In all, I’d highly recommend this as your “daily driver” tool if you focus mainly on water ice and alpine climbing. It will get the job done in moderate mixed terrain, but if that’s your focus, consider the Cassin X-Dream, another great tool from the folks at CAMP.go to full review

The best camming device ever made. I already want to get a double set of these, and I want my friends to as well. That said, I hope they expand and make Ultralight versions of the #5 and #6, the sizes where you often don’t haul them up a climb because they’re so heavy. Put them on your holiday gift list right now, or get one for someone you love!go to full review

This shoe comes close to being a jack-of-all trades; it performs at a high level on a variety of rock types and angles. It’s a favorite for climbing in places like Eldorado Canyon, where I have to be able to jam cracks, smear on subtle slopers, and stand on tiny edges. Some people like a slightly aggressive, downturned shoe for climbing hard cracks; I’d recommend armoring the outer toes with a little shoe goo for this purpose.go to full review

The Sum’Tec is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It performs excellently and it inspires confidence on most terrain. I grab it without hesitation on all of my ski mountaineering projects. However, in the back of my mind there is this nagging voice saying, This could be better. Unless you are confident that you won’t ever need to buy a technical ice tool, I have a hard time recommending the Sum’Tec. Even though it performs exactly as advertised and I have been quite happy with it, I think there..." go to full review

The FL-365 packs a lot of great features and comfort into a somewhat lightweight package, but all that comes at the price. A price only equaled by a handful of other harnesses out there. If you climb a lot, spend a lot of time in your harness, and need the level of racking storage the the FL-356 provides for trad, aid, or ice, I’d say it’s worth the price. However, you could buy a sixer of nice draws and a brand new harness for the same coin. Or lunch and a day of skiing at Whistler. Or gas..." go to full review

As a total package, the Aquila is the best all-around harness that I’ve worn in quite some time. It’s not perfect, but if Petzl makes some minor adjustments to the stability of the leg straps, this could be a difficult harness to top. In its current incarnation, the Aquila is everything you need to climb year round, and nothing you don’t. On top of all that, it packs down easily and has held up well. If your climbing is summer-only, you could probably slim your harness down even further and..." go to full review

I would put these shoes in the same league as the Scarpa Boostic and Miura VS, in that they are on the stiffer side of performance shoes. I found they were best on vertical to just past vert climbs with small footholds. The toe is very precise, once I got used to it, with enough sensitivity to know I was standing on the best part of the hold, but supportive enough my feet didn’t tire quickly standing on small nubbins.go to full review

In conclusion, the Grivel Air Tech Evolution ice axe set is a great ‘semi’ technical set of winter tools that will serve you well through many years of use and abuse. They are light, well balanced and the hot forged head is a great bonus for hooking, bullet hard ice or that super crispy neve we all dream of climbing.go to full review

Overall, I will be reaching for these tools for both guiding and personal climbing on moderate ice and mixed terrain. For upcoming alpine trips in bigger ranges, these will also be in my kit since they are more than capable of withstanding battering. For really steep ice and harder mixed terrain, I'll still reach for my Petzl Nomics, though, as the wrist-to-tool-head angle is more anatomically inline in overhanging terrain and causes me less strain.go to full review

Over several months of testing—let's just call it climbing—from the sharp cracks in Vermont's crags to the sustained splitters in New York's Adirondacks (ADK) to Boulder, Colorado's smooth granite, these svelte units performed as well as single-axle cams are expected to. They're also very flexible, which helped me wiggle them into placements, and they were generally easy enough to clean.go to full review