6 Valentine’s Day Gifts for Adventurous Couples

Gear is a generous Valentine’s Day gift. Picking something other than the usual chocolate, flowers, or booze shows that you acknowledge your partner’s interests and listen to their needs. Beyond that, the right gear gift can enable you and your Valentine to plan a romantic outdoor getaway.

Below we list some of our favorite gear specifically designed for two. Each product offers your partner (and yourself) something that is both extremely practical for your adventures together and romantic in its thoughtfulness.

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Exped MegaMat Duo sleeping pad

$370 at Exped $370 at REI

This wildly comfortable, two-person mattress is a brilliant Valentine’s Day gift because it invites intimacy while also offering better sleep.

I have slept more nights on the MegaMat Duo over the course of the past three years than any other inflatable camp mattress on the market. By my best estimate, that amounts to around 90 good nights of sleep. The secret to this comfort is the ample amount of super springy, open-cell polyurethane foam that’s both soft and supportive, whether or not you inflate it to a rock-hard PSI.

My wife and I are not alone in our  deep love of the MegaMat: Outside columnist Wes Siler used the MegaMat as the base point of an essay on why it’s smart to invest in high-end camping gear and apparently had “an awful lot” of good sex on one, too.

Exped MegaSleep Duo sleeping bag

$250 at Exped $250 at REI

Pairing a pricey camping mattress with the same brand of sleeping bag system may sting during the initial purchase, but it’s usually a smart investment. Just like in partnerships, compatibility goes a long way.

The MegaSleep’s measurements perfectly match the MegaMat Duo sleeping pad and offers two different insulation levels and temperature ranges depending on which side of the sleeping bag is facing up. One side (colored burgundy) is heartily insulated, and when it is oriented on top, performs like a 25-degree sleeping bag. Flip it over to its less insulated blue side, and it lands more in the 40-degree bag range that’s ideal for summer nights.

It also has a full-length zipper that detaches, so you can create two different sleeping bags (one 25-degree and one 40-degree) if you and your partner have wildly different sleeping temperatures like my wife and I.

Lifestraw Peak Series 3L gravity water filter system

$66 at Lifestraw $66 at REI

Nothing says “I love you” like saving your partner from a fortnight of water-borne diarrhea. Before my wife and I started splitting rent, we split up our pack weight in the backcountry. A 3-liter gravity filter was the first piece of gear I added to our shared backpacking load—clean water is something that I never want to ration unless I absolutely have to.

We love the Peak Series 3L because it’s exceptionally user-friendly—just fill it, hang it, and let gravity do the filtering. It also has NSF certification—a rigorous certification level that not all water filters go through—so I know it will actually filter out bacteria, parasites, and microplastics that would make us sick. Lastly, it stops letting water move through it when it can no longer safely filter water, which means I don’t have to keep track of how long we’ve used it and risk catching giardia.

MSR Windburner Duo Stove System

$220 at REI $165 at Backcountry

As I said, I believe splitting pack weight is one of the great advantages of partnership. A solid two-person stove like MSR’s Windburner Duo will allow both you and your Valentine to eat more quickly and efficiently in the backcountry.

My wife and I used a Jetboil Sumo for years but switched to the Windburner Duo six years ago because the wind-shield around the heat source works better for tailgating out of the back of my truck in our ski resort’s comically windy parking lot. I have not organized a formal test, but I can anecdotally say that the boil time is around four minutes, and its 1.8 liter-capacity delivers plenty of hot water for a freeze-dried meal and a couple of eight-ounce hot drinks for a delightful backcountry date night.

Miir Tomo thermos

$60 at Miir $60 at Amazon

The 1-liter Miir Tomo has been our go-to ski resort coffee solution for three years now because it does the best job of keeping our coffee warm throughout an entire ski day. When I start getting my family ready at 6:30 a.m. to ski at our local hill, I fill the double-walled, vacuum-insulated thermos with boiling-hot coffee. Two hours later, my wife and I are drinking piping-hot coffee out of the two 8-ounce cups built in as the lid and bottom of the Tomo. Even when I leave this thermos sitting in our truck on mornings that are below freezing, we always have steaming-hot coffee to enjoy hours later at lunch.

Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai meal pouch

$10 at REI $10 at Amazon

My wife and I both agree that a fantastic view beats a fancy indoor meal every time. The Pad Thai from Backpacker’s Pantry has a delightful sriracha kick and feels fancy thanks to the included peanuts you can sprinkle on top of the noodles to complete the dish. One sub-$10 package delivers 730 calories of spicy and peanut-buttery noodles that’s ready to eat in under 20 minutes. My wife and I find that one pouch serves up a light alpine dinner for a couple.

While the end result is backpacking-good (i.e. not on the same level as my favorite Thai restaurant in town), my wife and I can both eat it from the same container while enjoying an unreal sunset in the high alpine, which is plenty fancy for us.