 35° slopes as the
extre stress on the plastic binding plate can break it... I agree with
Uli, normally at this kind of angle I'm putting my skis on my back and
walking, either with boots or crampons.