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Forty Below Trail Runner Shorty Overboots – First Look

Forty Below TR Shorty Overboots with Hillsound Trail Crampon Pros Are you hooked on trail runners for hiking? I am. They're perfect for hiking with a lighter weight backpack where you don't need extra ankle support and dry quickly after stream crossings. But they're not optimal for spring hiking in the mountains if the trails [...]

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Forty Below Synthetic Camp Booties

Forty Below makes synthetic camp booties ($69) that are great for winter camping and mountaineering or for just wearing around the house. Cold feet no more! Picture this. It's winter, and you've been snowshoeing or backcountry skiing all day. Your socks and boot liners are wet with sweat and you need to change out of [...]

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Kahtoola KTS Crampons

Kahtoola’s KTS Crampons are an excellent traction option if you wear soft soled trail runners for winter peakbagging or hiking. This can be particularly useful in spring when the base of peaks have no snow, but you need to bring along traction to deal with lingering ice on high ledges and summits. Design-wise, the KTS [...]

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MSR Lightning Axis Snowshoe

MSR Lightning Axis Snowshoe MSR has introduced a new variant of the successful Lightning snowshoe product line called the Lightning Axis snowshoe. It features a new snowshoe binding that is supposed to improve the efficiency of your gait and make it easier to put on and take off your snowshoes. Here's a marketing video, which [...]

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Hillsound Trail Crampons

Hillsound Trail Crampons The Trail Crampon and the Trail Crampon Pro The guys at Hillsound really wanted me to review their Trail Crampons because they're one of the first direct competitors of Kahtoola Microspikes. First off, I wish Hillsound had named this product differently because it's so easy to confuse them with the Hillsound Trail [...]

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Garmont Momentum Snow GTX Hiking Boot

I have been looking long and hard at lightweight alternatives to heavy mountaineering boots this winter, for lower elevation day hikes. It’s not that I dislike my plastic Scarpa Omega boots, but after hiking in trail runners all year, I’ve found that I can hike at a much faster pace when I’m not wearing a [...]

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Hillsound Trail Crampon Pro

Until now, Kahtoola Microspikes were the only lighterweight alternative to mountaineering crampons for hikers who want extra winter traction to deal with icy trails and ice covered rock. But microspikes have their limits: the spikes are quite short and snow balls up under them, so you can effectively hydroplane on snow or ice while walking [...]

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