Climate Ride 2009

There’s a cool event happening next month – the Brita Climate Ride. Created by two passionate, seasoned bicyclers and world travelers, Climate Ride raises money for climate, energy and bicycle-related projects and organizations. This mass bike ride from NYC to DC spans 5 days and strives to inspire and empower citizens to work toward a new energy future.

Along the way, riders will camp out at designated spots and listen to top experts in the field of climate change. Denmark’s Ambassador to the US, NEMO’s own ambassador Alison Gannett, Dr. James Hanson, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Josh Dorfman, The Lazy Environmentalist, are among those speaking. When the group hits DC, riders are scheduled to meet with their senators and representatives for a one-on-one conversation about global warming concerns and solutions.


We at NEMO love the bicycle and love the idea of teaming up with such a passionate group. Plus, one of this year’s recipient organizations is Portsmouth, NH’s own Clean Air – Cool Planet. And not only will NEMO ambassador, Alison Gannett, be speaking during the ride, she’ll also be riding self-supported, carrying her Gogo.

BONUS: NEMO’s offering industry pro form (40% discount) to all registered riders, so think about it!

~Kate

Visit from Hurricane Bill

If you’ve been living in a cave recently, you might have missed some of the best surf to hit the East Coast in a couple years. Despite unbelievable crowds (both watching and in the water), there was fun to be had by all. We were out last Thursday picking up trash at our monthly cleanup (thanks Marta!), and it was looking calm before the storm. Starting Friday and continuing to even this morning, there have been great conditions. Bill snapped this shot Saturday morning in the fog after a monster session.


Check out the 500+ Hurricane Bill surfing pictures that have been downloaded to Magic Seaweed in the past few days.

-Connie

Trip Report from Explorer Post 58

This past July the Explorer Post traveled with eight students, ages 16-19, and three advisors, to a remote area of the Canadian Purcell Range. We camped on the edge of the Conrad Icefield and stayed there for one week. The team climbed seven mountains, including Mt. Conrad, 10,750’ (named for Conrad Kain), Mt. Mallow, Mt. Osprey and Snafflehound Spire. We brought our Moki™ and a couple of Morpho AR’s™, as you can see from the photos. The tents worked really well, thank you for the kind donation!


Explorer Post 58 is based in Portland, Oregon. The Post is the most active youth mountaineering organization in the country. We climb about 20 mountains each year and sponsor trips to Canada, Alaska and New Zealand. We also participate in approximately 20 other non-mountaineering trips each year.

~Pete Green, Post Advisor

America's National Parks

Even though the last of this year's free national park weekends just passed, some of the best weeks (no crowds, no heat, no mosquitos) are still ahead of us.

Lately, I've been wading through some of the reader photos submitted to Boston Globe's national parks photo contest , and wondering how Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone is so photogenic in every photo. amateur or not. All photos for the contest must be submitted by September 11, 2009. The grand prize winner will receive a signed copy of the new Ken Burns film, National Parks: America's Best Idea.



If you've got more time on your hands, here's a longer cut of it.

-Connie

2010 Sneak Peek: Meta 1P

As requested, here's a sneak peek at Meta 1P, one of our new ultralight trekking pole tents for 2010. Minimum weight for this tent is around 1.8 lbs, and the 2 person version comes in at 2.9 lbs.


Interest for these kinds of tents has been growing strong -- especially as more people (myself included) realize how much trekking poles can save your knees and hips when hiking. The bonus is that since you're already carrying trekking poles, these tents pack amazingly small.

-Connie

Primal Quest 2009

Primal Quest 2009 started on Friday in the Badlands of South Dakota. Throughout this infamous race, 32 teams will be challenged to cover 600 miles via trail running, mountain biking, caving, swimming, kayaking and ropes courses. Teams will rely on their orienteering skills to get them from check point to check point within the 10-day timeframe. You can follow their progress here.


NEMO has been a long-time supporter of adventure racing, designing ultralight tents for the competitors (Hypno PQ, Nano Elite) and sponsoring the 2006 Primal Quest, held in Utah. Team Nike, the most winning team in Adventure Racing, long-time friend and gear testers for NEMO, withdrew before this year's race started due to a mountain bike accident that team leader Mike Kloser was involved in a few weeks back. I spoke to Mike recently and he said "...I am back on the bike and feeling much better. Still got a ways to get back to top form, but am now shooting for the race in China in Sept."

PQ organizers do a fantastic job of keeping interested followers up-to-date with Tweets, SPOT tracking and video coverage. While the future of Adventure Racing is unknown, one thing is for certain - this race pushes competitors to depths very few of us have experienced.

Photo courtesy Team Nike

~Kate

Skate legend Andy Kessler

Take a couple minute and read this moving tribute about legendary East Coast skateboarder Andy Kessler.

Totes with a touch of Sterling

Our sewhouse in NH just delivered the latest round of Ditto Tote bags to us.


This version uses black floors from Sako tents (the predecessor to Morpho, and one of NEMO's first AirSupported tents), shiny black airbeam fabric from Hypno ARs and PQs, and fancy grey tubular webbing for handles.


The webbing (manufacturing seconds) came from our friends in Maine, Sterling Rope, who also run a great rope recycling initiative. Keep an eye out for some future collaborations between us...

-Connie

Moby Grape

This past weekend we (Cam, Caitlin, Connie and I) decided to join the hoards of people who ventured up to the White Mountains in search of adventure. Despite the extremely early start, post spaking, we still found ourselves with hours of time to kill as we waited for the groups ahead of us to jam, pump and shimmy their way up Moby Grape - a classic route on Cannon Mountain's East face. It turns out, many of these early climbers had slept in their cars (10 miles closer to the approach). No worries, that time provided opportunity for us non-lead climbers to get a few trad lessons.




-Suzanne

Friedrichshafen, Summer Outdoor Retailer

As Connie mentioned earlier, we’ve been traveling a lot lately. For a small company like ours, when multiple events come up at the same time, it means most of us are out of the office. Ask Steve and Bill how much fun that is when 279 boxes of new product arrives and there’s no one here to help unload it!

Our most recent trips were to industry shows in Friedrichshafen, Germany and Salt Lake City, UT. At these shows, manufacturers bring their next seasons’ product line to show existing and potential retail buyers. This is where retailers make most of their decisions as to what gear and brands they will be carrying for the next year. It’s a great place to see what the next trends and new products will be . It’s also a good place to get a pulse on the industry. While attendance was down, there were new companies displaying their products and a good shift in presence—some of the companies who have been sleeping for a few years were full of life. The NEMO booth was busy as usual. We expanded our size this year to handle the 10 new tents we’ll be adding to our line next year and we still didn’t have enough room for everything! Feedback from retailers was positive and we’re psyched for 2010. Gear editors also attend these shows to learn about the new products that they will potentially be reviewing for the next year. It’s a good opportunity to meet with these editors face-to-face and get initial impressions and feedback on the new models.



In Salt Lake, the positive energy flowed at the NEMO booth throughout the 4 days. With visits from top retailers, a happy hour with Sam Moulton from Outside Magazine presenting our Gear of the Year award and athletes like Steve Fisher, Camilo Lopez and Anna Pfaff, we were surrounded by some of the industry’s best. After receiving our award, we paid it forward by raffling off a Losi 3P™ to one lucky OR attendee. Bruce Weber from Backwoods Mountain Sports in Ketchum, ID was the lucky winner. And 5 others won a brand new (not yet released) Ditto™ Backpack.


~Kate

Perseid meteor shower in town

If you see meteor showers in the sky the next few nights, you’re probably seeing the Perseids. The streaks that you see come from particles ejected from the comet Swift-Tuttle, and are named the Perseids because they radiate from the constellation Perseus. The experts says that this year’s moon isn’t ideal for watching arguably the year’s best meteor shower, but you should be able to catch some of the meteors just before or just after moonrise (the show will tend to strengthen towards dawn).


If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, make plans to head out towards clear skies and minimally lit areas from late night Tuesday, August 11 to dawn on Wednesday, August 12. The Perseids are predicted to have peak rates of about 80-100 shooting stars per hour at a good vantage point.

-Connie

Introducing the Spake

We were camping out this past weekend and forgot tent stakes. Should this ever happen to you, and you have some spare cutlery handy, a spake (spoon+stake) is a perfectly acceptable alternative. Just remember, you read about it here first.


-Connie

Stoked @ the ICA-Boston

There's a cool documentary coming to the ICA in Boston this weekend. Take a look at what they have to say about Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator.

Helen Stickler's brilliantly constructed documentary charts the rise of skateboarding culture in the 1980s, using the life of the era's most celebrated skater, Mark "Gator" Rogowski, as a focal point. Stickler assembled a superstar cast including Peralta, Tony Hawk, and Jason Jesse to tell Gator’s story. A mix of jaw-dropping skateboarding footage, '80s nostalgia, music, and interviews re-creates the era with great energy and feeling, while presenting an intimate character study of fame gone sour.

If you're there, also check out the retrospective on Shepard Fairey. It's in its last couple weeks there at the museum.

-Connie

Spinning Round

Check out these videos recently posted on REI. Pretty cool.
[Follow the link below and go to the videos section]



We do all of the product photography of our tents in a photo studio we built in our NH office. The design team tries our best to take the right photographs to give the customer a good sense of what our tents are all about, but theres nothing like a video thats zooming around, up and down to give you the sense that you could reach out and touch the tent if you wanted.

-Suzanne