New From Rab Scoop!

We've just been over to see the nice people at Rab for a look at their spring/summer 2006 range.

Crazily enough, even thought there's snow all over the place, spring is officially now in gear world, so the kit featured below is either in the shops right now or will be as of next week.

We'd also like to apologise for our undoubted ability to make Rab's Neil Mcadie look like a convict whenever we photograph him, still at least this time the backdrop isn't a poster featuring celebrity climber, erm, Neil Mcadie...

Hello Neil. Right, introductions over, here's the new Rab kit :-)

Named after some obscure sub-atomic particle, the new Drillium is part of Rab's Neutrino range and aimed squarely at lightweight freaks regardless of whether they're climbers, walkers or lightpackers.

It's a waterproof eVENT jacket that claims to weigh in at an impressively light 350 grammes, right slap bang in the middle of the Paclite ballpark and priced competitively as well.

It uses three-layer fabric, with a neat, grid-patterned face fabric, modish waterproof zips over the twin OS Map-friendly pockets and a roll-away hood with wired peak. Rab say that the three-ply fabric should make it more durable than Paclite and it's a neat-looking jacket all right that should be way up in the breathability stakes.

Once neat touch we liked were the bias-cut cuffs. The cuff is cut on a slant so it's shorter on the inside on the inside of the wrist than on the top with the result being less bunching when things are cinched down, which should make for a neater fit with gloves. Nice... It folds into its own inner pocket too.

One other nice touch that most of the Rab waterproofs get this season is what they jokingly refer to as 'keepy uppy things'. The Driilium doesn't get one cos it's dedicated to saving weight, but most of the others do. So what are they? Simply a hook and loop fastened anchor point for hem cords designed to keep them out of the way. And if you don't like them, you don't have to use them...

Another neat newcomer is the Baltoro Lite. It's made from Polartec PowerShield Lite, one of our favourite so-called soft shell fabrics. It's pretty much windproof, 98 per-cent in fact, but the extra 2 per-cent makes for greatly enhanced breathability.

What makes the Baltoro Lite interesting is that it also incorporates panels of WindPro Stretch with Hardface Technology, a densely woven fleece that's reasonably wind resistant, but also breathes very well - they're the darker curvey panels you can see running from waist to shoulder and should again up the useability of the garment in warmer conditions.

Other touches include map-friendly pockets and slant-cut cuffs like the Drillium. It's designed to be as unrestrictive as possible so should suit both walkers and climbers.

Weight is a creditably light claimed 400 grammes and you get two outer pockets, adjustable hem, cuffs and neck too at a price of £100, which is good for PowerShield, an expensive fabric.

The Vapour-Rise range has been around for a while and the use of a Pertex Equilibrium outer with a micro wicking innner helps make it more vapour-permeable than similar jackets using standard Pertex or similar fabrics.

The good news is that it's now available for cut specifically for women and designed by Helen - below. It should make an ideal mountain garment complete with full-length two-way zip, three zipped outer pockets and a fold-away wired hood for when things get gnarly.

The outer fabric also gets Shield water-resistant treatment for, erm, water resistance. It's available in 10, 12, 14 and 16 and we'll have one on test soon. Weight is claimed to be 400 grammes.