After falling in love with mountains in New England, Ian traveled all over the country making ascents of everything from short roadside rock climbs to big walls to big peaks in the wilderness. Now he lives, plays, and guides in the Sierra Nevada, one of North America’s best mountain playgrounds. He rounds the year out with forays to Red Rocks, Moab, Washington’s Cascades, and Alaska. He likes ice cream, jackets with hoods, and well-earned rest days.
Author Profile
Credit: Dale Apgar
Ian McEleney
Review Editor
Showing 1-15 of 78 by Ian McEleney
Best Climbing Backpack of 2022
Looking for a climbing backpack for your multi-pitch adventures? We tested the top climbing packs to determine which was the most durable, comfortable, and versatile...
Editors' Choice
The North Face Route Rocket
Streamlined and practical, this pack dispenses with unnecessary features. That means there are few options for strapping kit to the outside of the pack, but...
Top Pick
Black Diamond Blitz 20
This pack is born and bred for alpine climbing. While it's feature set works well for all kinds of long routes, it's light fabric should be kept well away from hauling or extended...
Best Snowshoes of 2022
Finding the best pair of snowshoes for your adventure from the ever-growing crop of choices can be worse than wallowing through three feet of fresh snow in tennis shoes. To help, we...
Best Backpacking Stoves of 2022
We've been testing the best backpacking stoves for over a decade, and this current review has our 20 favorites. We purchased each stove for rigorous and thorough testing, spending more...
How To Choose a Backpacking Stove
Buying the right backpacking stove can make your life in the backcountry more enjoyable. But not all stoves were made with the same adventurer in mind -- many specialize
Editors' Choice
Soto Windmaster
This stove is light, easy to use, and features a great piezo igniter and generous pot supports. It's good at simmering and does impressively well in the wind.
Best Buy
BRS-3000T
This tiny stove impressed us for being ultracompact, ultralight, and performing decently in all our metrics. It does all of this for an unbeatably low price.
Top Pick
JetBoil MiniMo
This integrated canister stove is a boiling champ. When dehydrated meals are your backcountry reality, this model is a wonderful friend to have.
Best Mountaineering Boots of 2022
Trying to find the best mountaineering boot? We've got you covered. Our testers reviewed 7 of the top products on the market...
How to Choose Snowshoes For Trails and Deep Snow
This guide will help point you toward the perfect pair of snowshoes for a variety of snow depths and terrain. From groomed trails to fresh deep powder,
Editors' Choice
MSR Lightning Ascent
This snowshoe has everything you've come to expect from the best on the market with a new binding design that, unfortunately, wasn't our favorite...
Best Buy
Atlas Helium Trail
This model is good at all the basics and won't break the bank, making for a high value product all around. It's one of the easiest to use snowshoes that we've tested, and...
Top Pick
Crescent Moon Gold 10
If your entire motivation for snowshoeing is getting into deep fresh powder, this is a great model to consider. A large surface area coupled with...
How to Choose a Rock Climbing Backpack
On the hunt for a climbing backpack and not sure how to choose? To find the best options, we went over each pack in our lineup stitch by stitch during multi-month testing. By the end we...
Next >
Ad-free. Influence-free. Powered by Testing.
GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products. And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. No cherry-picked units sent by manufacturers. No sponsored content. No ads. Just real, honest, side-by-side testing and comparison.
Learn More