OMM, which stands for Original Mountain Marathon, is probably the only outdoor brand where two people wearing an OMM backpack on the tube will nod at each other. You see, OMM isn’t a brand, it’s a community. These two people will probably have either done the OMM, or are planning to do the OMM. They’re distance runners with a serious love of the outdoors.

There are now several editions around the world, including the OMM Lite, but the original race still takes place every year. It’s a two day event which involves navigating round a series of checkpoints. This might sound fairly innocuous, but it’s widely known as the toughest mountain marathon in the world. The big crux is that you have to carry enough food and equipment with you for an overnight camp – this means tent, stove, sleeping bag and mat, and the rest.

“It wicks moisture away from the skin brilliantly thanks to its two-layer construction.”

Now if you’ve just checked the name of this bag again, yes, that 25 means 25 litres. We’ve taken more than that on an amble around Ambleside. Yet having completed our first OMM using this backpack and not being particularly experienced is cutting weight, we can vouch for its usefulness.

Some of this is down to clever touches in the bag that means you can cut weight. For example, the stability of the backpack is down to carbon poles, ones that can be removed and replaced with tent poles – we took the Nordisk ULW and these poles worked brilliantly. More stability and padding is added by using a (very) thin folded sleeping mat (I still took a Therm-A-Rest – not quite being ready for that level of hardcore activity).