Black Friday Gift Special: How to Avoid Stores
It's Black Friday, a time to avoid stores if there ever was one. To aid you in this effort, we here at the Powder Feed put together a cheat sheet of items you can buy online for the ripper that holds a special place in your heart. After polling dozens of skiers and snowboarders on their wish lists, the results are in. Need more ideas? Check out Outside's interactive gift finder.
TOP TEN WISHES FROM SPORTY BABES:
1. A fully planned weekend away. Bonus points for powder days and spa treatments. "Fond memories are very reinforcing for liking a guy," says one gal. If you're coming up blank on ideas, enlist the good folks at Ski.com to help you plan.
2. A cozy down jacket. Our pick: Cloudveil's Inversion Hooded Jacket ($200), which is the best of all possible worlds: warm, comfy and cute.
3. Anything made of cashmere. "It's elegant, it's nurturing, it's decadent, it's sensual," attests one mountain woman. "Whenever I wear cashmere I find myself constantly squeezing and stroking it. If it's a sweater that [my husband] bought for me, well, that bodes well for his evening." J.Crew has some nice items to choose from. May we suggest the Ribbed Cashmere Scarf ($98) for apres purposes?
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November 25, 2009
The Wonk: A Special Deal on Nau Clothing
Over the past few years, we've written about and reviewed a bunch of gear from Nau, makers of stylish and eco-conscious technical outerwear and clothing for men and women, like the jacket the bearded gentleman is wearing above. If you're not familiar with their stuff, check it out here. And if you see something you like, type in the promo code “NEW2NAU”, which is good for 10% off anything on the site, including sale items. That's it: Nau asked me to pass along this code to all of our readers, and now you've got it. Happy shopping, and happy Thanksgiving. —Sam Moulton
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November 23, 2009
The Gear Junkie Scoop: The North Face Animagi Jacket
Dressing right for aerobic activity in cold weather is a continual challenge. With its new Animagi Jacket, The North Face offers a hybrid option that insulates where needed but also breathes.
Horizontal panels and a high neck give the Animagi the look of a vest worn over a base-layer top. But those dark sleeves are connected to the puffy panels, providing full coverage on the arms (but only a hint of warmth).
Indeed, the sleeves and the side of the torso are a thin stretchy material that wind cuts through. But your core is protected with the PrimaLoft-stuffed front and back panels.
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Gear Army: La Sportiva Women's FC 1.1 Hikers
I found the perfect place to test out the La Sportiva FC 1.1 Hikers ($105), the Moosehead Lake region of Maine. I set up up a series of day hikes to put the shoes to the test.
Let’s start with the cosmetics: these are really nice looking shoes. If you prefer your day-hiking shoes to moonlight as regular sneakers, thy are perfect. The synthetic leather upper has a nice feel to it and is also easy to clean once you’re off the trail. They run true to size – a women’s 10 gave me plenty of room for a thick pair of hiking socks.
On the trail, these shoes do a passable job. The Vibram soles are certainly top notch, gripping slippery wood, crumbling shale, and steep rock without a problem. The front toe bumper kept me from stubbing my toes (something I do often, for reasons unknown). The perforated synthetic leather leaves a bit to be desired in the ventilation department, though. For shoes without a whole lot of padding, these were rather warm. That said, they kept me dry while hiking in a drizzle thanks to a polyurethane coating.
The thing I was least happy with on the FC 1.1s was the lack of cushioning in the footbed. After a full day of use, I took these off and my feet practically cried out for a rub. Even halfway through a hike I found myself wondering what kind of Dr. Scholl’s pain relief I should buy when I got home. Thankfully, the relatively light weight of the shoes made it easier to keep on walking.
After a few weeks of moderate to heavy use, the shoes are holding up well. The design and construction are both solid. This morning when I put them on, however, I noticed that the laces are already starting to fray. Strange that, with so many grade-A materials, the laces would have problems.
My bottom line piece of advice to you: Buy these along with a set of cushioning inserts and a back-up pair of laces and you should be all set.
--Kisså
Roach may live in Philadelphia, but she recently planned a road trip
based solely around day-hiking. Her stops included Wyoming's
Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, and Medicine Wheel Passage, Oregon's Crater
Lake, Washington's Columbia River Gorge and Deception Pass State Park,
and Badlands in South Dakota.
To join the Outside Gear Army and write reviews for us, check out outsideonline.com/geararmy.
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November 19, 2009
The Gear Junkie Scoop: GearPods
Take a watertight polycarbonate container and cram it full with gear. That's the gist of a GearPod, the namesake new product from GearPods Corporation of Polson, Montana.
The company (gearpods.com) offers a line of ready-made adventure and survival kits. Each one uses screw-shut polycarbonate vessels about the size and shape of a water bottle. They fit unobtrusively in a backpack and protect the gear and small items inside until needed in the outdoors.
A customer can pick from more than a dozen pre-made kits, including collections assembled for first-aid, survival, cooking, and shelter. Inside, the company packs bandages, matches, cord, fire starters, water-purification tablets, whistles, blades, and other small items for a task.
The larger kits, including the GearPods Wilderness, which I tested out, offer a stock of essentials for first aid, survival, and shelter. The Wilderness package costs about $165 and lets you "effortlessly carry the gear and tools you need to manage contingencies and stay prepared--even during unplanned nights out," as the company puts it.
Total weight of the GearPods Wilderness kit is 1.8 pounds. It measures about 14 inches long, and the screw-together tubes are about three inches in diameter.
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November 18, 2009
Review: Patagonia Nano Puff Pullover
If there’s one item of winter clothing to put on the wish list this year, it’s Patagonia’s new Nano Puff Pullover. Here are three reasons why:
1. It has easily one of the best weight-to-warmth ratios of any synthetic
jacket I’ve tried.
2. It packs down smaller than an orange (in the handy chest
pocket) and the women’s version I have weighs 8.2 ounces. That’s probably less
than last night’s hamburger.
3. Unlike down, this jacket isn’t useless when
damp and dries quickly, thanks at least in part to the DWR treatment on the poly shell.
In other words, this pullover is ridiculously versatile. It makes an excellent ultralight mid-layer under a shell on cold days, an outer layer on warm days, and a no-frills emergency layer to cram in the bottom of a pack whenever. This is not a puffy cloud-like apres-ski jacket; it’s a lean workhorse. It has proven its worth during countless days of backcountry skiing as well as an 18-day Grand Canyon raft trip this spring that turned frigid on more than a few occasions.
Admittedly, the cut isn’t that cute on women. The elastic on the bottom poofs where women don’t want to poof, but the trade-off is that the elastic helps keep the drafts out. (My guy tester liked the cut of his.) Questionable cuteness quotient notwithstanding, the Nano Puff is probably the jacket I wear most. (And the ugly truth is I have 20-plus jackets.) Patagonia’s prices usually prompt eye rolls, but $150? It’s worth every smacker.
--Kate Siber
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November 16, 2009
The Gear Junkie Scoop: Injinji EX-Celerator Socks
When you pay $38 for a pair of socks--that's $19 per foot, excluding tax--they had better be something special. The EX-Celerator Socks from Injinji Footwear, which have individual toe slots and an over-the-calf compression fit, do indeed qualify as special.
Putting them on is a task. The compression legging, made of a
calf-squeezing nylon/Lycra fiber blend, is a tight fit. Add Injinji's
patented "five-toe-sleeve technology," where each piggy has to be
wiggled into place, and pulling on a pair is no fast feat.
But once adjusted and on, the socks feel great. They fit like no other sock I have worn, hugging toes, feet, ankles, and calves like a second skin.
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Lupine Lights the Way
My racing partner and I, Mario Correa, placed second at the 24 Hours of Moab this year. It was a tough course--the first six miles served up some rocky terrain, so it was game on right away. Because we were going to do a lot of night laps, I went in search of one of the best lighting systems out there. The winner: Lupine. We ran the Betty lights on our bars and the Tesla and Wilma on our helmets. We specifically wanted the lights to avoid these common problems during a 24-hour race:
1. Support gets batteries confused: All batteries are interchangeable with Lupine lighting systems.
2. Batteries run out of charge: Lupine batteries can last quite sometime, depending on your power output. Plus, it has a reserve tank.
3. Mounting systems fail or slide around: Lupine lights have two sizes of rubber o-rings that curl around your bars.
4. Light output isn't strong enough: These puppies put a Hollywood movie set to shame.
Bottom line: Lupine is a quality system across the board.
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November 13, 2009
Gear Army: MSR Skinny Too Tent
The first thing out of my mouth when I set up this beast was, "This thing's freakin' huge!"
MSR’s latest addition to its fast-and-light series of tents, the Skinny Too ($250), is a lightweight yet roomy two-person tent for adventures of all types. Did I say roomy? Perhaps generously voluminous, would be more accurate.
Comparable in packed weight (a dainty 4.6 lbs) to its similarly-sized, single-walled competitors, this tent just feels bigger than most. It's hoop design has almost completely-vertical walls which made me feel like I was getting every last inch of its marketed 25 square feet. It's nice to have reprieve from the sloping walls of a dome-style tent too.
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November 12, 2009
The Gear Junkie Scoop: Ultra-Light Hiking
Rod Johnson, owner and founder of Midwest Mountaineering, took a multi-month journey on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) this past summer to push the limits of ultra-light gear. His experiment in minimalism for the great outdoors included more than 1,000 miles of hiking and unconventional gear tricks, such as using bubble-wrap for a camp pad. His food--freeze-dried meals and Clif Bars--was bundled together at night in an odor-proof bag and used as a pillow.
You can take or leave Johnson's unconventional advice. But here are a few field-tested equipment suggestions and trail techniques he employed to trade comfort in camp for a lighter load while walking hours each day on the Pacific Crest Trail.
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