Our Top 10 Products of 2017
Over a year our reviewers get through a mountain of gear. Here, members of our review team pick their personal highlights from the class of 2017. Stuck for Christmas present ideas? We're here to help...
In these days of growing environmental concern and shrinking budgets, we can't all be constantly buying brand gear, and there's a lot to be said for reusing, recycling, making do and mending the stuff we already own. Some items just seem to go on and on year after year, quietly doing their job and seeming never to need replacement. To celebrate our loyalty to these trusty bits of kit, we've asked a few people to nominate a personal favourite or two.
Karrimat - 34 years, and still as comfy as it's ever been
Reviewed by Dan Bailey UKH 
Aged about 14, which would date things to 1988 or 89, I concluded that hills were best enjoyed without adults in tow. The game was to walk for a few days through the South Downs or a soggy bit of Wales in a gaggle of gangly mates, all of us weighed down under unfeasibly heavy rucksacks with bits hanging off them - a sort of DIY DofE trip minus the establishment whiff. Still only independent when I remembered to be, I graciously allowed my Mum to kit me out at Covent Garden's YHA Shop as was. There was a big red padded pack, and a stiff green unbreathable 'cagoule'. But while the rest has long since fallen apart or been handed on, I still can't get shot of the Karrimat.
© Dan Bailey
A chunky winter-weight composite foam number - the sales assistant must have persuaded us that only the warmest would do - it set her back, as I recall, something north of £20. With the benefit of decades of hindsight, and in terms of pounds per night of use, that turned out to be money remarkably well spent.
This yellow-and-black behemoth accompanied me everywhere: An ill-conceived bivvy on an ant's nest, melting in orange plastic survival bags; a drippy pine plantation in the Black Mountains; beer-fuelled teenage Inter-rail trips and Snowdonian wild camps. Later it helped hinder my overladen lack-of-progress on various Alps.
© Dan Bailey
Never exactly what you'd call genuinely warm, and only comfy relative to thinner and cheaper foam rolls, it nevertheless served its purpose, providing a bed of sorts on bogs, bivvies, and friends' floors. While the rucksacks to which it found itself bulkily strapped came and went over the years, my Karrimat endured. The thing seems indestructible. I only gave up using it routinely when blow-up mats became manifestly a better option and gear companies started sending me them to review. Scuffed and unpeeling at the ends, yet perfectly serviceable, even today the Karrimat sits in my gear cupboard, taking up a volume of space that seems more outrageous with each passing year. Once in a while it still sees some action (well, more than my 14 year old self). I've no doubt it will outlast my knees.
© Dan Bailey
Starburst Tent - 600 nights and still going strong (unless it rains)
Reviewed by Andrew Terrill
In September 1997, 1,700 miles into a 7,000-mile walk, I pitched a North Face Starburst tent for the very first time… never imagining that I'd still be pitching it twenty-five years later.
© Andrew Terrill
For the first five months of that trip, I'd been using a smaller, lighter tent. But with summer over and winter ahead I wanted a stronger and roomier shelter, one that could easily be pitched in deep snow. The Starburst, with its semi-geodesic design, enclosed inner, and large vestibule, looked as though it would fit the bill.
As it turned out: it did, and then some! Through a long snowy winter in the Alps and the remote mountains of Central Europe, during a windswept spring along Denmark's North Sea coast, then through six impressively soggy Norwegian months, my Starburst became a reliable and trusted home. Admittedly, it began to let in water and soon acquired a new name: 'Auld Leakie'. But a few leaks were a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things. More importantly, the tent withstood heavy snows and raging gales night after night after night. During the course of 5,300 or so miles, it became my castle.
© Andrew Terrill
Once that trip was done, I continued to use Auld Leakie, partly because I couldn't afford a new tent, but also because it had become irreplaceable – you don't replace trusted friends! When I moved from London to Colorado it was one of the first items I packed. These days, after 600 (or so) nights of use, the Starburst remains my first-choice winter tent. The great thing about winter in Colorado is it never rains – only snows – and my dependable old tent only leaks in rain. For six months of the year, Auld Leakie is still my castle… as I expect it will remain for many years to come.
Auld Leakie stars in Andrew Terrill's latest book, On Sacred Ground:
La Sportiva Trango Extremes - As tough as old boots
Reviewed by TobyA 
Ever since I first got to do some climbing that involved crampons - on a BSES expedition to Greenland in 1991, where I also had my 18th birthday - being able to afford a pair of boots that could take those crampons has always seemed as steep a financial climb as the ones I would undertake in them. Those first boots, beautifully crafted Scarpa Fitzroys, were bought for me as my 18th birthday present/expedition sponsorship by friends of my family, and I still remember being left speechless by Alan and Judy's generosity. Boots for winter climbing are expensive bits of kit and, until recently when I've been lucky enough to be asked by UKC to review a couple of different pairs, I have always bought what I could find on discount and expected them to last.
© Toby Archer
© Toby Archer
I spent most of the winters of the 90s in slightly too big Scarpa plastic boots which, while lacking in any sensitivity whatsoever, got me up my first grade Vs and meant I never experienced cold feet. As the millenium turned, and a bit late to the party, I found some half price La Sportiva Nepal Extremes and joined the yellow and black party that greeted the new century on mountains and icefalls around the world. This coincided with me moving to Finland and getting to ice climb every weekend from November into April.
I must have logged vertical kilometres in my Nepals before, in the spring of 2006, my eye was caught by some slimmer, lighter, even more sexy Italian yellow and black loveliness - the La Sportiva Trango Extremes - being sold off cheap at the end of winter. When they first arrived I was unconvinced by the different fit to the Nepals, but by Christmas that year I had already climbed ice as techy as any I had climbed before and fallen for the Trangos. For the next eight winters in Finland I did the vast majority of my winter climbs in them, before I moved back to the UK and found they worked equally well for British winter climbing. In Finland the Trangos' soles came into contact almost solely with snow, so what wear they received was all around the toe from endless front pointing. In the UK I've added many horizontal kilometres to them; slogging up hills to the snowline, in Wales, the Lakes, the Highlands, and even just over Kinder to climb the Downfall in the maw of the screaming Beast from the East. But, after 16 years, they still don't leak, still do keep my feet warm and still climb technical ground as well as any winter boots I've used. As tough as old boots indeed.
Karrimor Polartec Fleece Hat - Ageing better than its owner
Reviewed by Rob Greenwood UKC 
I'm not sure exactly when I received this as a Christmas present, but I reckon I was around 11 or 12 years old, and the following moody teenager shot - taken wearing an extremely fetching and pocket ridden Peter Storm 'waterproof' jacket* - must have been a few years later.
* I don't remember there actually being much waterproof about this jacket, which - unlike the hat - fell apart almost immediately
© My long suffering parents
© A long suffering photographer
© A long suffering climbing partner
Given how many hats I tend to lose it's a miracle that I still have this in my possession. It's been with me on countless adventures, ranging from early forays into the Welsh mountains, scrambling up Tryfan and Crib Goch with my family, through to more technical terrain, climbing on mountain crags and sea cliffs, Scottish Winter and even Alpine North Faces. It even guest starred in an Elite OMM, but sadly its owner's legs let it down...
Looking back at the photos one thing is pretty apparent - the hat has certainly aged better than I have!
Stiff-stemmed cams - Who needs to be flexible?
Reviewed by Alan James - Rockfax 
In preparation for this article, I dug out my old rack of stiff-stemmed cams and took them to Froggatt to get some photos. It did feel slightly fraudulent though since the article is aimed at gear you are still using and, to be honest, I don't normally carry these having long ago replaced most of the smaller sizes. (I do actually still use the big size 4 since the stiff version works pretty much as well as the flexi at that size).
© Alan James
© Dominic Green
I needn't have worried since my mate Paul turned up with his current, ongoing, fully active rack which had a full set of 80s stiff-stemmed relics and one modern flexi that he had got a couple of years ago. Not only that, I met another climber who showed me his set of beautiful old Friends and proceeded to describe the maintenance he carried out over the years in his workshop to keep them going. So I will make Paul and the unnamed climber the heroes of this piece. They certainly fly the flag for keeping old cams going.
In the cracks of Froggatt, a stiff stem works fine; who needs flexibility? OK, so once you get to the horizontal rounded breaks of natural grit then maybe a bit of flexibility is a help. A tie-off loop through the hole closest to the cams can get round this though - clip that and you load from the base of the stem (search 'gunks tie-off' to find out more about this). Our unnamed hero had a well-maintained set of tie-off loops on his Friends.
It should be noted that old cams do need a bit of looking after. Sewing machine or bike chain oil to free them up (avoid WD40 since it dries quickly), replace the slings every now and then, and replace the trigger wires if they break.
Crocs - As fashionable now as they always were
Reviewed by Fliss Freeborn 
Don't whimper too loudly, but I'm too young to remember dial-up internet, so there's a high likelihood that you've got gear sitting in your cupboard that is significantly older than I am. But although I'll always come last in a 'how-old-is-your-rucksac' competition, I do, as a young person with some amount of hill-going experience, have one item that's never let me down:
Crocs.
© Fliss Freeborn
Yep. Those silly looking rubber shoes that, staggeringly, are just as edible as they are stylish. I've had my current crocs for around five years now, and although I can't comment on their flavour, I can vouch for their durability, longevity and overall usefulness as a bit of outdoor kit. The branded ones (which last longer than the knock-offs) cost around £30 new, so true to my cheapskate, dirt-bagging ways, I actually bought my current pair second-hand on eBay for around £5. Despite buying them pre-loved, they've still held up to a lot of scrambling, canyoneering, and judgemental scrutiny from my more socially conscious friends - and happily, they've got a lot more life left to go. My current goal is to be the first person to scramble Tower Ridge in them, unless some idiot has beaten me to this already.
I do admittedly take my croc-wearing to the extreme, but to anyone looking for a great pair of 'cuttin'-aboot' shoes for relaxing at camp, for shuffling around bothies, and for driving home from weekends away, go get yourself a pair - they'll last years. Personally, I would recommend sourcing 'bog-crocs'; the style with the continuous rubber band around the sole, rather than the fully breathable holes; so that you can stand in up an inch of mud and not get your socks wet. I love my crocs so much so that I'll probably stuff them and mount them when they finally die, but I'm hoping that's a long way off yet. Long live the Croc!
Patagonia Snap T - Outlasting Prime Ministers and empires
Reviewed by TobyA
The start of the 90s: the Cold War was drawing to a close, the Soviet Union about to collapse, and a young lad in Worcestershire finished school and decided he wanted to see the world. I took a year off before starting university, got two jobs flipping burgers and life-guarding at local swimming pools and started saving.
© Toby Archer
I planned and bought a "round-the-world" plane ticket and started planning what to pack. First stop would be Nepal and some trekking towards Annapurna, but then on through the South East Asia heat, before the antipodean winter and a Canadian summer. I had just a year before got myself a Buffalo Mountain Shirt (I still have that too) but already, even as an 18 year old, I knew that it looked a bit weird away from the mountains. So I went to one of the very few outdoor gear emporiums in the West Midlands and went through the sale rail. My budget allowed me two two choices: an exceedingly 80s-looking Phoenix fleece jacket, or a black fleece pullover from an American brand I was only vaguely aware of. I coughed up the extra tenner for the Patagonia and my Snap-T entered my life. It's still here thirty years later.
On that trip, I sat in the Snap-T outside Himalayan tea houses on cool evenings. I pulled it on after my first and not massively successful attempts at surfing on the Gold Coast. I trekked to the top of a frosty early winter Kosciuszko in it. I wore it as I learnt to ski in the Southern Alps and on the volcano ski fields of Aotearoa, and I wore it to scramble up a minor peak somewhere in the Rockies above Banff. For seven months when not being worn, the Snap-T was rolled into a pillow in my tent or on long bus rides. Back home it came to university with me in Scotland and saw much use in the Highlands but also in the pubs and clubs of Glasvegas! Next, further north to Finland where a warm jumper is never a bad idea, but soon enough it would get used for new things like a warm cover over babies in their travel seats or an emergency picnic blanket for camping toddlers.
Being black and fleecy it's essentially unstainable, so I've often used it for bike and car repairs in the colder seasons. Now with me in my new home of the Peak, if the Patagonia repair-roadshow rolls around to Hathersage again, I might take it down for a bit of a touch up to the hem-piping and one of the snaps on the collar that give the Snap-T its name. But essentially it still looks and works the same as when I bought it: back when John Major was a fresh prime minister, when you could mosh to a new amazing song called Smells Like Teen Spirit and when, for a few weeks more, there was still a country called the USSR.
Berghaus Extrem shell - On gardening leave after three decades
Reviewed by Sealwife 
I still have my Berghaus Extrem Gore-Tex jacket hanging up by the back door, for putting the bins out in the rain, doing jobs involving the power washer etc.
Bought from Marshalls in Aberdeen in the mid 1990s, it's blue and red with the yellow diamond on the back and a ridiculously enormous hood with no volume adjustment. The zip doesn't work any more and the seam tapes are hanging off like streamers. But it was like wearing a suit of armour in the hills, and has seen a lot of action.
© Donna Stephenson
DMM Raptor - Dependably solid, but no lightweight
Reviewed by Dan Bailey UKH
Introduced in 1999, and revised a couple of times in the intervening years, the Raptor was for two decades the staple mountaineering axe from DMM. Back in 2000 I picked up an original straight-shafted version in the Llanberis factory seconds bargain bucket, and for the next many years it was my trusty and much-loved companion on every one-axe winter hillwalking or mountaineering day, and several overseas trips. With the weight of something you might have commissioned from your local blacksmith, and a feeling of solid dependability to match, this hefty tool could take it all.
In later iterations the design was tweaked, with a curve put in the shaft to give it a better swing, and the addition of a funky moulded handle. But the basic bombproof feel remained - and if you can look past the weight, that's very much a good thing. This old battleaxe has since been superseded by lighter and more refined models, and is no longer made. But I won't be parted from my Raptors. Scratched and battered they may be, but my two generations of Raptor are no way museum pieces, and on a stormy Scottish ridge or a hard-frozen grade I gully they're as reassuring as they ever were. They'll probably outlive me.
Comments
I have a Tenson fleece jacket that I've had for over 30 years. The zip is a bit dodgy but it's still warm and usable. Can't remember how much it cost but cheaper ones I've bought since don't last nearly as long.
But I feel compelled to say that Crocks are neither fashionable or stylish! :o)
Still using my Paragonia DAS Parka as my belay jacket in the winter which I bought at Country ski and climb in Stevenage in 1997. It could use a new zip but it's still ace, if a little bulky.
Point five sleeping bag -1974
Mountain equipment Annapurna Duvet 1980's
Both still use🙂
A seam failed on my fifteen year old Patagonia Ascentionist jacket in the dryer while I was re-doing the dwr on it. Sent it off to the free repair service; it came back with the seam now sewn instead of glued, and hopefully good for another fifteen years. (Which might be more than can be said for me!)
I aslo still have an early 90s Mountain Equipment ultrafleece jacket, acquired at a bargain price in the old factory shop in Glossop, but that's very much retired from on the hill activities and relegated to outdoor diy duties.
Honourable mention for the springy Sticht Plate on the Friends harness. I'm so pleased my innate tightness has been rebranded environmental awareness.