Earlier in the year I did Snowdon for the first time as an adult with my best mate.
We stayed stay in Bangor the night before (shout out to the Menai hotel), caught a bus to the start of the Family path, summit and then bog off down the pyg track and follow on to miners path, finding a spot next to Llyn Llydaw to pitch up for the night. (nice -3 night nice and snug in my OEX Bobcat 1.) Next day was a much shorter hike round to the start of the snowdon family track and a quick pasty in the café. Awesome!
Slight fly in the ointment was the backpack, it was new (groan groan). I'd heard horror stories of people not understanding their gear before using it "in anger" and whilst I'm not new to wildcamping, or camping in general I do expect I'm going to continue to make mistakes as long as I live.
I wasn't expecting the shoulder pad to rip stitching putting on after my breakfast on the morning of my hike! Thankfully it held together with the load lifter. (rucksack HERE)
After further investigation I realised that olpro had stitched the shoulder pad to the rucksack AT the stress point of the strap, all the other rucksacks I've used, including my mates nice osprey kit didn't put the stitch work to connect to the backpack AT the point where it gets the most strain.
Now you're thinking "Well son, you must've packed the kitchen sink" And you'd be wrong! The whole bag including water and food came to less than 14kg all in. Not "Ultra Light" but not anything too heavy, because I'm too lazy to carry much more up.
Now I'm a big fan of buying British camping gear where it's not too cost prohibitive (however I do have a cheap and cheerful Lanshan 1 for lightweight summer camping )
OLPRO are a firm that I've been keeping an eye on for some time, thinking of getting their version of a helm 2 (the Ranger) however whilst their customer service was top notch the experience with the build quality of the actual kit has put me right off from spending any more money with them especially as I was just using the item in the way it was intended!
So, anyone else have thoughts or experiences with OLPRO? Did I just get a duff piece of kit or am I just an idiot?
Get a refund: it’s not fit for purpose. It may be a quality control problem for one off bad workmanship or a design problem affecting many more people like you.
Amazing family weekend with old steam engines, classic car displays, market stalls, and full catering and bar. And camping on site - Save £25 by booking in advance.
Topic: OLPRO - How hard wearing are they really?
via mobile 07/12/2022 at 7:54am
