Gear Reviews

The Princeton Tex Helix Backcountry Rechargeable Lantern is an excellent luxury item for camping that’s lightweight enough for family or couples backpacking. It’s also a remarkably well-designed product that can be used in many ways: as a hanging lantern, a spotlight with …

The Mountain Laurel Design’s Bug Bivy is made using very fine netting which prevents gnats, ticks, black flies, and mosquitoes from reaching you. It has a full length, sewn-in silnylon floor which can also be used standalone as a ground sheet if …

If you hike in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, you should get yourself a copy of Guthook’s New England Hiker App (iPhone and Android) which has maps for most of the trails listed in the Appalachian Mountain Club’s White Mountain Guide. It’s …

The Aquamira Frontier Pro water filter is an exceptionally lightweight 2 oz. alternative to the more bulky water filters and water purifiers available on the market today. The Frontier Pro connects to platypus bladders or plastic bottles. To get water, you suck …

Marmot makes two styles of Precip Pants, the kind with full length side zips, and what they call a regular, classic, or old style which just has a zipper the runs up to mid-calf. I use the ones with the full length …

GPS Smartphone navigation just got easier using Geospatial PDF, an extension to Adobe’s Portable Document Format that let’s you encode GPS features with PDF documents. Imagine being able to download a PDF map to your phone for a state park or ski resort and having …

I’ve bought and owned 12 ultralight shelters in the past 6 years. Several of you asked what they were, and wanted to know why I bought them and then moved on to others (See also How to Choose an Ultralight Tent or …

The Amok Draumr is an ingenious hammock shelter system that includes a hammock, tarp, and a complete suspension system, including tree straps, carabiners, reflective cordage, and tent stakes for staking out the tarp. Its signature feature is that its suspension is attached …

The Sierra Designs Clip Flashlight 2 Tent is a relaunch of old customer favorite with an updated design, fabrics and hardware. It’s a double-walled, two-person tent, lightweight enough for backpacking if the weight is shared (3.5 pounds), but also well-suited for car camping …

The Loco Libre Gear Ghost Pepper is a down quilt made with a unique chevron style baffle, which limits the amount of down shift by catching it in the corners that the baffle forms every time it changes direction. This eliminates cold spots …

I started using Caltopo.com to plan and document all of my hikes and backpacking trips about a year ago after my friend Matt (Matt’s Hikes) recommended it on the approach hike to Peak Above the Nubble. Matt raved about Caltopo’s ability to print …

Loco Libre Gear is a new cottage quilt maker with a host of radical ideas about how to build top quilts and underquilts for hammock and tent campers. If you’ve given up trying to tell one cottage quilt maker from another, wander …

Many backpacking-style hammocks come in double-layer or single-layer models. How do you decide which hammock to get and what are the consequences of choosing one type over the other? Double Layer Hammocks A double layer hammock is so-called because the part you lie …

Ex Officio’s BugsAway SandFly Pants are the coolest pants I own. They’re perfect for hot and humid weather since the material they’re made with is very thin and they have mesh vents along the inside of the thighs to help vent sweat …