I wear a pair of Outdoor Research Crocodile Gaiters in winter to keep snow out of my mountaineering boots and to provide some protection for my legs against self-inflected crampon strikes. I’ve owned a pair for going on 4 years and they …
Read More »Gear Repair and Maintenance
Gear Aid Outdoor Sewing Kit Review
Gear Aid’s Outdoor Sewing Kit is a great hiking and backpacking sewing kit if you already know how to sew. While it includes an “Expert Repair Guide”, McNett’s claim that “anybody is going to be able to make a sewing repair even …
Read More »Annoying Gear Failures: How to Prevent Catastrophe and How to Recover
Backpacking and hiking gear has a nasty habit of failing when you least expect it or you need it the most – in the dark, when it’s pouring rain, or in the middle of nowhere. Knock on wood, I’ve never been stranded …
Read More »What Backpacking Gear have you Damaged or Destroyed?
Describe a piece of hiking gear or hiking clothing that you damaged, destroyed or wore out this year, including what it was, the circumstances leading to its demise, whether you plan to repair or replace it, and if the latter with what. …
Read More »How to wash an eVent Jacket
Do you remember the orange tag that was attached to your eVent jacket when you bought it? The one that said, Please Wash Me Often. It sounded like a good idea then, but I never seemed to get around to it. That …
Read More »Backpacking Gear Maintenance Checklist
Backpacking gear is expensive and you need to take care of it to extend its lifetime. Here’s a checklist of gear maintenance tasks I try to do the morning after I get home from a backpacking trip: Air out my sleeping bag or quilt to make …
Read More »Sterilizing Hydration Reservoirs with Efferdent
This year, I’ve had a hard time preventing red mold from growing in my Platypus hydration reservoirs. I don’t know why mold started to be a problem this year, but I think I’ve finally found a way to clean it out of …
Read More »Preventing Mold in Hydration Systems
Do you see that red stain on the inside of my platypus hydration bladder in the picture below? That’s mold, like the stuff that grows on our bathroom shower curtain. I only noticed it on my last backpacking trip, and since getting …
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