Gearblog!

Okay, this isn't going to be a proper blog where people spill their guts horribly all over the web and expect you to pick them up, it's more a chance for us to tell you quickly and informally about kit we're using, have used or are about to use and maybe even tell you a bit about what's coming up on the site in the next few months in terms of kit testing.

It's going to start with last week's OS Outdoors Show at the NEC though. You can see elsewhere on the site that we were a tad underwhelmed by the overall spectacle, but there were still one or two interesting bits and bobs lying around.

Not much from the big guys, though Berghaus were displaying two new lines for autumn winter this year, 2006. The first was a logical one, a selection of kid's outdoor clothing of the kind that makes you go, ahhh, cute and, at the other end of the scale and also housed in a glass case, a selection of hardcore, specialist big wall climbing kit.

The latter seems to consist of a mad-looking jacket with weird expandable cuffs fastened by a water-resistant zip plus a haul-bag come pack with a dry-bag type roll-over fastening at the top. Good news for the 20-odd committed big wall climbers in the UK we say... We even took a photo.

Solar Energy, Man...

Anyway, enough of the future. One thing we've been using but not quite enough for a full-on test is a Juice Bag Power Pocket. It's a fold-out and relatively light sheet with a number of solar panels on it and a selection of adapters including a car cigarette lighter one, which makes it easy to link up anything that'll work with a car lighter socket.

No half measures here, so we sent it to Nepal with a mate who was trekking Everest. He was very impressed, particularly with the speed it charged his iPod and the eyelets that allow you to hang it easily from a pack while walking.

Unfortunately the big, fast-charging version we used costs a whopping £220. However a more compact one retails for a more reasonable £120 and Hugo Youngman - the importer who also brings in Gregory packs - tells us that it will be available from both Ellis Brigham and Snow and Rock around three weeks from now. Silva's equivalent costs around 80 notes, but from memory is heavier and has less charging capacity, though we may be wrong.

If you're toting a GPS, MP3 player or a phone away from civilisation, it makes a lot of sense.

And Big Agnes

Also hanging around the Hike-Lite stand were a couple of neat things from Big Agnes, which is the darnedest name we ever heard. There's a sleeping bag with no base and a slide-in inflatable mat, a concept we're unconvinced by as they're difficult to make effectively.

More interesting though is a two-person, ultralightweight tent that weighs in at under 1500 grammes, has a mesh inner and, pay attention now adventure racers, half-decent internal volume and head room. We're hoping to blag one for a quick test shortly. We didn't take any pics mainly because by that point we were half dead with show fatigue...

Oh, one last thing, Berghaus was marking its 'is it, isn't it' 40th birthday by displaying an original and current Cyclops pack. Haven't things changed...