To say OR is a blur would be an understatement. If you took notes, you don’t understand what you wrote. If you didn’t, you get the fun of looking through a bunch of press releases and a giant stack of business cards, trying to put the two together.

Thankfully though, you get to see a bunch of really neat products that aren’t coming out for another 6 to 9 months. Occasionally, you also get to play around with them in the woods. Here’s a small sampling of the ones we liked:

Salewa

While I hadn’t heard of the company before the show, I’m told they own Dynafit. They’re part of the large trend of European brands making their way to the states and they’ve opened with an amazing innovation.

The Guide Pro boot looks like most other mountaineering boots these days. It’s crampon compatible, insulated, and has all the required features. Except, there’s that dial on the side. That’s where things get interesting.

Until now, all mountaineering boots have had no real flex in their soles. This is to support crampons and provide a platform to use them. This also makes it a gigantic pain on the approach. You can either lug a second set of boots with you, or you can deal with the pain of not being able to walk correctly.

Salewa took inspiration from AT ski boots and put walk and climb modes in the boots. With the turn of a key you can make the boots stiff, or bendable.

I must try these boots out.

Mountain Equipment

Another storied brand is making their way over to our shores in the European invasion of the outdoor market. For quite a few years, Mountain Equipment has made some very well thought out gear in Europe. Until now, this hasn’t been available in the US.

The company makes jackets with all of Gore’s latest fabrics and puts quite a few nice details in them. One jacket I saw had rubber strips under the hood. This way the hood wouldn’t fall off your helmet and would allow you to look side to side easier. There’s also a line of very nice sleeping bags that have their own little details added in.

The company says their products should be priced somewhere between Marmot and Arc’teryx. The jackets I briefly played with appeared to have the same build quality that Arc’Teryx has.

ACR

ACR has come out with the world’s smallest and lightest personal locator beacon. At 4.6 oz, this is not something that will weigh you down. Check out the video for more:

adidas

I thought it was a bit strange that a company like adidas was coming out with outdoor gear. Then I took a look at what they had.

The company has a gigantic line of outdoor gear. Not all of it looks like it’s perfect out of the gate, but there’s definitely a lot of thought behind the lines. Over all, I’m pretty impressed that they managed to come out with as much as they did as good as it looks the first time around.

Hopefully I’ll be able to try out some of their products in the near future. They certainly show a lot of promise.

Dynafit

The company synonymous with backcountry skiing is taking up a summer sport. What they’re calling ‘Speed Mountaineering’ is a line of products made for alpine running and alpine biking.

The unisex feline shoe on the left is one of the products they’ve come out with. I don’t know how they perform, but Dynafit certainly knows how to style them.

I’m not one to trail run or go speed mountaineering, but these look like they’d be killer for a super light mountain hike. We’ll see how well they turn out.

More to come

This only scratches the surface of what’s coming out in the next year. We’re hopefully going to be able to try out some of it and then give it away to our readers. So, keep your eyes peeled.

Now if only I could catch up with the massive amount of sleep I lost during the show.

As most of our readers know, the many flavors of Gore-Tex fabric have become the go to fabric for high end outdoor apparel. Companies like Arc’Teryx use their fabric exclusively due to this status in the market. The fabric can be found in everything from jackets and pants to gloves and boots.

Over the past few years though, there have been a few competitors that have come out with new products that have some rather compelling features over Gore-Tex. GE’s eVent fabric is significantly more breathable than any type of Gore-Tex fabric. OutDry also has some very nice features for gloves and boots. On the whole though, neither of these fabrics have managed to make much of an impact, as not many manufacturers have been using it in their products. Ultimately this means the public never gets to experience the product, and thus the fabric doesn’t gain a foothold in the market.

Now, we apparently know why companies haven’t been apt to use either of these fabrics. According to the complaint, part of the contract that Gore enforces is an exclusivity clause. If a company decides to use Gore-Tex for one part of their clothing line, they can’t use eVent or OutDry for another.

In 2008, REI adopted eVent for their line of waterproof breathable jackets. According to REI spokesperson Lilly Catalinich, “Shortly thereafter, Gore terminated the licenses under which our REI footwear was manufactured.” W.L. Gore has not commented on the reason behind terminating REI’s license.

Losing a license for Gore-Tex fabric can be devastating for a clothing manufacturer. Since many consumers believe Gore-Tex is the only breathable fabric on the market, sales can drop significantly if a company can’t produce clothing using Gore-Tex. Thus, the threat of terminating ones license to make Gore-Tex garments is anti-competitive and designed to keep competitors out of the market.

The founders of OutDry sold their company to Columbia last year for an undisclosed amount. “We weren’t expecting such an unfair and really frustrating situation” said Matteo Morlacchi, one of the brothers behind OutDry.

The FTC in the US is also investigating Gore-Tex for similar complaints brought forth by General Electric. That investigation is significantly further along than the EU complaint.

Personally, we have received a somewhat similar treatment when we directly compared Gore-Tex and OutDry in an article. All of a sudden, we had a massive number of negative comments claiming we messed up the test and no positive comments. Looking through the referrer logs, all of this traffic was coming from a W.L. Gore sponsored forum. The massive amount of heat we received was completely unlike anything we had experienced in the past. Even though our test was completely repeatable and I explained anything people asked, the pressure continued.

While I don’t believe this was directly from Gore itself, sponsoring a forum of ‘techs’ who try to rip apart any website that tries to compare Gore fabrics against their competition only serves one purpose in the end. Would I ever want to run another one of those articles and have to deal with the heat it generates? Or, should I take the easy route?

You can read more about the situation here.

Steven Blaney, Member of Parliament for Lévis-Bellechasse said “I am particularly proud to be the messenger for my government today, because I am convinced that this gesture of reconciliation will allow hundreds of families to return to the sites that they helped to build, where they grew up, where an important part of their history took place.”

Details on exactly how the passes will be distributed have yet to be worked out, but Canada expects that they will be implemented by spring 2011.

More information available here.

One of the pair had a cell phone on them and attempted to contact mountain rescue, but were unable to get through. The climbers had put the numbers for the French and the Italian mountain rescue services in their phone, but the numbers had apparently been disconnected.

By the time they figured this out, their cell phone battery was nearly drained and the pair resorted to calling a friend back in England. Their friend managed to contact the proper authorities and arranged a rescue for them. After a cold night on the mountain and two aborted rescue attempts, the pair was eventually picked up by a helicopter. Total time trapped on a ledge? 21 hours. Ouch.

- Via Google

More information available here.

The one thing that stuck with me after these panel discussions is that there are a lot of parallels between the magazine industry now and the .com era from 1998/99 to the bust in 2001. Back then I was an intern in an IT department at a software company. There was a lot of hype, a lot of talk about ‘paradigm shifts’, and a complete uncertainty of where we were headed. This now seems to be repeating itself in the publishing industry. What makes me laugh is that the lingo now is almost exactly what I heard 10 years ago. There’s also a gigantic land rush for market share without a concrete plan to make money.  Fortunately, it’s not quite as bad as the last time around (people are actually trying to make money this time), but it’s pretty similar.

This all stems from the fact that print media is on its way to being a historical fact, rather than a daily involvement in peoples lives. Magazines are shutting down left and right, newspapers are finding ad rates dropping through the floor as distribution dwindles. For years the industry has relied on a two prong approach to revenue. They would charge subscribers a fee to receive their product and then they would charge advertisers a much higher fee to advertise to their subscribers. From newspaper people I’ve heard from, the subscription fees pretty much only covered distribution of the paper, and the advertising paid for everything else. According to some sources, subscription fees accounted for as little as 3% of the income for a newspaper. I haven’t been able to track down similar stats for magazines, but I can’t imagine it was much different on that side of the industry.

Now that people are moving away from print and on to the web, distribution costs have shrunk so dramatically that it’s almost to the point of being free. This means that people also don’t want to pay for what they might have paid for in the past. If you no longer have to pay for that Heidelberg press, why should I pay for your product online? Famously, News Corp doesn’t believe this and has instituted pay walls on many of their sites. How’s that working out? From the articles out there, not well.

So where does this leave us? It was always about the advertising. While advertising has always paid for the industry, the problem now is that competition is up significantly, and ad rates are a lot lower on the web than they were in print. The publishing industry as a whole has to find a way to get ad rates up, most likely by delivering a very targeted demographic to advertisers. That is at least some good news for the outdoor publishing industry. The outdoor industry is about as targeted as you can get and includes quite a few people with lots of disposable income (also how Arc’Teryx can sell $600 jackets regularly).

However, what I haven’t heard from either of these panels or anywhere else really is a full understanding of what blogs mean to the industry. Most of the larger media outlets seem to dismiss blogs entirely as not being real competition and thus not worth their effort. However, there’s a much bigger problem the giants of the industry need to consider. Small blogs push ad rates down simply because the same people that read Backpacker or Outdoor also read blogs. The targeted demographic that the big names in the industry cater to, also reads blogs. Blogs also have much lower profit expectations than any of the big magazines. We’re not supporting a staff of writers, photographers, editors, IT people, secretaries, facilities management, etc, etc. Our costs are significantly lower than that of Backpacker. Of course, since the big names may have 20 authors writing articles, they can cover a lot more than a place like Daily Hiker. However, there are a lot more blogs out there than there are Backpacker magazines.

When it comes down to it, the same type of people that read Backpacker or Outside online are going to read a few outdoor blogs. With ad rates being much cheaper on a blog than at a magazine’s web site, how is a magazine going to compete with a blog?

In response, some of the bigger names in the industry are releasing iPhone or Android apps and are also starting to release some much higher quality content. This is what I think the outdoor media has understood a lot better than the rest of the media in general. People want high quality content online that’s much more than just text. Both of the panel discussions have had the big names in the industry repeat over and over again that it’s all about the content. People want high quality content and if they don’t get it, they’ll go somewhere else.

Thus, the gauntlet has been thrown down for outdoor blogs in general. Instead of the major outdoor media figuring out how to compete with us, we need to figure out how to compete with them. While blogs like Daily Hiker don’t have nearly the resources to produce and update a high quality iPhone or Android app, blogs have simply dropped the ball on the content side. With the price of digital SLRs that take HD movies coming down significantly, there’s really no excuse for poor quality photos or videos anymore. While I know we at Daily Hiker have some room to improve in more than one aspect, I simply will not compromise on the quality of the photography.

While this may not apply to every single blog in the world, it certainly applies to outdoor blogs. The outdoors is an inherently visual experience that has to be told with high quality photos and video. Many of the outdoor blogs I see out there use mostly stock or poor quality photos for gear reviews. The pictures on other types of posts are just as poor. It may be a pain at times, but we need to improve the multimedia experience for readers in general. If I can carry an SLR up Mt. Rainier, anyone can take a decent camera out with them hiking.

If we expect to be taken seriously, we must improve. Blogs may have the upper hand when it comes to the web for the moment, but that’s not going to be for that much longer. It’s pretty clear that the major names in the outdoor industry are making it their mission to be the best on the web. They have quite a few more resources than blogs in general, but we are much more nimble. While I don’t see myself doing big pieces on mountaineering in Peru like the big names can (unless I decide to take a vacation and write an article about it), we can compete much better on a local level.

We are far more nimble when it comes to content about local hikes or outdoor news. If we want to do a piece on climbing Glacier Peak, we don’t have to get approval from an editor and the budget for a flight out. I can hop in the car with a bunch of gear and a camera and off I go. To some extent the big names are trying to counter this by crowd sourcing hike reviews, but that just means we need to be better than what someone will write in a paragraph on Backpacker’s web site.

Additionally, outdoor blogs have to be more than gear review sites. While there is something to be said for the value of an independent gear review by someone that doesn’t get ad money from the company like a Backpacker or Outside may, there is a limit to the usefulness of the review. If we expect to remain relevant, we have to do more than simply review new gear. We have to cover news stories about what’s important in the outdoor world. We have to include interesting outdoor stories. We must create new, original content. Daily Hiker certainly isn’t perfect in this regard, but we’re trying. That’s a lot more than I can say for some of the other blogs out there.

So I guess what I’m saying is that we have to try harder. Day jobs and life may get in the way, but if we expect our blogs to actually serve a purpose in the world, we need to devote the time and effort it takes to make them what they should be. If we don’t, the magazines are going to catch up and beat us at our own game.

Well, the big news of Outdoor Retailer this week is the announcement by Columbia that they’re buying OutDry. We had heard there was going to be a big OutDry announcement, but never expected this. Looking back though, it makes sense. Mountain Hardwear (owned by Columbia) had completely replaced Gore-Tex with OutDry in its new line of gloves. Quite a few other manufacturers had also started implementing the technology too. Wenger had redesigned its line of boots with OutDry, and Kamik had a couple boots with OutDry to name a few.

Here’s the press release for the announcement:

Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM), a leading innovator in active outdoor apparel, footwear, accessories and equipment, announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire OutDry Technologies S.r.l., which owns the intellectual property and other assets comprising the OutDry brand and related business, via a cash purchase from Nextec S.r.l., based near Milan, Italy. The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2010, subject to customary closing conditions, and is not expected to have a material effect on the company’s 2010 operating results.

“Our consumers demand quality, performance, and superior functionality, and seek the most innovative solutions that allow them to challenge the edges of their potential. Our OutDry gloves have revolutionized our ability to deliver exceptional weather protection, warmth, and dexterity, providing consumers with superior performance over bladder-based construction methods.”

“Columbia’s acquisition of OutDry is the latest example of our strategy to build a portfolio of innovative technologies that deliver performance and protection benefits of greatest importance to outdoor consumers,” said Tim Boyle, president and CEO of Columbia. “We view OutDry’s proprietary construction methods, under development since 1998, as the ‘gold standard’ for producing waterproof, breathable footwear and gloves that outperform products still relying on the 25-year-old method of internal booties and bladders. We intend to deploy OutDry across our portfolio of outdoor brands, including Columbia®, Mountain Hardwear®, Sorel® and Montrail®, as well as to market OutDry to select leading brands within and beyond the outdoor industry.”

Boyle concluded, “We believe the combination of OutDry in our footwear and gloves, together with our new Omni-Dry™ ultrabreathable waterproof membrane found in select Columbia apparel styles beginning in Spring ‘11, means that Columbia now offers the most compelling combination of technologies to deliver head-to-toe waterproof breathable performance to outdoor consumers.”

OutDry’s patented and patent-pending construction methods bond a waterproof, breathable membrane directly to the inside of the outermost layer of a shoe or glove, thereby preventing water or dirt from penetrating to internal airspaces and fabric layers as commonly occurs with products that rely on bulky booties or bladders. OutDry improves waterproof, breathable performance, reduces water-weight gain, maintains insulation capacity, and improves fit and dexterity, resulting in greater comfort. Avoiding water penetration beyond the outermost layer may also help reduce the incidence of mold, mildew and bacteria that often develop when internal fabric layers become wet.

Columbia’s vice president of global footwear, Mark Nenow, sees significant benefits for footwear consumers, noting “OutDry finally delivers the waterproof breathable innovation that outdoor consumers have been asking for. This is ground breaking waterproof breathable footwear innovation for the mountaineer, the hiker, the multisport athlete, the trail running enthusiast, the road runner – any consumer that wants waterproof footwear without having to sacrifice performance, fit, light weight and comfort.”

In Fall 2009, Columbia’s Mountain Hardwear brand introduced a selection of high-performance gloves manufactured using OutDry’s patented construction processes.

Mountain Hardwear President Topher Gaylord commented, “Our consumers demand quality, performance, and superior functionality, and seek the most innovative solutions that allow them to challenge the edges of their potential. Our OutDry gloves have revolutionized our ability to deliver exceptional weather protection, warmth, and dexterity, providing consumers with superior performance over bladder-based construction methods.”

OutDry has gained increased awareness since winning the coveted Ecodesign award at the Volvo Sports Design competition at ISPO 2008, considered one of the most prestigious events within the global outdoor industry.

Nextec S.r.l. chief executive officer and co-founder Luca Morlacchi added, “We believe Columbia’s decision to purchase OutDry’s technology portfolio and to incorporate it across its portfolio of leading outdoor brands will help raise awareness of OutDry’s unique solution to producing truly waterproof breathable footwear and gloves. We look forward to working with our new partners at Columbia Sportswear to further develop the OutDry technology, and to market OutDry to other leading brands, extending its truly waterproof breathable performance benefits to consumers around the world.”

Nextec S.r.l. cofounders and brothers Luca and Matteo Morlacchi will serve as chief executive officer and general manager, respectively, of OutDry Technologies S.r.l., which will remain headquartered near Milan, Italy, and operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia Sportswear Company.

Columbia and OutDry plan to provide live demonstrations of OutDry’s performance benefits during the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market trade show at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, August 3-6, 2010, Booth #155-219.
The full press release is available here.
Here’s hoping that Columbia takes OutDry to its full potential.

Everett, Wash., July 6, 2010—This weekend visitors driving onto the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest will need a map showing what type of motor vehicles they can use and where they can use them. The maps are free at Forest Service offices and on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest website. Roads and trails will no longer be signed in the field as to permissible uses.

The map changes how the Forest Service will enforce road closures to motor vehicles on national forests. Those travelling on a forest road, area or trail not shown on the MVUM can be cited.

The map is a result of the 2005 National Travel Management Rule requiring each national forest to assess road systems to limit environmental damage caused by off-highway vehicles, such as jeeps, motorcycles and quads, and to create a uniform system of enforcement across the country. The rule does not apply to snowmobiles.

The entire 2,600 mile road system on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is open to state licensed, street legal vehicles. About 100 miles of forest trails are open to motorbikes and one area, Evans Creek, is open to other vehicles including quads.

The Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest did not make any changes or close roads to vehicles during this process. “We actually started several decades ago looking at motor vehicle use patterns and making decisions on the use of roads and trails based on public involvement,” said Rob Iwamoto, Forest Supervisor.

To keep up with on-going changes to road and trail systems, each national forest will update its map annually. For more information about the map, or to print it, go to http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/mbs/.

Via AAI.

• Recreation activities on National Forests and Grasslands sustain 223,000 jobs in the rural communities within 50 miles of the National Forests and Grasslands, where visitors purchase goods and services for their recreational activity. These include services of outfitters and guides for whitewater rafting and big game hunting, alpine and Nordic ski areas, and lodging as well as supplies from local businesses such as groceries, fishing tackle, and bicycle rentals.
• Visitors spend $13 billion directly in those communities within 50 miles of the National Forests and Grasslands. Those dollars spent in turn within the local communities generate $14.5 billion in economic activity.
• The national estimate for recreation visits to National Forest System lands in 2009 is 173.5 million. Additionally, there were more than 300 million occasions of people driving to simply view the scenery and wildlife on National Forests.
• Visitor satisfaction is very high, with an overall satisfaction rate of 94 percent.
• More than 57 percent of visits to National Forest System lands are done primarily for physical activity, such as hiking, biking, and skiing.
• Approximately 83 percent of visitors are content with the value received for any fees paid.
• 98 percent of the lands within National Forests and Grasslands can be accessed without paying a fee.
• Recreation visitation on national forests includes diverse clientele.

The full report is available here. A summary of the report is also available here.

One interesting thing I did notice in the summary document is that visits to the forests are mostly male. Of all the visits to National Forests, 65% are done by males. For the wilderness, it’s not much better at 61.1% male. Additionally, 95.8% of all National Forest visitors are white.

Conservationists are upset that the bill as being touted as a “wilderness” bill because the inclusion of motorized vehicle access. Recreationists are in favor of the bill, as it sets aside more land for them to play on. The problem with the CIEDRA bill is one we are seeing more frequently these days–”wilderness” legislation rolled into other, less related topics. Because the real focus of the bill is somewhere else, legislation affected wilderness slips by unnoticed. Luckily, organizations like Sierra Club are getting the word out about these issues.

One of the most obvious problems with the CIEDRA bill is the “no net loss” of recreational land included in the wording. That means if a trail or area is closed due to overuse and environmental damage, another trail or area of equal size must be opened to replace it.

Joe Rember, a former wilderness ranger in Central Idaho wrote a nice (but long) commentary on the CIEDRA bill in the Boise Weekly when the legislation was originally introduced–though a few years old now, many of his points still hold true today.

Read more about CIEDRA.

The World Bank seems to think this idea has a shot at working as his idea was one of 26 winners in their “100 ideas to save the planet” competition at the end of last year. While Mr Gold has not yet received the $200,000 prize, he has currently painted 2 hectares of mountainside white and hopes to expand to a total of 3 mountains for a total of 70 hectares of painted landscape.

It should be noted that Mr Gold is not a scientist and has no formal training in the matter. He says he has read up on glaciology however. There are some that says the scheme may have some improvement. Thomas Condom, a glaciologist at the French Institute for Research and Development says “On a local scale, it might have an impact, it might change a trend, improve things a little.”

Glacial melt is a huge problem in Peru. The country contains 70% of the world’s tropical glaciers and warming client has already melted 22% of glacial ice since 1970.

Read more about the story at the BBC.