Cold Cold World Chaos

Jun 15, 2011 | Stories | 2 comments

Jun 15, 2011 | Stories | 2 comments

One of my least favorite categories of gear to review is packs.  For one, all packs are the same. There are hundreds of them just on the climbing market, and they all claim to be unique, but ultimately they’re all just nylon sacks with straps, cinchers, waist belts and pockets that range from inadequate to superfluous, with most falling in the middle. Regardless of what kind of pack you own, however, it will always be true that carrying a full load and hiking around with it sucks like torture. No company has figured out how to design what I really want: a pack that carries itself. (That said,  in terms of things that would be useful to me, a pack that carries itself would still behind climbing shoes that don’t have bad footwork and harnesses that don’t squeeze a mushroom top of belly fat over the swami belt. Selah.)

Still, as a gear tester I inevitably end up with new packs in my arsenal every season, and while all the sleek new models come and go, there is one rucksack in my possession that I’ll never be able to get rid of. My Cold Cold World Chaos.


Cold Cold World packs have a cult following in the Northeast, where I was raised, especially in New Hampshire, where I lived for a wintry stint after college. They are hand-sewn by pack craftsman, woodcut artist and completely rad alpinist Randy Rackcliff in the basement of his home in Jackson, NH.

The Chaos is the biggest of the Cold Cold World fleet, and probably too much pack for what I need on a day-to-day basis. It’s really best suited for expeditions or multi-day alpine missions, but side straps cinch it down well for daytrips to sunny crags.

Really, the Chaos is nothing more than a heavy-duty nylon sack with straps, cinchers, a waist belt and pockets. It doesn’t even carry itself. Yet there’s something special about it. Perhaps it’s that none of the Cold Cold World packs have changed in design over the years—a rather striking dissimilarity to the rest of the packs and gear in the industry, an industry that churns out new colors/designs every season simply to have new stuff, even if the old stuff worked just fine. But Cold Cold World packs are timeless, and in that is soul — perhaps because the pack was hand-made by one of America’s most unsung badass climbers, or perhaps because it was my first winter pack and a consistent partner on many early solo forays into the mountains.

I found my Chaos in the consignment basement of IME, the historic gear shop in North Conway. At the time, I was living in Jackson, 15 miles north, in a 1960s ski chalet just across the valley from Mount Washington, a tall white mound that comprised the panorama from our basement apartment window. I was there to climb ice and cut my teeth on all the winter adventures offered by the old-school region, and get by waiting tables at a local restaurant. In the mornings, I’d be out the door at 5 a.m., into the zero-degree lifelessness, running up the flanks of Mount Washington in my Koflachs, Chaos on my back. I’d try for a car-to-car timed solo of one of the ice-choked gullies in Huntington’s Ravine, and often get back down in less than two hours, in time to work the breakfast shift at the restaurant.

I associate the Chaos with some of my life’s most solitary moments — the times when I’d just head off into the hills, whether the White Mountains of New Hamshire, or here in the pyramidal Elk Range of Colorado, just to be out alone in a wild place. The Chaos has a foam pad for a stay, and it can be removed and unfolded to create a very thin sleeping mat, which I’ve slept on many times. The pad is barely adequate, worse than even the worst Therma-rest — but in that restless discomfort I took pride and even perverse pleasure. It seemed fitting and appropriate to be at least a little uncomfortable in those pale, thin moments of solitude, in those moments when nature not yourself is most important. Everyone should be uncomfortable every now and then.

I’ve never actually met Rackcliff, unfortunately, and I only know a little about him through local lore and his appearances in Mark Twight’s stories—particularly the one in which he and Rackcliff establish The Reality Bath (VII WI6+ X, 600m), still unrepeated, and a climb that Albi Sole, guidebook author to the Canadian Rockies, wrote was “so dangerous as to be of little value except to those suicidally inclined.”

I have met Randy’s wife, Ruthann, however, during an industry trade show. We talked about how funny it was that we both lived in the postage-stamp-sized town of Jackson but hadn’t ever met. We spoke fondly about that quirky northern nook of the country where we lived, and the passion for that place that bleeds from its diehard residents.

The next day, Ruthann found me at the show and gifted me with one of Randy’s woodcuts: “The Bivouac.” The piece was made in 1991, and appeared in a feature in Rock and Ice to illustrate the famous Greg Childs article “Postcards from the Ledge.”

Woodcuts are fascinating, and one of the oldest methods of printing, a technique developed in China in the 9th Century. The artist chisels a picture into a block of wood, removing areas that are to remain white in the print. Ink is applied to the carved block with a roller, and paper is pressed, resulting in the print. The most famous wood cut is likely Japanese artist Hokusai’s “Great Wave.”

Cold Cold World

Since Ruthann gave me “The Bivouac,” I’ve acquired another one of Rackcliff’s masterpieces, “The Hammer.” I have both pieces framed and hung in my home, and they dominate the living room. I think that they compliment each other—one capturing climbing as a solitary venture, and the other capturing a moment of camaraderie. In both pieces, however, the emotional overtones are of lonely struggle, which to me represents a fundamental truth about our sport. There’s no pleasure cruising in climbing—it’s not like skiing or kayaking, where you just take an enjoyable ride, like a roller coaster. Climbing in essence is about struggle and about overcoming. It’s a fight: against both gravity and your own physical and mental limitations. Nothing ever comes easy in climbing—both “The Bivouac” and “The Hammer” capture that. But what I make of that, out of my own sense of optimism and adoration for this pursuit, is the hope that in the struggle is meaning.

Somehow, my Chaos pack—though nothing but a nylon sack—is aligned or kindred to these deeper truths. Which is why I won’t ever get rid of it.

About The Author

Andrew Bisharat

Andrew Bisharat is a writer and climber based in western Colorado. He is the publisher of Evening Sends and the co-host of The RunOut podcast.

Free Climb. Free Thought.

Join the climbing discourse.

Comments

2 Comments

  1. Avatar

    I have the same two prints in my living room – awesome

    Reply
  2. Avatar

    Funny, I feel the same way about my CCW Chaos. And I specialize in pack reviews!

    Reply

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