Ian Webb, Cape Town, South Africa
Hiking boots | Camping stoves
| Backpacks | Daypacks | Sleeping
bags | Torches
Whatever happened to...
Back to Great Hikes in the Western Cape
Disclaimer: All my own opinion gleaned from personal experience.
This page is prepared with a South African hiking audience in mind. For your information, here is a list of my personal equipment:
There are many alternatives,
but the main choice (after price) seems to be leather vs. synthetic. There are
many leather options, ranging from velskoen to some pretty hardcore bonded-sole,
last-you-a-lifetime boots. The market moves pretty fast so I'm a bit out-of-date
with what's now available. In reasonably-priced synthetic boots, the choice of
brand seems to be Hitec or nothing, but there are more expensive options in GoreTex.
Jim Green boots are a top quality leather product, or so I'm told - I haven't owned a pair yet. They're made in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, and can even be ordered online. (see the links page). And of course there's K-Way, the Cape Union Mart brand.
Hitec has a wide range of boots. Their synthetic boots are typically very comfortable (more so than leather boots) and don't require much wearing-in. Synthetic boots definitely aren't as durable as leather, though, and unless they specifically say waterproof, they're certainly not, although even leather boots or synthetic "waterproof" boots are seldom really waterproof after extended wetting. I would recommend Hitecs over leather boots for the novice or occasional hiker. Avoid the Hitech Utah, though. I have a pair for casual use, but they are definitely not tough enough for real hiking.
For the pro hiker with tough feet, consider going for a boot. Various options are available, some imported and some made locally. I'm not familiar with the brands at present - since I bought my Dachsteins in 1995 I've been out of the market, except to get my boots resoled at Rocksole in Cape Town after 5 years of use. They've done a lot of distance in all sorts of conditions, and I haven't had any problems with them.
For the pro hiker,
avoid the Gaz stove - for a rather higher price you can get a benzene stove
which is hotter, more robust, cheaper to fuel, less unstable and less susceptible
to wind, cold and high altitude. I bought a Coleman Apex II, which looks like
a moon landing unit and is hot as hell and a great talking point. BUT... read
on to find out why I stopped being a Coleman fan.
Well, only 4 years into it's supposed 10-year lifespan, my Coleman stove decided to spring a leak in the fuel line, letting loose a gentle arc of benzene - very fortunately not spraying over the flame itself. As far as I'm concerned that doesn't consitute "fair wear and tear" - it's either a basic design flaw, poor materials, or poor workmanship. Nor can I recommend Coleman aftersale service in Cape Town, which is 100% non-existant, or in South Africa as a whole. Meantime, I no longer recommend Coleman products. Anything so expensive that (a) breaks and (b) can't be fixed at all is not a decent hiking product. If anyone from Coleman wants to convince me otherwise, I'm open to offers.
The top range of imported stoves comes from MSR, and includes the Whisperlite and XGK (what would we do without American outdoor technology? But that's another debate). They're even hotter than the Coleman range: my Coleman Apex II was once convincingly beaten by a Whisperlite in a time trial, boiling 1 litre of water at 800m altitude in a light breeze. The Gaz stove didn't even reach boiling point. But temperature control is not an option with MSR: if you want to get one to simmer, there's a complicated mantra and a chicken-slaughtering ritual you need to learn first. The only thing hotter than an MSR or Coleman stove is the debate over which of the two is better.
GETAWAY magazine in Jan '97 rated butane stoves as better than the Coleman / MSR ranges - but they did their tests at sea level, with no wind, and at 20 Celsius. Heck, no-one uses a stove in those conditions, and butane stoves hardly work in wind, altitude or cold. And when they say butane stoves are safer, I've seen countless gas accidents on Gaz stoves when novice users don't know how to change a cylinder, so beware...
When buying a pack, size is the main consideration - 75 litres is big enough for most purposes. There is not much to choose in this market - the current generation of internal frame packs all seem well designed and durable. Locally, Karrimor and is the best known brands with a well-proven record, but other brands are available - some local, some imported.
Apart from plenty of hiking, my Backpacker Boulder has also done excellent service on several overseas trips. A friend of mine modified his pack so he can padlock it, but with a few knots in the straps and putting discouraging things like dirty underwear in the outside pockets, I reckon you can discourage most luggage tamperers.
Final comment - young hikers should not go for a small pack "until they get bigger". Packs are so pricy that they will be stuck with a small pack which becomes increasingly frustrating after a year or two. Go for a "real" pack as soon as you can, or borrow until you can afford to buy one of your own.
The usual compromise is to get something like a 20l day pack, which is big enough for your basic day kit and also doubles as a handy school or varsity book bag. Not a bad option, but not very individual.
On day hikes I prefer to eat well, carry lots of water, a bulky camera, map, 1st aid kit, and a few warm and waterproof alternatives in case the Cape mountains pull a fast one and it ends up snowing in mid summer. I gave up trying to fit all this kit into a traditional 20l day pack, mainly because I don't like carrying something that feels like a lead soccerball on straps.
My current day pack is a Karrimor Epic 35, which is a comfortable teardrop-shaped bag with plenty of space and some handy features like exterior mesh pockets. I use the Epic as hand baggage on overseas trips.
My current favourite daypack is the K-Way Kilimanjaro, which my wife uses. It's a medium size daypack with a light frame to allow air to circulate between the pack and your back.
In the synthetic range (ignoring the cheap supermarket sleeping bags), there are good bags from First Ascent, K-Way and others. Synthetic has three advantages over down - price, washability and the ability to remain warm when wet (yes, I've been there). It has the serious disadvantages of bulk and lifespan - my hollowfibre bag lost its loft and hence their warmth after about 3 years of heavy use, even though I stored it unstuffed. Basically, avoid hollowfibre if you can afford the excessive price of a good down bag.
Does anyone else find those Petzl headlamps as irritating as I do? Firstly, they're so damn nice, and secondly, they're so damn expensive. Whenever I see someone wearing one, I want to wump them with a foam-rubber cricket bat. I feel the same way about yuppies driving red BMWs.
Sorry about that, but I'm glad to have that rant out of my system. The other reason I'm not a fan of really expensive torces is that they're the most losable item of camping equipment, and I've lost a couple of nice ones in my time, so I don't think it's rational to spend a fortune on them.
For caving, I use one of those cheap plastic torches you get from Clicks (it's worked for years, so why change it). But in general, cheap torches always break at the least convenient time. When I'm caving I use the cheap torch and don't mind if it gets scratched, but I carry a better torch as a spare...
Anyway, I prefer a middle-of-the-range torch - nice quality, but not too expensive. For years I had a torch by Rayovac, with a halogen bulb, that could be focussed by twisting the head. Useful, and all you need. I reckon a hiking torch should be lightweight, taking no more than two penlight batteries: buy good batteries, take some spares, and you won't have any problems. Maglite also makes good torches, but that's about as exciting as wearing clothes with the Nike swish on them.
Here's the bit where I show my age and reminisce about hiking equipment from the late eighties / early nineties. I get quite a few emails about the equipment mentioned on this page, so it seems I'm not the only one with fond memories of equipment I've used in the past. If you have any information to update what appears below, let me know.
I grew up as a hiker with two pairs of Trailbusters T3s by AP Lubbe in Stellenbosch - you know, the classic hiking-boot-meets-velskoen approach, complete with red laces.. I found them comfortable and easy to wear in, and I've got fond memories of both pairs, although they were a bit lightweight and only lasted 3 years per pair. T5's were a heavier duty boot, but I never owned those. Trailbuster seems to have faded, although in 2005 they still have a website running - see the links page.
When I was a lightie, Dachsteins were the serious boots the older guys were wearing, imported from Astria. In 1995 I bought a pair of leather Dachstein Semmering boots from Camp & Climb in Claremont (they vanished in about 2003). They lived up to expectations and, with the help of new soles from Rocksole, have managed 10 years of hiking so far, although they're on their last legs now.
The Dachstein brand (named after the Dachstein region in Austria) was owned by ski-manufacturer Kneissl-Dachstein. In 2003 Kneissl-Dachstein filed for bankruptcy and sold off a lot of its brands: Dachstein was sold to DeeLuxe, and Raichle to Mammut, but it seems the brands are all still functioning and closely related.
After a lot of searching, I finally found pictures of current Dachstein boots under "Hiking Classics" on the website www.kneisslandfriends.com/english/outdoor in late 2004. They seem to be panelled boots, part leather and part synthetic. However on the same website I found leather Raichle trekking boots. Raichle operates in Switzerland and some of their boots (like the Raichle Mountain Trekker) look a lot like the great Dachstein boots that were sold in South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s. I don't know if you can find Raichle boots in South Africa in 2005 - if you can, let me know.
The superb Backpacker range was best known for their packs and their Benedorm hollow fibre sleeping bag. My pack is a Boulder 75l, which I've used since 1996, still going strong after 10 yeas including several overseas plane trips. Backpacker also made a great pack called the Thar (a cylindrical pocketless pack) which was a popular serious bag. (Some day, I'll figure out what I mean by "serious" hiking equipment, and let you know. I hope I'm not just being a snob...)
My favourite daypack was the Backbacker Kranz, a 40l rock climber's bag. The Kranz is similar to the Thar or Krakadouw pack, but smaller, expandable with expedition pockets. Two problems - some burglars liked my Kranz even more than I did, and Backpacker stopped making them.
In the 1990s the Backpacker factory moved to Botswana, and they gradually faded from view. In 2004, BackPacker was bought by Scavenger and is still in business with a postal address in Centurion and allegedly something in Duncan Street, Pretoria, and hopefully they'll regain their status as a major player in the local market.
Coleman used to be a contender in the market for serious outdoor equipment - their stoves were a competitor (and in some - but not all - ways superior to MSR). However, when my expensive Coleman stove packed up through a blatant design flaw, nearly causing a nasty blaze (see rant above), I contacted Coleman's local agents. How naive. It turned out Coleman wasn't remotely interested in repairing it - not free, not for money, nada, niks. So Coleman is no longer a serious player in the outdoor equipment market either. Good riddance.