I need a new …. (fill in the blank) and want it to be light, comfortable, functional, cheap and make me look very cool – which outdoors brand is best to get it from? I have this inner debate roughly 3-4 times day (I am a gear head) and in recent years, finding a good answer […]
Gear Review – Platypus PlusBottle and Platy Bottle
Water containers are such a trivial item but there many opinions about it, mainly since there are always the ultimate cheap and light options: empty soda bottles. I’m not against soda bottles (or any disposable bottle) in any way, but I hate the disposable aspect of them. For years I have been a Nalgene user: […]
Do you like being outdoors or just the idea of it?
If you are reading this, there is a good chance you have some connection to the outdoors – you may even call yourself an outdoors enthusiast – but are you really? Being outdoors is hard: you have the weather, the physical challenge, sleeping outside is usually a pain, you are always hungry and tired, your […]
When to retire old gear
Buying new gear is great – it is exciting, there is an underlying promise of better adventures and it often becomes an obsession; but with the new movement that encourages repairing old gear, the question becomes: when should you retire old gear? In the last few years (and some might say decades), it increasingly feels […]
The Dangers of Hiking in Hot Weather (some of which might surprise you)
Over the course of a month and a half in Israel, I had a chance to remember what it means to go hiking in hot weather: the constant sweat, the chase after water from the fear of dehydration, remembering to cover my self (or at least use sun screen) and the loss of appetite. All […]
Outdoors Father – Version USA
The last few months have been a real challenge in the Outdoors Father household as we relocated from London, UK to Portland, Oregon (USA), travelling in the UK and Israel along the way. During this time I took a long break and wrote most recently about hiking in Israel and in hot weather (last in […]
Gear Review- Haglofs Gram Comp 25 Backpack
Picking a day pack is a very sensitive issue for hikers, almost as much as footwear and big trip backpacks – they are very personal and can be very controversial. I have experimented with more than my share of day packs, trying to find the combination of the features and volume (22-27 litres) I want […]
Yam le Yam trail Trip Report (Northern Israel)
Last time I wrote about my plans to walk the Yam le Yam trail in northern Israel, despite it being the peak of summer, and how much I love this trail. The Yam le Yam is a truly Israeli classic and features some of the greatest that Israel has to offer in terms of flora, geology […]
Back to the keyboard and a look at hiking in Israel
After taking a bit of a hiatus from Outdoors Father, a new project came up that got me to deal, head on, with some old tricks that had been gathering dust recently. I grew up in Israel and started my outdoors experience hiking there, mainly stumbling across the country with all the wrong gear, not […]
Taking a little break
If you are a regular around here, or if you have just browsed around recently, you have probably seen my post from last week about moving to the USA. As part of the move we are going on a family holiday and spending some time doing much needed R&R for a few weeks, so Outdoors Father […]