Our Mission & Story
Our mission is to connect people with nature by providing information and inspiration to backpackers, hikers, and campers of all skill levels. We are committed to making outdoor recreation easier, safer, and more enjoyable for everyone.
CleverHiker was created in 2012 by lifelong backpacker Dave Collins. He had recently completed a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail and he wanted to share his knowledge and experience with other adventurers.
Dave started with two tutorial video series but soon expanded to include in-depth gear reviews and trip guides. Today, CleverHiker is the foremost resource for information on backpacking, hiking, and camping. With hundreds of articles and videos, there is something for everyone, from first-time campers to experienced thru-hikers.
If you like what you’ve read on our site, you can stay up-to-date by following us on social media (@cleverhiker) and subscribing to our newsletter where you’ll have access to our newest content, gear giveaways, and info on the best deals and sales around.
Why Trust CleverHiker
We understand how tough it is to find trustworthy gear advice, and that’s one of the main reasons we built CleverHiker. We live for outdoor adventure, and we take our gear guides, trip guides, and how-to articles very seriously. Our team of gear analysts are not just writers, they are truly outdoor experts.
No matter what you are looking at on our site, here’s our promise to you:
- Our recommendations are completely independent and based on hands-on experience.
- We field-test every product we recommend and do the market research beforehand to back it up.
- We test outdoor gear for a living – we’ve logged over 100,000 trail miles and countless thousands of nights in the wilderness. Our team has thru-hiked the most iconic long trails (several times over) including the Continental Divide Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, Colorado Trail, Long Trail, Oregon Coast Trail, Arizona Trail, Pinhoti Trail, Superior Hiking Trail, and many international treks in Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as extensive peak bagging throughout the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest.
- We travel to industry trade shows every year to stay up-to-date on trends, product innovations, and new releases.
- We continuously update our guides throughout the year and when new products launch.
- We’ve stayed true to who we are. We treat recommendations to our readers as if they were for our family and friends.
- We’re lifelong learners and we’re always open to feedback. If you think we’ve missed a worthy product or got something wrong, we’d love to know about it and improve our work.
We test all of the products that we review. Our process involves market research, developing test plans, and, of course, rigorous field testing. Our gear analysts are some of the most experienced in the industry, and their insights are backed by the knowledge and experience that comes with a lifetime spent enjoying outdoor spaces.
Content
Our goal is to deliver the most useful resources to our readers. With that in mind, our content falls into three categories:
Gear
Our gear guides are overviews of an entire category. They help you cut through the clutter and make the best gear decision for you. Our goal is to help you save time and money by buying the right gear for your needs the first time around.
Most Popular Categories
On these pages, you can find our recommendations and award-winning products for Best Overall as well as specific uses.
If you’re the type of person who wants all the nitty gritty details, we also have individual product reviews. These deep-dive articles describe our experience and testing in even more detail. If you want to leave no stone unturned, these are for you.
Award Badges
Products can earn two types of award badges on our gear guides.
Editor’s Pick – If you see this badge on a piece of gear, it means our testing showed it’s one of the best of the best. It’s either our favorite piece of gear in the entire category or it’s exceptional for a particular use.
Budget Buy – This badge means a piece of gear is a great deal. It outperformed its price point in our testing – and will have the score to match.
We are a reader-supported website and do not accept payment from manufacturers to promote their products.
When you click on some of the links on our pages and make a purchase, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This is what keeps our website running and enables us to continue providing independent, high-quality gear reviews, trip guides, and outdoor resources free of charge.
How We Test
We extensively test all of the products we review. We use a hands-on comparative process, which means we use and analyze our gear side-by-side. This allows us to understand how the products in our lineups are similar to or different from each other.
If you’ve ever wondered whether or not the tent, backpack, sleeping bag, or backcountry coffee maker you bought is really the best one, then you are like us. Our process involves thorough market research, carefully-developed test plans, and, of course, rigorous field testing.
We use a combination of industry experience, our network of experts, and additional research to generate a list of dozens of the most compelling products to consider for every category. After that, we hash it out and narrow down our selection to the most competitive options to test side-by-side. When you read one of our gear guides that lists 10 products, rest assured we considered several dozen more.
Then we identify key metrics and create specific tests for each of them (e.g. timing how long it takes each of our stoves to boil a liter of water or run through an entire fuel canister).
After that, we get down to testing. Each of our categories has a lead analyst who oversees the process with input and support from other members of our expert team. As we continue to test products over months, seasons, and years, we update our gear guides and individual product reviews to reflect our long-term findings. We stay up-to-date on new models and retest products when important innovations are released.
When we make a recommendation we mean it. And, if we don’t love something or it falls short, we’ll let you know that too.
And if you’re wondering, our photos are all our own. We take beautiful photos in the beautiful places we visit. Some of us are trained photographers, and some of us just have the outdoor chops and a smartphone in our pocket. Either way, the gear you see on our site is in the hands (or on the backs, heads, legs, or feet) of one of our gear analysts in the field.
We’ve been honing our craft since 2012 and our gear analysts are some of the most experienced in the industry. Their insights are backed by the knowledge and experience that comes with a lifetime spent enjoying outdoor spaces.
Just to state the obvious, our opinions come from us – real humans who tested the gear. We do not use artificial intelligence to develop our recommendations.
Trails
Trip guides are comprehensive overviews of specific routes designed to provide you with all the information you’ll need to complete the trip yourself. We have hiked every single one of the trails we write about and we revisit these guides each year to update them if any of the details have changed.
If you are planning a hike, our trip guides have the info you need to get going.
Skills
CleverHiker’s original tutorial series is still available on YouTube. We also have a variety of how-to articles to supplement the outdoor knowledge you already have. Here are some of our reader’s favorites:
How We Make Money
We are a reader-supported website. When you click on some of the links on our site and make a purchase, we earn a small commission at no cost to you. This keeps our website running and enables us to provide honest, independent, high-quality outdoor resources free of charge.
Seriously, that’s it. We do not accept payment from manufacturers to promote their products and we do not have ads on our pages.
But doesn’t earning commissions compromise which products we recommend?
Fair question. Here’s how we handle that: we completely separate our research, analysis, testing, and recommendations process from the business side of our work.
Our gear analysts do not know which products might earn us a commission and which ones won’t. In fact, we routinely recommend great products that deserve recognition, even though they won’t ever earn us a penny.
When you return a product, we get nothing – another reason why it’s best for us to help you get purchases right the first time and choose gear you’ll love. We want you to come back to our site often and use CleverHiker as your hiking gear homepage.We do this work because we absolutely love backpacking, hiking, camping, and all of the gear that goes along with it. We can only continue to do this work if you trust us and our resources so earning that trust is at the heart of what we do.
But where do you get the gear?
Much of it we just buy ourselves at full retail price – we love REI and our local outdoor stores as much as anyone else and we suppor them. Some pieces we request from manufacturers after our detailed research process has identified them as competitive products. The biggest benefit to our readers is that this allows us to test and review new release products before they hit the market so you can have the info you need to make your best decision in time for hiking season.
We do not accept payment to promote or review any of the products that appear on our site. The gear analysts who do the market research are not involved in acquiring products for testing.
Stewardship
We all came to this work differently, but we share a commitment to preserving outdoor spaces now and in the future. We’re dedicated to promoting responsible outdoor recreation.
Leave No Trace
We’re practitioners and advocates of leave no trace principles, ensuring that the trails and spaces we cherish remain pristine for generations to come. Leave No Trace is a 501(c)(3) that offers online and in-person instruction on how to protect the natural world.
Volunteer
We volunteer with outdoor organizations, from local trail maintenance groups to national conservation efforts. By helping to restore paths, protect habitats, and improve access to public lands, we live our commitment to the outdoor spaces we play in. It’s also a great way to connect with others and build community!
Get involved with one of these organizations doing excellent work, or another one closer to home:
- Continental Divide Trail Coalition
- Pacific Crest Trail Association
- Appalachian Trail Conservancy
- Green Mountain Club
- Superior Hiking Trail Association
- Colorado Trail Foundation
Donate
We’re proud to donate a portion of our earnings to organizations dedicated to protecting the environment and promoting outdoor accessibility. From funding trail restoration projects to supporting conservation research, our financial contributions reflect our belief that every dollar makes a difference.
We encourage you to give within your means to one of the organizations above or to another non-profit or conservation group that’s meaningful to you.
Connect With Us
Let us know what you’d like to see! We are highly experienced outdoor experts, but we also consider ourselves lifelong learners. If you have feedback on how we can improve any of our resources, we’d love for you to reach out.
The best way to stay connected is to sign up for our newsletter below. Also, follow us on social media and you’ll never miss a trip guide, gear review, or tutorial video.
