Category: News and Information

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Still Time to Find the Perfect Gift for Every Adventure

There's Still Time! Alpine Shop has Extended Hours and FREE In-Store Pick-up

No matter what day of the week Christmas falls on, it always seems like I never have time to finish everything I’d like to get done before the day is here. This year, at Alpine Shop, we’re trying to help you put the perfect gift for your outdoor adventurer under your tree with extended shopping hours all the way up until Christmas Eve, Free in-store pick-up at our Kirkwood location for items purchased on-line, expedited shipping and  outdoor adventure gift guides available at alpineshop.com as well.

For a complete listing of Alpine Shop’s store hours from now until New Year’s Day, check out our location information page. Complete with almost day-by-day hour listings along with directions and phone numbers, we’re trying to make your Christmas gift shopping as easy as possible.

Getting a late start on your shopping? In the St. Louis area, you can shop for great outdoor adventure gifts on-line at alpineshop.com and then pick up your gifts at our Kirkwood location. Just choose In-Store Pickup for your delivery option when you complete your purchase. In most cases, we ask you to allow 12-16 hours for your order to be processed. However, if you order by 2 pm on Christmas Eve, we guarantee we’ll have your order ready for you to pick up at Alpine Shop Kirkwood before we close at 5 pm that day. More information on our in-store pickup policy can be found here.

If you’re closer to one of the other Alpine Shop locations – or just don’t want to deal with the crowds, we can offer Overnight shipping with any order received as late as close of business on Wednesday, 12/22. Get the perfect gift without any hassle!

Have other questions or just need some tips for the adventure-lover on your list? Just give us a call: 1-888-347-2879. We’re here and happy to help!

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Free Socks to Help Soldiers Feel Good this Holiday Season

American Troops in the field can only go as far as their feet can take them. That’s why durable, quality socks have always been one of the most important items in any soldier’s locker. This weekend, Alpine Shop, in cooperation with SmartWool and the Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, will participate in a program designed to get our troops at least one pair of the finest socks available to them.

Smartwool Hiking Medium Crew Sock- Winner of Backpacker Magazine Editors' Choice Award

Now through Tuesday, December 21, as part of the Feels Good promotion, SmartWool will donate a pair of the brand’s Hiking Medium Crew Socks for every two pairs of any SmartWool socks sold at one of the three Alpine Shop locations or on-line at Alpineshop.com.

Product will be distributed to soldiers in Southern Afghanistan in the Kandahar Province along the grueling mountains of the Pakistan border. Socks will go to numerous Forward Operating Bases where soldiers are performing at their limit day in and out. Upon returning to their bases for re-supply, etc, the soldiers will receive a new pair of Smartwool socks.

Feels Good starts Friday, December 17th and will last until Alpine Shop sells its allotment of promotional socks from Smartwool. The goal of the promotion is to provide customers with an opportunity to participate in something that Feels Good for those who are far away from home this holiday season.

About Alpine Shop
Alpine Shop began life in 1973 as a small climbing shop. Today, through its three locations in Kirkwood, Chesterfield and Columbia, Mo., it serves almost every type of outdoor enthusiast—be they backpackers, campers, cyclists, hikers, paddlers, skiers, snowboarders or climbers—with a friendly and knowledgeable staff, cutting edge products and a wide variety of how-to clinics for all activity levels.

About the Grassroots Outdoor Alliance
Grassroots Outdoor Alliance unites independent outdoor retailers as a strong voice to protect and promote the experience of outdoor enthusiasts across the United States. We enable access to best business practices for our retail members, to the best equipment and apparel brands for the public, and to the backcountry for all.

About SmartWool
Based in Steamboat Springs, CO, SmartWool is an apparel brand whose products are inspired by living and playing in the mountains.  The company offers year-round apparel for an active life lived in unpredictable mountain climates.  SmartWool products are created to get the most out of the inherent benefits of Merino wool while delivering extraordinary comfort through intelligent and thoughtful products, allowing mountain athletes to do what they love to do longer.

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Columbia Sportswear’s OMNI-HEAT – We’ll Let the Videos Talk for Themselves

So have you heard of Columbia Sportswear’s new OMNI-HEAT technology? Alpine Shop began carrying the little silver dotted-liner this fall.

Columbia Sportswear OMNI_HEAT Heat Elite Jacket
Using small silver dots covering the entire liner, Columbia Sportswear claims their new OMNI-HEAT liners are 20% warmer than conventional liners.

Basically take the concept behind an old Alpine Shop staple – the emergency space blanket for warmth – a reflective surface inhibits heat loss. Columbia’s in-house testing has indicated 20% greater warmth using this new technology than a conventional lining. The difference, though, compared to the old space blanket, is that Columbia doesn’t coat the entire lining in silver. Rather, they have coated the lining in little silver dots. That way, the theory goes, moisture and excessive heat can pass through the gaps between the dots, giving you a)warmth and b) breathability. So, repeat Alpine Shop’s winter mantra for fun and safety in the outdoors: Stay warm. Don’t overheat.

Has Columbia succeeded? So far, reviews have been very positive. Try one on at your closest Alpine Shop or pick one up on-line at alpineshop.com.

Until you get here, though, you’ll just have to enjoy a few of their commercials!

Have a favorite? Let us know!

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901 Coats and Counting

What do 901 coats look like? I don’t know. Alpine Shop‘s goal has never been to have one big pile of coats to give away at the end. We’ve wanted to get the coats donated by our incredible customers into the hands of those who needed warmth as quickly as possible – especially as temps dropped down into the single digits today.

Coats donated to the Alpine Shop as part of the One Warm Coat Drive in 2010
Thanks to Alpine Shop customers, we've collected over 900 coats over the past three weeks. Our goal of 1000 coats for area folks in need is well within reach.

What the picture to the right shows is about half the coats we’ve had donated since our One Warm Coat promotion started on November 20. Most of these were donated in the past week. And donate you have, folks. We had so many coats come in last week that they are, in fact, taking over our Kirkwood store’s conference room. That’s a wonderful problem to have, let me tell you.

Most of the coats in this picture will hopefully be wrapped snuggly around someone before the week is out.

As it stands, we’re just 99 coats away from reaching our goal of 1000 now. With the drive ending this Sunday, December 19, we’re asking everyone to please continue to donate. As we have from the first day, we’ll give you a coupon for 20% off any one coat, jacket or clothing item for each and every coat you donate (no limit!). And after Sunday, if we’re over 1000 coats (which it looks like we will be), we’ll give away a total of four $250 gift cards to Alpine Shop. You get an entry for each and every coat you donate. Just make sure you fill out the paperwork when you drop your items off!

Thank you again, St. Louis and Columbia. We’ve got just one week left. Let’s see how many coats we can collect in just seven days!

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Alpine Shop in the News – Cold Weather Takes Hold… Finally

As the coldest day of the year hit St. Louis, Alpine Shop Marketing Director Todd Oswald talked with local media about the weather’s effect on business and also why the Shop’s One Warm Coat Drive is so important.

You can read all about it – and watch the video – here.

For more information about Alpine Shop’s One Warm Coat Drive, see this article explaining the promotion. Currently, Alpine Shop has collected over 600 coats as they try to gather 1000 before Sunday, December 19.

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Help Us Collect 1000 Coats this Month – One Warm Coat Drive

Alpine Shop's One Warm Coat Drive

Starting this Saturday, November 20, Alpine Shop will begin accepting winter coat and jacket donations as part of our One Warm Coat drive. This year, we’re going after a number we’ve never attempted before: 1000 winter coats or jackets for adults and kids. Last year we hit 475. So we’ve upped our time limit to a cool 30 days, increased the coupon we’re handing out to those that bring in coats and even doubled the total of our prizes for reaching our goal.

Interested in helping out with the coat drive? Good. We need all the help we can get. It’s pretty simple really:

For every clean, gently used coat or jacket donated at one of our stores through Sunday, December 19, Alpine Shop will give the donor a coupon for 20% off the purchase of a new jacket or clothing item in our stores. If we hit our goal of 1000 coats, we’ll celebrate by giving away $250 Alpine Shop gift certificates to four lucky coat donors.

All you need to do to participate in the coat drive is bring your coats and jackets to any Alpine Shop location. Bring them inside and check them in with one of our outfitters and make sure you receive your coupon(s) and get your entry(ies) into the drawing for the GCs. After that, we take care of the rest. Donated coats are split among three organizations in St. Louis; Sunshine Ministries, Coats for Kids and the Edgewood Children’s Center. If you know of another organization that could use our help, please leave a comment below.

So… now it’s time to go clean out your closet – because your old coat may never be worth this much again!

If you’re interested, here is the official press release we sent out to kick off this event.

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Thanks for a Great First Season!

Thanks to all of you that made that first Alpine Shop Trail Run Series such a success! We made it out of the park last night before getting soaked – and a huge thanks to all of you that came out despite the threat of some serious storms.

Big River Running will have the results up shortly and we’ll have everything linked up as soon as we can.

A huge thanks goes out to Big River Running for all the timing and assistance throughout the year to help get this series off the ground. Also, our thanks go out to New Belgium Brewing for providing Fat Tire Beer for us all month long. Also, we want to tell all of our trail run sponsors how much we’ve appreciated their help as well: The North Face, Wigwam, Montrail, Mountain Hardwear, Salomon and Columbia Sportswear.

We’ve had plenty of people ask us if we could continue this into October. We’re still looking into that possibility at this time and we’ll post an update later on this month. For now, thanks again for making this a great month of races on the trails. We’ll be back bigger and better next summer.

Thanks for joining the adventure!

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Thursday, 9/2 Races Are Still On

We hope you won’t let a little rain keep you from coming out tonight for the final race of Alpine Shop’s Inaugural Trail Run Series, presented by Big River Running. Tonight’s races are sponsored by The North Face and we’ve got visors and caps to give away all night long along with a number of pairs of TNF trail runners to raffle off, as well.

Tonight’s advanced course is going to be about 3.5 miles. Start time will be the usual 6:30 pm. For beginners, please expect to start your race around 6:45 tonight. With sunlight failing on us quicker and quicker, we need to make sure we have enough daylight to get you through your race AND make sure you’ve got time to enjoy some refreshments following your finish. Start and Finish lines will remain in the same spot – in the meadow past the Ranger station, just before the horse trailer turnaround.

This is the final race of the year, so if you haven’t joined us before now, this is your last chance until next summer! (Unless we do figure out some other way of adding on some events this fall!) Like we’ve said before, we started this series to get people outside having fun in an active setting. The important word being “fun.” We mix a little healthy dose of competition in and then celebrate it all with free food and adult beverages (for the adults, of course). Grab some freebies from the Alpine Shop tent and sign up for raffle prizes all evening long.

Series sponsor Big River Running will have results up at BigRiverRunning.com almost immediately so you can check your times.

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Sunday’s (9/5) 5k Championships Canceled

Well, we probably should have seen this coming, but even the Trail Running Series is getting big enough now to make the state worry about weekend problems at Castlewood State Park. The Rangers have asked us to cancel this Sunday’s 5k Championships. So, this Thursday will be our finale for the Trail Run Series.

Alpine Shop and Big River Running want to thank you for helping us make the series such a success and we’ll be meeting with the State Parks to plan out next summer’s schedule soon – knowing weekends are out from now on!

It’s just proof that St. Louis is truly looking for fun activities to do – even through one of the hottest summers on record. Thanks St. Louis for making the Off Road Racing League such a huge success!

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Final Results from 8/26 Races

Congratulations to Scott Linne who took home the win from last week’s Trail Run Series Races. Linne finished the four mile course (approximate) in 26:51, beating the second place finisher, Jason Difani by half a second short of a full minute.

Marcy Dunlap took first in the women’s division with a time of 34:20.

Full results are below:

Off-Road Racing League – Race 3

Castlewood State Park – Ballwin, MO

Aug. 26, 2010

Results by Big River Running Company

         CLASS
 PLACE   PLACE                    FINISHER                  TIME     PACE

Men Under 20
   15    1  Tyler Redmond, 18, Ballwin, MO             33:41.8    7:56

Men 20 - 39
    1    1  Scott Linne, 32, St. Louis, MO             26:51.5    6:19
    2    2  Jason Difani, 31, Kirkwood, MO             27:51.0    6:33
    3    3  Shawn Ganske, 38, St. Louis, MO            31:03.8    7:19
    4    4  Brent Newman, 37, St. Louis, MO            31:05.2    7:19
    5    5  Kyle Bradley, 24, Valley Park, MO          31:13.9    7:21
    9    6  David Garthe, 38, Ballwin, MO              32:51.3    7:44
   10    7  Clinton Rice, 23, Chesterfield, MO         33:11.5    7:49
   11    8  Phil Hussey, 28, St. Louis, MO             33:14.6    7:49
   13    9  Josh Smith-Moore, 26, Labadie, MO          33:32.3    7:53
   16   10  Rick Fessler, 38, Bridgeton, MO            33:57.3    7:59
   17   11  Bryan Niehaus, 37, U. City, MO             34:02.6    8:01
   19   12  Chris Sullivan, 31, Creve Coeur, MO        35:02.8    8:15
   21   13  Matt Kelsey, 34, St. Louis, MO             35:06.5    8:16
   23   14  Brian Tel Maat, 37, High Ridge, MO         36:08.2    8:30
   24   15  Matthew Townsend, 27, St. Louis, MO        36:55.1    8:41
   25   16  Zach Crow, 27, St. Louis, MO               37:53.2    8:55
   28   17  Kyle Fuller, 33, Wildwood, MO              38:23.2    9:02
   29   18  Doug Fenstermacher, 37, St. Charles        39:38.6    9:20
   30   19  Dennis Maddock, 36, Ballwin, MO            42:13.9    9:56
   31   20  Steve Worthy, 29, St. Louis, MO            42:59.5   10:07

Men 40 & Up
    6    1  Eric Buckley, 47, St. Louis, MO            31:56.6    7:31
    7    2  Will Hickman, 40, St. Louis, MO            32:34.2    7:40
    8    3  Scott Payne, 41, Fenton, MO                32:41.9    7:42
   12    4  David Welsh, 54, DeSoto, MO                33:28.3    7:53
   14    5  Pat McNulty, 56, St. Louis, MO             33:39.8    7:55
   18    6  Darryl Holman, 49, Chesterfield, MO        35:02.2    8:15
   20    7  John Guyer, 41, Fenton, MO                 35:03.8    8:15
   22    8  Steve Dernlan, 40, St. Louis, MO           35:12.4    8:17
   26    9  Steve Sommers, 49, St. Louis, MO           38:09.2    8:59
   27   10  Craig Seymour, 63, Valley Park, MO         38:22.0    9:02
   32   11  Kirk Smith, 51, Ballwin, MO                44:02.8   10:22
   33   12  Doug Combs, 43, St. Louis, MO              45:55.4   10:48
   34   13  Selman Akyol, 46, St. Louis, MO            45:58.7   10:49

         CLASS
 PLACE   PLACE                    FINISHER                  TIME     PACE

Women 20 - 39
    1    1  Marcy Dunlap, 36                           34:20.8    8:05
    2    2  Katie Helbig, 28, St. Louis, MO            34:48.4    8:11
    3    3  Suzanne Betlejewski, 25, St. Louis, MO     35:18.8    8:19
    4    4  Natalie Scheider, 30, Wildwood, MO         36:04.0    8:29
    5    5  Stephanie McCreary, 38, St. Louis, MO      36:10.6    8:31
    6    6  Christy Davidson, 32, Ballwin, MO          36:16.9    8:32
    7    7  Kate Huffman, 31, Ballwin, MO              37:19.5    8:47
   11    8  Chandra, Fessler, 35, Ballwin, MO          38:39.1    9:06
   13    9  Stacey Lester, 34, Ballwin, MO             39:43.3    9:21
   15   10  Abby Brian, 27                             43:32.3   10:15
   16   11  Stacey Rosen, 29, Ballwin, MO              43:51.0   10:19
   17   12  Zoe Weller, 24, Brentwood, MO              45:51.7   10:47
   19   13  Hannah Smith, 27, St. Louis, MO            47:08.8   11:06

Women 40 & Up
    8    1  Heather Dernlan, 40, St. Louis, MO         37:31.5    8:50
    9    2  Heidi Chambers, 52, St. Louis, MO          38:12.4    8:59
   10    3  Lisa White, 41, St. Louis, MO              38:15.4    9:00
   12    4  Angela Graflage, 40, St. Charles           38:49.2    9:08
   14    5  Samantha Stadler, 40, St. Louis, MO        40:26.3    9:31
   18    6  Donna Fink, 51, St. Louis, MO              46:00.6   10:50
   20    7  Pam Browning, 46, Grover, MO               52:41.5   12:24
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