Grivel Packing A Technical Punch

There's a new range of technical lightweight alpine and climbing packs in town and somewhat unexpectedly it comes courtesy of snow and ice hardwear specialists Grivel.

The sacs are aimed squarely at 'serious mountaineers and climbers' says Grivel and feature innovative technical features which - and we quote - 'give them an extremely technical and distinctive look'.

Grivel Alpine, one of a new range of packs from the company

The packs come in Grivel's distinctive black and yellow colour scheme, which is a good start we reckon, and some of the technical features look interesting. Most obviously they use 'interior gear loops' which are aimed at keeping heavy metallic climbing hardwear close to the user's centre of gravity and stopping your entire rack from making the classic and inefficient descent into the bottomless depths of your pack. A propos of which, interiors are bright yellow for easy visibility and attachments are the same colour for similar reasons.

The rest of the spec looks pretty de rigeur for climbing packs, though it's nice to see gear loops specced on the waist belt along with a hydration facility, twin ice tool attachments, side compression straps and ski slots.

You can run through the whole range with specs on Grivel's web site, but the range, which is apparently in store right now, includes an some classic looking alpine and cragging sacs and something a little different called the Manu. This is a piece of ultra-light alpine kit featuring a small - 13-litre - sac which is fastened to a vest-style, double gear sling.

The Manu features a detachable sac with a vest style gear sling set-up that you can wear on its own

The idea is that you can stash the sac somewhere convenient and climb with just the vest-style gear sling as a racking system. It's hard to explain, but more obvious when you see it on the site. Weight is quoted at 555 grammes.

The rest of the range is more conventional. The £70-Rock is a 35-litre, 1220 gramme cragging sac with the internal gear loops, hydration facility and narrow waist belt, while the Alpine Light weighs about the same, but is a 42-litre jobby, there's also the Ice, an £80, 30-litre panel-opening pack aimed at winter climbers, again with the internal gear loops, and narrow waist belt to leave the harness free.

There's more besides and you can check the full range out on the product section of the Grivel web site. For stockist details in the UK, contact the Mountain Boot Company on 0191 296 0212 or e-mail them.