Outdoor Retailer Report - the aftermath

I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but last weekend at the 2007 Outdoor Retailer was the longest blur of a weekend I've experienced in awhile. It feels like just hours ago I was packing for the trip, but yet reflecting on the weekend's humongous amount of tomfoolery finds me thinking it was three times as long as it actually was.

I've never seen so much outdoor gear and so many outdoor-loving people in one centralized place. It was bordering on ironic how many outdoor-related people and events were taking place in what was essentially a sealed off bunker flooded with fluorescent lights.

But it was a blast, and it was eye-opening. The general sense we got was that the industry has put sort of a hold on new technological performance advancements in favor of solving the pollution-from-production problem. So in terms of cool new mind-blowing gadgets, there weren't many. You'll see visuals of all the secret new gear as I start to put together the seemingly endless reels of video Yann and I shot, but some examples of new products you guys should be on the lookout for include a new soft rock cam from Metolius, a new sport climbing shoe from La Sportiva that, in my own opinion, is...the...s*#t, new cams and quickdraws from Black Diamond, new ropes from Petzl, the new Sharma shoe from Evolv, and a cool and tasty new coffee product that will have you stoked to get up in the morning.

My free-sticker collection impressive, my belly bloated by the heavenly amount of free beer pouring out of the place, our random-chance encounter with Timmy O'Neill forcing me to deem him my new personal hero, and with an optimistic outlook on the future of eco-friendly product manufacturing, Yann and I bid adieu to Salt Lake City and returned home to the YourClimbing.com nation.

Watch for tons of great footage from the show to pop up real soon! In the meantime, enjoy the pics...