Alpine climbing and mountaineering often happens in harsh conditions. When dealing with extreme cold, being able to do the right things in the right order when taking a rest can mean the difference between gaining strength and resolve or losing them. Last week, we did a video on packing our packs and stuffing our pockets with an eye towards efficient rest stops. In the full video, we go through a typical sequence of steps when at the rest stop, itself.

Lots of clothing, rigid gear, and stiff boots make life in a tent in the cold more complicated. Digging a simple pit at the door of your tent can make your winter camping or mountaineering experience a little easier.

When alpine climbing on a cold and slippery winter summit, being safe with your body temperature and with your gear when taking a rest stop comes down to quality management of all of those things. But quality management of those things begins with having the right stuff accessible in your pack and in your pockets. The full video goes over how to pack for efficient rest stops. Our next video will go into the sequence we often use during those rest stops to ensure we stay warm, safe, and don't lose any gear.

Sublimation of snow (moving from solid directly to gas) not only smells bad, but also robs you of the water you are trying to make (you can't drink a gas). Here's the easy fix to avoid sublimation when turning snow into drinking water when alpine climbing or winter camping.

Transferring canister fuel from one canister to another may save you money, weight, or both as you prepare for your next climbing, backpacking, or camping trip. But, it's not without its risks. In the full video, we review the FlipFuel transfer device and demonstrate how to use it.

We can conform snow to meet our backpacking, alpine climbing, and winter camping campsite needs. One of things we need is a firmer surface to hold in tent stakes and support us as we sleep. The lowest-cost way to do that is to make sure you stomp out your tent platform as soon as you arrive, giving the snow time to set.

When we go climbing in the winter, take on alpine climbs in the shoulder seasons, or go to high altitude, we are likely to face camping in the snow. If we are going to keep a camp at a single location for a longer period of time, or if we are facing whipping winds, we may want to build snow walls to better shelter our tent. The full video shares how to build them.

Since my twin boys put up their first leads last summer, they are now wanting to learn to lead belay. That's a nuanced skill, so we introduced them to it by doing mock leads on the home wall with many draws in place for practice. (They were seven years old at the time this was shot.)

Reusing those plastic bottles from a beverage purchase may leach BPA into your water (maybe a topic for another video). But I also know from many conversations that some people will do it anyway because it can save money and weight and they don't do it that often. Well, for those of you who are willing to accept the risk, there is also a practical consideration: the lips on the mouths of those water bottles can melt when pouring boiling water making them unable to be closed. So, you can take this simple, light, piece of gear to avoid at least that problem when backpacking or camping in the winter.

Climbing big mountains in anything more than a day, may demand that you cold-weather camp as well as you climb. It's the key to your recovery at the end of each day. My twin eight-year-old wanted to try winter camping in truly cold weather. It got down to -6 F (-21C). The full video goes into what I was thinking about and focused on teaching them during these 48 hours out.

Some climbers have moved away from using the Prusik hitch to the Klemheist hitch as a friction hitch on the rope because they are easier to tie (especially with gloves). Although a Klemheist can have varying degrees of bite on the rope in different directions of pull, unlike a Prusik. That has led to the question: "What if I accidently tie a Klemheist backwards?" As long as you dress it, the "backwards" Klemheist becomes a Hedden hitch, and is still effective.

The girth hitch, or larksfoot, master point climbing anchor has come into vogue, with climbers extolling the virtues of their ease to tie and untie along with the minimal gear needed to make them. But, like all things in climbing, there are pros and cons to these climbing anchors, and we need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of some of our options when we construct them.

Should you damage your climbing harness, you can improvise a new one with a sling, a few carabiners, and the climbing rope. Here's one solution for a harness that will provide both seat and leg support.

Are a-threads or v-threads stronger? What makes a "threaded" ice climbing anchor strong in the first place? In the full video, we go a little deeper into the characteristics of stronger and weaker threaded anchors and go through a tutorial of how to build a good one.

Anytime you need to stay upright while using a vertical rope - including crevasse rescues to rock rescues - you may want a chest harness. Here are two options using a simple 120cm sling and a single carabiner, and a quick discussion of their pros and cons.

When we form a rope team for glacier travel on a mountaineering route, we need to get the tie in points placed efficiently. While we may make different decisions on how far apart to place climbers based upon the crevasse sizes, the mix of terrain, and communication difficulties, we will always end up at the need to divide the rope and tie the knots where we want them. The full video provides two methods for doing so.

If you need to be able to come out of the rope easily, like during a crevasse rescue, you may tie a Kiwi Coil one way. If you need to temporarily shorten and then lengthen the rope, you may tie a Kiwi Coil another way. If you are going to stay tied in all day, like for mixed alpine climbing, you may want to tie a Kiwi Coil this way.

If you've ever had a carabiner freeze shut or freeze open, you know how troubling or potentially dangerous it can be. While we always want to try to find the right carabiner for the job, when we add in snow, ice, and cold we need to also consider how resistant our carabiner styles are to freezing. The full video shows an experiment I ran to compare how well (or not well) different gate styles stood up to harsh, cold conditions.

When on a rope team and needing to pass your knot through a piece of protection, like during a running belay, you want to be as safe and efficient as possible. Here's one technique to accomplish those two goals.

Knots weaken soft climbing materials like slings, but we tie knots in slings all the time. Particularly the high forces that anchors can face during multi-pitch climbing will make us want to be sure our anchors are reliable. So, why do so many people tie knots in anchor slings? And isn't this worse with dyneema? The full video goes deep into this topic.