The Rangers in Talkeetna will tell you to wait for the sun to hit the slopes on Denali Pass before heading out. It's not like you're gonna run out of daylight, if you take their advice. Besides you'll be busting your butt getting to the pass, not sitting around at shaded belays, getting cold.

At any rate, for those debating if S.H. wears whatever, here's his foot in 2008....


...Olympus Mons EVO. Oh well.

But if you're going to buy all Steve House's stuff, you'll want the kevlar pack, and all the other specialized gold-plated unobtinium crap that goes with it all.....

New question, I cant find the spantiks anywhere on sale for less than ~600. I can however find the baruntse's for reasonable prices. Since i will be going with overboots anyways, would these be sufficient for Denali? They are toted to be designed for 5-6000 metres. Also, I feel these would have a longer season in Colorado than the spantiks for before and after Denali.

I was told at the Mountaineer that the Baruntse is at least as warm as the Spantik, just less technical and without the fancy laces.

BTW, GearTrade has new Spantiks for cheap, under $400. Keep an eye out for your size. You don't wear a 44, do you? I wish I did:

http://www.geartrade.com/item/113194

Buddy of mine was on Vinson last week, two summited with Spantiks with the overboots from 40 below.

timfoltz wrote:New question, I cant find the spantiks anywhere on sale for less than ~600. I can however find the baruntse's for reasonable prices. Since i will be going with overboots anyways, would these be sufficient for Denali? They are toted to be designed for 5-6000 metres. Also, I feel these would have a longer season in Colorado than the spantiks for before and after Denali.

Have you considered bying a nice pair of boots for your lower altitude climbing requirements and renting a pair of doubles just for Denali?

Autoxfil wrote:I was told at the Mountaineer that the Baruntse is at least as warm as the Spantik, just less technical and without the fancy laces.

Here's a great review/comparison from cc.com for any interested parties that haven't seen it before.

Slap intuition liners on your spantik/burantse should be good. most of shops i have spoken to think overboots are not needed with that combo. good thing about spantiks is you can actually climb technical stuff with them, so you don't need another pair for ice. I climbed full day out for about a week in Smuggs, VT with temp well below 0 and never cold with the stock liners.
I tried out Burantse in the shop, they are really really nice. As far as being less technical, I'm not sure how true that is. I feel they both are about the same with Spantiks slightly ahead (more rigid). Also, wearing them with gaiters helps as well, since the gaiters trap a lot of heat. If you don't intend to climb ice with them, then listen to others, but inverno or koflach on the cheap, put intuition liners in them, then a pair of overboots. In fact, I got a pair of Inverno for sale, size 9 if you are interested .

Thanks for all the input. I found a pair of spantiks for 435 so I pulled the trigger. Now I guess I just need to decide on overboots or not now.

timfoltz wrote:New question, I cant find the spantiks anywhere on sale for less than ~600. I can however find the baruntse's for reasonable prices. Since i will be going with overboots anyways, would these be sufficient for Denali? They are toted to be designed for 5-6000 metres. Also, I feel these would have a longer season in Colorado than the spantiks for before and after Denali.

Probably too late for you, but it might still help someone. I got the Baruntse's and climbed Elbrus with them when it was REALLY cold. I heard of a lot of people who had cold feet and the boot you saw most out there was the spantik. My feet were really warm. And they have decent laces. My opinion and my feet though.

ScottyP wrote:I know I saw that. Big discussion on CC and some of the photos it is obvious he is not wearing th Spantiks. He wore the Nuptse.

where are his pictures? i cant find any pics of the the rupal face climb.

stormflap wrote:

ScottyP wrote:I know I saw that. Big discussion on CC and some of the photos it is obvious he is not wearing th Spantiks. He wore the Nuptse.

where are his pictures? i cant find any pics of the the rupal face climb.

I remember this too. In that Patagonia Video, he pulls out the Spantik it's true, but somewhere, I remember an interview or article where he had the Nuptse. Not sure it's his book, might've been his article in Alpinist or another mag. But he did indeed use the Nuptse and not the Spantik on Nanga Parbat.

I could maybe understand why though, since at that time, the Spantiks were relatively new and many people were concerned about the lacing system. Going light as possible, House wouldn't want to take extra parts to fix lacing system on boots when he had his perfectly dependable Nuptses right there. Might've been something in his agreement with La Sportiva that when asked what he brought along, to plug their new boot.

Great thread on the boots and a few pics of House.

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthr ... d_crampons

ScottyP wrote:Great thread on the boots and a few pics of House.

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthr ... d_crampons

i see it now. i agree with mscholes.. im sure he backed out on the spantiks but did the review anyway bc of contracts. in the video when he pulls out the spantiks he doesnt say he used them on nanga haha. he just pulls them out and talks abt them for a moment. its patagonia video so they wouldnt be concerned with anything to do with sportiva agreements. if all of thats^ tru i can see where steve was compromised.

Follow-up: I was on Denali the last three weeks with the Spantiks and they were great. I did bring 40 below purple haze overboots for summit day, but did not need them. The weather was good, -20* was the lowest we saw. I am very happy with the Spantiks and several of the guides I saw as well as the NPS at 17 camp had them on and stated they loved them. Boots are a very debatable item and we all have our opinions. I just thought I would share my experience. (I did get some shin-bang on the one day descent from 17k to KIA! )

climbxclimb wrote:Hey....any person is different....but the Spantik were designed for monutains in the 7000 meters range...LS feels confident about this.
Also Steve House climbed with those the Rupal Face...and the Spantik is what he uses for high altitude technical climbing.
One of my friends used them ice climbing recently, in -20F and he said that the only warm thing that day were his feet....

Never been to Denali but my understanding is that it's considerably colder than pre-monsoon Himalaya.