Why The North Face is not Worth Buying

The North Face is synonymous with prissy high school girls and rich college kids who want to make a statement. That’s right I said it, you were thinking it and I said it. For the vast majority The North Face products are overpriced and simply too fashion oriented to be a real competitor in the outdoor apparel market. I’m not saying that their products are bad, necessarily, I’m just saying that if you’re actually looking for economical functional outdoor clothing, you’re looking in the wrong place with The North Face. You’re paying for the name with these guys, and you’ll be paying through the nose... and mouth... and all sorts of nasty places to come up with the money for their extortionist prices.

Let’s take a look at The North Face’s Mountain Light Pant:

$180

Here’s a pair of pants that are seam sealed, light, meaning relatively little insulation, Gore-Tex fabric. Perfect for a long day on the slopes in wet conditions, right? These pants feature elastic gaiters, zippered pockets, the whole nine yards. Okay, so we can see that these pants are obviously not poorly made. What’s the price tag on these babies? You’ll be paying $180 retail for these.


Now let’s take a look at just one other potential competitor: Columbia Sportswear’s Men’s Splash Pant.

$120

As far as looks are concerned, they’re nearly identical. Except, of course, that with the Columbia pants you won’t be a walking billboard. Technical specs? Identical. The Splash is waterproof and seam sealed, elastic gaiters, zippered pockets. Same deal. What’s the price tag on the Splash? $120.

There’s a sixty dollar difference here, with absolutely no change in quality or function. So what could possibly explain this phenomena? Let’s call it The North Face’s tendency to take advantage of it’s uneducated consumers. Gore-Tex lost its patent on waterproof membranes long ago and since then it’s done a good job trying to convince consumers that other waterproof membranes are inferior. In truth, all waterproof membranes operate nearly identically and Columbia’s Omni-Tech waterproof membrane is just as effective as a Gore-Tex membrane. You will find that almost always Gore-Tex products are more expensive than the next waterproof competitor. Choosing carefully, with quality in mind, it’s quite simple to circumnavigate Gore-Tex’s expensive name brand. Put The North Face name, along with Gore-Tex and you’re just asking to pay ridiculous prices just for the name brand.

Let’s take a moment to consider the blundering buffoon, Bear Grylls; possibly The North Face’s most recognized face. Not only did his show advertise some of the best, most creative ways to kill one’s self in the wilderness, it also put The North Face’s name with it. Millions of people watched and love Bear Grylls (unfortunately) and we see The North Face logo on almost everything he has. Honestly I’m surprised they didn’t persuade him to get a “The North Face” tattoo so that even when his shirt is off there can be no questions; Bear Grylls is The North Face’s bitch.

Now, on a positive note, I have owned a pair of The North Face pants for several years which have seen me through survival training, hiking in the Red River Gorge, and backpacking in Pisgah National Forest. They are a great pair of pants, and I love them. I even had a hot coal pop out of the fire one night while I was curled around it in November, trying to stay alive under a pile of pallets and plastic tarps. It simply left a small hole which will never fray because the heat seared the fabric edges. Today, a year later, the hole is still as small as the day it got there. I bought the pants on clearance for $40 instead of the retailed $60 which, in my book, was worth the cost. It’s entirely possible to find good The North Face products for a price you’re willing to pay; it’s simply a matter of being an intelligent consumer.

I appreciate The North Face’s goals. They love the wilderness, I love the wilderness. They make good quality gear, I like good quality gear. However, I do not support their prices, nor do I support the mainstream image that The North Face has developed and seems to adhere to. It is unfortunate that a good outfitter, like The North Face, has ended up being a high school fashion statement and a product available only to the most financially well off and economically ignorant of outdoors people. If you’re a The North Face die-hard, take this article for what it’s worth: there are better options out there for your money.

I don’t know about you, but even if I had the money to throw away, I would not support the manipulation of consumers that is going on with brands like The North Face. Their products are good quality, but their prices are absolutely brutal. Don’t be an ignorant consumer, shop around.

Giveacar Motorcycle Donation Program | United Kingdom

This is a guest post by Daniel Frank, Marketing Executive at Giveacar Ltd. He knows we like our motorcycles here at the Adventure Lifestyle Blog. :)

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Motorcycles have always appealed to adventurers, offering a freedom and independence that even cars can’t match, as well of course as that all important rebel image. However as outdoor enthusiasts we must also respect and look after the environment and disposing of your motorcycle environmentally once it has reached the end of its life can be challenging. Like cars motorcycles are full of toxic chemicals that are hazardous to environment, such as oil, brake fluid and petrol.


If you want to dispose of your motorcycle then you need to find a reliable scrap yard that will depollute your bike before recycling it. There are scrap merchants out there, which will put unsafe bikes back on the road, or just strip them for parts and leave them to rot. In contrast a proper junkyard will recycle everything it can and ensure that everything else is properly disposed of.

So the challenge for motorcycle owners is to find an environmental way dispose of them. One quick and simple solution is to donate them to charity. In the US there are a number of charities, which will accept them of which the most famous is probably Teddy Bear Cops, though they are far from the only ones. You’ll even get a tax cut for doing so. In the UK, in contrast, Giveacar has recently extended its innovative car donation program to include motorcycles.

It may not be the most adventurous thing you can do with a motorbike but donation is surely the best option when it comes to giving your beloved bike a good sendoff both ethically and environmentally. And what’s more it works for scrap cars and trucks as well!

A Conversation With Les Stroud | The Backwoodsman

The March/April issue of the Backwoodsman Magazine, a primitive survivalist publication, featured a full cover picture of Les Stroud on a river raft with his digicam bandanna from the Peruvian Jungle. The article title, “A Conversation with Les Stroud”. In the write-up Les is asked several questions, which he answers quite extensively. I will sum up the question and answer session for you here.

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Q: Does Les Stroud believe everyone should know survival skills because an apocalypse is coming?

A: Les doesn’t worry about any apocalypse, he believes that learning and practicing survival skills should be done because one is passionate about it. It is a way of life. Les believes survival skills are not necessary for all people, i.e. city dwellers, but that the personal discipline and personal skills necessary to be a survival expert are universally applicable.

Q: Does Les Stroud think that Survival should be a public education requirement?

A: “Absolutely.” Les beieves that presenting children with the problems encountered in a survival situation help stimulate their personal confidence and ability to overcome adversity.

Q: What brought about the differences between Survivorman and Beyond Survival?

A: Les was passionate about the way his native survival coaches lived and survived when he was touring the world doing the Survivorman show. Thus, he developed a show where he lived among native groups of people and explored their ways of life and survival, Beyond Survival.

Q: Does Les Stroud feel more spiritually connected to nature after his Beyond Survival experiences?

A: Beyond Survival re-instilled Les’s connection with nature which he lost during the labor and time intensive making of Survivorman. Les believes he was more in tune with nature before starting Survivorman and making Beyond Survival allowed him the opportunity to rediscover his connection to nature through the native tribes he lived with.

Q: Who inspired Les Stroud to become Survivorman, and how did he learn his survival skills?

A: Les Stroud started learning survival like most people, a weekend hobby and local college survival seminars turned into a way of life. Les’s favorite survival company? Prairie Wolf, owned by John and Geri McPherson. In Canada his closest survival friends include David Arama and Doug Getwood.

Q: What’s the down-low on Les Stroud’s new album and multi-media tour?

A: The tour will be an emotional and spiritual journey through all of Les’s experiences around the world fostered by his Surivorman and Beyond Survival shows. It will not be a concert, but a conjunction of film and music which bring together all of Les’s favorite and most meaningful experiences.

Q: How does Les Stroud feel he influenced the mainstream view of survival skills and outdoorsmen in general?

A: Les Stroud believes he walked the line between filmmaker, and survival instructor. He claims to not be perfect at either skill set but believes that his position between the two extremes enabled him to bring survival skills into the mainstream. Les Stroud believes that it’s not necessary to be a hardcore outdoor addict or gear junkie to enjoy what he does, and he made this apparent to the general public. Les regrets that now the survival genre of television and filmmaking now has gone the way of all other filmmaking. It’s surrounded by drama, controversy, and bickering among the rather disconnect and ignorant masses. Les says that his background off the screen, as a normal guy, was one of the best things going for Survivorman.

Q: Does Les Stroud believe that anyone will top Survivorman in the outdoor filmmaking arena?

A: Survivorman took an intense amount of effort to produce physically. Setting and carry all of his own filmmaking equipment (upwards of 50 lbs), it was physically exhausting. The most important part, though, was his passion for filmmaking. Les thinks that his utter devotion to filmmaking and his passion for the outdoors are a combination that will most likely never be seen again.

Q: Will Beyond Survival run a season two?

A: Les is confident that there will be more than just the multi-media tour coming up in the near future. This neither confirms or denies a second season but promises us something in the future.

Ed Stafford National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year

Amazon River credit: NASA, from Wikipedia

Thanks to our partner CampingGearTV for this opportunity. This one is super interesting! Ed Stafford, British native, becomes the first man ever known to have walked the length of the Amazon from source to sea. According to Ed in the interview, he averaged 4 miles a day through the jungle! That’s ridiculously slow! My favorite quote from this interview was when Ed describes his thought process leading up to the walk, it goes something like this:

“I thought, what part of this is physically impossible? What one mile of this walk is physically impossible? The answer was none of them, so I just did it.”

AdventureLifestyleBlog.com Announces Video Blog

Adventure Lifestyle Blog proudly announces the first official entry in the Video Blog journal. To view the video blog, find the link on the navigation bar on the left side of this page or click here. Keep your eyes out for more to follow! As the weather improves, so will the videos!

Go follow Adventure Lifestyle Blog on YouTube to keep updated on the video blog. You can find us on YouTube here.

In case you missed the news, photo galleries are now also online. You can find them on the navigation bar as well, or click here.

AdventureLifestyleBlog.com Announces Photo Galleries

Some more news on the Adventure Lifestyle Blog:

First off, you’ll be seeing some content from the guys over at CampingGearTV.com on the site coming up. Thanks, Josh, for making this possible.

Also, photo galleries are coming online! The first of these is up now so navigate over to it on the left. It’s the Michigan Shore-to-Shore Trail which I explored in 2010. Expect to see a lot more photo galleries as I update old trips and wilderness photography albums. Expect to see them arranged under a “Photo Galleries” heading as more and more come online.

Les Stroud Divorce

I have to address an issue that came up on the old Contemporary Adventures site. Poking around Google one day I saw the popular search “Les Stroud Divorce”. I thought to myself, this must be more gossip hype, I haven’t heard anything about Les’s divorce. So I searched around and couldn’t find any solid confirmation of Les getting a divorce. Thus I concluded that Les Stroud was not getting divorced.

I was wrong.

A reader sent me over to Les’s personal blog where, under the entry “What Comes Next” we can clearly see this proof of his divorce:

“...his personal life almost clear of a nasty separation...”

The reader who caught this posted anonymously or I would give credit to him or her for correcting me.

Announcing AdventureLifestyleBlog.com

This is the new face of adventure! Hello readers, and welcome to those of you from contemporaryadventures.blogspot.com. We’ve moved to www.adventurelifestyleblog.com to better serve our readers!

It’s amazing how much more functional a real web development tool can be. I hope you all enjoy the new easy to use format. Check the left hand column for the old adventure archives listed at Contemporary Adventures. Article entries here will now be organized and much easier to find by topic.

Among other recent developments I am happy to announce my collaboration with Constantin Gabor from highballblog.com. He is a personal friend and a great author and web developer.

Another recent partnership to note is that Adventure Lifestyle Blog will now be working with OutsidePR & Sports Marketing, an outdoor marketing firm based in San Francisco. You’ll be seeing me post some new and exciting articles thanks to their unique opportunities.