2013 gear hits and misses

The good 

Very, very pleased with my OMM Kamleika over trousers. I have used these through the winter on the bike with either tracksters or merino leggings underneath and they have coped with low temperatures, spray and mud with aplomb. They have been even better for walking. I wore them for a solid 16 hours on the Bike and Hike during which it chucked it down and the temperature ranged from sleet to tee-shirt weather. After the first (wet) 8 hours I changed the trousers underneath and found them to be bone dry. After the second (dry) 8 hours there was no condensation. The truth is that I forgot I was wearing them. Highly recommended. 

The bad and the ugly

Not at all pleased with my Berghaus Active Shell which continues to let in water and weather at inappropriate times. It is also a very bright red and can be seen from space. Yuk.

Honourable mentions

I have been getting good use out my Montane pertex pullover which seems good for anything short of a hurricane. It breathes, is windproof and gets a kind of equilibrium going when it rains which keeps you dry underneath while it wets out. As with the OMM trousers you forget it is on unless you are working really hard. It's been good for some very long walks and for shorter winter runs in awful weather.It is not robust enough for the bike other than road and easy trails but it's a really versatile, packable piece of kit.
My Hope R4 bike lights continue to provide more pleasure than is decent on dark nights. They are now superseded in the bike tests by cheapies from the far east but I will stick with them for a few seasons yet.
A new pair of Scarpa Cristallos have barely been out the box except for one day in February but they were comfy from the start and gave a great feeling of security from the sharp edges of the new Vibram soles. Crampon compatibility was good and they look lovely - maybe that's just me...........

A soaker in the central belt

After a week in the squalor of Paris I needed a quick hit of fresh, clean air and the Campsies provided by the loch load on a wet and windy Wednesday morning. These are lovely and under-rated hills within 30 minutes of George Square. From the south they are visble as a green rampart to the north with a profile as familar to most Weegies as their mammy's nose. The tops are boggy and difficult away from the paths meaning they are totally empty on all but the best of days. From the north they present some fine corries which St.Tom of Weir described as the Cairngorms in minature. Tom loved them and for you that should be recommendation enough.  Lets face it - if they were south of Birminghan they would be a national park. 

My route took me up from the Crow Road to the level felltops on a boggy but obvious path but my time was limited and the top of Cortma Law was out of reach for the day.

It was great to be up there with an cold easterly streaming over the tops of the fells carrying stinging rain on the point of sleet. 

It is days like that when you want decent gear and regrettably my newish Berghaus Active Shell jacket let me down. I could not control it in the wind with the funny wee internal hood toggles working loose in seconds allowing rain down into the front and when I turned round to returnto the car  the jacket rose up over my bum continually. So within less than an hour of challenging but hardly extreme weather I was wet front and back. 

The jacket was a replacement from Craigdon for  a leaky Montane Superfly discussed above. Am I just unlucky or is the design of these light weight jackets just compromised for weight and style?

The jacket currently retails at £200 - steep for something that does not keep yer nuts dry.

Gear of the Year

Time for some gear talk and my vote for gear of the year as winter comes to a close. 

I considered my excellent Inov-8 Roclite 315s which have been through a lot over two years - hell on the Fannichs, a Highland Cross and more snow than we have seen in the previous decade and are still going for more. Comfy, grippy and hardy.

Honourable mentions to my lovely Haglofs hoodie fleece, my Howies merino 'surf style' base layer - which they stopped doing for some reason - and my PolarBuff. Nice to be warm...

But the winner is....my still shiny Hope Vision R4 LED light set. For a northcountryboy like me it means an extra 18 hours a day of potential playtime per dreary December day. It's a headtorch, it's a bike light, it means an end to night time as an excuse for not riding, running or even hillwalking. It's like a sunny day you fix to the front of your bike. And its made in the UK. 

Turkey of the year also belongs to the UK. A Montane eVent SuperFly jacket that leaked from the off. It took nearly a year of discussions to persuade Montane that the jacket was faulty. Just not good enough.