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In the bad old days, snagging Black Friday deals used to mean waking up before sunrise, braving the crowds at a brick-and-mortar store, and possibly getting into a shoving match with a stranger over a flatscreen TV. Maybe you got the prize you wanted, maybe you just got a black eye and some sleep deprivation.
Nowadays, however, you can get the season’s best prices on gear without leaving your house. You don’t even need to get up early the day after Thanksgiving if you don’t want to: These 31 deals on Backpacker-tested and -approved gear are available right now. We’ve organized them by category to make it as easy as possible. Make your picks today, and save your Friday for grabbing some trail time instead.
Tents
Nemo Hornet OSMO 3P
Negotiating between space and weight will always be a trade-off, but the exchange rate is rarely as good as this. The Hornet’s 40 square feet of floor space feels downright palatial compared to its 3.3-pound trail weight. Twin vestibules provide storage for packs, while the three-quarter mesh body helped control condensation even when the tent was packed.
The North Face Trail Lite 2
When the weather turned foul, this budget tent didn’t fold. During testing, the Trail Lite 2 handled gusts of up to 45 miles per hour and kept out moisture thanks to a generous bathtub floor. Credit the 9.5 millimeter aluminum poles, and a 20-denier ripstop fly with a burly water-resistant coating, all of which led our tester the chief ranger at Baxter State Park in Maine, to say he would be comfortable pushing this shelter into early winter.
Coleman Peak 1 2P
A backpacking tent from Coleman? While the brand may be better known for its car-camping offerings, our testers deemed this a solid beginner backpacking shelter for hikers just dipping their toes into multiday trips. Its size—32 square feet—made it feel roomier than any other 2-person tent in our tests last year, while it stood up easily to 30-mile-per-hour winds. (One tradeoff: At 6 lb, 1 oz, it’s chunkier than many other options on the market.)
Big Agnes Gold Camp UL3
Big Agnes’s take on the classic pyramid is a spacious shelter with plenty of headroom that excelled whether our testers were deploying it as a cook shelter or just using it as a sleep space to ride out a storm. Boasting 45 feet of floor space at 4.2 pounds, the Gold Camp also has one feature most pyramids lack: a small vestibule, which added 8.5 square feet of room to stash gear in front of the door.
MSR Access 2
If you’re a winter weekend warrior looking to stretch your overnights into the fourth season, this may be the tent for you. “The Access bridges that gap between bombproof mountaineering and three-season camping,” one tester reported after riding out a winter storm in Alaska’s Chugach Range. But you don’t need to be surviving a blizzard to appreciate the packability—about the size of a paper towel roll—of this winter offering.
MSR Remote 2
At a little less than twice the weight of the Access, the Remote 2 isn’t quite as suited to fast-and-light weekend trips. But for set-it-and-leave-it basecamping adventures in the winter, it’s one of the better options we’ve tried. The 22-square-foot vestibule is huge, providing plenty of room for stashing climbing and ski gear or cooking during daylong blizzards. Meanwhile, snow flaps extending to the ground kept shifting powder from piling up against the door in our tests.
Black Diamond Mega Light
This trusty pyramid has been a ski-touring staple for Backpacker‘s editors for years, and while it can be tricky to set up—especially in inclement weather—once you get it running, its 51 square feet of floor space is worth it (our testers brought camp chairs inside the floorless ‘mid). “The center-pole pitch takes practice for one person to set up, but it held taut in 25-mph gusts without sagging thanks to midpanel guy lines and some snow stakes,” one tester told us after a winter trip in Colorado. Nice touch: The peak vent helps keep condensation to a minimum.
Packs
Gossamer Gear Fast Kumo 36L
$143 (25% off) at Gossamer Gear
“A fastpacker’s dream”: That’s what our reviewer called this stripped-down pack, which weighs in at a little more than one and a quarter pounds. Despite the low weight, the PU-coated 70- and 100-denier Robic nylon made it through our testing season without so much as a scrape. The pack includes a bevy of smart features like hipbelt pockets sized for snacks, 4 small chest pockets, and D-rings for strapping a sleeping pad to the top.
Gregory Jade 43
If you’re looking for a backpack for a first-timer, the women’s Jade 43 (the men’s is the Zulu 45) is a strong pick. It’s feature-rich without being complicated or confusing, with three different openings for accessing gear, an exterior pocket, and a cushy, padded lumbar and hipbelt that toted up to 40 pounds without leaving our testers sore.
Kelty Glendale 85L
Sometimes, you just need to carry that weight. The Glendale is a supportive, sturdy pick ready to help you tote king-size loads, thanks to a burly spring-steel frame that helped efficiently transfer weight to our lower back and a J-shaped zipper that made accessing our gear easy on the trail. Our testers who guide used it to haul 60-pound loads in Colorado’s East Inlet Valley, and reported that the 300- and 600-denier polyester canvas used in the pack’s body survived encounters with branches and rocks sans tears.
Black Diamond Pursuit 15
Women’s—$75 (50% off) at Backcountry
Men’s—$113 (25% off) at Backcountry
Fast-moving hikers loved the stability of this 15-liter hauler. “Sticks like glue to my lumbar spine and follows my every move” said tester Elizabeth Kwak-Hefferan after taking the Pursuit 15 up Montana’s Mt. Sentinel. The vest-style sternum pockets kept snacks, lip balm, and other sundries close at hand, while the PE frame sheet kept loads centered close to our backs and weight on our hips.
Mystery Ranch Bridger 35
$217 (25% off) at Mystery Ranch
We named this versatile hauler our favorite daypack of 2023 thanks to the way it combined a superior load-carrying ability (we found it comfortable with loads up to 40 pounds, pushing it into overnight territory) with a bevy of pockets (chest pockets, hipbelt pockets, a toplid pocket, and mesh side pockets kept our gear stashed and organized.) The sturdy 100-denier Robic fabric stood up to encounters with brush and high-alpine rocks alike.
Sleeping Bags and Pads
Sea to Summit Spark Pro Down 30
Small packed size, light weight, warm and cozy on cold nights: There’s little that ultralighters won’t like in the Spark Pro except for the price, and finding it on sale helps with that. Packed with 950-fill goose down, the Spark also boasts 3 zippers, which let our tester open up the vents and throw a leg out during an unseasonably warm, 60-plus-degree trip to Isle Royale.
Katabatic Flex 22 Quilt
On a two-day bikepacking race in Minnesota, our tester encountered a rainstorm that soaked him and his gear—but never had to worry about his sleep system, thanks to gold-bonded down fill that evaporated moisture efficiently. The Flex 22 comes with some features that are fairly standard—elastic cords that cinch down around sleeping pads to prevent drafts from sneaking in—and a few luxuries that aren’t, like a down draft collar and a pocket to store your phone.
Nemo Disco 15 Endless Promise
This spoon-shaped bag gave our mummy-hating testers some extra wiggle room, and better Zs because of it. But the real draw for our reviewer was this bag’s sustainability: At the end of the Endless Promise’s life, you can send it back to Nemo, and the company will recycle it down to the fabric.
Thermarest Neo Air XTherm NXT
This ultralight, ultra-warm sleeping pad features an R-value of 4.5, which is enough to comfortably push it into shoulder season. The pad weighs just 13 oz for a regular, but traps heat effectively thanks to a reflective layer contained inside each of its horizontal baffles. (Compared to previous pads that utilized that plasticky, crinkly reflective layer, though, it’s significantly quieter.)
Big Agnes Rapide SL Insulated
This affordable pad packs up to just larger than a 1-liter bottle, but with an R-value of 4.8, still kept our testers comfortable while cowboy camping at Minnesota’s Lake Vermillion, on the Canadian border. The exterior fabric—40-denier double-ripstop nylon—proved to be durable enough to shrug off the stray rock, too.
Thermarest Polar Ranger -20
Designed with input from leading polar explorer and Backpacker outerwear model Eric Larson, the Polar Ranger is one of the best bags we’ve tried for truly Arctic conditions, with a three-quarter-length zipper to help stop drafts and save weight and 800-fill dry-treated down filling. The new edition further improves it with a soft, recycled nylon liner and a DWR-coated ripstop shell. Bonus: Zippered side vents let you stick your arms out so you can deal with camp chores without having to climb out of your bag.
Marmot -40 CWM
Twenty below not cold enough for you, for some reason? We respect that, you beautiful masochist. The CWM can handle the most extreme conditions—like, as musher, guide, and snowboarder Jody June Potts demonstrated during our test, sleeping outside in Alaska—thanks to a multi-baffled footbox and a secondary internal hood and draft collar.
Adidas Terrex Free Hiker 2
With a breathable, knit upper and a socklike cuff that seals out debris, the Terrex Free Hiker splits the difference between a boot and an athletic shoe. While it may not have the protection of a typical boot (no rock plate or waterproofing) we found it dried quickly and handled all but the rootiest, rockiest trails ably.
Danner Mountain 600 Leaf GTX
This is one of the more sustainable boots we’ve tested, thanks to Danner’s commitment to sourcing its leather from responsible tanneries and its use of a 100% recycled nylon lining. It’s also one of the best-looking: The classic leather-boot styling looks at home in the bar post-hike, which is more than we can say for the techier shoes in our test.
Topo Traverse
Think of these shoes like beefed-up trail runners: They have the low weight and flexibility of your favorite light-and-fast hiking shoe, but thanks to smart changes like a forefoot rock plate and a dense polyester-blend upper, they’re significantly less likely to disintegrate on you in the middle of a big trip.
Shells and Jackets
Patagonia Torrentshell 3L
This 3-layer rain jacket is a solid deal at full price; in testing, it kept our crew dry in everything from torrential rain in Montana’s Pioneer Mountains to sideways winds on the top of Mt. St. Helens. The 50-denier nylon survived bushwhacks with nary a scratch. Caveat: Breathability is just average
Outdoor Research Foray II
Dubbed a “one-jacket quiver” by our reviewers, the Foray II excelled on everything from round-the-world film expeditions to summit pushes. Our testers singled out the lateral vents, which made it easy to bleed heat when necessary, as well as the durability and bombproof waterproofing of the two-layer Gore-Tex construction.
The North Face Summit Papsura FUTURELIGHT
The 7.1-ounce Summit Papsura is “so light, airy, and breathable, you forget you’re wearing a rain jacket,” one of our testers opined. The jacket’s proprietary FUTURELIGHT membrane bled off heat and moisture but also did a good job of keeping out the rain. Feature-wise, the Summit Papsura walks the line between ultralight minimalism and more full-featured models, with handy inclusions like cinching elastic cuffs and a hood with a brim.
Mountain Equipment Katam Jacket
This 6.3-ounce ultralight shell breathes well enough for trail runs during the shoulder season, but also kept out “biblical” rain during testing in Vermont. The 2.5-layer jacket features a PFC-free DWR treatment and 100% recycled nylon face fabric, but beware: it’s still an ultralight jacket, and won’t stand up well to scrapes against rocks or branches.
Accessories
Stowaway Gourmet Meals
$16 (20% off) at Stowaway Gourmet
Stowaway’s camp meals aren’t cheap, but they are certainly good: After extensive testing, Senior Gear Editor Ben Tepler named the brand the best backpacking meals that money can buy. Our current fave: the kimchi jjigae, a hearty stew packed with pork belly and silken tofu in a gochugaru-infused broth.
Petzl Actik Core
If you’re looking for one headlamp to handle a variety of activities, the Actik Core is an excellent choice. Running on either the Micro USB-rechargeable Core battery or three AAAs, the Core can output up to 600 lumens on full blast or run for a respectable 100 hours on low. A built-in red light mode helps preserve hikers’ night vision.
MSR Titan Ultralight Titanium Long Spoon
Until you’ve eaten a backpacking meal with a long spoon, you’ll wonder why you need one. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without one. MSR’s 8.35-inch model reaches all the nooks and crannies inside your dehydrated meal pouches to scoop out the last bits of chili, sauce, or stew without leaving your fingers dirty. After abusing it for months, ours still hasn’t cracked.
Grayl Geopress
The 24-ounce Geopress is a purifier and a bottle all in one, filtering out everything from microplastics to viruses, so it’s a good gift for the international trekker on your list. Operation is dead simple: Just fill up the cup and push the filter into it. Grayl claims a blazing-fast flow rate of 5 liters per minute, so you can finish your camp chores and get back to enjoying your hike.
Double Haul Convertible Duffel 55L
This innovative gear hauler is really three bags in one, transforming from a duffel to a tote to a travel backpack. Our testers said that its sweet spot was keeping miscellaneous accessories organized while car camping. The built-in trusses help it stay open while you’re packing, unpacking, or fishing around for that one item you know you packed somewhere.