so just out of interest, what do yo do to inflate your mat, should you have a mat you inflate ..read more

Hi all Picked up a katabatic bristlecone bivy for using in the trailstar, Plan to lay it on top of my 3mm ccf pad to protect the bottom, question for stringing the head area is it best to use elastic cord? Cheers ..read more

Hi all, I'm on the lookout for a new walking pole (I tend to only use one pole). What models do folks like? I'm after something light but not too flimsy since they get bashed about a bit and I may want to use the pole for the tent too, so it still has to be in one piece by the end of the day ..read more

If anyone has any links to company catalogues of the past, or has any collections saved down, it would be fun to collect them here and then create some kind of mutual folder to store everything. I find old catalogues pretty fun to read, but many that were once found online are starting to disappear/links dying. I'll start off with Mountain Hardwear 1996 ..read more

I've been thinking of spending a bit of cash to get my 8kg summer (Edit - badly worded, meant April to early October) baseweight down, and as a starting point I had a play with the lighterpacker online tool. https://lighterpack.com/r/qwqxp7 But where to start? The obvious thing to do is to concentrate on the heavier items first, tent, rucksack and sleeping bag, and then chip away at the smaller items. Then I saw the price of decent down bags , so I decided to take a look... Read more ..read more

The UK and many other places often have rather windy hills. I got on this random trail of thought over the weekend, thinking of things that I've lost, blown away on the hill. I'm sure there must be plenty of examples, some of them hopefully entertaining (even if only in retrospect). For me the ones I can recall (my memory may be a little rusty): - I think I've lost two Lowe Alpine Mountain caps blown off my head, one on Goat Fell crossing a narrow ridge to the summit - Fairly sure, a... Read more ..read more

A Legend of outdoors gear design. I remember when Buffalo first came out. In those days, after responding to a magazine advert (from The Great Outdoors in my case), you got information by post, possibly even by sending an SAE (self addressed envelope) and they'd send you various ads and articles about the wonders of the combination of Pertex and fibre pile. All quite rough photocopies too. It took a few years for... Read more ..read more

First night out in the Peak District with the Tarptent Double rainbow DW ultra. Lots of room for me and I liked the porch options to take in the views when it rained. No significant wind but it feels solid with the tnt material. I carefully added the trekking poles to test it out as an option if the weather turned. Decent vestibules too, Impressed so far. [ATTACH... Read more ..read more

This is a Caravan Arctic down bag from the 70s. Very minimalist. weighs about 1.7kgs and originally rated for minus 10. Caravan made loads of camping gear back then. Bo Hilleberg even designed one of their early tents (forget the name). These kind of bags are often found in second hand shops or... Read more ..read more

Hope everyone is well. Just had a message back from the Rab warranty dept that the Xenair jacket I sent for inspection due to a zipper failure (mechanical slack where it joins as well as about 4 teeth having broken off) was 'showing signs of wear' so they don't think it's a warranty claim as such. It's a medium sized Xenair which I bought as a gift for my good friend. He'd taken my well used Microlight down jacket in to his good home and was using it regularly. So when the Xenair came up on... Read more ..read more