what happened to ‘steep and cheap’ ?

It goes in spurts, seems like. I've scored some awesome deals on S&C but usually months apart. I have started guessing that it's based on whatever Backcountry.com is overstocked on and trying to get rid of.

Once in a while they'll have something interesting, but it's been at least three years since I ordered from them with any frequency.

I don't even check their home pages anymore, I only check sacalerts.com to see if they've had interesting stuff up in the last few days, and whether or not it's worth watching their page, since they tend to relist stuff until it's gone.

SAC expanded backcountry's business by a large margin very quickly and now I think they're comfortable where they are so they've slowed it down.

Not nearly as much cool stuff on S&C anymore. These days I just check gearscan.com or cleansnipe.com, both of which are sites that aggregate all the daily/weekly deals from outdoor stores onto one page.

i bought a nice down jacket in april or so but it had been about a year.
I bought a ton of stuff in the previous winter and they had great sales on quality items of merit.Now its those stupid rambo knives,marmot hats,cheezy shades,and other discretionary knick-knacks.I think their suppliers squeezed them out.Rant over!

I recently bought a bunch of cases of probars and some oakley split jacket glasses and a sunday afternoon wide brim hat and a gibbon slack line off steep and cheap and I though all that stuff was quality and very discounted.