I have recently been lucky enough to receive some equipment from a few outdoor companies to facilitate my climbing and make my expeditions more comfortable. Here are some of the contributiors.
Valandre
The French company is a high-end manufacturer of down sleeping bags and outerwear for mountaineers and alpinists, such as the Austrian female climber, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, who made history in 2011 when she became the first woman to successfully climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without the use of bottled oxygen.
Valandre has been kind enough to equip me with a super-warm down sleeping bag, the Odin, a downsuit Combi and a very warm down jacket, the Bering, for those chilly nights at base camp. Thank you very much for the contribution!
Outdoor Research
A passion for human powered adventure inspired the birth of Outdoor Research, an outdoor gear company based in Seattle, Washington. And 27 years later, this passion remains as strong as ever. OR’s goals have expanded to embrace a greater mission: their customers’ experiences of human powered adventure. Over the years, they’ve learned it’s not simply about what they think. It’s about listening to their customers and building their ideas into their products.
KIKU Apples
It may strike you as weird to see an apple grower as a sponsor here but I have to say that I really like the idea of supporting this healthy fruit. We all know the famous saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, and according to KIKU, the annual apple consumption per capita amounts to 19.5kg within the European Union. I first came across KIKU apples at the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Brixen in 2010 (it is one of the event’s sponsors) and I clearly remember the special and delicious taste of these apples.
The KIKU brand was founded in 1990, when Luis Braun, a South Tyrolean fruit grower, was travelling through Japan and discovered a branch in a Fuji orchard from where he later grew apples. Today, fruit from this branch does not only taste delicious, it also has a particularly pleasant and attractive colouring. If you ever come across this brand – take a bite!
Lowa
The German boots manufacturer has been making high-quality mountaineering boots since the early 1930s and are one of the biggest distributors all over the world. The company, which is located north of Munich, kindly contributed a few pairs of mountaineering boots, which I hope will stop me from banging my toes on the descent. Thank you very much – I am looking forward to wearing them.
