rucksacking

Mont Bell Sleeping Bag Cover

7 is a magical number, and at only 7 ounces, this bag cover/bivy from Mont Bell is a magical item indeed. Made of Gore-tex and completely seam-taped, this little trucker will keep you dry as a bone no matter the weather. According to Mont Bell, even old Backpacker Magazine had good things to say, calling it "7 ounces of perfection" in its 2005 Gear Guide.

U.L. Sleeping Bag Cover [Mont Bell]
Reviews [Mont Bell]

REI Getting Into the Game

We take a few months off, and the whole landscape of lightweight backpacking rucksacking changes. REI has introduced a new line of "UL" products, which, though still a tad on the heavy side by most standards (or at least by ours), are still a huge improvement over traditional gear and will probably start a much larger segement of the public down the path towards rucksacking. We're not exactly sure when they began offering in-house items like the poetically-named REI UL 30L Pack, but we'll leave finding out stuff like that to real journalists who do stuff like, you know, research.

A list of words we like to hear: New, Tarptent, shipping, soon

The world's best lightweight shelter keeps getting better: Henry Shires and his team are going to be shipping new versions of the Virga and Squall tarptents starting in February. Light, easy to set up, and robust in harsh and buggy weather, the new designs offer improvements in roominess and stability (and privacy, if you know what we mean).

Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2005 Madness!

The good folks over at BackpackingLight.com have basically blogged this year's winter Outdoor Retailers convention in Brighton, UT, and posted an index here. There are even short, free descriptions for non-members. If we had to choose, we'd say we're most excited about this, but that's because A) we love Smartwool, and B) we're not so into winter backpacking, so a lot of these products fail to get our juices going.

Tarp(Tent)

Backpacking Light has a "highly subjective" comparison of floorless shelters available for non-subscribers (though you'll have to pay to look at the individual reviews). High scores go to Tarptent, whose re-designed line of shelters all include cantenary curves, great bug protection, and good looks, too.