Visit Swany Gloves during Denver Snow Show

It’s time for Snow Show in Denver. While the event attended by up to 20,000 officially opens Thursday, the Mile High City’s already a hive of activity, focused around the Colorado Convention Center. As always, Swany Gloves will be in the mix with a number of great products, including Eco-Circle, the first-ever completely recyclable gloves. That’s just one reason we’d like to invite you by our booth (#1777).

We’ll be available throughout the show at our booth, but you can also set up a time to talk with Bill Dzierson, Swany’s Senior Vice President, by calling him at 518-330-4949. Can’t reach Bill? Call Joe Rassenfoss of R&R Media at 303-803-8008. Want to have more fun during the show? Check out our Denver Guide to restaurants, bars and more.

Some of the products Swany will be showing off:

• Eco-Circle Gloves are the first cradle-to-grave recyclable gloves. Every part of the glove can be used to make the next pair, which helps eliminate waste. And because it uses recyclable material, making the NEXT Eco-Circle glove requires less energy consumption.
• Techno and I_Finger: Casual gloves with a touch-screen finger that let you operate an iPod or iPhone without removing your gloves.
• Packybak: Light-weight gloves that can be conveniently packed into an attached bag and clipped to a belt so they don’t get lost.
• Eversoft: They keep your hands warm AND moisturized with a liner that can be recharged with moisturizer as needed.

Vonn rolls on, Lago joins White on pipe team

U.S. superstar Lindsey Vonn refuses to lose: her Saturday win in a World Cup downhill means she is now five-for-five in downhills this year.  And the victory, the 30th of her career, means she now ranks eighth all time on the World Cup list for total wins. Read more. (And read why Vonn criticized the GS course on Sunday.)

But it wasn’t all about skiing this weekend. Scotty Lago became the latest to make the U.S. Olympic halfpipe team during weekend competitions in Park City. Read more about that and check out a list of who’s definitely ON the men’s and women’s superpipe teams and who’s expected to join the teams when they are announced on Monday. Read more and get  a list of the teams and see photos of the Park City events and the team here.

Coming to Denver for Snow Show? Check out Swany’s Denver Guide for the best restaurants and bars in and around downtown, as well as tips about how to navigate the city. And when you’re at the show, visit the Swany Gloves booth to learn about the first completely recyclable gloves, Eco-Circle, as well as our other new offerings.

Snow Show a big deal for Denver

The Big Blue Bear peeks into the Convention Center.

How big of a deal is the Snow Show for Denver? Huge. The annual expo, which visits the city for the first time this year as part of an 11-year deal, will bring more than 15,000 to the city for the event that runs Wednesday-Sunday at the Colorado Convention Center. The Denver Post took a closer look at the show’s impact.

Coming to Denver for Snow Show? Check out Swany’s Denver Guide for the best restaurants and bars in and around downtown, as well as tips about how to navigate the city. And when you’re at the show, visit the Swany Gloves booth to learn about the first completely recyclable gloves, Eco-Circle, as well as our other new offerings.

She’s a ski racer — at age 4!

When she was just 2, Phoebe Heaydon asked her parents if she could start skiing. “She was too little,” Phoebe’s mom, Julie Heaydon, told the Vail Daily of the conversation. “They’ve got to be potty trained to do it.” Now age 4, Phoebe’s left diapers behind. On Monday, she took the Beaver Creek town race series by storm, becoming the youngest skier ever to compete in the 17-year-old event. And it wasn’t a stunt: her effort helped her team to a third-place finish. Read more.

Coming to Denver for the SIA Snow Show? Check out Swany’s Denver Guide to find the best restaurants, bars and more.

Miller, Vonn end good week with crash in World Cup

Bode Miller after Friday's Super Combined win.

The Bode Miller comeback tour took a short detour Saturday in Switzerland when he crashed out of the World Cup downhill in Wengen. Still, the week showed some promise for Miller, who won a Super Combined on Friday in Wengen, his first victory in two years and a good result with the Olympics less than a month away.

Speaking of crashes, Lindsey Vonn continued her stretch of uneven slalom performances when she crashed Saturday three gates from the end of  her second slalom run in a World Cup race in Austria. Even so, her three-race win streak in the downhill means the American still leads the overall World Cup points standings.

Have you entered Swany’s Outdoor Adventure Video Contest? It could be as easy as capturing a snowball fight on your Flip  or as involved as skiing backcountry powder using a helmet cam. Either way it’s easy to enter and you could win Swany gloves and even a helmet cam. Here’s how to enter.
Follow Swany Gloves on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook.

Liftopia has a lift ticket deal for you

It’s the end of the week, when a person’s thoughts naturally turn to skiing, snowboarding and making sure to get the best price possible on that lift ticket. Many of us do that with season passes, but you can’t buy a pass to every hill. So that’s where a web site like Liftopia.com comes in handy. It can’t get you a deal every day at your favorite place, but it can find a lot of deals you NEVER would. Here’s a sample of deals the site found in a number of states. Visit the site, localize it for your needs and see how it works.

• California
• Colorado
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• Utah
• Wisconsin

Life’s an (aerial) circus for free-skier Ryan St. Onge

When it comes to free spirits, there aren’t many (any?) families that can match that of Ryan St. Onge. Need proof? How about the fact he spent third grade on a sailboat in the Caribbean? Or that he operated the spotlight at a Ray Charles concert at age 7? Or that somehow he can now list world-champion freestyle aerial skier as his occupation as he works to qualify for the Vancouver Winter Olympics? And there’s much more in this great story in The New York Times.

Have you entered Swany’s Outdoor Adventure Video Contest? It could be as easy as capturing a snowball fight on your Flip  or as involved as skiing backcountry powder using a helmet cam.  It’s easy to enter and you could win Swany gloves and even a helmet cam. Here’s how to enter.

Follow Swany Gloves on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook.

See the Olympics for the price of a lift ticket

The folks at Whistler Blackcomb want everyone to know that it’s “open for business before, during and after” the Feb. 12-28 Olympic Winter Games.  During the Games, the alpine races (downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom and super combined) will restrict access to only a fraction of its more than 200 slopes and trails and at some spots you can watch the races for the price of a lift ticket. Too expensive to visit during the Games? The resort’s offering a number of deals to lure you there afterward. Read more.

Follow Swany Gloves on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for the latest outdoors news as well as product updates.

Snow emergency for Vancouver Olympics?

UPDATE: The good news in Vancouver? It’s been about the most delightful January on record, with uniformly warm and dry conditions. The bad news? The Winter Olympics open on Friday and, last we heard, the Olympics need plenty of snow. How bad has it gotten? They’re trucking snow into venues. Look here.

PREVIOUSLY: How close are the Winter Olympics in Vancouver? Less than a month away. Check out ESPN’s coverage to get caught up on who’s already qualified (Shaun White) and who isn’t on the roster in ink (skater Sasha Cohen).

Rain and warm temperatures forced Cypress Mountain, the Vancouver ski resort that will host the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events at next month’s Winter Olympics, to close to the public last week, more than two weeks earlier than expected. Still, officials promised then that there will be plenty of snow for the Games given their efforts to conserve what has fallen and continued snow-making efforts. And here’s the latest from the Seattle Times, which took a close look at the situation as rain continued to fall in the northwest.

Follow Swany Gloves on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for news about skiing, snowboarding and other outdoor adventures.

Squaw Valley Olympics boasted many firsts

Giant Slalom course at Squaw Valley, 1960/Colorado Ski Museum

The increasing spectacle of the Olympics blinds us to the fact that the event used to be a far more humble affair. Check out this article from the Vail Daily, which points out that the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley was the first where an Olympic Village was built to house up to 750 athletes (5,500 athletes and officials will be in Vancouver).  Walt Disney elaborately orchestrated the opening ceremonies, which commenced with the release of white doves (so blame him for the out of control ceremonies these days).

Two other fascinating firsts: 1960 was the first year the broadcasting rights were sold (to CBS for just $50,000!) and electronic data processing was provided for the first time by an IBM computer. That’s singular. Read more about Squaw and other Olympics.

Have you entered Swany’s Outdoor Adventure Video Contest? It could be as easy as capturing a snowball fight on your Flip  or as involved as skiing backcountry powder using a helmet cam. Either way it’s easy to enter and you could win Swany gloves and even a helmet cam. Here’s how to enter.