GearFlogger

Brunton SolarRoll solar panel

While you're waiting for your Wonder Twin powers to activate (keep drinking that tequila!), it doesn't hurt to have a backup power plan. The Brunton SolarRoll is a flexible solar panel that is tough, lightweight, packable and comes in 4.5, 9 and 14 watt (15.4 volts, 900mA) versions.

The SolarRoll 14 puts out enough to charge a laptop, camera, or sat phone, measures 12x57 inches and easily rolls up to 3 inches in diameter. It maintains flexibility even after a long time in storage, and doesn't do too badly in the cold. The 14 weighs in at a pound even with the cigarette lighter adapter, one of three that come with the unit. The other two are a 4-prong DC (2.5mm, 3.5mm, 4x1.7mm and 5.5 x 2.5mm) and a 12V cable with alligator clips. Most people will probably want to charge laptops and smaller electronics, and there's a good chance that the included plugs won't work so be prepared with a car adapter.

In use the SolarRoll works great. Just unroll and drape over the tent, rock or backpack. With a little ingenuity you can pretty much hang it anywhere. Even on cloudy days you can trickle charge most batteries. The SolarRoll has reverse current protection so you can leave things plugged in overnight without worrying about overcharging. It's also waterproof and much tougher than glass panels. The included plastic case is quite useful for storing other small items; it's about 16 inches long and a little bigger in diameter than a quart bottle. If you need portable power, the SolarRoll is a great solution.

$342.68 at Backcountry

Brunton Gannett Grill

Brunton has a great tagline: "Why buy Brunton? No suits or ties were worn by anyone involved in the design, development or production of our products." Brunton makes a lot of reasonably-priced stuff, and a necessary decision in being a price leader is deciding where to put limits on features, quality or both.

The propane-fired Gannett grill is a perfect example. It does what a grill needs to do, which is cook, very well. It feeds gas and gets plenty hot. It has some added advantages in that it's light at 11lb and compact, about the size of a thick briefcase. The legs fold up and over the lid for portability. Some assembly is required, but the included instructions are good.

You'll notice putting it together that the metal is thin, some edges are sharp and the whole unit feels far from burly. The manual Piezo ignition on our unit generated a feeble spark yet never did ignite the gas, but using a long-neck fireplace lighter quickly fired it up, and once hot you're good to go. Bottom line: if you want small and light for a decent price, don't mind manually lighting it and treat it gently, the Gannett will pump out the brats and burgers to fuel your road trip.

$107.95 at Backcountry

Brunton Optimus Nova stove

A tale of two stoves: This little stove went to Denali. This little stove should have stayed home. This little stove wouldn't light at 17,000 feet. This little stove was returned.

In this case there were two of these little pigs. My climbing partner and I each bought a Nova multi-fuel stove. Long story short, they both began to fail intermittently starting at 11,000 feet and both failed completely at high camp. We tried everything we could think of to get them to go, until some Brits took pity on us and loaned us their MSR Whisperlite to melt snow for water. Kudos to the MSR, which got to a rolling boil in no time.

To shut off the flow of fuel you flip the fuel bottle over, and I suspect this mechanism was the cause of the malfunction. Nova means "it doesn't go" in Spanish, and that accurately describes this stove's high-altitude performance.

$129 at Backcountry.com