Weekend Adventures with Posie Strenz

Posted on May 8, 2021September 17, 2021 by Amber Judy

Weekend Adventures
Around the world with Posie Strenz

Welcome back to our Weekend Adventures with Woolpower series!  In this series, we are travelling around the country to meet some of our Woolpower users and see how they use their gear during an adventure. This weekend takes us up to the Catskills in New York for a chat with Posie Strenz – @posiestrenz – about a trip around the world in Woolpower!  

Woolpower – Hey Posie! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. We were excited to hear you and your family took a trip around the world with your Woolpower a few years ago. Tell us a little bit about that adventure…

Posie: We hadn’t been able to travel much in years and rented out our house for nearly a year. We wanted to fulfill a long-time goal of getting to places we’d never been. It’s actually a very economical way to travel. Our younger son was happy to be world schooled for half of fifth and sixth grade. He enjoyed taking a break from the traditional school routines. The route was tremendously educational!

My husband and I each carried a backpack and our son carried his travel guitar on his back. We left on January 1st, 2016, first basing ourselves with friends in Malaga, Spain, then moved on to Morocco, Tanzania, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, with a final quick stop in Hawaii on the way home. We met new friends and saw old friends too.

Annapurna Base Camp 2016 | Photo by Posie Strenz

Woolpower – What an amazing experience for your family! When did you first discover Woolpower? Has it become an integral part to your family adventures? 

Posie: In 2015, I was driving from the Catskills to Hudson, NY for a meeting when my tea thermos cup popped open spilling all over me as I was driving – right down to my socks. Having no time to spare, I called the shop owner of the store in the building I was meeting at and he told me to go in and take what I needed. I got a pair of Woolpower socks and soon discovered they were the best socks I’d ever found. I was leaving to go around the world on January 1 carrying only a backpack, and knew they had to be among the few pairs I brought!

During our trip we stopped in the Himalayas. After a whole day of hiking, it was great to put on my Woolpower socks to keep me warm all night in the unheated lodges, or to have them on to be cozy while doing snowy parts of the trek. My first pair made it all the way around the world, and I was still using them in the Catskills four years later with no holes! Finally, one disappeared but I had kept the packaging because I knew I wanted to order more, which I did!

Last Day in the Himalayas | Photo by Posie Strenz

Woolpower – Sounds like you really love our socks! Which pair are your favorite?

Posie: My favorite pair would be the black 200 socks.

Woolpower -  Tell us about your favorite spot or a special moment
during your trip around the world!

Posie: My favorite adventure was the 8-day trek in the Himalayas doing the Annapurna Base Camp trek with my husband and eleven-year-old son. We carried our own gear. The combination of hiking in a location with such striking scenery, while physically challenging ourselves hiking all day long for eight days straight, where you can only go on your own two feet, and experiencing it with loved ones made for an extremely special experience.

Woolpower – We know travelling around the world is a little challenging at the moment due to COVID-19 restrictions. What are some of your favorite spots in New York to adventure or hike?

Posie: I’m fortunate during this time especially to be living in the Catskills, where hiking trails abound. I do the Overlook hike pretty much every week,
and other longer trails whenever possible.

On the Overlook hike, you can see the ruins of an old hotel
and views of the Hudson River, Ashokan Reservoir and the surrounding Catskill Mountains.

Posie at Overlook Mountian 2020 | Photo Courtesy of Posie Strenz

Thank Posie! What a unique world adventure in Woolpower. Have a Woolpower Weekend adventure you’d like to tell us about?
Email or tag us on Instagram @woolpowerus for a chance to be featured.

Stay Warm!
– Team Woolpower

Let’s go

Want to see the Ashokan Reservoir?

Take a Virtual Bike Tour and experience the Ashokan Reservoir
with narrators Chris White, Kevin D Smith and Posie Strenz

Virtual Bike Tour

Enjoy a Virtual Book Reading of

Nina Shengold’s “Reservoir Year.”

📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖

https://youtu.be/_0RdpUlkoms | Book begins at 4:06

On the eve of her sixtieth birthday, Nina Shengold embarked on a challenge: to walk the path surrounding the Catskills’ glorious Ashokan Reservoir every day for a year trying to find something new every time. Armed with lively curiosity, infectious enthusiasm, and renewed stubbornness, she hits the path every day with all five senses wide open, searching for details that glint. As Shengold explores the secrets of this spectacular place, she rediscovers the glories of solitude and an expanded community, both human and animal. Step by step, her reservoir walks rekindle connections with family, strangers, and friends, with a landscape she grows to revere, and with a new sense of self. Her personal journey will resonate with outdoor enthusiasts and armchair hikers alike.

Hike the Ashokan Rail Trail

The Ashokan Rail Trail (ART) is open to the public from sunrise to sunset year-round. The 11.5-mile recreational trail runs along Ashokan Reservoir between West Hurley and Boiceville. The ART trail surface is 12 feet in width and surfaced with highly compacted fine crushed stone. Both the trail and trailhead parking areas (including the portable restrooms) are ADA compliant and accessible for persons with disabilities. The ART is open for non-motorized uses, including hiking, walking dogs on leash, bicycling, running, nature observation, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing. The ART trailheads are plowed in winter, but the trail itself is not.

Weekend Adventures with angler Matt Dewey

Posted on April 17, 2021September 21, 2021 by Amber Judy

Welcome to our Weekend Adventures with Woolpower series!  In this series, you’ll meet some of our Woolpower fans and learn how they use their Woolpower gear during weekend adventures.

Today we’re travelling up the coast to Southern Ontario and the Boreal Forest for a chat with Matt Dewey –  @mattt.dewewy – about his weekend adventures in Woolpower. Matt is an avid outdoorsman and guide. Fishing – more specifically ice fishing – adventures are his specialty.   

Matt Dewey on the River — Photo Courtesy of Matt Dewey

Woolpower – Hey Matt! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. We’ve been following your ice fishing adventures on Instagram for a while and were so intrigued by them. Ice fishing seems like an interesting sport! Tell us a little bit about how you first got into it. 

Matt - My late father raised me in the outdoors – hunting, fishing, camping exc.. He had taken me out a few times when I was younger and I’ll never forget the very first time he took me out – I was maybe 5 or 6 years old – we were catching Mudpuppies ( Aquatic Salamanders). It was a strange first experience! As I got older and more independent, I fell in love with ice fishing – around the age of 16 – and have spent almost every day on the hard water in the winter since.

Aquatic Salamander Mudpuppies have small eyes, a paddle-like tail for swimming,
and external gills that look like feathery projections near their head.
– Photo Courtesy of DNR –

Woolpower – Ice Fishing looks cold. We’re getting chills just looking through the photos…brrr! When did you first discover the warmth of Woolpower? Has it become an integral part to your ice fishing trips? 

Matt -  I discovered Woolpower probably 7 or 8 years ago; I was really getting into bushcraft and indulging in nature/fishing every second I got. Through researching YouTube videos and from personal experience, I knew I needed better clothing and gear to make my outdoor passions more enjoyable. I used my first or second paycheck to buy my first Woolpower pieces (long johns and socks) and that’s when Woolpower became an integral part of my fishing and anything outdoors – especially in cold temps – gear!

Borreal Forest // Mississagi River – Photo Courtesy of Matt Dewey

Woolpower – Which Woolpower piece is your go-to, can’t leave home without it in your pack? 

Matt – Definitely socks and long johns. The thicker long johns as my mid-layer is key. I can’t count how many people in the past have had cold feet on the ice and asked me how I stay so warm even though they have similar footwear most of the time. It’s all about the socks! I love my Woolpower socks. I like to say there’s no bad weather with the right clothing!

Woolpower -  What has been your most interesting or comical ice fishing trip?

Matt -  Probably the most interesting experience I have had ice fishing was a few years back. I was fishing Lake Simcoe in Ontario with a few buddies and a snow storm came through. Our gear and other huts were flying around on the ice. There was no snow at all on the ice so anything without grip was gone. Made it difficult to chase stuff down!

Woolpower -  We know anglers love a good fish story! What is the biggest / best fish you have caught through the ice? 

It’s not easy to choose my biggest/best fish through the ice. I often target multiple different species throughout the winter, but I will say over the past couple of years I caught two of my personal best – a 29″ Whitefish & 38” Northern Pike. The Pike I caught through 38 inches of ice!

Woolpower – For people interested in getting into ice fishing, what would you recommend? 

Matt - Get the basics for gear – all you need is a rod, reel, lures and some warm clothing – like Woolpower!

The biggest thing when first getting into ice fishing is learning about ice safety! Never go on ice without following all the safety precautions. You can usually find ice safety information and info for your local area on the internet.

Thanks Matt! What a unique Weekend Adventure in Woolpower!

Have an adventure you’d like to tell us about? Email your Weekend Adventure or tag us – @woolpowerus – on Instagram for a chance to be featured.

Stay Warm!

Team Woolpower

* Coupon code is valid through April 30, 2021 *

Interested in ice fishing?

Checkout these beginner’s tips!

Return to the Iditarod

Posted on March 7, 2021May 5, 2021 by Amber Judy

Mille Porsild joins an elite group of athletes this year as she journeys to Alaska to compete in the Last Great Race on Earth – The 2021 Iditarod. The wild Alaskan territory may seem daunting to most, but not to Mille.

A seasoned musher, the Danish adventurer has made over 16 long-haul expeditions through the circumpolar Artic with freight dogs. The Iditarod Race is quickly becoming familiar territory for Mille. She took on Alaska’s most grueling race last year as a rookie and added “Iditarod Rookie of the Year” to her resume with her 15^th place finish. Porsild is one of a handful of women to claim the title in the race’s 48 year history.

The Iditarod presents many challenges along the way – sub-zero temperatures, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Mille expects her gear to live up to the weather and protect her from the Artic conditions. She was introduced to Woolpower in the early 2000’s at an Outdoor show in Utah. Her GoNorth! Adventure Learning team received the Long Johns 200 and 400 as part of a sponsorship and as they say the rest is history. “Until that point, we had been wearing synthetic long underwear. I never have since. 20 years later, I am wearing the long johns from back then – amazingly still the best’ said Porsild ‘I have truly benefitted to such an extreme extent from the Woolpower products — my second skin basically — that allows me to do what I do.”

Mille and several other explorers founded GoNorth! Adventure Learning as a way to connect classrooms with their experiences on the trail. It’s a unique way for students to experience the Artic and explore topics like: dog mushing, sustainability, the environment and traditional cultures. Each year, she heads out on an Artic expedition with 22 Polar Huskies and millions of students worldwide tuning in.

With the Iditarod quickly looming on the horizon, the team at Woolpower US thought it would be a great time to upgrade Mille’s well-loved gear. We shipped a box up to Alaska with a few of her favorites and some other pieces we thought might be useful on the trail.

What’s in the mail to Mille?

Mille and 46 other mushers will head to the start line on March 7^th to begin their 2021 Iditarod run. Follow @woolpowerus as we track Mille and her team along the trail!

Stay warm friends!

– Team Woolpower

Category: Weekend Adventures

Weekend Adventures with Posie Strenz

Weekend Adventures
Around the world with Posie Strenz

Let’s go