I’ve always been interested in Brooks-Range Mountaineering gear and I finally was able to meet with the company and see their stuff up close at January’s Winter Outdoor Retailer Show. Their selection is small but high-quality. There is no “Fall 2011 line” of fashionable new colors or fad-of-the-year bandwagoning. It’s all professional gear for the backcountry [...]
The Outdoor Retailer Demo Day is all about flashy new gear demos and loud fun. But tucked in between the DJ booth and beer taps was a modest booth belonging to a company called Yurbuds. I probably walked by it ten times before stopping to take a look. Yurbuds are earbuds that are designed for [...]
Recently I acquired a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 digital camera (birthday present to myself). This camera is a high quality device disguised as a compact point-and-shoot. When I’m backpacking, I’m often in the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever experienced and strongly wish I had my DSLR along, but I’m not going to haul it for long [...]
Tom Mangan of Two-Heel Drive has written a nice profile of Henry Shires and his Tarptent business over on Trailspace.com. I’m very fond of my tarptents and was even quoted in the article, along with a cheesy picture of me in my Rainbow last summer. From the article: Shires’s business is based in the foothills [...]
I just published my Field Report for the Golite Xanadu on BackpackGearTest.org (read it here or start at the Initial Report here). This is an oddball tent and I felt I needed to say a bit more about it. The Xanadu is advertised as a four season, 2+ person tent that weighs in at well [...]
Last summer I got word of two new hand held GPS receivers that would be entering the market in late 2007/early 2008: the Magellan Triton and the Garmin Colorado. The Triton hit the market first, and the release was a disaster. The units suffered hardware and software issues, and they have been pulled from the [...]
On Sunday I will be heading our for a week on the JMT with some fellow Northern CA hikers. We’ll be going in at Kearsarge Pass on Sunday, and I’ll be exiting at Muir Trail Ranch the next Sunday while Paige and crew exit the next day at Piute Pass. As I finalize my maps, [...]
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