Cold, Wet Backpacking in TGO, Golden Autumn Wandering in BPL

Last summer I spent a few days at the giant OutDoor trade show in Friedrichshafen strolling round the exhibition halls looking at the new gear for 2009(see post for 24 July 2008). In the following months various interesting items arrived for review and over a couple of wet and windy days last November I took them out for a group test in the southern Cairngorms. A description of this trip with reviews of the gear appears in the February issue of TGO, just published, under the heading Cold Wet Cairngorms. The most interesting items I tried were the Therm-A-Rest NeoAir sleeping mat, a modern airbed, and the Lightwave Wildtrek 60, a tough lightweight pack. Other gear included the Rab Momentum eVENT jacket, Primus TiLite stove, Coleman Falcon X1 tent, Mammut Ajungilak Sphere 195 sleeping bag and Mammut Courmayeur Pants.

The gear test trip was in dull, misty, grey weather – I got to practise my navigation skills yet again – though the autumn as a whole was quite sunny with brighter and deeper colours than usual (see post for 22 October 2008). A selection of my photographs taken on day walks in the woods of Strathspey has just been published under the heading Autumn in Cairngorms National Park on Backpacking Light.com. You don’t need to be a subscriber to see this photo essay, which can be found here.

Photo info: Camp in Glen Baddoch on the Friedrichshafen gear test trip. Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS@30mm, f5.6@1/125, ISO 400, raw file converted to JPEG in Lightroom 2.