A Year in Review: NEMO's 2009 Beach Cleanups

NEMO just finished our second full year of adopting (i.e. cleaning, feeding, walking) the northern end of Jenness Beach with the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation.

We've been so psyched to work with this NH-based nonprofit to help with their debris monitoring program. In 2009, volunteers dedicated over 2,300 hours to remove over 10,852 pounds of debris from New Hampshire beaches. That's pretty impressive considering that NH only has 18 miles of coastline. There are a number of new adoption sites up for grab. If you're local to area, contact the beach coordinator to get started.

This year, NEMO employees (with the help of a few volunteers) picked up a total of 529 pounds of trash. Our top ten (in number, not in weight) items picked up during cleanups were:

1. Cigarette Butts (206)
2. Bottlecaps (192)
3. Rope (114)
4. Nets/Bait Bags (82)
5. Metal Cans (81)
6. Plastic Bags (70)
7. Straws (67)
8. Traps/Pots (66)
9. Balloons (65)
10. Fishing Line (65)

The most interesting items we found were:

1. The bottom half of dentures, with a healthy amount of seaweed threaded through the teeth.
2. An old Hawaiian sling
3. A blond wig, soggy weighing about 10 lbs (we thought it was attached to a real skull at first…)
4. a dead beaver

We are scheduling dates for the upcoming months so be sure to email our customer service if you are interested in joining.

-Connie

2010 Heart of Steel Bouldering Comp

One of our favorite New England climbing gyms, Boston Rock Gym, is holding their annual climbing comp Heart of Steel this weekend on Saturday, January 30. There is a full day of events scheduled, so be sure to check it out.

As added incentive, NEMO has donated a few prizes for the raffle, including a Losi 2P tent and Tuo Lite sleeping pad. If for some reason you can't attend, I hope it's because you'll be ice climbing at the Smuggs Ice Bash on the very same day, at the base of Smuggler's Notch. NEMO will have a little booth setup, so swing by, say hello, and check out some of our new products.

-Connie

Jameson

Whiskey is good for all sorts of things - a sore tooth, a bad breakup, celebrating, curing hangovers, anesthetic...

Now we can add to that list - structural element. We aren't naming names, but this picture was recently sent our way from a friend enjoying a paddling trip in the Grand Canyon. Now I know what I meant when I wrote this sentence in the Gogo instruction manual:

"the reinforced pockets on the end of the Gogo™ bivy provide a place to insert a stick or other rigid object."

I'm trying to figure out what the string is for. Either an abandoned guy-out attempt, or a sprung booby trap, with the Jameson as bait.

-Suzanne

Dreams of Sun/Summer and Longboarding

Our good friend Adam just sent over the latest video that he filmed and edited over at Loaded.

Hard not to be inspired, espeically considering the just-above-freezing downpour the East Coast is getting hit with right now.

-Connie

2010 Winter OR - Come Visit!

The Winter Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City is up and running until Sunday Jan 24. Come visit NEMO's booth (#1011) and check out all the newest products for 2010.

We will be giving away Ditto Tote bags with a $15 donation to the Conservation Alliance, so please stop by the booth before the goods run out!

-Connie

Winter Wonderland

Checking the weather forecast last night I had a very strong feeling we were in for an amazing sunrise. I preset the coffee maker and got all my camera gear ready for an early departure. With fluffy snow still falling I headed to bed anxious to see what the new day would bring. I was not let down by the sun gods this day. All these photos were taken within a mile of my front door in Hollis, NH before heading into the office in Nashua. To see more images click here.

-Bill

Ocean or Lake?

Last Friday, we headed out to Jenness Beach to do our monthly beach cleanup. Since the Seacoast has been in the midst of a major flat spell, it was hard to tell whether we were doing lake cleanup or a beach cleanup. Don't be fooled by the "wave" you see in the background below (it's only about 4 inches high in reality). We picked up around 50 lbs of trash -- about half as much as we take in the summer.

In our experience, winter is a much more peaceful time period to do our monthly pickup. You avoid crowds, parking fees, sweat; dogs like Charlotte are allowed to have free rein. Downsides? Watch out for frostbites and runny noses.

-Connie

Interview With the President

Trailspace interviewed Cam and posted this story earlier this week. I think its a great summation of NEMO's first (nearly) eight years. 

"Brensinger, president of tent-making NEMO Equipment, founded his company in 2002 at the age of 26, but while he was young, he was no beginner. He had been hiking in the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire since middle school. And he started designing his own climbing gear in college."

For anyone who has ever wondered where the ideas of AirSupported Technology came from or how many pins Cam used on his first airbeam prototype, this is an article you should read.

-Suzanne

Unchop a Tree

Maya Lin's video, debuted at COP15, and making its way across the blogosphere as we speak:



-Connie

Skiing Everest, in New England

Skiing Everest is making its way over to the Boston area with a showing on Jan. 28, 7:00 pm at the Kendall Square Theater.

The film is described by co-director and cinematographer Mike Marolt as "a documentary about how a group of life long friends climb and ski together on over 40 expeditions building trust in each other to achieve something truly cool and amazing – skiing the highest, gnarliest mountains in the world.”

Check out the website to see when the film will be coming to your area.

-Connie

Bullwinkle Found!

Finding any dropped antlers is always a great feeling, its hard to explain the accomplishment I feel when I find even one an antler of any size. I guess the best way to sum it up is that it is like a treasure hunt--a hunt based on observations made over the past 6 months. I look at topographic maps and locate food sources, bedding areas and the trails that go to and from.

A few weeks ago Cam found this amazing moose shed while on a late fall hike. What was amazing, beyond its size, was how fresh it was. In fact it still had small amounts of blood on the end indicating that it was VERY fresh.

Why do antlers shed? Like other ungulates, moose lose their antlers for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is to allow for new growth - much like a child loses their teeth to allow for adult teeth to grow; the primary difference being that deer lose their antlers every year. Many suggest that another reason is to alleviate stress during the more difficult times of their annual cycle. Winter can impose harsh conditions on deer and by shedding their antlers, they simply conserve energy.

-Bill

Nomenclature

If you are familiar with our tent line, you may have thought the model names to be a bunch of nonsensical words and letters. Here's a little insight into where these names come from:

Rule #1: All AirSupported tents end in the letter "O", all aluminum poled tents - "I", trekking pole supported tents - "A". As we expand our support technologies, you can bet we'll use more vowels.

Rule #2: Tent names often have a definition that means something in another language. For instance the word "Tenshi" (our flagship mountaineering tent meant for snowy conditions) means "Angel" in Japanese.

Rule #3: Sometimes the name is a made up word drawing from a tent descriptor. For instance, Morpho was named for the fact that with two clicks of side release buckles on the ExoFly, it can morph from an extremely spacious 2 person tent to a 2 person tent with a large vestibule.

Rule #4: The acronyms following the tent names differentiate tents from similar models like Gogo, Gogo LE (Long Edition), Gogo EX (Extreme). Or describe the intended occupancy like Losi 2P (2 Person) and Losi 3P (3 Person).

-Suzanne

NEMO Garage Sale

We're doing some old-fashioned (January) spring cleaning of recent tent salesman samples, demo tents, and even some yet-to-be-released 2010 tent samples. Yes, this is the NEMO Garage Sale. You can see the list of items when you click on the link on the NEMO homepage. Keep checking back as we will constantly be updating what's in stock.

-Connie