New Gear - Part One

Aku

AK-Who? AKU are another Italian boot maker who aren't particularly well known in the UK, but churning out some interesting stuff over in the mother country where they're much better known. We've been using some of their Jasper 3-season boots for a while and they're good. See our earlier report for information on the strangely ridged Nembo 2 boot, but also interesting is the new Summit which is due in the shops within weeks and is a three-season boot in men's and women's versions. Looks good, feels light and we'll have some soon. They also had an interesting highly air permeable fabric boot material that replaces Cordura, which is virtually non-breathing, and should help waterproof liners to work better than at present.

Berghaus

Quite a lot of continuity from the Berghaus boys, with just a few totally new products and some minor mods to existing stuff. Entirely new and interesting is the very minimalist - can you have very minimalist - Slipstream 3-layer XCR Summit Gore-Tex climbing smock. It's very competitively priced, has a long, water-resistant zip, big wired hood, a scoop back and a Big Wall-style chest pocket. It's a bit too stripped down to be mainstream, but one of its features, individual, colour-coded, seperately adjustable front and rear hem drawstring also makes it onto the Pinnacle mountianeering jacket, which also gets flared cuffs for better adjustment with gloves.

Elsewhere, Berghaus were displaying one of their ultra-light Extrem Expedition sacks. The Spectra-reinforced material may feel thin, but Thomas Hüber had chucked this 4,500 feet off Shivling wth just a couple of small rips and a bent frame as a consequence. Not unimpressive. These things are stronger than you might think.

Finally, the company also announced that it's going to be sponsoring the 2001 Kendal Mountain Film Festival, not a lot of people know that yet. Oh and some nice snow sport kit too which at least one member of the OM team was lusting after...
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Craghoppers

The Craghopplets have been hard at work with some neat new stuff for the winter in both men's and women's ranges. There's a new 3-layer AquaDry Pro fabric which they've used in the new top of the range Rage jacket (Fury for women who get even rather than just cross), but the one we really liked the look of was the Raincloud jacket (Stormcloud for the lasses) which uses a 'Dobby weave' outer with a fine criss-cross texture that looks like Mountain Hardwear's FTX fabric. Looks great in the Aubergine and Black colours and is claimed to be very durable. We are so shallow...

There's some nice fleece, including a very soft micro-variant that made us swoon, but the other highight are Craghoppers new down jackets and vests for both lads and lasses. The man's Alaska uses an 80/20 down feather mix and is claimed to be comfortable at minus 10 C, but the girls are the real winners here with a women's specific cut using stylish slanting baffles. Very nice.

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Columbia

Columbia's top of the range Titanium Alloy kit gets a going over for next winter. The TriFlex shell is their top mountain jacket and now has waterproof pit zips and a zip-closed sleeve pocket and utilises the snappily named Omin-Tech Tri-Ply Stretch Twill which is designed to mimic the way human skin stetches - honest - and is used in key areas to offer the elusive combination of close fit and mobility. A nice touch are the pit zips which stretch almost down to the wrist - the idea is that you can actually just take you arm out of the sleeve for enhanced cooling. Very neat.

The matching trousers are the Tri-Form pant, a full stretch garment with a jersey lining and a neat detachable snow gaiter.

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Helly Hansen

The big news from Helly is the re-launch of the Pro-Wool basae layer, styled like Lycra, it's heavier and uses a mix of polypropolene, wool and nylon for a heavyweight, cold conditions base layer, albeit with the familiar Lifa stripe, so you'll know it's Helly straight away. It's claimed to provide extra thermal insulation combined with comfort, odour resistance and adequate moisture transfer.

Also in the pipeline are the Thin Air jacket and vest using Primaloft articifcial insulation for an all-conditions warmer, small-packing alternative to fleece. It's calimed to be very water-resistant - watch out for more on that on OUTDOORSmagic - and has a DWR-treated shell for versatility. If you prefer down, they've got that covered too, with the Cirrus down vests and jackets.

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Official Site Health Warning

None of this stuff will be in the shops until September, to preserve your health, do not hassle your local outdoor shop until then... And don't say we didn't warn you, eh.

Grivel

A big change for Grivel, as we reported a few weeks ago, the new Grivel importers are The Mountain Boot Company who also bring in Scarpa boots. They were showing their full range at the show, but there wasn't much that was actually new. One neat tweak though, is that the threaded height adjuster on the heel bail of their quick fit crampons is new located on the inside of the heel piece making it less exposed and removing the chance of anything catching on the adjuster.

The new importers intend to put a lot of emphasis on the walking element of the Grivel range, in particular their neat, ergonomically-designed walking axe heads - the Eagle and the Phantom both use them - and the Spring leash system which uses a chest strap to remove the possibility of dropping an axe while changing over hands on steep ground.

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Garmont

We've already covered Garmont's new range of technical mountain wear, or at least their 400 quid, top of the range, mountain jacket, but their core business is boots. They actually produce some of Karrimor's KSB range of footwear, but also export and sell in the UK under their own name.

The key to their boots is what they call ADD or Anatomically Directed Design. There's not enough space to go into the details here, but it's a design strategy that mirrors the detailed anatomy of the foot much more closely than normal boots. Your ankle bones are at different heights, so the recesses on the inside of the boot are also staggered, laces are at a slant to promote a more natural flex, but the key to the thing is that the boot leaves your big toe lying more naturally so that your foot can work more naturally as a shock absorber, much as it would without a boot. If you want to know more, check out the web site below.

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Official Site Health Warning

None of this stuff will be in the shops until September, to preserve your health, do not hassle your local outdoor shop until then... And don't say we didn't warn you, eh.