Tagged as “the lightest carabiner set on the market,” these clippers barely tip the scales at 19.5 grams (about 0.7 oz.) per biner—hence the name. That’s about 20 percent lighter than the sveltest micro-biners out there. Put another way, a rack of 10 Edelrid Nineteen G quickdraws with 10cm Dyneema slings weighs less than a pound.
Take the weather resistance of the best softshell and marry it to the breathability of an unlined fleece, and you have the Acto MX. “It’s great for high-output activities in the alpine,” said one tester after climbing the Breithorn outside of Zermatt, Switzerland, on a crisp, bluebird day.
“It’s like wearing armor,” said one tester after a two-week stint in perpetually weather-beaten south Patagonia, during which he rarely took the jacket off. “From climbing to sea kayaking to horseback riding, this jacket is perfect for the cold and wet, and it handles abrasion better than just about any other shell I’ve seen.”
Many “summit packs” are little more than stuff sacks with shoulder straps, but the Bacon is as hearty as its namesake. Ultralight (23 oz.) but tough, the 28-liter Bacon has a lightly padded back and internal webbing “skeleton” that kept loads centered squarely on the back and made it comfortable to carry modest loads up to 15 lbs.
For an ultralight alpine setup where two ropes are needed for rappels, it would be hard to top this package. The 6.9mm Flycatcher rope—you read that diameter right—is so thin that Edelrid had to invent a new belay device to handle it: the Micro Jul. A pair of 60m Flycatchers weighs just over 9 lbs.—about the same as one 10mm.
Modeled after the popular curved, double-gripped Black Diamond Fusion and Petzl Nomic tools, the Raptor is a fairly worthy competitor. Female and small-handed testers especially loved this tool for its light weight (19 oz. without the optional 2-oz. pick weights) and smaller grip size. “I have tiny hands, and I didn’t have to over-grip for fear of losing a tool. With a mid-weight glove on, the main grip above the pinky rest encased my hand near perfectly,” said one tester.
It’s funny how much waiting happens at the crag: Belaying, spotting, gawking, sharing beta—these don’t require a ton of energy. What’s not funny is how far your core temperature can drop on cold days during inactivity. Solution? The Sierra Designs DriDown Gnar Lite jacket ($229; sierradesigns.com). While at first glance it looks like any other 800-fill down jacket (and indeed its weight and warmth are comparable to most in that category), it’s the invisible treatment to the down itself that makes the difference.
Finding a pack that is perfect for everything from trad cragging to backcountry pursuits can make you feel like a whiney Goldilocks. It should be comfortable and stable enough to haul a double rack, food, layers, and water five miles or more into the alpine, but light and trim enough to stay out of the way when leading a crux pitch 500 feet off the deck.
Bailing off the sixth pitch of Petit Grepon (5.8) in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, in the face of a rain and hail storm, our tester put this “emergency storm jacket for an alpine environment” to the test. The Arc’teryx Alpha SL Jacket ($319; arcteryx.com) was a godsend for the two-hour downpour while the tester and her partner rapped down almost 800 feet.
Would you rather drop a few hundred clams for an ultra-specialized glove that ends up relegated to ski-slope use or pay way less for a warm workhorse glove that handles your dirty work? That’s what we thought. The North Face Work Glove ($80; thenorthface.com), an all-around and full-leather paw-warmer, stood up to plenty of rappels and belays.
On steep and technical ice—or loose, sketchy ledges—precise foot placement is critical. The Lowa Weisshorn GTX ($460; lowaboots.com) made even the most unstable terrain manageable. “It fit me like a second layer of skin—never awkward or bulky,” said a Vermont tester after multi-pitch ice climbs at Lake Willoughby. The secret?
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.
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