Building Gear for the Kind of Trip That Tests It

This started with a simple question: what would I want to carry on a serious 3–5 day hike?

Not a casual overnight. Not a quick walk-in campsite. I mean something like the North Georgia Loop. The kind of trip that takes 4–5 days if you keep moving, or 5–6 if you want time to stop, take in the views, and enjoy where you are. A trip like that forces you to think carefully about every piece of gear you carry, and for me, two pieces matter most: the backpack and the tent.

The Backpack

I've owned seven backpacks over the years, and three of them came at once when I was a scout leader. Both of my boys were in the troop, which meant I wasn't shopping for one pack. I was shopping for three. Price became the deciding factor in a hurry, and I picked up bargain packs at around $50 each. I felt good about the savings, right up until we hit the trail.

The waist buckle on my son's pack broke on day one. We were a few miles in. I improvised a repair with what I had on me, then swapped packs with him so he wouldn't feel bad about the cheap gear his dad had bought him. While I felt terrible. The two of us walked the rest of that trip wearing each other's mistakes. Those packs went into the next garage sale and didn't see another trip. Return on investment, measured as cost per trip, was about as bad as it gets.

The packs after that taught me in smaller, slower ways. Some lasted a season. Some lasted years. A couple gave me hot spots on long climbs that I didn't fully understand until I tried something different. Each one moved my mental list of what mattered a little further along.

My recent go-to is an Osprey, and after years of use I still respect it. It's built for light weight and ruggedness, and the suspension is right for my back. But even a pack that good has gaps. No side access into the main compartment, which means everything you need is gated behind a top-down dig. No integrated rain cover, so you're tying a separate sheet over the load every time the sky turns. Small things on paper. They add up when you're seven miles in and the weather turns.

After all that trial and error, I know what I want in a pack: durability, comfort, weight, easy access to my gear, water bladder compatibility, weather protection, and comfort.

Yes, comfort gets mentioned twice.

For a 3–5 day trip, my pack has to hold the essentials: tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, light clothing, rain gear, stove, food, water, and basic medical supplies. The sweet spot for me is around 47 liters. Anything smaller and I'm leaving behind gear I actually need. Anything larger, knowing myself, I'll overpack and carry more weight than I should. I'm not an ultralight purist. A loaded pack in the 25–35 lb range is fine by me. I want my comforts on the trail, and when it's cold and raining, I want to be warm, dry, and comfortable in my tent.

The first Camping.Tools pack is the result of working that list. Here's how it came together: a honeycomb nylon shell, YKK zippers throughout, side and bottom access zips that let you reach into the main compartment without unpacking from the top, a water bladder port, a height-adjustable and breathable back panel, a stowaway rain cover in a bottom pocket, and a trekking pole attachment. It comes in at 1.39 kg, about 3 lbs.

The Tent

My thinking on tents runs along the same lines. I want durability, comfort, dryness. And durability.

That one earns being said twice.

Years ago, I led a weekend trip with 60-plus scouts and parents to Huntsville, Alabama. The plan was simple: camp on top of the mountain Friday night, visit the NASA museum on Saturday, leave on Sunday. We pitched camp in good weather and turned in.

An unpredicted storm came in overnight. Wind gusts at 50 to 60 miles an hour funneled up the valley and over the ridge, accelerated by the venturi effect right into camp. Rain came down in buckets. Limbs cracked and fell in the dark, and it was by the grace of God that none of them came down on a tent with a kid inside it.

The morning showed the damage. Tents collapsed flat. Poles snapped. Tents filled with water. Sleeping bags, food, clothing, all soaked or ruined. Whatever those families had invested in their gear was now a loss they had to absorb on the way home.

The neighbors closest to me had it worst. Their tent was completely collapsed. The mom was sitting on a bucket with her head in her hands. Their daughter was crying and cold. The dad was hauling sleeping bags out one at a time and tossing them in a pile, each one landing with a big watery SLOP. Then the clothes. SLOP! SLOP! The words coming out from under his breath were hardly fit for a scouting experience.

My tent held. I was lucky. That kind of night changes how you shop for shelter. It teaches you the difference between gear that's marketed for the outdoors and gear that's built to handle the outdoors when conditions turn. A storm doesn't care what you paid for your tent.

Plenty of hikers love hammock camping, but at my age, with my back, that's not the answer. I want a real shelter, a good night's sleep, and gear that helps me enjoy the trail instead of fighting it. A two-person tent is usually more weight than I want to carry on a solo hike, but a one-person tent still has to feel livable. Room to move, room to keep gear protected, and construction that holds up in real weather.

The benchmark in that space is Hilleberg. Their one-person tents are known for exceptional quality and serious weather protection, and a price tag that reflects it. That became the challenge: could we build gear at that level of quality without the premium price tag?

Our answer is the first Camping.Tools one-person tent. The build is a 40D nylon ripstop shell with a PU2000mm waterproof coating and silicone treatment, 7001 aluminum poles, reflective guy lines, and a total weight of 2.3 kg. You can see it in the video below from a recent training hike where we're still testing and refining the gear with real multi-day trail use in mind.

The Long Way Here

Two years of research, negotiations, testing, and samples brought both products to where they are now, and the path was bigger than I expected.

Manufacturing. Finding the right partner. Building trust with someone I'd never met. Designing prototypes. Reviewing samples. Learning about textiles, testing protocols, legal requirements, import standards, labeling, production schedules, minimum order quantities, and everything else that comes with turning an idea into a real product.

Some of those lessons came expensive. Early in the process, I received a sample on another product line spec'd as 650g down fill. I was thrilled when the package arrived. The number on paper matched exactly what I'd asked for. What I didn't yet understand was that hitting 650g of fill weight is much easier when the ratio of feathers to down skews higher, and a higher feather ratio cuts the warmth-to-weight efficiency the spec was supposed to deliver in the first place. The total weight was right. The product underneath the number wasn't. That's how you learn about down fill power, the testing required to verify it, and the lab costs that come with both.

Every category has its version of that lesson. Tents have their own. Packs have their own. Every line of gear comes with assumptions a buyer makes by default that a maker has to interrogate. The work is to do that homework once, so the customer doesn't have to do it themselves.

Why Build It at All

I'm not doing this just for me. My Osprey works for me. A Hilleberg would too if I wrote the check. The reason to build is bigger than my own gear closet.

My mission is to help people enjoy the outdoors the way I do, and to share what I've learned so the next person doesn't have to learn it the way I did, one expensive trip at a time. Life is short. The whole point is to get the most out of it.

The story is still unfolding. Stay tuned as we share the progress, the lessons, and the products as they take shape. If you'd like to be part of the first release, send me a DM and we'll add you to the list. The Backpack and Tent will be for sale soon.