Author: Jack Bogart

I heaved the fully loaded Exped Lightning 50 off my back onto the ground, right in the middle of a gem of a creekside Colorado campsite. It was packed to the absolute limit with gear and food that was quickly extruded into a neat pile beside us. Within moments, I had alpine charcuterie served, camp chairs pitched, water heating, and a diaper changing station deployed. With a new baby in tow, the demands on my day hiking pack have grown exponentially. 20 liters? Forget about it. I nabbed a sample of the freshly updated Exped Lightning 50 to pull double…

The next time you’re about to upload a video from your hiking trip, take a moment to consider the following: Is it possible I’m doing something illegal? That clearly wasn’t on the minds of a hiking couple in Banff National Park who had a risky run-in with a grizzly bear. The couple posted a 90-second video of the encounter to TikTok account twohumanstwodogs on July 21. It swiftly went viral: The couple yells and backs away from the burly bruin while their small dog barks in agitation. While many online spectators expressed sympathy for the scary situation, others noted an…

As an avid paddler, I consider a waterproof first-aid kit non-negotiable. Even when I’m heading out on dry-land missions, I want my first-aid essentials to stay bone-dry. If I had to pick one compact kit to keep in regular rotation, the Adventure Medical Kits Ultralight/Watertight .7 Medical Kit ($35) would be it. Smaller than a 32-ounce water bottle, this kit is ideal for multisport days where space is limited. I have tossed it into dry bags, running vests, and even my dog’s pack without a second thought. The .7 includes the basics I want for blisters, headaches, mild allergic reactions,…

Imagine you’re a first responder. Your patient has just broken their leg and is wet, underdressed, and nearly hypothermic. If you don’t have any clothes to change them into, you may have to offer your own, or some purchased for the occasion. And if the injury is serious enough, those nice base layers might get cut right off, never to be used again. That was the scenario that merino wool brand Minus 33 tackled head-on when it launched a program in 2017 to donate its factory seconds to a local search-and-rescue organization. The Search & Rescue (SAR) kit program repurposes…

Oregon voters will not decide this November whether hunting, fishing, and many common agricultural practices should be treated as animal cruelty. The Oregon Elections Division announced that Initiative Petition 28 failed to collect enough valid signatures to qualify for the November 3 general election ballot. The campaign needed 117,173 valid signatures. State officials determined that 104,262 of the signatures submitted were valid, leaving the measure nearly 13,000 signatures short. What Initiative Petition 28 Would Have Done Known as the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act, or PEACE Act, the proposal would have removed several existing exemptions from…

Deep in the remote wilderness of Maine exists Redington, home to the U.S. Navy’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) school. It is this hallowed locale from which GiantMouse’s most formidable blade, The Redington, gets its name. This week, that knife got a new edition in the GiantMouse Redington N690, which maintains its incredible versatility and robustness, but cuts the price down significantly. It is a cool knife, but I think of GiantMouse as a folder company, with a more urban vibe.  This knife is quite a departure from that. Read the whole thing at GearPatrol.com https://www.gearpatrol.com/outdoors/giantmouse-redington-n690/ Read the full…

It’s late July, early August, so it is time for the annual Light&Saber Listicle. To clarify language here is my article about the price brackets. The goal of this article is to recommend to you a knife and a light that This year represents a huge shift for two reasons. First, a lot of my favorite gear is no longer in production. Second, inflation has destroyed the market. I feel like those two things might be related. It might be that the old stuff I liked is too expensive now to make at a profit and so those things have…

By Tom Laemlein Posted in #History In the summer of 1918, a new fighter ascended in the German Air Combat Forces, or Luftstreitkräfte, boasting a level of performance that would outpace any of Anthony Fokkers’ famous designs. The Fokker E.V parasol monoplane, eventually known as the Fokker D.VIII, demonstrated tremendous combat potential during Germany’s Second Fighter competition of May-June, and multiple frontline pilots lauded the E.V’s outstanding maneuverability. But in a bizarre twist of aviation fate, the new Fokker was grounded by the end of August. The “Flying Razor” had become a blade that cut both ways,…

We’re so used to seeing folding knives (and folding blade-loaded multitools) during our daily travels around world and web, we’re not quite ready for an entirely different tool inside a folding package, especially not one with very knife-like G10 scales and thumbhole. But the all-new Norse Foldable from Willumsen conceals a different fold-out blade inside its handle. It does look just a bit too chunky when closed to be a knife, and that hints at the real capability that flips open in milliseconds at the flick of a wrist. I had the chance to play with this at Blade Show……

To say the military loves its challenge coin culture is an understatement. Chances are, if you spend any amount of time in the service, you’ll find you’ve accumulated a drawer full of them. There’s an entire cottage industry that does nothing but make displays for them; the same goes for places that make custom challenge coins.  Challenge Coin Culture Military coins are, at least in today’s military, an integral part of unit, branch, and service culture. There are many reasons for this. While they are fun to collect and display, they can also be part of a much deeper connection…