Lowe Alpine Clothing Scoop!

We popped up to see the guys at Lowe Alpine yesterday for a quick preview of both this autumns kit and what's coming your way early next year and the big story is the launch of Gore-Tex Pro Shell.

Pro Shell Out Shortly

Top of the Pro Shell range is the Climb Pro GTX which will be appearing in the shops right about now - August / September 2007 - the one in the pics is in 2008 colours but is otherwise just the same.

The new Pro Shell fabric - see links below for previous articles - uses a woven rather than a knitted inner backer which has three main advantages, says Gore.

It's lighter to the tune of around 100 grammes on a typical jacket, it's more durable and it has soft, silky feel that means it slides more easily over other clothing giving better mobility. The weight's helped by micro-taped seams as well.

The Climb Pro is a top-end technical jacket but weighs in at just 514 grammes, so it's definitely light. Features include two chest pockets, a whopping great swivel hood with multiple neck fastening Velcro to ease adjustment and water-resistant zippers all over.

The jacket also gets Lowe's interestingly-site ventilation zippers at the rear of the upper arm. We'll let you know how they work. Cut seems slick and technical and it certainly looks the part . Price is £260.

Classic Hill-Walking Jacket

Out in the spring is a much more traditional UK hill-walking jacket, kind of the spiritual successor to the Foraker and similar TPC jackets. The Arete GTX is a longer cut, waist-corded, four-pocket jacket complete with map pocket that will do the job for many British mountain walkers.

It's made from Pro Shell again, this time the two-ply variety which means it's weightier than its technical brother at a claimed 858 grammes, but offers more coverage. Price when available in early 2008 will be £160.

Somewhere between the two and also available this autumn is the Fusion GTX. Originally it was meant to be a hybrid Paclite / Pro Shell jacket, but once Lowe had worked out there was no weight advantage to using Paclite, it became a pure three-layer Pro Shell affair.

Again it's a technical mountain jacket and weighs near enough the same as the Climb Pro. It's a little less featured and makes do with normal zips plus flaps so price is cheaper at £220.

There are also women's versions of all three plus matching Pro Shell pants for the Climb Pro.

Triplepoint Lives :-)

If Gore-Tex is out of your price range, you'll be glad to know that good old Triplepoint lives on. The long-established Rush jacket is dropped from the range next spring and replaced by the new Velocity Jacket. It's a 334 gramme lightweight waterproof costing 80 quid and has new, textured inner scrim that's less, erm, slimy feeling than the old version.

The jacket that really caught our eye though is the impresive Peak. It's a lightweight alpine mountaineering jacket made from 2.5-layer Triplepoint and weighing just 368 grammes.

You get a helmet-compatible Swivel Sight hood, the rear sleeve vents, two-way front zipper with flap, chest pocket with water-resistant zips and more. Amazingly the price is just £120 and we reckon it's an awful lot of jacket for the money...

Softshell and Dryflow

As usual Lowe has some nice fleece, softshell and DryFlo baselayer kit waiting in the wings as well as a funky windproof jacket we liked the look of - below. Generally worth taking a look at the range.

You can find more Lowe Alpine information at www.lowealpine.com. We'll be bringing you a run down of the company's updated walking packs shortly.