6 ways to score cheap gear

The beautiful thing about climbing is that it’s a relatively cheap hobby—once you have the gear. Climbing gear, while worth the money we pay for it, is freakishly expensive. You can spend thousands of dollars on gear and still have a list of thousands more that you want. Here are some great ways of getting gear for as cheap as possible:

1. eBay
eBay actually isn’t as good of a place to score cheap gear as you might think. The problem is that there are a ton of people out there who want exactly what you want. As such, it’s hard to get really good deals. There are ways, though. Last week, for example, I got myself a sweet OR Alpine Bivy that had been used only once. This bad boy retails for $220ish, but I got it for $80. How? The seller spelled it “bivi,” not “bivy.” So people searching for it normally wouldn’t be able to find it. A good way of going about trying to get deals is to go through gear categories manually instead of searching for terms.

2. Outlet/deal sites
Sites like REI Outlet, Steep and Cheap, Backcountry Outlet, Mountain Gear (check the sale page), and Sierra Trading Post have great deals, though often they’re short on climbing gear and longer on clothing.

3. Comparison shopping
At Spadout, you type in the gear that you want and it comparison shops for you, showing what website has the cheapest gear. You can use Google’s Product Search to search for whatever and then sort the results by price from lowest to highest.

4. Forums
There are several outdoor websites that have forums. These include Mountain Project, Summitpost, SuperTopo, and RockClimbing.com. People are always selling gear. This is one of the best ways to get cheap stuff.

5. Gear swaps
If you live in an area with lots of climbers/climbing, there are probably some gear swaps that go on from time to time. In Salt Lake, for example, Black Diamond hosts a gear swap twice a year, in the spring and fall. In my experience, this is the number one best way of getting cheap gear. You can handle and inspect the gear yourself (a downside of buying gear online) and maybe even haggle. I’ve gotten a pair of BD ice tools for $30, an ice axe for $10, and $5 cams. Sweet!

6. Classifieds
Craigslist and similar classified websites often have good deals. There are also gear-specific classifieds like GearTrade.

What else? I guess you could always get sponsored, but that’s definitely easier said than done. You could also try trading stuff. Any other ideas for getting cheap gear?