Gear | Survival, Mountaineering, Hiking, Military and Exploration with Ben Wolf

Posts Tagged ‘gear’

Deactivate & Dispose of your 121.5 MKz EPIRB

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 by Ben Wolf

In February of this year 121.5 MHz EPIRBs stopped being detected by the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system making them effectively obsolete. Despite this the units are still detectable by many commercial aircraft and, if activated, can result in a full scale search and rescue operation. Due, in part, to a rise in false alarms from this type of beacon they will become illegal to use one for any purpose after 1 February 2010.

(more…)

Tags: gear, search and rescue, survival
Posted in Equipment, Sea, survival | No Comments »

Black Diamond AvaLung in Action: Skier Buried Alive in Avelanche Survives
Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by Ben Wolf

This amazing video posted on You Tube documents the frightening ordeal of skier Chris Cardello who’s helmet cam captured what he surely thought were the final moments of his life.

Fortunately Chris was wearing a Black Diamond AvaLung which saved his life. To quote Black Diamond directly:

The Black Diamond AvaLung allows you to breathe fresh air directly from the snowpack, buying you precious time during a rescue. Rebreathing exhaled air when youre buried causes suffocation because the air becomes oversaturated with carbon dioxide and depleted of oxygen. The AvaLung diverts the exhausted air away from your fresh-air intake zone, considerably extending the time your partners have to conduct a successful recovery.

The footage, shot in Haines Alaska, shows Chris’s own eye view of him dropping in on a steep piste which quickly gives way beneath him. We follow him down the slope as he eventually comes to rest buried under many feet of snow. You can hear the AvaLung working as he struggles for breath whilst rescue crew above work furiously to free him.

When you hear Chris’s deep distress under the snow it’s sobering to think that some of the final moments in this video must go some way towards representing what it’s really like for those avelanche victims who don’t make it.

Tags: gear, Mountains, snow, survival
Posted in Cold Climate, Equipment, Mountaineering, survival | No Comments »

Cure Smelly Boots Permanently With Tea Tree Oil
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 by Ben Wolf

A nasty foot fungus spreads through boots in Caroline Hut

How I brought my boots back from the brink

Most mountaineers follow the same practice when drying their boots. You remove the insoles, stuff them with newspaper and leave them somewhere warm overnight. It’s nice and simple and it works. Unfortunately at Caroline Hut the practice also involved saving and randomly reusing the old bits of rolled up newspaper the next day. This inevitably led to cross contamination which in turn caused the spread of some kind of mega fungus from one person’s boots to everyone else’s.

By the time I reached Australian Customs on the way home the smell from my boots was enough to alert a customs officer even though they were buried deep in my bag. They were truly putrid.

A year later my boots had not yet recovered so I purchased a new pair for a very hansom sum indeed. So you can imagine how horrified I was when a pair of socks managed to transfer the mega fungus from the old boots to the new ones within the first week. That’s when I decided to go head to head and do battle with the fungus. I wasn’t about to buy a third pair of boots! Thus I stumbled across the solution and I’m glad to share it with you all.

Here’s how to fix your smelly boots instantly - and for good! (more…)

Tags: boots, gear, repairs, tips
Posted in Equipment, Techniques, Uncategorized | No Comments »