The Last Best Gear For Exploring Montana
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Get $10 off • click here or use code JOURNALOFLOSTIME at check out for $10 off your next order of $100 or more on Simpler Ways
Essential gear for adventuring in Montana
Morning brew & mountain views
After an early morning watching colors unfold on the steep mountaintops, we treat ourselves to a light roast coffee made with the Aeropress Go, our go-to coffee maker when we’re on the trails. Its functionality is ideal when packing small is a priority, while simultaneously yielding a quality cup of coffee.
The AeroPress Go travel coffee maker gives coffee lovers everything they need to conveniently brew superb coffee anywhere they want. The AeroPress Go brews American, espresso, and cold brew-style coffee.
We asked a nomadic barista to share his 4 preferred ways to make the best coffee on the road, and what to use. Read his responses on Simpler Ways.
Power through the day
Back at the trailhead, we get back to our rig. Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch? Doesn’t matter: we open the backdoor and pull our basecamp kitchen out to boil water. We grab a few pouches of Mountain House dried meals. Ten minutes after pouring water into the pouches, we have two hot meals bursting with flavor and protein, which we enjoy with an outstanding view. A few days into our trip, Montana still amazes us with its natural beauty.
Mountain House creates convenient dried meals that don’t sacrifice taste. They start their process by cooking a delicious meal and then use the freeze-drying process, which they’ve perfected over 50+ years, to lock in the flavor and nutrition.
Shop Mountain House’s delicious meal options to whet your appetite and keep you fueled no matter where you find yourself.
Unbreakable sunglasses
We’re well into the morning and the light at high elevation is very bright but we’re well equipped. All summer we’ve been rocking our Dolomite Sunglasses. Ombraz is on a mission to solve sunglasses’ biggest problem: the sidearms, screws, and hinges, which always end up breaking. They got rid of them and instead use marine-grade nylon cord. We tried them once, and never went back: they’re ideal for our active lifestyle.
Certified by 1% For the Planet and Climate Neutral, Ombraz sequesters 1,384X more carbon than is emitted to produce and deliver each pair - making a pair of Ombraz the most carbon-negative product ever sold.
An outdoor mat for anywhere
We have an ambitious plan for the day — a 40-mile mountain bike ride that’ll take us through a few mountain passes and down green valleys. We grab our bikes and gear up. One of our new favorite items to take on long mountain bike rides is our new KĀMA Poco, a small origami-style adventure mat that is sturdy as hell. Poco is the smallest of three available sizes and packs up flat. The stuffed cell foam offers a much appreciative rest from our bike seats during our breaks.
The KĀMA outdoor mat is the ideal surface for all your outdoor activities: it's a non-traditional picnic blanket and a yoga mat. It is a post-surf changing zone, a campfire bench, and a great spot for a nap. Grab your friends and you’ve got a dance floor. Last but not least, KĀMA is a female-owned business part of 1% For the Planet.
Shop KĀMA’s origami-style adventure mats - they come in three sizes, and five nature-inspired colors.
Camp storage reinvented
We’ve been pretty active the past couple of days, taking full advantage of our stay in Montana — one can’t do it all in this state with endless activities, but we sure tried. We’re ready for a night off, and drive over to a BLM spot to meet up with some friends for a much-deserved campfire night. We’re the first there, and we start setting it up for an evening of good food and company. We grab our 70-liter RUX all-in-one storage system, the perfect solution to transfer everything and beyond from the car to the fire ring — a couple of trips and it’s all done!
RUX is an all-in-one system to pack, move, and use your valuable gear. Its tri-fold lid increases ease of access while keeping the rest of the RUX contents protected from the elements which makes it perfect for beach excursions.
Soft goods for nature lovers
As always we carefully follow principle #5 of our partner Leave No Trace's 7 principles for better outdoor ethics. We check fire restrictions in the area. Fall in Montana is less prone to wildfires, and we’re good to go! To carry wood from our roof rack to the fire ring, we’ve been using this neat Utility Sling by Roam & Shelter. Not only does it pack very small, but it’s also made of a heavy-duty polyvinyl liner, making transporting wood a breeze.
Roam & Shelter was born in the PNW from a love for the outdoors and adventure. This father and son design team has a combined 50 years of making products, and they create beautiful hand-made-to-order high-quality soft goods for trail and nature lovers.
Elevate your camp kitchen
As much as we appreciate the convenience of quality dried food before heading out for a day-long ride, we’re also suckers for a long evening spent cooking and eating outside. As far as campfire cooking goes, we tend to trust Barebones for their high-quality, beautifully designed products. We’ve been using their skillets and enamel products for a long time, and appreciate that they’re a B-corp-certified organization rooted in their passion for enjoying great food outside.
Barebones is about food, nature, and the pull of the fire. Through their rich catalog, they supply the inspiration, goods, and guidance to help you better your outdoor experience.
Our selection of Barebones products—beautifully crafted products to enhance your outdoor experience.
The magic blanket
Montana will get cold at night, even this early in the fall. We’ve been sleeping in our pop-up tent through all kind of seasons and weather, and we’ve had some rough nights up there. That was until we came across this new company in the outdoors scene, Aeronaut Outdoor. The founder, an outdoors product designer veteran, created an ultra-warm goose down quilt, promising to keep you warm all the way down to 30 degrees. Turns out it’s been a game-changer for us.
Camp blankets are usually fine around the campfire, but have cold spots. Sleeping bags are warm but constricting. Aeronaut merged the two to provide the best outdoor sleep experience out there. We promise you'll always be looking forward to it on every adventure.
Camp lights that work
Like most of you, we’ve owned our fair share of underperforming camp lights. That was until we tried portable LED lights from Ledlenser. The reputation of German-engineered products has once again been confirmed: these headlamps have outlived any other ones we’ve tried by far, and their performance is beyond impressive — whether in luminosity, range, or battery life.
One of the world’s market leaders in LED flashlights and headlamps, Ledlenser have set the highest standards in terms of innovative materials, technology, workmanship, design, and sustainability with their quality German-engineered products, creating over 100 patents in the process.
We do the research so you don’t have to: browse our carefully curated selection of home goods and outdoor gear for your life on the road
