Petzl
Fifty years of French vertical-safety engineering, and the spine of most rope access kits — including ours.
Gear to be prepared for anything.
One manufacturer at a time — who owns them now, what they actually make, and who each one is not for.
one hundred thirty-one brands rated · sixty-one guides · seventeen journal entries
Guides
Questions people actually ask
All sixty-one guides →What is actually supposed to be in a 72-hour emergency kit?
Ready.gov's basic disaster supplies kit list opens with one gallon of water per person per day, for several days, for drinking and sanitation. Kits sold as 72-hour kits ship four-ounce pouches instead, and the four we counted carry seven to ten percent of that figure. Radio, flashlight, whistle, dust mask, sanitation and tools they generally do carry.
Read the guide →What does a backpack's liter rating actually measure?
Whatever the maker decided to include. ASTM F2153 defines a test method for backpack capacity, but running it is voluntary — of the seven makers checked here, only Osprey publishes how it measures, filling every component with 20 mm balls. The rest publish a number with no method attached, and most keep one figure across every torso size.
Read the guide →What does a sleeping pad's R-value actually mean?
R-value measures how well a pad resists heat conducted into the ground — higher means slower loss. Since 2020 the figure has come from one shared lab test, ASTM F3340, so numbers compare across the brands that use it. It is not a temperature rating, and it says nothing about comfort or durability.
Read the guide →What is the difference between a water filter and a purifier?
Purifier is a standard, not a grade. The EPA's published guide standard asks a purifier to reduce bacteria, protozoan cysts and viruses; a filter typically claims only the first two, because viruses are smaller than a 0.1 or 0.2 micron pore. Where you're drinking decides which word matters.
Read the guide →Brands We Love
Who makes gear worth owning
All one hundred thirty-one brands →
Battle Born Batteries
Reno, Nevada — LiFePO4 house banks from a public company, which means every number on this page arrives with a date attached.
ACR Electronics
Fort Lauderdale, since 1956 — the rescue beacon that talks to a government satellite system and never asks for a subscription.
Sterling Rope
Maine-made life-safety cordage since 1992 — the rope the other five brands' hardware runs on.
Harken
Pewaukee, Wisconsin, since 1968 — two brothers, a plastic ball-bearing block, an Olympic sailing habit, and the employee-owned company that now owns SMC.
CAMP Safety
From a blacksmith's forge in Premana, 1889 — the brand that made professional PPE light enough to forget you're wearing it.
The Journal
Notes from the trail
All seventeen posts →
Carbon monoxide on boats: why half the victims were outdoors, and what a detector can't do
The space under a swim platform can hold six times the concentration that's immediately dangerous to life. A compliant marine CO alarm may take fifteen minutes to sound at a fraction of that. Both facts are true, and together they explain who the detector actually protects.
Your flares expire in 42 months. Almost nobody can tell you what to do with the old ones
Federal law requires you to carry visual distress signals, requires you to replace them every 42 months, and then goes quiet. Firing them off is a felony, the trash is illegal, and two counties in California will take them.
The only life jacket with an expiry date: inflatable PFDs, and who tells you when they fail
An inflatable PFD is the one piece of life-saving equipment aboard with consumable parts. It also sits outside the CPSC's jurisdiction, so there is no public recall database — which makes a manufacturer's own advisory archive the only systematic record that exists.