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REI’s 2026 Holiday Sale kicked off November 13 and lasts until November 23 this year. There are plenty of great deals to help you restock your backpacking, hiking, biking, camping, outdoor-loving gear quiver. REI Members can use the code HOLIDAY2026 to save an extra 20 percent off one full-price item, and an extra 20% off one REI Outlet item. Below are the best deals on all our favorite tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, pads, cookware, outdoor apparel, and more.
There are also sales at Backcountry.com and some of our favorite cottage industry brands like Six Moon Designs, Zenbivy, and more. Not sure what you need? Check out our many outdoor gear guides.
Great Deals on Outdoor Apparel
The 650 Down Jacket is one of the best budget three-season puffer jackets you can buy, more so at this price. At 10.9 ounces, it’s reasonably lightweight and has large hand pockets and some very nice internal pockets for stashing a hat or gloves. The kids’ version is also on sale in a nice yellow color that’s handy for spotting your child in the snow.
The Ghost Whisperer Down Jacket is my top pick for a backpacking puffer jacket. It weighs just 6.7 ounces for a men’s medium (7.3 ounces for the men’s large I tested), packs down to a tiny little thing (stuffing into its own pocket), and the 1,000-fill-power goose down offers one of the best warmth-to-weight ratios on the market. The men’s version is technically on sale right now, but the only size available is small and XXL.
This is my favorite puffer jacket, especially in the shoulder seasons when temps dip a little lower. It features 4.5 ounces of 1,000-fill down (men’s medium), which is half the weight of the overall jacket. The internal TILT lining (short for Thermo Ionic Lining Technology), may or may not do anything, I haven’t been able to devise an effective test, but even if it did nothing, the amount of 1,000 fill power down combined with the scant weight makes this an appealing option for ultralighters. The 7D fabric (which is what keeps the weight low) does need babying, but I haven’t had any issues in over a year of use.
This is great deal on a very warm down parka. It’s thigh length, which helps keep drafts up your back to a minimum, and fits pretty well, though it’s definitely boxy (what do you want from a 650 down fill parka that’s designed primarily to keep you warm?). I did find that the main two-way zipper can be fiddly, and does sometimes snag, but it’s hardly a deal breaker, especially at this price.
Deals on Tents
Six Moon Design’s Lunar Solo is one of the best single-wall ultralight solo tents you can buy. It’s not without its quirks (read the pitching tips), but if you want something more than a tarp, that still weighs just 26 ounces (740 grams), this one is hard to beat. Use the Code YULEHIKE to get the 25% off.
Nemo’s Hornet tents are some of the lightest freestanding tents around. The 1-person model is my go-to for situations where I might have to pitch on rock or concrete slabs (like staying in towns on a longer bikepacking trip). It’s roomy enough for you and all your gear, light enough at 2.25 pounds (without stakes), and packs down remarkable small. It’s also held up well in storms, though you will want some extra guyouts if the wind is really howling (I like Zpacks 1.2mm dyneema cord for lightweight guylines).
This is the bikepacking version of Big Agnes’s popular Copper Spur tent. The only difference, aside from color, is that the pole segments on this model are shorter (to make it easier to store on a bike). The Copper Spur line is very nearly the lightest freestanding tent around (it’s just slightly heavier than the Hornet above), and if you happen to use it with trekking poles you get what I think is the best feature, the covered awning modification for the vestibule. While this is the best deal, the 2-person model is also on sale for 20% off.
Sleeping Bad and Sleeping Pad Deals
This is one of my favorite ultralight sleeping bags. There are lighter quilts out there, but when you need the warmth of a mummy bag on those colder nights, this is what I use. It also has the smallest pack size of any bag I’ve tested in this temperature range. With the included compression sack, this thing is truly tiny. The down fill is PFC-free, 850+ hydrophobic down. The zippers are on the small side, but they slide well and rarely (if ever) snag on the bag. I’ve slept in this bag down to 20 degrees and never been the least bit cold.
Closed-cell-foam pads like the Therm-a-Rest Z-Lite Sol are a must-have. They weigh next to nothing (10 ounces for the small), fold up small enough to lash to the outside of any pack, and double as a chair, extra padding on cold nights, table, you name it. I am too old and too soft to be the sort of ultra-minimalist who gets by with just a Z-Lite, but I still have one around on almost every trip I take.
Nemo’s Tensor-insulated sleeping pads have the best R-value-to-weight ratio of anything I’ve tested. The Tensor All-Season featured here sports an R-value of 5.4 and weighs 18.2 ounces. That alone is impressive, but what I love about the Tensor is that it’s thick, comfortable, and most importantly, nearly silent. The lighter Trail model is also on sale at REI. Its R-value is only 2.8 though.
Deals on Camping and Backpacking Gear
I don’t usually bring a chair backpacking, I just sit on the ground, but for some reason I do love a chair when I’m bikepacking, which is where I’ve used this Nemo the most. It’s quite pricey, but it’s very light and packs down to a tiny package. The genius part of this chair is that the cover is also a mat that keeps it from sinking into soft ground.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop REI brand gear is the company’s basic proposition: you get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and half the price.
I sincerely hope you never have any need for one of these Sea to Summit bug head nets, but if you do, boy do you. I once did not have one, and tried to go backpacking in Michigan’s UP in early May. I lasted about two hours. When I got home I bought one of these and… still haven’t ventured back to that marshy bog of hike, but I could, and possibly even retain some of my sanity thanks to this thing.
What I said about the chair above goes for this pack as well, it’s an excellent value, especially on sale. I was surprised by how comfortable this thing is, especially because, to look at it, the straps are very lightweight and there’s almost no padding. It still managed to carry loads up to 10 pounds without straining the shoulders, and the side stash pockets are fabulously large—big enough for a Nalgene bottle or rain jacket. The Flash 22 is made of 70-denier recycled ripstop nylon, which is on the lighter side, but mine has held up well, even coming through some rough canyon hikes in Utah without any more than mud stains.
These two pots are my go-to cooking vessels for larger group meals. I find they’re just about perfect for boiling up enough water to re-hydrate four servings. I don’t take the bowls and silverware into the backcountry, but they’re handy for camping.
The Stash is our favorite all-in-one backcountry cook system. The heat diffuser design is what speeds up boil times (Jetboil claims 2.5 minutes, which I was only able to match indoors in still air), but the real appeal here to me is the way this kit all packs down into itself. For weekend trips, this is the simplest system I’ve tested when it comes to cooking for two.
These dry bags from Sea to Summit have double-stitched, tape-sealed seams that have held up well over the years. I also really like the external lash loops that make it easy to strap to anything with a tie-down anchor.
I like these dry bags for organizing things in my pack. They’re not dry bags in the sense that you can submerge them and your gear will be fine, but the 30D silnylon with PCF-free DWR sheds a little rain no problem and makes finding your stuff easy, so long as you use different colors for each thing. I put all my cooking gear in a red bag (red for fire), all my water filtering stuff in a blue bag for, wait for it, water, and so on. I find the 3 and 5 liter bags the most useful, but you can get all the way up to 35L.
I’ve noticed that, when trying to lighten their load with a smaller, lighter weight backpack, people then struggle to fit all their gear. The answer for sleeping bags and clothing is this compression stuff sack, which takes my favorite sleeping bag (the Sea to Summit Spark above) and smashes it down to about half the size of the included stuff sack. You can do the same thing to clothing, especially puffer jackets, but also fleece and merino to some extent, to free up more room in your pack.
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REI’s Big Haul duffel is a durable, water-resistant, gear-swallowing bag for carrying, well, just about everything. It’s one of our favorite ways to schlep your gear when flying. It hits the right balance of robust build materials and pockets without being too heavy to lug around all day. The strap system is cleverly customizable, and you can convert it to a backpack.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I traveled around Southeast Asia with an early version of this Osprey pack, living out of it for almost a year. It stood up well to the abuse of overland travel—more than once, I watched a bus driver tie it to the roof of a bus by cinching it down with a rope, pulling with all his weight right down the middle of my pack, like a cheese cutter. The Farpoint survived, and my gear inside did as well, thanks in part to the thickly padded sides, which provide considerable extra cushioning.
