Mountaineering gear news, reviews and tests
I’m ashamed that it has taken me this long to finally getting around to writing an MSR Whisperlite Review. I should have done it ages ago because it is not just one of the best liquid-fuel stoves out there, it is also by far one of the most popular. A quick description The Whisperlite is [...] Read more »
MSR is a great company with an excellent reputation so it is not surprising that their tents are such best sellers. They have a full range that extends all the way from skimpy little shelters that weight hardly anything all the way up to some pretty serious expedition and mountaineering tents. One of their more [...] Read more »
I’ve been looking fora while for some real data on how different camping stoves stack up and finally stumbled across a great comparison of the amount of time that it takes to boil some water using different sorts of stoves. The results are pretty stark in showing how much more powerful both canister gas stoves [...] Read more »
Some bits of gear are just so darned simple and reliable that it is hard not to love them. The Trangia stove is one of them. Well, I should say Trangia stoves because there is a whole range of them in a variety of sizes. Yet they are all still true to a very simple [...] Read more »
If you’re regular readers of this blog you will know just how much I love my Karrimor KSB Boots. I’ve had two pairs over the past decade and they have done really well, taking me up to almost 6000m in Nepal as well as half-way around the world. These are one of the company’s lightest [...] Read more »
A friend recently asked what I thought was the best multi fuel stove for expeditions and camping, and when I thought about it I figured that actually I couldn’t give him one simple answer because in my opinion there are at least two that are great and they are the MSR DragonFly and the second [...] Read more »
Forgive me if I get a little too excited about headlamps, but I really do find that they are such essential pieces of mountaineering gear that I usually end up owning a whole bunch. You may by now have figured out that I am a huge fan of Petzl and love their range of small [...] Read more »
Few tents out there come even close to being as tough as the Mountain Hardwear Trango 2 , a tent that really is built to be bombproof. The Trango is not exactly light, nor is it compact, but it is tough and roomy and makes a great first mountaineering tent that will see you through [...] Read more »
A lot of tops and pullovers promise warmth without weight. And to be fair, most of them deliver on the promise, whether they are made from Polartec, company specific fabrics such as Patagonia’s own brand of fleece or even cheap no-name fleece. The difference between the various products is firstly cost: a no-name fleece will [...] Read more »
Almost since the dawn of time people have tried to figure out funky ways of staying warm in the cold. Even poor old Otzi the iceman, who fell into some snow high up on a glacier in the Alps about 5000 years ago, only to pop out near the bottom of it a few years [...] Read more »