REI breaks the back button

Been a while but I came across a usability blunder bad enough I had to share it. REI uses some javascript to do some whacky stuff to the browser history. It’s so bad that on some pages of the site, there were over 30 entries before I could back up to the page I was previously at, and this is without taking any action on the page except moving the mouse. I checked a number of product and category pages and all had similar coding problems.

Quick screenshot, 1 of 3 pages of history of the same page:

This just defies all logic. I can’t believe anyone let this malignant code hit a production website, especially one the size of REI.

REI, you’re doing it completely wrong.