Julbo Tensing: Thoughts on Glacier Glasses
For the past decade I’ve worn Ray-Ban Aviators as my sunglasses of choice. I love them and for the longest time my eyes had never felt strained from sunlight while wearing them. This all changed when I started Mountaineering and hiking across glaciers and snowfields. For those that haven’t been high in the mountains on a sunny day in June in the middle of a glacier it is hard to describe the intensity of the brightness. The snow surface acts like billions of tiny mirrors reflecting the suns light at you from every angle. Without some kind of protection for your eyes you can go “snow blind” very quickly. The higher you go, the thinner the atmosphere which means more damaging UV radiation is hitting your skin. I’ve had my skin badly burnt high in the mountains even on a cloudy, dark day. Add together the increased UV radiation at higher elevations and the reflective nature of snow and ice and you have a cocktail which makes Sunlight just one the many additional dangers a Mountaineer needs to be aware of and protect against. I struggled through however, continuing to use my Aviators in the mountains for the past few years as I could get by without full eye protection, which in hindsight, was pretty stupid of me. My Ray-Bans filtered out most UV radiation hitting my eyes straight on but my eyes would feel strained from glancing rays coming under and through the sides of my glasses. The final straw that made me finally decide to retire my Ray-Bans from Glacier use was when I was climbing Mount Rainier last August. Above 4000m’s on the Ingraham Glacier in the midday sun I was experiencing the strongest UV radiation ever. Even with my Ray-Bans on I could barely let my eyes open a slit to see. After hours of this I had to cover my eyes to try and rest them whenever we’d stop for a break on our descent. I’d spent thousands making sure I had all the necessary equipment to protect my body on this huge mountain but neglected to think about spending less than a hundred bucks to protect my eyes. Once back to civilization I started looking online for Glacier Glasses. Julbo will almost always show up if you do a search yourself as they seem to be a market leader for this specific class of sunglasses. Ultimately, as the title suggests, I chose the Julbo Tensing. It had the right mix of functionality, weight, price (~$50) and aesthetics for my needs. Plus, the name Tensing also sold me a little. It’s an homage to Tenzing Norgay,...
Mt. Rainier
The highest point I had been too before I attempted Mt.Rainier was the summit of Wedge Mountain at 2892m’s, in Garibaldi Provincial Park, B.C., and I remember feeling a keen sense of achievement at having scaled that height. Just knowing that it was the highest summit in the park made it feel like more of an achievement for me, like I had conquered some invisible force, a force that as you reach higher becomes more and more oppressive. Rainier, which stands at just over 4300m’s (14,411ft), was now going to be the tallest mountain I had climbed to date. Despite the many mountaineering trips I had taken in the last few years, the trip to Mt. Rainier felt like something outside of the scope of anything I had known. This was a big mountain and it felt like it deserved a deep respect of it’s own. “….the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.” - John Muir As I stood at the Paradise visitor centre looking up at Mt. Rainier on that hot August afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking of how close it seemed. It looked no farther than a stone’s throw away. Rainier just stood there in all it’s glory, streaks of grey rock showing through the late summer snow, deep crevasses gouging the glacier that tumbled down within my view, brightly colored wild flowers dotting the grassy meadows in the foreground. Standing alone in all it’s immensity with no concern for the tiny creatures standing below looking on in awe; standing there thinking that we could somehow conquer this mass of stone and ice. But as usual the mountain doesn’t care that we are there or that we care to struggle and gasp our way up it’s flanks. It is just there, and it was in my own mind that I felt this sense of the mountains willingness to accept us, allowing us to pass and giving me the opportunity to test myself. I remember looking at the winding path that made it’s way in the direction of Camp Muir, comparing it to previous hikes in my mind, thinking it wouldn’t take long at all. The mountain after all looked so close, like a super-imposed image on a screen, but no matter how long I walked that image remained the same distance away. My sense of scale was becoming more and more obscured. At that moment I remembered a quote I had seen in an outdoor store earlier that year regarding the Himalaya, it said “everything is so much bigger and so much farther away than you can imagine”....
