I'll be looking at these climbing conditions tomorrow morning, gonna be fun!

I'm trying to guess what type of tree you're in, is it an ash?
-moss

Moss

It's a Cottonwood with a 50' tie-in point.

I knew the snow was coming and made preparations. I set the line yesterday. I did some climbing in the cold yesterday to see what it was like. I placed a cell phone call when I was on rope for this climb, and called back when off rope.

For some odd reason, I picked up my Fig-8 as a back-up. When I descend, I use a rap ring in a sport belay configuration. I've been doing this for about a year. For the first time, it locked up and rope wouldn't flow. I'm still not clear on the specifics that made it not work. I slipped in the fig-8 and continued.

The point is preparation. I consider myself a three season person, so I'm very cautious in the cold weather. The temp was about 35F.

On cold weather climbs, I learned that body heat ventilation is important. I was dressed for the weather. When climbing kicks in, there's an enormous amount of heat generated. I could feel it trapped in my clothing, so I climbed slower.

It was worth the experience. It's part of my personal objective to stay active in nature for as long as possible.

I thought it might be one of your (or the) cottonwoods. I should have recognized all of the saplings and brush at the bottom which may be the reason you've invented some of your throwing systems. I'll post if I can get into a tree during the expected snow in the a.m.
-moss

Oh good. I thought I was going to have to start a thread on winter climbing myself - Bemidji is in northern Minnesota, and if you don't climb in the cold you don't climb for about half the year. Since I started in May, I'm still new to this end of the sport.

On Friday I went up a nice fat (relatively broad and healthy with an unusual number of good TIPs) aspen just up the hill from my house. Not much snow on the ground yet, but the temperature was about 15. Gentle wind from the NW and lots of sun. Took about 40-50 minutes to get up to the first TIP; my throwing is even worse than usual in the cold. My main worry - that the Zing-It would be so stiff in the cold that it would carry wads of loops up into the tree - did not materialize; it seems to stay pretty supple. Took a while to readjust everything to new layers of clothing. Couldn't make up my mind about what to wear; the gloves went on, came off, went on again - same thing with the warm hat. No big problem with manual dexterity; there were enough layers that I was sweating a bit halfway up the tree, and cold fingers warm up pretty fast against the neck (I've read that the Inuit do it that way too). Not a bad view at the top, and the air was something you could bottle and sell to yuppies for some silly price. Aspens are often held in contempt for being short-lived and perhaps overly common in this landscape, but they are every bit as beautiful bare as they are clothed in leaves. Only problems: cold toes, and not enough time to enjoy the place at the top (about 50 feet in a 65 footer).

More later. I'll be up again.

Cheers,
MarkF

As they say in NY...fuget abotit.

You know there are lots of places to live in the south...

Climb Safe!
Icabod...

Icabod,

Some folks is moose, some folks is alligators. They both like woods and swamps, but not the same ones. Bemidji Minnesota suits me fine; I'm a moose.

Cheers,
MF