Last summer I lost my favorite hiking hat to a 40 mph gust on the Manitou Inlet trail in Colorado. That was the moment our team decided to put the best bucket hats for hiking through 60+ days of real trail testing. We logged over 480 trail miles across the Rockies, Appalachians, and Pacific Northwest […]

I have spent more weekends than I can count swatting mosquitoes at the campsite, so when our team decided to test the best bug zappers for camping, I brought my notes from the past two summers. We packed eight models in our gear bin, drove to three different campgrounds, and ran each one for 30 […]

Every paddler who has ever watched a kayak shift on the highway knows that moment of panic. The right cam buckle straps for kayaks are the difference between a stress-free drive to the put-in and a disaster on the interstate. I have spent years hauling kayaks on roof racks, J-cradles, and truck beds, and I […]

I've been carrying a camera on the trail for over a decade, and I know the exact frustration of watching a great shot slip away because your pack was too uncomfortable to lift. Last summer, our team hiked more than 35 miles across the Sierra Nevada with 10 different camera backpacks, hauling everything from a […]

I have lost count of the times I have watched a perfect sunset get swallowed by a squall line, my camera already outside the bag and the first drops landing on the lens hood. That is why I spent the last 90 days testing camera rain covers in real conditions - Pacific Northwest drizzle, Florida […]

If you are over six feet tall, you already know the frustration of a standard camping cot. Your feet dangle off the end, your knees bend at awkward angles, and you wake up feeling worse than if you had slept on bare ground. Finding the best camping cots for tall people means looking past the […]

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 […]