Mountain Hardwear Adaro Jacket
August 25, 2008
Get this totally awesome jacket for $449 at Altrec.com! Click here!
You’ll probably notice that most of my posts this summer involve testing waterproof gear, or discussing the waterproofness of gear, or complaining that gear isn’t waterproof enough. That’s because we’ve gotten more rain this year than any other year, ever! I think we’ve gotten more rain this year than all the rain in the rest of the world combined. I mean, seriously, it’s rained a LOT this year.
So what better to do in the rain but go on a nice long kayak trip? It’s not often that one can say that a kayak trip keeps them dryer than staying on land. While packing, I decided to bring along every single item of warm clothing I have, and wrap it all in every single item of waterproof clothing that I have. Good thing you don’t have to pack light on a kayak trip. Anyway, I hadn’t even taken the tags off the Adaro yet, but I decided to bring it along as my Trip Jacket, mostly because the sample was a size too big for me and I knew that I’d be able to fit all my warm layers underneath it. Well, it turns out that it was the best packing choice I possibly could have made. The Adaro is, quite simply, incredible. Totally, absolutely, persistently waterproof, and nicely breathable as well. Maybe it’s breathable because the main zipper is inexplicably normal (not heat-taped like all the other ones), but whatever, it worked.
Since the sizing was a little off, it’s hard to comment on fit, but I can safely say that the Adaro doesn’t have really streamlined cut. Good for layering, I guess, but I think mostly it’s to accommodate the pit zips. Some people love pit zips; I’m not one of those people. I prefer the slimmer cut that comes with zipless pits, but if they’re a plus for you, you’ll like the Adaro even more.
This shell does not come cheap, but I am fairly sure that it’s worth the cost. Truly a marvel of bad-weather engineering, you really can’t go wrong with this piece as your outerwear staple.
La Sportiva Sandstone GTX-XCR
August 25, 2008
La Sportiva was really asking for it when they posted an adline for these shoes reading “Built For Abuse!” I just have no choice but to abuse the hell out of them, clearly.
At first I tried to come up with some riff on abuse for this post, but I really couldn’t get it right without inevitably offending someone, somewhere, so let’s all just accept that I’m not going to make any off color abuse jokes. Accept it you must, because I limited my mistreatment of these shoes to the standard muddy, slippery trails; sharp chossy rocks; long, punishing hikes, and various other means by which to establish just how “built for abuse” they are. And I have to admit, they seem to be fairly abuse-worthy, as I couldn’t even crack the waterproofing until I’d been wearing them several times a week all spring and summer. They held out through weeks of mud holes and it seemed that they were a match for my abuse skills. Had I not worn them in a serious downpour while stomping through chest-high wet grass for three and a half hours, I think they’d still be shedding the elements. That particular trip really was tatamount to dunking the shoes in a river, so the fact that they lost their waterproofing at that point really isn’t a black mark against them.
The Sandstone XKC/YR/Magnum, PI (whatever, I haven’t cracked the code yet) low hikers feature a tread pattern that Sportiva calls Impact Brake System (note the unfortunate acronym); intended to make descending a little easier on the joints. As you may have noticed, I’m not too techy, so I didn’t bother trying to figure out how it works – but work, it does. The Sandstones won’t slip for anything, and I really do notice a difference while descending. They feel really solid and trustworthy; not too shabby for something I’ve been abusing for months. Speaking of long-term abuse, my aging joints have of late been objecting to steep descents, so every little bit helps.
Before I tried the Sandstones, I was never big on “low” hiking shoes. It was either running shoes or hiking boots for me. Hiking SHOES? What is that about? But these, I love. I love them so much I have barely even worn the hiking boots Sportiva sent me to test. Er, sorry, Sportiva, I’m a little behind. I’ll get to the boots soon, I’m sure, just wait until I’m done thoroughly abusing the shoes first. It’s not my fault you make shoes that just won’t give up!
Mountain Hardwear SkyLedge 2.1 Tent
August 16, 2008
I’m one of those idiots who thinks that taking a brand new piece of gear out in the field before even taking the tags off is a great way to test it. Sometimes that’s not the greatest idea and I’m left struggling with a water filter with no directions, finding out that my backpack has a broken zipper, or discovering that, say, the sleeping bag on which I am relying on for survival should be rated +85 degrees instead of -20. This time, though, I got lucky and was pleasantly relieved to find that the Skyledge 2.1 is fairly intuitive to set up and had all its pieces (whew).
Designed for ultralight backpacking, the Skyledge flirts with the 4 lb. mark, perfect for lazy people who don’t like to carry heavy things. One of the reasons it’s so light, though, is that it’s not roomy at all. If you’re using this for two people, the two people really better like each other a lot. I think Mountain Hardwear anticipated this, because the Skyledge has two side doors, each with its own roomy vestibule. That will go a long way towards promoting the sanity factor on tentbound days. Aside from those luxuries, this is a fairly minimal sleep center, without bells and whistles. Still, I’d personally rather not have to carry bells and whistles, so that all works out well. The tent itself, as you can see from the picture, is mostly mesh, so this is probably not the best cold-weather tent out there, but at least you won’t get a lot of condensation.
One absolutely awesome feature is the windows in the tent fly. I’ve always thought it was dumb to have a great tent made of mesh so you can see out, but then cover it up with an opaque tent fly. What’s the point of that? MHW made up for this by providing nifty see through panels in the fly. So when you’re stuck in the Skyledge, with the two vestibules providing the only buffer zone between you and annoyance sufficient to justify strangling your tentmate, you can always gaze out the window (probably at whatever weather is forcing you to stay in there) and think happy thoughts rather than focusing on the annoying way your tentmate is sipping her hot chocolate (okay, it’s been in that cup an hour and a half, do you REALLY think it’s still so hot that you can’t drink it without slurping????).
I don’t know how to spin this to make it women-specific, so how about this: the lack of color coding on the poles means it’s designed for people who might possibly be inclined to read the directions (hint: not men). But it’s so easy to set up that color coding is really not necessary, so that’s kind of moot. So let’s try: the color is described as “wasabi” rather than “green” which might appeal to a woman’s more nuanced sense of description. How’s that?
Mountain Hardwear Ultralamina 15 Sleeping Bag
August 7, 2008
Warm. Dependable. Cuddly. Compressible. No, it’s not a list of things I’m looking for in a man, it’s a list of attributes brought to the table by the Ultralamina 15 degree synthetic-fill bag. I understand your confusion, though – if you’ve ever been disappointed by a date, you might think “compressible” is a reasonable thing to look for. But anyway, other things the Ultralamina possesses that don’t apply to significant others are the super clever dual-zipper system, which eliminates left-zip vs. right-zip frustration; the pillow pocket in the hood; the super soft outer material; and the nice, perfectly sized, ultralight stuff sack that for once actually COMES WITH the bag. The zipper system is by far my favorite – I hate ending up with a left zip bag and, as a left-side sleeper, having to sleep with the zipper under my hip and shoulder. The Ultralamina has two 1/2 length zippers that are located on the top of the bag, rather than the sides, so it doesn’t matter which side you sleep on – there won’t be a zipper in your way. The 1/2 length zippers also contribute to the warmth of the bag since there’s no way for the air in the bottom half of the bag to leak out the zipper. If your feet tend to be fragrant, your tent mate might also appreciate that feature.
I am a cold sleeper so I need a warm bag, and I’m into airflow and don’t like to have to completely entomb myself in a sleeping bag, so I took this 15 degree bag on a kayak trip in fifty-something degree weather. Because of our extended swath of cold summer weather this year, I expected the trip to be rainy and chilly and I wasn’t disappointed on that front. While I didn’t quite need a 15 degree bag, it was really nice to be able to warm up quickly after each day out on the water in the rain. The excellent performance of this bag left me confident that this bag would be sufficient even in below-freezing temperatures (high praise indeed from the Queen of Cold Feet).
The material is not your run-of-the-mill sleeping bag nylon. It’s soft and silky, quite luxurious really. It wasn’t cold and clammy to crawl into and it didn’t retain moisture from a night in the tent (ever have that slimy-sleeping-bag-on-the-face feeling? Not a nice thing to have in the morning). The side pocket was really handy for my watch and headlamp, and the bag was nice and fluffy, kind of like sleeping on a feather bed. It’s the kind of bag that makes you look forward to crawling in bed with at night. And that IS something I’d look for in a significant other – so, Ultralamina…’til death do us part. Well, death or colder weather, of course.
