GearFlogger

Therm-a-Rest Trekker Pillow Case

Sometimes in extreme situations small things can make a big difference. Exhibit A is the Therm-a-Rest Trekker Pillow Case, a soft fleece pouch that you can stuff full of clothing to make a field-expedient pillow. And at only 2oz to boot.

This little item went up Denali with us last season and turned out to be a great piece of kit. It doubles as a stuff sack for all kinds of clothing, in our case expedition weight base layers. We just pulled it out at night, threw it in the sleeping bag and laid our weary heads to rest. The 14x17 inch size will tuck in nicely to most bags, and a foldover flap keeps the contents in.

It's more than just a creature comfort. A good night's sleep is a safety and health issue on a big mountain. If you're carrying a stuff sack anyway might as well make it do something else while it's along for the ride. Another nice function is it keeps all your skull-nastiness away from your sleeping bag, keeping it cleaner. Nothing quite as nasty as a bunch of brain fungus contaminating your expensive down fartsack.

$10.95 at REI

TrailHeads Be-Seen Pocket Hat

While we're on the subject of perverts and their nasty little running habits that they don't even have the good sense to hide in public, the least we can do is make them easily identifiable for when the inevitable time comes to arrest them and take them in for questioning, slum-dog style, with electrodes to the nipples. Ah, to be king.

TrailHeads makes some well-thought-out fleece headwear for exactly this purpose, and for that they are awarded the GearFlogger Good Public Citizen Award for 2009. The Be-Seen Pocket Hat points the bright light of justice at runners, with a 360 degree reflective band and additional reflective piping around the zipper.

A zipper on a hat? Yes indeed, to secure the small tracking devices we will one day require all runners to wear at all times to make sure they're not going near places where small children congregate. Plus they can put their credit cards and stuff in there. Even perverts need credit cards. Don't ask why.

$26.00 at TrailHeads

Ahnu Firetrail Winter shoe

Ah. New. Ahnu. We're sure there's a story behind the name, but we're too lazy to investigate. Also, we're angry at Ahnu for making us run to test their new Firetrail Winter shoe. You all know how we feel about running: think full-body moving dry heaves.

And yet the Firetrail does what it can to make an unpleasant task better. At 13oz per dog for a size 9 it's light on the feet, and the Vibram sole has a serious tread with lugs that face every which way so you get equal friction going up, down and sideways. The Firetrail easily handles mud, slush and snow in equal measure. A wide heel provides excellent stability, and the fit is solid with great arch support. The rocker provides a smooth foot roll over a running stride, and the fit is

The exterior isn't technically waterproof, but it's damn close: Ahnu calls the outer mesh hydrophobic, but whatever you call it you'll really have to submerge it to get your tootsies damp. There's plenty of protection including a toe cap, so no worries about banging your piggies either. The Winter designation distinguishes this shoe from the normal Firetrail. The beefier construction and weatherproofing also confer more warmth, so all you winter runners can run on down to the mental health center to get yourselves checked out.

$124.95 at Paragon Sports

REI Duffel Bag

A duffel bag is so versatile. It holds gear, sex toys and body parts with equal efficiency. Just be sure to grab the right thing at the right time, if you know what I mean. The REI Duffel Bag is an excellent and inexpensive piece of kit that does a lot of things well.

REI put a lot of thought into what could have been an unremarkable bag. First off it comes in a zippered tote sack that doubles as a toiletry bag, with a hanging loop, two exterior compartments under a zipper and two mesh compartments on the inside. The duffle itself is a tough Cordura bag, stats for the medium: 12 inches in diameter and two feet long for almost 3,000ci capacity. It weighs in at 12.6oz minus the tote and included carrying strap, also nicely designed with wide 2in webbing and swiveling carabiner-style clips on each end. It has a beefy wrap around handle so go ahead and overload it.

So why is it Denali Approved? It was our sled bag last season, fitting perfectly in a cut-off 2/3 length kid's plastic sled. The medium size fit a tent (the pole length is the deciding factor), shovel, stoves and miscellaneous gear perfectly, with room behind it to tie in gas cans. The big plastic clip-in points for the strap have holes big enough to take a full-size carabiner for hauling. The dry weight of the whole sled, bag and cord haul system was under three pounds. The cut off edge on the back of the sled kept it from backsliding, and it could easily be slung over a pack for the technical sections. A great combination, easy on the legs and the pocketbook.

$24.93 (on sale from $29.50) at REI

Sierra Designs Flex down jacket

You got to flex it if you want to sex it, baby! The beach is (flex bicep while pointing with thumb) thataway! Sierra Designs has been flexing it for some time now with their sleeping bags. Their 3-season bags use an elastic tape and their ultralight bags use an elastic thread, as does the Flex down jacket. Kudos up front: the Flex uses 100% recycled polyester fibers in the shell fabric.

The Flex isn't designed to be fancy: it's a big two-pound bag o' 750-fill down to keep your core happy, and we had no problem on walkabouts at sub-zero F temps. The Flex does have a few tricks up its sleeves, one of which is the sleeve itself, which uses what SD calls Condor Construction, a long fabric panel - basically no articulated cut - that minimizes hem rise when reaching overhead. The Flex elastic stitching helps with mobility as well, bestowing about 3-4 inches of give where you need it most around the holidays, the gut. Or as the SheFlogger calls it while pointing at me and laughing in front of her friends, the twins.

There are two tricot-lined zippered hand pockets, a tricot chin guard with requisite zipper garage, and a zippered inside left chest pocket with cord port. The left hand pocket has a handy little velcro-flapped credit-card sized pocket-in-a-pocket. The Flex is equipped for serious mountaineering with two large water bottle pockets on the inside down low; some big-mountain jackets only give you one, and you always wish you had another. The only adjustment on the jacket is the two-way adjustable hood, which brings up our only real nitpick, the lack of a hem adjustment. Even though it fits fairly snug by design a high wind is going to get in.

$249 at Sierra Designs (not yet available at retail at the time of this writing)

Glacier Mountaineering book

We're a big fan of books by Andy and Mike, so we were excited to see a "revised" edition of Glacier Mountaineering: An Illustrated Guide to Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue out this year. The original was published in 2000, and we figured a 2009 edition would have new and expanded material.

The bad news is there's nothing new except the cover, presumably to reflect its publication by Falcon Guides instead of original publisher Climbing Magazine. The good news is, it's still a highly readable and relevant title on the most important subject in the history of FloggerKind: 140 pages divided into ten chapters on technique and equipment to keep us knuckle-dragging climbers from the early extinction we would otherwise almost certainly be facing. Well worth inclusion in the seminal list at GearFlogger's Backcountry Bookshelf.

What sets Andy and Mike books apart are the unpretentious, fun writing style that is paired with cartoon-style illustrations of amazing clarity and detail. Better than any photographs, the illustrations invite and repay careful study, often communicating subtle tricks of the trade. See how to escape a belay for an example. In the book the final illustration on page 140 that shows a glacier traveller fully rigged with thirty callouts packed with good advice.  Picking up this along with their Backcountry Ski Book - some overlap, but hey, they're cheap! - and you are good to go.

$11.53 at Amazon

Feathered Friends Down Booties

They say you shouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. We say bag that honker, stuff him into some ripstop nylon and make a nice pair of socks. Great minds think alike, and Feathered Friends has come up with the ultimate down camp booties named, after a worldwide branding talent competition, wait for it... Down Booties!

Quality and design set these booties apart. They use only the highest quality 800+ down, 4oz fill weight in a pair for a total weight of 10oz for men's medium (sizes 8-10). Design is top-notch: the inner bootie is basically a down sock with a waterproof sole and snaps at the cuff that allow you to choose three degrees of snugness. The outer bootie is a nylon shell with a Schoeller waterproof/breathable rand, two drawcords at the ankle and cuff, and a thin but surprisingly effective foam insert footbed.

The shell plus insulation layer design essentially mimics what you would wear on the rest of your body, and on Denali we found it proved versatile and performed great. We couldn't wait to park our dogs in these booties after humping all day and making camp. At night we'd slip off the shells and use the inners in the sleeping bag. If you want to get all Stevie House you could bring just the inners, and replace the inner boot on your mountaineering boots for camp use, assuming they're double boots. The down inners only weigh 5.2oz for the pair. Great kit from a great company.

$85.00 at Feathered Friends

Integral Designs Guides Siltarp 2 shelter

Integral Designs is a Canadian company that specializes in thinking outside the box, or more accurately outside the tent. They do make tents and other gear, but their tarps are truly works of functional backcountry art.

The Guides Siltarp 2 is a sub-pound 8x10 foot piece of Sil-coat, "a high tenacity 30 denier 1.1 oz parachute rip stop nylon impregnated with 1/4 oz of silicone, the lightest waterproof fabric available." Suffice it to say, it's tough stuff, and bonus: it rolls up about the size of a quart (or liter for our northern communist brothers; you keep your free, high-quality health care!) bottle. You need to seam seal the center seam, but it comes with a 1.5oz tube of Sil-Net for that purpose, enough to seal about 40 linear feet.

ID has basically added tie-down points to create an extremely versatile tarp. It has a centerpoint loop for suspension, and velcro on both 8' edges and one of the 10' edges so you can burrito-roll two people in sleeping bags easily. Or, set up as a sit in shelter for four people, or a pup tent for two, or whatever you can think up. It's ability to serve a foursome is where the "guides" designation comes from. It's a high-quality, thoughtfully-engineered piece of gear that might just replace your tent.

$135.00 CAD at Mountain Equipment Co-Op

Mountain Hardwear Dome Perignon hat

I like the nightlife. I like to boogie. I like to wear hats made from Polartec Thermal Pro. It's a simple life, and the Mountain Hardwear Dome Perignon is a simple hat. In any case, it simply kept my brain bucket warm on Denali this year, so I'm sold.

Thermal Pro is a 200 weight fleece with a nice subtle waffle weave. Mmm. Waffles. The Gore Windstopper fleece earband keeps your flappers toasty, and an elastic section at the back stretches for optimal fit. Unlike some hats it comes in small, medium and large sizes so you can dial in the fit exactly where you want it.

There's just enough of a curve around the bottom to cover your ears, and the piping is a nice fat roll that makes it easy to pull on. Peak hats like this are more than just a random design. A little bit of air space up top facilitates moisture working its way out the top and evaporating, until those little drops of water are just so much vapor, like Sarah Palin's presidential chances.

$30.00 at REI

Sherpa Chair

Every backpacker has had this idea at some point. I don't care how granola you think you are, there has been a time or two where at the end of the trail your dogs are barking and you've thought, "why doesn't anyone build a backpack with a chair built in?" Enter the Sherpa Chair.

The Sherpa Chair is mostly chair, with a 480ci pouch on the back. That's 3in deep, 10in tall and 16in across, actually fairly decent sized for a short outing. The Velcro closure is light duty so don't invert or the contents will squirt. There's a bottle holster on one side, big enough literally for a 12oz bottle or can, or even a 20oz bike bottle, but not a quart bottle.

Comfort is as good as any camp chair, which is to say better than standing. Construction is fairly sturdy. I have no idea what the weight rating is but it had no problem handling my CookieFlogging derriere - hey, it's a medical condition: HAS (holiday ass syndrome). Plenty of straps to adjust the seat, and it sets up in all of three seconds. For a fairly inexpensive camp chair the Sherpa Chair is sturdy, packs easily and carries a bit of kit. Nicely done.

$24.99 at Amazon