Vintage Backpacking Gear

Boreas Gear Buttermilks 55 Backpack

Boreas Gear Buttermilk 55 Backpack

The Boreas Gear Buttermilks 55 is a lightweight backpack suitable for weekend or multi-day backpacking trips. Although it’s a bit on the heavy side at 3 pounds 1 ounces, the Buttermilks combines the simplicity of a minimalist ultralight-style backpack with the load …

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Osprey Variant 52 Backpack Review

The Osprey Variant 52 is a great winter backpack for overnights and ice climbing and one of the best winter backpacks you can buy off-the-shelf from a mainstream gear manufacturer. It’s lightweight, roomy, exceptionally comfortable, and easily reconfigured for many usage scenarios. …

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Montane Tigertooth Pro Glove Review

Montane Tigertooth Pro Climbing Gloves

Montane’s Tigertooth Pro Glove is a technical softshell alpine glove that provides enough dexterity, warmth and water resistance, to hold a mountaineering ice axe in the ready position in cold winter weather. The problem with most high dexterity gloves is that they don’t provide …

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Nemo Equipment Obi 1-Person Tent

Stealthy Nemo Obi 1P Tent

The Nemo Obi 1P single person, double-wall tent is spacious, simple, and quite lightweight, weighing just under 3 pounds. With a built-in vestibule, it is suitable for 3+ season camping and backpacking in good weather and bad, with ample external tie-downs to …

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Zamberlan Fitz Roy Boots

Zamberlan Fitz Roy Mountaineering Boots

The Zamberlan Fitz Roy straddles the technical hiking and mountaineering boot categories. I received a pair late last winter, too late to really put them to the test for winter hiking, but I’ve been hiking in them regularly this year in late autumn, and …

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