Age of Canvas vindicated: Arctic Ural

A half-fist-sized bubble on a frostbitten earlobe was a good reminder of what the canvas was good for: wind protection.

For the 1989 trip to the Arctics, I designed a twin-layer windbreaker. Parachute Nylon outside (purloined from Lenin Textile Combine in Nara), and a wind-protecting cotton inner layer. Unfortunately my design called for an intersection of three seams at the top of the hood, and our trusted granny's sewing machine couldn't handle so many folds of the dual-layer material. So what the heck, I blithely decided to sew the hood in single Nylon layer.

It took just one day of Northerly wind at 68th latitude to prove me wrong. In this inside-a-tent shot, Olya's draining the bubble of my frostbite the following morning. March 1989.