Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Yesterday in the Icebreaker Portland office, the team celebrated the 1st Annual Icebreaker USA Agricultural & Pastoral Society Show.  It’s quite a big tradition in the Kiwi calendar year, and so being a New Zealand company it only seemed right that this ritual was installed on this side of the world.

It’s a day when “agricultural and pastoral interests are celebrated and promoted”, and there are many fun activities on tap for all to enjoy (American’s – it’s sort of like a County Fair).  And our show didn’t fall short of craziness – there was animal shearing (although with stuffed not live animals); wood chopping; sheep hearding; gumboot throwing; flower arranging; fruit & vege people-creation – competitions galore.

An awesome day was had and the team can’t wait for next year’s event!

An inspiring and exciting message  from long boarder and Icebreaker fan  Adam Colton who, with a few of his friends, has long boarded thousands of miles through some pretty exotic places; Morocco, Peru, Bolivia, France, and  New Zealand – just to name a few! They are also already planning their next trip to long board throughout  Asia sometime this year. If you’d like to read up on their past travels and share in their future ones, these brave souls can be found at whoisadamcolton.com

“One of our most recent trips went a little something like this: 14,000 foot mountain passes, 128 kilometres of uphill riding, and a grand total of 2414 kilometres – did I mention our mode of transportation was a human powered long board?  In 2009, myself, Adam Colton, and 2 of my friends, Paul Kent and Aaron Enevoldsen set out to long board through the Andes crossing Peru and Bolivia . We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but that was an understatement. We crossed some high  peaks and harsh terrain while much of the time being completely malnourished. In order to keep our packs as light as possible we chose not to pack food and cooking utensils  which meant we depended solely the local fare we found as we roamed from  town to town. But there were many times when  cookies, stale bread and bananas  became the  main  staples of our journey. Besides our dietary downfalls, we pushed through horrible potholes, stinky tarry pavement, and cold cold  rain that chilled us all to our bones.

But our passions for the long board, for human powered transportation, documentary film making, our friendship and a damn good sense of humour is what pushed us to carry on, on  this unorthodox journey. On an arduous trip such as this; you could imagine that gear was crucial to our success. I rocked a pair of Icebreaker Bodyfit 200 Boxers and some Icebreaker Hiker Mid Crew Socks. The gear was amazing, it took some hard abuse and made it the whole trip with just a little bit of expected destruction. And let me tell you – Icebreaker merino wool Boxers control odour! After eight days straight in my BodyFit Boxers (yeah I know, its a little gross), I sat next to two pretty Australian girls at a restaurant in Potosi, Bolivia and actually had a conversation without repulsing either of them from what otherwise would have been an eight day old stench of stale perspiration! I didn’t offend anyone – I was stoked!

I invite you all to take a look at our journey – as well as our others – as they have been some of the toughest things we have ever done! But at the end of it all we were stoked – so stoked in fact that that we just completed skating across Morocco in June of 2010 and have our sights set on Nepal for October 2011.”

- Adam Colton – an Long boarding Icebreaker fan

Jordan Pearson recently completed the Speight’s Coast to Coast, racing a gruelling 243 km’s from New Zealand’s West to East Coast, crossing the mighty Southern Alps and some of our merino country in the process. An Icebreaker sponsored athlete, Jordan put our GT Baselayers to the ultimate test.

“My first Speight’s Coast to Coast went better than expected with great results in all of my sections. My school team finished 3rd in the 2 Day School Boys section.

On the beach I received a lot of media attention in my R&R Sport kit, a bright yellow school team race bib with Icebreaker tattoos on my face. The race began well with an average run placing me in the third bunch up the road. Ok but the bunch wasn’t working well together so using my awesome Giant TCR Advanced I made the jump up to the second bunch. However, this bunch wasn’t working well together either, so when I got the chance I made a break up to the first bunch. With about 20km to go on the first ride, the individuals expected the team members to tow them to the run transition. This left me pulling along the first bunch without help. I soon got sick of towing them along so I broke away seeing if I could catch Steve Gurney. I didn’t quite catch him before the transition but still good enough to be 5th overall into transition giving my team runner a five minute lead over the other school boy teams. After a decent run by my team mate, we were still placed third, 20 minutes behind second place. A good day 1.

Day 2 began well, with Steve Gurney, Olivia Spencer-Bower and Kate Cambie in my start group. Steve and I charged through the bike catching other competitors easily as we worked together to Mt White Bridge. I was really pleased to actually lead Gurney while running down to the kayak. My Icebreaker GT layers were ideal for the paddle through the higher than normal gorge. Took a few waves over the bow but great fun and fast! The kayak was going well until just before Woodstock where the wind picked up to almost impossible conditions for paddling. Thanks to the wind and my relative light weight I had several swims which lost me at least 40 minutes. Even the elites and heavier paddlers were having major issues with the wind. After a fast transition, my team mate was flying down the final cycle until 2 punctures ended any chance of moving in to second place, crossing the line in an overall time of 14:10:00.

Overall, the race went well with only a few glitches. Thanks to Icebreaker for the merino layers.”

- Jordan Pearson, Icebreaker Sponsored Athlete