Montane's Medusa 32 - A Private Preview...
If you followed our reports from OutDoor at Friedrichshafen, you'll know that Montane has a range of new packs due to appear early in 2012. We thought they looked ace at the show with some really neat little touches and now, after a backhander to the UPS man, we have one here to take a closer look at.
Think of it as being a bit like a private viewing at an art gallery before the exhibition's opened to the public and also as an initial look to be followed up by some proper feedback later in the winter.
The Medusa 32 is one of three packs and a bum-bag and is going to sell for £80. It's an all-round mountain pack rather than an ultra-light fast thing, but is intended to be functionally light for its strength. Montane's used polyamide 500D fabric, which it says that thanks to its construction - it's woven with a disrupted Dobby pattern - it's as tough as most 1000D materials. The base is reinforced too.
Measured weight on our Medusa is 940g on the button, so not too shabby for a tough mountain pack with gear loops, ice tool attachments and so forth. Oh, one other thing, the colour in our images is wrong - we'll try and fix them shortly, but the blue is a lot greener in real life, the same greeny/blue orange mix that Montane uses for some of its jackets, which is a nice touch.
Of course, there's a lot more to a pack than a bunch of neat features, but we like the thought that's obviously gone into the Medusa and reckon it bodes well for the overall performance of the pack
