It’s the little things that count

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/12/2014 (4172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the people in your life need a really expensive piece of outdoor gear, do them a favour and make them buy the damn thing themselves.

Seriously. No one should ever choose something so personal and picky as a tent or down-filled jacket for somebody else. Your friends and loved ones are going to buy this stuff themselves.

The best holiday gifts in the outdoor-gear world are the little things they probably would never think to purchase for themselves. Here are six little doodads to consider that cost $20 or less and are available at Winnipeg retailers:

 

For those who must read before sleep

OK, so you’re lying in your tent at night and you want to read yourself to sleep, but you don’t want to waste precious headlamp battery-life on interior illumination.

If you hang a flashlight from the top of your tent, the beam will be way too concentrated. And candle lanterns are just too freaky, even though they probably won’t set your tent on fire.

A decent nighttime solution is Princeton Tec’s Amp 1 LED flashlight/bottle opener ($13.95 at the Wilderness Supply), which comes with a conical plastic cover that diffuses light like a household bulb, facilitating reading in your sleeping bag.

If you fall asleep with the light on, don’t worry: This thing is supposed to shine for 50 hours. It also comes with a bottle opener, which is useless for backcountry trips but handy for car camping.

That loop functions as a hanging ring, but you’ll need a separate carabiner or fastening tie to affix it to your tent. If that’s too complicated, pick up the Nite Ize SpotLit LED Carabiner Light ($6 at Mountain Equipment Co-Op), which is designed for dog collars but could easily hang inside your tent. Be warned: Product reviewers complain of a lousy burn time.

For those addicted to devices

Most of us are so addicted to our mobile devices; we’ll gladly harm ourselves just to text or check our Twitter accounts. In Winnipeg, we do this by removing our gloves at -20 C just to manipulate our phones, placing our fingers at risk of frostbite.

There was a time when tight-fitting “tech gloves” cost too much to warrant a purchase. Most of those gloves didn’t work very well, anyway.

A more affordable and somewhat improved version of texting gloves is the Mountain Hard Wear heavyweight power stretch glove (on sale for $20 a pair Olympia Ski & Cycle on Portage Avenue), which functions as a ski-and-cycle glove and does a passable but not perfect job of allowing you to use a touchscreen.

For the minimalist java junkie

Once you get into the habit of trying to shed weight from your pack, you encounter maddening decisions about jettisoning gear.

One of the first things to punt is a dedicated tea or coffee mug, which takes up more bulk than weight, not to mention specialized caffeine-brewing devices such as camping espresso machines or single-serve plastic Bodums.

One way to maintain your loose-leaf tea or fresh-ground coffee habit without adding weight is to tote around a GSI Outdoors H2JO! water bottle coffee/tea maker ($12.95 at the Wilderness Supply), which is a small infuser/strainer that screws inside a standard wide-mouth bottle.

The benefit is you can use your water bottle as your tea or coffee mug. But this is also a drawback, as most plastic bottles will eventually absorb those flavours.

For the insomniac

Most veteran campers are perfectly content making a pillow out of a stuff sack filled with clothes. But some people cannot sleep without the real deal.

Big pillows are impractical, but small, inflatable pillows may be no more comfortable than plastic bags.

A well-reviewed, happy medium is the Therm-A-Rest compressible small pillow ($18 at Mountain Equipment Co-Op), which will add 320 grams to your pack and scrunch down to the size of a folded-up fleece. Larger and slightly more expensive versions are available.

For the accident-prone

If you’ve ever tried to apply a Band-Aid in the middle of nowhere, you know how tough it is to remove those stupid plastic liners on your own. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself giggling at the sight of the loss of my own blood from a minor cut I would have been able to cover easily if I wasn’t alone and outdoors.

Happily, this not-actually-comical scenario has not escaped the manufacturers of Easy-access bandages ($3.99 for a pack of 45 waterproof or 30 fabric bandages at the Wilderness Supply), which are stick-on strips you simply pull from the liners with one hand.

I haven’t field-tested them, so I can’t attest to whether they actually work in a pinch — but anything has to be easier than the self-application of a Band-Aid.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca