I've been flying for 23 years and I've had two bag-opening scares that taught me the value of a good travel lock. The first was a flight from JFK to Heathrow where my checked suitcase arrived with a broken zipper and missing items. The second was a backpack theft attempt in a hostel in Barcelona […]

Last summer, our team logged 4,300 miles across the Pacific Northwest, the Rockies, and the California coast to find the best travel neck pillows for road trips. We packed eight top-rated pillows into the backseat of a Subaru Outback, swapped them every 90 minutes, and tracked how our necks felt after hour three, hour five, […]

I still remember my first trip to Southeast Asia, standing in a hot Bangkok hotel bathroom staring at a faucet I couldn't bring myself to drink from. I bought bottled water for ten days straight, and the plastic waste haunted me more than the questionable ice cubes. That was the trip that made me test […]

I lost count of the sunburns I racked up on my neck before I started wearing UV buffs for fishing. Anglers chase fish under the worst possible sun conditions - flat water reflecting UV back at your face all day, a stiff offshore breeze, tournament hours that run from first light to mid-afternoon. After testing […]

Last summer I watched my friend's red Hobie kayak turn pink within a single season of rooftop storage. I had to do something before the same thing happened to my own plastic sit-on-top. That is what pushed our team to spend the last 90 days testing eight UV protectant sprays for kayaks across polyethylene, fiberglass, […]

I bonked hard at mile 62 of a 100K last spring. I'd trained the legs for six months, but I'd winged my ultra marathon nutrition kit on the morning of the race, grabbing a fistful of gels and hoping for the best. By the time the trail turned vertical, my energy crashed, my stomach revolted, […]

I learned the hard way that not every trekking pole pulls double duty as a tent support. Three years ago, on a wet shoulder-season trip in the Sierras, I watched a buddy's ultralight carbon shaft fold like a wet noodle when he cinched his tarp in a 35 mph gust. We spent a soggy evening […]

After our team spent 47 nights across the Pacific Crest Trail, Sierra Nevada, and Wind River Range testing shelters in real weather, we ranked the 12 best ultralight backpacking tarps available right now. I personally packed each one over multi-day trips and measured weight savings, waterproofing under 3 inches of rain, and storm pitch performance […]

After spending the last three spring seasons trolling Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River with our test team, I can tell you this: not every umbrella rig handles striped bass the same way. We landed stripers on every model in this guide, but the difference between a slow day and a limit often came down […]

After three months of boiling, simmering, and stir-frying through wind, rain, and one surprisingly cold May weekend in the Cascades, our team has a clear answer to the question we get asked most: which best two burner camp stove actually deserves a spot in your trunk? I ran every stove in this guide over the […]