Those crazy Swedes! This week, two Sweden-based companies, Thule AB and Koenigsegg Automotive, have announced a partnership to produce a roof-top gear box designed for speeds up to 186mph. The Thule Lightning box is made of pure carbon fiber and it attaches to the top of the Koenigsegg Agera R, a "hyper sports car" that can go zero-to-60mph in 2.9 seconds.

Photo: (C) Thule
Thule box on Koenigsegg Agera R

It is "the fastest combination of a commercial car and roof box on the market," Thule touts. (Well, yeah!) The Thule box product, called the Thule Lightning, debuted this week at the Geneva Motor Show. The gear box was made only for the Koenigsegg Agera R, and it comes integrated into a removable roof panel. In other words, you cannot swap out the carbon-fiber Thule box for use on a Subaru on days when you're feeling not so fast.

The Thule Lightning package -- which (oddly) also comes with a pair of customized skis -- costs about $20,000. I guess that's chump change if you're the kind of person who can afford this car. The Koenigsegg Agera R purportedly goes at more than $1million USD.

--Stephen Regenold

This column is part of a series of gear reviews based on tests in the 2011 Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, a weeklong competitive event in southern Chile. The race stretched 300+ miles and included trekking, kayaking, climbing, mountain biking, and wilderness navigation. Team GearJunkie.com took second place.

By STEPHEN REGENOLD

The clean snap of carbon fiber breaking in half was a distinctive sound and a slight sensation in my hand. It was day five of the week-long Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, and I was apparently testing trekking poles to their breaking point.

Photo: (C) LEKI Inc.
LEKI Carbon 4 Trekking Poles

In a gully deep in the wilds of Patagonia, bushwhacking while rain pissed from the sky, I'd stabbed a pole for balance into a steep hillock of moss. The pole plunged down. My feet slid out from under me, and off I went, gravity grabbing hold, riding on my rear end over wet moss and coursing down the hill.

At the bottom of the gully, I looked up. I'd slid 30 feet but was unharmed. My trekking pole? Snapped in two, the carbide tip and lower pole buried somewhere above in a patch of deep Patagonian moss.

My team started the Wenger Patagonian Race with eight poles, the lightweight LEKI Carbon 4, which are new for this spring. By the end, five of the eight original poles made it to the finish line. Two broke on the trek -- both moss-induced catastrophes -- and one was lost in a tumble I took through a stretch of bushes and vines so thick I wanted to just lie down and cry.

Patagonia is an extreme testing ground for gear. The poles were hardly the only casualties. We ripped pants, wrecked gaiters and gloves, and popped two camping mats. The wilderness of Patagonia beat us down, physically and mentally, and our kit of gear suffered, too.

Before my Carbon 4 poles broke, they were holding up to the rigors of our trek quite well. As a runner, I often eschew trekking poles. But for long distances like on the Wenger race -- we trekked for more than 100 miles in trail-less terrain -- poles are a crucial piece of gear.

Photo: (C) T.C. Worley
Member of Team AdidasTERREX/Prunesco digs in

The Carbon 4s are premium products, and they have a premium price tag to match. At $229, the poles have carbon-fiber shafts, carbide tips, and LEKI's super nice Aergon handle grips. They are telescoping poles and can pull apart and pack down small enough to fit inside a backpack.

Feathery weight -- at about 7 ounces per pole -- is the kicker with this model. They feel airy and non-existent in the hand.

In normal use, the poles are durable. Indeed, I was the only person on Team GearJunkie.com who broke a pole. The other team members' poles survived miles and miles of off-trail trekking and abuse. My moss scenarios were rare and unfortunate mishaps not often replicated in average outdoors situations.

We collapsed and telescoped our poles a couple times a day, putting them away when the terrain got steep or too thick. The spin-to-tighten locking system was bomber -- our telescoping poles rarely ever slipped. But in a race, the system was too slow. Adjusting eight poles -- two for each team member -- was a time-consuming process when you're racing hard and trying to milk every minute of the day.

I ended the Wenger Patagonian Race with no poles. Now, I am an adherent to "leave no trace." But somewhere in the wilds of Patagonia, my broken shafts and carbide tips remain buried in the moss -- I lost them and could not dig them out. Please forgive.

My hope is that a future explorer or archeologist might find the poles some day. He or she will admire LEKI's clean design and stout carbide tip. Then the explorer will wonder what happened. They will look at the broken pole and then glance at the steep slope below. They will laugh and wonder who was the half-wit who slipped long ago off a hillock and snapped his pole in two.

--Stephen Regenold is founder of Gear Junkie. Read more on Team GJ's experience in the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race at GearJunkie.com/Patagonian-Race.

This column is part of a series of gear reviews based on tests in the 2011 Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, a weeklong competitive event in southern Chile. The race stretched hundreds of miles and included trekking, kayaking, climbing, mountain biking, and wilderness navigation. Team GearJunkie.com took second place.

By Stephen Regenold

"What do you eat out there?" That's a common question I get from readers about my diet while participating in events like the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, which lasted a week and required three food drops over a 300+ mile course to complete.

The broad view is that most racers in long endurance events take in 5,000 to 7,000 calories a day. You don't eat meals, you snack all day long. My personal goal is to eat between 200 and 300 calories per hour -- hour after hour as I race.

To get all the food into your body, you need to like what you eat. Variety helps there. You also need to know how many calories and what kind of nutritional package you're getting with each type of food.

Photo: (C) GU
GU gels and chews

For the Wenger Patagonian race, I organized about 90 percent of my food at home. I packaged up 10 bags, each representing one day on the race, with a load of food. In each day-size bag there were energy gels, bars, nuts, candy, dry fruit, and other goodies.

My team used traditional "energy food" as well as grocery store items. Sure, GU and Clif SHOT gels are great, quick energy. But in a long race you can only eat so much soy, cane sugar or maltodextrin-based goo.

At the long, slow pace of an endurance race, sweet tastes quickly become old. The body craves salt and "real" foods like meat sticks and cheese. Salted nuts work, too.

Dehydrated or freeze-dried food from companies like Mountain House and AlpineAire are wonderful. These food packets come in tons of flavors and types, with soups, pastas, stews, and breakfast items included. Most recommend hot water to be poured in to soften and reconstitute the dehydrated bits inside the bag.

In Patagonia, we did not bring a stove. Instead, we used cold water to "cook" our freeze-dried food. It takes a bit longer to soften up, but we found that after about a half-hour of soaking the dinners were softened and ready to eat.

My favorite product in this realm was the Mountain House Pro-Pak meals, which are vacuum-packed bags with enough food for one "meal" for one person inside. I toted along two or three bags for most days. They weigh just a few ounces and cost about $6 a pop. With flavors like Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Teriyaki with Rice, and Chili Mac you cannot go wrong.

Photo: (C) Mountain House
Pro-Pak meals

The Pro-Pak meals have several hundred calories apiece. On the race, I would add water, reseal the bag, and then let it sit in a backpack pocket for 30 or 40 minutes. When ready, I'd eat it caveman style with my hand or squeeze it out of the bag like a giant, salty energy gel right into my mouth. Manners go out the window entirely in a race like this!

Other non-traditional items in my food stash included pudding cups, chorizo meat sticks and hard cheese (both purchased at a Chilean grocery store), croutons, rice crackers, pumpkin seeds, syrupy fruit cups, Ensure energy shakes, and Java Juice coffee extract packets for making a brew on the go.

More standard, I brought along a stock of energy food from GU and Hammer Nutrition. GU energy gel has been a longtime staple for fueling my body. The easy-to-eat packets are 100 calories apiece, and their formulation provides quick, noticeable energy when your body is low on power.

More palatable even, GU's Chomps are gummy energy chews. They have about 100 calories per pack. Even after days of racing, I still liked to eat these fruity, candy-like treats.

Hammer Nutrition has some excellent energy food. The company's gels are palatable and easy to eat, but nothing out of the ordinary. Hammer Bars, in contrast, are awesome and unique. They cost $2.50 apiece and come in Cashew Coconut Chocolate Chip, Almond Raisin and Chocolate Chip flavors.

Photo: (C) Hammer Nutrition
Hammer bar and Perpetuem pack

Hammer bars are soft and easy to eat, and they are not overly sweet. They taste nutty and have ingredients like agave nectar and quinoa -- a great alternative and a nice change of pace for the energy bar category.

One more Hammer callout. . . the company's Perpetuem drink mix is a "meal you can drink" kind of thing. These powder packet stir into water to make a creamy brew that has about 270 calories. Great quick energy out there, and good tasting to boot.

Last, I need to give a nod to Honey Stinger. This small energy-food company has some crazy good products. The company's bars and gels, which come in many flavors, are all good and all very sweet. They are made with honey, as would be expected, and the bee juice provides a quick shock of sugar to the bloodstream when you're running on low.

The king of Honey Stinger's line is its Stinger Waffles. These unique delectables are modeled after stroopwafels, which are traditional baked pastry treats widely for sale in Europe. Stinger's take on the stroopwafel is a thin disc with two hatch-marked halves and a honey concoction in between. Yum.

Photo: (C) Honey Stinger
Stinger Waffles

Energy food has come a long way in recent years. Eating well in the outdoors -- be it an endurance race or backpacking in a state park -- is no longer a tough deed. I was satisfied in Patagonia and energized for days. On a long race, eating becomes a chore. But with some creativity and savvy shopping, you can make a perfect expedition menu.

--Stephen Regenold is founder of Gear Junkie. Read more on Team GJ's experience in the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race at GearJunkie.com/Patagonian-Race.

Andrew Skurka, age 29, is something of a god in the world of ultra-light backpacking and long-distance solo treks. His latest feat -- a 4,680-mile trip that entailed traveling by foot, ski and pack-raft for 176 days straight -- was called the "Alaska-Yukon Expedition," and it began and ended near the Arctic Circle in Alaska. For nearly six months, Skurka traveled alone in a humongous geographical circle in land so wild that the route crossed only eight major roads. The trip was supported by National Geographic and coverage of it appears in the March issue of the magazine, on newsstands now. Gear Junkie caught up with Skurka for a dozen quick questions on dirty socks, food drops, and the best and worst equipment used on his latest long trek into the wild. --Stephen Regenold

1. How often do you change socks?

In wet environments like Alaska, I change my socks once at the end of the day. I swap my hiking socks (which are usually damp or wet) for my dry sleeping socks.

Photo: (C) National Geographic
Stream crossing in ski boots

2. Where were the food drops throughout the Alaska-Yukon Expedition?

I shipped most of my supplies to Post Offices along my route. But I also had two packages dropped off by air and another by dogsled (in Denali National Park) where otherwise the logistics were too challenging.

3. Let's talk footwear. How did you choose the La Sportiva Fireblade shoes?

It fits my foot really well -- secure heel cup, form-fitting mid-section, and just enough room in the toebox. It's also lightweight, low to the ground, and very durable for a trail-running shoe.

4. How many pair did you go through?

Only six pairs, though there were only 2,100 miles of walking. Otherwise I was wearing my leather three-pin Telemark boots (for 1,300 miles of skiing) or I was in my pack-raft in water.

5. What gear broke or needed to be replaced on the expedition?

There were no catastrophic gear failures. This didn't surprise me at all. But many people struggle to believe that a two-pound backpack or a 13-ounce, fully-enclosed tarp can be durable enough for a mega trip like this. It can be. Obviously, I needed to swap out gear due to changes in the seasons (e.g., my sleeping bag and insulated clothing) and to wearing stuff out (e.g., socks, base-layer shirts, even a camera).

Photo: (c) www.andrewskurka.com
Route of Alaska-Yukon Expedition

6. How heavy was your pack without food and water and fuel (during the non-winter trek portion)?

During the summer my pack weighed 18.6 pounds without food and water, and I had 22.9 pounds of gear in total (this was including my clothing, footwear, trekking poles). This weight includes my 5-pound pack-raft, 2-pound paddle, 1-pound satellite phone, plus standard three-season gear (clothing, shelter, kitchen, etc.).

7. Your No. 1 favorite piece of gear on the trip, or most crucial was. . .

In Alaska, my inflatable Alpacka pack-raft is critical for three-season conditions. It allows me to get across rivers, fjords, and bays that are in my way, and I can float rivers that go in my desired direction of travel rather than bushwhacking for days along the river banks.

8. Your No. 1 favorite food on the trip overall (and least favorite food)?

Anything with chocolate in it. Least? Anything lacking chocolate.

9. Least favorite gear piece.

Waterproof/breathable fabrics are not very waterproof, at least in real-world conditions. And they're not very breathable, either. Unfortunately, the alternatives aren't any better: Waterproof/non-breathable fabrics cause excessive sweating; a wind-shell with more clothing is not as warm; and ponchos and umbrellas are not good in wind or when bushwhacking.

Photo: (C) National Geographic
Andrew Skurka

10. What surprises you about gear in the outdoors world?

Lightweight gear has come a long way in the last 10 years. I was able to get every piece of gear I wanted from a manufacturer, save for my homemade stove. The largest retailers and manufacturers are doing their customers a disservice by not embracing this equipment revolution. It'd be equivalent to a bike company like Trek or Specialized ignoring carbon-fiber bike frames and suspension forks, or like Volkl and K2 insisting that long, skinny skis with no sidecut are still best for downhill skiing. Wake up!

11. Why did you use a trash compactor bag as a pack liner?

Most importantly, it's effective in keeping my gear dry. It is also cheap and ultralight, and it lasts longer than a sil-nylon pack liner.

12. Any other unconventional gear used on the trip?

I made my 3-season stove out of a Fancy Feast cat food can. And by wearing my clothing to bed I was able to use a much lighter sleeping bag -- I used a 0-degree bag in temperatures down to -24F, and a 30-degree sleeping quilt down to 15F.

--Stephen Regenold is founder and editor of www.gearjunkie.com. Photos by Michael Christopher Brown / (C) National Geographic. See more photos from Skurka's expedition at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/alaska-trek/brown-photography.