Re: [pct-l] Jardine mania

[BLISTERFREE@delphi.com]

I don't know if the "proper equipment" could save a novice's life unless
he or she understood how to use that equipment. Jardine's book rightfully
assumes the hiker is NOT an alpine mountaineer, and therefore presents a
strategy to travel the trail corridor in optimum fashion, avoiding as much
adversity as possible. If the hiker chooses to tackle the Sierra before the
snow has diminished and consolidated, then he chooses to play the role of
mountaineer and needs "Fredom of the Hills" not PCT Handbook. If he follows
a Jardine itenerary, he encounters, in a do-able thru-hike year, only minimal
snow of real dangerous potential, and can employ the ice-axe to chop steps,
hopefully with the self-arrest skills to back him up. This means, not a free
ride to running shoes in the Sierra, but lightweight hikers to facilitate
better purchase in all of those snow steps. Crampons require a heavy, inflexible boot that doesn't serve much use, except for the crampons themselves. And
how much time is spent in the crampons, vs. lugging the spiked beasts on
our pack, wishing we had waited for the snow to melt?
"If I need it, and I don't have it, then I don't need it."
Travelling with nature is much more fun than fighting her every step of the
way.
- Blister>Free
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