This was my fifth time attending the Outdoor Retailer Winter show, and it was no less daunting. It always takes a while to get over the sheer size and craziness and get to business, but I had to focus, starting off Day 1 with appointments right away.
As I wandered the show floor in between appointments, a few things started to catch my eye. I started off with a chat with JetBoil, the popular ‘all-in-one’ stove maker. They have a new design for their neoprene sleeve that has a cool indicator thingee on the side (you come up with a better term…). As your water heats, the flames turn orange. When all three are orange it means your water is at a boil. This is a simple change, but if you’ve ever tried to take one of those tight JetBoil lids off while the stove was running to see if your water was at a boil, you’ll appreciate the help here.

I have some friends who are very fond of carrying wine for an evening treat in camp, and this is the new thing for them: Platypus Wine Preservation system. This isn’t just for the outdoors nuts – this is meant to store opened wine at home as well, with its airtight, oxygen-free reservoir. I occasionally will carry wine in for overnighters and my current method is to repackage a bottle in plastic water bottles, which is obviously not an optimal solution (which is why I usually carry my cheapest table wine in to camp). I look forward to trying one of these out.

Another exciting thing from Day 1 was attending the Lowrance press conference. Long a straggler in the outdoor navigation handheld GPS market, they’re coming out with guns blazing, releasing a new Endura line to compete with the units being made by Garmin, Magellan, and DeLorme. My impression is that they’ve sat back and watched Garmin and Magellan race each other to market while making many mistakes. Learning from these mistakes, Lowrance looks like they’ve put a lot of thought and work into this new line. As much as I love my Garmin Colorado, I’d really like to try one of these out when they’re ready.

It’s not an OR show without the evening happy hours. I became a regular at Rogue Shoes, who have built an interesting partnership with Rogue Brewing Company. Their beer was flowing freely every evening, and I even got to try on a pair of ‘Brewshoes’. Not hiking footwear, but comfy, post-hike, beer-drinking footwear! You have to love a company that made custom galoshes for the Rogue brewers to wear on their brewery floor.
And just because, I couldn’t go without sharing an image from the Icebreaker booth. Icebreaker makes some amazing wool clothing, and it’s nice to see their sheep look happy….