It’s all about the gear, people. There’s even a name for it: The mountain person who has too much gear is a Gearhead. But the fact is, never mind all those people who want to be fashionable in the mountains. The truth is, fashion has little place out here.
Outside Magazine Tells the Hipster Millenial how …
This month in Outside Magazine the editors gave us a nice little story (under Dispatches) about how to be fashionable in the mountains … … I had to laugh. Because, every real mountain rat knows that the thing is … It’s not your *look,* It’s about what you (and your gear) can do. How it works. How it looks is secondary. That’s why we’re up here. People, that is to say, this is not New York.
But the truth is, people do buy a lot of stuff. Check out this list of items from the Outside webpage …
If you have $500 to spend on a parka, go back to the Coast. Here, you’ve gotta save that money for functional equipment.
For an example, this video, from Dude Dad, gives us the detail that his fat tire bike costs more than his car. Minute 2:51. That’s a mountain person for you.
Of course, I laughed. In the same vein, when I meet up with the Mountain’s Edge People, we all seem to have these old 4-Runners and Highlanders. (Mentioning this reminds me of the time we had a meetup at Happy Jack in Wyoming for cross country skiing and some of the band chickened out because of excessive snow, despite four wheel drive. But I digress.
Yes, we drive cheap cars. We don’t worry about looking stylish behind the wheel. When you’re in the mountains, you conserve resources, and that includes money. Clothes are about the same. First and foremost: just so it works. Next, save your money. The only clothes worth buying at retail are hiking boots. The rest is catch as catch can.
Never trust a man who drives a BMW. But I digress …
The only way is to blaze your own trail …
“When it comes to fashion … “ According to Outside’s editors, “the only way is to blaze your own trail … “
Now I’m from San Francisco Bay Area and I know what he’s talking about – the thing about really setting a fashion trend is you have to be first and you have to look best and … the truth is being a fashion maven is a difficult thing because in order to get noticed you have to go outside the box, so you have to be unfashionable to be fashionable. But fashion, really obsessing about it, that’s stuff and style for city people. We don’t look too much at that. When we go hiking, we’re usually looking at the mountains. Or the trail, or checking the weather on a phone app. The thing about hiking and mountaineering is, people don’t really look at your clothes. They watch what you can do. Are you keeping up? Did you slip? How’s your form? How fast are you going?
For example, mountain biking and skiing are activities that are radically charged by how your ability determines the terrain you can cover, and the truth is, hiking trips are pretty much the same.
In the mountains, when it comes to fashion, function is the way to go, and you need to know how not to go broke on it, because … you’ve got to save up for skis and ski tickets and fat tire bikes. No one short of a trust fund baby has the money to buy the best ski parkas … I saw one jacket on the REI website, it was $999. I was like, “Okay, that is for tourists; no *real* skier would be caught dead in that.”
How to Get Out of Jax for Less than $100
Maybe I’m wrong. I haven’t, after all, interviewed all the Real Skiers. But one of the guys in Mountain’s Edge got quite a few kudos and admiring looks with his French Army Surplus Camo Parka on a recent skiing trip. It came with matching French Army Surplus Camo Pants. All waterproof *and* white and gray camo. To blend in.
“How do you get that stuff?” He was asked.
“You gotta go to Jax and *ask*” he said. “They don’t sell these to just anyone … you have to know someone. Jax keeps these babies hidden under the piles of Keen trail sandals and Norrona snow pants. You know, the stuff that they sell to yuppies and people from California.”
“How much you pay?”
“Five dollars.”
Now, as a result of saving money, he’s *that’s* fashionable, in the mountains. Because being “fashionable” out here is just showing, by how you dress, that you’re someone with the savoir-faire to know how to ask the guys at Jax where the super-secret cheap stuff is. That’s being resourceful. In that case, you’re definitely someone to know if we’re out on the trail, worried about avoiding becoming the 21st century Donner Party. Because fashion in the mountains is about looking clever, effective, and smart. And knowing how to stay alive. Just saying.
With this purpose in mind, I don’t care what kind of parka someone has …above all, I care if you’ve got an extra water bottle and extra micro spikes! Micro spikes, by the way, are $70 for the good ones from REI. They should be in your pack until June. If you want to be fashionable on the Front Range, it’s all about the gear, baby. And if you end up looking like Mork from Ork, so be it. Fashionable in the mountains is a geist, not a look. You have to feel it to be it.