New From outdoordesigns

We popped over to see the guys at outdoordesigns and Rab last week, mainly to see what's new from both companies for this winter, but also to get a more general idea of where they're going in the future.

We'll tell you all about Rab in the next day or two, but for starters, here's the gen on outdoordesigns. If you're thinking 'outdoor-who?' right now, it's maybe not that surprising. The brand's been a bit of a one-stop emporium for all things outdoors - hats, gloves, cooking pots, stoves, gaiters, funny little key ring things. Gore-Tex tents and bivvy bags and lots more.

This winter though the company's concentrating on a few main areas and stuff like the cookwear has been dropped completely. If you think gloves and hats, you won't go far wrong. If you think around 70 different gloves and 50-odd hats, you'll get some idea of the size of the range.

We're talking some seriously good stuff here, even if the profile's low. To put things in perspective, in Norway, the company's gloves are seriously top-end kit and are priced and rated above super-technical US brand Black Diamond.

Check out the range and you'll see everything from base-layer liners through to full-on winter gauntlets with the latest Gore-Tex liners, Primaloft insulation and top spec Pittards leather. The construction's state of the art too, with pre-curved fingers, box-wall construction and a massive choice of styles.

And if you don't want to shell out for Gore-Tex and Primaloft, there are more affordable versions of the same gloves available using, say, Porelle or the company's own Watergate liners.

We're not about to run through the entire massive range, but one new glove that we really liked the look of was the Taku Stretch which has just won a Polartec Apex award for design.

The glove uses a neat new Polartec fabric with the snappy name 'Polartec Windpro Stretch with Hardface Technology' - yep, like we said, a bit of a mouthful - but a nice fabric, which has a hard outer face combined with a densely woven fleece inner which offers much higher wind resistance than normal fleece, rather like Ultrafleece.

The palm uses a silicon print grip palm to make it sticky and we reckon the combination of wind protection, breathability and stickiness, plus a stretch, pre-curved design, should make for a killer allround glove. The price will be £20 when it appears in month or twos time. There's also a leather-palmed version which should work well in the Alps.

At the winter end of the scale, we picked out the Winterflex Inferno, which is revised for this winter and uses Primaloft, Gore-Tex and Pittards leather in an allround winter performance glove with a short cuff for under-jacket use. Price is around £70 and we should be testing both gloves this winter.

The other outdoordesigns thing that really caught ourr eye was the Airstream Drysack - it's a classic lightweight dry-bag with roll-over top closure but with a difference. The bottom panel, which you can see in the picture, uses Gore-Tex air permeable Exchange Lite bivvy bag fabric. That means air can be forced through it, so, when you stuff, say a down jacket into the bag, you can squeeze all the air out, though the bottom of the sac.

The result is what's pretty much a vaccuum-packed bag with all the air expelled for minimum bulk. The seams are fully taped and the rest of the bag is Neoprene-coated nylon. Brilliant idea, available from x-small to large sizes and priced from £10 to £13.