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A 60 litre rucksack with a decent harness and weighing around 1Kg is a key product for us, and in my experience Granite Gears ‘litres’ are a bit bigger than some other pack manufacturers, this manifests itself in the fact that the Crown 60 seems significantly bigger than some other 60 litre packs. I think this is because Granite Gear only count the main compartment when quoting the capa …

I used the 2p version of this tent on a recent trip to Scotland, camping on the Kintail ridge in some wet and windy weather. The Hornet Elite tents are Nemo’s lightest series and as such have been designed with every aspect examined for weight and function. The first thing that strikes you about the  Hornet Elite is the high cut flysheet at one end, and in fact the flysheet is …

The Vapour Rise series of RAB garments are designed to provide comfortable insulation and protection from the wind without causing you to overheat if you start climbing up something, or the sun comes out. To achieve this Nirvana a garment needs to transfer moisture away from the skin or base layer so you remain dry and comfortable. I tested the Vapour Rise Summit Jacket on a recent h …

The Blaze and the Crown have long been the key backpacking rucksacks in Granite Gear's range, their features are very similar so we explain the differences here so that you can make an informed choice.

The FreeLite series gets a makeover and is now lighter than its predecessors. Poles weigh 226g Flysheets weigh 416g Inner tent weighs 338g Total weight 980g The tent I was given to test has a dark flysheet but this didn’t seem gloomy in any way. We camped in high summer and the weather was good so the tent hasn’t had a long term test nor tested in stormy conditions. …

The  Black Diamond Distance tent is a good example of the kind of tent I look out for – it’s spacious for one person (although Black Diamond says it’s a two-person), has a good head height and is very lightweight. It achieves its lightweight tag by being single skin and utilising your trekking poles as its support structure. Also, there’s no porch for storing gear – so using the …

I used this pack on a three-day winter backpacking trip to the Lake District and was mightily impressed, Gregory don’t seem to have compromised at all which makes me wonder why all backpacking rucksacks don’t weigh in at 1.2kg or thereabouts. How much does it weigh? The sample pack I used had a medium back length and with all the optional components removed it weighed 1100 grams, but you …

Criterion has two particularly lightweight ranges of sleeping bags of interest to backpackers, they are the Ultralight range and the Quantum range. The former uses 700 Fill Power down and the latter uses 870 Fill Power, therefore the Quantum range has the highest warmth to weight ratio of the two so is of most interest to us. Down Quality At 870 Fill Power Polish Goose down (in a r …

Exped have revamped their sleeping mat ranges and are now using recycled fabrics and are producing the mats to a carbon neutral standard, furthermore they have simplified their naming convention so that the mats now feature the R-Value in the name. This is only a good thing if you understand R-Values and we think the names could have been better. The R3 is a regular sized mat 7cm th …

This was not my first use of these boots, I’d been using them for about a year prior to this trip, I’d bought them as a winter boot for days out in the Lake District where I didn’t see the need for big traditional winter boots. They will take a lightweight micro crampon for traversing ice, they are waterproof and warm enough with mid-weight socks for everything I’d be doing during a Lak …

I was using a Platypus 2.0L Hoser as my daily hydration system so I decided to leave the clean side bladder at home and use the hoser in its place, this brought the weight of the system down to 221g, which is reasonable for piece of mind and ease of use. There are certainly pump action filters that are lighter than this but they take quite a bit of effort to get the same filtered res …

The Big Agnes Platinum series tent use the lightest of materials to get down to astonishingly low weights at 1113grams for a three person, two skin, two door, spacious shelter. My main reason for taking this tent on the Tour of the Matterhorn was to assess its robustness, not so much a long-term durability test but an out-of-the-box assessment of whether the tent was up to the rigours …