We are bringing gear from twelve different companies on this trip to Jackson, New Hampshire.  Depending on the conditions when we arrive, we may or may not get to test everything.  The current forecast is for temperature to be around 35º for the days we'll be there.  There may also be some rain, possibly of frogs.  Who knows...this is New England :-)

We'll have the Tubbs Adventure 25 snowshoes for the hike in the backcountry.  We will be testing the Durham Waffle boots as well as the Technica Cyclone XT.  For trail running, we'll be using the Adidas Kumasi XCR running shoes.

For the underlayer, we'll be testing moisture wicking stuff from UnderArmour and Nike.  We have worn the UnderArmour stuff a little bit and it has worked extremely well on the short outings (30 minutes) around town.

For the outer layer, we'll be bringing the Columbia Sportswear's Skier Cross Vertex layered system.  We are eager to see if the venting is as useful as we think during an extended trek.

For navigation, we'll be using the Magellan eXplorist 500 GPS and the HighGear AltiTech and TerraTech Digital Compasses.

For hydration, we'll have the CamelBaks and the Nalgene OTG bottles.  We have plans to give the Miox water purification system a try on this trip...but we'll have to see how things go.  This is one of those field tests that may get pushed back to the Spring or Summer trips.

We will have gloves for every possible conditions on this trip.  We will be bringing the Tavo for driving and as an inner layer.  The 180s Exhale will be used if the temperature gets crazy cold.  Gloves from Kumbi will be used during the day.  We'll also try out the 180s convertible training gloves to see if they can keep us from overheating when we really got going on the trail.

We hope the weather cooperates. We have spec'ed out gear for all kinds of conditions.  It's going to be a fun trip! 

We've decided to do things differently on RainyDaySports in 2006: instead of doing individual FirstUse reviews for each piece of gear, we'll be taking a bunch of gear with us on planned outings and reviewing them as a group.

Our first trip will be a “Snowshoe Outing” to Jackson New Hampshire. We have a lot of vendors participating in this first outing (Adidas, Magellan, Tubbs, etc...)!

For the FirstUse report, we'll take all this gear with us on the snowshoeing trip to see how well they perform.

Winter Outing:

1. The Gear

2. Heading to Jackson

3. The Inn

4. The Outing

Related Reviews:

1. 180s (Exhale, ExoLite, Mortise)

2. Addidas Kumasi XCR

3. CamelBak Hydration Pak

4. Columbia Sportswear

5. Dunham Waffle Boots

6. HighGear Compass

7. Kombi Gloves

8. Magellan GPS

9. Tavo Gloves

10. Technica Boots

11. Tubbs Snowshoes

12. UnderArmour Underlayer