Quality gear is essential to a safe and successful day outdoors—but building a comprehensive outdoor gear kit can get expensive real quick.  You don’t have to spend top dollar on brand-new items, though. A ton of websites sell used gear, often in near-new condition or repaired by in-house experts—yet costing a fraction of the original [...]

The only thing worse than having bugs swarm your outdoor festivities and drive you inside is the itch you’re left with after getting eaten up.  We’re not talking a little tingle after you feel the mosquito, ant or other creepy crawly bite—we’re talking about that relentless itchiness that keeps you up at night and makes [...]

Historically, disease-carrying ticks were mostly an issue in New England, Michigan and Wisconsin. But over the last two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have seen cases of Lyme disease spread by ticks pop up in nearly every state in America. Researchers continue to find ticks in the places you’d expect—the traditional tall [...]

While some ice anglers have hard-and-fast rules about how many inches thick the ice should be to make it safe to fish – the reality is, no ice is truly safe ice and any journey across it comes with its own risks. Note that safety depends heavily on the quality of ice—not just the thickness, [...]

Learning how to layer in the winter seems simple, but can be a challenging skill to master. You want—and need—to be warm, but we’re often moving through a mix of activities and intensity levels which adds complexity, like actively hiking to a lookout then sitting still in the cold. The best way to stay warm [...]

Don’t stop camping when temperatures drop! Winter car camping is an amazing way to access untouched terrain as a backcountry skier or snowshoer, jump on the first ski chair (many ski resorts allow you to overnight camp in the parking lot!) or visit a favorite National Park without the crowds — a perspective few people [...]

Skiing on ice can be frustrating and unnerving. In our perfect winter worlds, we’d all be skiing powder every day. But if you live on the east coast or it’s a bad snow pack year in the Rockies, chances are you’ll hit slippery slopes at some point during downhill adventures. Icy runs come in different [...]

A fresh delivery of fluffy powder can be as exciting as Christmas morning — it means your ski day is going to be full of that wild, weightless magic as your sticks take you cruising over cottony clouds in a way that seems to defy gravity. But if you’re new to it, deep powder can [...]