Gear I Thought Was Hype... Until I Tried It

Every year a few pieces of gear go viral and I just kind of roll my eyes. They're either overpriced or overhyped or trying too hard. But some of this list is exactly that. It's stuff I bought expecting to hate but I ended up totally wrong about. And some of it it's just gear that I love and I just want to share it with you because you're my friend. It's gear that has earned a permanent spot in my kit. So stick around there's a good chance that something on this list will end up in your kit too. Okay let's get into it. So the first up is the Rocky Talkie radio systems. These are super hyped. I see them all the time on social media. They make some really great ads and I was kind of like okay whatever. They have good branding. They look nice but do they really hold up? These are super ruggedized radios that are meant to allow you to communicate with your friends over very long distances. So they actually claim a line of sight communication for 35 miles. In the mountains you can get one to five miles which is pretty stellar. And then if you're in the forest or in the hills a half a mile to three miles range. The battery life is three to five days on a single charge. And you know what's really cool is they came out with some cool accessories for it. So you've got like a carabiner that you can clip into the rubberized thing on the back here so you can just hang that off of your backpack straps. Or you've got this lanyard so if you're like boating or kayaking or something like that you can clip this on and you won't technically lose this radio unless you go in the water. They also have a hand mic which is really cool. So the hand mic is really nice so you can actually keep the radio unit like on your belt or something like that and then have this running up and just clip this on so you can talk into it. Super nice accessory to have. Rocky Talky makes really great gear. So in case you were wondering you've seen the ads. Yeah it's worth the hype. Next up is Fiber Light. Now I am friends with the owner of this company and I gotta tell you Outdoor Element makes some really cool innovative gear for the outdoors and I kind of thought this was hype. This is a product that they came out with and I'm like okay whatever. Another fire tinder? Really? Like another way to start a fire? Haven't we figured this out over millennia? But no this is worth the hype. This is really cool stuff. I use it exclusively now to start my fires because it works so stinking well. So this is some like wood pulp with some proprietary blend of awesome natural wax stuff that it's mixed with and it just goes up crazy hot super fast. It's really great for lighting your fires. So anyways pick up some of this Fiber Light from Outdoor Element. Support a U.S. business and they're a backpacking knife which is the Scout Feather. This is the Grim Granite edition but you can get the green and orange colorway. They also have like I think glow-in-the-dark colorway now which is kind of cool. So Outdoor Element man they make some great gear. Next up is the Flip Fuel device. If you haven't seen this you're living under a rock because this is some seriously hyped product right here. The Flip Fuel device has saved me so much money and quite frankly has saved me from running out of fuel on many trips now. So you can actually transfer from like a half empty tank into another tank and get it topped off. You just chill one of the canisters and put one of the canisters in a warm environment and it transfers it from one into the next. So this is a device that I suggest every backpacker owns. If you go out more than once a year just get one of these little Flip Fuel devices because they are stellar. Now I want to talk about a favorite piece of gear. It's this hoodie I'm wearing and actually they are the sponsor of this video. Arms of Andes. You know what nobody tells you about base layers and mid layers? Most of them are lying to you. They're polyester pretending to be technical. They trap odor after one wear and they melt if you get near a campfire ember. And after a season of hard use they smell like something died in them because something kind of did. This is the Arms of Andes alpaca hoodie and it is the new piece of gear that made me rethink everything I thought about layering. It's 100% alpaca fiber sourced and made in Peru. No synthetics, no blends, just one of the oldest natural fibers on the planet worn by the people in the Andes for thousands of years for one simple reason. It works. Here's what I noticed from months of testing this in the field. It regulates temperature in a way that synthetics genuinely can't. I wore this hoodie hiking in 40 degree drizzle and again sitting around a fire on a 70 degree evening. Both comfortable. Same shirt. It doesn't hold odor and I've worn it days straight backpacking and it still smells like nothing. And here's the part that I really love. Alpacas are one of the lightest impact fiber animals on the planet. They don't have hooves. They have soft padded feet so they don't tear up the ground the way that sheep and goats do. And they don't rip the grass out by the roots when they graze. They nibble the tops leaving the plant alive to grow back. That means the same pasture land keeps producing year after year instead of getting stripped down to dirt. The fit is athletic without being tight and the hood actually fits over a hat. It's soft like next to skin soft not itchy wool soft. So definitely check out Arms of Andes. They make amazing products. Seriously. Check out the link in the description. If you only upgrade one layer this year make it this one. All right now let's get back to the gear. Listen we're we're getting into mosquito season here and it seriously cramps my style to go out and be bombarded by mosquito mosquitoes by mosquitoes and just get eaten alive. So the Thermacell products everybody says they're hype but I've been using them for like over a decade and I absolutely love them especially this one the MR300. This one I carry with me when I go backpacking. It doesn't like work as you're walking because this this generates like a cloud around you so you got to sort of be stationary for it to work and it can't be super windy. It does handle some breeze but if it's like really windy it's not going to work because it's going to blow all the stuff away. But if you're sitting there and you've got like a light breeze or whatever then this thing is going to rock. You basically just put these little pads in it turn it on it runs off of butane. Holy cow where'd that go. Here it is. So it runs off of butane it's this little replaceable butane canister and it lasts a very long time and then you've got the little pads for the stuff that it puts into the air. Definitely love this product for mosquito season. Here in Wisconsin they are like the state bird. So yeah. All right next up is the Olfa Works saw. This is their like camp saw and this I would highly highly recommend everybody get if you're like a backpacker and if you're just even sort of interested in bushcraft get one of these because they are awesome. They are made in Japan. Very high quality. They have a replaceable saw blade so you can just swap it out real easily and I've found that this is great for just cutting up little sticks around camp crafting little bushcraft items around camp. You know what this is just a great gift for somebody too if you know somebody that is into camping and backpacking you don't know what to get them just get them to saw there. They're really going to love it. It's fun. Next up for our content creator friends out there these are hover follow drones and how you use these things is you don't even have to pull out your phone or controller or anything you just kind of double tap the button and it looks at you with its little camera and AI takes over and it follows you around it's got all different kinds of like patterns and things so it can orbit you and it can track in front of you or it can dolly next to you and create these really cool walking and hiking shots and I have the like original hover and then I have the new 8k version right here and so I absolutely love these things for content creation because you can stuff them in the in the hip pocket on your backpack and just whip it out take a couple shots put it away super cool where drones are allowed to be flown these are fun to use so I thought they were hype they're just plain awesome and I would never make a video about gear without including this bag this is backcountry exposure devon creates these bags and they're just they're just perfect they're perfect okay like I have all of my junk in here for like all my ditties and my my coffee and my electronics and everything uh sometimes I use it to store my food it can hold like two three days worth of food in here they're just awesome just go support a small business in the U.S. devon at backcountry exposure okay so this one I've done a video on before this is the wicked edge knife sharpener I really love this thing it's like 40 bucks you can actually throw it in your backpack because it weighs I think base weight is like five ounces or something like that super light and it's just dead simple to use so if you're looking for a knife sharpener for your kitchen knives at home or if you want to also take it backpacking with you what's really cool about it is that the sharpening stones you can flip them over to get to different grits so you start off with 200 or 500 and then they also give you like a thousand grit stone here and then a leather strop on the back so you can get your knife super sharp and keep it very durable with that stropped edge okay so anyways check out wicked edge they make great knife sharpeners all right you may have seen ads for the ombra's glasses these are glasses with the strap on them now ombra sent me these and they put my prescription in them I absolutely love these glasses they're super clean super crisp and super lightweight like they are just barely there and they stay on your head no matter what you do so if you are an active person or if you do a lot of hiking check out ombra's they make really nice elevated sunglasses let's talk about cooking I have two cook kits right now that I use and I can't decide which one I love more honestly so what I have been using for years now is the petrol pot by fire maple it's a heat exchanging pot so it's very efficient the heat that goes into it it transfers into the pot you don't lose it to the wind and whatnot so this is just a fantastic little piece of gear love the petrol pot by fire maple and then I also have your typical like 750 milliliter tokes titanium pot now this is a very famous pot but what you might not have is the lid now the lid is from pika outdoors and what's cool about this lid is invented by justin outdoors pika has made this lid in in collaboration with him and it can hold your gas canister and keep it from rattling around or creating a rust spot in the bottom of your pot and also it has a spot right in here for a mini bic lighter so you can store one in there I don't know why I don't have one in there right now fail but you can also still put your stove in the bottom of it and my favorite stove right now is the green peak stove by fire maple I just really love this stove it's regulated it has piezo igniter on it and it can rip in a windy environment so it's very efficient and it just transfers all that heat right to the pot so I still really love this this green peak stove uh and it's inexpensive so definitely check out fire maples stoves and then get yourself a pika lid if you're going to be using a tokes titanium pot so this is a just a fantastic thing oh and if you've got a spoon then you can use your spoon to pour huh you don't have to use the the little handle thingies doodads you can use your spoon to pour your beverage or your soup or whatever so very creative and it's got conversions on the top of the lid as well so and no backpacking gear video would be complete without talking about miranda's water bottle now this has been just super hype right this has been all over the place the migo water bottle everybody's doing videos about them and talking about them and uh yeah I dig it it's a great water bottle she is my friend so of course I'm going to support Miranda but it is a good product and I've been using this now for the better part of six months and it's holding up great I dig it the next product is pure hype the bv1 by bear vault you've probably seen this thing on uh everybody's feed as of late this is the adjustable bear canister so you first of all you can open it um very easily now you just engage those little buttons and the thing pops off like that but what's really cool about it is that it is adjustable so once you close it up you can keep going with it and make it super small so you can store less food you can take it on a shorter trip or as you're consuming the food you can make it a more squat version for taking up less space in your pack uh love this very very cool and if you haven't listened to an interview with uh grant um then you should definitely check out beyond the trailhead podcast with grant where he talks about the development of this thing and all of the this just all of the thought that went into making this is extreme and how they test it with bears did you know in order for it to be certified it has to survive bear engagement for over one hour so a bear has to be actively trying to get into this for one hour and uh it's pretty gnarly that these things can hold up to that kind of abuse love it tons of hype but i absolutely love this thing and if you haven't seen my video where i take this uh i think i'm gonna post it right up here um i took this on a trip to an island full of black bears so definitely check out that video that's on my second channel called gordon krum which is an eco noir documentary channel definitely check that out and for our content creators here's another piece of gear that is just amazing this is the peak design uh tripod this is their uh what do you call this carbon fiber yeah carbon fiber tripod uh very light but extremely stable and the fact that you can just twist this and go like that lock it down is the fastest tripod i've ever used for setting up a shot it is so fast and then to clip your camera into it it's just you just put it on here and it locks down like instantly no fuss no messing around with it no dropping your camera like i've done a dozen times off of other tripods yeah this thing is sick i love it so nice so i just had to show this off peak design sent this to me to try out and i've been using it on all my trips lately and in just day-to-day life filming and i i am obsessed with this tripod now i love it i finally found travel tripod i can trust and i i actually enjoy using it makes me feel more creative if you're a content creator you're serious about doing what you do then looking to get in one of these it's an investment it is not cheap but it is really good all right i know that we're heading into summer and the last thing you want to talk about is cold weather gear but i i gotta tell you coming off of a hard winter using this jacket i love it and if you are in the market to buy cold weather gear right now then definitely check out this jacket it's the vantage alpine jacket by outdoor vitals i have been using it nearly every single day that the weather is um below like 50 degrees and all the way down to negative 15. i love this of course with layers you know it's not going to be your only layer negative 15 f but this is a stellar jacket they have kind of evolved their coats and jackets over the years and this is sort of like their their flagship right now and it is extremely nice there's no stitching in this baffle right here so in these baffles there's no stitching so the the down pockets are held in place by this this line right here which is actually woven together the fabric is woven together in those spots it's really spooky how they do it but what that really does for you is that it's thousands less stitch holes in the product where wind can get through so it is warmer just by the way they construct it absolutely adore this jacket love it all right that's the gear that i thought was hype until i tried it including this awesome hoodie by arms of i'm telling you from one friend to another if you only invest in one layer this year upgrade your mid-layer you get get you a hoodie from arms of andy's they are amazing love you guys we'll see you out there