GSI Outdoors Blog
Why You Should SUP This Summer
Come early June, you see them everywhere: putting in at the boat launch, strapped to the roof of every Subaru on the highway, towering over you from the walls of your local outdoor gear shop. SUPs (Stand Up Paddleboards) are impossible to avoid if you're involved in...
6 Essential Camp Cooking Spices
We’re big fans of delicious food, and our best guess is that you are too. Yet, for some reason, many people are still settling for mediocre meals when they venture outdoors. There’s nothing more disappointing after a long day on the trail than having to dig in...
How to tell a scary story
The practice of camping has a lot of traditions. Building a campfire, roasting hot dogs on sticks, skipping rocks across the lake, and watching the stars move across the sky from your sleeping bag are some of the classic camping trip activities enjoyed by both young and old. But...
3 Ways to Cool Down With Camp Iced Coffee
Every adventure starts with coffee - whether that means tackling a 14’er or heading into the office for a ten meeting Monday. We take coffee brewing techniques very seriously around here because we rely on coffee to get us through our day (perhaps a little more than we...
5 Tips From Vanlifers to Improve Your Road Trip Skills
All the signs are here: temperatures are heating up, rivers are rising, and every highway is under construction. It’s beginning to look a lot like road trip season. Late spring is the perfect time to get in a good road trip or two; it’s late enough...
How to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo by the Campfire
This year, Cinco de Mayo falls on a Saturday, making a it a perfect holiday to celebrate with a get together in the outdoors. Cinco de Mayo is a day to celebrate Mexican heritage and culture, and part of that culture is delicious cuisine. Gather your friends...
When to Retire Your Old Cookware
Old gear is the best. There’s old gear like the first tent you ever bought when you were young because you had a $50 gift card and you saw it hanging majestically from the ceiling of a grocery store for $49.99. The price was right, the...
How to Step Up Your Eco-Warrior Game
If you’re reading this, you’re probably already a bit of an eco-warrior. You carry a reusable water bottle, take public transportation when you can, pick up trash on trails, and recycle your paper and plastic. You might even be that person that bikes to their local grocery store...
Here's Why You Should Bring a French Press On Your Next Camping Trip
The French have an uncanny ability to make a good thing much, much better. Bread is nice, French Bread is delicious. French Toast takes regular toast to the next level. Make a braid or a kiss into a French one, and voila! Instant improvement. Fries are great, but...
Get your $*** together!
Anyone else feeling seasonally confused lately? There's still fresh snow in the mountains, but the hint of springtime in the air has us itching for upcoming warm-weather camping escapades. The slightly warmer weather and resurgence of your hay fever sneezing means it’s time to play...
How to Prepare for a Rainy Camping Trip
Your campsite’s booked, your bags are packed, you’re ready to get away for the weekend on that first spring camping trip. There’s only one thing standing in the way of your plans for a weekend of sleeping under the stars and cooking by the campfire: the weather. ...
Not Your Grandma's Cookware: Classics Get An Upgrade
It seems like everyone’s doing things the old fashioned way these days: listening to records, buying veggies at farmers markets, and practicing film photography; some dedicated folks are even going back to using typewriters. The good news is, you don’t have to revert to using an...
How to Plan a Last-minute Spring Break Backpacking Trip
It seems like we were just talking about our New Year’s resolutions, and yet spring break is somehow right around the corner. (It snuck up on us, too.) So if you’re one of the lucky ones who gets to enjoy spring break--or just wants to...
A Match Made in Camp Heaven: Find Your Cookset Soulmate
Finding the perfect cookset for your camping needs can seem as difficult as trying to find your soulmate. With such diverse options on the market, it’s hard to know which sets are the right fit for you - and which ones are just leading you on. It’s...
#Panlife: Easy meals you can make in a single pan in 30 minutes or less
Fresh air won’t be the only breeze on your next car camping trip. With a little bit of prep beforehand, you can spend less time cooking and washing dishes and more time adventuring after eating a gourmet warm, hearty meal. We put together 7 easy camp meals...
Meet Infinity polypropylene: one small step for camping, one large step for mother earth.
Once you spend as much time thinking about plastics as we do, you learn not all plastic is created equal. Polycarbonate plastic is particularly undesirable: it absorbs food odors, leaches chemicals into food, and weighs down backpacks with its heavy structure. Nobody wants smelly, unsafe, heavy dishware ruining...
6 Microadventure Ideas to Make the Most of Your Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. And since it falls on a Wednesday right in the middle of the week this year, it can be hard for most busy working adults to consider any special plans beyond dinner and Netflix. We may not be experts...
Everything You Need to Know About Microlites
These days, reusable water bottles are no longer just environmentally friendly: they’re engineered with the latest top secret temperature engineering technology. It’s come to the point where your bottle might be one of the most high-tech pieces in your gear collection. This technology overload has led to heavy...
Camping Fails and How to Prevent Them
Camping is one of the best ways to escape your busy schedule and center yourself in what Mother Nature has to offer. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the dawn of a new day under a forest canopy surrounded by fresh mountain air. A weekend camping trip...
5 Camp Breakfasts That Will Make You Actually Want to Leave Your Sleeping Bag
We know the feeling. You’re awakened at an ungodly hour by a vocally blessed bird that has convinced itself it was a rooster in a past life. Everything around you is covered by a layer of wet, as you’ve yet to master the art of tent condensation prevention...
Camp Knives That Will Make You Cut Out Dull Meals
We’re going to take a stab in the dark and guess that you’re not quite as obsessed with knife technology as the design nerds at GSI are. In fact, you’d probably find the intricate details of knife design quite dull; you just want a knife that isn’t. Therefore, we...
New Year's Bucket List
I’ve never been very good at New Year’s resolutions. As someone who rarely knows what I’m eating for dinner on a given day, I’m not so good at setting an intention for an entire year and sticking to it. Goal setting and self improvement is important, but I’ve...
Mark River Roasted Oats
Breakfasts should be easy. They almost always are, when you’re camping, backpacking, or canoeing and must carry all food in and out. Mark “River” Peoples is Chief Guide at the Quapaw Canoe Company, in Clarksdale, Miss., and has been cooking over cookfires in GSI anodized aluminum dutch ovens for...
Why You Should Spend NYE Outside
New Year’s Eve celebrations usually start with the best intentions: getting together with friends to celebrate and dance the night away until the clock strikes midnight. Yet more often than not, NYE turns into a headache to rival that of the New Year’s Day hangover: you end up...
Last Chance to Fulfill Your 2017 Resolutions
Let’s be honest: the new year is the time to make promises to yourself you won’t actually keep for more than a month. Life gets in the way, you forget about those big self-improvement dreams, and you fall back into the same routine you had last year. What...
What to Get the Adventurer Who Has Everything
They say the holiday season is all about giving - but what do you give that one friend who has everything? It’s not easy to have a gearhead on your list, because trying to track down a gadget they don’t already have can make you feel like the...
Backcountry Cocoa 3 Ways
Outdoor activities often center around beverages: we boil coffee by the tent, share beers by the campfire, down water on the summit, swig whiskey on the chairlift. We may outgrow our childhood skis, writing letters to Santa, and our pants after Thanksgiving, but we never outgrow our favorite...
Downeaster Cowboy Coffee
Start your day and indulge at night with a full-immersion “cowboy coffee.” The beautify of this recipe is the ability to stretch the pot of coffee twice as long as most other brew methods. When you have served it all, pour new water on the saturated grounds and keep...
Winter Getaway Guide
We consider ourselves lucky to live in the PNW, and wintertime is no exception. The frozen windshields and sidewalk wipeouts are a small price to pay for the endless winter adventure opportunities the northwest holds. For those who reside in less wintery states, planning a trip north...
Don't Leave Your Leftovers Behind
The relatives are gone, the card table is back in the closet, and your bags are packed for your #optoutside adventure. Then the age old post-Thanksgiving dilemma hits you: what are you going to do with all that extra food? No matter how big your family is...