“I’ve been thinking about things on a cost-per-use basis lately,” my friend Nick said to me a few weeks ago. Nick doesn’t make rash decisions on anything that costs money, evidenced by the holes in the elbows of the merino wool hoody he wears to work most cold days. If he swipes his credit card [...]

I walked onto the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder last Friday and a Denver Voice vendor looked down at my sandals, laughed and said, “Oh man, you must be from Colorado.” Hey, it was October 5th, far from winter, and it was still 35 degrees outside. Lots of people talk about fall being their favorite [...]

Staying hydrated is important. Perhaps equally important is subtly communicating your identity by decorating your favorite water bottle with the proper stickers to project your outdoorsy/adventurous identity. Here at Semi-Rad.com, we want to make it easy for you. For just $29.99 (or just three easy low monthly payments of $9.991/3), we’re now offering pre-stickered CamelBak [...]

In the weeks leading up to my wedding in 2007, my hair was a little long for my parents’ taste. I stood fast against weeks of subtle suggestions that maybe I should get it trimmed a little before the ceremony, until my father got on the phone one Sunday evening and said, “Your mother wants [...]

In a conversation a few weeks ago, a climber friend of mine described herself as “not super-girly.” Her expanded definition of that was: I like cute clothes as much as the next girl, but I’d rather spend my money on new rock shoes, or spend my time hiking somewhere rad to go climbing … so [...]

There’s nothing better than some shit-hot new gear to spend your hard-earned dollars on, is there? Technological advances in apparel and outdoor hardgoods are fun and exciting, and we love to celebrate them. Like a lot of folks, I have my favorite pieces of tried-and-true gear, and here are my favorites for 2012: 1. Hoods [...]

You have approximately one million different travel mugs at home. I know this because I have previously owned approximately one million travel mugs. You buy one, it works OK, but you think maybe you’d like one with a handle, or a new one without a handle, or one from a coffee shop you visited on [...]

I picked up these sweet-ass rigs after I finally wore out my last pair of trail running shoes after 2 ½ years (the tread was gone and one of the laces finally snapped). As you can see, there’s all sorts of technology and shit in them—there’s some plastic stuff on the side, and there are [...]

I had this idea in early 2011 to make a web site about “normal” outdoorsfolk, those of us who are fairly average in ability when it comes to climbing, skiing, cycling, and other outdoor pursuits — but exceptional in our love for them. That became Semi-Rad.com, which I see as a celebration of that passion [...]

  -Brendan Semi-Rad is brought to you by Outdoor Research.

On Nov. 25, Black Friday, Patagonia placed an ad in the New York Times, telling readers, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” As they said in a blog post on The Cleanest Line, they felt it was time to address the issue of consumerism head-on, and laid out how they were addressing their environmental impact — telling [...]

This might be my favorite piece of climbing gear I used in all of 2011: The Wild Things Guide Pack. I got one of these to review back in July, and then spent the better part of two months beating on it over several days and several dozen pitches in Idaho, Yosemite, and Washington. I [...]

A year ago, a friend asked me what I thought of the Street Strider. He had seen it on The Biggest Loser or something like that and was thinking about getting one. I Googled it, and I thought, if I saw someone rolling down the street on one of those, I would point and laugh. [...]

Snow is falling in the high country. Be honest. Can you really afford to start this year’s ski season with anything but the best? The best costs money. But it’s worth it. Outfit yourself with all this hella expensive ski gear that I Googled for you — only $125,561.00, plus probably some shipping fees and [...]

It’s hard to sell me a water purification device. I’m a lifetime backcountry iodine tablet user, because of its simplicity: The only way it can malfunction is user error, it’s light enough to put in any pack, even if I don’t think I’m going to need water purification. Never have to worry about leaving other [...]

GoLite makes a lot of things — ultralight backpacking gear, trail running gear and apparel, outdoor performance clothing, even luggage. One of the things they probably don’t focus on is rock climbing. But I’m going to tell you that one of their packs is great, not for ultralight backpacking, as advertised, but for alpine rock [...]

I have learned many things from my friend Lee: How to place gear on trad routes, how to suffer with enthusiasm, how to talk to myself while on the sharp end of the rope. Other things are more simple. Like how to keep critters from eating the zippers off my climbing pack. Here on the [...]

I feel lucky to have a story that Grant Petersen thought worthy of the latest Rivendell Reader. It’s about riding across the country on the same bike I ride to work every day — the 1985 Raleigh Team USA I bought from a Craigslist ad for $100. Click the photo below if you’d like to [...]

Maybe you missed some of the Internet chatter a few weeks back when Levi’s announced its new 511 cycling jeans. Big news for folks who don’t like to wear lycra when they ride to work or the coffee shop. Even bigger news for Levi Strauss & Co. is that they have been making comfortable, somewhat [...]

I was renting this guy a backpack and 3-person backpacking tent when I worked at an REI store several years ago, and he and I had the following conversation, as he was holding the tent bag in his hand: Guy: I bet I could just strap the tent on the back of the backpack here. [...]

Petzl designed the Ultra Wide headlamp for “activities like caving.” I’m not a caver, but I’ll tell you what this headlamp is awesome for: Night biking. Especially night mountain biking. Also night hiking and scrambling, or any night activity that would be more comfortable with a huge box of light projected in front of you. [...]

  There’s a single paragraph in Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of A Reluctant Businessman in which he talks about solo expedition kayaker (and grandmother) Audrey Sutherland, who at that time had paddled more than 8,000 miles around the world. One of the quotes attributed to Sutherland is one of the [...]

A few years back, I went from a co-habitating man living in a spacious apartment with a walk-in closet dedicated to gear, to a bachelor living in a tiny studio apartment. I owned one chair, a couple plates and a bowl. But I still had several thousand dollars’ worth of climbing equipment. I thought about [...]

Does the lining of Sigg bottles contain BPA? Who cares — this one’s not going to hold water anymore. A nice reminder to take care of my stuff/clean out my car more often.   -Brendan Semi-Rad is brought to you by Outdoor Research.

The average human poop event weighs between 7.3 and 9.3 ounces, according to an Iranian study of 100 male and female subjects. I only looked this up because I think no one should buy a $7,000 carbon-fiber bicycle, since the only people who arguably “need” a bicycle that expensive already get them for free and [...]

This interview was originally supposed to appear on Spadout.com’s Gear Talk before it stopped publishing Jan. 31. I still wanted to share it here, since Mile High Mountaineering is one of the few outdoor gear companies to call Denver home, and I’m excited to see their stuff, which will be available at retailers on March [...]

I rode my bike across the country last year, carrying three free water bottles from my pal Scott’s bike shop, Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop. I wasn’t really convinced there was much difference in any water bottle I owned — basically they all hold water and allow me to pour it into my mouth at some point. [...]

I had this old, beat-up REI Mistral soft shell for 4 years, and finally, when the cuffs started fraying so badly that particles of dirt, rocks, and Doritos would get into the sleeves, I started looking to replace it. My pal Chris, who won’t buy anything without a hood — if Patagonia made a pair [...]

You like your bike ride to work. It fires up your heart, lungs and legs before you spend 8 hours sitting in desk chair getting soft. You lessen your impact on the environment. You spend a few more minutes outdoors, every day. It makes you smile. One thing can wipe that smile off your face: [...]