Late Update (2009-11-28 12:27):  Here’s a picture of the items I ended up picking up:

Gear from REI Garage Sale (October 2009)

I was hoping for some clothes and found some, but not exactly what I was looking for.  I picked up a new pair of Keen’s as my previous pair was falling apart.  I also found a great pair of waterproof boots that were marked down quite a bit.  Finally, there’s a pair of pants that were really cheap.

Kate and I arrived at REI around 7:30am, an hour and a half before the sale started at 9am. I believe this was the optimal time to get there. We were very near the front of the line and didn’t need to get up too early. There was a group of people who had apparently camped the night there, not something I was willing to do.

Just before they let us in I snapped a picture on my phone of the line.  This was just the start, it continued far to the left around the building:

Line at REI Garage Sale

Once the doors opened, we headed in and the madness started.  The sale items were located behind the store, in the unloading truck bay areas.  There were multiple racks of clothing and tables and tables of bins full of cheap gear.  Packs and shoes lined the sides of the truck bay.  My main reason for going was a pack, so that’s what I hit first.  I found a nice one pretty quickly.  After that I browsed the bins and then hit clothes.

I ended up with more than I expected, but the table below shows that I really did save a ridiculous amount of money, so it will probably be worth it in the long run.  All of my new gear:

My new gear

Table of the gear I bought, along with full price, sale price, savings totals and maximum sale percentage:

Item	Original Cost	Sale Cost	Savings	Percent Off
Therma Rest	74.95	37.83	37.12	0.5
Osprey Pack	149	84.83	64.17	0.43
REI Jacket	199	42.83	156.17	0.78
North Face Pants	65	27.83	37.17	0.57
Kuhl Pants	58	29.83	28.17	0.49
Silva Ranger Compass	55	24.83	30.17	0.55
REI Shirt	10.83	4.83	6	0.55
Under Armor Shirt	50	27.83	22.17	0.44
REI Fleece Hoodie	45	24.83	20.17	0.45
Mountain Hard Wear Shirt	38	17.83	20.17	0.53
REI Shirt	24	7.83	16.17	0.67
Petzl Head Lamp	64.95	24.83	40.12	0.62
180s Ear Warmers	30	11.83	18.17	0.61
Perl Izumi Cycling Shorts	100	22.83	77.17	0.77
Patagonia Long Sleeve Shirt	29.99	17.83	12.16	0.41
Water Filter Kit	79.95	24.83	55.12	0.69
Sigma Cycling Computer	56	29.83	26.17	0.47
Totals	1129.67	463.11	666.56	0.78

Midway through the day we decided we’d like to try Bear peak.  We ducked out of work a bit early and after grabbing our gear and waiting a bit for Ben, we headed out around 4:30.  As we knew, this is definitely too late to head out for a hike as early/late afternoon storms have made themselves a part of Colorado life for the past few months.  Despite this, we were hopeful and tried to make a decent pace up the trail.

The first mile or so along the mesa trail isn’t so bad.  We held a pretty good pace for this section on the Mesa trail.  Apparently there are two ways to reach the top of Bear Peak: Along the Bear Canyon trail (longer and less steep) or along the Fern Canyon trail (much shorter but much steeper).  We chose the latter option.

Most of the way up the Fern Canyon trail was full of rock steps and switchbacks due to the decently steep incline we were ascending.  After multiple breaks, we made it to a decent lookout over the west side of the climb and could see some very pretty snow covered peaks and another peak to our north:

Peak north of the Bear Peak trail

Up to this point we had heard a few rumbles of thunder.  As we could see west, the building storm clouds were visible.  The combination of the continuing thunder, slight sprinkles, and occasional lightning were enough to convince us to turn back.  I’m not one who likes to mess with lightning in elevated terrain.  As we turned around to descend, a nice view of the plains just south of boulder presented itself:

View of the plains from the Bear Peak trail

Also, a picture of us descending (from right to left) Nick (fixing his shoe), Ben, Kuo, Dan, and Evan:

Descending Bear Peak

After a knee/shin jarring descent and a quick hike back down the Mesa trail towards NCAR, I snapped a quick few images of Boulder from the trail just west of the office:

Start/End of the Mesa trail just north of NCAR

By this time it was quite close to raining pretty good, so some of us hurried back to the building.  Just as Ben and I made it to the back entrance (across the bridge) it started raining.  Perfect timing!

After hiking Evan, Kate, and I headed to Southern Sun for dinner and a few beers.  Also, Evan and I decided we were sick of the weather denying us a full hike, so we are planning on leaving around 6:30 tomorrow morning to try again.  It is 11pm now, we’ll see if we actually make it.  I’m sure I’ll at least post photos if we do.

Side note: I found a Linux GUI/CLI tool called Hugin that does photo stitching very easily.  The third and fourth images of this post were made using Hugin and turned out pretty well.  I plan to make more in the future as they are much more impressive than a single image.