The consequences of a lead climber fall when ice climbing are simply too high to let ego get in the way of safety. When you need to take a rest, and you can find good ice, go ahead and take that rest. Here's how.

If you are going to get into alpine climbing, you need to be able to handle the variable conditions which mountains present to us. So, beyond snow and rock, one may need to contend with ice. You may love ice climbing, like my kids and I do, or you may grudgingly pursue it, but it is a necessary set of skills to have for mountaineering. Last video, we talked about good footwork. The full version of this video demonstrates how to make efficient swings and combine all the individual techniques into a full movement sequence.

If you have big, double boots for cold mountaineering as well as shoulder-season alpine climbing boots that are considerably smaller, you will have extra strap material from your crampon attachments whenever you put those crampons on your smaller boots. Here's what I do with that extra tail to keep it securely out of my way.

If you are going to get into alpine climbing, you need to be able to handle the variable conditions which mountains present to us. So, beyond snow and rock, one may need to contend with ice. You may love ice climbing, like my kids and I do, or you may grudgingly pursue it, but it is a necessary set of skills to have for mountaineering. Because all technical climbing starts with good footwork, in the full video we go over the basics of proper footwork for ice climbing. Next week's video will cover using ice tools and the complete sequence of movement.

The biomechanics of winter climbing are different and strain different muscles due to the equipment we have to wear. If you are into ice climbing, alpinism, or mountaineering, don't let your calves be the muscle endurance shortcoming that keeps you from the top.

Sitting in the snow and adjusting your crampons to your boots is hard to do with winter gloves and is a good way to make yourself cold. That's why I pre-fit my crampons to my boots before I ever leave the house for every ice climbing, alpine climbing, or mountaineering trip. This opens up all of the options to move heel and toe bails and fine-tune the crampon fit to maximize the likelihood that the crampon will stay on as well as the performance of the crampon for my climb. The full video shows how I go about pre-fitting crampons for each of the three crampon types: full strap, step-in, and hybrid.

When I'm done with a winter trip, maybe a little wet and a little cold, I want to get out of the wet gear and into some dry things. That's where this very cheap piece of equipment comes in, making it easy to store my wet things. It's big enough and tough enough to handle climbing equipment, axes and crampons, snowshoes, and boots for the whole family.

One half of our seven-year-old twins, Connor, and I went on a winter training hike as he progresses towards his first winter ascent of a Colorado 14er and starts to ready himself for true mountaineering. Hiking and scrambling on snow makes everything just a little bit harder, so it was nice to see his determination and sense of accomplishment. Unlike most of our videos, this one isn't instructional; the full version is just a short film to celebrate the joy my family and I find in the outdoors.

Cold weather brings condensation inside your tent, and condensation brings frozen water to your sleeping bag. The more days you are out, the more of a problem this becomes. Airing your bag out in the sun can evaporate the moisture and keep your bag lofted and insulating well.

My twin seven-year-olds love mountaineering, climbing, hiking, and camping. But making sure we have all the right gear for winter trips comes with larger consequences for getting it wrong. The full video is a load out of what we take for a winter day-trip in snowy, cold conditions

Having done a full video on attempting to avoid getting cold hands in the first place, what can you do if you end up with cold hands, regardless? Here are four ways to get your hands warm, and you can actually do all four together, if need be. My family and I use these techniques regularly on our hikes, climbs, and backpacking trips in the wilderness.

Being someone who goes to high and cold places on mountaineering, winter backpacking, and backcountry winter camping adventures, I need a sleep system that can handle severe temperatures (below 0 Fahrenheit or below -18 Celsius) but also not full up my pack and break my back with weight. The fill video shares my personal journey from nearly 4.5 down to 3.0 pounds (1.4 kg) for a winter bag and sleeping pads along with the gear changes I made to get there.

Too much snow can damage a tent be overweighting the tent poles. But getting snow off your tent can damage it, too, if you aren't careful. See why I put duct tape on my snow shovel so that I can better clear snow off my tent when winter camping.

I've seen extreme temperature ranges in the winter. So, when I head out for a winter climbing, backpacking, hiking, or camping, I need to have the right clothing layers. And the same clothing that works for 50 degrees (10 Celsius) doesn't work for -35 degrees (-37 Celsius). And if I always have a down jacket and rain shell, then the difference in clothing needs to be made up by the baselayer and midlayer. The full video provides my four favorite baselayer and midlayer combinations I use to adjust to progressively colder days in the winter.

As I teach my kids how to enjoy winter in the backcountry, I have to remind them that stepping out into the cold is supposed to feel cold. And it is a good tip for anyone new to winter adventures: When you are pursuing activities like summit hikes, long backpacking trips, and mountaineering routes, you are going to generate some heat. Your layers need to make sense for what you will feel when working hard, not when standing at the trailhead.

Camping in winter - either for its own enjoyment or as part of a climbing, backpacking, or mountaineering adventure - can be done warmly. There are lots of little things you can and should do to keep everyone in your group comfortable as possible. But if you were to only do three things, I would make the three things I show in the full length video the ones, as I have found they have had the biggest impact on my ability to control my temperature at night and make for a good night's sleep.

There are legitimate reasons to prefer not bringing a GPS device with you in the backcountry. Costs may be prohibitive. You may prefer map and compass. You may only take short trips out. But if you do anything that is multi-day, GPS devices make the most weight-efficient electronic option. It's more than just gross weight that should be considered, but weight per hour of use. Once you start getting other devices up to the same battery life by bringing battery banks with you, that supposed weight disadvantage starts to disappear.

Either poor vision, like me, or sun reflection off of the snow may drive the need for wearing glasses or goggles in the winter on hikes, climbs, while backpacking, and even camping. Unfortunately, glasses and goggles tend to fog up, as your breath and body heat mix with the cold air. The full video documents my journey through various attempts to solve this issue, moving from marginally effectively solutions to something that has finally worked for me on even the coldest mountaineering expeditions.

New home. New climbing wall. New route set. At six years old, the twins take on a new bouldering problem; here's the first clean top out. The boys are working on three-dimensional climbing and twisting the hips, often with a drop-knee, to keep the hips close to the wall.

I started getting into the outdoors by hiking to summits. Eventually, I got into technical climbing and mountaineering. The gear I bought for the hikes didn't quite cut it when it came to the climbs. So, for any budding mountaineers and alpinists, here's what I've come to value most in design of various insulating jackets. If you can buy with your future outdoors activities in mind, you can save the money I didn't save. Learn from my mistakes!