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'.
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Grivel Alpine, one of a new
range of packs from the company
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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.
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The Manu features a detachable
sac with a vest
style gear sling set-up that you can wear on its
own
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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.
Convert your beloved's trekking pole into a handy self-arrest device come ice tool with Grivel's handy screw-on Condor device and save some weight into the bargain. Who says romance is dead?
