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.
Gloves
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.
Super Cunning Drysacks
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.
More about
outdoordesigns from
www.outdoordesigns.co.uk
