Windy Tops

Tag: retailers

  • Claustrophobic bivy bags

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    It’s bright orange!

    I commented to Craig and a couple of others earlier this afternoon that to me it seems the most embarrassing kind of tramping accident that didn’t necessarily involve idiocy might be to become trapped inside a sleeping bag. It’s just been a pet fear of mine for a while now and something I might one day like to produce a horror movie about. I find something disconcerting about completely zipping oneself up inside a sleeping bag on a cold night without the certainty of being able to locate the zipper in the morning, or having the zipper get stuck on something and refuse to move. For some reason this leads to mental visions of a giant sealed sleeping bag bounding out of the Tararuas.

    The reason this topic of conversation arose was because I’ve taken the claustrophobia one layer further and bought myself a nice little bivy bag, primarily for emergencies and as a possible alternative to carrying around my Huntech 2 to 3 person fly as backup shelter when I’m not planning to camp.
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  • Wellington Snowgum

    Stacey and I were in town earlier today, a couple of hours before the Tip Top Santa Parade, and we noticed that a Snowgum Clearance Shop seems to have opened in the Grand Arcade. Snowgum is an Australian outdoor retail outlet which also has retailers in Christchurch and Auckland. The new Wellington Clearance outlet is hidden underneath the escalators, in the same place where Mainly Tramping used to be before it closed down. (In fact, the old Mainly Tramping banner is still above the door.) It mostly seems to be clothes and footwear at the moment.

    Whether it’ll stay as a permanent fixture and become a complete Snowgum outlet, or simply remain a temporary clearance outlet, is an open question. I asked one of the people there and she wasn’t completely sure, but she thought they were testing Wellington at the moment to see how it goes and what sort of reaction there is. Perhaps it’ll help to fill part of the void of outdoor retailers at the moment, which has existed since Mainly Tramping and Tisdalls closed down.

  • I really hope I’m warmer from now on

    I’ve spent the odd night over the past winter feeling rather cold. The most “interesting” of these was that episode in the wood-shed between 3am and 6am on a Saturday morning. The absence of sleep before 3am and after 6am probably didn’t help, but I suppose I’d hoped that it would have been warmer during those 3 hours. I probably managed about an hour in total, which made for a very long and cranky Saturday of walking.

    This event, and some other recent events, have convinced me that maybe it’s time to fork out some cash and replace the Kathmandu PaceSetter bag that I’ve mostly used recently. I think some people would see the words “Kathmandu” and “Sleeping Bag” in the same sentence (or any gear for that matter), and immediately think that it’s a horrible product. I don’t want to criticise it too much if I can help it, because it’s served me pretty well. At this point I still plan to use it during summer because it’s adequate and probably better suited. It’s usually okay in huts and under an open fly at the low-ish altitudes where I’ve used it, but I can vouch from my own experience that for a sleeping bag that was marketed near the top of the Kathmandu range, I still thought it was… well… flimsy and unreliable, and sometimes cold, at least when it was exposed to places that weren’t under much other shelter.

    Consequently, and just in time for mid-Spring (I’m brilliant at timing), I’m now the proud but uncertain owner of a new Macpac Sanctuary 700XP sleeping bag, which I hope will turn out to be more appropriate for some of the winter-like things I want to do in the future. It’s not the warmest bag in the range, but when looking at the relative weights and the loft and down fill, it already seems much warmer than what I already have and without being any heavier.
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  • Being hip and groovy, just like skiers

    Trying to help dig a snow cave during a blizzard a couple of months ago (during that training course) really made an impression on me. I realised that although handy at times, regular sunglasses can be seriously out of their depth in some conditions. For much of the weekend it was difficult to choose between being blind from perpetually fogged up glasses (thanks to warm breath coming up the balaclava) or being blind from a stinging and freezing wind in my eyes. In the end I guess it was fortunate that we were digging the cave about 30 metres from the club lodge, so it didn’t really matter.

    It’s true that we were there on a weekend that was noted for its unusually severe weather, and as we were sipped hot chocolate in our toasty lodge, about 2,000 skiers were being hastily evacuated from the mountain. Perhaps I’ll never experience that kind of thing again, but one thing I learned was that the people with proper goggles protecting their faces were a whole lot better off than people like me who’d decided to try and put off getting any. It inspired me to buy some proper snow goggles before my next alpine trip, primarily for a safety thing I suppose, just in case. This will probably be a few weeks away, but I thought I’d try to go shopping now before all the stock’s gone, since it’s getting towards the end of the ski season.
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  • Branders as retailers

    Lately it was announced that the Fairydown brand is under new management (again) for about the millionth time in its history, although I don’t feel as if I’ve been around on the scene long enough to really appreciate all the changes it’s gone through. (Ben of Cactus Climbing has a brief summary of the recent situation.) Well done to these three guys and good luck to them. The new business plan, rather than manufacturing quality NZ-made goods for NZ conditions, is to manufacture it all in Asia (as everyone does these days to be fair), and open New Zealand Fairydown retail outlets in the main centres. I guess I’ve been wondering from my limited perspective about some of the changes that have been going on in the Wellington retail sector of tramping shops.
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  • Problems with Salomon Alp-7 GTX boots

    So anyway, here’s what happened to my new boots. In summary, be cautious before buying Salomon Alp 7 GTX boots, because in my opinion they aren’t that great. To be fair, my opinion’s probably been influenced by the problems I’ve had with getting them fixed under warranty.

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