Take a bomber four-season tent and make it comfortably livable, and there you have the First Ascent Katabatic ($599; firstascent.com). Our seasoned tester and guide put this tent at the top of his all-time-favorites list after taking it to 26,000 feet on Everest and braving 40 mph winds in it. He then rounded out his testing with another high-altitude stint in wind-whipped Peru.
This tent was perfect for car camping, yet light (4 lbs., 6 oz.) and packable for backcountry adventures like my twoweek stint in the Cascades of Washington. For the hot and dry eastern side of the range, it had large doors on either side, with a fully open option or a nice screen for bug protection. For the soppy western side, double-wall construction, vents in the fly, and those large screened doors meant no morning condensation buildup.
A good night's sleep is imperative for all climbing objectives. Whether you're attempting the Nose in a day or just car camping for a weekend of sport climbing, your bag can make or break your climb, not to mention your mood. Climbing magazine teamed up with Backpacker magazine to round up a dozen three-season down sleeping bags that were new for 2012.
Climbing tested five new stoves so you'll know which one to take out on your next rock climbing, mountaineering, or camping adventure.
Enter the Goal Zero Guide 10 Plus Mobile Kit ($129.95, goalzero.com), a nifty way to literally recharge the batteries in all the gizmos you take rock climbing.
The Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, is madness this time of year—the reason is the summer Outdoor Retailer Trade Show, a massive gathering (over 20,000 people, I've been told) of outdoor gear and apparel companies, retailers, media, and athletes.
For a rest station after a marathon day of sport climbing or traditional climbing, you can’t get much more soothing than The North Face Minibus 23 (thenorthface.com), a user-friendly, two-person, three-season tent new for 2009.
The Mountain Hardwear Phantom provides solid, lightweight performance at a moderate price that will leave you with enough change left over to buy the expensive mac and cheese instead of the 75-cent ramen noodles.
The Feathered Friends Merlin sleeping bag comes equipped with a snag-free three-quarter-length zip and a simple one-handed hood closure, which unfortunately lacked a baffle. The Merlin’s Epic shell made it the most weather-resistant bag of the review, without sacrificing breathability.
Western Mountaineering’s meticulous attention to detail is evident in the UltraLite, an open-baffle sack filled with conservatively rated 850-fill down. The UtraLite’s full-length zipper was the best tested: It never snagged, and I could not get it to catch on the draft tube even when aggressively yarding on the zipper.
To that end, we gathered all the ultralight down sleeping bags for rock climbers on the market, made sure they had full mummy hoods; were equipped with at least a half-length zipper; were rated between 20 and 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and weighed them on our certified postal scale. Any models that exceeded our one pound, 15 ounce limit, we handed back to the UPS man.
This review excludes bags with synthetic insulation because down is warmer and more compressible for its weight than man-made fibers — crucial considerations for any alpinist. climbing online sleeping bags review
Share