A Brief Review of Hiking/Outdoor Shops

outside of SA I love Chamonix in France!

There is a 2 story Patagonia store and a 3 story North Face store a few hundred metres apart. That's not all... another store named Snell Sports sells a wide variety of top brands including Marmot, Arcteryx, Millet etc. This is a place where you can fulfil many gear fantasies!

Service is generally good too. I was helped by a professional mountain guide that works at the Patagonia store and their shoulder season sales are pretty good.


So go climb Mt Blanc or do the Haute route and get some great gear!

I have already mentioned my experience of Due South in The Grove Mall (see the first page of this thread), but I recently went to Due South in Woodlands Boulevard and thought I would provide an update:

Due South , Woodlands Boulevard, Pretoria:
I initially enquired on the Due South website about The North Face sleeping bags, and almost immediately received a professional and helpful response, directing me to Due South at Woodlands Boulevard. The sales assistant there was incredibly friendly and helpful, and also seemed knowledgeable about hiking. This branch of Due South really made me reassess my opinion of the Due South franchise. I would definitely shop here again.

I have to agree with Ruthbl, the guys at Due South Woodlands are very helpful, polite and friendly

I have to agree on the due south post, I am trying to buy gear for a kilimanjaro trip, i was looking at due south (the glen and sandton city) for sleeping bags and other stuff. The staff are clueless the one guy asked me if kilimanjaro was in Switzerland, had no idea what down was or why I need a down jacket! On a previous occasion I bought a HRM which the assistant insisted had a built in GPS only to find it had a compass!

Cape union mart has been great but they only stock k-way brands! And driffters it's still on top!

my experience with gear is that it's best to do my own research and really understand my needs myself because even with the guys at Drifters they are still basing their advice on their experience and physiology which can vary quite a bit.

Some of the bigger purchases we make are the most subjective too - tents, boots and backpacks are almost entirely aimed at different usage scenarios and profiles of users which is defined based on your personal input to the Sales person so no matter how good they are you can misdirect them by giving a less than accurate view of your needs....

Basically we need to have better knowledge to ensure we make better purchases!