The Western Mountaineering Flash Vest might make you look like a sailor that just jumped ship, but this life-jacket-styled insulator is an ideal choice for anywhere you might need some more core warmth. At 3.5 ounces this thing is made from an ultralight shell lined with reflective trim and stuffed with 850 fill goose down. A super light coil zipper keeps the weight down and allows you pack the Flash Vest into your palm.
Smith’s Phenom has some pretty lame features like Hop-Up Kits that customize the colors and frame, but it also comes with some new anti-fogging tech that could save your day on the hill. Smith’s Carbonic X lens mimics the natural curvature of your eye like their old Spherical lens, but Smith also bonds the lens with a silicone bead which practically eliminates the chances of delaminating. By preventing delaminating the Phenom will stay fog free for seasons to come. Smith also makes a Phenom with a built-in fan if you like to waste money.
Strap the Zodi Hot Vent Tent Heater to your buddy’s external frame pack and head for the hills. This tent heater provides 10,000 BTUs and runs for 3 to 8 hours on one 16oz propane cylinder. A sealed heat exchanger that probably won’t breakdown keeps potentially deadly gases outside your tent. Or you could just use the money you would spend on this thing and get a warmer sleeping bag that would probably be lighter than your old one. Then you wouldn’t even have to carry this awkward heater and its venting ducts with you.
Leave the Special Blend Commander Snowboarding Pants at home if you’re sneaking around the school parking lot to hit that monster rail. With a built-in boxer top that lets you sag the pants without getting soaked, you won’t be able to make much of a run for it if the rent-a-cops show up. Save the Special Blend pants for pow days on the mountain when you know you’ll be the coolest guy in teeny ski school with a eight inches of boxer top showing below your jacket hem.
The Pterosail is a recumbent trike with a sail and two marine batteries that’s accurately referred to on its website as, “a new form of transportation.†This ungodly monstrosity is made for cross-country “cycling†using wind, human, and electrical power. The sail might make it tough to fit under low bridges or traffic lights, and it’s probably too wide for bike lanes in a city so hopefully you live in the middle of the desert. This is really an ideal doomsday form of transportation. When government breaks down and all the local militias are fighting over gasoline to power their tanks, you’ll still be cruising around—they’ll probably make fun of your ride though.
The Timbuk2 Musette is simple, narrow, over-the-shoulder bag for $70. If it matches your style it might be a good way to carry your hemp yarn, knitting needles, and mate tea gourd, but for most people its lack of laptop padding and restrictive carry space makes it inadequate for actual cycling. Also, the length-wise cut means it won’t get any wrap on your body, so it’ll want to fly in front of you whenever you hit the brakes (assuming you use your messenger bag for actual riding and not just street cred).
The French ski company Zag has entered into an irreversible liquidation process following the withdrawal of a principle shareholder. MySnowSports.com reports that Zag was ready to go into production for their 06/07 line, but without a shareholder to guarantee payment to creditors they had to shutdown. If you liked their $1200 skis now’s the time to get them since no more will be manufactured. (At least now maybe they’ll be affordable.)
Black Diamond’s O1 tele binding makes climbing skin tracks as easy as walking up steep hills at altitude really, really slowly. With a flick of your pole you switch from ski to tour mode which allows the binding to pivot freely across the toe for low-resistance climbing. On the way down the binding locks back to the ski for normal descents. G3 makes a similar binding, but they route the cables at the sides of your feet instead of BD’s underfoot routing.
Arc’teryx must have seen a four-year-old picture of some snowboarders because they’ve released a visor beanie as part of their fall line. That means in three years we should see an Arc’teryx basketball jersey. This hat is just going to look weird on people in their full-on Arc’teryx ski/mountaineering outfits.
