In the last few years, the popularity of hiking boots has decreased, and many hikers and backpackers have switched to low-cut hiking shoes or trail runners. These are indeed lighter than hiking boots and often provide better breathability. However, hiking boots also have certain advantages over the lighter alternatives. There has been a lot of…
In 2018, I switched from Suunto Ambit 2 to brand-new Suunto 9. Suunto Ambit 2 was and is an extraordinary watch. It’s durable, simple to use and very accurate when it comes to GPS tracking. Furthermore, the battery life is just amazing. I was using the watch daily for no less than four years and…
Over the last couple of years, the popularity of fleece jackets has decreased, and many hikers have replaced their fleece apparel with jackets insulated with synthetic fill. While synthetic fill jackets are indeed warmer for the weight and pack smaller, fleece does have certain advantages over synthetic fill. I own a fleece jacket (Mountain Hardwear…
Several months ago, we got in touch with the French company CimAlp which makes apparel for hiking, skiing, trail running and other outdoor sports. I was especially impressed with their jackets because they utilize high-quality materials and are lightweight. Therefore, I asked them for a sample of CimAlp PrimaLoft jacket. I had been wanting such…
In fall 2018 I contacted Suunto’s support to ask them if they are planning to make it possible to sync moves from the new Suunto smartphone app to Movescount. It really annoyed me that this was not possible because I had to connect my new Suunto 9 to my computer via a cable to see…
In the beginning of 2019, we spent several days in snowy Slovenia and of course leaving the country without hiking was not an option. We really wanted to climb some high peaks in the Alps but after a brief research we figured out that that’s not the best idea. There was a lot of…
Blisters are one of the most common injuries on trails and especially beginners are very likely to suffer from them. When it comes to blisters, prevention is indeed better than treatment because almost nothing ruins a hike more than blistering feet. Of course, you can tape up blisters with bandages while on the trail, but…
The new Suunto 9 watch comes with an innovative feature called FusedTrack which according to Suunto improves GPS tracking accuracy while the watch is in battery saving mode. The watch has two battery saving modes; Endurance and Ultra. In the Endurance mode the watch retrieves GPS position every 60 seconds and in the Ultra mode…
If you often wear rain jacket, rain pants or other waterproof clothes, you probably noticed that the performance of these garments decreases with time. While your new rain jacket kept you dry for hours, it can’t withstand more than half of an hour of rain after half a year of intensive use. That’s most often…
If you are buying new sports clothes such as a hiking shirt or underwear, it is very likely that you will stumble upon the feature called flatlock seams. Clothing brands typically explain that flatlock seams eliminate chafing and increase the durability of the garment. But is this really true? In the last couple of years,…
