Aftermath - The Gear in Review

Well, it is done. The cape is at the taxidermist, the horns in the garage, gear cleaned and in the basement, and all I can think about is going back. In retrospect, it was easy. As others told me: "It wasn't easy, you were just well-prepared".

Let's have a look at the gear, and see what worked and what didn't. I can be brief about the real weak link in this adventure - the hunter: next time I'll be fitter and stronger! I spent five days on the slopes, one day before the opener and four hunting days. Temperatures ranged from about -25 oC in the morning to I-don't-know-what in the afternoon, and winds were between none-existent-almost-never to knock-you-down-on your-face-in-the-scree kind of strong pretty much the rest of the time.

Starting at the bottom: the Schnee's Hunter Extreme boots worked. Period. In deep snow, through the scree, on hard rock, never did I feel that I made the wrong choice. It was only with the heavy load of sheep head and cape, that I felt I needed a bit more support from the relatively soft rubber-bottomed boot. I didn't suffer from cold feet. I added the Arctic Shield boot covers, except for the one day that I thought I forgotten to bring them, and the feet stayed warm. That one day I put some chemical toe warmers in the boot, when in the afternoon, my feet started to get chilly. At night I needed to take out the felt liner to let it dry, it did absorb quite a bit of moisture.

A big shout-out for the Kahtoola Microspikes slip-on crampons. I only used them once, when coming down heavy, but they provided a lot of grip, and stayed on the boot well. If you go late-season mountain hunting, I'd recommended getting a pair of these or something similar.

For socks I did nothing special, just a liner sock and a smart wool sock over top.

For a baselayer I wore a set of long underwear that COSTCO had on sale, a blend of merino and some stretchy fabric. I won't be buying shirts with zippers anymore, but that was the only thing they had at the time. This worked well, it got wet a bit but not drenched, and didn't itch (I itch easisly, even the so-called no-itchy merinos still bug me).

The advice I got was to at least switch into a dry shirt at the top, and I did once. Good advice! Other times I didn't and it took up to an hour for the cold feeling along the spine to disappear. I tried another time, but it was so cold and windy that I barely had time to got extra layers on before my hand turned cherry-red and stated losing dexterity.

I had a 260 weight long-sleeved merino shirt with me, that I actually wore on the first two days during the climb, and used as an extra layer during sitting on the other two days (the fifth day we didn't have time to sit, as soon as we hit the ridge it was game on!).

I wore gloves with windstopper during the climb, and switched into liner gloves, fleece gloves and mitts once settled in on the ridge. For me, putting on dry gloves was an absolute necessity, the climbing gloves just got too wet.

To be continued...