Welcome to Black Sheep Adventure Sports’ annual gift guide for climbers of all styles and creeds. This is the fifth annual Black Sheep Adventure Sports Gift Guide for Climbers! And as always, we’ve found a bunch of great gear that the climber in your life is sure love. This year we start off with some kit for ice climbers before moving on to more rock … Continue reading Climbers’ Gift Guide 2019
In this second installment of our Summer Outdoor Retailer Show Reports we take a look at all the cool new climbing gear that’s on its way. From carabiners to cams, helmets to ropes, there was some pretty cool kit at the show this year! If you’re looking for harnesses though you’ll have to wait for the next post. There were quite a few this year … Continue reading Summer OR 2019: Climbing Gear
Most of us buy or acquire our climbing gear slowly over time. When you first get into the sport there’s a lot of expense associated with getting kitted out so gear is bought a little at a time. Once you’ve been climbing for a while, equipment is replaced as it gets worn out or newer, shinier and possibly better gear. Of course this leads to … Continue reading Building the Ideal Ice Climbing Kit:
There was a wide variety of cool climbing equipment introduced at the Summer OR show this year. Some new and updated cams (always exciting!), belay devices, rope grabs and so on. Of course not all of it is truly new, there’s a little of the usual copycat or one-upmanship going on as well. If you’re interested in new helmets and harnesses they’ll be found in … Continue reading Summer OR 2018: Climbing Gear
Another year seems to have flown by and the holiday season’s approaching once again. If you’ve got a hard-to-shop-for climber in the family don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. In this first installment of the guide we’ll look at 10 great ideas for smaller “stocking stuffer” type gift options. Basically cool stuff that will cost less than $100. The next installment will cover some bigger … Continue reading Climbers Christmas Guide 2017: Stocking Stuffers
It wasn’t all that long ago that climbers had to choose between a lightweight carabiner and a snag-free carabiner. However, with innovations in technology, material processing and manufacturing more and more companies are blending these two features. We’ve reached the point where most brands have their own version but the designs are all a bit different. So it seemed like a great time for a … Continue reading Comparison Review: Lightweight Snag-free Carabiners
The new DMM Pivot has stepped away from the standard design for multi-pitch belay devices (dual mode, tube style) and solved a long standing challenge: How to safely lower a second. Features: Weight: 72g Type: Tube style, dual mode Rope Range: 8.7 to 11mm (single) Most standard multi-pitch belay devices look and perform about the same with only superficial differences to differentiate between brands. Some work better … Continue reading Review: DMM Pivot Belay Device
It seems like all the various climbing hardware companies decided that this was the year to come out with new or updated cams: BD has the Camalot Ultralights, Metolius the Ultralight Mastercams (actually these came out in late 2015), WildCountry the new Friends, etc. And while most of these companies have chosen to focus on making their cams lighter, DMM decided to buck this trend and focus … Continue reading Review: DMM Dragon Cams
When making the step from single to multi-pitch rock climbing you no longer have access to all the kit at the base of the climb. This means that you have decide what’s important enough to haul up the wall and what can be left behind. Below I provide an outline of the technical gear that I typically carry with me into the vertical world. I … Continue reading Essential Gear for Multi-Pitch Rock Climbing
Each year at the Outdoor Retailer show hundreds and hundreds of new products and designs are introduced by brands from all over the world. Of course many of these so-called “new” products or innovations are realistically “me-too” products. (me-too product: a brand introduces something new or different, soon after many other brands develop similar products). However, every year there is some real innovation and new … Continue reading 10 Cool Products to Check Out in 2017
