Gear of the Year

December 31, 2011

Ye gads, do I ever hate those “gear of the year” lists. It seems disingenuous to me to pretend to sort through the thousands and thousands of products and choose 5-10 to subjectively proclaim to be “the best.” This just doesn’t work because gear is made for many different conditions and so are people. What fits me might not fit you and your preferences may not line up with my preferences, and so on. This is, coincidentally enough, also why it’s so difficult to find a soulmate in this cold, cold world.

It’s certainly a cold, cold day in my cold world today which reminded me to write this post. You see, I finally found the gear that I think is deserving of a Gear of the Year post. My disclaimer is the same as the above – this really worked for me but it might not work for you. This gear, unlike most, is so cheap and readily available that giving it a try is easy and affordable, though. I can’t say that about a $400 jacket.

If you enjoy irony you will appreciate the fact that I’m chronically hypotensive (BP 80/60 typically), have an underactive thyroid, and live in Alaska and love the snow and cold. Keeping myself warm is not an easy task from a physiological perspective. I’ve chased off more men with my cold feet than you can possibly imagine (you want to find out for sure if a man is tough enough? Put your ice-block feet on his stomach and see if he screams like a baby). It’s hard to find non-romantic partners as well – I can’t go out in the backcountry with partners who like to stop and take breaks; I’ve got to keep moving or I get dangerously cold extremities almost immediately. Not taking breaks isn’t fun for most people so it’s a tough sell at times.

Over the years, though, I’ve amassed a group of backcountry partners who have a similar ethos regarding the need for a quick turnaround and constant motion; not because of the cold feet thing but because of personal preference. I was out with one of those friends last week and I told him how cold my feet get. He mentioned that I should try taking some aspirin as a blood thinner, and that it’s what alpinists do when they’re up high.

What, really? How did I not know about this? The next day I took some aspirin before I headed up and whoa, what a difference. I stayed warmer longer and, once I did get cold, I warmed up a lot faster than I had before. I thought it had to be a fluke, but a few days later I forgot to take the aspirin before heading out for a SAR event and was back to being cold immediately. Luckily one of the other searchers had some aspirin in his pack and gave me some, so my feet warmed up about 30 minutes after that. Crazy! Who knew? Well, evidently lots of people knew, but I didn’t, so just in case you didn’t either, I’m writing this post for you. What you may not know is that aspirin also can lower your risk of colon cancer by almost 50% over an extended period of time. Aspirin, Gear of the Year, $5 for 50 tablets, give or take. Enjoy.

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