Over the last year Black Diamond have become one of our most popular brands and for this winter we’ve again improved our range of their top notch ski touring and avalanche safety gear. As well as a fantastic range of skis, we’re also stocking a few extra bits and bobs just in time for christmas. Take a look:

Black Diamond Lynx Shovel £29.99

The Black Diamond Lynx Shovel is a compact, light and robust shovel which is great value for money. It features an aluminium blade and a removable T handle. This is an ideal choice of emergency shovel for winter mountaineers and ski tourers.

Black Diamond Cheat Sheet £13.99

The Black Diamond Cheat Sheet is an essential part of your ski touring kit. Designed to remove some of the mess and faff from fitting and storing skins, it also protects your glue and so extends the life of your kit.

Black Diamond Icon Beanie £24.99

The Black Diamond Icon Beanie is a bouldering essential. It is part of our ever popular range of branded knitted beanies which offer a great combination of style, warmth and comfort.

Black Diamond QuickDraw Tour Probe 190 £34.99

The Black Diamond QuickDraw Tour Probe 190 is a lightweight avalanche probe ideal for mountaineers and ski tourers who are looking for a lightweight, compact probe. It features Black Diamond’s QuickDraw system making it quick and easy to deploy.

Black Diamond Titan Lantern £89.99

The Black Diamond Titan Lantern is idea for car camping and camper vans, it casts an incredibly bright but diffuse light more than capable of illuminating the largest tent. The Titan is incredibly tough and much safer than the traditional butane lanterns.

Leeds Met Carnegie are organising a Himalayan expedition to do more research into physiological adaption to altitude. See the flyer below, you could take part!

Leeds Met Carnegie Flyer

In spite of the evidence of a few rather grim blog posts, we’re actually big believers in looking after your feet. Alongside our determination to help you find the right shoes for your feet we also want to make sure that we have a range of socks to suit your needs.

Socks are often a rather neglected part of the outdoor wardrobe, with threadbare Christmas presents from ten years ago a very popular choice, however it’s amazing how much of a difference a good quality pair can make. We’re especially fond of merino blend socks as we find they offer the best mix of fit, warmth, breathability and odour control.

We currently have over 50 different models in stock with everything from low top mild weather cycling socks through to expedition weight mountaineering socks.

Here are a few of our favourites:

Smartwool PhD Ski Medium £19.95

The Smartwool PhD Ski Medium is a classic all-season ski sock with double knit merino padding in high wear zones. This makes for a great, durable choice for resort skiers and ski-tourers alike. Comes in Mens and Womens varieties

Bridgedale Coolmax Liner £13.99 (two pairs per pack)

Liner socks make a huge difference to the warmth of your footwear but also help to prevent blisters and fungal problems on longer trips. These Coolmax Liners are ideal for mountaineers and hikers.

Bridgedale Endurance Summit £14.99

The Bridgedale Summit Endurance is a bit of a personal favourite as they’ve been my winter walking socks for about the last five years. They are incredibly comfortable and hardwearing and offer a great compromise between padding and bulk which means that I’ve never yet had a blister with them. For extreme winter mountaineering add a coolmax liner to extend their warmth by a few more degrees.

This is the first review in the midweight softshell series. Click here and scroll down to see the intro.

I have had an Astron Hooded Jacket from Mountain Equipment for 2 years and it’s the reason I decided to increase our offering of this type of garment. For 3 seasons of the year I use it so much that I think most people would do well to have a midweight softshell.

Mountain Equipment Astron Hooded jacket

The Astron Hooded Jacket uses  2 Polartec fabrics, Powershield Lite and Powerstretch.
Powershield (in all its variants) has a smooth and durable nylon face fabric with a DWR (durable water repellency) coating combined with a perforated PTFE membrane.  The membrane is much like one used in a waterproof fabric but perforated to allow better movement of heat and moisture through the membrane but this happens in both directions so it is not a waterproof fabric. Powershield is available in several weights. Powershield Lite is the lightest and least insulating of the Powershield variants, using a light flexible outer face fabric and a soft brushed lining.
Powerstretch is a non membrane fleece fabric with a smooth outer and brushed inner. Powerstretch has fantastic moisture transfer abilities plus great stretch and durability. It is way superior to microfleece and used to make both panels and complete garments by many manufacturers.

The Astron Hooded Jacket is primarily made of Powershield Lite but uses Powerstretch panels under the arms and on the trunk to increase breathability, improve freedom of movement and reduce weight.  The underarm panels are quite large and extend over part of the shoulder blades on the back , over the triceps on the back of the arms and are a good width down the sides of the trunk.

Powerstretch Panels - Rear View

Powerstretch Panels - Side View

As the Astron is an active piece, these panels do a great job of allowing heat and moisture out of the jacket at an even faster rate than the perforated membrane. I have done a lot of winter running in the Lakes in my Astron and have never found it sweaty to wear. However breathability is always a two way street in winter and in a cold and biting cross wind the Astron is not particularly insulating for a membraned jacket.

The Astron had a great hood with a soft wired short peak and an elasticated volume adjuster. This does a great job of keeping the hood on your head even facing into a strong wind. Tethered adjusters on the front of your hood allow you to really cinch it down.  The hood is helmet compatible and could be worn under or over the helmet. The hood can be rolled and tabbed down when not in use. 2 pack friendly pockets with long zips also serve as venting options on the sides of the jacket.  Venting pockets are all well and good  except that if you keep stuff in your pockets then you can’t use them as vents.  As pockets they are a good size and easy to operate. Double adjuster elasticated hem and elasticated cuffs complete the jacket. Elasticated cuffs divide people like marmite, so big gloves must be gauntlet not under the cuff style. All liner gloves are fine under the cuff.

Helmet Compatible Hood

Hood Under Helmet

The Astron is the lightest jacket in the test (by 20%), because of the Powershield Lite and Powerstretch.   As well as being light the Astron is the most  flexible and packable in the test but consequently not the most protective softshell jacket. In cold conditions you need to choose your base layer carefully, a merino half zip top works particularly well. For those who wish to use a softshell for a high proportion of  Scottish and Alpine winter work then the Astron might not be protective enough and you would do better with one of the full Powershield jackets but this is very subjective. I am looking forward to running in one of the full Powershield jackets to see how breathable they are.

I have done a lot of running, climbing, walking and biking in my Astron for 2 years and not always washed it correctly but it’s still doing a great job for me and really standing the test of time.  As I test the other jackets and review my experiences I realise that I have had a few cold days in the Astron as I am also a bit too minimalist sometimes, but if you run warm to hot then the Astron is a good choice.

Astron in action on my BG round

Since we have quite a few midweight softshells, I thought we could have a series of reviews and comparisons for midweight softshell jackets.  At Facewest we have softshells from Mountain Equipment, Marmot, Arcteryx and Rab. Most use a Polartec Powerstretch fabric of some sort, except the vapour-rise piece from Rab. If you read the blog you may know already that I am a real fan of this type of softshell.

Midweight softshells do not attempt to be waterproof or suggest not carrying a shell, they are wind blocking and weather resistant so shell use is less frequent and the shell pretty minimal. For me a base layer, softshell and light waterproof  suffice just about all year round in the UK. I have found that less expensive membrane free softshells were actually LESS breathable than Powerstretch or Vapour-rise because to achieve the wind block without a membrane or a lining means a really tight outer weave and this also traps in the moisture. So although less expensive I  found that the drop in performance meant they were not better value.

Below are links to the pages for garments on test and to the blog review done by me about each garment. Only the first link is live yet but I will get them tested over the next few months and update the links accordingly.  See all in the series so far here. If anyone has their own experiences then we would love to hear from you via the blog comments or review the actual jacket on it’s page and earn some website credit.

The Great Midweight Softshell Test
ME Astron Hooded Jacket	Arcteryx Gamma MX Hoody	Rab Vapour rise Lite Tour
Product Page	Product Page	Product Page
Blog Post	Blog Post	Blog Post
Marmot Pro Tour	Rab Baltoro Alpine
Product Page	Product Page
	Blog Post

Another new brand to Facewest for winter 2010 is Odlo. A long time established brand in Europe and most well known for winter sports, especially cross country skiing, Odlo is gaining prominence in the UK outdoor market. Odlo are a synthetic baselayer brand with a growing range of mid layers and running clothing.

Odlo Synthetic Base Layers

Every season our range of Deuter packs increases. Long established as the number 1 pack brand in Germany and Switzerland, Deuter is now a big player in the Uk pack market. At Facewest we particularily like their focused Alpine Packs and their Ski Touring Packs.

New for this season are 2 custom touring packs, the Rise 32 and the Womens Rise 30 SL and 2 freeride packs with back protectors the Descentor EXP18 and Descentor EXP 22, plus updated versions of the Speedlite packs and plenty of stock of all the established favourites.

Rise 32 Ski Touring Pack

Rise 30 SL Womens Specific Touring Pack

Descentor 18

Descentor 22

See All Deuter Products

We have just received our Ortovox winter stock. See all Ortovox Products or just the New Products for 2010.

Highlights of the new stuff is the new 3+ Transceiver, Beast Shovel and New Merino Wool Baselayer Range

New Ortovox 3+ Transceiver

We have received some of our Winter 2010 stock from Arcteryx. Sadly some items are going to be a bit late because of Arcteryx under ordering the production of some garments which turned out to be big hits with the buyers.

However we have got the majority of it in and for this season we have an expanded range of Softshell and Hardshell for men and women, synthetic insulation and the new Phase base layers for men and women. See the complete Arcteryx Winter 2010 Range.

Mens Gamma MX Hoody

Womens Venta SV Jacket

Womens Phase AR Zip Neck

Added to the site today is a range of products from Powertraveller.

As we work, tweet, blog and status update from remote locations using ever more power hungry devices, our need for reliable power grows. Powertraveller offer a range of rugged, tough and well thought out solutions to your power crisis.

The Power products (Powerchimp, Powermonkey and Minigorilla) use rechargeable batteries that you can connect to your device to power it and recharge it’s internal battery.
The Solar products are solar panels that can be connected directly to your device or to the range of batteries above to recharge them.

The Powerchimp and Powermonkey are great options for those smart phone users who can’t make it through a weekend away from a plug or the car without their phone going flat.

Powermonkey eXplorer. Complete system for handheld devices. 5V and under. Li-Ion battery, Solar Panels and multiple connectors.

Powerchimp. Uses either standard NiMH recharegables or disposable batteries to recharge your handheld device.

Solarmonkey. Solar charge your handheld device directly or use these panels to recharge your Powerchimp

Minigorilla. Advanced Lithium Polymer battery to power anything up to 19V. Ideal for netbooks, laptops and camcorders.

Solargorilla. Large solar panels that can power your laptop/camcorder etc directly or can be used to recharge the Minigorilla