I have spent the last four summers camping across the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest, washing dishes in everything from a rooftop tent to a 26-foot travel trailer. After drying a cast-iron skillet on a folded t-shirt one too many times, our team started testing camping dish racks side by side. We loaded each one […]

I've spent the last three months testing camping cot tents across desert sites, pine forest campgrounds, and a soggy weekend on the Olympic Peninsula. I dragged eight setups out of my truck, set them up in the rain, slept in them through cold nights, and broke down every one to find out which models actually […]

Anyone who has dropped serious cash on a premium rotomolded cooler already knows the sinking feeling of walking back to camp and seeing an empty spot where the cooler used to be. I have been campside at three festivals and watched at least four high-end coolers vanish in plain daylight, which is exactly why I […]

Cooking for a family of four or more at a campsite is a different beast than boiling water for a solo freeze-dried meal. You need pots big enough to handle a real pot of chili, pans that can fry a half-dozen eggs at once, and enough plates and utensils that nobody is eating with their […]

Last spring I spent a soggy weekend in the Cascade Range trying to coax a fire out of damp cedar. After an hour of cupping my hands and getting smoke in my eyes, I finally bought my first pocket bellows on the drive home. That single tool changed how I camp, and it's why I […]

I still remember my first trad lead. I stood 30 feet above a sketchy yellow Camalot that I shoved into a flared crack, crossed my fingers, and kept climbing. That single piece of gear taught me what every climber eventually learns: the best camming devices are the difference between a confident send and a terrifying […]

I spent the last three months putting seven of the best camping fans through their paces, from a sticky July weekend in a 4-person tent to a power outage during a coastal storm. I ran them on low until they died, measured airflow with an anemometer, and counted decibels at arm's length. After hundreds of […]

There is nothing quite like sitting around a warm campfire after a long day on the trail. But finding the best camping fire pits for your specific setup in is harder than it looks, with fire bans, weight limits, and smoke complaints all complicating the decision. Our team spent three months testing 10 of the […]

I've spent more than 80 nights under canvas testing lights in fog, rain, snow, and dust, so I know what makes a camping flashlight actually work in the field. The best camping flashlights balance beam distance, runtime, water resistance, and weight without breaking the bank. On our test trips, we ran 8 top models through […]

I've been cooking on a flat-top griddle at campsites for over a decade, and the single upgrade that transformed my outdoor cooking was adding a proper camping griddle press. After burning through flimsy bacon and watching my smash burgers steam instead of sear, I learned the hard way that weight, material, and handle design matter […]