Living out of a backpack: Becoming a ski bum can be expensive

I never thought I’d say this.. but I think I now know why people don’t like shopping!

We had a mission - to secure cheap, decent and reliable gear but we had no idea where to start looking!

We google’d a few stores online and found that most of the ski / adventure type stores were over at Broadway, so we took a bus over that direction and walked the streets for a while. We came across a range of adventure shops selling all sorts of things, but didn’t really see too much ski gear. Rhys was talking to a guy in MEC (Canada’s Anaconda equivalent) and we got a tip to head a little further down the street to a store called Sports Junkies. (See below for locations of stores) They stocked last seasons gear and had a whole pile of ‘pre-loved’ equipment too. We went down and had a look and were overwhelmed by the amount of gear and the quality of it all!

The complete set

When it was time to finally make our purchases we spent a good few hours in this store getting kitted out! Jacket and pants for me, pants for Rhys, boards boots and binding sets for the 2 of us, helmets x 2 and a set of ice skates (!!). All for under $1000!! We were totally stoked to have succeeded with the bulk of our goods but not looking forward to carrying it all back on the bus..in the rain.

We still needed a few other things, like board bag, gloves and goggles so headed to the place where the TWHC (The working holiday club – the recruiting company we had gone through to get our jobs organised) guys were recommending we went. – The Board Room. We didn’t have much success in this store (except for hats), but it had all last seasons gear (Be sure to go to the clearance store though, I think it was a little further down the road to the Board Room..definitely worth the extra steps) and everyone else who had purchased there thought it was pretty good – although I don’t think the prices were comparable to those that we had got at Sports Junkies.

Board bag, gloves and wrist guards (safety first) we picked up from a store back on Broadway of which we can't remember what it was called!! They weren’t cheap but we were over shopping by this stage and since my fingers go numb in temperatures above 10 degrees I thought it was a worthwhile investment into warm hands!

My gear

Rhys' gear

Goggles with additional speaker ear warmers!!

In my skates and ready to go!

Rhys and his near gear

In summary; for those heading to Van to set up before heading up to Whistler.. this would be our recommendations:

o If you aren’t fussed about what kind of board you want and don’t mind a pre-loved board, definitely head to Sports Junkies. (My compete set, boards boots and bindings, was only $200)

o If you want to spend a little more money to get something brand new, head to the Board Room. (I think boards were starting at about $200ish??)

o Both stores had the same brand of helmets but they were cheaper at Sports Junkies so probably start here

o Goggles – definitely the board room

o Clothes – Sports junkies

o Other accessories – gloves and stuff they probably had a bigger selection at Sports Junkies, but just shop around a bit until you find the best!

As annoying as it is to go between stores (especially when you just want to buy stuff and don’t have time to muck around) I’d probably recommend it just to check out the options. We were there very early in the season so stocks were pretty good. They might run out quickly once it starts snowing and coming into holidays so the above may not be useful to everyone.. but it’s what we found and how we did our thing and we were more than happy with how we went!! Still to get out on the mountain with it all but so far so good!