Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

A Pack With An Identity Crisis

Outdoor Research calls the DryComp Ridge Sack a perfect pack for peak bagging and summit pushes. Well, living in Minnesota, there aren’t a lot of peaks to be bagged but we have a few thousand lakes and countless rivers, so I’m re-positioning this waterproof bag as the perfect paddling pack.

Reusable Warmth

While an additional heat source may not be on your mind as we approach the first official day of summer, it’s never too soon to start planning for outdoor fall and winter activities. Wonder Warmers are a solid solution for instant, portable, and reusable warmers. We tried them out and found them to be perfect [...]

Your New Retro Drinking Companion

Created as the working man’s go to brand for taking food or coffee to a job, the Stanley classic black flask ($20) brings the same quality to your booze of choice. Though it may not have the panache of shinier options out there, we actually prefer this flask’s dark utilitarian looks and sneakable size. Made [...]

A Year Ago on Gear Patrol

Brand Spotlight is a series on Gear Patrol focused on highlighting unique and creative brands we feel should be on men’s radars. Most shoes are made like cars, meaning they are massed produced in an assembly line. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the efficiencies gained from this approach for certain kinds of kicks, but it [...]

Hitting the Sweet Spot of Technology and Craftsmanship

First-hand experience has taught us that Nike Golf cranks out some top-notch golf equipment. Despite the crew here possessing a wide range of handicaps and skill levels, Nike clubs and balls have won universal acclaim amongst the Gear Patrol crew. Still, one wonders what’s behind the ascendancy of one of golf’s fastest growing brands. That’s [...]

Puhl-vuh-rahyz

According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of pulverize is: to reduce (as by crushing, beating, or grinding) to very small particles. Well, the Pulverizer from Jackson Professional Tools is nothing if not appropriately named. Whether your abrading, atomizing, beating, braying, contriturating, crumbling, crushing, fragmenting, granulating, levigating, pestling, splintering, or triturating, the Pulverizer does a man [...]

Good Gear Hunting

Fancy yourself a good navigator? Want some free gear? Well, if you’re going to be in the Roanoke, Virginia area on July 11th, you can run around the woods collecting points toward $40,000 in outdoor loot. Our friends over at Gear Junkie are putting on an adventure race in the wilds around Roanoke. If you’ve [...]

What's the Shiny Exterior Hiding?

Absinthe has a reputation for many things. Some of them are accurate and justified, others are bogus. Fenom certainly hopes to capitalize one way or the other on the allure of this infamous mind altering substance with their so-called “Modern Absinthe”. Brought to our attention by Liqurious, it’s described by the company as the first [...]

Because Getting It Clean Shouldn't Take Hard Work

There’s nothing, and we mean nothing, quite like the feeling of a clean car. In fact, it’s been proven (through our highly-scientific testing process) that a spiffy ride really does drive better. Typically, that means adding a trip to the wash to your already packed routine. That’s why you might want to consider booting your [...]

A Year Ago on Gear Patrol

Meatbook

Besides a title that gets your mouth watering, Ribs, Chops, Steaks, & Wings ($14) has a singular focus on our favorite food group: meat. 40 simple meat-centric recipes make up this 132 page book. Everything from veal chops Oscar, to filet mignon, to Southern fall-off-the-bone spare ribs. Ray “Dr. BBQ” Lampe also takes you through [...]

For Fireside Chats

Over at Boston based Acquire Boutique you’ll find not only interior design that blends contemporary design with vintage styles, but also a small collection of goods that embody Acquire and its principal designer, Nikki Dalrymple’s approach. Our favorite are the Industrial Table Lamps ($145) which use Ferrowatt Bulbs to give a rich, warm ambiance. The [...]

A Year Ago on Gear Patrol

Attractive, Affordable, Functional

Hand mixers may not be on the top of your must own kitchen gadget list, but their main benefit over that aircraft carrier KitchenAid Stand Mixer you have prominently docked on your counter is that they allow you to bring the power to the place where you need it rather than transferring ingredients to the [...]