An 'Outdoors' Halloween

Halloween is upon us. This year, instead of investing in a cheap costume you’ll use only once, why not drop the dress-up budget on a costume that will keep on giving! Spurned by a Gear Junkie Twitter follower this week who commented on a Kokatat dry suit looking like a perfect Halloween getup, I now present a few other options, a half-dozen Halloween costume ideas culled from the Gear Junkie archives that can do trick-or-treat! as well as double duty in woods, mountains, or waves around the world. —Stephen Regenold

Left to right, here we have the retro-grunge look going with Burton’s GORE-TEX-based U.S. Snowboarding Team 2010 Olympic uniform; the Sea to Summit Packable mesh suit (click and scroll down) with Permethrin treatment, good for flies and scaring small children; and I/O Bio Merino’s Pilot Suit, a base-layer union suit that’ll wick sweat, insulate, and keep you looking like a Ninja running through the night.

Here is the unconventional — but fully surf-ready! — RDT Star Trek wetsuit; Spock ears not included. The uber-cozy — and Mount Everest ready! — Eddie Bauer First Ascent men’s Peak XV Down Suit (click and scroll to end) offers a marshmallow-man look with the added advantage of extreme high-wind protection above 8000 meters. And for speed on the ski slopes as well as that happy All American Skinsuit look outdoors on October 31, the Spyder 2010 Winter Olympic Skier Speed Suit is a viable costume option you might consider hard.

The Canada Goose Snow Mantra Parka is in the running as the World’s Warmest Winter Coat. It has a large tunnel hood with a coyote-fur ruff and a certain disembodied look that comes only with a parka stuffed inches thick with pounds of goose down insulation. Tip a boat in cold water and your core temp can immediately plunge. The Kokatat GORE-TEX Front Entry dry suit will keep you safe — and it can swing a superhero theme on Halloween night. Another Goose option, the exclusive “Yuki Expedition” parka from Canada Goose is a cousin of the Snow Mantra, though tweaked with some rare style by Japanese-born fashion designer Yuki Matsuda. It costs $1,750 but immediately qualifies in the crossover costume category with its touted “eastern sensitivity and a street-funk orientation.”

Last, for the minimalists out there, Vibram offers an idea via two buff naked athletes tattooed and scrawled upon with observations about “natural running movement and the maladies of the running shoe industry.” Scariest of all? Look at their feet. The Vibram FiveFingers foot-gloves are actual shoes with toes! Trick or treat, no doubt.

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