Jake Reyes
Jake spent his twenties guiding raft trips and rock climbing in the Eastern Sierra and now leads our gear-testing program. If a piece has been on a Pack Your Tent gear list, odds are Jake has carried it for 50+ miles or chopped wood with it in 20-degree sleet.
4 published articles · most recent April 26, 2026
Jake spent his twenties guiding raft trips and rock climbing in the Eastern Sierra and now leads our gear-testing program. If a piece has been on a Pack Your Tent gear list, odds are Jake has carried it for 50+ miles or chopped wood with it in 20-degree sleet.
His specialty is the brutal honesty that gear marketing never gets near — what fails in the third season, what blisters when you carry it 18 miles, what you actually grab from the gear closet at 4am for a permit hike.
Articles by Jake Reyes
The Three Water Rules That Keep Us Alive in the DesertAfter ten Mojave winters and one bad scare in Anza-Borrego, here are the only three water rules our team enforces in the desert.
Which Colorado Fourteener Should Be Your First?Bierstadt is the obvious answer. Here's why we still recommend it, and three trickier ones that build better skills.
How to Pick a Backpacking Tent (Without Falling for Marketing)Five tent specs that actually matter, and the four marketing terms we've learned to ignore. Pulled from ten seasons of Sierra guiding.
Angels Landing in November: What Permit Day Was Actually LikeWe drew an Angels Landing permit for a quiet November morning. Here's what worked, what didn't, and what we'd do differently.