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Ice Waterfall – Wearing Alpine Gear

Abseiling in Iced Waterfall – Occasion for Wearing Alpine Gear

At the beginning of this winter we had installed a spot for abseiling in an iced waterfall to enable this great freeride slope for winter skiing. There’s need of wearing alpine gear to have maximum elbowroom at outdoors work without giving up on protection against snow and coldnees.

Then there was no snow, but anyway it was hard work to fix a climbing rope for abseiling in winter. Since then we had a lot of snowfalls and now, in March, there’s still snow and nearly everything is iced, as well the waterfall. This is the reason why we had installed this spot for abseiling, because otherwise we couldn’t overcome this steep, high cliff on a nice freeride session.

Now you may ask, what for we’re doing all of this? There are two reasons why: First, this freeride route is pretty cool. Unfortunately it is intercepted by this cliff. So without a abseiling spot there’ll be now freeride route. Second, we do fieldtesting. All year long we want to test our products like the polychromelab La Neve Nera winteroverall (worn this time) outdoors under extreme conditions. This way we kill two birds with one stone: we’re enjoying a nice freeride session wearing alpine gear for testing!

Finally, some pictures of our adventure day!

polychromelab concept store

 

Night Skiing vs. Product Test

Product Test at Night Skiing in Tyrol

Equiped with headtorches and a go pro we started at 2610 meters from our textiles research lab next to the Glungezer Hütte in Tyrol. In winter there are always some repairs to do. Additionally measured data by sensors, which we fixed to jackets for product testing, gives us insight concerning their functionality and resilience against exposure to nature.

Unfortunately work took longer as expected this time, so we had to go for night skiing on our way home. Beeing experienced with such incidents we had headtorches with us. Knowing the downhill route quite well after years of fieldtesting and product development at Mount Glungezer night skiing off the slopes wasn’t that dangerous.

At the Ready for Serial Production

Out and about in nature and Tyrol’s mountain range equipment easily is stretched to its limit. The wearout of gear is high, beeing outdoor about 300 days a year. When one is freezing, sweating, or feeling unpleasantly wind, or having to bear nature in any other way, one gets a lot of ideas of what else to wear to feel more comfortable concerning clothes.

At the ready, as you can see on the pictures, are new whole-body-clothing concepts, which we want to realise using polychromelab’s 3 layer laminate. By now there are only ideas and first prototypes to be tested at night skiing, but soon there will be more to tell.