Three Pieces of Gear That Excelled in the Alps and One Surprising Failure

After a couple of months traipsing about France and climbing through way more mountain passes than a yak looking for fresh grass, it’d be fair to say that the gear I had was put through the ultralight wringer. I am by no means a gear reviewer, I barely function as a blogger as any who have read my previous entries could attest.

Nonetheless, I wanted to highlight three pieces of gear that I found really excelled above and beyond my expectations and one really surprising failure considering the conditions. I paid as little as I could for all the items I’ll chat about below, I didn’t get any for free and am not sponsored or have any affiliation with the companies, I’m just a regular gear nerd like anybody else who clicked on this post.

1. Atom Packs Pulse 40L

I’ve rocked an Osprey Exos 48L for the past decade. It has been dragged all over the world, endured every type of transportation known to man and been pulled through a lot of off track shenanigans. It has no laminate left internally, squeaks with every step and the outside pockets have holes the size of my tent. 

So it was time to retire the Exos. After the funeral and the ensuing wake (many tears were shed), I decided to drop some weight and settled on Atom Packs as the company to take me through the next decade of wandering. As the contents of my pack are pretty dialled in at this point, I downsized in litres to the Pulse 40. 

When the pack arrived I was nervous. It was simply too light and small. I had zero confidence that it would be of any use when I needed a five day food carry along with my base weight. I decided to shelve my fears and took the pack anyway on my hike through France.

The first thing the Atom had to survive was being checked in on the flight from Auckland to Geneva via Dubai. As I waited for the pack to appear at the airport baggage claim I wondered if I’d done the right thing checking it in (tent stakes and a tiny knife and scissors forced my hand). The pack rolled around to me and was completely unscathed, first big tick.

The next two months were a joy in regard to how this diminutive pack carried weight. When I had days with all food eaten and only carrying my meager base weight I genuinely couldn’t even tell it was on my back. I’d guess my maximum load was somewhere around 8kg when I had five days of food and the load transfer through the hip belt was outstanding. I never experienced any shoulder soreness even on the longest days on trail. 

The pack volume also turned out to not be an issue. I could just get one roll in to seal the bag with five days of food, and I still had plenty of room in the outside pockets if I had needed to carry two or three more days of food.

I did some off trail wandering through some rough brambles, and the pack literally didn’t pick up a scratch. The material is bomb proof. 

As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of the Pulse. It has some cool features like a snack pocket on the base of the pack so you can eat on the go, a removable hip belt for shorter hikes where you won’t need to transfer weight (or you’re stowing it on transport) and the roll top lid is really handy for sizing the volume up or down. Well worth adding to your short list if looking for an ultralight pack that can handle long distance tracks.

2. Altra Lone Peak 9+

I’ve had a long standing love affair with Altra Lone Peaks. I discovered them in 2015 (I think they were up to version 3 at the time) and have since bought way too many pairs. Which is kind of the issue with this great trail runner. They die before their time. Iteration after iteration gave me great foot comfort, zero blisters and solid grip. They just didn’t last that long.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a frugal human, and I could nurse up to 1000km out of a pair. The issue was that the final 500km each time involved walking on a flat tyre with zero grip and failing seams. Realistically you had an excellent shoe for around 500km and then you were making compromises in comfort and safety post that number.

So when Altra finally came to the party with a Vibram sole on the 9+ I was pretty excited. I still anticipated the flat tyre effect as the internal foam deteriorated but I was hopeful I wouldn’t be slipping and sliding due to the wonders of Vibram.

The first walk I had with these Altras was on the way to the bus stop from my house when I was heading to the airport. As always these shoes require no breaking in, they’re comfortable from the very first kilometre. 

900km later when I finished my Hexishtrek in France I was shocked by the longevity of this new model. The grip was still excellent. I’m not sure what they’ve done to the foam but right through to about the 800km mark they were still a bit squishy and comfy. The last 100km they felt like a very deflated tyre yet still not quite flat. Kudos to Altra for the improvement.

Not one blister, not one day of discomfort on all day rocky trails in the Alps climbing and descending silly amounts of elevation. Highly recommend at least trying on these shoes in a store and seeing if they’re a good fit for your foot. As I said, for me they’re comfortable from the first step so a quick trot around a store will give you the verdict.

3. Coros Nomad

Watches have come so far in the past couple of years. It was an absolute frivolous novelty when I got my first Garmin Forerunner 935 in 2017. Fast forward to now and the Coros Nomad literally changed my navigation system and approach for the first time since I moved from paper maps to a smartphone. Yes, I know many of you reading this did not make that jump as it was some time ago. You should consider this new leap in technology as I believe it is as significant for long distance hikers in particular.

To put it simply, I very, very rarely used my phone for navigation whilst hiking on trail. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of navigating through the French, Italian and Swiss Alps crisscrossing a multitude of intersecting trails without removing the phone from my pocket. 

The Nomad has worldwide detailed maps. For free. You simply download the part of the world you will be traversing to the Coros app on your phone, upload the map to your watch and you have ridiculously high detailed maps on your wrist. You can then add routes of the trail you will be following and you now will have to really struggle to get lost. Like you’d have to be super special. 

One of the features I loved the most was the deviation alert. I’d be wandering along lost in the views or my own murky mind and have unwittingly taken a wrong turn. Within seconds my watch would let out an annoying series of beeps and vibrations to distract me from my folly and tell me in no uncertain terms that I was going the wrong way. This saved me so many unnecessary kilometres and is worth its weight in gold for this feature alone.

An unintended benefit of this new way of navigating is you simply need less power. The watch is a trivial recharge from your power bank, and you need to charge your phone less frequently as you aren’t needing to use it for on trail navigation anymore. 

If you haven’t looked at smartwatches for hiking in the past, I can tell you that these devices have reached maturity and are of great benefit for the trail.

An Unexpected Failure 

1. Timmermade Serpentes 30F Quilt

I can assure you I never thought I’d be saying a Timmermade product didn’t live up to the hype. After many miserable nights high in the Alps I am dismayed to report that the quilt was a really unexpected failure.

And it had started off so well. I received the quilt a couple of weeks before my flight out to Europe and was impressed with the workmanship and the ultralight nature of the quilt. I laid it out on the floor and it lofted up great and so I duly stuffed it into my pack and flew.

The first few nights I had no issues. I was in the foothills of the Alps and temperatures at night were around 10°C so I really only had the quilt draped over me with no need to use straps and I wore my alpha fleece to sleep. 

It was when I got up higher and had my first night around 3°C that the quilt failed. Still nowhere near the rating of the quilt temperature wise I was shocked when I woke in the middle of the night freezing. I had used the supplied strap and was tucked in tight. The issue was that the down had completely migrated off my shoulder (I’m a side sleeper) and had pooled on either side of my body as the down fell down to the mattress. This left me sleeping under two thin pieces of 7D nylon and no feathers. Hence the freezing part.

I contacted Dan, the manufacturer of the quilt and after some back and forth on emails he said it was a skill issue on my part. He didn’t clarify what skill I was lacking after forty odd years of sleeping under feathers in a tent, I can only assume it was my inability to sleep on my back or stomach. I believe this was the crux of the issue. As the quilt is at the absolute limit of weight to warmth ratios I think my desire to sleep on my side creates too steep a situation for the limited amount of down to stay where it should (on top of you) and it simply slowly falls off the peak of my shoulder throughout the night.

I spent the rest of the trail when sleeping at high altitude wearing every piece of clothing I had and waking up every couple of hours to shake the feathers back to the centre of the baffles as I woke up shivering. As I said, a very unexpected failure of gear from a very highly regarded manufacturer.

Final Thoughts

I hope this rambling essay on my gear choices for my wander on the Hexatrek and a few surrounding trails over the European summer helps you as you look forward to 2027 and all the adventures you are planning to have on trail. I will be on the hunt for a quilt that suits my side sleeping ways better and be stuffing it into my brilliant pack, lacing up a new pair of Altras and glancing regularly at my wrist to make sure I stay on trail next year.