For the last two days I have been at Plas y Brenin in North Wales for a Lyon Workshop. Lyon are our supplier who deals with brands which include Petzl, La Sportiva, Beal, Ortlieb, Exped, Aquapac, Julbo and Jetboil.

The two days were informative and there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions about the products in a variety of theory based sessions. Alongside there were also practical session where there was the opportunity to use their products, which is handy is it would be tricky for someone to have tested every product that every manufacturer sells. But at least I have a few more under my belt now.

The main areas that were covered were as follows.

La Sportiva Rock Boots - This was a great opportunity to try a variety of boots one after another getting a good comparison between them all. I was particularly impressed by the Miura Velcro’s. We do stock Miura Velcro and I have tried them on, but this was my first opportunity to climb in them.

Petzl Helmets - We had quite a bit of theory and examples of helmets that have been involved with rock/ice falls to see how the impacts are absorbed depending on the differing styles of helmets. We also observed the helmets having a 10kg rock dropped on new helmets to see how they fared.
 

Ropework & Via Ferrata - In one of the walls a simulated Via Ferrata was in place, giving me a chance to get a feel for the products and to understand the pros and cons of different kits. Also rope based there were practicals on some of Petzl’s ascender and descender ranges. Just focusing on ropes, there was a theory base lecture about how Beal make their ropes and their range as a whole.
 

Headtorches - A night activity ensured that we had a good test of a variety of Head torches. These ranged from the small E+Lite to the impressive Ultra
 

Camping & more Other brands of Lyon were also included. We had a variety of camp based Ortlieb and Exped products to put up on our night activity, with a rundown of them the following day alongside a talk about Julbo and their different lenses that are used in their glasses/goggles.

Overall it was an educative 2 days, so many thanks to those involved from Lyon.

Links
Lyon
Petzl
La Sportiva
Beal
Ortlieb
Exped
Aquapac
Julbo
Jetboil
Plas y Brenin