Old gear beats new?

How often do we hear about the handicaps past sportsmen and adventurers labored under? That may be true enough when it comes to, say, bicycles, but recent experiments suggest that old-time mountaineers did pretty well by their clothing:

The results of a unique experiment on Mount Everest confirm that the clothing of the 1924 climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine would not have prevented them from reaching the summit, as many had believed.

The findings are a step closer to proving the men could have reached the top, 29 years before Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary.

Over the past few weeks, climber Graham Hoyland has been putting the old-style clothing worn on the fateful Mallory expedition to the ultimate field test on the world's highest mountain.

Wearing replica gear made from gabardine, wool, cotton and silk, he wanted to disprove the common myth that the 1920s climbers were ill-equipped to reach the summit.

Full story at the BBC. It seems the clothing was not just good enough, but in many respects superior to what is now state of the art:

The layered natural materials used to construct the garments were found to be excellent at trapping air next to the skin.

The outer layer of gabardine was hardwearing and water-resistant yet breathable. But the clothing was also lighter than modern gear - the lightest ever to be used on Everest.

Parsons said: "The results stand out as a challenge for future outdoor innovators because Mallory's clothing and footwear was 20% and 40% lighter respectively". . .

Hoyland also discovered that the clothes were more comfortable to wear than modern day gear.

Posted by David on June 14, 2006 11:21 AM