Gear Check! (Part One)

Posted by Serina Hardiman

First off, I'd like to thank the heavens for giving me a hubby who researches EVERYTHING! He's made it quite enjoyable to stock up on all the gear we need to ease this trip where we can. After a lot of consideration (read: months and months of hmm's) and countless trips to what we now consider our second home (read: REI) we are outfitted and have tested all of our gear.

We booked our hike through Peru Treks and those very thoughtful folks tossed up a helper list of everything we would need to nab in preparation. Using it as a template we procured the following:

Backpacks:

We both started out with daypacks a while ago when we started getting into hiking. Chris has smaller Osprey pack with hydration bladder and since he's been thoroughly impressed with their brand and quality he upgraded to the Osprey Atmos 50 Liter. He moved his hydration pack from his day pack to this one. I started off with a Camelbak and actually ran through a couple of "fittings" for my next pack for comfort. I eventually came across my pack, the Deuter Futura Zero 40 Liter. I, too, moved over my hydration pack from the Camelbak and found it fits nicely in the Deuter.

Sleeping Bags:

Next up we have the essential sleeping bags. We knew we'd need something to accommodate cooler weather so we decided to go with 15°F down bags. Chris had his eye on the Marmot Helium EQ (Tall) pretty much from the beginning and so sticking true to his conviction, picked one up. I wound up getting a Big Agnes Roxy Anne (Petite) and have got to say it's one of the most comfortable sleeping bags I've ever owned (it just barely beats out the Care Bears one I had as a kid)! The coolest feature, I think, is the integrated pad sleeve that allows me to slide my sleeping pad in the bottom of the bag so there's no rolling off. We hadn't gotten to go camping but we laid out on the porch in the 25°F weather and stayed nice and toasty.

Sleeping Pads:

We were sold on the Therm-A-Rest ProLite series of self inflating mattresses. They've proven to not only be very comfortable but compact and light weight. We've used them a good bit and they even weathered a trip to Ohio with our rambunctious nephews rolling all over them.

Rain Jackets:

Chris has been pretty impressed with the Marmot brand so he was pretty excited to find the Marmot PreCip rain jacket. It's been his jacket of choice since he bought it except for on extremely cold days. I'll admit at this point I was hunting on the clearance racks and chanced to find The North Face W Venture jacket for a steal! This is when I also found out that Chris thinks the pit-zips double as tickle-zips and proceeded to assault me with "gootchie gootchies!"