I know a lot of peo­ple post on the Out­door Retail­er show. It is a hec­tic and amaz­ing trade show where all of the lat­est gear is on display.

There are some great write-ups around the web about the show and the lat­est and great­est prod­ucts being dis­played, like this one from Will Rietveld: https://gossamergear.com/wp/buzz-blog/outdoor-retailer-winter-2014-trade-show-part-1-pre-show-hiking-loads-interesting-new-gear-technologies-lightweight-backcountry-travel

and this one from Liz Thomas: http://www.eathomas.com/2014/01/24/sneak-peak-at-the-useful-quirky-and-innovative-new-gear-at-outdoor-retailer/

I won’t go into any­thing that they have men­tioned, but I feel that there are a few things that should be high­light­ed that have been glossed over about the show and some of the new gear being debuted.

Ice­break­er Debuts Meri­noLOFT: This seems like a ground­break­ing step for a lot of rea­sons. Smart­wool was also show­ing some insu­la­tion lay­ers at the show. They were all very styl­ish and lifestyle ori­ent­ed instead of meet­ing my ultra­light back­pack­ing needs. How­ev­er that is com­plete­ly ok with me because for every­day use I don’t need to shave ounces. I think this could trans­late to even more inno­va­tion down the road. Wool has incred­i­ble odor reduc­ing and “warm when wet” prop­er­ties, which could take the best of both down and syn­thet­ic insu­la­tion and bring them together.

Down is the byprod­uct of the duck and goose meat indus­try. There are cur­rent­ly heavy price increas­es on down because of a short­age due to the bird flu epi­demics in Asia, increased demand, and decreased  farm­ing of ducks and geese. Hope­ful­ly this does­n’t lead to more “live pluck­ing” at down farms. Most peo­ple con­sid­er this prac­tice inhumane.

Geese after live pluck­ing. Pho­to cour­tesy of PETA.

I am excit­ed for the Meri­noLOFT tech­nol­o­gy used at Ice­break­er because it is renew­able, sus­tain­able, and biodegrad­able. They take the meri­no wool scraps, those that would be thrown out because they pill off when they make the yarns, and process those into a meri­no insu­la­tion. Wool is sheared annu­al­ly and is a renew­able and sus­tain­able mate­r­i­al, and by using by prod­ucts of the process make this even more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. I look for­ward to see­ing where this tech­nol­o­gy goes mov­ing forward.

Note: I have not used any of these prod­ucts yet, so I am unaware of the R val­ue of the insulation.

Tur­boP­up:

This new “bar” for dogs has a lot of poten­tial. I brought home a few sam­ples from the show and Yoni loves them! They are made from real ingre­di­ents and are very healthy (I even tried one when I was hun­gry at the show). Ultra­light hik­ers are always look­ing for a way to pare ounces. This bar has the poten­tial to shave POUNDS! As we know weight sav­ings leads to effi­cien­cy, decreased ener­gy out­put, and the abil­i­ty to go far­ther and be more agile. Since your dog can’t talk back to you when it is tired, the com­fort of know­ing your dog is doing well and ready to keep going is price­less. I did the math and for Yoni’s size Tur­boP­up rec­om­mends 3 bars per day. I would give her 4 so she would have the extra calo­ries on trail. Yoni eats near­ly 2.5 pounds of Pup­py Chow per day on the trail. Sim­ply put, if Yoni ate Tur­boP­up only every day she could save a stun­ning 50% of her pack weight! Instead of 8.8 pounds of dog food for 4 days, she would only need between 4–5 pounds of food (16 bars at 4.5 ounces per bar). Now if I could only cut my food weight in half and still be car­ry­ing enough calories!

The down­fall is that they are more expen­sive than bagged dog food. That being said I would high­ly rec­om­mend Tur­boP­up for any dog that is get­ting used to car­ry­ing a pack, on a long stretch with­out resup­ply, or any own­er that wants to make sure that their dog is not over­bur­dened. Remem­ber your dog will enjoy the trail a lot more car­ry­ing less weight, just like you do!