Camping Gear Reviews

Nemo Riff 30 Endless Promise sleeping bag.

Review: Nemo Riff 30 Endless Promise Sleeping Bag

by

Sleeping Bag
Nemo Riff 30 Endless Promise
$360, 1 lb. 15 oz./879g (men’s regular)
Sizes: men’s and women’s regular and long
nemoequipment.com

Nemo’s Riff down sleeping bags have long carved out a unique space among high-end backpacking bags with their spoon shape and comfortable dimensions, as well as the zippered “thermo gills” on the chest area for adjusting the bag’s degree of warmth to vent on mild nights or batten down the hatches on chilly nights. Spending eight nights in the 2024 update, the Riff 30 Endless Promise, in Glacier National Park in September and in southern Utah in early October, I found that Nemo maintained or improved on the Riff’s exclusive features—while making the bags fully recyclable.

Read on

A campsite at night by the Colorado River at Hance Rapids in the Grand Canyon.

Ultralight Backpacking Tents: How to Choose One

by

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?

Read on

A campsite at Precipice Lake in Sequoia National Park.

5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent

by

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.

Read on

The Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT air mattress.

Review: Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT Air Mattress

by

Insulated Air Mattress
Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT
$200, 11.5 oz./330g (size regular short, not including stuff sack or pump sack)
Sizes: four sizes from 20×66 inches/51x168cm to 25×77 inches/64x176cm
backcountry.com

Choosing the absolute lightest air mattress you find doesn’t always go well: The hours of sleep lost to discomfort may exceed the weight savings in ounces. Put another way, the personal energy lost through a poor night of sleep may eclipse what you gain from shaving a few ounces of pack weight. The latest iteration of Therm-a-Rest’s ultralight NeoAir XLite air mats, the NXT, will flip that equation to the positive side of the energy ledger for many backpackers, as it did for me on several spring and summer backpacking trips.

Read on

The Mountain Hardwear Phantom 30 sleeping bag.

Review: Mountain Hardwear Phantom 30 Sleeping Bag

by

Ultralight Sleeping Bag
Mountain Hardwear Phantom 30
$450, 1 lb. 6 oz./624g (unisex regular, 72-inch)
Sizes: unisex short ($440), regular, long ($480)
backcountry.com

Look at specs when shopping for a high-quality, ultralight, three-season sleeping bag and you might quickly trim your short list to about five models, all at basically similar weights and price points. But having slept in most of those top bags—and after sleeping in Mountain Hardwear’s Phantom 30 on cool nights on backpacking trips from a section of the Arizona Trail in the first days of April and camping at Idaho’s City of Rocks in June to the Canadian Rockies and Wind River Range in August—I place the Phantom 30 among the two or (maybe) three very best ultralight mummy bags for its strategic balance between low weight and excellent warmth. Here’s why.

Read on