Lowepro just made the new go-to adventure photo pack that features four-season protection and enough storage for a pro camera setup

Sick of carrying a heavy cooler into rugged or hard-to-reach spots? Igloo has you covered.

A resourceful, cozy escape overlooking Puget Sound

This may be the coolest set of bike tools we've ever seen

A lush hideout just a few miles from the city

The coolest outdoor toys don't always cost a fortune

In Jay Blahnik's first extended interview since Apple hired him to help launch the Watch, the company’s director of fitness for health technologies insists activity tracking is overemphasized, elite athletes have a sitting problem, and the real breakthrough apps for the device will probably be created outside of Cupertino.

If you want clean, safe water in the backcountry, this is the only purifier you should be buying

This may be the coolest car-camping stove we've ever seen

Columbia just reinvented the rain jacket, and it works great

Lighter, softer, and more stylish than we thought possible for a performance top

The portable shower has gotten a much-needed reboot

Gear companies from around the world released their brand-new summer 2016 products this week at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. We pored over all of it, and these five products—from a brilliant new water filter to a totally reinvented waterproof jacket—were our top picks for Gear…

Don’t feel like making friends with bears and raccoons? Keep your campsite locked down with these simple tips.

In a time when “enduro” has become a tired epithet, the Nomad virtually reclaims the genre with downhill manners equal to any big bike and a weight that rivals many trail machines

Denali Jacket: A popular performance fleece garment made by the North Face and commonly seen on mountaineers and college students.

SUP: Short for stand-up paddle-board, a stable floating platform that combines the cool of surfing with the practicality of a spin workout.

An incomprehensive history.

Teva sandal: A water shoe that came to define a generation of river athletes.

BMW GS: An iconic adventure motorcycle introduced in 1980 to compete in the Dakar Rally race, the famed long-distance off-road endurance event.

Tough-ass pants: A term for rugged work trousers that are particularly good at handling abuse.

What do world-famous pilots like Jeb Corliss and Joby Ogwyn have in common? They all wear suits sewn by Tony Uragallo, a garden-loving designer who helps daring men zoom through the sky.

Dropper Post: A mountain-bike component that can be raised or lowered with a button mounted on the handlebars.

Chamois: A diaper-like pad first used by cyclists around 1900 to prevent saddle sores and chafing on their nethers.

Utility bike: A bicycle built for hauling children, gear, or grocery bags full of organic quinoa and local honey.

A tubeless tire tool that will fix holes too big for sealant

Chip timing: The practice of using a small wearable transmitter to track race participants’ times at regular checkpoints along a course.

You can now use clipless pedals with sneakers when you want to ditch your bike shoes

Crowdfunding: A method of raising capital to launch commercial ventures in which small individual donations are made through an online platform.

Snowboarding: A snowsports alternative to skiing.

Direct to Consumer: A business model in which a company sells its products via its own website, catalog, or store, reducing retail markup and passing the savings along to the consumer.

Tech binding: A lightweight binding system that transformed backcountry skiing and put telemarking on the path to obsolescence.

Dithering: The intentional degrading of a satellite’s signal to discourage unauthorized use, which deterred citizens from tapping into the Department of Defense’s Global Positioning System, or GPS, for ten years.

Bill Bowerman: A legendary Oregon track coach who cofounded the shoe company Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964; 14 years later, it became Nike.

CamelBak: A hands-free hydration system that can be carried in a backpack.

Carabiner: A gated aluminum fastener used with rope and other equipment to arrest rock climbers’ falls.

Royal Robbins: Climber, businessman, and archetype for the modern clean-climbing ethic, which espouses the use of removable protection instead of pounding pitons into rock.

Gear companies know how to make packs lighter, jackets more waterproof, and skis burlier. The only problem: young people couldn’t care less.

Rollerblade: A roller skate with soft, linearly arranged wheels offering fast, smooth glide.

Double Plastic Mountaineering Boot: A highly reliable style of footwear that prevents frostbite in alpine environments.

Base-Camp Duffel: A large, 155-liter bag often seen loaded on yaks in Nepal’s Khumbu region for a few simple reasons: it can take a beating, it has straps that convert it into a backpack, and mountaineers know that it can carry all their gear.

Rubbermaid Bin: A polyethylene storage container commonly used for gear.

Lifa Shirt: The first commercially available base layer made from polypropylene, released in 1970 by Helly Hansen.

Jacques Cousteau: A French explorer and arguably the most prolific marine scientist and ocean conservationist of the 20th century.

Sports Bra: A groundbreaking invention that lets women participate comfortably in a range of vigorous athletic activities.

Duct tape: A cloth-backed metallic gray adhesive that fixes anything worth saving.

Camouflage: A varying pattern of earth-colored prints designed to obscure the wearer from view, worn by hunters and members of the U.S. military

The raw materials that make up the tools for hiking, running, paddling, skiing, and cycling. These 36 building blocks are indispensable to the design and function of gear, from mankind’s first wool layer to the latest lab-born membranes. (Some things just look better in print. To see this in all…

The Perfect Size Wheel: An elusive and controversial hoop that allows mountain bikers the ability to optimize progress over rocky terrain.

Sick Footie: A visual recording worth replaying for others.

Waffle: A repeating inverted cube shape adopted by sporting-goods manufacturers, beginning with Nike, which used the pattern on the sole of its iconic waffle trainer.

Founders of the Recreational Equipment Co-op (REI), which the couple started in their West Seattle home in 1938 as a way to help climber friends gain access to cheaper ice axes and harnesses by ordering bulk gear from Europe.

A cooler company whose two-inch-thick, double-walled products are so effective that its creation, in 2006, began a new era in rafting.

Vibram: A vulcanized-rubber sole that revolutionized footwear.

Telescoping front forks and articulating rear frame triangles that absorb bumps and shocks.

A pioneering social-fitness app released in 2009.

Fat shoes: Shoes with roughly 20 millimeters of foam underfoot

Phil Knight: Cofounder of athletic-shoe company Nike.

The brand of zipper that is likely keeping your britches up at this very moment. Headquartered in Tokyo, 81-year-old YKK (short for Yoshida Kogyo Kabu­shikikaisha, which translates as ­Yoshida Company Limited) was founded by Tadao ­Yoshida, who started making cus­tom zippers to take advantage of breaks and…

Jeremy Jones: A pioneering big-mountain snowboarder and snowboard designer.

Swiss Army Knife: The world’s first consumer multitool, designed by cutler Karl Elsener with two blades, a screwdriver, and a can opener.

P-cord: Parachute cord, also known as paracord, the world’s most versatile survival tool.

Recall: A request by a manufacturer, and usually the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), to return a product after the discovery of safety issues.

Westfalia: A breed of Volkswagen camper van prone to expensive repairs, yet beloved by those who own them and coveted by road-trip dreamers everywhere.

A category of gear that came into being in the late 1960s as more and more skiers ventured beyond resort boundaries.

Gone are the days of rangers in fire lookout towers. Now, mountain-top cameras are being used to spot smoke and flames.

Filson, a Seattle-based maker of high-quality leather goods.

Sunglasses designed to protect a pilot’s eyes against high-altitude sun.

A packable device producing fire for camp cooking.

Hummer: The civilian version of the military’s Humvee off-road vehicle, which was produced by AM General from 1992 to 2006.

A bindingless monoski invented in 1965.

Howard Head: The founder of ski brand Head.

The surprising tendency for technical products and trends from the outdoor world to find their way into mass culture.

Caves, tepees, wall tents, those green canvas triangles that caused hypothermia in so many Boy Scouts—in one form or another, ideas borrowed from these flawed shelters appear in their modern descendents.

Jeep: A four-wheel-drive vehicle first produced for the U.S. Army during World War II.

Fat Skis: Skis that are at least 115 millimeters underfoot.

Dutch Oven: A large cast-iron pot and the campfire cooking vessel of choice for pioneers, cowboys, and river guides.

Repurposing: Taking a product and adapting it for a different use.

Elk Skin Gloves: Hand protection made from the skin of the great wapiti.

Little Things: Those items that mark the difference between a miserable experience and a joyous one—pit zips on jackets being a prime example.