HowNOT2 Videos – Climbing Safety

HowNOT2 Videos – Climbing Safety

Byrichard

In scuba diving and aviation safety is a discussion that takes place before and after every dive or flight. It is discussed every time divers meet up. With climbing safety is important too but the focus is different. “This is how you should belay, this is how you should climb, this is how you should set up the top rope, and more.

With climbing I know what the safety rules are but I don’t necessarily know what the numbers mean. As an example, it’s because I read construction instructions for how to setup a Via Ferrata that I learned how safe they are.

It’s because I went with a VF maintenance crew that I learned about the safety steps to ensure that a VF is safe before the season begins.

I came across on Youtube and watched a few interesting videos yesterday. These videos have value because they test equipment, as it’s meant to work, and then when people make mistakes. It shows how different the performance on safety gear is.

In one video they show safety gear that is over a decade old. He mentions that it’s rated to 20km but when it is tested it lasts to just 13kn or so. The effect of age on that sling is clear.

A few years ago I belayed at an IFSC World Championship so I practised falling, and belaying. I learned how to catch a fall dynamically, rather than violently. Violently might not be the right term. The point is I learned to assist a fall, rather than give a hard stop.

Via Ferrata Safety

In climbing part of the fun is to push, and fall, but in Via ferrata the opposite is true. In VF you’re meant to stay within your comfort zone, and use a sling to rest. You’re not meant to fall. . When you do Via Ferratas the sling is there in case of emergency, to stop you from falling to your death. If you fall in VF you will fall to the next “queue de cochon”, pig tail in English. Your shock absorber will then deploy and you will smash against the cliff.

Falling Versus Safety

In climbing falling is part of the sport, so if you get used to falling without fear then you can push further. You can make progress with your climbing style and go up to more challenging grades.

With VF the kit is there in case you slip and fall. It will keep you in situ but you may be stuck. That’s why it’s good to be with others, but also why it’s good to know your limits.

In VF I have seen people get stuck two or three times. In both cases we needed to use ropes to get the person back onto the VF in one case, and beyond a challenging bit on a second VF.

And Finally

My reason for watching such videos is to get a better understanding of how safe what I am doing is, but also how dangerous mistakes can be. If you understand the risks you’re more likely to do things the right way.

It’s like the zip line I could have done a few days ago. I had everything I needed, but I haven’t done it for so long that I had to remember how to do it safely. You put the tandem speed on the cable. You attach your sling to the tandem speed and then you add the via ferrata set behind the tandem speed. You hold the top of the tandem speed, check that everything is in order and then . It’s a lot of fun, once you overcome your fear. In some places you can do them more than once. You can repeat the fun part. It also allows people to share their equipment.

When climbing and doing dangerous sports either get someone you trust to show you how to be safe or get a professional guide to guide you the first time.

My first VF was with a guide. So were my first climbs. It’s only when I understood the principles that I went with groups of enthusiasts.

Can You With Trail Glove 7 Around Lavaux?
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Can You With Trail Glove 7 Around Lavaux?

Byrichard

Yesterday I tried an experiment which could have been a silly one. I tried to do the Lavaux hike from Puidoux to Vevey with Trail Glove 7 shoes. They are barefoot minimalist shoes so I could have regretted it. I didn’t but mainly because of the preparation before hand.

The Preparation

I have worn through one pair of Trail Glove 7 shoes before switching to the pair that I am using now. In that time I have walked at least 800 kilometres with one pair and an unknown amount with the second pair. The second pair is starting to show signs of wear. I think the left heel is about to fail.

The key difference between barefoot shoes and normal shoes is that barefoot shoes do not offer much padding for the heel. Every time your heel hits the ground it hits with more force than it would with normal shoes.

With the Vapor Glove seven, trail glove 6 and meindl barefoot shoes I find that the padding is not enough for my normal walks so I wear them very little, especially when walking my usual walking routes.

 The Walk

Yesterday my shoes felt fine for almost the entire walk. They felt fine when going downhill and they felt fine when going uphill. They also felt fine in terms of temperature despite the snow. I think this is due to walking fast enough not to feel uncomfortable with the temperature.

It’s near the end of the walk that I could feel that my left heel was starting to hurt. It wasn’t excruciating pain. I was simply aware that my body was getting tired. You would expect this. It’s hundreds of meters of climbing and descending as well as a reasonable walking distance.

It’s 11.3km of walking with 447 meters of climbing and 636 meters of descending over three hours of moving time and three and a half hours overall.

And Finally

The advantage of barefoot shoes, once you get used to walking with them is that they are light and malleable. You have a more direct contact with the ground. I tried them because I started to find cheap shoes uncomfortable, and wanted to try something new.

I knew that this walk would be on tarmac and concrete so I wasn’t worried about deep muddy puddles and more. I still had spare socks in case. I switched to these shoes because I was curious and stuck with them because I find them comfortable.

The Lavaux Walk from Puidoux to Vevey

The Lavaux Walk from Puidoux to Vevey

Byrichard

Today I met with a meetup group to walk through the Lavaux vineyards from Puidoux to Vevey and the experience was good. The logistics of buying a train ticket confused me but other than this the experience was good.

I was able to catch a train from Nyon to Morges, change in Morges for the train to Puidoux before then getting off the train in Puidoux. The advantage of changing in Morges is that I just had to get off one train before getting onto the next.

At the start of the walk we were in snow, rain, and at one point it was almost but not quite hailing. The balls were small so I barely count them as hail. The advantage of walking in such weather is that the light is interesting. It changes from overcast to spotlit, to sunny, and back to rain and more. It’s dynamic weather.

The views are great and one of the nice things about this walk is that you’re seeing different landscapes around each bend. One moment you’re seeing chateaux and vineyards and the next you’re seeing the Alps, and then after that you’re seeing the motorway and more. The motorway isn’t a selling point.

What I appreciate, on this walk, is that you’re walking through old villages rather than modern ones. The buildings are old, with character. I like that we get a sense of history without having to drive to Italy or Spain, or Southern France. If you know where to look you can find historical sites in Switzerland. I think this is a nice cultural walk.

During the walk I was struck by something. We hear about how Machu Pichu and other cities are built with vertical terraces but on this walk the terrassing is quite vertical in parts. You’re quite high above the lake, and the view down to the lake is precipitous. I even thought it could be described as vertiginous during the walk.

And Finally

The walk is physical. The beginning is a steep descent, and then you get some steep ascents and descents, more than once. Vineyards are often built on slopes and this was clearly evident. At one point I was walking up a slope on tip toes. It’s not high, in terms of altitude, but it’s exertional for people with less experience of “mountainous landscapes”.

I enjoyed it and I think that this is a walk that I would do throughout the year. I would do it in spring, when the flowers are out, in autumn when the leaves are turning, and maybe in summer.

It’s a nice walk.

Daily Move Goal Reached One Thousand Seven Hundred and Fourty Seven Times

Byrichard

In three days I will have closed the activity on an Apple Watch 1750 times. I have a love hate relationship with the device. That Love/hate relationship started when I broke the screen on my Series three watch when climbing but continued on when I got into the habit of allowing the move goal to be raised every single week. In the end I was walking four hours per day, every day, during lockdown, to fill the rings. I eventually got fatigued.

Plenty of Miscounts

Although I say that I have almost reached the daily activity goal 1750 times this is rubbish. I have reached it far more than this. There are plenty of cases where I was wearing an apple watch, a garmin or a suunto and Apple either counted all three and then counted none, or it didn’t count anything at all.

Addiction, Rather than Health

It might sound impressive to wear the Apple Watch and fill those rings 1750 times but to me it is a sign of Apple’s desire to turn me into a quantified self addict. Does reaching a calorie goal count for anything?

According to Suunto, Garmin, Xiaomi and even Apple daily walks don’t count towards Vo2 max, so the Apple Watch is pushing me to reach 10,000 steps per day, and pushing me to burn a certain number of calories per day, but in reality a three or four kilometre run would count for more.

Higher Returns

My fitness shoots up when I walk and cycle, but it stagnates, or even declines as I walk daily.

I want my daily walks, runs and my regular bike rides, via ferrata and more to be enjoyed in the moment, without it being about a badge. Garmin and Apple make it about badges. Sports Tracker, Suunto and others make it about the experiences. I prefer the yearly distance by Strava as a measure of progress.

No Smashed Screen During a Via Ferrata

When I did the via ferrata on Sunday last week I was curious to see whether I would break the screen or not. A few years ago I broke the screen on a series four when indoor climbing. I don’t know whether it’s the rope, or hitting a plank of wood that fractured the screen. Since then my passion for Apple Watches has been muted.

Good Data

Although I love to hate the Apple Watch it does give more data than the Suunto Peak 5 and the Garmin Instinct Solar. It gives me power as watts for running, HRV (heart Recovery Value) and Vo2 max for running and cycling. Without this data I believe I would stop wearing the Apple Watch.

And Finally

Reaching the daily calorie goal for 1750 days means that I have reached that goal for 4.8 years. I have had an Apple watch since around the 11th of July 2018. In three days I could write about what I have learned after reaching the daily activity goal for 1750 days. I think it has no value. It’s a way for them to ensure loyalty to what I see as a mediocre device.

NixOS and Darwin – Partial success

NixOS and Darwin – Partial success

Byrichard

Yesterday I experimented with NixOS and Debian. I managed to install NixOS on the Pi4 and I managed to implement several changes to the configuration.nix file before the Pi started to overheat and become much slower. At this point I tried to run Debian and that worked.

At first Debian was running in command line mode so I took the time to install the KDE desktop and that’s when I ran into the same limitation of the Pi4. It tends to get hot and slow down to a crawl.

This could be seen as a failure, or as a success. The reason for which it is a success is that I managed to get NixOS to work on a Pi, in the first place, and that I managed to compile a few changes before the system became too slow to work.

With Debian too, I class it as a success, rather than a failure. I class it as a success because I read documentation, understood it, and then installed Darwin first in command line, and then with the GUI. It was working well enough for a bit. it’s when I left the machine to “sleep” and the display time out that the system failed to start again.

It counts as a success because if I had been using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB or higher it would have worked well. It’s only because of the limitations of the hardware that this could be considered as a failure.

The other success that I am counting is that I was able to get my log ready for editing on three linux machines, within minutes, rather than quarter hours as I had previously. I have learned the work flow to get the hugo version of my blog downloaded locally, and set up the theme, and then git-ftp to upload the latest hugo compilation.

And Finally

Today I wrote my blog post using VIM rather than Wordpress and VS Code so it went faster. I find that I am gravitating towards simpler blogging habits once again. I only broke with blogging via VIM because I thought it would take hours to set things up again on the current machine.

NixOS on a Pi

NixOS on a Pi

Byrichard

For a few weeks I have tried to install NixOS on a raspberry Pi without much success. I have finally managed to get NixOS to work with a GUI/Desktop environment. I kept getting stuck at the command prompt but in the end I found a blog post that helped me.

What I Struggled With

The first thing I struggled with was finding a version of NixOS that played nicely with Pi’s processor. With some distributions you download it, install and it’s easy. With NixOS it took some searching to find the right ISO image that I also had to download a tool to unzip.

The Command Prompt That Updates

I think I could have got NixOS to work much sooner but I was confused by the command prompt. Every few seconds it gives messages about bluetooth devices and more. It made me think that the install had failed and that there was an error. I also had to learn to use the passwd command at the first prompt to set the password for the nixos user before moving forward.

The Other Challenge

When you install NixOS on an HP laptop, or other device you can download the standard ISO, make a bootable USB stick, and then install NixOS from NixOS. With the Pi you can’t do that. You have to do some things in the command line. The key step is to set the password, find the IP address and then SSH from xour usual machine. Once that is done it is easy to experiment with setting up NixOS.

And Finally

Now that I have NixOS up and running on a Pi I can experiment with the OS. When I update the configuration file I can keep a copy of it. Any time I install Nix on a system I can re-use the config file and replicate a setup within minutes, rather than hours. I set it up on a Pi4 with 2gb of ram but I could move it to a Pi4 with 4 or 8gb of ram, when I see that it requires more ram. Now that I am at this point I can experiment with more flexibility.

On Being Asked Why I Wear Two Watches
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On Being Asked Why I Wear Two Watches

Byrichard

During the Via Ferrata I did on Sunday I was asked why I wear two watches and I answered with a joke before giving the serious answer that I wear two watches at once because I want the data from both watches. I was asked why I need the data from both watches and that’s where there is a change that is happening at the moment.

A Waning in Garmin Watches

By wearing the F-91 for a few days and wearing the Garmin watch less and less I find that my desire for heart rate, steps, recovery and other things to be recoreded is declining over time. I wore the Garmin for the Via Ferrata because I wanted the data. In the end I just looked at the temperature data and not much else.

Over a period of weeks I think I have weaned myself off of the desire to quantify everything I do, to several different services. I’m wearing a casio on my left wrist, as the primary watch, and the Apple watch as a secondary watch on the right wrist. For weeks, or even months, I have been keeping data from walks but I don’t feel the need to check that data at the end of walks, runs or other sports. I’m happy just to do things.

Dependencies

Both Garmin, and Apple, made such a huge effort to get us to wear them twenty four hours a day, and work towards challenges, that they have turned me off of wearing them. They “punish” us for not walking, they “punish” us for not keeping a never-ending streak. According to the Apple watch I walked three hours out of five so far. It feels like we’re filling an addiction rather than getting interesting data.

Not the Only One

Funnilly I was not the only one wearing two fitness trackers. Someone else had a fitbit and a Garmin watch but because one was a band and the other was a watch it was less obvious. I suspect that it may become more common for geeks to wear two watches in the near future.

And Finally

If we want to we can use hand held gps devices and we can use our phones as GPS trackers. In my experience relying on phones as GPS trackers is likely to result in incomplete data. If you put a phone into battery saver mode while tracking you may lose the GPS track, including with Sports tracker, among other apps.

During the pandemic I could wear two watches without it being a problem. Now that I am slowly going back into normal society I have to choose whether to wear two watches or not, whether to be normal, or not.

The Roche Au Dade Via Ferrata
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The Roche Au Dade Via Ferrata

Byrichard

Two days ago I was agonising about whether to go for a via ferrata(VF) or a hike. Eventually I decided that I would go for the hike, because hiking was an 18 minute drive away. I went for a walk/run and then I found that I had a burning desire to do the via ferrata. I went down to the cave and rummaged through to find various bits and pieces. I found my Grigri, climbing rope, harnesses and more. I also found that I had a tandem speed which I considered using.

It’s amusing. I had a real, deep, burning passion to do the Via Ferrata. I had forgotten how it feels to prepare for something that is potentially dangerous, but in reality very safe, if you follow the rules and regulations of the sport. It’s fun to consider whether to use the brand new VF set or to use the slightly older set. My slightly older set might have been used on one or two VF before I broke my arm and stopped climbing from 2019-2024 or so.

When I was walking along the port’s high wall in Javea in 2001 or so I felt scared at being three or four meters in height, compared to the road beneath. I questioned how I would cope with the heights that we encounter on a VF. I hoped that I would not be scared of heights again.

Luckily Via Ferrata is something you don’t forget. I found that all of my old Via Ferrata habits were still there. The habit of keeping arms straight, of resting when required, of taking pictures, of day dreaming and of patiently waiting for the rest of the group. At one or two points I was asked “why are you waiting” and the answer is simple. If I went at my speed the one and a half hour VF would take fourty five minutes. I have done VFs every weekend every summer for years so I am perfectly at home on VFs.

I was so “at home” that I took 72 photos during the VF.

The one challenge I faced was keeping the phone safe. I would have taken more photos but my key concern was dropping the phone if I slipped or lost my balance. I didn’t have as much flexibility to take photos as I would have liked. I need to find a system that gives me that flexibility. When I was doing VF all the time I had a strap so that if I dropped a camera it would drop less than a meter. Yesterday I was taking a risk every time I took photos.

In the past, when doing Via ferrata regularly, I have smashed one or two cameras to bits as they hit the rocks, over and over again. The best solution might be to use the Garmin virb.

About the Via Ferata Itself

The Roche au Dade Via Ferrata is about 45 minutes from Nyon. It is located in the valley that you pass by as you drive from Switzerland to England and vice versa. You get off the main road, drive through the village and head to a small simple parking. There are three or four routes that you can take. You have an introductory VF that takes you across several bridges. You also have the option of just going to do the zipline. There are two of them but for the second one you need to be more experienced to get to it.

For the most part I would class the VFs as easy but that’s with years of VF experience. There is one bit on the classic route that I think people should be wary of. It’s the vertical climb after the last monkey bridge because it is more vertical and physical than the other parts. This is where people might struggle if they are not prepared.

I like that there are three or four routes to enjoy because you can spend more than fourty five minutes here. You also have a picnick table. You can climb one part, get back down, have a snack or drink and do the other parts.

As you can see from the featured photo the via ferrata is right on the road, as is the parking so access time is quick.

And Finally

In the end I’m happy that I chose to climb with the Via Ferrata group rather than hike with the hiking group. One of the advantages of doing something with a smaller group is that you get to know the people better. I definitely want to do more activities with this group and I’m happy that we ended the day with a drink before driving home. I think that “end of activity” drinks, even if it’s orangina, are important.

Being L’âne de Buridan

Being L’âne de Buridan

Byrichard

For the last 24 hours I have been L’âne de Buridan because I wanted to do two activities. I saw that a group was hiking in Annecy and I was hesitating due to the drive, the parking and the distance. I also saw that there were no spaces left. That’s why I signed up for a second activity while sitting in the waiting list. I didn’t expect to get a place.

The second activity is a via ferrata and I love that sport and I just got new kit so I should use it. The issue is that the group that is doing this activity meets irregularly and I prefer to find a group that meets regularly, to spend time with people more often.

The first activity then changed from Annecy to being at La Dôle so I thought that committing to the VF would be much easier., except that it isn’t because A) Via Ferrata are fun but you usually spend more time getting there and back than climbing, and because the group meets irregularly the group becomes less interesting.

I’d like to elaborate on this point. One of my character flaws is that I often want to try something new, rather than remain loyal to a group of people. The result is that I end up with solitude, rather than companionship. I’d like to meet the new group, and new people, but at the same time I feel that I should show “loyalty”, and I use the word loosely, for the group that I have done one thing with, so far.

I now have two groups that do things on alternate days so I can easily be a regular with both groups.

And Finally

Annecy would have been a 50 minute drive, each way, Morez is a 40 minute drive. St Cergue is an 18 minute drive. It makes environmental sense to do the local walk, on a rare occasion when people do something that is so convenient for me. If I had known yesterday I would have kept the electric car.