For fast and light mountain tours where every gram counts, this slightly smaller variant of the Ortovox High Alpine Peak Light is your Huckleberry. It's incredibly lightweight to start with, but you can whittle a whopping 30% off the base weight by removing the lid, hip belt, aluminium back reinforcement struts and some of the gear attachments. In fact, in its lightest configuration, the Peak Light 32 is almost half the weight of Ortovox's regular Peak 32S backpack. Redesigned for 2023, this is a serious four-season mountain backpack with attachment points for skis, ropes, helmet and ice axe/poles. Access to the main compartment is either via the top flap or the circular zip on the front, and it features quick-access pockets for your emergency avalanche gear. The regular length back panel is Ortovox's lightweight Swisswool Hybrid system, which places three absorbent wool pads in the high stress zones across your shoulders and the small of your back. This provides plenty of cushioning and pulls sweat away from your back – making it feel drier even when you're working hard
If you’ve spent much time in the Alps, chances are you’ve seen a lot of folk sporting Ortovox kit. It’s one of the biggest and most well-respected brands in Austria and Germany, backed up by the kind of mountain heritage that most companies can only dream of.
Ortovox started out more than 40 years ago making avalanche transceivers and other rescue equipment, and to this day they’re still the go-to outfitters for mountain rescue teams, alpine guides and extreme mountaineers. Get your hands on an Ortovox pack or garment and you’ll soon see why. The construction and quality of this stuff is on a whole different level, right down to tiny details like the buckles and merino mesh inserts. It’s gear you can rely on day-in, day-out, in seriously spicy conditions – and thousands of mountain professionals genuinely do just that.
Ortovox kit has a very distinctive, technical look – and their background in mountain safety means they’re big on bright colours that make you easy to spot in an emergency. But the materials bear closer inspection too. They’re huge champions of the properties of natural wool, and they’ve been using it in performance mountain gear since the 80s – putting them streets ahead of other manufacturers who are only just rediscovering nature’s original miracle fibre. As a bonus, this also makes their products very environmentally friendly, and the entire winter range is now climate neutral.
