Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The First Internal Frame Backpack - Kelty's Tour Pack by John Robinson

In the early 1970s the outdoor equipment industry was changing rapidly.  Kelty backpacks were the premier backpack, with others made by Jansport and Alpenlite being quality brands.  REI made a Cruiser which was a cheap imitation of the Kelty.  The packs of that era were not called external frame backpacks, because there was no internal frame backpack to require the distinction. 

John Robinson and Jim Lawrence were working for Kelty designing new products, and the project headed by John Robinson was the Tour Pack, the world's first internal frame backpack, first sold in 1973. 



The Tour was blue, and appeared small and simple compared to today's internal frame packs, but you can definitely see it is the genesis of all those that followed.   Alp Sport, Gerry and North Face had pack swith some sort of bendable aluminum stay, but they were primarily ruck-sacks with no viable hip-waist suspension system.  Shortly after the Tour Pack came out Choiunard made an Ultima Thule, and Gregory and or Rivendell soon followed with similar packs.

Kelty sent models of the Tour Pack to myself and Ned Gillett, who both gave it high marks.    John Robinson and his climbing buddy Steve McCarthy did a nine day winter transit from Mammoth Mountain to Yosemite Valley on skis using the Tour Pack. That was with winter bags, tent and lots of food, on x-country skis over interesting terrain. The packs worked perfectly.  The side pockets of the Tour served as ski holders, and you could slip your skis behind the pockets.  The bottom compartment was a zippered sleeping bag compartment.   The pack had leather patches for securing skis, crampons, and ice axe.  The top flap and rear panel had zippered pockets.

The Douglas B-23 Dragon Bomber

In the late 1930s the Douglas Aircraft Company found a superior design for a sturdy long range aircraft in the civilian DC-2 and DC-3.  These were the finest passenger planes yet created, and also served as the basic form of military transport as the C-46 and C-47. 

The Army also wanted a better bomber than the then current bomber, and requested a bomber with twice the range and load as the current Army bomber, which was based on the DC-2 design.  Douglas responded with a redesigned airplane with a tail gun, the first for the U.S., and more power.   In addition, the stronger wings of the DC-3 were added.  The B-23s were also fitted with the new top secret Nordon bomb sight, said to be able to place a bomb in a pickle barrel from 25,000 feet.  That particular claim proved to be hogwash.   

On January 29, 1943, pilot Robert Orr and a crew of 8 were returning from bombing practice in Nevada to their base in Washington.  Low on fuel and with the wings icing up in a winter storm, Lt. Orr crashed landed his B-23 on Loon Lake in the mountains near McCall, Idaho.  The lake was frozen and the plane skidded across the frozen lake and into the trees close to the lake.  The trees sheared off the wings of the plane, and the fuselage came to rest in waist deep snow, with more snow falling and one crew member injured in the landing.

Loon Lake, (after the 2007 fire) looking across toward the bomber site

After 4 days, three of the crew decided to hike out, though they had no idea of where they were.  After six days of hiking through waist deep snow, they found a cabin with a forest service map on the wall, which told them where they were and the route to the nearest town, McCall.  At day 13 they found a CCC building, where they left an injured airman and continued toward McCall. On day 15 they had gone another 5 miles and found a Forest Service building with a phone, and called town for help . 

Meanwhile, on day 16 a local pilot spotted the wreckage of the B-23, and the next day landed at the lake and made two trips to haul the remaining 5 airmen out.  The town of McCall closed schools and stores, and greeted the rescued airmen, all of whom survived.   

In the summer of 2007, the whole area around Loon Lake for many miles was devastated with a huge forest fire.  It was with great wonder that we approached the wreckage of the B-23 near Loon lake to see if it had survived the fire.  We found that it had survived, and our crew of 3 boy scouts from Troop 100 explored the wreck.

The perfect way to end a hike to Loon Lake and the bomber, is to visit Burgdorf Hot Springs!!  Oh yeah, Baby!

Jeff Alt's "Hike for Mike"

Jeff Alt convinced his wife (Beth), a woman raised with the belief that vacations include hot showers, beaches, and warm beds, to chuck her domesticated amenities and “Take a Hike” to help her overcome the loss of her brother to depression and suicide.

Jeff had to spend quite a bit of time convincing Beth that the hike would be romantic, skillfully leaving out some minor details about the journey.

They walked the 218-mile John Muir Trail across California’s Sierra Nevada  mountain range as a depression awareness campaign, carrying all their supplies on their backs and sleeping on the ground for weeks on end.

Several times along the way, Beth realized that she had been taken for “a ride” or rather “a hike.”

Jeff and Beth’s trail adventures, detailed in the award-winning "A Hike For Mike", will entertain and inspire anyone through Jeff’s witty humor and inspirational stories.

Jeff wrote an award winning book, which is available on his site, A Hike for Mike.

                                                 

The John Muir Trail

The Y's Hikers John Muir Trail hike, 1971

see www.backpackingtechnology.com for the trip report and pictures of the Y's Hikers JMT trip, 1971

Ballet Lessons on the Beach

I have recently been teaching my daughter about ballet, and she is getting almost as good as me.  These photos of ballet on the beach and beach camping are from our backpack to the Olympic coast.   

Camp on the beach:

Kane Lake, in Idaho's Pioneer Range

I went with my son Jim, our dog Ginger, and friends Kerry and Erin to one of our favorite lakes, Kane Lake in the Pioneer Range of Idaho.  The scenery was great, but the fish were busy spawning and not jumping into a frying pan like usual.  What was feeding like crazy were the mosquitoes!  However, the views were worth it for me.  It was also pretty nice drinking a good cup of coffee sitting on a mountain meadow teaching my son to fly fish at the lakeshore.  How do you get a nice cup of jo in the mountains?  I used my new French press that works inside a Nalgene bottle.  That is a nice piece of equipment.

Banner Ridge Winter Camping

I joined my friend Bryan Wilkins and his friend Bryan Oakes on a winter camping trip this past weekend, and we went to an area in the hills above Boise.  The area is called Banner Ridge, and it has many miles of groomed cross country ski trails.  We headed up the trail pulling sleds with our gear, and quickly were on top of the ridge from the car, at about 2 miles.  The ridge is open and flat topped, with incredible views of the surrounding area. 

Once we got on top of the ridge we left the trail to a secret clearing in the trees, and began building snow shelters.  Both Bryan O. and I snore, so we all made seperate shelters. I have been a bit nervous in closed spaces for the past few years, so my shelter had an open entrance and my head was right at the door. 

We started by stomping down areas for our shelters, then cutting blocks out of a trench with snow saws.  Once the trench was cut, we formed the blocks into a peaked roof.  After the roof was up we cut back the sidewalls to widen out the trench in a flare that widened towards the ground.  Inside the trench we placed a plastic tarp, a foam pad and our sleeping bag.  I also had a candle lantern, and a thermometer with a probe that extended outside the shelter so I could see how cold it was outside.

Our cooking was at a little bench where we sat on foam sitting pads, with a kitchen table in front of us.  It got down to 5 degrees F. and I was just fine in my warm sleeping bag.  I had a bad dream that featured my two worst fears.  I dreamed of being in an enclosed space with my ex-wife, and she wouldn't stop talking.  That woke me up at about 1:30 AM, and the whole area was bathed in moon light.

Bryan O. had freeze dried eggs for breakfast, and Bryan W. had canned corn beef hash.  He said that as he ate it he could feel his body temperature start to rise, from the fats and calories in it.  They both looked on enviously as I started frying up my frozen Jimmy Dean hash, with potato chunks, peppers, onions and sausage pieces.  When it was about done I added 3 eggs, and it was looking pretty good.  Bryan W. read the ingredients on  the package to find out some reason why it was unhealthy, but couldn't really find any bad things in it, and I didn't care anyway because it tasted so good. 

There are two yurts located on or near the ridge top.  They are operated by the Parks and Rec department, and anyone can book either yurt and stay there overnight year round.  This looks like a fun way to spend a weekend in the mountains in the winter.

The Ptarmigan Traverse

In 1973 my college buddy Marc Dilley and I went on a famous mountaineering trip in the North Cascades of Washington, near the Canadian border. It is called the Ptarmigan Traverse. It starts at Cascade Pass, which is reached by one of the most spectacular hikes imaginable, spectacular because you are surrounded by incredible peaks on either side. From Cascade Pass, you leave the trail, not to see another trail for 5 or 7 days, depending on how fast you do the route. Most of the pics below are by Marc, and I have shown some of his other pics in posts on Lewisii tweeyi, Fall Trip to the Enchantments, and The Kayak, High Tech Watercraft of the Arctic.

The view below is by Marc, and shows me in stylin' red socks, wool knickers, and ventile cotton anorak, standard  mountaineer garb of the 70's, when wool was king and synthetic fabric was only a dream. We were camped with a view of El Dorado Peak, about halfway to the second pass of the trip, Cache Col.

Looking down at where the trip started we could see Cascade Pass and Forbidden Peak, and Sahale Arm, which leads to Sahale Pk off to the right of the picture below.

Our second night on the trip was spent at a small lake named Kool Aid Lake. There is usually no lake to be seen here, as its usually frozen and covered by snow. In the evening at Kool Aid Lake a cloud formed over us and swirled about in the golden evening sun. It had a real magical air about it.   

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The photo below is of me looking down at the valley floor from Kool Aid Lake.  I was trying a hair style called the "mountain man".  The route of the Ptarmigan is on the mountains above those big U shaped glacial valleys. The valley bottoms are impassible, with devils club and alder thickets, and no trails.  The valley walls are very steep, and level out on their upper part to a flatter profile, which is covered by snow and glaciers.  The glaciers have carved away the mountains until all that is left is a knife edge ridge between the glaciers on either side of the ridge.  The route of the Ptarmigan follows these upper areas high above the valley floor, and crosses the glaciers and the passes between the glaciers and ridges.

 

On the third day of the trip, you have to cross a rocky ridge near Mt. Formidible, and also this snow filled gulley. This is called "the red band", for the band of red rock that leads up to the snow gulley. I crossed first in this photo from my third Ptarmigan, cutting steps in the hard snow. Then I belayed my partner across. The run out below the snow crossing is not pretty, so your heart is pumping pretty good as you move your ice axe with each step, and concentrate on not tripping on your own crampons. Carrying a 70+ pound pack does not make things easier either.

The photo below shows the group after leaving Yang Yang Lakes, climbing a ridge, and approaching the main obstacle of the fourth day. The route is to head toward the dark rock wall, descend to the left towards the big scary glacier, then pick your way through the crevasse fields of that big mother glacier, and top out on a pass next to the pointy peak at the right of the picture. The crevasses were so incredibly deep, maybe 200 feet deep. Crossing the snow bridges was a little disconcerting.

The view below shows the glacier more clearly, and our route up the right side of the glacier, through the crevasses and up the slope.  The visible crevasses are easy, its the hidden crevasses that are dangerous.

Mark Gibson descending a steep snow slope with a big pack. The danger was in sliding down the snow and sliding right over the little rock ledge, below which were cliffs.

We camped on an flat spot below Le Conte Pk, and in the evening thought we would head up and see if we could climb it.  We took ice axes, but no rope.  It got pretty steep at the top, but we reached the top, looked around, and then looked down at our route.  We all thought "Oh Crap, that is a lot steeper than I want to downclimb!".  It was dang steep.  The fellow in the photo is standing about vertical, and you can see that the snow slope is right in his face.  It had to be 60 degrees, which is the steepest snow can stick to rock.  Plus if you got sliding you would be down in those rocks long before you could self arrest.  Do not ever climb Le Conte Pk without a rope or a helicopter, thats what I learned.

The view fromWhite Rock Lakes to Dome Peak (below) is pretty impressive, and its made more impressive by periodic calving of house sized chunks of ice that break off the glacier and fall over the cliffs below, forming a temporary white flow of ice pieces over the rock. That goes on all day and all night. 

The last pass of the trip is on the ridge between Dome Peak and Spire Point, and is called Spire Pass.  We climbed Spire Point, then rested at Spire Pass (below) before heading down to Cub Lake.  The slopes below Spire Pass on the southern side were so steep and slippery with grass and moss that we thought about putting our crampons on for the descent. Of course there was no trail

The photo below shows me in white and another guy approaching the top of Dome Peak, which has really breathtaking dropoffs on either side.  It is definitely not a "dome". It was tempting to get down on hands and knees and crawl out there, when you realized on either side was just about vertical for a long ways

The photo below is as we were rappelling down from Spire Point.  Spire Point is so sharp there is no place to sit on the summit, even for one person.  Each person gets to a ledge below the summit, pulls up to the knife edge ridge that is the summit, looks around at the view over your knuckles, maybe peeps down the other side, which is vertical, and drops back down to the ledge below.  From the ledge we rappelled down. Its about a 5.5 climb, which is enough for me when the exposure is like that. A rock was kicked down from above that came down the route like a cannon ball.  It didn't hit anyone, or they'd be dead.

Lewisii tweedyi

These are examples of  Lewisii tweedyi, with text from an article at www.wenatcheeoutdoors.com by my friend Marc Dilley. Wenatchee Outdoors has a list of other articles here.

A gentle belle--resplendent in a muted setting of sharp needles, gritty soil and cold stone--Tweedy’s Lewisia clings to life in the least likely of environments.



Valued by many experts as the world’s premier rock garden plant, L. tweedyi is unique to impoverished, rocky settings in Wenatchee and Methow subranges of the Washington Cascades and in Manning Park, British Columbia. It was named after Frank Tweedy, a U.S. Geological Survey botanical collector who made the first ascent of Mt. Stuart on August 5, 1883. Much of L. tweedyi’s renown is due to its extravagant bloom.



A large flowering specimen can be spotted hundreds of feet away, its mass of flowers lighting the way like a beacon. While flowers are typically two to 10 per plant, individuals with 50 to 100 blooms are not uncommon.

Flowers in all stages of development may coexist on these large specimens.

Marc's Photos of the Enchantments

Just to rub it in, my friend Marc Dilley sent me photos of his recent hike to the Enchantments, an alpine plateau surrounded by peaks in the Stuart Range of the Cascades, near Wenatchee Washington.   He and some friends hiked in to the Enchantments as a day hike, which most sane people do as a 4 or 5 day trip.

This time of year the larch trees are turning orange and dropping their needles.   Marc and I once went into here in the early spring, skied across frozen Colchuck Lake, carried our skiis up the snow filled Asgard Pass, climbed the peaks around the basin, and skied down Asgard Pass, in another life when we were invinceable.  Marc is also a botanist, and has some wildflower articles on the Wenatchee Outdoors Club site.  Marc's skills as a climber and as a photographer continue to amaze me.   


Hiking around Colchuck Lake, with Asgard Pass above. I can't believe we skied down that sucker with packs on.  Oh now I remember.  I fell a lot, and tumbled quite a bit of the way.

This little pond is Gnome Tarn, with Prussik peak on the horizon.


These are larch trees in their pre-winter color. They drop their needles shortly after turning yellow.


This is one of the bigger lakes of the Enchantments.