Authors
The writers behind Campsidepicks. Each person owns a domain, from the gear they test to the criteria they use. Here is where they come from, why they cover it, and how they work.
Alex Turner
Cookware
Portland, Oregon · testing since 2014
Alex treats a camp kitchen like a rental car: if it cannot survive being shoved in the trunk, it does not come. He cooks two real dinners a weekend on the gear before he forms an opinion, and most of it gets retired fast.
Background
Most summer weekends of Alex's childhood were spent in a tent at a Forest Service site off the McKenzie Highway, near his home in Eugene, Oregon, where he was the youngest of three. He worked four years as a prep cook at a Portland diner, where a dented carbon steel pan taught him that heat and technique matter more than the label. The camp bin in his garage still holds the first aluminum pot set he bought, scratched and slightly warped, and he refuses to replace it.
Half of Alex's garage in Southeast Portland is camp gear, sorted into clear tubs by trip type: a solo overnight, a two-night car camp, a tailgate. He shares the two-bedroom rental with a partner and a dog that sheds on everything. A cheap spiral notebook lives in the lid of the cookware tub, where he writes down what worked, what scorched, and what he forgot to pack. The list from last Labor Day is the reason a lid now travels in every kit.
Why I got into it
The diner job turned him picky about pans, and camping made him ruthless about weight. He started carrying a kitchen scale on trips just to see how much the pot set actually weighed, and the numbers were sobering. Most camp cookware guides list a set's material and call it a day. He wanted to know how it behaves when the only heat source is a canister burner and the sink is a stream.
How I review
At least three trips come before a write-up, including one where dinner is a one-pot stew and cleanup happens in cold water. He logs boil time on a canister stove, how evenly a pan browns, whether handles stay cool, and how much the set weighs with and without the stuff sacks. A kitchen scale settles most arguments about weight claims.
Packing is the tiebreaker. A skillet with a folding handle often beats a better pan that needs its own padded bag, because the bag is one more thing to lose. He says plainly when a set is too heavy for backpacking or too fussy for a family of four. Anyone who cooks elaborate meals at a drive-up site should look elsewhere for cast iron.
Weekend camper and former prep cook who runs cookware through real trips, weighing every set and tracking boil time, scorch marks, and cold-water cleanup.
Domain: cookware · pot-sets · backpacking-cook
Focus: nesting sets · packability · car-camp kitchens · nonstick care · weight vs durability · camp cleanup
Harper Lin
Stoves & lighting
Boulder, Colorado · testing since 2015
Harper tests stoves in wind and lanterns in the dark, because that is when the spec sheet stops mattering. She times a boil, runs a charge down to its lowest setting, and keeps notes on what failed.
Background
A family spot near Red Feather Lakes is where Harper spent nearly every summer weekend growing up in Fort Collins. Her first job out of college was as a seasonal fire lookout on a ridge west of Boulder, which meant months of cooking on a single canister stove and reading by lantern light. That job taught her how fast fuel disappears when the temperature drops and how badly cheap piezo igniters behave in the cold.
A storage closet packed with half-empty fuel canisters is the first thing Harper's north Boulder apartment reveals. There is a windproof lighter taped to the lid of the stove bin, the cheap one that finally worked after three others died. Neighbors borrow her lanterns for power outages, and she keeps a checklist of which models still hold a charge after a year on the shelf.
Why I got into it
The lookout job is where she stopped trusting brochure specs. A stove rated for high altitude still struggled to melt snow in a stiff wind, and a lantern's high mode was useless for reading. After that season she started keeping fuel logs and runtime charts, first for herself and then for friends heading into the mountains. The stove and lighting guides grew out of those notes.
How I review
Wind and altitude come before a stove earns a paragraph. She burns a full canister to measure boil time and total fuel life, then checks how fine the simmer gets, whether the pot supports hold a wide pan, and how well the whole thing relights a second and third time. A cheap one gets the same treatment as a premium model.
For lanterns she runs a full charge down at the lowest setting, since that is what dinner and a card game actually need. Runtime at high brightness matters less than a low mode that stays warm and dim. She flags lights that whine, flicker, or take three clicks to turn off. Backpackers who need only a headlamp can skip most of the lantern coverage.
Colorado camper and former fire lookout who tests stoves in wind and altitude, logging boil times, fuel life, and how low a lantern dial actually goes.
Domain: stoves · lighting · lanterns · fuel
Focus: canister stoves · ignition reliability · fuel logistics · dimming · rechargeable lanterns · cold-weather lighting
Nate Brooks
Camp coffee
Salt Lake City, Utah · testing since 2016
Nate judges camp coffee by the cleanup, not the first sip. If a maker needs two rinses, a strainer, or a fire pit burial for the grounds, it stays home, no matter how good the cup tastes.
Background
A dented percolator hangs in Nate's garage as a reminder to stop babysitting coffee. He learned to brew on scout trips around Provo, long before he owned a real brewer, and the habit stuck. He teaches high school chemistry in Salt Lake City and grades lab reports at a desk that is usually covered in gear. For a decade his camp kit has been a single tote beside the cooler, and anything that does not fit goes back on the shelf.
Water is the real constraint on Nate's trips, so he plans brews that use one pot and one rinse. He lives near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon with a roommate and a truck that has a permanent dent in the tailgate. He still owns the dented percolator that boiled over into a Moab fire in 2016, and it hangs in the garage as a reminder to stop babysitting coffee.
Why I got into it
Most of his mornings start at 5:30 with a mug he needs in under ten minutes, which narrowed his gear opinions fast. Guides that describe a fifteen-minute pour-over ritual lost him, because nobody does that at a trailhead. His test became simple: would he repeat this brew on a cold Saturday before a hike. That question is why the coffee coverage favors presses, pour-over cones, and stovetop makers that clean up in one pass.
How I review
He brews the same recipe for a week of trips, using a scale and a thermometer, before he writes down a verdict. He times how long water takes to heat on a canister stove, how evenly the grounds extract, and how much water a full rinse takes. Capacity gets checked against a normal travel mug, and grounds get weighed so the cleanup claim is honest.
Cleanup decides the winner. A maker that traps grounds in a hard-to-reach seam loses to a simpler one that rinses clean, even if the coffee is slightly worse. He packs each kit the way a reader would, in the tote, and notes what leaks or rattles. Backpackers counting ounces should skip the car-camp presses and look at the single-cup filter coverage instead.
Car-camp coffee drinker and high school chemistry teacher who tests presses and brew kits for capacity, durability, and one-rinse cleanup.
Domain: coffee · french-press · brew-gear
Focus: camping French press · grounds cleanup · stovetop brew · packability · durability · limited-water brewing