This year’s installation in playa preparation is for the virgin burners. There are plenty of all-inclusive packing lists for surviving a week in the Black Rock Desert, but this is not one of them. I wanted to focus on a few key things that are often overlooked when packing for Burning Man.

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A couple weeks ago we added a new Q&A site feature that allows you to ask questions on product pages. The Q&A section can be found under the “Questions?” tab on every product page. Read questions and answers from other customers or ask a question of your own.

Questions will be published and answered within 24 hours of asking. You will receive an email confirmation when your question has been answered.

Here’s a screenshot of our Q&A feature in action, on the Mammut Ride Snowpulse Airbag pack product page:

If you ever have any questions about any product on the site, please ask away. Odds are that other shoppers have the same questions you do, and your questions help build our online knowledge base for outdoor gear lovers everywhere. No question is too simple or technical for our gear experts.

Todd handles all things tech for Tahoe Mountain Sports, so we weren’t surprised when the Pieps Vector beacon made his holiday wishlist. Read on to see what else a tech-oriented outdoorsman might want for Christmas, Hannukah or just for being extra nice.

Snow Peak Snow Miner Headlamp

I have a special talent for losing headlamps, so I’m always in the market for a new one. This is the most ingenious headlamp design I have seen in a long time. The LED lamp is housed in a silicone dome that allows it to go from a headlamp to a hanging lantern. Push the dome in and it focuses the beam. Pull the dome out and it diffuses the light 180 degrees. Best of all it’s small, light, and has a super-long battery life. $49.95

Pieps Vector Avalanche Beacon

It’s high time I upgraded my old analog beacon. Turning that knob and following the loudest radio static noises adds unnecessary complication to rescuing a buried backcountry companion. I could just move up to a three antenna digital transceiver but the technophile in me demands the smartest and most advanced transceiver on the market (afterall, this device could save somebody’s life). Enter the Pieps Vector. The GPS-guided search strip with vector triangulation makes search and rescue faster, easier, and more efficient. This is the first transceiver with a USB rechargeable battery, and you can download your GPS tracks and vertical profile onto the computer. $599.99

Patagonia Nano Puff Jacket

Nobody likes to be cold. This highly compressible synthetic puffy jacket packs small enough to carry around everywhere and add an extra layer in a pinch. I could carry something like this around in my jacket pocket. It’s thin enough to layer under practically any shell without adding bulk and amazingly warm for its weight. $179

For more outdoor gear gift guides, see other TMS staff and contributors’ wish lists: Lis, Greyson, Pam and Dave, and Kevin. 

In less than two weeks 60,000 people will gather in the high desert of northern Nevada and form an improvised city in the dry lakebed of ancient Lake Lahontan. Our fair city will be the tenth largest in the state of Nevada, and will have a higher density of creative ingenuity per capita than anywhere in the world.

My big project for this year’s burn is to build a large hammock stand and shade structure for our camp. I’m borrowing Bucky Fuller’s tensegrity design to build the portable and collapsible structure. Buckminster Fuller is probably known best for inventing the geodesic dome, but there are already lots of those out on the playa. His tensegrity design, on the other hand, is just as genius, quicker to setup, and less material intensive. Tensegrity, a contraction of “tensional integrity,” uses tensioned cables or cord to create a rigid floating compression structure. I would translate that to layman’s terms if I could, but here’s a picture instead:

Rendering of Tensegrity Prism by Bob Burkhardt

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See this button below? Go ahead, click it. I promise nothing bad will happen…

…if you clicked the button and have a Google account, then you just “+1′d” www.tahoemountainsports.com. What that means is that you personally endorse or recommend this site to friends and contacts connected via your Google account (and anonymously to the rest of Google). As a page gets more and more +1s it will begin to rise up on Google search result pages. The end result? A more relevant and democratic search experience.

Here you can see a Google search result page for the term “google”, with anonymous +1s circled in orange:

Here’s another search result for “lake tahoe weather”, and the page that I +1′d:

If any of my Google contacts +1 a page, their information will appear beneath the link.

These +1 buttons can be found throughout the Tahoe Mountain Sports website on every blog post, product and category page. If you’re browsing the site and see something that you like and think the rest of the world might like it too, give it a +1.

It takes tons of constant tweaking and updating to stay on top of the ever-evolving world wide web. A lot has changed on www.tahoemountainsports.com since my last tech update in September. Here are just some of the highlights of how we are improving the user experience on the site:

Checkout by Amazon

We now accept payments through Checkout by Amazon. This payment method is a quick, easy and secure way to checkout using your existing Amazon account. I’m going to give you a quick walk-through to show you how easy it is:

When you’re ready to checkout, click this button on the shopping cart page:

A secure login window for Amazon will open:

Once you log into Amazon you will be taken to our secure checkout page where you will select your billing and shipping information on file with Amazon:

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WHO: TMS Tech Guy Todd and friend Hillary

WHAT: Cutting a Christmas tree

WHERE: Tahoe National Forest

WHEN: December 17, 2010

GEAR: snowshoes, headlamp, kerosene lantern (for old-fashioned ambiance), Klean Kanteen Insulated Bottle filled with hot chocolate and brandy, and most importantly – a saw

Did you know that for just $10 you can get a Holiday Tree Permit from the U.S. Forest Service that allows you to cut your own Christmas tree on National Forest land in the Tahoe Basin? I actually had no idea until this winter. It turns out that all you have to do is drop by one of the U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit offices and pick up a permit. Not only does this give people the traditional experience of venturing out and cutting down their own holiday Tannenbaum, it also helps the forest. Cutting down small bushy firs, pines and cedars aids in creating defensible space by removing potential fire ladders.

I got my permit a week before Christmas and the extended forecast was showing snow all week long. The sun had already gone down but the moonlight was glowing through the clouds. It was now or never.

It was a nice night for a moonlit snowshoe hike. Armed with a kerosene lantern and a saw we set out towards my old neighborhood. Having lived the summer in this neck of the woods I knew it pretty well. Granted, it looked totally different covered in snow. We hiked about half a mile into the forest and then scouted around for the perfect candidate to fell.

Picking the right tree is trickier than one might think. Not only does it need to look good, there are also certain criteria that it needs to meet in order to satisfy the regulations on the permit. I won’t get into the details, but you can read the regulations if you wish. After nearly an hour of searching for the right tree we found a nice fir closely surrounded by a few other firs. Long story short, we cut it down, hauled it back to the car and brought it home.

Want to get a tree of your own? Permits will be issued until December 23 and cutting is permitted up until Christmas Day. Visit the LTBMU Holiday Tree Permit page for more details.

This summer I answered the call of the wild. I spent four and a half months residing within the Tahoe National Forest, living simply and reconnecting with nature. Low-impact, portable outdoor living was the name of the game, and I made sure not to leave a single bit of evidence that I was ever out there.

For me, Leave No Trace is far more than just picking up your litter (and litter found along the way), it is using the outdoors in a minimal and responsible way. LNT is digging a proper cat hole, appropriately disposing of wash water and even making sure to spit out your toothpaste in a way that is virtually invisible to passers by and harmless to woodland creatures.

These wilderness areas were set aside to be left wild. There are so few places left in the world that are devoid of human influence that it becomes our responsibility to protect these places where nature is able to run its course. When I am out in the forest I make it a point to tread lightly and have as little impact as possible on the forest.

As soon as I began noticing faint trails forming around my campsite, I’d pick up and move to a new location. Same thing if I noticed that my presence has started leaving a mark in any way. I wanted to leave the forest exactly as I found it. If somebody hiked through one of my previous campsites they would never know I was there.

Besides practicing Leave No Trace for ethical reasons, I also had a very practical reason to not be seen. I was not fully sure what the legal status was for high-country homelessness on public land at first, so treading lightly protected my own hide as well as those belonging to the furry critters that I called my neighbors.

Todd Shimkus is a web developer at Tahoe Mountain Sports, and penned this Leave No Trace post to cap off our big $1 per fan Facebook promotion with the organization. Just a few days left to like us on Facebook for the great, Leave No Trace cause. Don’t delay!

In this month’s Tech Talk I want to show you a new site features that make it easier to find exactly what you are looking for within our category pages:

Pictured above is a screen capture that shows our Men’s Pants category, which can be further refined by Size (e.g. “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”) or by Waist Size (in inches) via the left navigation column. Clicking on a specific size will show only products that have that particular size in stock. This feature can be especially useful to customers that have a hard time finding clothing or footwear in their size.

Other product level refinements include: Mondo Size for ski and telemark boots, Disc Weight for disc golf discs, and US Shoe Size for our wide selection of footwear. And of course, you can still browse all our categories by Brand and Price.

Tech Talk is a monthly blog series written by our resident tech geek, Todd Shimkus. Questions or comments about the Tahoe Mountain Sports site design or functionality? Comment on this post and Todd will look into making it a reality.

Burning Man 2010 is just around the corner and we want to make it easy for burners to get last minute supplies before venturing off to the Black Rock Desert. NOTE that this list is not all-inclusive and will not contain everything you need out on the playa, just a few things we carry at the store that will make your stay in Black Rock City more comfortable.

Hydration

Burning Man is a lot of things to a lot of people, but first and foremost it is desert survival. Water is the single most important thing you can bring out on the playa. The rule of thumb is 1.5 gallons per person per day. Bring more if you are using a solar shower, mist sprayers or anything else that uses additional water. For in-camp water storage, check out 5 Gallon Foldable Water Carriers, 10 Liter MSR Dromedary Bag or the 6 Liter Platypus Water Tank. All of these water carriers can be folded up to save space on the way back. For hydration out on the playa, we carry a variety of hydration backpacks, hydration reservoirs and water bottles. Last year I took the 40 oz. Klean Kanteen stainless steel water bottle with a sling through the top, and it was plenty of water for long escapades. For electrolyte-enhanced water add Elete, Cytomax Recovery or Nuun drink mixes.

Bike Accessories

Bikes are an indispensable mode of transportation on the playa. You will be able to see and do more on a bicycle than you will traveling on foot and hopping on art cars or mutant vehicles. Need to carry some cargo? Check out our selection of bike bags and bike baskets. For nighttime riding, bike lights are a must. At the very least you will need a front light and blinky rear light, like the Planet Bike Beamer 1 Front and Rear Light Set. I also recommend some SpokeLites for some extra flair.

Sun Protection

The sun’s rays are very powerful in the high desert, and the reflection off the light-colored alkali ground amplifies the sun’s effects. Protect your skin with Sol Sunguard Altitude SPF 40 or Alpine SPF 25 sunscreen for non-greasy, sweatproof sun protection. Lip Balm is also one of the best things to have with you after a couple days in the desert. Sunglasses are a good idea as well, but will not protect your eyes against dust storms. Snow goggles, work well for keeping dust out of your eyes. A big hat like the Kavu Chillba Fisherman’s Hat is another great way to keep the sun off your face.

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