Vintage 1942 Handbook of American Mountaineering.
A ski’s basic stats are one aspect of the ski review process to which we default—a placeholder for things like weight, sidecut, and material science. I often default to weeding out ski selection by weight when choosing among different skis. Fact: I’m loath to push any ski weighing over 1650g (over 3.5 lbs/ski) without a binding. Add even a lightweight binding, skin, and boot; you can immediately discern this: the extra grams are additive.
The adage is that a pound on your back equals five pounds on your feet. In other words, keep the weight on your feet to a minimum—with the caveat that some days warrant heavier skis and boots. And some days require the weight on your feet, or at least some of it, to be secured on your back. The two obvious situations are boot packing up a couloir, doing ski alpinism ballet on decidedly more spicy and dicey terrain, or walking days across sage uplands to a food cache.
I’m not ashamed to state I’m old enough to recall when A-framing was all there was. Packs with only an A-frame ski carry option made it darn *&%$ing tough to access anything from the pack’s interior unless it was strapped to the outside. Good on Dana Designs way back when for adding a “shove it” pocket to their Bomb Pack. You could A-frame all day and keep minor essentials on the exterior. Those essentials were accessible by removing the pack but did not require the skis removal from the pack. (I don’t recall packs with side zip access available then. But the Bomb Pack weighed a lot and then some.)
Over time, ski carry systems became more highly evolved. The A-frame still has a place. But with side carries and ski-mo-inspired quick access carry systems, it’s good to know friends; you have choices.
Yet, to think that a fast-and-light moving-through-the-mountains ski aesthetic is a more recent development is nonsense. Years earlier, woolen-clad mountain folk were gear-modding too, refining how to carry skis in the hills.
The refining, it is safe to say, left a ton of room for further refining.
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The ski carry spread in the 1942 Handbook of American Mountaineering.
I’m in possession of a 1942 copy of the American Alpine Club’s Handbook of American Mountaineering, written and illustrated by Kenneth A. Henderson. (For the kids reading this, sometimes there are nuggets to glean from the past.)
The book presents three types of hands-free ski carry. One technique calls for carrying skis “through” a rucksack’s straps, and another, “en bandolier,” which maybe, if a pack is lost in an uneventful calamity, approximates ski carry elegance. The skis “through” a rucksack’s straps likely had a short shelf-life as gear tinkerers realized this ski carry system becomes problematic, and even a liability, in steeper terrain.
This system might serve one well in flatter terrain. One would also need to rig some secondary straps (aligned to carry the skis parallel to the snow surface) along the sides of a modern pack to make it functional.
En Bandolier—A few Voile straps and this ski carry system could serve in a pinch. From the Handbook of American Mountaineering.
The third ski carry technique mentioned is towing one’s skis. “A light line about six or eight feet long with a cross-piece on the end a foot long with a wire hook at either end to catch in a small hole drilled in the ski tip makes an excellent rig.”
I’ve got some 1943 10th Mountain Division skis weighing ~18 pounds for the pair. They’re over 200cm. The ski towing system, if I need to carry these lengthy planks, might be the way to go.
It turns out that Henderson, the book author/illustrator, was a prolific climber in his day. He passed in 2001 at the age of 95. If you’ve ever walked or skied through Titcomb Basin in the Winds, you’ve quested under Henderson Peak, named after the Kenneth we reference here.
We might discount some of the ski carry techniques in the Handbook of American Mountaineering as antiquated. The illustrations, however, stand the test of time. Simple. Crisp. Playful. Energetic.
Certainly worth the rewind.
A more modern carry system.
