6 ms·

As a civilian, I'm surprised to learn, with all the technical improvements in mountaineering gear, that frostbite on gloved hands is still an unsolved problem.

by te 3y ago

LesZedCB 3y ago
finger dexterity is important for technical climbing so thick gloves are a trade off. additionally, when hanging on to technical ice tools, your finger tip is doing a lot of work, so not a lot of circulation to keep the tissue healthy.
zakary 3y ago
My understanding is it has definitely been solved by the use of much thicker gloves or gloves with heating elements. But doing difficult technical climbing at very high altitudes also requires good dexterity and you are often up there for many days. Also lithium batteries don’t work much at all in temperatures that cold. I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before. There’s a lot of great engineers who’ve done a lot of climbing so my guess is pretty anything that works sufficiently well to keep hands and feet warm, is also too complex, expensive or bulky to be useful in really extreme mountaineering environments.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Crunchified 3y ago
  Lithiums don't work in cold temperatures? That's a new one on me. Many lithium battery formulations work in colder conditions than other common formulations. I don't read the NYT so didn't read the article, but were they climbing in temperatures well below -40° with exposed batteries? I know that lithiums are commonly used in balloon payloads that can get mighty cold!
  - lstodd 3y ago
    Eww, people of warm climates... You try making a few calls in -15C 5 m/s wind (typical 55 latitude continental climate weather in winter), then see the charge bar plummeting to zero when you attempt to call up a taxi so that you don't freeze to death. About only thing you can do at that point is shove the phone into your panties to heat it back up and then hope what's left of the charge is enough and it doesn't refreeze while you're at it. No, lithiums don't work much below 0C. Balloon payloads use insulation and heaters, but that obviously eats into energy available.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      I mean, other than this lovely anecdote, lithium batteries do, in fact, work absolutely fine I'm very cold temperatures, albeit at reduced capacity. The reason your phone shuts down is because the allowed discharge rate of the battery also goes down and it can't run its components at requested power levels, not because the battery stopped working. Since we're sharing anecdotes - EVs are extremely popular in Norway and YouTube is full of videos of people testing the cars in negative 40 or even 50 centigrade. They work fine even without battery preheat.
      - bdamm 3y ago
        They do work fine, but let's be real, they work with reduced range and increased charge times. I have an "older" Tesla with nearly 100k mi and operate in the north quite a bit. There is a tradeoff, which I personally think is worth it, but many do not or cannot make it. It's fine to acknowledge the reality of current technology while also being optimistic about the future. Operating EVs in cold remote areas requires diligence and preparation. It's a fact.
      - lstodd 3y ago
        Man, I've been designing solar+battery offgrid installs for a few years up to my ears into battery datasheets. And I tell you, thermal is critical for the performance. The phone can't get the current it needs exactly because the temperature is out of spec. This is the definition of "battery stopped working". Now if you've got a tesla-sized one, and it has a good load, then you have another problem - you have to cool it, or it shoots above 50C and you get a dead battery eventually. I can imagine a 80% charge battery of this size heating itself in a few minutes of load even from -50C. Won't get the usual 2K cycles to half capacity in those conditions, but the car will still move. A bit. In other news, Norway is overrated wrt colds courtesy of Gulfstream. Compared to say northern Kazakhstan it has a nice mild climate.
- davidw 3y ago
  > warm water tube system Not to pick on you because that sounds like a legit idea for the environment those guys were in, but that's part of the "plot" of "The Complicator's Gloves" https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_gloves https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_glov...
  - devnullbrain 3y ago
    It's also the opposite of a stillsuit from Dune
    - debo_ 3y ago
      A busygown?
- bdamm 3y ago
  Yeah, powered by a pump near your chest, with heat pushed out from the center using liquid, and then distributed everywhere it is needed using smaller and smaller tubes that get close to the surface of the skin before returning. And why not use this same liquid to provide extra oxygen. Love it! The last time I was on the periphery of mountaineering, performance enhancing drugs were commonplace. A breakthrough in performance enhancing drugs should yield new results in mountaineering.
  - devnullbrain 3y ago
    What kind of PEDs?
    - burkaman 3y ago
      Here's a 2001 article with some examples: https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12200116300/Mountain-Medicine-Performance-Enhancing-Drugs-and-Climbing https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/1220011.... I don't personally know any serious alpine climbers so I have no idea how common this stuff is.
    - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
      Amphetamines are pretty common…
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  The critical factor is weight. Electric heated gloves only work if they have power. Batteries are heavy. Water and fuel are also heavy, which means climbers on big routes like this are usually riding the edge of starvation and dehydration for days, which further raises the risk of frostbite in extremities.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    There is a lot of stop and go. In the kind of conditions they were in. It's hard not to break a sweat when climbing, and hard to avoid early stage hypothermia when belaying. When the core cools down, blood flow to the extremities is restricted to conserve heat, putting them at risk of frostbite.
- jmye 3y ago
  > I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before. I feel like you just re-invented the circulatory system. I don’t mean that to be snarky at all, just that I think part of the problem with your hands is that your body starts sending them less blood to keep your core warm. I’d think that pumping more heat away from your core would be bad for survival. But my climbing is also not on vertical rock at 25k+ feet!
- eternityforest 3y ago
  They must have some way to keep gear warm or they wouldn't be able to drink water, right? Can't you just put the batteries in a vacuum insulated can? Vacuum flasks are such an amazing invention. They really seem to work exactly like you would want.
crubier 3y ago
Space suits solved it. But climbers need dexterity. Thermal insulation requires thickness, almost by definition. Dexterity requires thinness, also almost by definition. It's hard
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  Did space suits solve it? Astronauts are in a vacuum, so heat transfer can't take place except through radiation. Meanwhile the cold air at the top of the Himalayas is very good at pulling the heat out of you.
  - qchris 3y ago
    The "space is cold" thing is actually a pretty good shibboleth for people who don't know that much about engineering things in space. Most space systems have to put in effort to reject excess heat than to hold onto basic amounts, hence those giant radiators and the high emissivity paint that gets used on most things.
    - crubier 3y ago
      Note that thermal insulation also means insulating from hot surfaces :-)
  - crubier 3y ago
    Vacuum is bad at heat transfer, sure. But mechanical parts of the space station can be as hot as 120C (250F) and as cold as -150C (-250F), so I'm pretty sure you do want thermal insulation :-)
- krisoft 3y ago
  > Space suits solved it. Worth noting that 65% of all the injuries reported during spacewalks occur to the hand.[1] They “solved” it as in astronauts are not dying because of glove malfunctions. But there is plenty of improvement to be wished for with the solution. 1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140014058 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140014058
quickthrower2 3y ago
Apparently the hands, feet and upper part of the face have the most thermal conductivity. So if you are hot cool these with a wet towel.

As a civilian, I'm surprised to learn, with all the technical improvements in mountaineering gear, that frostbite on gloved hands is still an unsolved problem.

by te 3y ago

As a civilian, I'm surprised to learn, with all the technical improvements in mountaineering gear, that frostbite on gloved hands is still an unsolved problem.

LesZedCB 3y ago

finger dexterity is important for technical climbing so thick gloves are a trade off. additionally, when hanging on to technical ice tools, your finger tip is doing a lot of work, so not a lot of circulation to keep the tissue healthy.

zakary 3y ago

My understanding is it has definitely been solved by the use of much thicker gloves or gloves with heating elements. But doing difficult technical climbing at very high altitudes also requires good dexterity and you are often up there for many days. Also lithium batteries don’t work much at all in temperatures that cold. I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before. There’s a lot of great engineers who’ve done a lot of climbing so my guess is pretty anything that works sufficiently well to keep hands and feet warm, is also too complex, expensive or bulky to be useful in really extreme mountaineering environments.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Crunchified 3y ago
Lithiums don't work in cold temperatures? That's a new one on me. Many lithium battery formulations work in colder conditions than other common formulations. I don't read the NYT so didn't read the article, but were they climbing in temperatures well below -40° with exposed batteries? I know that lithiums are commonly used in balloon payloads that can get mighty cold!
- lstodd 3y ago
  Eww, people of warm climates... You try making a few calls in -15C 5 m/s wind (typical 55 latitude continental climate weather in winter), then see the charge bar plummeting to zero when you attempt to call up a taxi so that you don't freeze to death. About only thing you can do at that point is shove the phone into your panties to heat it back up and then hope what's left of the charge is enough and it doesn't refreeze while you're at it. No, lithiums don't work much below 0C. Balloon payloads use insulation and heaters, but that obviously eats into energy available.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    I mean, other than this lovely anecdote, lithium batteries do, in fact, work absolutely fine I'm very cold temperatures, albeit at reduced capacity. The reason your phone shuts down is because the allowed discharge rate of the battery also goes down and it can't run its components at requested power levels, not because the battery stopped working. Since we're sharing anecdotes - EVs are extremely popular in Norway and YouTube is full of videos of people testing the cars in negative 40 or even 50 centigrade. They work fine even without battery preheat.
    - bdamm 3y ago
      They do work fine, but let's be real, they work with reduced range and increased charge times. I have an "older" Tesla with nearly 100k mi and operate in the north quite a bit. There is a tradeoff, which I personally think is worth it, but many do not or cannot make it. It's fine to acknowledge the reality of current technology while also being optimistic about the future. Operating EVs in cold remote areas requires diligence and preparation. It's a fact.
    - lstodd 3y ago
      Man, I've been designing solar+battery offgrid installs for a few years up to my ears into battery datasheets. And I tell you, thermal is critical for the performance. The phone can't get the current it needs exactly because the temperature is out of spec. This is the definition of "battery stopped working". Now if you've got a tesla-sized one, and it has a good load, then you have another problem - you have to cool it, or it shoots above 50C and you get a dead battery eventually. I can imagine a 80% charge battery of this size heating itself in a few minutes of load even from -50C. Won't get the usual 2K cycles to half capacity in those conditions, but the car will still move. A bit. In other news, Norway is overrated wrt colds courtesy of Gulfstream. Compared to say northern Kazakhstan it has a nice mild climate.
davidw 3y ago
> warm water tube system Not to pick on you because that sounds like a legit idea for the environment those guys were in, but that's part of the "plot" of "The Complicator's Gloves" https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_gloves https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_glov...
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  It's also the opposite of a stillsuit from Dune
  - debo_ 3y ago
    A busygown?
bdamm 3y ago
Yeah, powered by a pump near your chest, with heat pushed out from the center using liquid, and then distributed everywhere it is needed using smaller and smaller tubes that get close to the surface of the skin before returning. And why not use this same liquid to provide extra oxygen. Love it! The last time I was on the periphery of mountaineering, performance enhancing drugs were commonplace. A breakthrough in performance enhancing drugs should yield new results in mountaineering.
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  What kind of PEDs?
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Here's a 2001 article with some examples: https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12200116300/Mountain-Medicine-Performance-Enhancing-Drugs-and-Climbing https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/1220011.... I don't personally know any serious alpine climbers so I have no idea how common this stuff is.
  - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
    Amphetamines are pretty common…
snowwrestler 3y ago
The critical factor is weight. Electric heated gloves only work if they have power. Batteries are heavy. Water and fuel are also heavy, which means climbers on big routes like this are usually riding the edge of starvation and dehydration for days, which further raises the risk of frostbite in extremities.
- Fricken 3y ago
  There is a lot of stop and go. In the kind of conditions they were in. It's hard not to break a sweat when climbing, and hard to avoid early stage hypothermia when belaying. When the core cools down, blood flow to the extremities is restricted to conserve heat, putting them at risk of frostbite.
jmye 3y ago
> I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before. I feel like you just re-invented the circulatory system. I don’t mean that to be snarky at all, just that I think part of the problem with your hands is that your body starts sending them less blood to keep your core warm. I’d think that pumping more heat away from your core would be bad for survival. But my climbing is also not on vertical rock at 25k+ feet!
eternityforest 3y ago
They must have some way to keep gear warm or they wouldn't be able to drink water, right? Can't you just put the batteries in a vacuum insulated can? Vacuum flasks are such an amazing invention. They really seem to work exactly like you would want.

crubier 3y ago

Space suits solved it. But climbers need dexterity. Thermal insulation requires thickness, almost by definition. Dexterity requires thinness, also almost by definition. It's hard

bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
Did space suits solve it? Astronauts are in a vacuum, so heat transfer can't take place except through radiation. Meanwhile the cold air at the top of the Himalayas is very good at pulling the heat out of you.
- qchris 3y ago
  The "space is cold" thing is actually a pretty good shibboleth for people who don't know that much about engineering things in space. Most space systems have to put in effort to reject excess heat than to hold onto basic amounts, hence those giant radiators and the high emissivity paint that gets used on most things.
  - crubier 3y ago
    Note that thermal insulation also means insulating from hot surfaces :-)
- crubier 3y ago
  Vacuum is bad at heat transfer, sure. But mechanical parts of the space station can be as hot as 120C (250F) and as cold as -150C (-250F), so I'm pretty sure you do want thermal insulation :-)
krisoft 3y ago
> Space suits solved it. Worth noting that 65% of all the injuries reported during spacewalks occur to the hand.[1] They “solved” it as in astronauts are not dying because of glove malfunctions. But there is plenty of improvement to be wished for with the solution. 1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140014058 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140014058

quickthrower2 3y ago

Apparently the hands, feet and upper part of the face have the most thermal conductivity. So if you are hot cool these with a wet towel.