Learning how to purify water in the wild is one of the most important outdoor skills you can carry with you. You can survive weeks without food, but only about three days without water — and the wrong sip from a cloudy backcountry stream can put you on your back for a week. Our team […]

Putting on a wetsuit without ripping it comes down to three things: remove anything sharp, use a plastic bag or changing sock on your feet and hands, and ease the neoprene up slowly instead of yanking it. Most rips happen because dry skin grabs the rubber and forces you to pull harder than the seams […]

Three nights into a Lake District weekend, I woke up at 2 a.m. to a cold puddle spreading across my sleeping pad. The culprit wasn't a torn rainfly or a soaked footprint — it was the stitching. Every one of those factory seam lines had quietly let water in through the needle holes. That soggy […]

I spent last winter tracking a coyote family across six miles of frozen creek bed, and the moment everything clicked for me was not when I found a perfect print — it was when I realised that every track tells four stories at once. Reading animal tracks is one of those outdoor skills that looks […]

I still remember the morning I almost pushed into a northwest couloir because the forecast said "Moderate." It was the second number on a green-yellow-orange-red-black chart, and I read it like a green light. A partner who had been skiing the Wasatch for twenty years stopped me, pointed at the danger rose, and showed me […]

The first time I unfolded a depth map of a lake I had fished for fifteen years, I felt a little cheated. There were spots I drove past every weekend that the map showed as sharp underwater points dropping into twenty feet of water, and I had never once drifted a bait over them. That […]

When I first held a NOAA nautical chart above the cockpit of a 22-foot sailboat, the colors, numbers, and tiny symbols looked like a foreign language. After a season of coastal cruising, dozens of harbor entries, and one very close call with a half-submerged wreck, I can confidently say: learning how to read nautical charts […]

After two decades running rivers from the New River Gorge to the Grand Canyon, I still rely on the same six-line rating system that American Whitewater published decades ago. If you have ever wondered how to read river rapids classifications and translate a Roman numeral on a guidebook into what the water actually looks like, […]

Learning how to roll a kayak is the single most important self-rescue skill you can build as a paddler. I've spent the last five winters rolling in cold pool sessions, salt-water surf, and Class III whitewater, and I can tell you the roll is less about strength and more about patience, timing, and a quiet […]

Yes, the Palomar knot is one of the strongest fishing knots you can tie, retaining roughly 95% of a line's tested strength on braid and around 90% on monofilament or fluorocarbon. After 20 years of fishing everything from backyard bluegill to coastal stripers, I keep coming back to the Palomar because it's fast, works in […]