Reviewing gear: South African style

[trailjunkie]

Hi Guys and Girls

I am new to the forum, so I'll provide a bit of background. I am 25 years of age, living in Cape Town, recently graduated from Stellenbosch. I am absolutely addicted to hiking, trail-running and mountain-biking. The problem is, for a 25-year-old to buy all the kit necessary to sustain this addiction is close to impossible, so an obvious way to help out the outdoors community in general (and get to test, and hopefully keep, cool new gear) will be to become a gear reviewer.

The idea originally came to mind when I was looking for a hydration pack for the 22km Two Oceans trail run. I found a lot of American sites but not a lot of South African ones.

Do any of you know whether there is anything like this in SA, who one can ask, or if any of you are the editor of a cool outdoors magazine or you want to have some gear reviewed, just reply to this post.

Thanks a million!

[Ghaznavid]

Howzit!

I think the same thought goes through many people's minds. I tried that "can I review your gear approach" on many SA gear manufacturers and got nothing. By all means try, the worst they can say is "no".

Just build up your gear slowly - it took me about 2 years to put together enough hiking gear to do Drakensberg hiking, I am now slowly putting together the stuff I need to lighten my daypack (for years I used a almost empty 70 litre pack for day hiking, just got a 35 litre pack last weekend), and getting towards building up my trad rack...