Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

So I spent last Wednesday through Sunday at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2010 trade show. There’s really only one reason for Winter Market: for buyers at retail outlets to decide what to put on their shelves next fall. If they make the right calls, they have a happy Christmas (wrong calls could put them out of business). The show’s planners also allow “working media” to cover the show in the hope of generating buzz/hype/interest for new products. Working media are hopelessly addicted to novelty, so it works for everybody (except the lowly gear buyer, who has to wait six months for this cool stuff to start showing up in stores).

I was there at the behest of Trailspace.com, which paid for my flights, meals and motel room, so everything I experienced there is their property and I’m obliged to devote my OR-related energies to content for our site, whose readers might actually click on a few links and buy some stuff that pays our salaries.

However, I’m totally free to flog the content we produced last week. Alicia (my boss) and I devoted five consecutive 18-hour days to Winter Market. Bill Straka, one of our fans, devoted almost that much time totally on his own; he picked up some free gear that he will happily run through the wringer (Bill’s hiked on every continent, as near as I can tell, and he’s also an accomplished climber in addition to being a retired astronomer.)

This page on our site has links to all we’ve posted to date (and there’s more to come as we post some wrap-ups). These are my posts:

• Klymit NobleTek: Company producing insulating layers via thin web of “noble gas” bubbles. Note the second guy in the video bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Keanu Reeves.
• Snowshoe trends: Slow economy and attention from outdoor athletes is driving snowshoe sales.
• Coghlan’s and Industrial Revolution: Cool gadgets that don’t cost much.
• Ready for their close-ups: Just a bunch of pictures from the first day of the show.
• Snowshoes in action: They turned me loose with their brand new shoes. Fools.
• Snowshoe preview: What’s in the pipeline for winter 2010/11.
• Nite Ize KnotBones: Video shoes an adjustable bungee cord system that caught my eye.
• Yet more pictures: Best I could do indoors with a cheap digi-cam.

We’ll have several more posts as we try to make sense of what happened last week. Then we get to start gearing up for Summer Market ‘10, which is even more fun because it’s about doing stuff during the fun seasons when bone-chilling cold is out of the picture.

The other day I was over in Greensboro and stopped in on the local REI and had an amazing realization: the store is my job come to life.

I’ve studiously avoided boring folks with the details of my new gig (I’m too busy boring you on the details of my hikes), but suffice to say it entails devoting intense attention to two-dimensional depictions of coats, tents, sleeping bags, shoes, socks and just about anything else that might prove useful in the wilderness.

Going to the REI and seeing all those virtual products on real hangers suddenly made me feel like the Hiking Guide I Could Never Be (unless I’m guiding over-80 hip-replacement patients, the only hikers on earth slower than I am). I couldn’t name you three indigenous species the American Southeast, but I’ve seen every fleece jacket Patagonia sells, every spring-loaded cam Black Diamond sells, every dry bag Sea-to-Summit sells. I can walk down any aisle and find something to say about something or other (and find time to remark on how small REI’s brick-and-mortar inventory is compared to what’s available out there).

Next week I’m going to Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Salt Lake City, where something like 150 brands and 13,000 people are gathering to bask in the glory of gear. Skis and snowboards will get most of the love; we’re mainly interested in socks, snowshoes and base layers (and the free beer, of course). There’s an “all mountain demo” where we get to see skiers and boarders do cool stuff that we’d do if we didn’t have real jobs.

If you want to see what we’re up to, stop by the Trailspace Blog next Wednesday through Sunday. We’ll do what we can to make synthetic fibers seem sexy.

I posted this today: a look at how guidebooks (Audubon, Peterson, National Geographic) are being re-engineered as iPhone apps. I focused on guidebooks because they are far more useful to outdoorspeople than the GPS-related apps — which are great as long as you’re in 3G network range, but have a long way to go in the utility department for outdoorspeople.

Here’s a scene from Audubon’s Guide to Mammals:

See, Coleman has a problem: it’s the most ubiquitous outdoor brand on the planet but none of the cool Internet kids think Coleman is cool. Witness Coleman’s scant 361 Twitter followers (as of 12/02/09) … meanwhile Camping Blogger will probably pass 3,000 in the time it takes me to finish this post.

So about this contest: my high ideals and low energy level take me out of the equation, but here’s the scoop for the rest of y’all (I’m saying this now because it makes the trails safer in hunting season): Coleman is giving away a $25 gift card every day for 50 (sorry, you’ve already missed the first seven). What you have to do:

1. Follow Coleman on Twitter.
2. Tweet the answer to this question, “What would you buy this holiday season from Coleman.com and why?” Make sure you put @colemancampfire in your Tweet.

Entries are limited to one per person/Twitter account per day (U.S. residents only; official rules here).

And just so’s we’re clear: I turned down an offer of a free $25 gift card that Coleman would’ve happily sent my way in exchange for this post. I just thought a company whose coolers have enabled so much tipsy campfire revelry should have a bigger Twitter following.

I just finished an article at my day job highlighting all the new ones out this year.

You might be amazed that this is all I have to show for the several weeks since I started my new job. Well, writing about groovy new gear is a mere fraction of my responsibilities. Job No. 1 is maintaining Trailspace’s massive gear catalog so users looking for a new pair of gloves or boots can see prices, reviews and descriptions of stuff combined in a single Web page. Part of it is automated, but each of the more than 34,000 items in the DB had to be double-checked by a human to minimize garbage in/garbage out. Six thousand new items were added in the past three months; I did almost all of them on a free-lance contract that put me on the path to full-time.

One nifty detail about snowshoes: many good ones are still built in the United States — Redfeather, Crescent Moon and Northern Lites among them. Then there’s Yukon Charlie’s, which builds all its shoes overseas but sells them here cheap enough to get hooked on the sport and perhaps trade up to the premium shoes down the road.

Memorable take-aways from my snowshoe assignment:

• Crescent Moon founder/president Jake Thamm demonstrating his shoes’ bindings on video with the Colorado mountains rising behind him.
• A snowshoe shop in Vermont has an amazing array of snowshoe videos demonstrating how to get into and out of the models it sells.
• As a professional courtesy I decline comment on Outside Online’s Gear of the Year Gal. (Though I am grateful for the awards: they give you something to say about at least one product in the line-up).

Next on the agenda: winter backpacks. Try to contain your enthusiasm.

Geeze, I’m like synthetics from head to toe here. About the only things not produced in a factory were my wife’s cookies and the PB&J she lovingly prepared.

Just thought I’d post this, seeing as how my new job implicates me in the business of helping hikers decide which gear to buy. In an ideal world we’d all find local artisans to build our packs, sew our shirts and tack our shoes, but the urge for practicality and convenience nudges us into the arms of Big Business.

Truth be told, just about everything listed here could’ve been manufactured in somebody’s garage, by somebody I could call up in person if a strap frayed or a seam split.

Furthermore, fabrics made of natural fibers could replace just about everything here.

I’ve gotten pretty jaded about the “We Recycle!” pitches on everything from jock straps to mason jars, but the prospect of my pile of poly-what-have-you multiplied by millions of hikers worldwide makes these efforts seem almost noble. Sure, it’s a ploy to drum up business, but here’s the thing: hikers just like us are pressuring them to green up their businesses.

My guiding principle based on the products above: Be extra careful about what you buy — you may be living with it for a very long time. Don’t hate yourself for buying at REI, but do try to keep your home-grown outfitters in business. And take a long hard look at cottage industry gear; it just feels good to be able to know the person who put your stuff together.

A new cottage gearmaker profile is up at Trailspace.com: Erich Volkstorf talks to Glen Van Peski of Gossamer Gear.

Making a pack didn’t seem daunting to Van Peski. “My mom thought that no kid should leave home until they knew how to sew, bake, and cook,” said Van Peski, crediting his mother with his sewing skills. He’d even made some outdoor gear as a kid, a couple of sleeping bags, a down vest, and the like from kits.

Common thread (couldn’t resist the pun) among folks who build and sell their own gear: apparent absence of the “I can’t do that” gene.

In my quest to continue providing gear deal scans that will never yield one thin dime of income (I know what you’re thinking: cosmic justice!), I added one for Mountain Hardwear this morning. I figured since they’re based up in Richmond I’ve at least got a local angle. But after I had it all set up I found myself wondering: do typical hiker types of our ilk actually own any of this stuff?

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Tarp, bivy and tent footprint

Back when I bought my first backpacking tent at REI, I bought into the hype that by god if you put all this money into your backpacking tent, you need to protect that investment by buying a footprint to protect the tent’s floor. Well, if you camp out 300 nights a year it might be worth it, but no less a personage than Rick of Best Hikes fame once told me he never uses one, and he’s backpacked everywhere.

But a funny thing happened as my buyers’ remorse wore off: I found myself using the footprint far more often than the actual tent.

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Anybody over 6-foot-2 has a heck of a time squeezing into most backpacking tents. This “three-person” tent from REI could be an option, assuming you’re taking a friend along. While cruising for bargains at REI I noticed they’d sliced 20% off the Hoodoo 3 ($249 to $200), which looks like a knockoff of the North Face Tadpole. You’d never solo in this baby — packed weight is north of 7 pounds — but a couple customer reviews reveal an interesting side benefit: room for two tall campers. A snip: “My girlfriend and I are 6′0″ and 6′2″, respectively, and we were quite comfortable sleeping, changing, and playing cards in this tent. Being able to both sit upright with plenty of headroom is a rare pleasure in a tent that is flexible enough to be taken on short backpacking trips.”

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