Chad de Alva, Author at American Adventurist

Overland Expo West 2022

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming: Overland Expo West is back to it’s normal timing in May! But with only six-odd months having passed since the last Expo event, like many of you we had to wonder what could really be new here if anything. Cool new stuff was definitely a little harder to come by at this event (don’t worry we still found a few things) but thankfully, Overland Expo is much …

Gear and Skills

LTR: SureFire Stiletto Pro

A good EDC flashlight needs to be versatile, easy to use, and able to hold up to absolutely everything life exposes it to, day after day. Surefire is known for making some of the best illumination tools money can buy, and their Stiletto series of lights offers a unique feature set that makes them incredibly versatile and useful while hitting all of the standard Surefire checkboxes like quality, performance, and durability. For the last few …

Gear and Skills

LTR: Wagan Tech Lithium Cube 1200

As time goes on, we humans tend to possess an ever-increasing number of powered devices. These devices do so many great things for us, which is why we want to bring them with us wherever we go. Yet thankfully the world isn’t covered in a grid of easy to access power outlets, so we have portable power supplies to keep our gear powered up when we’re off grid. A good power supply can provide any …

American Adventures

Stuck In The Snow

Recently, a young couple from Louisiana found themselves stuck in the snow in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. They were miles down a closed road and completely unprepared for the situation they were in. A series of poor choices had led them to their predicament and their experience is a great reminder of how an adventure can turn into a scary suffer fest in short order. This young couple who are probably not old …

Adventure American Adventures Gear and Skills Vehicles

Overland Expo West 2021

For what feels like forever, Overland Expo West has been part of the calendar, like a holiday or some event that is just always in May. It’s just always assumed that it’s going to be there, it’s just a question of which weekend in May. Then things changed, and May came and went twice without Overland Expo West. Meanwhile, the folks at Lodestone Events persevered, and thankfully they were able to lock in dates for …

Adventure Gear and Skills

TESTED: Dometic CFX3 45

We test the new Dometic CFX3 45 fridge

Gear and Skills Vehicles

TESTED: Lightforce Lights HTX2 Twin Pack

For the last ten years, I’ve had a pair of Lightforce Blitz lights on the front of my Tacoma – and they’ve been awesome lights. Ten years is a long time to have any product, and it’s even more impressive when you consider that these lights have been outside for that entire time. These lights have baked in the Arizona sun, and frozen in the Colorado winter. They’ve held up to more than 150,000 miles …

Adventure Gear and Skills Vehicles

Rebuilding Icon Vehicle Dynamics Shocks

Along with good tires, your suspension is THE single most significant upgrade that you can make to a vehicle, and ICON Vehicle Dynamics (IVD) makes some of the best rebuildable off-road shocks around.

Gear and Skills

Long Term Review: Benchmade Auto Triage and 917BK

I have to admit that prior to using a Benchmade Knife, I was a $20 El Cheapo knife guy.

Gear and Skills

Hack The Pandemic

Using crowdsourcing and 3D Printing to make PPE for healthcare works and first responders.

Gear and Skills

Long Term Review: Maxtrax Xtreme

MAXTRAX has a great product in their MAXTRAX Mark II vehicle recovery board. They’ve been proven the world over, and everyone from special forces units to families out on afternoon adventures rely on MAXTRAX Mark II’s to solve vehicle recovery problems and so much more. In the professional guiding world, MAXTRAX are the only vehicle recovery boards on the market to be endorsed by the International 4 Wheel Drive Trainer’s Association (I4WDTA) Product Recommendation Program …

Gear and Skills

TESTED: Baja Designs XL Lasers

Baja Designs (BD) calls themselves The Scientists Of Lighting. While that title may strike you as the brilliant work of someone in the marketing department, ask anyone who has used their products and I’d be willing to bet that they’ll tell you their lights are the gold standard. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to check out a BD prototype light that used a laser to create light instead of the LEDs …