The Pilgrimage

The Gear Junkie crew just returned from Salt Lake City and the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market trade show, a gluttonous spread of outdoors products, multi-story “booths,” caffeinated marketing types, hippy shop owners, free running dogs, swag (“schwag,” whatever), blinking lights, beautiful people modeling merino wool, bowls of Clif Bar samples, and video screens flashing with young guns hucking cliffs on fatty “skiboards.”

John Peacock, web editor of thegearjunkie.com and Outdoor-Retailer-trade-show-virgin, had this to say: “It’s, like, huge, and neverending.”

So what about the gear, you ask? Well. . . Mr. Peacock and myself had dozens of editorial appointments over three days (see sample schedule below), including handshakes and product demos with the likes of Westcomb (cool outerwear co. from Vancouver); Backcountry.com (the behemoth online retailer that’s now introducing its own line of jackets); Outdoor Research (doubled its apparel line); Arc’teryx (new uber-jacket that requires 350 minutes to make by hand in a Vancouver factory); Camelbak (new fizzy nuun-like electrolyte tablets); Merrell (svelte new apparel line); Keen (new bag line, made out of shoes); Inov-8 (orienteering + free-running/parkour shoes!); and so on.

Below is a sneak peak at the (insane) show schedule of meetings we attended over four days. (This is just Saturday).

Watch these pages for elaboration on the gear and goodies we found out Utah way within the next couple of days. . .

THEGEARJUNKIE.com—Outdoor Retailer Winter Market

SHOW SCHEDULE

SATURDAY JANUARY 27TH

9:00—SCARPA, booth 3001
9:30—Gregory Packs
10:00 – Atomic, booth # 1017 (also visit Arch’Teryx)
10:30—open
11:00—Outdoor Research, #13011
11:30—G3 gear, Booth #28001
12:00—Keen, #38051
12:30—Highgear, booth 16005
1:00—breathe
1:30—Teva, #8000 (STEPHEN’s appointment)
1:30—Ex Officio, #12035 (JOHN PEACOCK)
2:00—Brooks, booth #36089
2:30—Coleman, booth 34111
3:00—Indigenous Designs, Booth #1 (MIKE)
3:00—Crazy Creek, Booth # 20045 (JOHN)
3:00—K2, Mike Hattrup (STEPHEN)
3:30—Sugoi, #16043
4:00—Black Diamond + Cloudveil, Booth #6026
4:30—Booth 5042 Sea to Summit,
5:00—Petzl
5:30—Icebreakers party
6:00—Brooks Sports Rundance party, Lumpy’s Sports Bar
7:30—Verde event, Grand American
until 10 pm—Merrell Apparel party, A GALLERY, 1321 South 2100 E

. . .this went on for four days straight (!) . . .