Making It Better - Gear mods for the obsessed

Disassembling the Petzl QuarkDane Burns is a machinist with an unquenchable thirst for cold and scary alpine and ice climbing. He writes about it frequently on his blog, www.coldthistle.blogspot.com. Bloggers in the climbing world seem to find each other with some regularity. I read Dane and he reads me. Not too long ago, he commented about my Petzl Quark ice tools which he noticed in some pictures of me climbing the Black Ice Couloir. He implied that my set-up was less than ideal and he could offer me an upgrade of his own creation. Cool.

When it comes to gear, I rarely leave well enough alone. After nearly 40 years of consuming outdoor equipment, I've come to believe that the details of perfect design are often trumped but the realities of budget and manufacturing. If it's easy for me and my friends to pick apart a jacket, tent, tool or pack and see the flaws, it's unfathomable that these same details are lost on the product's design team. So, it stands to reason that there are other variables that lead to the look and function of the final product.

That's not to say that once we have our hands on the new toy that we need to leave it as is. To the contrary, if one possesses a sewing machine, basic tools and a space to use them or even a machine shop, there are endless ways to improve anything. Why complain about your new purchase when you can make it perfect?

There is a naughty satisfaction to taking scissors, dremel tools and other instruments of destruction to brand new gear. It feels so wrong and yet the prospect of unleashing performance enhancement is simply too great to resist. One must first get over the trepidation experienced when potentially destroying brand new shwag. But once you have, you're only limited by your own needs and the creativity needed to fulfill them.

It seems that Dane was frustrated by the lack of a hammer option for his favorite ice tools, the Petzl Nomic, and used his considerable machinist skills to upgrade the tool with one. He then realized that the same hammer head could be fitted to the Quark, improving the swing performance and dropping 30 grams from each one. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Now, I'm no hard-core ice climber. I love doing it but it also scares the crap out of me. I just don't get out often enough to feel completely comfortable with the high end of the difficulty scale. As a result, I can't say that I'm particularly in tune with the subtleties of tool design and swing weight characteristics of various brands. But if a guy like Dane says my tool will be better with his hammer heads on them, who am I to argue? So, I told Dane I would gladly install them on my Quarks and write about it here. 

Standard head (L) C-T head (R)

Getting them to fit took only about 15 minutes total, requiring a few minutes with each grinding some material off the pick/tool interface with a flat file to make room for the head. It was pretty easy and Dane covers the details here.

Finishing the pick grindThe first thing I noticed is the weight, or lack thereof. It's only 30 grams but dropping that off the end of the tool is noticeable. I like that. The downside is that the profile of the hammer is smaller and closer to the shaft which theoretically places the shaft of the tool more in harm's way when beating in pitons. Frankly, I just don't place enough pins to worry about this risk if the tradeoff is significant. Additionally, there are plenty of Dane's hard guy friends using the hammers in scary places and they don't seem to mind.

Svelte perfection!

So, the weather is cooling off and the rain is falling. There's snow in the mountains. All this is good for climbable ice formation. I'm vowing to get to Cody this season for a shakefest or two. Get the grades up, and all that like my Aussie friends like to say. And when I do, I'll be able to see what all this swing weight talk is about. Maybe even do a side-to-side comparo with one tool traditionally equipped and the other with Dane's mod on board. Stay tuned for that.