GearFlogger

Base Camp Las Vegas by Deborah Wall

We live in the golden age of guidebooks, and one of the nice things about this is the proliferation of regional guidebooks like the second expanded edition of Base Camp Las Vegas by Deborah Wall. Subtitled 101 Hikes in the Southwest, BCLV is a beautifully laid out, richly photographed and impeccably organized guide to one of America's greatest trekking regions.

BCLV begins, as God intended, with a fold-out front cover that displays an overview map with sections and page numbers clearly marked. The area covered you can see on the small map on the front cover, basically Southeastern Nevada, Southwestern Utah, Northwestern Arizona and a slice of California. You'll find classic locales like Death Valley, Bryce, Zion, Red Rock and the Grand Canyon.

From the excellent beginning you can jump right into exploring hikes in your area of interest, or you can keep right on turning pages for a detailed table of contents and a very helpful "before you hit the trail" section that covers important topics like snakes, drinking water, snakes, flash floods, snakes, archaeology, snakes and children. Apologies to the herpetologists out there, but... snakes.

Each section starts out with a nice concise overview map and text, then jumps right into the hikes themselves. Each hike has the vital signs up front: best season, length, difficulty, elevation and warnings. The end result is a superbly balanced book: the photographs make you want to go (Eureka Dunes, here we come!), the maps tell you how to plan, and the detailed narrative gives nuance and depth to the different character of each hike.

$20.18 at Amazon

Knuckle Lights

We here at Gearflogger have developed finely tuned BSG detectors - that's BullShit Gear for the rest of you. Most gear falls clearly into one category or the other: bullshit or not bullshit. Yet when the Knuckle Lights arrived we were perplexed. Bullshit or not?

After testing them out, they are clearly not bullshit. In fact, for their narrow and intended purpose they are really well designed to the point that we have continually found new uses for them. Knuckle Lights are designed for running. Just put your fingers in them, activate the top switch with your thumb and you're good to go. 280 lumens with high (4 hours), low (8 hours) and flashing high modes give you plenty of illumination for walking, running and hiking.

The designers clearly put some thought into the product. This version is rechargeable via a USB base. The lights attach magnetically to each other and to the base. The whole package works together in a very slick and intuitive way. The housings are IPX-6 waterproof, so feel free to get out in the rain. Use both or split the pair between two people. The beam is usefully wide, and the ability to scan with both hands without pointing your head like you have to with a headlamp is useful.

The straps are resizable, and they even fit in a MOLLE configuration or attach easily to backpack straps, tent sleeves or whatever to leave your hands completely free. They're also light enough we didn't bother to weight them. We were really sold when we realized we could use our USB solar panel to recharge them on the trail during the day for use at night. Knuckle Lights are useful in ways that complement headlamps and other handheld lights, two thumbs up!

$59.99 at Amazon