Scottish Mountaineer

I picked this up off ebay after I saw it being praised highly on some of the outdoor forums. A 300 lumen headtorch for a fiver? Sounded too good to be true. Ok it’s a generic build with a stock LED, but it’s got to be worth trying, right?

The first thing I noticed was the rake adjustment. It was limited to five notches, two of which pointed to the sky, the middle one pointed low and the last two highlighted my nose and toes. The middle notch was just a little annoying smidgen off the right height, so I found I was getting a sore neck holding the beam in position. This proved not to be a long term problem because after two days use the wee spring that holds the rake assembly in place broke. No points for build quality.  I bodged it in place and carried on.

The beam is zoomable, which turned out to be a choice between a superbright tiny square like a postage stamp, up to a diffuse square with some surrounding light that covered a fair bit of ground. Range was good, but the light quality was very uneven, so yet more headbobbing required. There appears to be no regulation so battery life was short and there seems to be no rain resistance at all, so not much use around these parts.

Then the clincher, real hill performance. I stomped up to the top of Ben Narnain in the gloaming, pulled out the torch and bam! Nothing happened. It was dead. I pulled out my Petzl and chucked this into the depths of my rucksack. Further investigation revealed some rather shoddy soldering in the battery department had fallen apart. I’ve since fixed it and it’s used by me to go out and shut the hens in at night.

So in summary, poor adjustment, poor light quality, shocking build quality, but hey, it’s bright.  Utter dreck. Avoid like the plague.

Base layers can make or break a trip. If you’re sweating like a Sun reader in an IQ test because you’re overheating and then getting chilled as a result when you stop, your trip can have a enjoyment rating matching that of a jaunt to Ikea on a bank holiday Monday.

With the community all going a bit daft for merino and merino mixes,  it’s nice to see a synthetic that can stand up against the natural fibres. Don’t get me wrong, I like merino. I do find it holes a little bit to easily, but maybe I’m just not careful enough around velcro or have moths in the cupboard that are really choosy. Given the cost of merino, I’m not keen on replacing holed kit that frequently, I am Aberdonian by birth and have a stereotype to live up to.

Wild Stripes use polypropylene. In terms of styling, they definitely do not do the stock Helly-Hansen-blue thing. The Dennis the menace vibe is great. How can you not be cheered up wearing something like that?  There’s a decent length zip for venting and some thumb loops on the cuffs that can be folded back if you don’t need them.  If your interested, you can see how they are made.

Performance is where this is a real revelation.  I’ve worn this in all sorts of conditions: sun, drizzle, light rain, snow, heavy rain, hail,  very heavy rain, and cataclysmic rain. You’ve got to love Spring in Scotland.

Regardless of conditions it’s been very soft on the skin, warm but not too hot and most importantly it wicks like a chandler who lives here. Even after brutal uphill sections I could take my rucksack off and my back would be as dry as a bone in the Atacama. Outstanding. In fact, I can comfortably say this is the best synthetic base layer I’ve ever used. I can go further and say this is one of the best base layers I’ve ever owned, regardless of material.

So in summary it looks great, performs fantastically and is reasonably priced. Very highly recommended.

My lovely wife Kirsty has been testing this jacket for the last couple of months and I’ve been trying to talk her into writing a guest review. She didn’t have time to sit down and write it up, so I had to quiz her on it and here I am writing up some ladies kit for a change. I do like a challenge!

The Scimitar is designed to be a technical softshell. The material is Rab’s own Matrix DWS, with heavier weight hard wearing panels on the shoulders, across the upper back, on the hips and over the hood.  The material has a pleasant soft feel and it stretches well, so your sleeves don’t ride up if you reach up for a hold.

It has a napoleon pocket and two chest pockets which are massive with mesh inners, which is handy for venting.  The zips are weather resistant with a storm baffle behind the main zip and  the cuffs are adjustable. The hood is the usual Rab quality ( they make the best hoods in my experience) and the adjustment toggles are captive so you don’t get whipped in the face on windy days.

So much for the details, how does it perform? Well so far it’s proven to be very weather resistant and very breathable, as you would expect from a softshell. The hood fit is excellent, and it moves nicely with your head.

Now onto the crux: fit. Kirsty normally takes a size 10, but it seemed really tight across the chest, so she swapped up to a 12, which was a better fit, but her view is that the jacket is cut for the ahem, smaller-bosomed lady. Maybe that should read ‘athletic build’. I’m sure someone will keep me right here.

The size 10 fitted well around the waist and hips and the arm length was great,  but it was too tight around the chest. Her ideal would be a 10 on the hips and a 12 on the chest.   The material does seem to relax a bit and it definitely stretches so if you’re considering a purchase bear that in mind. Check your sizing and allow for some give.

This jacket has drawn some admiring glances when out and about, so it does a good job of being technical, stylish and a nice colour all at the same time, which I’m told is important. Like I’d know, I’m about as stylish as Boris Johnson.

This jacket from Vaude is my first foray into using Polartec Neoshell.  The fabric itself  is very interesting, it’s soft to the touch, stretches a bit and is densely woven. Polartec has high hopes for it and reckon it outbreathes any hardshell on the market, given that it relies on convection rather than diffusion like other membranes. The theory is you get something that feels and breathes like softshell but is as weather resistant as a hardshell.  Sounds pretty ideal to me.

The jacket has been well thought out:  It’s three layer, with a nicely textured lining. My size medium weighed in at  602g.  The seams are ultrasonically welded, and in a stylish contrasting black.  The two front pockets are cavernous and harness-friendly, there’s a decent sized inside pocket for your phone or GPS and wee skipass pocket on the sleeve which also manages a compass or more importantly, a packet of energy chews.  Zips are water resistant but there’s no storm baffle. The zips have nice large rubberised toggles attached, so they can be easily handled with gloves or mitts on.

The hood is a good size and is adjustable. The adjustment toggle even has a garage on the back of the hood to keep the rain out. There’s an smaller inner hood around the top, which helps hold things in position when you’re moving around. The peak is stiffened but not wired.

One point of note is the pit zips. The most obvious thing is they aren’t anywhere near your pits. They’re on the back of the upper arms. I can see the sense in that you’ll get much more airflow up there than under your arm, but in my experience even the most water resistant zips don’t like wind-blown rain and can leak, which makes this a potential weak spot. We’ll see how it goes in the longer term.

This has only been out on one trip so far, so I can’t comment on anything other than fair weather performance, but wind resistance is excellent and it breathes very well when it’s dry. I’m looking forward to getting  this out on a wet day.

More shall surely follow.