August 3, 2010

Looking for that perfect piece of gear that you just can’t seem to find anywhere?  Want to see the newest designs, innovative ideas, and what the small guys are offering?  You need to attend the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, UT.  The show is held twice a year to to bring outdoor gear manufacturers and outdoor retailers together.  It is the largest outdoor gear show in the US. 

The focus is on camping, backpacking, kayaking, climbing.  Typical REI type sports.  Hunting, Fishing, and motorized sports were barely visible.  Since camping is such a large component of Overlanding there is still a large cross-over.  I saw booths of a lot of traditional Overlanding type companies such as Garmin, Magellan, Delorme, National Geographic, SPOT, Engel and Kelly Kettle.

Ortik

http://ortik.net

As I walked in the door, the first booth that grabbed my attention was Ortik’s mountaineering gear.  Ortik is a small company out of Portugal and they had all sorts of well thought out and innovative gear ideas. 

Their modular mountaineering tent system allows you to interconnect multiple tent pods to create anything from a super small 2 person tent to a small home.  This gives it the flexibility to be used as a base camp setup or in a smaller configuration during a climb.  Unfortunately, this item was too big to setup in their booth at the show so I was only able to grab a photo of brochure.

Next up from Ortik was the Ortik Heat-it Stove Cooking System.  This is a lightweight (6.3oz) stove windscreen for climbing/backpacking stoves.  It is the perfect setup for anyone with a small lightweight stove like the Snow Peak Lite Max (1.9oz).  Unlike a heavy Jetboil, these stoves are very exposed to the wind which blows the heat away.  The Ortik Heat-It increases stove efficiency by 40% in normal conditions, and even more in cold or windy conditions.  Useful for backpackers and alpinists alike, it can be setup on the ground or suspended.

The final, and my favorite, item from Ortik was a very lightweight tent that could be pitched using hiking poles.  It makes a great single person shelter when ultra-lightweight backpacking or as an emergency shelter in a day pack.

Evernew

http://evernewamerica.com

Evernew makes titanium backpacking gear.  This year they’ve come out with a new titanium alcohol/wood cooking stove that weighs 1.2oz.  They have a variety of attachments for it such as windscreens and upper/lower stands that make it incredibly versatile.  The primary source of weight on any extended backpacking trips is fuel.  The ability to use wood as a fuel source allows you to carry less alcohol and insures that you can still cook if you run out. 

From an Overlanding perspective, this sort of stove makes for a great backup cooking system.  Toss the stove in your Bug Out bag and if your stove breaks or your truck breaks and you need to hoof it out you have an easy way to boil water. 

Klymit

 http://klymit.com

By now, you may have realized that I am interested in ultra-light backpacking gear.  equipment that works as good as the heavy stuff, but in order to spare my old knees comes in at a fraction of the weight of traditional gear 

The Klymit Kinetic clothing had to be one of the coolest items at the show.   These vests use what they call “NobleTek insulation” which they claim is the thinnest, lightest, and warmest insulation available.

According to their product information, NobleTek uses noble gases, like argon, as insulators. Because of the structure of these gas molecules they make for an extremely good insulator. Argon is non toxic, non flammable, 100% eco-friendly.

Snow Peak

http://snowpeak.com

Snow Peak is hands down my favorite outdoor gear company.  While expensive, almost every product they make strikes a perfect balance between functionality, durability, and weight.  They had one of the larger displays at the show and had a number of items on display that I hadn’t seen before.

The most interesting item I’ve seen Snow Peak release this year is their new “Hot Lips”.  Ultralight backpackers like to carry only one pot to both boil water in and to drink out of.  Double wall mugs can’t be used to boil water, and single wall pots get incredibly hot.  Enter the hot lips.  Boil your water, steep your tea, put the hot lips on and you can get started drinking right away.

I noticed a few other items from Snow Peak might be of particular interest to Overlanders such as these wine glasses whose base unscrews and can be threaded back into the top when transporting.  Wine glasses have an awkward shape, and this minimizes the room that they occupy.

In the past I’ve had GSI lexan glasses but they were prone to scratching which made them look less than elegant.  And let’s be honest, if you are carrying a wine glass into the woods then you want it to look as classy as wine glass.  If not, you’d be drinking the wine out of your mug.

These color coded sporks make an easy way to keep track of whose is whose.

For overlanding where room and weight aren’t as big of an issue this foldable bamboo cutting board looks really good.  It stores a nice Santoku Knife on the inside.  Bamboo is lightweight, strong, and renewable.  A popular knife for prepping Asian food, the Santoku knife is an ideal choice when outdoors.  Because of it’s width it makes it easy to use it like a spatula when moving vegetables from the cutting board into the pan (wok?).  I’ve had this type of knife in my Overlanding cook kit for a couple of years and love it.

Brunton

Brunton has upgraded their solar panels and they are now available in a hard mount configuration.  A simple, but effective means of keeping the battery topped off if you plan to spend several days in camp.

Bamboo Bottle

This is the most ridiculous product of the show.  The sales guy told me that they set out to create a bamboo bottle.  A bottle that would be green, natural, renewable, etc.  Similar to a water bottle that you might see Bear Grylls hollow out while on adventure in the jungle.  What they wound up with was a glass bottle, with a plastic lid, sleeved by bamboo.  The sales guy told me they tried the bamboo only version but that mold prevented it from being sanitary.  So, they added the glass bottle and plastic lid.

Ironically, they had one of the largest booths at the show and this was their only product.  Sometimes it’s important to know when to give up on a product.