Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Snow Might

With enough bite to make a Yeti white with jealousy, Atlas Snowshoe has outdone themselves with the Aspect ($269). Built around an all-new traction system called ReactiV-Trac, the Aspect’ offers up tons of grip thanks to an angry saw-toothed perimeter. Something you’ll want when the powder gets especially naughty. A platform of offset webbing creates [...]

Everything just clicks

Plenty of goggle brands have introduced interchangeable lens systems over the last several years. The ability to swap lenses tailored for specific conditions has been a boon for powder hounds seeking an edge, but the changing process is still too tedious to do on the mountain. Rimless iterations made things slightly faster, but users still [...]

Heat your meals, charge your phone

They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks — but the same axiom apparently isn’t true for the wood burning camp stove — the oldest camping gear dog of all. Like any other timber burnin’ stove, the BioLite CampStove is great for cooking, since there’s no risk of fire-starting chemicals flavoring your grub. Lugging [...]

Thinking Ahead

No matter what the law dictates in your particular state, not wearing a helmet while riding is one of the dumbest things you can do. That doesn’t mean lugging around a bulky dome guard is any fun for commuters. The Overade aims to make riding slightly more convenient and just as safe. Designed in France [...]

New Jerseys

Take a trip down memory lane and look at the unis worn by Bird and Magic, vs. Jordan and Isiah Thomas, vs. Lebron and Kobe, and you’ll see just how much the style of basketball has changed. The same trends have flowed through the college game. Yesterday, Nike unveiled what it expects to be the [...]

Bicicletta Italiano

Bringing their subtle Italian style from leather goods to two-wheel motion, Travelteq has collaborated with Milan based Cicli Maestro to create the Traveler Bike (~$1120). For the record, we haven’t decided whether or not to categorize it as a style accessory or simply a stylish bicycle, but we’re leaning toward the former. The single speed [...]

No Drafting

It’s quite satisfying when you find quality bike wear that not only offers up the right functionality, but also looks downright fashionable. We recently tested the Icebreaker Commute Jacket ($230) and fell in love with it — a trend these days with Icebreaker gear. The 84% Merino wool Ponte 355 fabric is both soft and [...]

Lite a fire

For grilling in the great outdoors, lightweight construction and portability are a must, but without durability and a flexibility, there’s really not much point (or culinary joy) in lugging one around. Oddly, there aren’t that many great options out there. Newcomer SlatGrill ($110), designed by Chris Weyandt of St. Paul Minnesota, offers up a solution [...]

2 Coats, 18 Days

Seasons are something you can take for granted when you live in LA — I do — rarely giving you an opportunity to truly test cold weather gear. Granted our desert climate can create temps in the high 30s on winter nights, but it’s still not the right environment for challenging the winter gear that [...]

Speedway

When you hear the words “larger” and “curves” used to to describe something, a golf club isn’t exactly the first thing that springs to mind. At 9% larger than last year’s F11, the 2012 Adams Speedline Fast 12 Driver ($349) was designed with aerodynamics in mind. Featuring their Airfoil technology, the F12 has a few [...]

Cutting-edge indeed

So-called “cloud services” hope to make transferring digital data via physical devices akin to cave painting in the near future. That hasn’t stopped pocket-tool legend Victorinox from evolving the classic Swiss Army Knife to house the latest SSDs and transfer protocols. Their new solid state drive line features a special single connector that’s compatible with [...]

8 second showdown

Going into its sixth year, the Professional Bull Riders descended on the Big Apple earlier this month, and with it an abundance of leather, flannel and denim in tow. But the rough-and-ready horde didn’t come here to talk style, but instead demonstrated the brutally tough sport of professional bull riding. Kicking off a 10 month, [...]

Rushless

Performance engineering and lightweight design come together with the all-new Adidas adizero Rush ($100). Weighing in just under 7 oz. the Rush features their lightweight adiPrene+ midsole, a nylon mesh frame for stability and breathability (SprintWeb) and thin rubber outsole for a close-to-ground feel. And just in case the shoe’s design, available in 7 colors, [...]

What down side?

The next time you think Mother Nature has lost her edge to science, consider this fact. Despite all of the advanced synthetic insulators on the market today, no material boasts a better warmth to weight ratio than down. The trouble is that down’s got a serious achilles heel. As most outdoor enthusiasts know, its thermal [...]

The business end

Your average man doesn’t give much thought to knives, much less fixed blade knives. But if you’re at all a prepared man and you either get to the great outdoors with some regularity or you just want to be ready for whatever may come, you might want to include one of the Cold Steel Leatherneck [...]