French technique with harscheisen

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In article ,
Ken Roberts wrote:
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).

_ Well, the Rainey crampons were steel, just very thin and
flexible with no points. I think Aluminum crampons have their uses, but hard blue
steep ice isn't one of them. Aluminum headed ice axes are just walking
sticks you can hurt yourself with.


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.

I think that the best strategy 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).


_ I see it as a very minor optimization with a pretty nasty
failure mode. While you gain some efficiency in climbing angle,
you put yourself in a potentially more insecure position.
If you find yourself with problems with skin grip,
climb at a lower angle. You're attempting to optimize grip
at the expense of security, at least from my perspective.
Ski crampons are handy tools, but they don't really do anything
but allow you to traverse steep terrain more securely. They
are meant for across not up and the more up you put them
the worse they perform. They are really nothing more than
a slighty fancier version of the much maligned instep crampons
and have all their faults.

_ In the situation you describe, I think it's generally much more
of an optimization in both security and climbing speed to switch
to regular crampons. If the snow is hard enough to support your
body weight, I think it's faster to walk uphill than ski.

_ Booker C. Bense

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In article ,
Ken Roberts wrote:
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.


_ I'm no expert on Fritschi, but it seems to me that ski
crampons and lot's of heel elevation don't mix well. From
what I can see on the web the Fritschi Axon crampon is
quite short. If it's steel I could see how you wouldn't
experience the flex out problem I memtioned.

_ I was poking around and it's interesting to note that the
Silvretta crampon is now made of titanium. This would make it
much stiffer and also less suspectible to the flex out problem.

_ Booker C. Bense



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Booker Bense wrote
Ski crampons are handy tools, but they don't really
do anything but allow you to traverse steep terrain
more securely. They are meant for across not up
and the more up you put them the worse they perform.

My experiences and observations are different, now that I've been skiing
more in Europe and with some good European partners. In Europe I see lots of
people using harscheisen to climb _up_ slopes around 30 degrees and steeper.
My Euro partners routinely climb on skins up sustained 35-degree slopes, and
sometimes steeper.

Having spent a lot of time on Fritschi Diamir bindings, it feels to me like
the length of the harscheisen points are optimized for the "3rd position"
heel elevation (one below the highest). A month ago I heard a Chamonix guide
whose client was using a lower heel position than that tell him that there
was no point in trying that, because the points penetrated enough already in
the "3rd position".

The fact is that thousands of skiers in Europe are routinely zig-zagging
_up_ fun 30-degree skiing slopes on harscheisen / couteaux / ski crampons.
And they're purchasing their ski bindings from manufacturers who deliver to
them bindings and harscheisen which well support that established
practice -- and for which I haven't heard "failure mode" reports like Booker
describes.

If the snow is hard enough to support your
body weight, I think it's faster to walk uphill than ski.

Sounds like what I used to say before my Euro partners forced me to learn
how to make a solid dependable kick-turn on 35 degrees. My feeling now is
that booting up might be faster for 5 minutes.

But if my goal is to save the strength of my big leg muscles for fun skiing
down, or for continuing to climb for another 4 hours to a great summit, then
keeping the weight of my skis on my feet is the easiest way for me -- and
also seems to be the consensus of thousands of European backcountry skiers.

Ken
______________________________________
Booker C. Bense wrote
In article ,
Ken Roberts wrote:
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).

_ Well, the Rainey crampons were steel, just very thin and
flexible with no points. I think Aluminum crampons have their uses, but
hard blue
steep ice isn't one of them. Aluminum headed ice axes are just walking
sticks you can hurt yourself with.


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.

I think that the best strategy 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).


_ I see it as a very minor optimization with a pretty nasty
failure mode. While you gain some efficiency in climbing angle,
you put yourself in a potentially more insecure position.
If you find yourself with problems with skin grip,
climb at a lower angle. You're attempting to optimize grip
at the expense of security, at least from my perspective.
Ski crampons are handy tools, but they don't really do anything
but allow you to traverse steep terrain more securely. They
are meant for across not up and the more up you put them
the worse they perform. They are really nothing more than
a slighty fancier version of the much maligned instep crampons
and have all their faults.

_ In the situation you describe, I think it's generally much more
of an optimization in both security and climbing speed to switch
to regular crampons. If the snow is hard enough to support your
body weight, I think it's faster to walk uphill than ski.

_ Booker C. Bense

Ken Roberts schrieb:

The fact is that thousands of skiers in Europe are routinely zig-zagging
_up_ fun 30-degree skiing slopes on harscheisen / couteaux / ski crampons.
And they're purchasing their ski bindings from manufacturers who deliver to
them bindings and harscheisen which well support that established
practice -- and for which I haven't heard "failure mode" reports like Booker
describes.

That's my experience too - european, obviously.



If the snow is hard enough to support your
body weight, I think it's faster to walk uphill than ski.


Sounds like what I used to say before my Euro partners forced me to learn
how to make a solid dependable kick-turn on 35 degrees. My feeling now is
that booting up might be faster for 5 minutes.

But if my goal is to save the strength of my big leg muscles for fun skiing
down, or for continuing to climb for another 4 hours to a great summit, then
keeping the weight of my skis on my feet is the easiest way for me -- and
also seems to be the consensus of thousands of European backcountry skiers.

Exactly. Moreover, in Europe (Alps) you often have very different
snowconditions within a short sector and or period of time. Normally,
we're taking off the skis only in certain, very delimited cases, may be
a gully where, when you reach the top, the descend will begin or where
(in case of extremely steeps) you will better recognize eventual
problems for the downhill or something other thatlike.

Here a link to some image of such kind of gully (i personally know
pretty well):

http://www.microgis.ch/joost/luisin/nicraidegolette.gif

In this case, there is no other way than backpacking your skis. But as
you can see in the lower (and larger parts) of that gully one will
ascend with the skis on.

Greetings,

Uli

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In article ,
Ken Roberts wrote:
Booker Bense wrote
Ski crampons are handy tools, but they don't really
do anything but allow you to traverse steep terrain
more securely. They are meant for across not up
and the more up you put them the worse they perform.

My experiences and observations are different, now that I've been skiing
more in Europe and with some good European partners. In Europe I see lots of
people using harscheisen to climb _up_ slopes around 30 degrees and steeper.
My Euro partners routinely climb on skins up sustained 35-degree slopes, and
sometimes steeper.

Having spent a lot of time on Fritschi Diamir bindings, it feels to me like
the length of the harscheisen points are optimized for the "3rd position"
heel elevation (one below the highest). A month ago I heard a Chamonix guide
whose client was using a lower heel position than that tell him that there
was no point in trying that, because the points penetrated enough already in
the "3rd position".

_ I can only report on what I've used and how it's worked. I'm
not suprised that newer stuff works better, the flaws in the
older stuff were quite obvious. The ski crampons I have are
lightweight, in this case it appears too lightweight.


The fact is that thousands of skiers in Europe are routinely zig-zagging
_up_ fun 30-degree skiing slopes on harscheisen / couteaux / ski crampons.
And they're purchasing their ski bindings from manufacturers who deliver to
them bindings and harscheisen which well support that established
practice -- and for which I haven't heard "failure mode" reports like Booker
describes.

_ Well, you'd only see it if you try french technique stuff with
them. I certainly didn't make up what I experienced, and I don't
think 30 degrees is really steep enough to notice it either. The
places I experienced it were closer to 40 degrees.


If the snow is hard enough to support your
body weight, I think it's faster to walk uphill than ski.

Sounds like what I used to say before my Euro partners forced me to learn
how to make a solid dependable kick-turn on 35 degrees. My feeling now is
that booting up might be faster for 5 minutes.


_ I ski Castle Peak quite a bit and by far my fastest time to the
top was done by carrying my skis. Generally I don't do that
since, I'm there to ski and I don't really care if I'm faster or
not. That's not a 5 minute climb, however what works for me where
I ski probably doesn't work elsewhere for other people.

_ I do find it interesting to note that taking the skis off and
booting up is actually against the rules in many Randoneering
races.

http://www.pawprince.com/sm_race/faq.html

_ Booker C. Bense


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