Blizzard Kabookie

Blizzard’s Kabookie ski was one of two new Alpine Touring standouts I found at the 2012 SIA show—the other being Garmont’s Cosmos boot. Like the Cosmos, the big news with the Kabookie is its ability to bring the performance and especially the ‘feel’ of your favorite Alpine rig into the backcountry. On my scale, the Kabookie weighs eight pounds, four ounces per pair (173cm). In general I think of eight pounds (more…)

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Nikon D600 Video: No Free Lunch

The D600 is arguably the very first affordable full-frame Nikon DSLR, and for many still photographers, it will be nothing less than a dream come true. We Nikon faithful long ago got used to the limitations of DX-sensor cameras, and their 1.5x crop factor, but spend a day shooting with the D600 and it’s like coming home. Here, at last, is 35mm digital photography as it was meant to be (more…)

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Andrew McLean Visits SoCal

Don’t miss your chance to meet legendary ski mountaineer and Chuting Gallery author Andrew McLean, who will be speaking at Caltec in Pasadena next Thursday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m. I have to say, there are a lot of parallels between Andrew and me: we both started as ski racers, moved on to become steep skiing fanatics, and currently run two of the sport’s most popular and passionate websites (more…)

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Garmont Cosmos

Garmont’s new Cosmos delivers a perhaps unprecedented combination of skiing and touring performance, at a marvelously low weight. I’ll admit it: where Alpine Touring ski boots are concerned, I’ve long considered myself a Garmont man. Their shells have always seemed the most Lange-ish to me, in terms of fit and feel, which remains my gold standard for downhill skiing performance (more…)

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The Marine Layer Returns

Thank goodness. It’s been a long, hot slog through August and now September, climaxing (hopefully) with this past Saturday’s downtown high of 103°. Ugh! Last night I rode my bike out to the beach to watch that happiest of events, The Return of the Marine Layer. For the uninitiated, that means the winds have shifted, and cool air off the Pacific is returning to the Los Angeles Basin (more…)

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Black Diamond Twilight

The water-resistant/breathable Twilight replaces Black Diamond’s Winter Bivy as the lightest bivy sack in the Black Diamond collection. The major difference, aside from a color change, is a switch to ‘NanoShield’ fabric (from Epic). We also get the addition of a mesh over-the-face panel for bug protection. What is NanoShield? I believe it is basically a re-branded Epic, with the primary difference (more…)

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Today’s Slice of Zen

Here’s a quick sample of video from my Sony RX100 compact. Truth be told I’m using the RX100 a lot in my day-to-day photography, and I’m liking it a lot, so I’ve made some changes to my review to better reflect my evolving impressions. These dancing jellyfish aren’t ideal for judging sharpness, but this is hand-held, straight out of the camera footage, and overall picture quality is quite good (more…)

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Mountain Hardwear Direkt 2

Mountain Hardwear’s new Direkt 2 is a single-wall tent built in the style of Black Diamond’s Firstlight, but updated in a way that makes it both more and less useful. The twin headlines here are a crazy-low measured weight of two pounds, nine point five ounces (tent and poles), plus a completely 100% seam-sealed single-wall body that once and for all puts to rest any worries of waterproofness. The bad news (more…)

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