Mountain Tool Holster (Patent Pending)

In 2004 a good friend and climbing partner was killed in a crevasse fall. When travelling on a glacier I often think of his death and how we perform this activity. When it comes to glaciers and extensive travel on them I am no longer that willing go with just one other partner. The difference between a single person and two people performing a crevasse rescue is huge and a minimum of three on the rope is now my standard practice.

However, even with three on a rope performing a crevasse rescue is still pretty awkward. It is the first portion of this “task” that is often the most problematic. That first yank on the rope as (usually) the lead skier plunges through into the abyss is often followed by being slammed into the snow (for the second) with the full weight of a body hanging in space loaded onto your harness. Now if you practiced a traditional method of glacier travel you may have removed your axe from the back of your pack and slipped in between your back and the pack with the pick and adze around your neck, so when your partner went in the hole you were prepared to build an anchor with the axe.

There are serious short comings with this technique that are obvious to any one who has used it. When I began to develop what would eventually become the Mountain Tool Holster I thought of all the situations that I have found myself in when I wanted my axe, but did not want to (or could not easily) drop my pack to get at my gear. I went through the exercise of searching the solution space and tried every conceivable location for the axe and determined that the orientation of the vertical shaft running along the back with the pick end placed directly over the most lateral aspect of the iliac crest was the optimal position for the valuable piece of equipment.

This location / orientation allows easy access to the tool, but also places the tool on the body in a way that uses the tough nature of the axe to provide some protection to the user.

These versions you see and best thought of as bevavioural models

Mountain Tool Holster with an Ice Axe

Mountain Tool Holster with a Hiking Pole

Mountain Tool Holster with a Probe Pole

A few years ago I read some thought leader’s ideas on the probe pole and that he didn’t think it was that worthy of a tool when compared to its weight. At this time my own feelings on the probe pole was that it was such a useful tool that I wanted to be able to have access to it without having to stop and drop my pack.
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I was using my probe pole to:
1) probe cornices when topping out on high cols and when traveling corniced ridges;
2) probe for crevasses when skirting small sections of glacier (when the length of travel is not long enough to stop and rope up) and when looking for solid places to stop for a rest or to set up a camp;
3) to probe for snow depth and to feel for layers in the snowpack at many times during a tour.

And then there is probing for a victim in an avalanche.

All good reasons to not only carry a probe pole but to be able to get to it without dropping your pack. As balloon bags become more popular the less people are going to want to drop their pack when performing a rescue. They will want to be able to search, probe and dig without leaving the perceived safety of their aigbag packs and they will want ways to do this.

I worked quite a while before I came upon what looks to be an obvious solution, but now the system behaves very close to what have become the specifications.