Whenever I hear about a new outerwear company entering the ski industry fray, I get excited. I have too often been forced to choose between buying a high-priced, mediocre jacket from a ski-specific company; or a less expensive and more appealing piece from a snowboard-specific manufacturer. It’s not hard to guess what the outcome of that dilemma is 99% of the time. I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in this experience. For the purpose of my rant, I think we need to examine how we got to this point. After all, someone was supplying fashionable outerwear to the masses before snowboarding even existed. What happened?
Most young skiers probably have parents who ski. Therefore, you’ve probably taken a glance at their chosen outerwear when they hit the hill. I was introduced to the sport by a few friends of the family. Their outerwear choices ranged from a pair of yellow Helly Hansen overalls worn over some type of sweater, to the Batsuit technicality of a matching-integratable Phenix suit. It suffices to say, when these well-meaning souls took my brother and I out to the local hill, we wanted to snowboard. Continue reading this entry »
It’s raining outside, and it’s cold. When I was a kid, an age before internet edits, I’d be really pumped about this cold rain. It meant that winter was on its way, and I’d be blissfully dreaming that the rain on my window was snowflakes up on the hill. My cocoon of ignorance was uninterrupted because dial-up internet was waaaay too slow for live webcams to actually work, and the computer at my parents’ house was always one virus away from going molten.
