Building Your Backcountry Kitchen, Part 2: The Essential Ingredients

Jul 31, 2023

I grew up in a family that embraced the convenience of freeze-dried meals and deviled ham when it came to camping trips. It wasn’t until a college spring break trip to Baja’s Bahia Concepción that I discovered it’s possible to actually, you know, cook while camping. We’d procured some scallops from the bay. My friend Caroline, an avid cook, sautéed them with garlic and chili flakes, adding a splash of her beer and a squeeze of lime to finish. I was gobsmacked—left to my own devices, I’d been subsisting on canned frijoles refritos and tortillas. That pivotal moment not only inspired me to go to culinary school, it redefined what I thought of as camping fare. Today, there are certain ingredients that are staples in my home and backcountry kitchen….

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Camp Breakfast in Scotland: Kedgeree and Cranachan Recipes

Jul 24, 2023

The green walls of our tunnel tent glow, light shimmering and flowing in waves, the dawn chorus ebbing, reminding us that time is a-wasting. Waking slowly in cocoons of silk, down and nylon there’s a delicious sense of lethargy. We’re slow to get moving.  Here, beneath stark basalt mountains on the Isle of Skye, the scent of sun-warmed earth and heather flows into the tent. Still in our bags, there’s good-natured banter about who must leave the comfort of a warm bag to light our stove and get breakfast going.   Grumbling slightly, one of the team wriggles out of the tent, the fly taut with the heat from a cloudless sky; a rare and unexpected joy here in the far northwest of Scotland, where one day of sunshine is a thing to…

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Living Large—The Habiscape™ Family Camping Tent

Jul 5, 2023

I blinked my eyes open on a chilly morning in Colorado and peered out of my sleeping bag. The tent walls sloped high up above us, a small palace to temporarily call our home. My partner, our dogs and I finally started using the Habiscape 6-Person camping tent after tiring of camping in coffin-like tents. Although I wondered if this tent would be overkill for the four of us, I quickly came to love the red and gray fabrics and the safety they provided. With this tent, we no longer had to compromise. We could comfortably sleep in the woods without cramming ourselves into a small space. Yet it still came with all of the necessary protection we needed to rough it in the woods. Since one of the greatest…

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Fly Your Tent Down the Freeway

Jul 3, 2023

The original Mountain Safety Research Newsletter (1969-1982), written by MSR founder Larry Penberthy, is a fascinating read. The newsletters are filled with extensive and technical product testing and mountain safety information. However, Larry and his team were also known to have some fun. One of our favorite features in this vast newsletter archive is the makeshift “wind tunnel” testing report in Issue 7 (April 1973) for the new MSR Mountain Tent. Important performance features of the tent are profiled under the headings “More Room,” “Condensation,” “Doors,” “Ease of Erection,” “Wind Stability,” “Cookholes,” “Materials” and “Weight.” Within the “Wind Stability” description, the reader is given this glimpse into MSR’s rigorous and fun DIY testing methods. Larry was never satisfied until he personally put gear through the ultimate paces. The original color…

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