Off to the last OutDoor Show in Freidrichshafen

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Friedrichshafen via Inverness, Heathrow and Zurich for the huge OutDoor industry trade show. This is the last time the show is in Friedrichshafen. From next year it'll be in Munich - easier to get to, plenty of accommodation but no Bodensee (Lake Constance). I'll miss Friedrichshafen.

Whilst I plan on finding time to wander along the lakeshore, most of the trip I'll be wandering round the vast halls (I averaged eleven miles a day last year) looking at gear and hoping to find something new and interesting. I'll be sending reports back for the TGO website and posting comments and pictures on TGO's Twitter and Instagram feeds (both @TGOMagazine) and probably on Facebook too.

Coincidental Entanglement: the John Muir Trust and the OutDoor Show

Loch Linnhe, Fort William

Just over two weeks ago I was in Fort William for the John Muir Trust AGM and Members' Gathering. On returning home I had one day free before I headed off to Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance to be one of the judges for this year's OutDoor Industry Awards.

A side note from these two trips: in Fort William I had time for a stroll beside Loch Linnhe, and noted how this arm of the sea looks like an inland lake. In Friedrichshafen I visted Lake Constance and noted how this inland lake looks like the sea.

Lake Constance and Friedrichshafen

Now having those two meetings follow each other somewhat inconveniently closely is something I'd probably have quickly forgotten. But it's about to happen again. On June 16 I go down to Pitlochry for a John Muir Trust Trustees meeting. Then the very next day I go back to Friedrichshafen for the OutDoor Show itself. From conservation to gear again. Both about the outdoors, though in very different ways. And both involving spending a lot of time indoors.

Latest TGO: pyramid tents, stupid heavy/light backpacking, Pacific Northwest Trail photo-essay, Friedrichshafen show report

Belatedly, due to connection problems (see last post), here's a look at the September issue of TGO (well, it is still August). My main feature is a photo-essay on my Pacific Northwest Trail walk with a special offer on my book on the trip, Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams.In my backpacking column I write about the weight of gear and going stupidly light and stupidly heavy while in gear I review a selection of pyramid-style tents.And in the Hill Skills section I answer questions on looking after your feet in hot weather (not a problem often this summer in Britain!) and the advantages of 'technical' legwear. There's also a feature written with Daniel Neilson on the new gear we thought the most interesting at the Friedrichshafen OutDoor Show last month.

Elsewhere in this issue I'm delighted to see Jim Perrin praising Edward Abbey's wonderful Desert Solitaire, one of my favourite outdoor books.Vivienne Crow follows the River Esk in Cumbria from its mouth at Ravenglass to its source high in the hills at Esk Hause, an interesting route.Daniel Neilsen goes sea kayaking round the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales and climbs its two little hills, another interesting approach. The most exciting story comes from Hanna Lindon, who describes an unintended night out on the Cuillin Ridge on Skye. Luckily the weather was fine but even so it sounds quite an ordeal. This year is the 400th anniversary of the notorious Pendle witch trials and there have been a number of events marking this. For TGO Carey Davies describes a walk over Pendle Hill and considers this grim period of history. Other interesting features include Roger Smith asking if Scotland's national parks are doing their job well (whilst by no means perfect I think they are doing better than Roger does), a useful key for identifying birds of prey (I suspect an awful lot of buzzards are mistaken for eagles), John Manning's review of 15 mid-range waterproof jackets and Stuart Brooks, chief executive of the John Muir Trust, appealing for walkers to get involved in protecting wild land.

New Gear: Friedrichshafen OutDoor Show Review

My final report on this years outdoor gear trade show at Friedrichshafen is now online on the TGO website here.



www.tgomagazine.co.uk/news/gearnews/Coming-soon-to-an-outdoor-store-near-you

Friedrichshafen Thoughts

Outdoor shows are strange places. In vast, hot, artificially lit, windowless halls of concrete and steel little stands are built and filled with gear designed to keep users comfortable and safe outside in the real, natural world that can only be seen in the pictures of mountains and forests decorating the stands. This year at the giant OutDoor show in Friedrichshafen I camped just a few minutes walk away from the exhibition centre along with hundreds of others, including colleagues from TGO magazine. Sleeping in a tent and waking to bird song and the smell of wet grass (it rained every night) added a touch of reality. One morning I looked across the packed tents to see distant jagged peaks rising into the sky, the edge of the Alps, the real world. Then I grabbed my shoulder bag and cameras and headed off into the show, to spend the day out of sight of the mountains but in constant contact with gear designed for climbing and living in them.

For two days I tramped the halls, visiting a succession of stands and seeing huge amounts of gear. Even so I missed much. Some themes became obvious though as the stands flashed past. Colour for one. Bright colours – sky blue, pink, orange, yellow – that repeated from company to company on everything from boots to packs. Trail running was another theme, with so much footwear and clothing aimed at it that you’d think it was the most popular outdoor activity. Light weight continued from past shows, though as before what is considered light varies enormously. Check the weights not the description!

So did I see anything of any real interest? Yes, I did. Detailed descriptions will appear in the September TGO (with some information on the TGO website before then) but here’s a taster. (There’s also some show reports from Daniel Neilson on the TGO site now).

In footwear there were some curious shoes from Teva called TevaSphere with a sole claimed to perform better on all types of terrain plus, from Hanwag, some boots for anyone with bunions, inevitably to be known as Bunion Boots. The Ecco Biom boots that won the Scandinavian Outdoor Award were also on show.

The most exciting tents were almost identical to the Terra Nova Laser models. Why exciting? Because the Wild Country Zephyros Lite 1 and 2 person tents are around half the price of the Lasers yet weigh only a little more and look, to my eye, just as good  (better in one respect as the fiddly pole sleeve has been dispensed with). Also very light is the 880 gram 2 person Nordisk Telemark 2 Carbon tent. Away from these ultralight backpacking tents Crux showed a single-skin mountaineering tent, the X1 Assault, made from a carbon incorporating fabric claimed to minimise condensation.

New ideas in sleeping bags would seem unlikely but two companies had come up with them. Nemo showed the unusual-looking Wave bag that is very curvy and designed to allow comfortable sleeping on your side or any other position. Cascade Designs had sleeping bags with straps underneath to secure them to sleeping pads as with quilts. These are full bags though. Other bags looked more conventional. Of these I particularly liked Lightwave’s first down bags as they are ultralight and the quality looks superb.

Montane launched their first packs at the show last year. For 2012 they have expanded the range with a bigger pack, the lightweight Grand Tour 55, that has some interesting features. Other good looking lightweight backpacking packs came from Arc’teryx.

In stoves there were two that I’m looking forward to trying. Primus has completely redesigned the EtaExpress with a windscreen that fits properly and a wider, lower profile pot while MSR has finally made a smaller version of the powerful Reactor.

Whilst there are plenty of new colourful base and midlayers in clothing it was two shell jackets that really caught my eye. In Gore-Tex Active Shell Berghaus has designed a jacket, the Vapour Storm, with the most thorough venting system I’ve ever seen. In Neoshell, my current favourite waterproof fabric, Rab has a new lightweight jacket, the Myriad.

Images from OutDoor, Friedrichshafen

 

Friedrichshafen OutDoor Show Aftermath

Back from the OutDoor show in Friedrichshafen after four days of trains, planes, cars, ferries, airports, stations, exhibition halls, hot hotel rooms, bright lights and no actual outdoors it's time to take stock. Shows like this are much more tiring than a long walk in the hills, both because of the travelling (longest section - home to Edinburgh Airport!)and the non-stop round of stands and the barrage of new gear and marketing. Of course the show is also very interesting and I did see some good-looking stuff including stoves, packs, shoes and mats. Updates on all these are still appearing on the TGO website (scroll down to Gear News). I'll be writing an overview of the show and the new gear for the October issue of TGO too.





Home again my first desire was fresh air and the natural world, away from artificial lights and constant noise. The green world looked very appealing despite the swirling clouds and heavy showers. In fact as I wandered through my local woods and fields it was the sky that dominated the landscape with huge clouds piled one above the other rising to the heavens. Insubstantial and mobile the skyscape changed constantly, white clouds giving way to black, rain slanting fiercely down then shafts of sunshine lighting trees and patches of hillside. The warmth of July and the wetness of the weather meant rich greeness everywhere. The light freshness of spring is gone. Now the dominant colour is the deep green of summer. Close up there was much colour amongst the green though - a mass of flowers in the meadows and marshes - tormentil, eyebright, orchids, ragged robin, viper's bugloss, thistles - yellow, white, pink, purple. Sunshine may be missing but the summer is still full of vitality and interest.

OutDoor Show, Friedrichshafen

In a few days I'm off to the huge OutDoor Show in Friedrichshafen to see all the new gear and try and pick out anything interesting. I'll be at the show for TGO magazine, and, all being well with the technology, reports should appear on the TGO website during the show. Then there'll be a detailed account in the October issue. I might post some less gear-orientated stuff about the show here as well.

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.

Friedrichshafen Podcasts

Over on The Outdoor Station site Bob and Rose Cartwright have put together six interesting podcasts on this years Friedrichshafen OutDoor show that are well worth listening to by anyone interested in new outdoor gear. Included in the fifth podcast is a short interview with John Manning and me, made when we met Bob in one of the big "Tent City" halls. I admire Bob and Rose's stamina in putting these podcasts together. It's hard enough work just prowling the stands and talking to people without recording them as well.

The photo shows Terra Nova's new tarp with netting inner. The photo shows Terra Nova's new tarp with netting inner. Photo info: Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF-S 18-55 mm IS@18 mm, f3.5@1/60, ISO 200, raw file converted to JPEG in DxO Optics Pro.

The 2008 OutDoor Show, Friedrichshafen

Last week I spent four days tramping the giant aircraft hangar-like exhibition halls in Friedrichshafen in Southern Germany looking at outdoor gear, old and new. It’s a strange activity, spending all day inside in noisy, echoing, crowded halls under glaring artificial lights examining products designed to take you away from just such places. On previous visits to the show the weather had been hot and sunny, which made the exhibition halls unpleasantly warm and sticky. This year the weather was cooler and wetter with frequent downpours and one spectacular thunderstorm, which at least meant the halls were cooler. Relief from the unnatural environs of the show was provided by the footwear company Merrell who for the second year running set up a tipi village in a meadow surrounded by woodland just ten minutes walk but a million miles in feel from the exhibition. The tipi village was a great place to unwind after the show and talk to writers from other magazines and other outdoors people. Last year the tipis were fitted with rather unstable camp beds. This year Aerobeds were provided, which I found the most comfortable camping mattress I’ve ever used. You wouldn’t want to carry an Aerobed far though (and it wouldn’t fit in an Akto!). The tipis are wonderful to sleep in, even if they did prove less than fully waterproof in torrential rain.

What though of the gear on show? With over 800 exhibitors there was much to see, not all of it very interesting. Here’s a quick run-through of some of the items that attracted my attention.

In packs there’s some good looking lightweight models from Lightwave – the 55/60 litre Wildtrek – and Osprey - the 46/58 litre Exos. Elsewhere there were a surprising number of similar packs with long water resistant front zips.

In shelters Integral Designs has a curious winter bivy bag called the Penguin Reflexion, which is made from a heat reflecting silver reflective version of Sympatex, and a tarp with a single hoop called the SilDome that begs the question as to what is a tarp. To me the SilDome looks like a tent flysheet. Terra Nova also has a shaped tarp that comes with an insect netting inner. This pitches with trekking poles and looks a bit more like a tarp than the SilDome. In tents the emphasis seems to be on large and light with Terra Nova showing a 2.7kg tent in which I can practically stand up and The North Face a roomy tent with almost vertical inner walls called the Minibus 23. MSR had some light tents with carbon fibre poles called the Carbon Reflex that look interesting too.

The luxuriousness of the Aerobed may not be portable but there were some comfortable-looking inflatable mattresses that you can carry in a pack. Cascade Designs showed an airbed called the Neo Air with a reflective barrier inside and an internal structure claimed to overcome the problem of cold air circulating. At 260 grams in the small size the Neo Air could be the most comfortable backpacker’s mattress yet if it really is warm. Alternatively there is Pacific Outdoor Equipment’s Peak Oyl Lite (so called because it’s made from palm oil rather than petroleum) which is said to be the lightest 1 inch thick self-inflating mat. The 2/3 length one weighs 360 grams.

An unusual device – it can’t be called a stove – is the Heatgear Heatstick, a gas-powered water heater that fits inside a water bottle. It’s not light – 329 grams for the 0.5 litre version including bottle – but there’s no flame and it’s said to work in any temperature. Maybe a replacement for a vacuum flask?

More conventional lightweight stoves come from Primus, with the 596 gram remote canister EtaPacklite complete with heat exchanger, windscreen and 1.2 litre pot, and Snow Peak with the 56 gram Lite Max, the lightest canister stove yet.

In clothing Rab has a new eVent jacket, the Momentum, at a light 340 grams, while Marmot had a very light Paclite jacket, the Nano at 228 grams. Not exceptionally light at 482 grams Patagonia’s Stretch Ascent N2NO jacket is interesting because it’s made from 100% recycled polyester.

There was much else of interest of course but these are a few of the highlights. Along with other items detailed test reports will appear by me and others in TGO magazine and on the Backpacking Light.com website over the next year.

The picture shows the Merrell Tipi Village in one of the brief bursts of sunshine. Photo info: Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF-S 18-55 mm IS@ 33mm, f8@1/500, ISO 100, raw file converted to JPEG in DxO Optics Pro

After the Friedrichshafen Outdoor Show

Four days away from the endless rain of this British "summer" in the heat and sun of Friedrichshafen has been welcome, even if most time was spent indoors looking at equipment and talking to the outdoor trade. Merrell's tipi village was a good place to relax and gave an appropriate outdoor feel to the event. A tipi proved a far cooler place to sleep than last year's hotel too. The show itself is huge, 712 exhibitors filling ten giant exhibition halls. Even in four days there's only time to see a little of what's on show.

So what was interesting? A surprising amount for the lightweight backpacker, especially in shelters and shoes. GoLite has a completely revamped tent line, with some nice looking shelters that erect with trekking poles, Mountain Hardwear has an ultralight solo semi-geodesic, Terra Nove an even lighter single hoop and Mountain Equipment and Hilleberg lightweight solo winter tents. In shoes there are more models without membrane (hurrah!) and even, from Lowa amongst others, some with leather linings, which don't stink like synthetics. There are some good ultralight sleeping bags from Rab (the new Top Bag looks superb) and Mountain Equipment and a 418 gram stove with heat exchanger called the EtaExpress from Primus. There are brief descriptions of some of this gear on the TGO website by Cameron McNeish, who spent his afternoons at the computer while Judy Armstrong and I roamed the halls, and proper test reports will appear in TGO magazine over the next year as actual products become available.

The photo shows Cameron McNeish and Judy Armstrong relaxing in the Merrell tipi village. Photo info: Ricoh GR-D with 21mm lens adapter, f8 @ 1/250, ISO 100, JPEG, processed in DxO Optics Pro.

Preparations for the Outdoor Show, Friedrichshafen

This weekend sees the Outdoor Show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. It's the biggest outdoor trade show in Europe and the place to see all the new gear. I'll be there for four days, wandering the halls looking for interesting items and talking to myriads of designers, marketeers and PR people. Shows like this are exciting, entertaining and exhausting. I reckon a long day on the hill is far less tiring than a day at a trade show. I always need to go for a walk afterwards to recover. I like to go to the hills beforehand too, just to remind myself what it's really all about - which isn't gear. So a few days ago I climbed Ben MacDui in the Cairngorms by way of Loch Avon and Loch Etchachan on a day of much cloud and brief sunshine with spits of rain that only turned heavy ten minutes before the walk was over. The hills glowed and glowered under the clouds and flashes of sun, fresh with the green of summer and sparkling with water from the recent rains. I was surprised at how many snow patches remain, given the warm and wet weather of the last two months. Some were big enough for a few ski turns. Refreshed I'm now prepared for a long weekend inside. Actually it won't be totally inside as I'll be staying in a tipi in a village of such tents provided by Merrell footwear, which could be interesting.

Once I'm back from Friedrichshafen I'll post an overview of the show. Test reports of interesting new gear will then appear in TGO over the next year. So far I've heard of interesting developments from GoLite, Terra Nova and Primus. I'm sure there'll be more.

The photo shows the head of Loch Avon, Carn Etchachan and the Shelter Stone Crag at 14.30 on July 15. Photo info: Canon EOS 350D, Canon 18-55 lens @ 18mm, f8 @1/1 25, 2 stop graduated neutral density filter, ISO 100, JPEG. No post processing.