Whats happening at the ISPO 2013

As every year the leading sports business trade fair, ISPO 2013 shows off innovative and functional products, the latest trends in fashion and gear for segments in outdoor, winter and performance sports. Apart from meeting a few familiar faces and catching up with long lost contacts, my mind was fogged with a potpourri of colours and functional fabrics, here’s a few highlights of the 1st day at the ISPO in Munich.

The blogger meet with Bergfreunde was a part of the highlight of the day that went together with a briefing of technology and new products of 66° NORTH with the new Polartec® Alpha® and the Polartec® Neoshell®. The first generation of the Puffy insulation in jackets was light and warm. And once you finally get all warmed up in a sports activity, you start to overheat. So much so that you will want to take off the jacket. What you probably didn’t really know was that these garments insulate, but they keep your vapour inside you so you start feeling damp, and then instead you start to freeze. That was one big reason for the 2nd generation to come by. Now, these garments are breatheable too! The Snaefell Jacket which won the Outdoor Award 2011, is one of these products.

It was nice to finally meet the sympathetic faces behind a brand that comes from Iceland who carries the slogan “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing”. Their garments are trendy, functional and very convincing. Thanks to Bergfreunde for arranging this meet.

Familiar faces and meeting new ones makes you feel slowly like one big blogging family Gipfelglück, Aufdenberg, UptotheTop, Einfachdraussen, SchöneBergtouren, HugsforHikers, Gipfelstürmer, Gipfelblick, Ulligunde, Alpinfieber were there to share the experience.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sprinting from one end of the Fair to the other and getting lost in this huge cocktail of a labyrinth. At the end, I decided to chill off with a beer at the finals of the DAV boulder cup together with HugsforHikers and a few others. I must’ve made the oddest comment of the day when I said “look, they can’t start yet, coz there’s still no holds screwed on the wall”. When one of the finalists proved that you can achieve a boulder using a tiny screw that held a poster, this made the crowd finally go all frenzy. That was pretty awesome.

Well, I haven’t seen ’em all, but there’s still a few days left …