Is there a place for a technical comparison of outdoor gear?
I think that your best bet for expert gear advice is to go to a local gear store that is staffed by people who actually use and abuse the gear that you are interested in purchasing. Unfortunately I don’t know of any publications that produce good gear reviews–it just seems like they are trying to sell their advertisers product. That said sometimes the reviews at Backpacker magazine are good (especially their editor’s choice awards) Rock and Ice and Climbing have some tolerable and a bit more technical reviews. This website Summit Journal claims to have gear reviews by actual pros and adventurers. I’ll be curious to see if anyone has a good answer to your original question regarding technical comparisons–the only other route for research that I can think of is to check with Rescue Teams who actually break gear purposefully to assess its strength and clean up after climbi
