Zero Hour for Gear Junkie

By STEPHEN REGENOLD

It’s time to head out. Time to double-check my list, kiss the kids goodbye, and get on a plane to Kathmandu! My boarding pass is printed and sitting on my pack. My duffels are crammed full with gear, including new products, some tried-and-true items I never leave home without, and a stash of new and prototype base layers, socks, and outerwear from Hanesbrands. (Was that also a custom Expedition Hanesbrands Buff I saw in the mix?!)

It’s the literal zero hour for my time with Expedition Hanesbrands. The big countdown clock we built for GearJunkie.com’s Everest Channel (http://gearjunkie.com/everest) has ticked down to zero weeks, zero days, and zero minutes. Nepal is calling. See ya later, and goodbye!

The last few months have been a whirlwind of training, packing, gearing up, and preparing for this journey. For the next three weeks, I hope you follow me and the Expedition Hanesbrands team. We’ll start later this week with reports from Kathmandu. Then it’s into the mountains and to the start of the trek, where the team will file reports, photos and videos on the experience.

About a week into the trek, I will catch up with Expedition Hanesbrands’ leader, Jamie Clarke. (He left last week to get a jump start on acclimatization.) Then it’s up and up further still in the mountains, gasping for breath, hoping the body takes hold of the new reality at high altitude. Everest Base Camp is our first goal. Then, Clarke and his team will go for the summit. I’ll be blogging and reporting on the trek, the gear we use, the culture in Nepal, and life at Everest Base Camp in the shadow of Expedition Hanesbrands’ 29,035-foot goal in the sky!

Signing off,

—Stephen Regenold