 |
|  | |
 | | WastwaterNorthEnd.jpg | | by Paul Holroyd |
| | |
| |
| |
| GEAR FEATURES |
22 / 02 / 06 |
New Stuff Scoopio | | Gear features in association with |  |
| | We spent Monday at the Soltex trade show at the fabulous
G-Mex centre in Manchester. It was mainly full of snow sports stands
and weird-looking folk in very baggy trousers, but there were a few
outdoor companies braving the chills of Manchester, so here's a quick
report on what we found...
Icebreaker
The nice people from Icebreaker were there with their latest
merino wool clothing. To be honest, the material's pretty much as
you'd expect - pure merino wool - in different weights, but they have
some nice new colours and styles due out later this year.
This includes some neat, patterned prints aimed at the women's
market and lots of stripes. The rather lovely Coronet - a mid-layer
merino with neat styling stripes - is joined by the Pinnacle,
which has similar stripes, but plain shoulders and normal cuffs
rather than thumb-looped ones - see below:
There's also a plainer top, The Tornado, in the same weight of
fabric and a more seriously techy top which really caught our eye.
The Ignition Zip uses stretchy Eyelet side panels - still 100
per-cent merino, the stretch is in the knit - along with a drop tail.
It all looks very nice as does the range of hats which is out now.
www.icebreaker.com
|
Mountain Hardwear
We also got a sneak preview of the autumn/winter 06 MHW kit. It's
the stuff that'll be out late this year, but there were a coupe of
interesting bits and bobs we thought you might like to know
about...
The GTX 2.5 Jacket takes the membrane and accompanying grey
scrim from Gore-Tex Paclite and laminates it onto a tougher more
durable face fabric, which should create a material that combines
decent moisture handling with greater toughness.
 It
also has a lining of PimpChimp lightweight fleece at shoulders and
middle back which is attached only at the edges to minimise the
effect of glue on breathability. Looks interesting and will retail
for £280.
There's a new G50 softshell, which is effectively the
technical-looking Synchro, but minus the taping, so it's highly water
resistant, but not waterproof, but more affordable at £130.
Of the kit which is appearing in the shops now, the most
interesting stuff looks like being the new Offwidth Jacket -
right. It's very similar to the Velocity Jacket, which we like a
lot, but uses an own-brand fabric instead of Schoeller. That makes it
a lot cheaper at £100, but it should still give good wind and
water resistance with excellent breathability for fast movers.
Check out the new Cordillera Pant too. It has a seamless,
chamois-lined conical waist, like the old Pack Pant, but uses a
lightweight fabric with four-way stretch and looks a bit more modern
with it - should make a good, all-round mountain walking pant we
reckon.
www.mountainhardwear.com
|
Helly Hansen
 The
HH team have been busy too. They've very excited about a new
waterproof softshell with welded seams, but more interesting, we
reckon, is a new version of their Lifa baselayer due out next
winter.
It's an interesting one, using a new version of their
polypropylene fabric, but with hollow fibres to trap more air,
apparently it's based on polar bear fur. Then the Thermic Tube
Technology (T3) is combined with merino wool for additional
insulation. The T3 is on the inside and the merino outside with the
ratio being 38/62 between the two, that's more merino than
polypropylene.
Feels nice and soft plus we have some to try so we'll report back
later in the year.
Wild Roses and Gore
Wild Roses is a women's-specific brand that you'll hopefully be
seeing a bit more of in the shops this year. The company makes kit
purely for women right across a range of outdoors sports from full-on
mountaineering through to more leisure-orientated stuff. The idea is
kit that works well and also looks good.
Their stand was also the first place we've seen any of the new
Gore-Tex Comfort Mapping kit in the flesh in the form of the
Body Mapping Jacket and Pant. Body Mapping aims to combine different
Gore-Tex fabrics to suit the demans of different areas of the
body.
In the case of the Wild Roses jacket, that means a mix of Gore-Tex
3-layer XCR with XCR stretch and 3L Softshell. The latter seems to
use small squares of a microfleece-like material laminated onto the
lining of the garment, presumably to provide insulation in those
areas. Anyway, here's what it looks like... More details of the
comfort-mapping stuff next month.
Aku
This is the Zenith boot which kind of caught our eye. It's
available in Gore-Tex and plain vanilla, non-Gore-Tex versions and
looks like a really nice allround walking boot at a very light
claimed 1350 grammes or so per pair. Nice low profile too thanks to
the Aku internal mid-sole system which effectively reduces the
thickness of the sole unit by putting the hard lasting board under
the EVA cushioning instead of above it. Out now.
Congratulations to Aku as well for winning a Soltex award for
their full-on mountaineering boot The Spider due out next winter.
We've been using a pair and they combine incredibly light weight with
great comfort and performance. More about them soon.
www.aku.it
|
Gear features in association with
|
| | Want to send this article to a friend? Please join here | | |
| | Comment on this in our forum: |
| | Related articles:
 | MHW Retires Pack Pant...
... and unveils its replacement along with some stretchy, welded-seam shorts for this spring.
| |  | Aku Spider Tested
Aku might be best known for its lightweight walking shoes and boots, but the new Spider shows that the same philosophy can quality can produce a stunning technical mountaineering boot.
| |  | Mountain Hardwear Harrier - First Look
Proper first impressions of MHW's new, very expensive and very sophisticated backpack complete with carbon fibre, Scandium and self-healing siliconised Cordura fabric no less...
| |  | Mountain Hardwear Pack First Look
Five years in the making, more components than the average Meccano set and a price tag to match, but does all that innovation really make for a better carry?
| |  | Wanderlust at the Adventure Travel Show
Last week’s Adventure Travel and Sports Show at Olympia, bombarded visitors with information about every destination you can think of and a few you can't... Here's what we learned.
| |  | The Friday Pin-Up
It's not normally something we'd do, but trust us, we have a very good reason for dragging this beauty onto the site on a Friday afternoon...
| |  | Mountain Hardwear 's New Packs For 2006
New for next year from MHW a radical new range of packs that's taken five years to develop. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming our way in a month or two.
| | | Superlightweight Mountain Boot Scoop
What happens when you take the technology used in light-hiking boots and apply it to a full-on, crampon-compatible mountaineering boot? A quick taster with more to follow soon.
| |  | New Lightweight Winter Boot
New in, the AKU Edge GTX, a rather nice lightweight, fully crampon-compatible winter boot that we reckon is going to be rather nice on mixed ground and in Scottish winter conditions.
| | | Gear Lifts Lid On Mountain Hardwear Pack Range
Our man Richard Gear has the latest inside information on a radical new range of packs from American outdoor clothing and equipment brand Mountain Hardwear and they sound radically different.
| |  | In Brief
Small stories from our small story desk: Jazzing up Keswick, more open access land in Wales, a nature based John Muir Trust AGM, new Thales handheld GPS navigation systems and Helly Hansen clothing...
| |  | Lifa Gets Loose And Light For Summer
Helly Hansen's classic Lifa baselayer has been given a swishy revamp for the summer with a spangly new range of Lifa Versa tops and bottoms aimed at fast, active, hot-weather users...
| |  | Oi, Where's Me Mid Sole?
Italian boot specialists Aku have turned sole construction upside down, sort of, with their new IMS boot technology. Looks interesting.
| |
| |
| |
| |
