My Favorite Travel Gear of 2014

I’ve always been a bit of a minimalist. I rarely buy new equipment if I am able make do with what I have for ethical as well as economic reasons. But, the more I travel, the more important my travel gear becomes to me.

Over the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to have started receiving gear for review from companies — often things that I could never afford. I’ve also become much more calculated in my purchases and have gradually refined my travel kit, swapping out second-rate pieces of gear for top-notch ones. It’s had an enormous effect on the quality of my travels.

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11 Of The Best Travel Products You’ll Never Want To Be Without

In January I visited winter Outdoor Retailer (OR) 2014 — the biggest trade show for outdoors and travel brands in North America — in search of the newest, most innovative, products that help people to travel longer and better with less baggage. This list contains the most innovative, versatile, travel-friendly products that I found.

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My Favorite Travel Gear from this Summer

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Sunrise at the Outdoor Retailer Open Air Demo

My Favorite Clothes of the Summer

While at the Winter Outdoor Retailer retailer conference I stumbled across a brand that I’d dreamt of for a long time — a brand that is socially conscious and makes outdoors clothes that are functional and packable, but that also look stylish when you’re out on the town. That brand is called Nau.

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Some Extremely Serious Gear

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Finding the best ski resort in the western United States is a serious job. We’re going to have to do a lot of skiing and snowboarding, interview a lot of people, take a lot of photos and videos, and upload a large number of said photos to Facebook and Twitter to make sure our friends are sufficiently jealous.

We’re taking this job very seriously.

Serious people doing serious jobs require serious equipement. Below is a list of the most important gear that we’re taking with us. Click on the name of any piece of gear for more information about it.

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Cyber Monday: The Best Day for Xmas (and Personal) Gear Shopping

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Me cruising in the new setup of gear I bought from many of these websites.

Cyber Monday started in 2005 as a marketing gimmick to get people to buy lots of stuff online.

It worked.

Now, on Cyber Monday, online shops have massive deals on pretty much anything you can buy, and outdoors and travel gear are no exceptions.

I’m an affiliate for several discount travel and outdoors discount online sellers, so they all send me emails with their best deals. Some of them are really good.

I’ve been waiting for today to get some ski gear for my girlfriend. As soon as I’m done writing this, I’m going to do all of my Christmas shopping.

Here are the best deals that I’ve seen so far:

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How I Bought a $1000 Snowboard Setup for $500

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My $500 setup. I was so happy.

I skied or snowboarded pretty much every weekend all winter long from when I was three until I was 18. I even got my snowboard instructor’s certificate. Then, I moved out, started working, went to University, and moved to Asia. I haven’t had a full season of snowboarding since.

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The Great Big List of Cheap Gear Deal Websites

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**This post includes affiliate links, which means I am paid a small commission of any sales resulting from their use. For more information see my disclosure policies page.

(Last updated August, 2015)

Bookmark this page, because you are going to want to come back.

By buying selloffs and promotions in bulk and avoiding the overhead costs of physical stores (leases, employees, bills, etc.) online stores are able to offer incredibly cheap gear deals.  I’m talking up to 40-80% off every day. More and more of these stores have sprung up in recent years, so I’ve kept a list of the best ones for my own shopping (I almost never shop at ‘real’ stores anymore) because gear is so cheap online.

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