Trekking and Outdoor Kit

Poles, light, and the small things that matter out of proportion to their weight.

Updated

The bits and pieces that are cheap, light, and disproportionately useful.

Trekking poles

They take a real share of the load off your knees on descent, help on stream crossings and loose ground, and cost a little energy on the flat. If you have knee trouble or carry a heavy pack they are not optional.

Set them with your elbow at ninety degrees on the flat, shorter uphill and longer downhill, and put your hands through the straps from underneath so the weight hangs on the strap rather than being gripped all day.

Headlamps

The most useful few ounces in any pack, and worth carrying on day walks, because the usual reason people need one is a walk that took longer than planned.

Rechargeable is now standard and brighter, but a dead rechargeable is dead until you find power, so for long trips a lamp that takes either a pack or AAA cells is the best answer. Ignore the headline lumen figure, which is quoted for a few minutes before the lamp steps down to manage heat; what matters is a genuinely dim low mode, a red mode, controls you can work in gloves, and a lock so it does not drain itself in your pack.

The rest, briefly

Kept current

The reviews (19)

Written at the time, about gear that in most cases is no longer made. Useful for what the writer noticed, not as a shopping list.