GearFlogger

MBT Navada X GTX Hiking Boot

We've reviewed MBT fat (phat? thicc?) shoes in the past and come away impressed. Their cushy midsole and generous rocker takes a lot of the pounding out of pavement running, so it stands to reason that the same benefits accrue to off trail use as well, and the Navada X GTX hits all the right notes on the road less taken.

Looking dead-on from the side you can clearly see the extra midsole height, although from a normal perspective looking down at the boot on someone's foot it's not nearly as apparent. The Navada is actually a pretty good-looking boot, and the quality is top notch on everything from the stitching to the GORE-TEX waterproof construction.

The sole of the Navada has decently aggressive lugs with large voids between, so it sheds mud effectively and climbs on loose terrain quite well. As usual with MBT shoes, the rocker promotes an efficient rolling stride that is especially noticeable on hardpack. An unexpected bonus is on descents where your heel strike gets more purchase, because instead of striking on a sharp lip of the sole's heel you have the rounded heel with more surface area and thus better purchase.

If you haven't tried fat shoes yet, MBT is a pioneer in the field and will be a great introduction. If you're looking for that extra cushion for long hiking days, with the added benefit of waterproof construction, take a look at the Navada X GTX.

$259.95 at MBT

Clip & Carry Kydex Sheath

We love us some Kydex, so much that we were considering buying a few sheets and rivets and making a press to build our own carrying sheaths for whatever struck our fancy. Then we remembered how lazy we are, and when we found Clip & Carry, a veteran-owned business that employs other veterans, it was problem solved.

Clip & Carry has a wide selection of Kydex sheaths for various EDC - that's every day carry for the uninitiated - items, inlcuding Leatherman and Gerber multitools and Victorinox Swiss Army knives. We checked out a model for our Leatherman Skeletool and came away very impressed. The sheath is built taco style, meaning it's a single piece of Kydex folded at the bottom to make the two sides of the sheath.

It's a sweet piece of minimalist design, with exactly what you need and nothing you don't: adjustable cant on the belt clip, a drain hole on the bottom that matches up with the carabiner clip hole in the Skeletool, and adjustable retention via the screw on the side. The sheath looks great and works flawlessly. Best of all, it's on sale at the moment so check it out.

$20.99 (on sale from $29.99) at Clip & Carry

weBoost Drive Reach OTR Cell Signal Booster for Trucks

Here in Alaska we've come to rely on weBoost cell signal boosters for convenience and safety in urban areas and along well-traveled highway corridors, but they really come into their own when RVing around Alaska. It's pretty easy to find yourself in truly rural areas where the cell signal is weak or nonexistent. If it's really nonexistent you're out of luck no matter what, but often it's just too weak to be usable, and that means we've got some room to improve it with a signal booster. Enter the weBoost.

OTR stands for Over The Road, as in long haul trucking, and the Drive Reach OTR for trucks - let's call it the OTR-T - is weBoost's most powerful vehicle booster, supporting voice, 2G, 3G, 4G HSPA+, 4G LTE and 5G E networks for all of the major carriers in the United States and Canada. The OTR-T has up to 50dB gain for incoming signal - the FCC max for mobile boosters - and over 29dBm in uplink power for transmission. Keep in mind that every 3dB increase doubles the power because decibels are on a logarithmic scale.

It's no exaggeration to say that weBoost has one of the best out of the box experiences of any consumer electronics product. They provide clear diagrams that show how all components fit together, with no surprises. As usual with cell boosters, before you get to the installation remember to register your device with the FCC. It's free and just takes a minute. Once you start installation, it's fairly straightforward: assemble the antenna mast, up to about 40 inches long if you use both sections and the spring base. Attach it to the mounting surface - tubular is easiest, e.g. roof rack, but the 3-way mount is pretty versatile. One thing to keep in mind is that the system relies on a metal roof to separate the inside and outside antennae for optimal functioning. We found on a Jeep Wrangler (fiberglass roof) versus a Jeep Grand Cherokee (metal) we seemed to get more consistent performance on the metal roof configuration, but that said it wasn't glaringly different, maybe because we have the metal roof basket on the Wrangler.

In any case, once you've decided on the mounting approach, mount the inside antenna, probably next to the driver or passenger seat. Finally mount the booster and connect the power and antenna cables. The power is a 12V cigarette lighter adapter which has a button for hard power off, in case your outlet is on even when the car is off. It also has a USB pass-through port for power so you can plug in your phone or anything else that gets USB power, a thoughtful design touch.

The gory details of testing are below. The simple way to test is when you're in a marginal signal area just power the OTR-T off, look at your cell signal, power the booster on and look again. We consistently watched the signal gain a bar and often two. The bottom line is that with the booster installed we could make more connections, and the connections we made had generally better voice quality and fewer dropped data packets. This means you will get usable signal in more places and better quality on the signal that you're using.

The gory details: cell phone signal is measured from -50dB (perfect signal) to -120dB (dead zone). After installing put your phone in field test mode to see your signal strength in dB, because the bars that supposedly show signal strength really don’t mean jack. On iOS 12 open phone app > dial pad > type in *3001#12345#* > hit send to open a hidden menu. Go to LTE > Serving Cell Meas > look at the rsrp0 number to see the strength of the closest cell tower in dB. On an iPhone this mode used to replace the useless bars with a useful numerical decibel reading where -50dB is a perfect signal and -120dB is a dead zone. However since iOS 11 you now get this funky menu setup that has a lot more information but is difficult to read, not least because the list of data that includes the critical rsrp0 number keeps automatically resorting every second or so. If you’re specifically interested in data up/download speeds get the Speedtest app by Ookla to test your speeds before and after boosting.

Signal strength generally depends on the location and power of the nearest cell tower, which you can find at least roughly with a number of apps and websites. Performance of the booster depends on signal strength: the higher the signal strength, the more you'll gain, it's just the nature of the thing, and weBoost recommends a base signal strength of -100dB to operate. We still saw small gains of 5 to 10dB, although somewhat inconsistently, at a base strength of -110 to -120dB. At around -90 to -100dB we saw consistent improvements of at least 15dB, and often up to 30dB. If you're looking to go from zero to hero in cell phone hair-pulling zones, weBoost is your answer.

$499.99 at weBoost

Toproping: Rock Climbing for the Outdoor Beginner

Full disclosure, when I was getting started rock climbing I took some beginner and intermediate classes in Joshua Tree with Bob Gaines through his company, Vertical Adventures, way back in the early 1990s. Bob was already a legend in the rock climbing community, both for his climbing exploits and for his devotion to teaching the sport. Anything he writes is worth reading, especially if you're a beginner looking to get off on the right foot. And handhold.

Toproping, even more than bouldering, is the safest way to get started climbing and the best way to learn the fundamentals. When I think of climbing I think of getting to the top of a rock, setting an anchor, rappelling down and belaying a friend. These tasks are the essence of climbing and provide the foundation for a lot more, most of which can be practiced on toprope: lead, ice and mixed climbing for example.

I don't have the 2012 first edition of Toproping, but I suspect the 2020 second edition of Toproping is just a re-issue with a different cover to match the Falcon Guides series formatting better. It doesn't matter, it's still the same great book that covers basic equipment, technique, anchors, knots, rappelling and risk management. Falcon has books that cover all of these topics in greater detail, but for a beginner looking for somewhere to start this book is fantastic. It's a great review for the advance climber who might be looking to start teaching as well.

The book has clear organization, text and pictures. It also makes great use of anecdotes from Bob's extensive climbing history, and has gorgeous photos mostly taken around Joshua Tree, often featuring titans of the climbing world, such as Peter Croft and John Long (another great outdoor writer and a truly funny guy). If you're looking for a one-volume book of knowledge, or for a gift for the beginner climber in your life, this is the book.

$17.58 at Amazon

Tuffy Jeep Wrangler Tailgate Lockbox

Tuffy knows Jeeps, and they know you want to store stuff in every nook and cranny of your Wrangler. They also know you want that stuff to be secure, and their products are the industry standard for locking storage on all kinds of vehicles. For a little more peace of mind at the trailhead, we checked out the Tailgate Lockbox for our 2012 JKU (also available for the new JL series).

The box comes really well packaged with plenty of padding. It's fully assembled except for the shelves, which screw into place quickly after you've got the box mounted to the tailgate. The mounting itself is dead simple: pop off the plastic cover on your gate and the box slips into the vent slots on the bottom and screws into existing holes in the top with four plastic anchors. Watch this six minute video and heed their advice to hand tighten the screws so as not to strip them, and you're good to go.

The shelves likewise just screw into place, one left and one right. You can leave one or both off if you have something specific you want to store that needs the extra height or width of the box; we put them both in because we're mostly storing small items, but without them installed you might be able to store a two-burner gas stove depending on the make and model. Then you just drop the door down to serve as a table and start grilling. The box intrudes on the storage space in back of your Jeep by about six inches, but you're not losing that space, you're just converting it to secure storage.

Once you've got your stuff in there you can lock it up with two corner locks, which is nice since if there was just a single center lock it would be easy to pry the corners open, but with two that's gonna be a chore. Closed the box clears the subwoofer if you have one, and even better it fits like a glove under the Tuffy Security Deck Enclosure that we've also got installed. Now granted, having the security deck and the lockbox installed is kind of a belt-and-suspenders approach, but we really like the additional small item storage for organization, and especially the flip-down door for table space. So drop that top, you're protected with Tuffy!

$139.99 at Tuffy

Gear Aid Tenacious Tape

As Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously wrote, "Into each life some rain must fall, and unto each jacket a tear must appear." OK, so maybe the second part he didn't say - but he should have! We've all been there. Our favorite jacket, torn by the careless claws of a pet who shall remain unnamed, but if they were to be named their name would be Tonks, and she is every bit as unintentionally destructive as the her namesake.

What to do? Shuffle on down to REI and pick up a roll of Gear Aid Tenacious Tape. Available in a few colors just cut a piece to fit, round the corners to resist peeling and smooth over the tear. We fixed three tears we'd been ignoring until the loose down started to pile up around the closet.

Tenacious Tape is a nylon fabric tape with uber-sticky adhesive that works on all our nylon and vinyl gear: jackets, sleeping bags, tents, packs, you name it. It has a waterproof coating and goes through the wash just fine. The 3 inch by 20 inch roll will patch a lot of small tears and a few big ones, so add it to your repair kit and laugh, laugh at the rain. A few bucks to save a much more expensive piece of gear is just a good investment.

$4.95 at REI