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I'm coming to you from the Salt Palace convention center in Salt Lake City, Utah. This week on The WildeBeat; Summer O-R two thousand seven.

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News from the Wildebeat, the audio journal about getting into the wilderness.

This is program number ninety nine.

I'm Steve Sergeant.

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STEVE: The people around me are attending the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market of two thousand seven. This event is an outdoor industry trade show held twice each year. The major and lesser known manufacturers of outdoor recreation equipment come here to sell their wares to the various retail merchants, large and small. Along with them, a lot of us journalists walk the aisles to learn about the new products. Testers from BackpackGearTest dot ORG are also here, to look for the new products they plan to test in the coming year. Andy Mytys is a very active tester for BackpackGearTest dot ORG.

STEVE: Andy, what's the most exciting thing you've seen so far on the show floor?

ANDY MYTYS: I think the most exciting thing is the SPOT Satellite Personal Tracker. Now, it's not a P-L-B, or personal location beacon, but it's something similar to that. It's basically a unit that does use satellite technology to send out a signal. It fits in the palm of your hand, it takes two double-A lithium batteries, and including batteries it weighs about seven point three ounces they say. So, it sends out a signal to a service, and on that service you can do multiple things. Before you go on your trip, you log-in as as customer, and you can identify up to five individuals who you want to send a message to via e-mail, or via S-M-S. And you type in the message that you want sent when a signal is received from the SPOT system. Now there's two levels of messages, as I understand it. One is a simple check-in, and that would be, for instance, if you just wanted to say, "Hey, I'm O.K. Everything's going fine, I'm still alive." There's one level where you can ask for help, and that's a request for help from your friends and family at your exact location. There's another alert, and that's a nine one one alert. That actually sends a signal to the service's emergency service center. And that emergency service center has operators standing by, and they receive a signal from the satellite, and in that signal it shows exactly where you are, your position, latitude, longitude, and then they contact those authorities and then those authorities come out and rescue you. So a traditional P-L-B today runs about six hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. This unit sells for a hundred and forty nine dollars, so it's considerably less. It's a subscription service. The subscription to use it costs ninety-nine, ninety-nine a year, or for those that want to go monthly, it's nine ninety-nine a month.

STEVE: So, what else did you see that was interesting?

ANDY MYTYS: The other interesting thing I saw was a new line of tarps by the Go Lite company. It's the Shangri-La line. They have a two-person tarp, a four-person tarp, a six-persoon tarp, and an eight-person tarp. The one that intrigued me was the six-person tarp. It's a pyramid-type design, this one has two large poles that come with it. Looking on the inside it looks like it could even sleep more. What I really liked about it is, I guide trips that a lot of new backpackers go on. A lot of people are anxious about sleeping in a tarp. This is something that I can turn around and tell people who are new to backpacking that they don't need a shelter, that they can share a shelter with me, and then when they wake up in the morning they say, "Wow, that was a really good experience," and when they turn around and go out and purchase their own shelter, hopefully they don't purchase a big, heavy tent, but they purchase a tarp, and they end up carrying less weight.

STEVE: And is there something else you want to tell us about?

ANDY MYTYS: I stopped by the Sea to Summit booth. They really don't have any whiz-bang gear, but what they do have is small gear that we all need. What I liked is they had a dry sack that you could actually fill with water, and at the base of it it had a little pull-out spout that became a shower. And then, of course, when you're all done using it as a shower, you can turn it inside-out perhaps, and put you gear back in, so it gives that dual functionality. Another product that Sea to Summit had that I really liked was something called the iPOOd, and it's a backpacker trowel. This kind-of folds away, takes up about half the space of the conventional orange trowel, and it's made with lightweight materials so it weighs about three and a half ounces, and it looks like it could really puncture the dirt and dig the hole, especially in ground that has a lot of roots.

STEVE: Jennifer Koles is another tester for BackpackGearTest.

STEVE: Jennifer, can you tell me about the interesting things you saw here on the show floor?

JENNIFER KOLES: This year's show I saw the Magellan Triton-series hand-held G-P-S units. They are teaming up with National Geographic, and you can now download your topo maps and your weekend explorer maps onto the Magellan G-P-S system, and be able to view them while backpacking. The G-P-Ss have a color screen. Some of those screens are available in touch, where you can access your maps by just touching on the screen. Some of them have a speaker and microphone, some of them even come with a flashlight. Some of the models have a barometer, for weather tracking, and some of them also have a compass. One of the... Triton models come with a camera. With the National Geographic software availability, the users can select the area that they want to view and transfer to the Triton with the click of a button. Any of the waypoints, routes, or tracks you collect on the Triton can be transferred back into your National Geographic software. The user would need to own the National Geographic software, and transfer it into the triton G-P-S. Currently I'm testing the National Geographic Topo software, actually testing the National Parks series, and I'd like to be able to have that software available to me while I'm out in the field using my GPS unit.

STEVE: Jenn, thank you very much.

JENNIFER KOLES: You're welcome.

STEVE: Jason Boyle is one of the BackpackGearTest dot ORG testers, and Jason has been walking the floor here. So tell me about something you saw that stood out.

JASON BOYLE: One of the new companies, it's not really a new company, it's new to the U.S, it's called, Rab. And one of the things that they're going to be introducing this year is an eVent rain jacket called the Neutrino. It's super-lightweight, it's breathable. It is a full-featured rain shell, has an articulated hood with a full front zip. It also has chest ventilation pockets, and because it's an eVent fabric there are no pit zips, because the fabric breathes well enough that it's not needed.

STEVE: What's something else you saw?

JASON BOYLE: One of the other things I saw was that I can see in my gear kit for this winter, is made by Cliff Bar. They've introduced two new hot drink products. One's an electrolyte drink, and the other's a recovery drink. The apple cider flavor is the electrolyte drink that you can drink during a cold weather activity, and then the hot chocolate drink is a recovery drink to help fill-in those -- after a hard day's winter work-out to help your muscles recover, at the end of the day. It is the Shot Hot Apple Cider is the electrolyte drink, and the Shot Hot Hot Chocolate recovery drink.

JASON BOYLE: One of the other things I saw was that I can see in my gear kit for this winter, is made by Cliff Bar. They've introduced two new hot drink products. One's an electrolyte drink, and the other's a recovery drink. The apple cider flavor is the electrolyte drink that you can drink during a cold weather activity, and then the hot chocolate drink is a recovery drink to help fill-in those -- after a hard day's winter work-out to help your muscles recover, at the end of the day. It is the Shot Hot Apple Cider is the electrolyte drink, and the Shot Hot Hot Chocolate recovery drink.

STEVE: What's something else you saw?

ANDY MYTYS: Mont-Bell is increasing their ultralight thermawrap and ultralight down lines with a parka. And so there's an ultralight thermawrap parka, and an ultralight down parka. Which incorporates a hood and a bit more fill in each one of those for those winter campers that need a little bit more.

STEVE: Thanks, Jason.

STEVE: Andy Mytys saw green in an overall industry trend.

ANDY MYTYS: The show itself seems to be promoting an eco-friendly kind of lifestyle. It seems like some of the companies are starting to make packs, for instance, that are P-F-C free using more and more recycled materials, and they're putting that in their packaging. So the consumer can look at perhaps like products and have that one extra difference in the features. And hopefully manufacturers start looking at, "hey, my competition has an edge in sales because the consumer is interested in eco-friendly product," and the trend just goes across the entire industry.

STEVE: Thank you, Andy.

STEVE: My thanks to Andy Mytys, Jennifer Koles, Jason Boyle, and the editors at Backpack Gear Test, for making this edition possible. Please remember that these opinions are those of the individual contributors, and don't necessarily reflect those of Backpack Gear Test, or of The WildeBeat. Backpack Gear Test is looking for qualified testers. To get qualified, you start out by writing reviews of gear you already own. After that, you could be offered free gear to review. Find out more at our web site.

STEVE: I've been here at the show myself looking for better ways to thank you for your membership in the WildeBeat, and to find ways to encourage more of you to support our work. It's been a worthwhile trip. Please watch our web site for future news about this.

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STEVE: We'd like to hear your comments or questions about the gear mentioned on this show, or about anything else we do on the Wildebeat. You can e-mail us at comments at WildeBeat dot net, or call our toll free comment line at 866-590-7373.

STEVE: This edition was produced with funds provided by <name of underwriter>.

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STEVE: Our official website is WWW dot WILDEBEAT (that's W-I-L-D-E-B-E-A-T) dot NET. We need your help to bring you future editions of this free service; please click on our support link and become a member. The WildeBeat is produced by Steve Sergeant, with help from Jean Higham, as a nonprofit educational project of Earth Island Insitute. This has been The WildeBeat, program number ninety nine. Thank you for listening.

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Next time -- a thousand lakes.