As a year-round runner on the dirt roads near my home in Montpelier, Vermont, I know a thing or two about cold, wet, muddy feet. I’ve worn Saucony running shoes since high school, and I still love them, but the slush and mud just soak right through the mesh fabric.
This fall I bought a pair of Salomon XR Mission CS running shoes (the CS stands for Climate Shield). They have
been super comfortable and have kept my feet warm and dry all winter, but their real value became apparent this past weekend when the temperature soared to 40 and my dirt road run became a quagmire of mud, slush, and snow. These shoes aren’t waterproof, and my toes were damp after 4 miles in the mud, but I was much better off than in my traditional running shoes. I didn’t have a cold puddle inside each shoe, splashing and squishing with each step.
The XR Mission CS is classified by Salomon as a door-to-trail shoe, a name it lives up to. I’ve been running in them several times a week, and they have also become my go-to shoes for a quick trip downtown or to the chicken coop. I was worried that my old knee problems would surface again with a change in shoes, especially to something not quite as cushioned as my regular running shoes, but I have been injury free.
I’m predicting the Salomon XR Mission CS will be my favorite hiking shoes this summer as well!
Reviewed by Patty
This was originally printed in the latest edition of the Catamount Trail News (Volume XXVIII Number 1). If you’d like to be the first to read Kip’s reviews, we recommend you hightail it over to www.catamounttrail.org and become a member!
Gear Review – Skis, an Option for Everyone
Step into any well-stocked Nordic shop these days and you’re bound to be overwhelmed by the multitude of colors, shapes, sizes and brands of skis that fall under the “Nordic ski” umbrella. Gone are the days when you could wander in, proclaim to the sales attendant that you’re “looking for a backcountry ski” and in a few short moments, you’d walk out the proud new owner of a pair of 210 cm Karhu Kodiaks, trusty leather Merrell XCD-Legend boots and the requisite Rottefella “rat trap” 3-pin binders. We’re now faced with a plethora of options: touring, light BC-touring, backcountry and cross country downhill, just to name a few of the seemingly ambiguous industry-coined ski categories. Enter the well-trained sales attendant to guide you through the dense underbrush of the backcountry ski-shopping world.
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I hate to be the first one to tell you this, but our days are getting shorter, the evenings are crisper and the trails are emitting the undeniable crackle of fall. Nine months of winter are just around the corner. Until then, fortunately, we have a brief window of bug-less, amazingly beautiful riding.
The trouble is, it’s tough to fit that ride into our hectic schedules. For those of us who battle “the grind” until 5 or 6 every night, the only options for a trail ride is during the 30 minutes of daylight left at the end of the day. For anything longer than that, we’re going to need lights. Luckily, we at ORS have the best, most cost-effective lighting systems in stock that’ll blow away last year’s options!
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We are ALL water bottle geeks these days. With fears of leaching BPA (and other chemicals), the trend has been to find materials that are greener, cleaner, and chemical free. Metal bottles have been gaining ground over plastic bottles for years, but now there’s a new bottle on the block. You have probably seen glass bottles around – some now covered in a thin silicone sleeve, protecting the glass as well as providing a pop of color to reflect your personal style. For those of us (like me) who tend to be a little less than careful (and do things like pop your metal water bottle in your bike cage – only to watch it get launched down the road when you hit your first big pothole, forcing you to ditch your bike to chase after your, now dented, bottle as it rolls down the hill), the glass option, while lovely, and arguably better in many ways, is just a little too fragile.
Enter the Bamboo Bottle. While I haven’t managed to launch this one down the road yet (it’s a little too wide for the bike cage) it’s served me well in stationary situations. This bottle is built with durability in mind. The thick exterior bamboo shell protects the glass, and serves the dual purpose of insulating the contents of your bottle. Prefer your beverages hot? Great! They’ll stay hot
(jury is still out on the length of time it will keep your morning joe piping hot). Like your water near Arctic-temperature? Excellent, throw in some ice, and you’re good to go.
The mouth of the bottle is wider than my good ol’ Kleen Kanteen, making cleaning easy if by dishwasher or by hand. The lid, green top ring and base are plastic, but clean up is easy (though easier if you clean it regularly–this probably isn’t the bottle you want to leave in your car for a week with the dregs of some sugary recovery drink lolling around in there). This bottle is super easy to disassemble: the cap unscrews, then the green ring, then slip off the bamboo sleeve, and viola – pop the glass part in the sink or dishwasher and wipe the bamboo sleeve with a damp towel – I always vote to hand wash plastic, but Bamboo Bottle’s website says that the cap, top ring and bottom are dishwasher safe – so go for it!
The cons to this bottle are few, but significant. It’s heavy. Even when it’s empty. On the bright side, you could consider each sip a rep in your new desktop-weightlifting workout. And, it’s thick. Will it fit in your car’s cup holder? I wouldn’t count on it.
All in all, it’s a unique addition to the current, crowded landscape of reusable water bottles. You have to hand it to the Bamboo Bottle folks, there’s a ton of consideration that has gone into the resources used and the design. If you are concerned about what’s surrounding your water, give this bottle a try!
So…it’s usually not our style to review a piece of motorized equipment in our “Muscles Not Motors Gear Review”, but with this bike, we couldn’t resist. And, admit it, you’re curious! 
Let’s talk bike commuting; great in theory, a bit harder in practice. Some of the most common impediments to commuting via bike that we hear about in the shop are: “there are just too many hills” and “I’m so sweaty when I get to work and my office has no place to shower”. Well, Trek has a new line of electric-assist bicycles aimed at folks like these (you?). These bikes take the grunt work out of Vermont hills, the sweat out of a 20 mile ride, and make hauling kids/groceries/trailers faster and easier – really!
The Valencia+ is a mid-level offering in the Ride+ series from Trek Bicycles. This baby has a 350 watt BionX electric motor, and a 2-year warranty on the battery and motor. Four levels of assistance increase your output from 25% in level 1 to 200% in level 4. In our highly-scientific tests around Montpelier, we’ve been able to get up to about 18mph going up hill (on Terrace Street) in level 4, without working up a sweat. Honestly, it feels like there is someone behind you giving you a good strong push – that’s thanks to the brushless rear-hub motor. It’s also so incredibly silent that your assist-less friends will wonder what performance-enhancing drug you’re on!
The battery has a charge life of about 40 miles under moderate usage, so you can get just about anywhere you would reasonably need to go before a recharge. The battery makes it easy – with a charge time of about 3-5 hours using a standard wall outlet plug-in charger, you can charge it just about anywhere. Ride your 20 miles to work, pop out the battery, take it inside to charge, unplug at the end of your day, pop the battery back in the bike and ride home. And, the bike has a regenerative braking-mode and regenerative pedal-mode that help give up to 10% power back to the battery as you ride.
This bike has impressed with it’s power, silence, speed, ease of use, and quality. At an MSRP of $2649 it’s not your average mid-price hybrid, but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to keep up than a car! (the average cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle over the course of a year: $3000). There are other electric bikes out there, but this bike has the quality we’re used to seeing from Trek; it’s well built, well designed, and gets you where you’re going faster and easier. We have one all built up and ready to go in the shop, stop by for a demo ride!
Or, “Why balance bikes are awesome and training wheels cause cancer; Scott Baker’s take on Training Wheels”
Ok, so that might be a little dramatic… but it’s sorta true. I can firmly say that training wheels cause learning disabilities. And since I’m being a little dramatic, let’s just draw a melodramatic comparison to teaching your kid how to walk. If you gave your kid Lilliputan crutches at the ripe old age of 12 months, and showed them how to use the crutches to keep themselves from tipping over when they got off balance, they would probably learn to walk fairly quickly. But when they got a little older and realized all of the “big” kids were walking without them, they would probably want to walk without them too, right? So you tear those little arm stilts out their hands and say “Go for it, kiddo!” as you promptly watch them tip over. They would have to relearn what it is to “walk” all together.
Same thing with a bike. You teach the kids to propel themselves around with wheelie “crutches” (often at high speeds…) but then one day take them away, and they’ve got to figure out a whole different approach! Oho! Just as soon as I’ve exposed the fatal flaw in the system, I offer you… the solution. What has long been popular in other countries has finally begun to gain some ground in the grand ole U.S. of A… Balance bikes.
Balance bikes are the most basic of bikes, they have no pedals or crank mechanism, so kids propel themselves by scooting with their feet. This motion ends up being incredibly similar to the pedaling motion of riding a bicycle. Often, as the kid gains a little speed, they will pull their feet up and rest them on a small platform that sits in the place of where the pedal and crank assembly would normally be. Holy moly!
“Look ma! No Feet!” And no training wheels.
The kids natural sense of balance that they developed while becoming a part of the average ambulatory population in combination with the natural centrifugal stability of a spinning wheel has led to a presto-kazam explosion of magic known as… basic physics and a little common sense. Now when the kid is ready for the world of bicycles, they already know how to ride. They just need to figure out propel themselves. Oh wait, look at that! There’s a little pedal thingy. When I push on it the bike moves forward! Nifty. AND! way easier for them to learn how to pedal than how to balance when they’re bigger.
Happy kid + happy parent = a treat rarely experienced in simultaneity.
That’s not to say that it’s for everyone. Some kids are going to prefer bikes with training wheels for their provision of instant gratification, among other things like the ability to lay down sweet skids and totally wicked airs… plus some families live at the top of a hill where the kid is less likely to get into a sticky situation with a bicycle that has a proper coaster brake (see above note about sweet skids). And, training wheels can be a big bonus for the “do it myselfer” kids out there who just MUST get on and off by themselves – built in training wheel kick stands.
So, while we’re not saying NO to training wheels entirely, we are saying, give a balance bike a try, there is some merit to learning to balance on a bike while you’re small!
(p.s. …this is your wallet speaking… they’re cheaper too! [but don't be a miser, a kid is only a kid once])
In stock at ORS: ROSSIGNOL BC 125 backcountry waxless skis! Yeah, OK, the Karhu Guides were pretty cool and as fat as you could get with a waxless pattern, but not anymore. The 2011 BC 125, with a pricetag of $360 (crazy inexpensive compared to a full-on telemark ski!) and dimensions of 125mm at the shovel, a monsterous 90mm under foot and 115mm at the tail, comes in at only 3000 grams/6.6 lbs. per 175cm PAIR! (165cm length also available) Match these babies up with a light tele binding (Voile Switchback, we’d recommend), your existing plastic boots (or heavy duty BC 75mm boots) and you’ve got the best touring/turning/yo-yo-ing/floating setup around! The Rossi BC 125: set your stun gun to shred.
