I climb. I used to climb pretty much all the time, now I just climb a lot. My company makes backpacks for climbers, as they are carrying around that 30 pounds of gear and want a very light yet durable pack.

I think this section of this board is pretty quiet because there are so many other sites with extremely active climbing or mountaineering forums...not that this isn't a valuable resource.

Most fatalities reported from technical climbing in the United States over the past decade or so have NOT been from alpine climbing. That's a base canard. There are roughly 20 to 30 fatalities reported to the American Alpine Club every year, total, and the vast majority are from rappelling. For example, there were about 32 fatalities per 100,000 attempts on Denali since 2000, but an average of only 1240 attempts per year. In contrast, there are numerous rappelling accidents across the country every year. Here's a report done by the American Alpine Club on the issue of the costs of rescue on the AAC site. I don't really feel like beating a dead horse (again), but other information given in this thread is wrong.