Company Launches Motor-Powered Pants That Increase Leg Strength by 40 Percent

The Arc’tryx MO/GO Hiking Pants come with a built-in exoskeleton powered by powerful motors that can increase the wearer’s leg strength by 40 percent and make them feel 30 pounds lighter.

Motor-powered exoskeletons have been a reality for years, especially in the medical field, but not so much in the leisure department. That is about to change, as outdoor brand Arc’teryx and Google spinoff Skip recently teamed up to create the “world’s first powered pants”. Called MO/GO (short for ‘mountain goat’), the innovative garment is more than a piece of clothing; it comes with bespoke carbon fiber support structures that feed power from integrated AI-controlled motors at the knees to the wearer’s leg muscles during ascents and decreasing pressure on their knees during descents. Marketed as a mobility device, MO/GO pants are designed to make hiking more accessible to people who may not have the endurance for it.

Read More »

China Installs Giant Escalators as Alternative to Mountain Hiking

Lazy tourists visiting scenic mountain spots in China’s Zhejiang Province can now skip mountain hiking altogether and ride giant escalators hundreds of meters long to reach the best view spots.

Tour operators in China’s Zhejiang Province have installed massive escalators on mountains to help tourists gain access to the best views with virtually no effort. Scenic scots that were once only accessible by hiking on precarious trails are now available to anyone willing to ride one of these escalators for a few seconds, minutes at most. For example, Tanyu Mountain, in Zhejiang’s Chun’an county, has an altitude of only 350 meters, but due to the precarious relief, tourists have to walk three mountains around the mountain in order to reach the summit, making it inaccessible to the elderly and young children. But thanks, to the new escalator, anyone can now reach the top of Tanyu Mountain with virtually no effort.

Read More »

Swiss Website Lets You Hike through the Alps without Breaking a Sweat

If you’re a couch potato who dreams of seeing the beautiful Alps without actually doing any hiking, you can thank technology for the unbelievable experience offered by WebWandern.ch.

Translated as Web Hike, this revolutionary website allows visitors to see the most beautiful sights the Alps have to offer, from the perspective of a hiker. To achieve the desired effect, the project initiators used real hikers to film HD footage of their  mountain treks and uploaded the material to their website. All in all there are 10 stages that cover 130 kilometers of hiking, from Thusis (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy). It all unfolds at normal speed, so it would take you days to go through the whole thing, but the best part is anyone can just jump through the footage however they like and see the most popular sights of the mountain range in a matter of hours.

Read More »