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NRS Boundary Boot Review
If there’s one thing about early season paddling it is this: your feet get cold. This is especially true if you have the wrong gear and keep sticking your feet into icy water. Over the years, I’ve tried different methods of keeping my feet warm and have settled on using a dry suit, warm socks and the NRS Boundary Boot, which is a classic piece from NRS. Every year, I think about writing a review for these shoes, but never get around to doing it. So here’s my NRS Boundary Boot review. The way that NRS describes the NRS Boundary Boot makes you think it is a shoe designed for…
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Sunyear Camping Chair Review – a Cheap Knockoff of a Heliox Chair, but is it Good?
On an 8-day canoe trip through the lower canyons of the Rio Grande River along the Texas border, we brought along Heliox chairs for lounging around on in camp. They were light and comfy, but at $100 I didn’t feel like they were worth it. While researching the chairs on Amazon I found a knockoff by Sunyear. I’ve been using these chairs since February and this is my Sunyear Camping Chair Review. Description of the Sunyear Camping Chair The Sunyear Camping Chair is basically a knockoff of a Heliox chair. It is even the same blue. The legs are made from aircraft-grade 7075 aluminium alloy and fold up into a…
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Northstar Polaris Canoe Review
This is my Northstar Polaris review — well, mini-review of the Polaris. Summary: If I could only own one canoe in the world, this would be it. Longer Northstar Polaris Review The canoe is a Northstar Polaris. I’m using one with their BlackLite layup, carbon fiber and Aramid with a resin coat on the outside. It has wood trim, which is an upgrade over the standard aluminum trim. The seats, thwarts, yoke and deck are laminated ash and walnut and the gunwales are ash. I ordered it with a kneeling thwart to use solo after the rest of the crew is hanging in camp and I need to paddle somewhere…
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Katadyn BeFree Water Filtration System Review
Over the last few years, I haven’t been paying attention to new products in the outdoor industry (instead I’ve been remodeling a fixer upper that we bought). When I was recently redoing my kitchen kit, I ran across a new water filter by Katadyn. The Katadyn BeFree Water Filtration System looked like an ideal filter that took everything good about the Sawyer Mini and shrunk it even more. I decided to pick one up and test it out. This is my review. I used the Katadyn BeFree on a five-day trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. There were three of us on the trip and we filtered over…
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Mana Loa Cambodian Buddha T-Shirt Review
While in Cambodia clothing company Mana Loa visited a Buddhist monastery near Siem Reap. They donated food and toiletries to the monastery and were taught chants. In the temple, the monks allowed them to make a carbon copy of a painting of Buddha. They used the copy they made as artwork on their Mana Loa Cambodian Buddha T-shirt. I received a sample to review. So, why review a fashion t-shirt instead of a high-tech wunder-shirt on a website about paddling? I asked myself the same thing when the opportunity arose. On low-mileage canoe and kayak camping trips, I like to bring along a shirt to wear in camp. Typically, it’s…
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First Look: MyCanoe Review
The MyCanoe is a foldable, origami-style plastic canoe designed for easy storage and transport. This 14′ 6″ canoe folds up in a similar style to the more familiar Oru Kayak, and it packs down into two cases. The first case, created in part by parts of the canoe, measures approximately 37 inches wide by 25 inches high and 8 inches deep. The second case is soft sided. It measures about half the height of the other case. Both cases easily fit inside the trunk of a compact car such as a Toyota Corolla. The entire package weighs about 52 pounds and has a claimed capacity of 400 pounds. I had a chance…
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Review Jon Turk’s Crocodiles and Ice
Jon Turk’s latest book Crocodiles and Ice [Buy from Amazon] takes the reader through a half dozen of his adventures starting from when he was a child cutting across an immaculate lawn on a shortcut to his grade school to a hike in the mountains in his late 60s. In short, it’s an autobiographical story of his life – of sorts. In it he describes why he chose the life he chose. He describes his motivations and tells us about some of his trips – while maybe not the defining trips of his life, they seem to have helped shape his life or help shape the narrative that he wants to tell.…
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Xshot Dome Port Review
Like many paddlers, I bought a GoPro camera. I used it for a season to shoot lots of video, but didn’t do anything with the video — because most of it was pretty boring. Eventually, bored of shooting action video, the GoPro sat in the corner of my office gathering dust. That is until I got my hands on an XShot Dome Port to review. The XShot Dome Port is a 6-inch dome port designed to allow you to use your GoPro Hero 3 or Hero 4 to get “half-and-half” waterline shots. This gives you a picture that is half above the waterline and half below the waterline. It also…
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First Look: Big Agnes Copper Spur UL3
Almost two years ago, we added a person to our family. As he has grown up, we’ve had to figure out how he is going to fit in with our camping and paddling trips. This year with a toddler in tow, we found that our two person tents didn’t fit anymore (last year, we used my heavy old mountaineering tent which had plenty of extra length to fit a baby). We bought a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL3 and will review it as we continue to use it. This is the first look after using it on one canoeing trip into the BWCA. Our goal was to find a lightweight…
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First Look: Flip Reel – a fishing handline for kayaking and canoeing
Have you ever wanted to fish from your canoe or kayak, but didn’t want to deal with rods and reels? The Flip Reel by Squiddies offers a solution. It’s an easy-to-pack hand fishing line. The line, sinker and tackle all store inside the flip reel when not in use. The reel itself is compact and portable, and has a line cutter built in. It weighs 5.3 ounces without tackle. To use the Flip Reel, you flip open the bell to expose the reel, clip on the tackle (and bait the hook if needed), then you wet the reel completely. To cast, you spin the line around in a circle and let go…
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First Impressions: Vargo Titanium Ti-Lite 750 Mug
I’ve been testing the Vargo Titanium Ti-Lite 750 Mug since May. The Ti-Lite Mug is one of Vargo’s most popular mugs. Its 25 ounce (750 ml) capacity is large enough for most freeze-dried meals, and it’s big enough to cook single entree meals. It also works well as a mug to sip hot chocolate or a nightcap out of. If you carry a Nalgene bottle, it will fit inside the mug. As far as other features, it has graduated measurements in mililiters, foldaway handles, a strainer lid and a mesh storage bag. Vargo states its weight as 3.7 ounce with a diameter of 3.8 inches and height of 4.3 inches. It took…
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First Look: Paleo Meals To Go
Sick of the salty, typical freeze-dried fare in the cooking aisle of your local big box sporting goods retailer? Or are you sick of cooking when out paddling because you never have luck making a tasty meal without hauling a truck load of cooking gear? Or maybe you’re on a paleo diet and haven’t found a good way to continue that diet while on the trail. It was the later that spurred Ty Soukup and his mother Dawn Anderson to launch Paleo Meals To Go. They developed freeze-dried camping meals that aligned with the paleo diet. Paleo Meals To Go are freeze dried, gluten free, milk free, soy free, grain free,…
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Jon Turk’s New Book Crocodiles and Ice: A Journey into Deep Wild Available for Preorder
Adventurer and sea kayaker Jon Turk has a new book coming out in September. Amazon is now taking preorders. The book, called Crocodiles and Ice: A Journey in the Deep Wild, ties together several of Jon’s expeditions under the theme of a “journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth.” The book covers Jon’s circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, which is the trip that won him National Geographics Adventurer of the Year, and several other trips as well. Here’s the description: Crocodiles and Ice is a scientist/adventurer’s journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth. The book highlights my…
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Fenix HL60R Rechargeable Headlamp Review
Recently, I received a Fenix HL60R Rechargeable Headlamp for review. For the last month, I’ve used it on night outings for photography and for night riding a fat bike. Due to the time of year, I haven’t had a chance to use it while paddling at night — something that I seldom do — but I have used it for camping. The HL60R is the highest end light in Fenix’s headlamps lineup and one of the brightest headlamps on the market. This is Fenix’s description for this headlamp: Featuring a micro-USB port for go-anywhere charging, the Fenix HL60R Headlamp delivers a maximum output of 950 lumens, beam distance of up to 381…
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Mythic Gear Drysuit Review: a Budget Drysuit
The water temperature on my home waters of Lake Superior seldom rises above 55°F. For most of the year, it’s much lower. It’s not unusual to have temps in the 30s even on the summer solstice. The warmest I’ve seen the big lake is in the 70s after unusually calm stretches of weather in August when the air temp reached into the lower-80s. It doesn’t stay that warm long. It can literally drop from the 70s to the 40s overnight. I’ve seen that happen several times when 5 to 6-foot waves mix the surface water with the colder water just a few feet lower. Because the lake is so cold,…
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