Built by a hiker. Powered by data.

I'm James — a cybersecurity engineer in New Hampshire who spends as much time as possible in the White Mountains. Lincoln Woods at sunrise, Hancock Campground with the tent half-frozen, the ridge over Franconia when the wind decides the plan for you. That's where RidgeNote comes from.

Researching gear online is worse than it should be. Marketing copy instead of specs. "Best of" lists with no sources. Prices that change the day after you buy. I wanted the tool I couldn't find: every spec that matters, side by side; the trade-offs in plain numbers; a link out to the retailer so you can check the price yourself; and a pack planner that adds up your kit from those published weights before you leave home.

So I built it. RidgeNote tracks manufacturer specs and list prices for hundreds of tents, bags, pads, packs, and jackets, compares them side by side, and turns them into trail-ready pack lists — starting with the routes I know personally, in the Whites.

What I can and cannot tell you about price#

I publish the manufacturer's list price, and nothing else. I do not have a licensed live-price feed, which means this site does not compare current retailer prices and shows no price chart. The Field Dispatch notes when a maker changes its own list price, read on the maker's site before and after the last issue. Treat the price here as a reference point, not a quote: use it to see where a product sits in its category, then follow the link and check what the retailer is charging today. Sales and closeouts are real and often large, and they are exactly the thing I cannot see. I would rather say that plainly than paint a stale number green and call it a deal.

Where the numbers come from#

Weights, dimensions and materials come from the maker’s own pages wherever the maker publishes them, otherwise from a retailer listing; list prices are the manufacturer’s. Where a source is recorded, the product page prints it beside the figure: the site it was read from and the date we checked it. Temperature ratings are shown as manufacturer claims and labelled as such, because I have not independently confirmed which test standard was applied. Where a rating genuinely is ISO 23537 tested, it says so. An automated gate blocks a product from publishing if it has no retailer link, if its listing price has no recorded source and date, or if a temperature rating neither cites a test standard nor is labelled as the maker's claim. Where a maker publishes no list price we can read, the product page says so rather than showing one.

Read the full validation methodology.

Some links on this site are affiliate links — if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no cost to you. That never changes a ranking: the numbers are the numbers. Product pages carry no reviews.

Questions, corrections, or a trail I should cover next? Say hello.