We will begin the year by heading to Salt Lake City and the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market to check out the latest and greatest in outdoor gear from all of your favorite manufacturers.  I have a ton of great appointments booked, including some time with Mountain Hardwear, Golite, MSR, Thermarest, Columbia Sportswear, Osprey, Gore-Tex and many more.  I will be attending the All Mountain Demo, and twittering live from the All Mountain Demo and the show.  Follow me @outsidesd for live reports from the show floor.

January also marks the beginning of the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Wilderness Basics Course. We have a lot of great trips planned,  including the always adventurous snow camp in the Sierras.  This 10-week backpacking course is a fantastic way to get the essentials of backpacking, as well as a means of connecting with a group of like minded individuals. The class is starting at the end of January, so if you have not signed up yet, there is still time.  In addition to the snow camp,  you can join me on a car-camp to the Anza Borrego Desert where we will be exploring Ghost Mountain, and the Pictograph trail,  as well as a land navigation backpack where will will get the basics of map and compass navigation down.

Spring time marks high season for all outdoor activities in San Diego. As the winter cold mellows, and the summer heat is just a glimmer in the sun’s eye; the possibilities are endless.  We at Outside San Diego will be spending time in the desert, in the water as well running, biking and swimming in preparation for a series of Triathlon events in which I will be competing with the Triathlon Club of San Diego.  I am looking forward to challenging myself in this new direction.

Summertime is very busy.  Eleanor, my daughter, and I have plans to conquer Mount Whitney.  We have a usual extended Fourth of July basecamping trip to Eastern Sierra Nevadas to look forward to.  George, a regular Outside San Diego contributor, has the month of August blocked out for a backpack along the length of the John Muir Trail.  He will be backpacking from Yosemite to the summit of Mount Whitney, covering about 211 miles in the process.

2010 marks the third year that Outside San Diego has been in operation, and it had grown exponentially from my original goals.  For that I thank everyone who comes and reads the material presented here.  Outside San Diego is a labor of love,  and the response I have had has been heartening.  Each year I have set goals for the site, and this year is no different.  The number one goal I have for Outside San Diego in the next 365 days is to morph it into a more community based website.  I would like to make it a place that everyone can be a contributor, and a place that belongs to everyone.  Now is the time to start.   I need to hear form everyone.  reply to this post and tell me what you want Outside San Diego to be.  Describe your perfect site, and lets make Outside San Diego come close to the utopia you have imagined.

Toby Guillette of Active Toby left yesterday to participate in the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run.  His team will be posting updates via twitter at http://twitter.com/TobyGuilltte.  Toby is a San Diego Product, and one of those amazing people who have broken through those physical and mental barriers that make us mere mortals look like sedentary sloths.

Along these same lines,  I just finished a great book titled Ultramarathon Man,  which chronicles Dean Karnazes as he challenges his mind and body to some of the most grueling runs that anyone has managed to imagine,  including a summer race from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney, and a marathon to the South Pole.  This book has some interesting insight as to the mental aspects of endurance sports.

The PR folks over at Gibbon Slacklines turned me onto a neat organization called San Diego Slacklining.  These guys put on slackline events throughout San Diego,  and give one the opportunity to try out this unique activity as both a training aid, and sport within itself.

I have been following this company since last summer at Outdoor Retailer,  and now I have now partnered up with them to offer you the Coolest Camper Ever.

Sylvan sports is offering a pretty cool deal if you are in the market for a very hip little tent trailer:
SylvanSport is excited to extend this special offer: Purchase a base model ‘GO’ for $6,195 and receive over $800 worth of essential accessories… FREE! Coupon Code: AL000AL

I have also recently been given the opportunity to partner with NRS,  a huge kayak and rafting supply company.  They have anything and everything kayak,  so check them out for your next water sports purchase.

One of my favorite products is the NRS Aquablaster Water Guns. These are perfect for defending yourself against aggressive 8-year paddlers, and their splashy tendencies.

Around The Great Lakes

Bryan Hansel is going to attemp to circumnavigate all 5 great lakes solo in his kayak.

A Wayward Journey

A family with two young boys travels from Alaska to the tip of Argentina via bicycle.  They are in Mexico now, and according to Dad via Twitter a couple of nights ago they are having a great time.

Primal Quest

The official Primal Quest Adventure race website.  Enough Said!

Joe Jacobi

United States Olympic Gold Medalist Joe Jacobi’s take on the world of kayaking.

Enjoy, and have a good weekend.

Wend Blog

I was impressed with Wend Magazine during Outdoor Retailer, and soon found their blog  as interesting.

Whitespider1066.com

A European outdoor blogger.  He has a lot of interesting things to say, and beautiful photographs of birds in his latest posts.

Zsherpa.com

A news aggregation site, bringing you outdoor information from around the world, and around the web.

EcoZebra

An interesting blog covering the environment.

Canoelover

I am always a big fan of paddling blogs,  and Canoelover is a good one.  It is somewhat all over the place subject wise, but an interesting read.

Scratching The SURFace Website

“‘I’ll never complain about being too busy again…’ Rep overheard’ as twittered by @canoelover explains a lot about the mood on the floor of the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market this week in Salt Lake City.  The recession that has been biting everyone hard for the last year or so is creeping into the outdoor gear market, and it was evident in the mood of the attendees.  Unless there is a significant turnaround in the next few months, many of vendors that were selling their wares at the winter market will not be around for the summer market.  Quality and innovation are the traits that critical to riding out the economic downturn.  I noticed some of the smallest gear makers had the most crowded booths.  The commonality running though these small companies (Mystery Ranch, Granite Gear, Western Mountaineering, ect.) were a reputation for quality gear.  As evident in a post in the Outdoor Retailer Show Daily Digest, there still is a demand for outdoor gear, but people are going to be more selective, and insist on gear that is going to perform well and last a long time.

Continued commitment to the making of Green Products

Despite the trouble many in the industry are facing, there is still a strong commitment among manufacturers to reducing their impact on the environment.  I was very happy to see that the commitment to the environment was not abandoned.

A good example of this commitment is from Nemo Equipment. In the fall of 2009 they will be introducing a tent that uses bamboo poles, and they are currently reusing old tents by making shopping bags from the fabric

Social Media and the Outdoors

Social Media played an interesting role at The Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.  Twitter made its debut during the show, and provided a near real-time glimpse into what was happening each day.  New and interesting products were Twittered to the demanding public, and the merits of this new gear were debated and hashed out world-wide within moments.  The role of Twitter and other Social Media sites in the Outdoor Industry were also a hotly debated topic during the show.  The amorphous role that social media plays as a business tool has led many to dub it as fad, or not worthy of their time.  There has been much debate as to how the users of these sites do not respond to advertising; therefore there is no money to be made by advertising through social media.

Whether advertising is ever viable on these sites it is important to understand where the real power of social media lies.  People have begun to use bloggers as a research tool to find independent opinions about the products they buy.  Social Media sites are a natural extension of this, allowing the conversation to extend to readers in near real time. The rules for social media in a business environment are still being written.  The only certainty is that is you do not participate; you will have no say.

What Backpacking Light has to say aboutSocial Medai and OR

REI Super Clearance! Jan 9-19

Do you have a hike that you feel should have been added to the list?  Did I leave a hike out?  Is this list totally wrong?  Let everyone know of the hikes your gonna hike in 2009.  A comment here will begin to provide a foundation for a community of hikers and  will become a valuable resource for all hikers in the future.

Let your opinion be known and then get out and hike!

Here is a good place to start

the percentage of boys who spend time outdoors walking, camping and gardening is down to just 8%, from 16% in the late ‘90s.  That’s an eye-opening drop in just a 10-year time span and I believe that it could have larger ramifications than just an increased occurrence of childhood obesity.

He goes on to talk about the connection between outdoor people,  and their work in preserving our wilderness areas. If you have a kid,  or know a kid,  make it a point to show them the wonders of the outdoor world,  and lets reverse that disturbing trend.