Off The Beaten Path in The Owens River Gorge

It's no secret that we're having a dry winter here in the Sierra. California's drought was even a headline on the BBC's website last week. For those whose first love is skiing and snowboarding this has been disappointing. That disappointment can be heard at house parties, pot lucks, restaurants, and bar stools all over town. For everyone else, it's been a great season for sport climbing in the Owens River Gorge.

Recently my friend Maarten and I made plans to head down to the Gorge for the day. We chose to head down to the Sub Gorge - a rarely visited area that looked good in the guidebook. Usually, dragging partners to obscure crags leaves them (and me) questioning if we'll ever climb together again. This day was different.

After few warm ups we headed down to the Silent Pillar Wall. The trails aren't very well established so this involved wading in the river itself at a few points. It was only knee deep at the deepest and a pleasant temperature, a nice change from the generally loose dusty approaches to other crags in the Gorge. The routes at the Silent Pillar were great. They had high quality rock and fun moves. There was almost no chalk on the holds, so we had to actually figure out our own beta instead of follow the chalk highway. And there was no waiting for the multi-starred routes.

Visiting a scenic, quiet area with beautiful climbing and a great partner is a pretty good silver lining in a dry winter. Though I would hesitate to use the word "adventure" to describe a day of sport climbing, it was definitely a fun variation on the usual day in the Gorge.

Climbing Up Waterfalls

While meeting a few climbers at the beginning of a trip recently I was told, "We were just reading about you." I was surprised until shown the article (below) when I remembered Lyra interviewing me last winter.

From the winter edition of Welcome To The Eastern Sierra.

June Lake Ice

The Roadside Ice in June Lake is in great shape right now. It's also even more roadside than usual. The June Lake Loop road is open, so a climber can park about 10 seconds from the base of the ice. I was there the other day and my partner didn't even bring a pack. We geared up at the truck and away we went. A 60m rope works for some of the anchors but a 70m is necessary if you want the most options.

Boy Scout Falls on January 3.

Rab Neutrino Plus Jacket Review

I've been using the Rab Neutrino Plus jacket for winter mountaineering trips and as a belay jacket for cold days in Lee Vining Canyon for the last year, probably for about 25 or 30 days total. I've even worn it while moving on a few particularly cold summit days. I'm glad to have this jacket with me when NOAA has the daytime highs from 0 to 15 F (or colder).

Rab says that in a size large the jacket weighs 27.7oz (785g)  and has 9.7oz (275g) of 800 fill down. Baffled or box-wall construction, like a sleeping bag, makes it warmer than a jacket that's sewn through but otherwise similar. The North Face Nuptse jacket is a classic example of sewn-through construction. Rab's Neutrino Endurance Jacket has less down and sewn-through construction. This makes it a little lighter and cheaper, but also a little less warm. Other than that the features on the Plus and Endurance jackets are almost identical.


Being a skinny guy with long arms, I've come to appreciate the way that Rab cuts their outerwear. This jacket has a nice long cut in the torso, and it's even a little longer in back. It keeps my hips nice and toasty and even when reaching there are no nasty drafts. I didn't think much of this feature at first but I've come to believe that my core is kept a lot warmer by it. The hood works well over a helmet but also adjusts nicely for when you're not wearing a helmet.

The zipper is a two way separating zipper. This means that the zipper has two sliders and when you put the jacket on and zip it up all the way, you can reach down and zip the lower slider up allowing the jacket to open up at the bottom. The big advantage here is when belaying. The jacket can be down around your hips keeping you warm and not interfering with your belay device at all. This is a small detail but makes a big difference in actual climbing applications. I wouldn't buy a big belay jacket without this feature.

The outside handwarmer pockets are big, easily big enough to fit a one liter bottle. The pockets are also inside the insulation. What I mean here is that while the pocket opening is on the outside of the jacket, anything you stick in there goes between the lining of the jacket and the down. This makes these pockets a good place to warm up a cold fuel canister, or your hands. They're also the only good place in this jacket to make wet gloves less wet. I think I still prefer the big drop-in mesh pockets like you might find on Patagonia's DAS Parka for that job.


There isn't anything I really don't like about the Neutrino Plus, but there are a few features that I find unnecessary. At the bottom of the main zipper is a small snap. I imagine this is for keeping the jacket snug around your hips when you've opened the zipper to use a belay device. I have yet to find it particularly useful.

There's also a velcro flap inside the jacket that lets you roll the hood into a collar. I cut this off. I find that if I don't want the hood up (usually for better hearing) I can just zip the jacket up all the way and the hood nestles the back of my neck nicely.


Rab clearly clearly designed and built this jacket for use in pretty cold temperatures, well below freezing kind of temperatures. In those types of conditions one is probably not going to encounter much liquid water and certainly not liquid precipitation or even wet snow. This makes the Aquaguard waterproof zippers on the handwarmer pockets seem like overkill. I would prefer a regular zipper as the Aquaguard zipper is a little stiff to open and close.

Neutrino Plus in the included stuff sack. The jacket could easily be compressed to about half this size.

MARCH 2014 UPDATE. It looks like Rab no longer sells the Neutrino Plus. Their website only shows the Neutrino Endurance.

JUNE 2016 UPDATE. I've now used this jacket for 5 trips to the Alaska Range, including 3 trips up Denali's West Buttress. I still wish it had the DAS Parka - style big drop-in mesh pockets, but otherwise I'm really happy with it. I have yet to be cold with this thing on.

Mount Whitney Ice Climbing

Winter is coming, despite all the excellent and sunny rock climbing and bouldering to be done in The Eastern Sierra right now. Boy Scout Falls are usually the first climbable water ice around here. Indeed this year they were already freezing over in early October.

Dale contemplates the goods. Photo by Aaron Richards.

It was easy to persuade Aaron and Dale to hike in and swing some tools. We warmed up with a few laps on the main falls and finished the day with a fun mixed pitch above and to the right of the main flow.