Gearing up: Where we Shopped to Save Money

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We are big believers in never paying full price for anything. So when we started gearing up for our trip, we focused our efforts on websites with great deals and sale sections. Below are the top 3 sites we used to purchase our gear. You’ll notice that most of them are rather specific to outdoor clothing (travel, hiking, etc.) because we wanted items that were light, quick-drying, moisture wicking, breathable and easy to wash.

1. Sierra Trading Post (STP)

I’m pretty sure we purchased more than 70% of our apparel from Sierra Trading Post. At least. On top of their extensive sale section, you can sign up for their newsletter and they’ll send you daily deals with further discounted items. Talk about savings! According to them, we’ve saved more than $800 off MSRP for pieces from Columbia, Icebreaker, Lolë, ExOfficio, The North Face, and more.

Note: The items are so much cheaper because STP sells seconds, overstocks and closeouts. A lot of the time, you end getting older models. However, we’ve found that since they look nearly identical to the current models, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

2. Steep And Cheap

This site is unlike any other in that it runs new deals every thirty minutes (or less if the product gets sold out). This section, or what they call “current steal”, will include outdoor clothes as well as equipment. We found a great price on our packing cubes here. They also recently launched their “gear cache” section, which is similar to other flash sale sites.

3. Amazon

Okay, Amazon does not specialize in outdoor clothes but they always seem to have good prices on a lot of items. What we like most if their wide variety of brands and... the reviews! Since we bought most of our clothes online, Amazon reviews came in really handy.

Other sites we used include:

  • The Clymb: flash sale site that specializes in outdoor gear

  • Shop It To Me: great site that searches leading retailers and will email you a daily or weekly summary of new items that go on sale in your size

    • They don’t have all the brands we like but Tyler found his North Face soft shell for almost half off with Shop It To Me

  • Moosejaw, Backcountry & BackcountryEdge: similar to STP, they provide great deals and sales

    • We purchased our packs on sale from BackcountryEdge (23% off) and received a free Platypus Platy Bottle for signing up for their newsletter!

Please stay tuned as we’ll be sharing our packing lists in the upcoming week!