MSR® MugMate™ Coffee Filter Wins Backpacker Editors’ Gold Award

SEATTLE, U.S.A. – The MSR MugMate Coffee/Tea Filter has been honored as a recipient of a 2009 Backpacker magazine Editors’ Choice Gold Award, given annually to products in recognition of outstanding innovation in design, materials and/or performance and that have remained a timeless leader in their category.

Backpacker Editor-In-Chief Jonathan Dorn and his staff of editors and testers presented the MSR MugMate Filter with the award at the annual Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 22nd, 2009.

The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards, bestowed annually since 1993, honor the products that Backpacker editors have chosen as the best of the year based on months of trail testing by teams of highly experienced hikers and climbers. The Gold Award honors products with superior design that have proven their time-tested excellence over years in the field and have since become an industry standard in must-have gear. Gold Award recipients must be at least five years old and remain relatively unchanged in design.

The MSR MugMate Coffee/Tea Filter was one of only two classic products that have been honored with a 2009 Backpacker Editors’ Choice Gold Award. First introduced in 1997, the MSR MugMate Coffee/Tea Filter is a low-profile, reusable coffee/tea filter that can be used and stored in just about any mug or cup, eliminating the need to pack out soggy paper filters. The MSR MugMate Coffee/Tea Filter is a classic product, capable of making café-quality brew for the outdoor java or tea junkie.

“It’s a great source of pride to hear that the decision by the editors to give the MugMate a Gold Award was unanimous,” said Drew Keegan, Product Management Director for Cascade Designs. “As one of those classic MSR products that has withstood the test of time because of its simplicity and dependability, it’s rewarding to know that the dedicated and rigorous testers at Backpacker have loved this great little filter as much we have.”

The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards are the gold standard against which all outdoor products are measured, and are a seal of approval that can help put an outdoor company or product on the proverbial map. Each year at the Outdoor Retailer show, retail buyers use the awards announcements as a must-buy shopping list, knowing that their customers will be asking for these products in the spring.

Since their inception, the Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards have come to be regarded as the most sought-after award for outdoor equipment and apparel found in the industry. The impeccable outdoor credentials and rigorous field-testing standards of the Backpacker staff guarantee that these awards are an undisputed mark of quality for the companies and products selected.

All winners must excel under extensive field-testing conducted by Backpacker’s team of editors, who take hundreds of new products every year into the backcountry to put them to the test, plus a few classic ones. This rigorous process ensures that the performance of the winners is truly worthy of distinction and meets the guiding principle behind the program: gear that is of real value to the readers of Backpacker magazine, who are very active, long-term outdoor enthusiasts.

The complete list of Backpacker 2009 Editors’ Choice Award winners will be officially announced to the general public in the magazine’s April issue, on newsstands March 3rd.

About the MSR® (Mountain Safety Research) Brand

Cascade Designs, Inc. engineers the MSR brand of standard-setting, high-performance outdoor equipment. A commitment to quality manufacturing and innovation ensures customers are outfitted with the finest, most reliable gear available for outdoor adventures. MSR brand product lines include stoves, fuel, cookware, water treatment, hydration, shelter, snowshoes and camp towels, the majority of which are made in the Seattle, U.S.A. and Cork, Ireland manufacturing facilities. For more information, visit www.msrgear.com.


About Backpacker:

Backpacker brings the outdoors straight to the reader’s doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world’s first GPS-enabled magazine and website, and the only outdoor media whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker’s Editors’ Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured. And the magazine recently launched mobile media applications that allow users to text-message hiking maps and directions to their phones. In 2008, Backpacker won the magazine industry highest honor, the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, joining The New Yorker, Mother Jones, GQ, and National Geographic as top winners in their respective size categories. It has won numerous other print, design, and digital awards, and its writers have been recognized in prestigious contests and best-of-the-year anthologies.


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