Every year my mom mails me a birthday check, which I promptly squander on hiking gear. This way I get to pretend like I’m a smelly, unshaven (but way-cool) outdoors dude who’s so broke he still needs checks from home…
Gear
iPhone 3G battery blues
by tom • August 6, 2008 • 5 Comments
I put my iPhone through its paces on the nearby Guadalupe River Trail yesterday, using pretty much every feature built into it. With iTunes running in the background, I walked for about two hours, snapped and uploaded 40 low-resolution pictures…
Two-way radios for hiking
by tom • July 30, 2008 • 5 Comments
I’ve been on group hikes where folks carry along little two-way radios, which are a notch above those walkie-talkies we played with as kids. The range isn’t great, especially when there are hills and trees in the way, but as…
Gear Junkie’s Outside Online gig
by tom • July 25, 2008 • 0 Comments
Stephen Regenold has added a new kingdom to his gear-review empire: Outside Online, which introduced The Gear Junkie Scoop this week. Stephen comes out of the gate swinging (er, napping) with an intro the ThermaRest Neo Air, an inflatable that’s…
iPhone 3G: any good in the outdoors?
by tom • July 21, 2008 • 11 Comments
After 15 years of resistance I have finally acquired a mobile phone. Of course it could not be one of those el-cheapo throwaways sensible people own. It had to be an iPhone because, well, Steve Jobs sends secret messages to…
MSR Reactor camp stove reviews: raves mostly
by tom • June 26, 2008 • 1 Comment
For fun this morning I went looking for reviews of the MSR Reactor backpacking stove, Mountain Safety Research’s response to getting its butt kicked, innovation-wise, by those JetBoil upstarts. GoBlog touted its arrival in October 2006, Backpacker magazine made it…
About those SPOT rescue beacons
by tom • June 19, 2008 • 5 Comments
Read this before you buy one. (Read the whole thing, it’s a corker … I won’t spoil it here. It’s about the Backpacker Magazine guy on Denali, in case you’ve seen the coverage on other outdoor blogs.) Previously: Mulling the…
Trekking poles for women — any such thing?
by tom • June 18, 2008 • 14 Comments
One of the latest arrivals at Backpackgeartest.org is the Leki Diva Antishock Trekking Pole system (left). This one got me wondering if there’s much need for a women’s trekking pole — they don’t have much to do with boobs or…
China quake outcome: Tent-factory takeovers
by tom • June 4, 2008 • 0 Comments
The outdoor blogosphere is gaga over this story: SNEWS reporting that the Chinese government has “seized control of all Chinese-owned tent factories,” presumably to help the millions left homeless by the massive earthquake (one can never be sure of the…