Winter Lust List: Most Expensive Gear

By: GearJunkie, 1 year 5 months ago

Last month, I wrote about Oakley's Elite C Six sunglasses, which are carbon-fiber shades that cost an insane $4,000 a pair and were debuted by none other than Lance Armstrong as he rode on the final stage of the 2009 Tour de France.

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The article, which drew a couple dozen impassioned comments and emails, sparked contention with many Gear Junkie readers as pimping a product that stands in as the height of ostentatiousness and consumerist glut. Other readers, in contrast, cheered: "Very extravagant, but totally cool." Another comment: "I like hearing about companies. . . pushing their technology, which trickles down to us eventually."

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Either way, my journalistic nose tells me something like a pair of sunglasses carved out of a block of solid carbon fiber -- which happen to cost $4,000! -- is newsworthy at the very least, and worth some significant investigation and/or a review more likely. Now, I may be the Gear Junkie. But I do not reserve veneration for superficial bling. $4,000 sunglasses? Totally silly proposition. But because they're made of solid carbon fiber, totally cool!

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Here are a half-dozen additional "if price were no object" items that reflect either the outdoors industry's state of the art in design, or its mingling in the depths of a consumerist culture gone mad. You decide. --Stephen Regenold

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For more coveted winter survival gear, check out the entire 2010 Winter Lust List.