Geartrade seller highlight: Lone Pine Gear Exchange
Browse Geartrade long enough, and you’ll see quite a few “regulars” among the gear sellers. Among the most prolific is Lone Pine Gear Exchange; they seem to have an
incredibly impressive array of gently used and good-as-new gear listed for sale. Dig in a little deeper, and you’ll see why they have such mighty breadth: they’re also a gear shop located in Salt Lake City, Utah. But they’re certainly not
any gear shop—they specialize in used gear, repurposed gear, and repaired gear. Which, obviously, we’re wild about because it aligns exactly with our own mission.
Lone Pine is quite a bit more than a gear shop and even more than a consignment shop. It’s a community shop, where sustainability- and budget-minded folks can mingle, swap stories, sell gear, and fix it up for further use. Lone Pine has gone to great lengths to build the ideal place to keep gear in circulation while treading as gently on the planet as possible. (They even plant a tree for every item sold, which totaled 10,000 trees their first year. The trees went to areas with an especially severe need: places devastated by the summer’s wildfires.)
“Our mission is to
not just be a gear consignment shop—we have a larger mission to make a difference, to do something more sustainable, to keep gear in circulation, and keep winter sports affordable,” says Katy Jackson, CEO and co-founder of Lone Pine.
All things outdoors
While many Salt Lake locals have spent time drooling over the used ski selection at Lone Pine in-person, it’s certainly not just a ski shop. Their gear goodies span every season and multiple sports, with all the clothing, layers, shoes, helmets, gloves, accessories, etc. for hiking, camping, skiing, and biking.
They have a great kids’ selection, which is a boon for parents who don’t want to throw down for brand-new outdoor gear and clothing their kids will grow out of in six months. They’ve even added a full-service bike shop, and will soon be boosting their array of bike parts and components available for sale. They also boast a brand-new Wintersteiger ski tune shop that (of course) uses eco-friendly mountainFLOW ski wax.
Gear repair available in-store
As part of Lone Pine’s mission to keep gear out of landfills, they’ve built a gear repair department in-shop, with an industrial seamstress on staff. She can fix absolutely anything—zippers on clothing, tears in technical fabric, backpacks with broken buckles or straps. People just bring their items in and we’ll let them know if it can be fixed and what it’ll take.
What’s even cooler is that if something can’t be fixed—if it’s beyond repair–she’ll repurpose it. The back panel of a jacket can be made into a camp pillow, or a sleeping bag can be made into a down blanket. Fabric sections can be made into a gear stash bag or camp pillow. With an imaginative and sustainability-minded seamstress, the sky’s the limit. Even the shop billboards are made into gear-tote bags when they’re torn down.
Sustainably remodeled space
When Lone Pine built out their space, they did it with a careful eye for repurposing all possible materials. They uncovered a beautiful old stained walnut wood they could sand down and reuse for all their counters, racks, and fixtures.
They try to practice what they preach in every way, down to making their own price tags out of the cardboard that vendors ship their gear in. They use a jute string to tie them on rather than the typical plastic hangtag attachments. They recycle absolutely everything, use their plastic-free homegoods refill station for their in-house soap and cleaning needs, and avoid overpackaging the items they ship.
When you
shop Lone Pine Gear Exchange on Geartrade, now you’ll know a little more about the efforts you’re supporting, all while stockpiling superb gear on a budget that’s deeply satisfying. Lone Pine is known for their quick shipping—and of course, they’ll send your goods using minimal packaging for added sustainability. No one likes boxes in boxes just for the sake of it, so your box will come with exactly what you ordered: rad gear.
Beth Lopez is a seasoned writer and creative director who loves to tell tales of adventure and discovery—and finds writing a powerful way to give a voice to people, causes, and places. Beth runs amok in the Wasatch mountains when untethered from her computer. She believes there’s no such thing as a bad ski day and considers animals her favorite people. Don’t tell her mother about her Instagram mountaineering photos.