This past December, our friend, Anno Davis and her crew of intrepid women set out to reach the summit of Volcán Lautaro, the highest peak in the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap.  Because its summit requires a difficult and often dangerous expedition through isolated peaks and fierce weather, it has less than a dozen ascents on record. But if successful, Anno’s team would became the first all-female team to reach its precipitous summit.

In this three-part series, Anno chronicles their journey—from chance meeting to blustery ascent—and everything along the way.
By Anno Davis

Meet “Mujeres al viento”, a dreamt-up name roughly translating to “women into the wind”. This group currently consists of five young women whose common thread is a strong desire for outdoor adventure: Adelina Odriozola (Ade), Flavia Mazzina (Fla), Marina Etchart (Meri), María Roldán (Maru) and Andrea Davis (me), all Argentine (from lovely Bariloche, to be precise) except myself. Our paths had crossed in different points in space and time, but all five of us had barely met until we were called together by Maru and Ade in April 2011.

The email invitation was sent from Maru and Ade to six women explaining their careful selection of us. The recipients all shared a passion for getting into the mountains on skis and a series of positive attributes. Their idea: to plan the first of many female outings and challenge ourselves in a male-dominated realm. They suggested, as an ambitious first foray, that we explore the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap on skis—our favorite mode of transport for such snowy places—and that we choose a peak in the area to add some verticality to the otherwise-flat itinerary. Three of us enthusiastically accepted the proposal, beginning a journey of unknown dimensions and implications.

Our first of many meetings over the course of the following five months, would be virtual, with Maru, Ade and I gathered around the computer on Ade’s kitchen table in Mendoza (central Argentina), Fla connected from Jujuy (far north, where she was working), and Meri from Bariloche (south). Amidst our shared excitement of beginning this adventure, we also felt an urgency to put our ideas into words. The Club Andino Bariloche was celebrating its 80^th birthday by accepting expedition grant proposals with a deadline of just one month away. It was time to get serious about our goals, choose a peak to ski and begin planning our itinerary, logistics, budget and other aspects that make up a solid expedition. It was complex planning in which none of us had much experience.

Together we chose the ambitious goal of skiing Volcán Lautaro, an active volcano and the highest peak in the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap reaching approximately 11,800 feet (3,600 meters). It is situated in Chilean territory and accessed from the well-known mountaineer’s destination town of El Chaltén in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. Due to its isolation and severe weather conditions, it has less than a dozen ascents, and we would be the first all-female team to set out with this goal. The Club Andino Bariloche agreed to fund half of our budget, an opportunity too good to be true.

There was no turning back.

Vespig Summit on one of our training runs

THE PREPARATION

Preparation for the expedition took the better part of five months. We sought out support from everyone we knew and were surprised by the positive responses we received. We were able to cover almost half of our budget with donations and discounts on food and gear (thank you, Nau!), as well as equipment loans. We were even lent a truck to travel from Bariloche to Chaltén, greatly reducing our travel expenses.

We hired a trainer who helped us arrive at the start of the expedition in similar physical conditions. Friends and guides familiar with the area gave us advice. And amidst all the planning, organizing and our regular studies and jobs, we managed to get together on two occasions to go on ski outings in Bariloche and Mendoza to test gear and brush up on different technical, safety-related and organizational skills.

In late October, the five of us finally convened in Bariloche for an intense week of last-minute preparation. The moment had finally arrived. We loaded the truck, hugged friends and family goodbye, and hit the road. I was filled with exhilaration; we had an incredible adventure ahead of us, no matter what the outcome would be.

Stay tuned for next week: In part 2 of our three part series on “Women Into the Wind,” Anno and her crew attempt to summit Volcan Lautaro despite the fierce weather conditions.

On our way to Volcán Lautaro

There are many things we love about our friends at Grain Surfboards. Not only do they build beautiful, natural wood surfboards akin to a work of art, they do it sustainably.  Rooted in traditional boat-building, Grain uses locally harvested cedar to carve out stunning modern boards built to last. And, as we learned, they’re not afraid to share their secrets.

This week, in the Thought Kitchen, our friends at Grain give us a little insight behind the business of building surfboards, how they came to be here, and why you should come to Portland (or their hometown in Maine) to build one of these handcrafted wonders yourself.

Grain Surfboards is a small hive of activity located on the coast of Maine. With our small, tight crew of eight, we handcraft, classic surfboards, out-of-the-ordinary wood belly-boards, hand-planes, and skate boards out of local timber. And in the process of creating beautiful, custom boards, we end up building an off-kilter community of independent thinkers around us.

To find yourself in the business of making stuff for people feels a bit odd, especially to those of us disinclined to accumulate things. But as Brando once said, “one must do something” and at Grain Surfboards, we’ve found that there are deep rewards and contributions to be made even in the world of making what – on the surface – appears to be mere consumer goods.

That may be because of the way we originally came to build surfboards; out of a desire to make our boards in a way that felt more real, more lasting, and of better quality than what we felt was being offered by the so-called “surf industry.” Those origins, combined with our experiences with traditional wood boats, brought us together some years ago. We all had the same idea: to craft surfboards in the same way that boats are built – as a hull around a frame, an essentially hollow vessel, built to last.

Along the way, we discovered that we could adhere to a pretty strict ethos of sustainability, even as we taught others that there were options to the short-lived, industrial surf-craft that has become the norm.  Our teaching roles expanded as we realized the many rewards inherent in “rolling our own” surfboards. We figured out how to assemble wood parts, hardware, and knowledge into the most complete surfboard kit available and began to share the experience of building your own board with people from all over the world. Eventually, we invited people to build boards in our shop. And now thanks to the help of some like-minded companies like Nau, we are able take our classes on the road in cities like Portland, Oregon.

In the process of helping people build their own surfboards or custom build their dream board, we collected a community of people around us. This is one of the great rewards of doing what we do. People often find that what starts as a simple customer-vendor relationship ends in friendship and community. We believe this happens simply because, for us, the emphasis is on the experience and the inherent meaning of what we do rather than on the thing itself.

Ultimately, we found that we can be more than a mere purveyor of stuff. By offering products built with passion that will never see a landfill, we help give surfers a chance to join the collective voice of our customers and friends—a voice that celebrates great experiences, good friends, sustainability, quality and longevity.

In addition to building surfcraft and surfboard kits in Maine, Grain Surfboards holds classes in surfboard building all year long.  A traveling class will be held in Portland, Oregon in an old shipwright’s shop in March.  See details here.

Despite mother nature’s slow start to the snow season, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the office this week. Mark, our GM, is enjoying some off-piste skiing in Utah. Tyson and Peter are taking turns at Ski Bowl. Josie’s over in Bend probably causing some mischief on the mountain. And Leigh, well, she’s staring down the steep terrain of the Tetons. She took a break from the mountain to give us the low down on life in Jackson, Wyo.

Even when the snow is low, it’s hard to complain about spending the holidays in the Tetons. Walking through the antler arch at JAC, I couldn’t have been happier to be any other place with my family, 8 adults and 5 kids, to seek some mountain adventures. Over the years I’ve made some of the best turns of my life in Teton Village and on Teton pass, but snow is way down this year and it took a little extra motivation to make the best of this winter playground. In a way, I’ve enjoyed the challenge to seek out a stash here or there, earn my turns in the pass or enjoy a snowshoe in Teton park at sunset. As always, Jackson did not disappoint.

Day 1: we were  a large crew on the mountain. Ten out of 13 on snow—impressive for a crew that flew in from Oregon, Vermont, Florida and Italy.  For the first time in 15+ years, I took my first run of the year with my dad, brother-in-law and ripping eight-year-old nephew. All ages were stoked. Over the next several sunny days, I enjoyed skiing and snowboarding with my four year old daughter, husband, parents and siblings. We made the most of low snow on the mountain and explored the magic of Teton park, enjoyed many après beers at the Moose and shared lots of memorable holiday meals.

Winter wishes from Jackson, and I wish mountains everywhere lots of snow in the New Year!

Photo by Jonathan Maus

Yes, we love bikes, and we also love people who build bikes, like our friend Tony Pereira. In just six years, Tony has built everything from utility and transportation bikes to randonneuring and touring rigs, road, mountain and cyclocross bikes. Inspired by the French Golden Age, his sleek, fillet-brazed steel bikes have won him awards at the North American Handmade Bike Show and, most recently, at Oregon Manifest’s Constructor’s Design Challenge where he took home top honors for building the ultimate utility bike.  He’s been called a “master of his craft.” And not only by us, but by Rapha who recently selected Tony to craft a one-of-a-kind bicycle for their master framebuilding collection.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Tony at his small shop in Portland to talk about—you guessed it—bikes.

OTG: You’ve been building handcrafted bikes for over 6 years now, everything from single-speed bicycles and randonneuring rigs to touring, road, cyclocross and transportation bikes. With all of these different styles of bikes, what is your overarching design philosophy that ties them all together?
Tony: My design philosophy is informed by two totally separate worlds. One is the early mountain bikes. I started mountain biking in the 80s, and the high end bikes at the time were out of California made by Tom Ritchey and sold by Gary Fisher. Those were all built using fillet-brazing. So when I started building, I was drawn to that technique. But on the other side—the road bikes, city bikes, touring and randonneuring  bikes—they’re all informed by the French Golden Age, the bikes of the 40’s and 50s. They established the form and style of bike that I’ve been so drawn to. And it’s a form that still works. I can build bikes in a style that is still useful. But if I was drawn to bikes of the 1890’s, they wouldn’t translate because the geometry and components have evolved. But by the 40s, geometry had stabilized, and they had figured out what worked well for riding quickly over long distances.

So fillet brazing is a kind of seamless process?
So the fillet is the shape of the joint. I’ve seen it used in manufacturing where there is a rounded edge on a surface which is what they call a filleted edge.

As opposed to lugs?
Right. Lugs are fittings that the tubes slide into. Then it’s a lap joint where you add filler between two pieces. So it’s a dissimilar metal that melts at lower temperature than the parent metal. You’re heating up the main tubes to the melting temperature of the filler, and just the filler melts. That’s what I like about it. It gives you that kind of sculptural flow between the tubes. The other more common lugless joining method that you see today is called TIG welding and that’s how most bikes are built. In the 80’s and before that, TIG welding was expensive. Then in the late 80’s, the cost came down enough that it started to be used in bike building. And ever since, it has taken over for steel and aluminum bikes. But a really good TIG weld, to a trained eye can look good, but to me it never looks as good as the fillet brazing. That’s why I have stuck with fillet brazing as my primary style of building.

Photo Oregon Manifest

In just six years, you’ve already earned a lot of accolades and recognition. You’re doing this collaboration with Rapha, and you won Best of Show this year at Oregon Bike Manifest. But I’m curious about the bike you built for Oregon Bike Manifest— the electro assist, sound system, lockable storage. Where did you find the design inspiration for this bike?
That’s a bike I have been thinking about for a few years. I’ve been intrigued by electro assist for about four years now. I thought that most of the electro assist bikes that have been made so far have been pretty ugly, and I wanted to try and make one that resembled a motorcycle. I also wanted lockable storage on the bike, so you could leave stuff with the bike and walk away.

Sweet.
Yeah, I think that’s one of the limitations of the bicycle. You show up somewhere and you have to take all of these bags off your bike and walk into your meeting or the store or wherever you are. You see bicyclists around and they’ve a helmet and a couple of bags, and they’re sopping wet dragging their things around with them wherever they go. With this bike, you can take your helmet off and leave your stuff behind on the bike. And it locks. With the sound system, I went with this idea of a car replacement. We’re used to having stereos in our car. It’s a little bit goofy— you’re riding down the road and your radio is blaring and people are looking at you funny.

And you had some statistic you threw out about bike commuting….what was it?
So 85% of all of the trips made by car in the US are under five miles.

Wow. That’s a lot.
Yeah, and it’s something like 50- or 60% of trips made by car in the US are under TWO miles. And I’m not the biggest environmentalist or policy wonk, but it just makes sense to me, that if we’re going to change the way we use fossil fuels, then we need to change the way we look at transportation.

Well, that leads me into my next question. I like this quote that you had on the Oregon Manifest’s website: “Most of the products being manufactured today are not meant to last very long. They are made in factories far away by people we will never meet. The modern craft movement —and I do think it is a movement— can help change what people expect from the tools they use and the items they adorn their life with.” So what do you mean by this and how is it going to change things?
Because the internet has made the world such a small place, we are all able to communicate with each other so easily that you can get exactly what you want no matter where you are. Prior to the internet, in order to find a hand-made anything, you had to seek it out. Now everything is more accessible. And it has spurred this modern craft movement. I don’t know if it’s widely perceived as a movement. But there are a lot more craftspeople out there who are able to exist because of things like Etsy. Hopefully it will keep some of the old techniques alive. Fillet brazing is sort of dead in manufacturing. I see it used randomly in things out there and I’m usually surprised

And that’s because?
Stuff is usually welded because it’s faster and cheaper. It doesn’t require as much skill. There are certainly some applications for brazing still, but it’s sort of obsolete.

Ok, one more question. So, let’s say your garage is on fire, and you have to save one bike from your entire collection, which one would it be?
The bike I call the roaring 29er, a single speed styled after a 1920’s cruiser bike. I feel like it’s the bike that got things rolling for me. It won two awards at the 2007 North American Handmade Bike show: best off-road bike and best fillet-brazed bike.  You know, I’m still proud of all of my bikes, but that bike, it’s kind of different.

17 inches and counting. La Nina is back, my friends. In fact, word on street says Mount Hood Meadows might even open some lifts this weekend. With that kind of a forecast, it’s a good thing we’re giving away two ten passes to Meadows, as well as a weekend getaway to Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont (includes lodging, lift tickets, rentals and dinner) and full Nau winter kits for all in our Winter Stoke Giveaway. It’s your last chance to enter, so sign up today.

RadBot gives Seth a go fast blessing. It was awesome and it worked - just like RadBot 3000

This is what Seth looks like naked. Thanks Castelli for a flattering control top panel in the team clothes!

Yeah, we know, Halloween has come and gone. But some of us like to think that feather boas and vampire capes should be an accepted clothing option every day of the week. Our friends at River City Bicycles think so too. In the second of our series of dispatches from the River City/Gates Center Track Cyclocross team, John Walrod and his crew show the cycling world that fat suits and pumpkins are nothing to mess with.

A road trip to Bend, more costumes than we needed, a few trench coats and our hotshot Carbon Drive Raleighs: Cross Crusade is all about the Halloween bash. Some would even say that the early races in the series are meant to build up enough fitness to be able to race in a costume on Halloween. And the post Halloween races are nothing more than victory laps meant for dominating crappy, store-bought costumed racers.

Don't get passed by this guy in front of your girlfriend.

But Alex, Ryan and Seth think that every race is meant for racing.  I —aka RadBot 3000—am of the costumed school of thought. Luckily we balance out quite well. They get results; I get the hot media: (yep, that’s the front page of the Bend Bulletin, the local newspaper).

Long story short – too much dust, too much booze, too many flats, too many costumes, and not enough rain for trench coats.  Seth, Ryan and Alex posted actual results against dudes who get paid to race.  I grabbed a ton of facial lacerations from my huge pumpkin head and sheet metal cuts on my thighs from the RadBot 3000 legs, but I also distracted the competition while the boys stole the glory.  Teamwork.

-John Walrod

Giving the Carbon Belt Drive some gas is where these bikes shine!

“Single speed – really? Belt? Why would you do that?” Those are the questions that precede the inevitable – “Can I try it?” That’s followed by “Holy @)#(!, that thing is a rocket!”

This summer I was invited by my good friend Dave Guettler to join Alex Criss, Seth Patla, and Ryan Weaver on a cyclocross team co-sponsored by his shop – River City Bicycles (super shop of the country and shining star of Portland, OR). I have raced for Dave for about 10 years but this idea was different, we’d be teaming with Gates Carbon Belt Drive to do the drivetrains on our bikes. Long story short – we recently took delivery of 4 Carbon Fiber Raleigh Hodala frames and built them up with the Gates Carbon Center Track belts.

Warm and dry—two things that don’t go together with 'Cross!

Cyclocross Magazine did a review of this very bike earlier this year. The bikes are flashy and really light (belts/pulleys end up a fair bit lighter than a chain) and they garner tons of attention. Riding in the first few races we dialed in the fit and waited for a true test to come. That came a week ago in the form of unexpected rain at the CrossCrusade season opener. Thank you Nau for the super dope trench coats – they are gonna get some high mileage this year!

Single speed bikes are counter-intuitive: Gears are supposed to make you more efficient, right? Not always. On many cross courses, as well as mountain bike tracks and urban adventures (just ask any messenger), some of the best riders sport one gear. Why? Because there are no derailleurs to fail, there’s much less friction in the drive train—a big efficiency savings—plus much less weight. A reliable bike that weighs a lot less and is more efficient sounds good huh? Yeah, it’s really good.

Uh oh, no more excuses.....

Single speeds are better in the mud than gears and the Gates Carbon Center Track makes my old chain single speed feel like a donkey. Chains, even single speed chain bikes, clog up. I won’t bore you with more words – look at this: I couldn’t get into my pedals, and somehow my drivetrain was as clean as the day it was installed!

- John Walrod

Here at Nau, all this early season excitement is just adding fuel to the fire of our winter stoke. So to give it a positive outlet, we’re giving away everything you need to take advantage of what’s sure to be an epic winter.

For our first-ever Winter Stoke giveaway, we’ve got two great prize packages: East Coasters can win a weekend for two at Stratton Mountain Resort, complete with lodging, lift tickets and rentals; West Coasters can pick up one of two 10-passes to Mt. Hood Meadows. Best of all? We’ll outfit all the winners in complete mountain kit—including jacket, down, pants and insulation—from Nau.

To win, submit your entry at nau.com/ski and stay tuned to our Off The Grid newsletter—we’ll announce the winner November 16th.

Practicing the Pop-Up

Our friends at Warm Current have combined three of our favorite things—surfing, sustainability and giving back—and created an ingenious non-profit that helps underserved kids learn how to surf. For the past three years, they’ve collected tired, old wetsuits and surfboards, polished them up, and used the gear to outfit kid’s surf camps across the Pacific Northwest, Peru, Mexico and Morocco.

Now, for the first time, they’ve launched a brilliant fundraising campaign, The Faces of Warm Current, that will help spread the love of surfing and the outdoors to kids that would otherwise go without.

This is how it works: From now until July 31^st, you can donate a mere five bucks and purchase a square containing a message or photo that will become part of a giant mosaic on the side of the kid’s surf camp trailer. The money will be used to buy new kid’s surfboards, new wetsuits and a trailer that will tour up and down the West Coast.

Even if you’ve never ridden a wave, this is a cause to get on board with. Break out your old wetsuit and send it their way. Teach a lesson. Donate a five spot (or more). And if you haven’t done so already, check out their website: Warmcurrent.org.

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