Friends Don't Let Friends Wear Jeans While Snowboarding

I try to not rip on other people's taste in clothing, whether on the hill or off. But I do question some people's judgment.

I came off the top of the list when I saw a guy in jeans. He was sitting on the snow, getting into what was obviously a rental board.

Was he out with some friends? If so, why didn't anyone tell warn him? "You're going to be sitting down a lot. Don't wear jeans. Wear some rain paints. Some nylon wind pants. Something. But not jeans."

Gear: Obermeyer Spring Gloves

It's springtime, which means that your cold-weather gloves may just be too hot for riding. So what do you take on the mountain with you for that snowboarding session? Spring gloves.

I've been trying some Obermeyer gloves. They're lightweight but cover your hands well. The shell is 96% nylon and 4% polyurethane, mostly around the wrist. The topside of the hand is nylon, while there's an extra coating of leather on the underside--on the palm, fingers, and wrist.

The gloves have a cinching strap that hooks across the top of the wrist, with velcro. Truth be told, I have worn them more driving about town than on the slopes, so I can't tell you how water-repellent on the slopes they are. I do know that they don't hold up too well if you try to fish chunks of ice out of standing water, as I did about a week ago. I had to let them dry overnight.

If memory serves, they do a good job with a casual amount of snow. Just don't expect them to stay dry if you're always wiping out in spring slush. (Overly pessimistic? Perhaps. I prefer to be on the cautious side in writing a review.)

They come in both black and silver. (I'm showing the silver since it displays better on the screen.) Unfortunately one glove is already showing a bit of wear: there's a stray thread near the cuff, and there's a slight separation of nylon and leather on one of the fingers.

I also have a pair of spring gloves from the North Face.

They're mostly polyester with some spandex to help promote a snug fit, but they feels cheap, and are more suitable for even warmer weather than the Obermeyer glove.

Gear: Obermeyer base layers

This season I decided to add to my clothing collection. So I bought some base layer clothing from Obermeyer, both a shirt and a pair of pants. Now I wish had I bought more.

The shirt, a zip-T, is oh-so-comfy, especially compared with the Marmot shirts I have been riding in for years; no scratchiness here. (To be fair to Marmot, perhaps the shirts have just aged.)

The Obermeyer UltraGear Pro base layers come in 3 models: 50, 75, and 150. Each number is successively heavier, and all use Polartec fabric. The shirts come either in a crew neck or zip-T style.



The pants are very snug around the waist, or as the company call it, they are "performance fit." Perhaps the ski heritage of Obermeyer calls for a super-tight fit, but I could recommend buying one size bigger than you might otherwise (I picked mine off a chart in the catalog).

Impulsive Shopping at Steep and Cheap

If you look at shopping as the thrill of the chase, you might take a look at the web site SteepAndCheap.com.

SAC, as it's often abbreviated in Internet discussion forums, sells a lot of gear for the outdoors: clothing, helmets, altimeters, tents, sunglasses, camp stoves and the like.

It has a somewhat unusual business model. SAC doesn't, like a traditional merchant, have a lot of "shelves" of stuff that you can look at. Instead, it sells one item at a time--and only one item at a time--until it's gone. Then another item comes up on the auction block. Actually, there's no auction and there's no block, but that gives you an idea of how the goods are rolled out.

If you don't want that Big Agnes sleeping bag that's up for sale at the moment, a quick look at a sidebar widget gives you an idea of how long it will be before something else is for sale.

I have one beef with the site, but it's a significant one: So fare, it doesn't have anything I would like to buy. On the other hand, it often offers "Big Agnes" sleeping bags, something I don't have much interest in.

So far, snowboarding gear has been rare, though some people report having purchased Flow bindings on the site. Me, I'm still waiting for a ski mask that I can squirrel away for those coldest days of next season.

Layer Up

One of the principles of keeping warm in the extreme cold is to layer up (and no, wearing one bulky piece of clothing in place of several lighter pieces isn't recommended).

Around here the temperatures have been rather cold of late--cold as in "The high today will be 2 degrees." So when I went out to the hill the other day, I put on plenty of layers. Here's what I wore on top:

• A base layer with wicking properties;
• thin pull-over shirt with a mock turtleneck;
• A light zip-up cardigan;
• A heavier zip-up cardigan;
• A jacket

Despite all this clothing, I was not overheated.

For my legs, I took no special measures. I wore my standard snowboarding pants (a two or three-year old pair from Ride) on top of some comfy base layer pants.

Remember what your mom said about heat escaping from your head? Believe her. That's another reason why a helmet is useful, but you might need to supplement it, as it I did, with some ear warmers.

The weak part of the outfit? The gloves. I don't like the "helpless" feel of mittens, so I normally go with gloves. When I teach, I wear a ratty old $10 pair from Wal-Mart, and put a leather palm guard on top to keep the tow rope (used in our teaching area) to keep them from getting instantly sliced.

Gloves are lightweight and easy to pack. If you leave some stuff in your car or in the lodge while on the hill, it might be worth your trouble to bring along several pair of gloves, some heavier and some lighter. Swap them out as conditions warrant.

Gear Review: Obermeyer Radial

My Rossignol snow jacket has served me well since I bought it in late 2002, but it's been heading towards retirement lately. The main zipper has become unreliable, and prone to jamming, causing me to have to pull the jacket over my head.

It was time for a new one, and I decided to step it up from a technical standpoint. The fact that I could get a nice professional discount on some new gear helped out as well.

So I spent the better part of a recent flight pouring over the men's catalog from Sport Obermeyer.

If you hear someone talk about sports clothing being "technical" and you're not sure what that means, trust me: It's technical. Technical as choices in fabrics that might be at home on the periodic table. Technical as in numbers such as "20,000 gm/m2," which sound like they came out of a physics lab. Technical as in features, such as "Control Zone Ventilation" that conjure up images of civil engineering.

What I knew, primarily, was that I wanted a new jacket.

Now I'm by no means an expert in clothing or snowboard gear generally. So here's what I went with. There are two numbers key to any piece of snowboarding jackets or pants. One tells how waterproof it is, or how good it is at keeping water out. The other deals with breathability, or how easily it lets the sweat from your body go out, and evaporate.

These two items are in a push/pull relationship. A raincoat is waterproof, but not terribly breathable. Other jackets are breathable, but if it rains or you get in the path of very wet snow, watch out: you'll get wet.

So if you want a jacket that is both breathable and waterproof, you will have to spend some serious dough. In a totally unscientific method, I looked for high numbers for both qualities. I also made sure that the breathable number was close to or even higher than the number for the waterproof quality.

Oh yeah, and I also had to find a model that was in stock. Shop after November at your peril.

So I ended up with the Obermeyer Radial. Click on the link if you would like to look at all the my-eyes-glaze-over details. Here's what I'll say after spending a couple of days in some wet snow: I like it.

I'd like it better if it came down a bit longer in back. (Did I mention that I'm not much of a shopper?) But it kept me dry on a day of wet snow, and though I was wearing four layers underneath it (base, pullover, fleece jacket, fleece vest) on a fairly warm day (high: 22 or so), I wasn't too hot until I went to the third floor of the lodge and near the fireplace, at which point I had to quickly shed layers.

It's got several pockets, including one for an MP3 player, and another for a cell phone. There are features that I'm still learning about, such as a loop-with-a-fastener in an outside pocket. That's for clipping your car keys--something I could have benefited from a great deal about a month ago, when I wiped out--and the keys flew out--while wearing my Rossi.

The jacket comes with a hood, which doesn't do me much good while on the slopes, as it's too small to fit over my helmet. But it did come in handy while driving about town.



The coat comes in many colors, including the one shown above. (I got "cayenne," which is a shade of red.) Availability may be limited.

It's sold as a jacket rather than a shell, but unlike my Rossignol jacket, it's probably too thin to wear on colder days about town when I'm not bulked up with mountain-ready layers of fleece.