The best battery powered lawn mower for a small yard is one you can lift with one hand, fold flat against a garage wall, and finish the whole lawn on a single charge. After putting ten cordless mowers through a maintained small-lawn workload over a full mowing season, the Greenworks 40V 16-inch push mower stood […]

The best lawn mower under 500 right now is the Greenworks 40V 16-inch push mower with the 4.0Ah battery and charger in the box, because it is the rare budget machine that arrives complete, starts with a button, and has been put through work by more than twelve thousand buyers. I have spent the last […]

After three seasons of chasing mule deer in Wyoming and elk in Colorado, I have learned one hard lesson: guessing wind on a 600-yard shot almost always costs you the animal. The best ballistic calculators for hunting take the math out of long-range ethics, so I can focus on the buck and the breeze instead […]

I spent three weekends hanging, riding, and re-tensioning zip lines across two yards and a friend's farm to find the best backyard zip line kits you can buy in . I've ridden every kit on this list at least 20 times, weighed in at 200 lbs to test adult limits, and watched my neighbor's 7-year-old […]

Last summer, our team spent six weekends testing inflatable water slides in three backyards, three age groups, and one very patient neighbor. We logged setup times, watched seams stress under 350 pounds of jumping kids, and measured how much water each model pulled from the hose. The result is this guide to the best backyard […]

I learned the value of a stove repair kit the hard way. It was day six of a nine-day Wind River Range traverse, and my WhisperLite started hissing fuel from the pump cup. The O-ring had finally given up after eight years of service. Without a spare O-ring or pump seal in my pack, dinner […]

I've been chasing the perfect cook kit for the better part of a decade — thousands of trail miles across the Sierra, the Wind Rivers, and the Long Trail, with too many dented titanium pots and scorched aluminum pans to count. When hikers ask me about the best backpacking pot sets, I always start the […]

I'll be straight with you: my first year of thru-hiking, I skipped a measuring cup and rehydrated my freeze-dried meals by eye. The result was a week of watery huevos rancheros and dry clumps of beef stroganoff that I will never get back. After 200+ nights on trail and testing dozens of vessels, I now […]

If you've ever poured boiling water into a freeze-dried meal pouch, sealed it, and waited ten shivering minutes at camp hoping the food was actually hot in the middle, you already understand why the best backpacking meal pouch holders exist. I tested these insulated sleeves on three trips last season - a weekend in the […]

Choosing the best backcountry snow shovels for is one of the most important gear decisions a backcountry traveler will make. I have spent the last eight winters testing avalanche shovels in the Wasatch, the Tetons, and the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, and I have buried probes in debris piles more times than I want […]