America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
If you’ve opened this story, you probably already recognize this truth: For backpackers, dayhikers, climbers, mountain runners, and others, trekking poles noticeably reduce strain, fatigue, and impact on leg muscles and joints, feet, back—and really on your entire body. And that’s true no matter how much weight you’re carrying, whether a daypack, an ultralight backpack, or a woefully heavy backpack.
By Michael Lanza
A good backpacking tent not only makes your trips more comfortable by keeping you warm and dry in foul weather—it’s critical safety gear and one of the heaviest and most expensive items you’ll carry. Those facts alone are motivation enough to find the right tent for your style of backpacking. But how do you choose from the many models out there, which come in a huge range of designs, weights, and prices? Whether you’re shopping for your first backpacking shelter or looking to replace an old one, this review will help make that choice easy for you.
Skiing and Riding Bib
Flylow Baker Bib
$430, 2 lbs. 2 oz./952g (men’s medium)
Sizes: men’s XS-XXL, with tall and short sizes
backcountry.com
Skiing in Utah’s Wasatch mountains virtually every single time it snows exposes me to a wide range of inclement weather conditions: from subzero temperatures and cold smoke to warm, humid clouds dumping wet snow that can soak outerwear in minutes. Moreover, skiing as often and hard as I do exposes my clothing to a serious amount of wear. For these reasons, I went on a quest for a bib that would keep me dry through wet, seven-plus-hour days of skiing and have the durability to last hundreds of ski days. That search that led me to the Flylow Baker, which I’ve found ideal for resort skiing and colder, wetter days in the backcountry.
By Michael Lanza
Switching from a standard backpacking tent to an ultralight tent can shave pounds from your total pack weight—which for many backpackers will be the biggest step they can take toward a lighter pack. But it can be confusing to sort through the various ultralight tents out there, and the specs on them can look like a big pot of numeral soup, leaving you wondering: How are they different? And ultimately, which one is best for you?
By Michael Lanza
The choices in tents for backpacking seem to get better every year, with lightweight models continually getting lighter and other advances that make tents sturdier and more livable without adding weight. But with all the options out there, how do you choose? The answer is simpler than you might think: It comes down to understanding the key differences that distinguish tents from one another—which will help you understand what you need.