Outdoor Retailer Report – Climbing

A week ago we attended the annual Summer Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City. We headed up to get a look at some of the fancy new gear coming out from all our favorite companies, and to catch up with many old friends we both have in the industry. While there was nothing earth shattering, there were some cool innovations and some things worth checking out. Here are some of our favorites.

Metolius

Great new crash pad coming, which will replace the Behemoth. It uses folding technology, instead of the old taco style, which can be a little unwieldy, especially with such a big pad. I was out with my Behemoth at Coal Creek recently and thinking how nice this new big pad will be. Also, offset Master Cams are in the works, but they are still in development.

La Sportiva

Two cool shoes coming from these guys, one is Tommy Caldwell’s 5.14 trad masterpiece, which looks pretty retro for a $170 shoe, and the Ultimate Approach Shoe. That’s not what it’s actually called, but it should be. At $225, it may be the only approach shoe you can afford for the next couple of years. But its not lacking in anything, and reportedly will last you a long time and can take many many resoles. We’ll try to get our hands on a pair of these as soon as they are available, apparently the designers were given free reign and this is what they came up with.

Black Diamond

Some fancy new harnesses coming from BD. They look similar to Arc’teryx models, but will be priced much more affordably. A new livewire quickdraw with a thicker nylon draw, perfect for those of us that find it hard to grab all those new skinny ones. Plus it’s shiny green, which just makes you want to have a set of them.

Cloudveil

While summer isn’t their busiest time, they were showing the new BPM jacket, which is incredibly light for a waterproof piece. Looks really cool.

Big Agnes

A super lightweight new one man tent, and another cool tent that you can tension the fly from the inside.

DMM

These guys made a lot of folks happy when they introduced the old HB offset nuts, but the first offering was only the larger sizes. By spring, the small sizes should be available for what many feel are the best offset nuts available. Also, they are reintroducing RPs, which they are calling IMP’s. Nice to see these guys are keeping some very worthy gear in the climbing world, instead of letting it fade into obscurity.

Petzl

A cool new headlamp with programmable lighting options, and an update to the ascenders. Goodbye blue and yellow, hello super stylie.

Hopefully we’ll get our hands on some of this stuff soon and get some honest hard hitting reviews out.