Probably because Black Diamond is primarily a climbing hardware company, and thus is familiar with products that have to be tested for “life safety”, and thus care about their patrons staying alive–before anything bad happens with something that someone is depending on to save their life.

Please no. Spare us all the smell.

In Southeast Asia I exclusively wore a pair of Chacos for 3 months, only shoes I had with me or needed. Just take what you’ve got on your feet and presto! Problem solved.

Glad you got your stuff back man!

Mt Washington (or Mt. Lafayette) is not 29,000 ft high.

Awesome to hear you are back safe and sound Chris, can't wait to read more stories about your adventures.

Great article Wes, I've often wondered how legal is is to carry my 2.75 in blade kershaw with me on a pocket clip, seems like I'm fine in most places. It (obviously) has a locking blade, and is a half assist. I pretty much carry it everywhere with me, unless I'm getting on a plane, and have carried a knife of some…

I came into this hoping to learn a new useful knot, turns out these are the five I also use on a pretty regular basis and am familiar with.

Sure, but are we talking about a ePTFE type membrane? PU Film? 2 , 2.5 or 3 layer? Something else entirely new?

If this is being marketed as an outdoor tech piece then I want to know what Wes over at IW thinks, because a comparison to an old obermeyer ski jacket is not what I would call rigorous. It sounds pretty bad from a technical standpoint to me, considering the weight, and lack of other information–I.E. no mention of what…

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one Wes. In pretty much all ways. Except the sex part, that's totally true.

Food in Laos was weirdly expensive in a lot of places (similar to Cambodia I found so not crazy, but certainly more then Vietnam and Thailand, and worse tasting). Cheap street food was around, but I found that I had to look much, much harder for it. Vietnam was definitely the cheapest food and beer.

I met a bunch of people who did Vietnam by bike when I was there (mostly on the same touristy coastal route I followed by bus), and it sounded really cool. If I was to ever go back to that country it would be to do the inland "high" route by motor bike though. Which is supposed to show a very different, more rural,…

So this is fairly different from most of the farms in Europe because these are floating wind turbines, where as the farms in Europe of mounted to the sea floor. There are some floating platforms that that have been tested in Europe, but there are not any floating farms installed to date, as far as I know.

This is then DWR treated and laminated to a waterproof membrane and then laminated to our Dual Surface wool to create our own three-layer waterproof laminate suitable for mountain professional users like patrollers, guides etc.

This. This all perfectly describes how I use Facebook. My two personal favorites definitely are: leaving videos of you staring for about 10-20 seconds on a friends wall (bonus points for weird music or noises in the background), and friending my close friends parents, then actively engaging with them.

Wes, slightly unrelated, but I was wondering what they chances are of you doing a review of this Minaal Bag sometime in the future. I recently learned about them, and am intrigued by the design, as they seem pretty damn near perfect for carry on only travel, but $300 is a bit much for me to drop right now, and I trust…

Lots of great advice in here, Wes. As someone who recently (within the last year) started seriously traveling internationally I can definitely say this is all great information. You learn what you need on the road I think to some extent, as every country is a bit different. As long as you are respectful and listen…

Sounds about the same as Vietnam, except you don't know if you get accepted until you're in the airport waiting for them to hand the passport back to you.

Cool, that was what I thought you probably meant. Mostly just checking to make sure that the Icelandic people hadn't figured out some revolutionary new way to generate electricity from cold water.