Mountain Khakis, a staff favorite for their comfortable, great-looking pants, is offering a special deal for their MountainTops. All you have to do is donate a new or gently used shirt at Alpine Shop, and you’ll receive $20 off any MK Original MountainTop. Donate two shirts, take $20 off two MK Original MountainTops. Donate three shirts, well, you get the idea.
Alpine Shop certified pedorthist and senior bootfitter Angie Bono shows how Alpine Shop custom fits the heel of a boot for one of its customers.
Using a sequence of heat, pressure and cold, Alpine Shop bootfitters can remold the shape of your boots to perfectly fit your heel and ankle.
Alpine Shop can also use different techniques to help you deal with problems like bunions, hammer toes, plantar fasciitis, tarsal tunnel and leg length discrepancies.
You can learn more from all of Alpine Shop’s boot fitters by stopping in any one of our locations in Missouri. You can also visit http://blog-alpineshop.com for continuing instructional videos.
Alpine Shop’s head bootfitter and Certified Pedorthist, Angie Bono, explains the main differences between a “Good” quality hiking boot and a “Bad” boot. Beware—Looks can be deceiving!
Back in the early 1900’s mountaineering and backpacking boots were built on steel shank. This was great for sturdiness and for protecting your feet from rocks and turned ankles. However, it was also heavy and unyielding—not quite the solution we are looking for today. With current technologies, the top quality hiking boots today are based on a nylon shank that runs the length of the boot from the toes to the heel. This stiff nylon helps to protect the hiker’s foot and ankles while also helping to keep weight down and comfort up.
All of Alpine Shop’s hiking boots will contain this feature. However, if you visit some other store that claims to sell hiking boots, watch out for cheap imitations that may put your body at significant risk. Once Angie shows you what’s inside two boots that look almost exactly the same on the outside, you’ll know where to look for your next boots—Alpine Shop!
Alpine Shop’s head bootfitter and Certified Pedorthist, Angie Bono, spends a few minutes on this video going over some easy and effective lacing techniques to help your shoes or your hiking boots fit better.
For problems with your heel slipping in your boot or shoe, the “heel lock” technique helps lock your heel into the back of your footwear. This prevents your foot from moving and reduces the chance of a blister forming on the back of your heel.
If you have problems with too much pressure on sensitive parts of your foot, Angie shows you how to use the “box lace” technique to simply go around those sensitive parts while keeping your footwear as snug as it needs to be everywhere else.
Finally, Angie demonstrates how the “surgeon’s knot” can be used to custom tighten the lower section of a boot for new boot wearers (and another great option to help with heel slippage).
We hope you enjoy the video. We apologize for the focus coming in and out on the boot. We’ll get it fixed before our next video later this week!
There are over 110,000 miles of streams, both large and small, that need our attention and protection in Missouri. The Stream Team program brings together groups of concerned individuals to work on stream improvement projects, water quality monitoring, and serve as the eyes of the agencies that protect our watersheds. Alpine Shop is proud to have worked with Stream Team in the past, and we just found out about a new program that will help others across Missouri support them even more.
Now you can show your support for our wonderful waterways by ordering your Stream Team License Plate. In order for the plate to be produced a total of 200 people must pre-order the plate. These plates are personalized with your selection of letters and numbers. By purchasing these plates you will not only show everyone that you are protecting our crucial watersheds, but you will help fund this great program.
We hope that you will take this important step in helping keep Missouri’s streams clean and safe.
2. Write a check to Missouri Stream Team Watershed Coaltion for $40.00 for 1 year or $65.00 for 2 years (this covers both the donation and specialty plate fees).
3. Mail Form 1716 along with your check to:
MSTWC
P. O. BOX 2132
OZARK, MO 65721
4. A voucher will be mailed to you after 200 plates have been pre-sold.
5. Take your voucher to your nearest Missouri Department of Revenue License Bureau to complete the purchase of your Stream Team license plate.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please note this is a separate process than renewing your license plate at the Missouri Department of Revenue, and you will still be required to pay your registration fees in addition to the donation and specialty plate fees you send to MSTWC as outlined above. If you have just renewed, your renewal registration payment will be pro-rated when you receive your personalized specialty plates. Your pre-collected payment to MSTWC includes either a $25.00 for one year or $50.00 for two years donation to MSTWC, plus an annual $15.00 specialty plate fee to the Department of Revenue. You cannot pay the annual fee directly to Department of Revenue for this first-time purchase. We must pre-sell 200 plates before they go into production. We will send the MSTWC donation voucher to you after the 200 plates have been pre-sold. Only after you receive your voucher can you complete your plate transaction at your local licensing office.
In the outdoor specialty retail world that we work in, our main industry magazine is known as SNEWS® (or Specialty News). Each year SNEWS and BACKPACKER Magazine award theirRetailer of the Year Awards. There are six different categories that retailers are honored in:
Sustainable Business
Community
Youth Involvement
Growth of Outdoor Sports
Conservation
Best Online Retailer
While we would put our standards up against others in almost all of these categories, our vision as a company is to see: “Generations Transformed Through Discovery Oudoors.” Those five words have driven Alpine Shop to truly dedicate itself over the past 37 years to the “Growth of Outdoor Sports” in St. Louis and the Midwest because of the physical, emotional and spiritual changes that the outdoors can bring to every one of us. And we like to think we’re doing a pretty good job of it. If you are one of the more than 4,000 people who have been a part of the 275 clinics or instructional classes we’ve put on in the past year, or if you participated this year in the Off-Road Racing League in either the Alpine Shop Short Track Dirt Crit Series or the Trail Run Series, we hope you agree. If you do, we’d humbly request that you put in a nomination for Alpine Shop as a Retailer of the Year in the category of “Growth of Outdoor Sports.”
The process is simple. Just visit www.snewsnet.com/roty and fill out the short entry form. We promise it doesn’t take very long and this type of recognition–and the interest and funding it can provide–would make it easier for us to continue to improve the events, programs and races that we already offer. Nominations are open now through October 1, 2011 and can be found at www.snewsnet.com/roty.
Thanks for taking the time to help. If you’re interested, below is the information we’ve provided as our own nomination.
“Generations Transformed Through Discovery Outdoors.”
That’s Alpine Shop’s vision and that vision drives our continued efforts to get more people of all ages active in the outdoors. Our dedication to the “Growth of Outdoor Sports” has never been more recognizable in our business than over the past 12 months. During that time period, this St. Louis-based outdoor recreation company has taken in nearly 4000 registrations for 275 educational and experiential programs designed to teach paddling, cycling, wilderness first aid, backpacking and much more across 13 different disciplines. 103 of those programs were absolutely free of charge to everyone in the community.
What’s even more impressive is that the 4000 registrations listed above don’t even include the attendance at Alpine Shop’s largest effort to grow outdoor sports in 2011: the Off-Road Racing League. The Off-Road Racing League includes Alpine Shop’s Short Track Dirt Crit Series of mountain bike races and the Trail Run Series held at a local state park in St. Louis. These two series, which feature a nine nights of outdoor racing in St. Louis, brought in a total of nearly 1200 registrations – including over 200 newcomers and kids – to the two disciplines. The Off-Road Racing League sold out each of five nights of racing for the mountain bike series and experienced 200% growth for the four races of the trail run series despite a St. Louis summer that registered seven record high temperatures throughout the months of July and August.
That’s truly putting our vision to work. And that’s also why believe we’re one of the best retailers in the country in bringing about the “Growth of Outdoor Sports.”
Check out offroadracingleague.com for more information on this series of races and see for yourself how Alpine Shop is helping to grow outdoor sports in St. Louis like never before. Or for more information on Alpine Shop’s complete list of clinics and programs, see alpineshop.com.
You can nominate Alpine Shop for a SNEWS/Backpacker Retailer of the Year by visiting www.snewsnet.com/roty.
Outdoor Nation was a unique and exciting experience. The 2011 summit I attended took place in St. Paul, Minn. at the University of Minnesota – St. Paul and included about 95 young people ages 16 – 28 from all across the Midwest. While the majority of participants were from the Twin Cities-area there was also a large group of high school students from Chicago and representatives from as far away as Texas!
Issues and Concerns
We began the summit discussing obstacles that prevent youth from spending time outside. The issues brought up ranged from safety concerns in inner cities, to lack of outdoor education in school curriculum, to the rising dependence on technology. We discussed our concerns in broad terms, and through a series of 6 person discussions, followed by large-group votes, narrowed down our broad topics to specific issues we, as a whole, wanted to address. From these specific issues we broke into several small groups to come up with program ideas that we could then implement, and the top four ideas received seed money provided from Outdoor Nation to put their plans into action!
Decisions and Developments
It was neat to be involved in the decision process that lead to implementable, outdoor, youth programs. The four ideas chosen were all excellent and spanned a broad range of topics including: helping start community gardens, mentoring elementary and high school aged youth and trying to influence political leaders. The majority of the participants were from Minneapolis area, so all the programs developed were for that area, although each has the potential to expand to include other regions in the Midwest.
In addition to seeing the existing programs grow, I hope the summits move to new cities each year so they will continue to get a diverse group of participants and expand the reach of their programs throughout the country. I am very glad to have had the chance to participate in this program and to be involved in the initiatives that resulted from the summit, I am excited to see it grow in years to come!
If you’ve come to this page thinking you’re about to find an information-packed morsel of trail running goodness in St Louis, well you’re right. It just might not be the information you thought you were getting.
Register today for the Off-Road Racing League Trail Run Series
Instead, I’m going to share the five things you should know about participating in Alpine Shop‘s Trail Run Series – part of the Off-Road Racing League in St Louis. This series already has hosted four full nights of bike racing during July and now we turn to trail running for the month of August. (It’s all part of the big plan!) Our mission is nothing short of turning St. Louis into one of America’s Top 10 cities for outdoor activities.
1. Yes, we know it’s hot.
That’s why we’re trail running! We’ll be running in the shade most of the time on the great course that Big River Running Company has helped us set up. Even better – we’re going to run through a cool creek twice! Seriously, we know this time of year the temperature can be a real issue; but it doesn’t have to stop us from enjoying the great outdoors, getting some exercise and having some fun. Please bring water bottles or a CamelBak pack and participate at your own pace. And then enjoy the food and drink following the race.
2. Set your own pace.
We’ll have everyone from experts to flat out beginners in this series. How seriously you take it is up to you. For some of you, the only thing that will matter is finishing in the top 10. For others, the only thing that matters will just be finishing – period. Whatever your skill level, whatever your fitness level, this series is about having fun.
3. Have fun.
In the mountain biking part of this series, we’ve had guys dressed as cheerleaders, we’ve had people riding on tandems, we’ve had kids of all ages. If you feel like running in
The Off-Road Racing League is all about having fun
a costume – more power to you! If you want to race in a giant Fredbird costume (hint, hint Cardinals), we urge you to do so. If you’re more comfortable running in your trusted workout outfit, we happen to be St Louis Magazine’s A-List choice for athletic and workout gear (another hint, hint)! And after the race, The Wolf provides the food and New Belgium Brewery provides the adult beverages. All you have to do is enjoy yourself.
4. Get registered.
So what are you waiting for? If you sign up for the entire race series, you can save $10 on the price of the four races. The first race starts this Thursday, August 4 at 6 pm at Castlewood State Park. You can find out all the information you need here. Register today!
5. Spread the word.
Invite your friends to run with you. Help us turn this event into the party it should be. Help us celebrate the outdoor life in our great city of St Louis!
Alpine Shop will pay your sales tax on EVERYTHING in our stores beginning this Friday, July 29 through Sunday, August 7.
Why wait for the “Back to School” tax break? We’ve got “Back to – “Whatever you want to do” Savings going on right now!
It doesn’t matter to us if you’re shopping for Back to School, Back to the River, Back to the Trail or Back to the Ski Lift. Just fill in whatever you want to get back to for yourself. Whatever you’re shopping for, we’ll take care of the sales tax for you starting Friday, July 29 through August 7.
And when we say EVERYTHING, we mean EVERYTHING.
This is not just good on backpacks or clothes. Need a new bike to get to school (or to get on the trail)? Pay absolutely no tax on it when you purchase it from us before Aug. 7. Are you thinking you just need to get a new kayak? No Tax! Skis for this winter’s trip to the mountains? No tax! EVERYTHING is tax free.
Alpine Shop’s Save Your Sales Tax Week starts Friday, July 29 at all Alpine Shop stores and on-line at alpineshop.com. Don’t get caught waiting – it only goes through Sunday, Aug. 7.
* Discount on receipt reflects normal sales tax amount.
For our customers in the market for a new Wilderness Systems kayak, like maybe the Tsunami kayak we use in our instructional courses, or the fishing-centered Tarpon, this last weekend of July is your final chance to take advantage of up to $100 in rebates.
If you’d like to take advantage of the deal, come in to Alpine Shop‘s Kirkwood or Columbia locations and pick out the Wilderness Systems kayak you like. We’ll print out the rebate form for you (or you can print the copy below) and make sure you have it filled out correctly. Then, just mail in the form with the correct proof of purchase by August 30, 2011 to claim your cash!
