Outdoor Retailer: Fuzzy Underwear and Adventures with a Gold Pass
Posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010
The Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, the twice-annual gear banquet where manufacturers woo retail shops to order their wares, is everything you’ve heard. It’s like the largest REI in the world, thousands of square feet of shiny, sheeny, stuff, except that they’re giving away candy and beer, and if you are lucky, like me, red fleece boxers.
Not just anyone can go — you pay your way in as a manufacturer or retail shop, or bluster your way in as a media member. If you know someone in any of those capacities, it’s worth wrangling a pass for the peep show, and even better for the schwag, which in my case also included a Ski Utah Gold Pass, at least for a day.
You’ve probably heard of the Gold Pass. The single pass that gets you on a chairlift at every one of Utah’s 13 ski areas. The only decision to make each day, after which socks to wear, is where the storm hit hardest. Just a dusting at Alta but a foot of fresh at The Canyons? Just make the drive, ski up to the lift and hop on. Sick of the aggro vibe at Snowbird? Get fresh lines all day long in the woods at Deer Valley. It’ll set you back $3,400, which is actually a bargain considering you get 40 days at each of the 13 areas. Can’t possibly ski that much? It’s okay, the passes are transferable. Problem is, only 120 are sold each year, and there’s a waiting list. So, needless to say, I was pretty pleased to get my grubby mitts on one at Outdoor Retailer last week.
“Don’t lose this,” says Jeff, fixing me with a stare as he hands me the Gold Pass, a normal, card-sized ski pass on a shoestring lanyard. No kidding. The pass is worth double his dented Toyota pickup truck, in which we are currently speeding northward on I-15 in the gray Utah morning. Furthermore, the passes belong to a company he reps for, apparel manufacturer Kuhl, so if we lose them, it’ll be even harder for him to raise the money to pay them back. I put the pass around my neck right away. We’re taking a day off from walking the floor of the show and are on our way to Snowbasin, site of the 2002 Olympic downhill races and notorious for being big, steep, and virtually empty. Neither of us has been there, which made the choice of where to use the pass pretty easy — that and the 10 inches of snow that fell there overnight.
But when we get to Snowbasin, the wind is fierce. Gusting 30 miles per hour at the base of the Gondola, which rises precipitously into the clouds. We wait a half-hour, an hour, buffeted by wind, and finally at 10 a.m. they start loading the gondolas. Even with eight people crammed inside, the cars sway and at one point a dude closest to the window reaches out a grabs a pair of skis — mine, incidentally — that almost fly out of the holsters on the gondola doors. “People are always coming into the shop I work at and saying that their skis fell off the gondola,” he says.
On the descent, we ski blindly, tree to tree, the visibility no more than 80 feet, the wind pushing us around. When we finally get down, the Gondola is still the only lift open and I am about to get back into the maze when Jeff looks at me and says: “Gold Pass.”
“Let’s go check out Powder Mountain,” he says. “It can’t be this bad, and with the pass, we just should.” I can’t argue, and so we pile into the truck and make the 30-minute drive to Powder Mountain, an area neither of us has ridden. Which is the easy part. The hard part? Finding the lift. When we arrive at the ticket office at the very end of a long, steep road, it’s dumping snow and the visibility is horrible. Still, it’s surprising that there’s no lift in sight. We grab trail maps and head inside the scrappy lodge to check them out. It’s 11 a.m., but inside the tiny, rec-room-like bar there are already a half-dozen people spaced along the edges, each silently, and sullenly, nursing a beer. It’s kind of a desperate scene. I spread the map out on a bar beside a 20-something girl clutching a beer and staring blankly out the window. “Do you know where the lifts are?” I ask her.
“Hell,” she says, looking flustered, “I just spent an hour getting lost.” She turns away, embarrassed. But then she leans over to look at the map with us. “I think this is where I took my snowboard off and threw it,” she says, pointing. “Powder Keg,” she says. “ I remember seeing that and then laughing, ’cause I really wanted a beer.” Finally, we agree that to get to the lifts we actually go downhill from the parking lot. And there they were, a little slow, but completely uncrowded, leaving us fresh tracks all day. The terrain is nothing like the Little Cottonwood resorts, and they hadn’t gotten much snow yet, to which the bases of my skis can now attest, but between the adventure of hitting two new areas in one day, without paying a cent, and the memorable encounter with snowboard girl, we agreed we’d made the best of the Gold Pass.
As for the OR show, here’s a little taste, like Cloudeveil’s Stettner jacket, an insulated soft shell that ups the function by including Scholler’s impressive c-change membrane, a waterproof, breathable fabric whose pores actually increase in size when the temperature increases, helping venting and moisture management.
(Cloudveil designer Donna Veraguth shows off the new Hoback and Stettner insulated jackets.)
Other cool stuff? How about Smith’s ABS-shell Vantage helmet, which vents in two positions in two different spots, but still weighs a paltry 15 ounces and is wired for sound with designed-for but separately sold Skull Candy audio system.
The trend of the show, though, was undoubtedly the ultralight touring boots that a slate of companies were previewing. I haven’t skied any of them, but thought it was a cool trend.
Dynafit led the way with their TLT5, heavier than last year’s Dyna randonee racing boot, but stronger, less expensive, and still a paltry 2.5 pounds. What sets it apart is the removable plastic shield that goes under the two buckles at the front of the ankle. Take it off for a crazy range of motion front and aft, for climbing, and then put it in for stiffness on the descent.
Garmont rolled out their 2-buckle Masterlight, a 2.4-pound feather of a boot that saves weight but preserves strength by spiderwebbing the plastic shell. The thing that sets the boot apart from the others is the rocker on the forefoot, which is designed to keep your hips from sagging back during weight transfer while climbing. I haven’t tried the boot, so can’t say how it works.
(Black Diamond Quadrant and Scarpa Maestrale)
Black Diamond weighs in, so to speak, with a series of three- and four-buckle boots, the flagship of which is the four-buckle, banana-and-lime-colored Quadrant. Even at 7 pounds, 10 ounces, it’s reported to be easily able to drive a 100mm underfoot ski. It should be a hit with the backcountry-only crowd.
Stepping right up to compete with Black Diamond in that category is Scarpa, who introduced their Maestrale, a four buckle, sub-seven-pound boot that stands out for what Scarpa calls Alpine Axial Overlap, where the tongue hinges outward to open the shell for entry/exit, or removal of the liner.
As for the fleece boxers, sorry, they aren’t actually available — Polartec made them for vendors to demonstrate the new Thermal Pro insulation. If you are the owner of a Gold Pass, however, drop me a line, we may be able to work something out.
Frederick Reimers is a freelance writer, skier and kayaker who lives in Portland.
