Category: Tech
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Shit that works week; again
We’re back! In the season of flash sales and emails, where impulse purchases push companies into the black and fill our closets with things that aren’t strictly necessary, it behooves us to step back and take a break. As I wrote three years ago: “A lot of gear upgrading is malarkey, born of boredom or…
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Mounting problems
My first rule of skiing is that my gear has to do a lot of things, in the backcountry. I don’t go outside to be around people, and recent events have confirmed that for me serious ski mountaineering is simply too dangerous. Therefore I’ll inevitably be drawn to longer, moderate, backpacking-type routes that feature plenty…
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Getting what you paid
This is how an obsession starts, refinement of a tool whose elegance is only matched by its ubiquity, and the unessentialness of special details. The appeal of knives is easy to grasp, and so too is the dizzying extent to which in the internet age they’ve been fetishized into almost nonexistence. Nothing speaks to the…
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DIY spraydeck and the perfect backcountry packraft
I’ve written a lot, indeed too much, about the ideal backcountry packraft, and the extent to which the market has continued to drift further towards putting backcountry and sidecountry whitewater front and center. The new boats are amazing, and will in the next five years help reinvent remote whitewater paddling. But that isn’t my primary…
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Patagonia Nano Air Light Hoody: the fleece killer
Back when I reviewed outdoor gear professionally, which is to say I regularly got stuff for free and was paid for writing about it, and is not to say that ever amounted to a sustainable living, trips like this were as rare as they were lusted after. Outings where conditions were so bad, so consistently…
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Hunters, Get a tripod
A few days ago I went for an evening hunt on public land, a 20 minute drive from home. I spent a few hours hiking up ridges, through gullies, and around forests that were the evergreen species different and the cacti a little more robust could be in northern Arizona rather than central Montana. I…
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Fizan Compact trekking poles
Danny Milks from Massdrop contacted me a few months ago about a new version of Fizan’s compact trekking pole they were producing, and he ended up sending me a pair to use with no strings attached. With one major flaw I’ve found them to be excellent summer poles, and a good discussion point for what…
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Cairn Carto maps
Disclaimer: M knows that the 4th or 5th fastest way to my heart is via a free and nifty-looking trucker hat. A while ago the folks at Cairn Cartographics asked me to take a look at their new Glacier/Waterton map before it went to print. In exchange they gave me a few free maps and…
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MTI Vibe v. Astral V-8: packrafting PFDs
The Astral V-8 and the MTI Vibe are PFDs you’d use for similar things, and have similar attributes with only a few distinct yet significant differences. They are both class III vests with 15 pounds of buoyancy, both weigh about the same (20 oz for the V-8, 24 oz for the Vibe), and both cost…
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Bark River Micro-Canadian; more knife perfection
Last fall I wrote; Ideally, I’d like one knife which combines the slicing and edge retention of the Dragonfly with the abuse-ability of the Candiru. The Bark River Micro-Canadian has been the number one candidate for some time, but it violates my no-knives >100 dollars policy. A year from now I’ll probably have purchased one,…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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