Yeti Cooler Review 2025 – We put it on the exam in Death Valley

I spent part of the graduate school in a river equipment in Flagstaff, Arizona, and prepared private Float trips on the Grand Canyon. (You have to be ready to do everything to finance a study of poems.) The preparation of the food was part of our service. We had a “proprietary” method for freezing flash meals in different amounts of iron, which were calculated the moment they needed it on their three-week expedition. I have not questioned science. But I took note of the coolers. The only two brands that we trust in order to maintain our paying customers were flagstaffs own canyon coolers and the big dog in the cooler fight: Yeti.

I usually have myself for the outsider, but Yeti deserved my respect and loyalty on a Rim-to-Rim backpack trip. At the end of the canyon, the temperatures met in the mid -1990s. It is the only time in my life that I had legitimate heat creation. It was bad. But two nights and three days later, when we performed the 5,000 -foot rise of the Bright Angel Trail and stumbled back into our parked car, our beers were still wonderfully cold.

But when the work in July sent me to Death Valley to attribute the Badwater 135, a 135-mile street race, I was curious. Could the same coolers deal with Death Valley's legendary warmth?

Only one way to know.

I ordered some of the newer styles of Yetis, the Tundra cooler and the Roadie, and sent them to my hotel in the middle of Death Valley. But a warehouse delay meant that the coolers arrive after my trip. I scratched my head and google: “Can you check a cooler?” Answers to the volatility of dry ice and packing bear meat appear, but the short answer is: Yes, you can check a cooler. So I rolled in a straw cowboy hat with the already used tundra 35 and 45 to my small airport Michigan, which I had secured in my garage with NRS cam straps. If it were a bear season, I would definitely look like a bear with bear meat in the cooler. I just hoped that they would make it through the luggage cushion fulllet. The coolers did it, but my cable cars didn't.

The evening before the race, where it stays in the corresponding oasis in Death Valley, which, according to an unconfirmed sign, is 290 feet below the sea level next to a defiant courtyard. I slipped to the disadvantage in the hotel's spring pool. It was as warm as bathing water and still refreshed. After 45 minutes of diving and drinking Miller-Lites for rehydrating, I made the short, two-minute walk back to my Freon cooled room. My swimsuit was dry when I came back. And that's all while the sun was down. The weekend turned out to be a mild for Death Valley, but this is still the hottest place on earth.

In the next 48 hours I watched runners from all over the world through Death Valley's heat to end the Alpine Wunder that is the eastern sierras. Occasionally I helped deliver crews and athletes coffee and towels. Most of the time I made a pastime of a writer: I have and heard, stared and listen. And I hydrated. The temperatures rose to 117 this year, not quite the dramatically promised 120 or the life -threatening 130, which had been promised to us by the race director. But still damn hot. Enough to take my camera short and ruin the planned money that my editor was asked for (and for whom I bought an ambient air thermometer): a Yeti in a desert peeling, filled with ice cream, with the thermometer from the charts.

Yeti M20 backpack soft cooler

But how is the Yetis? They insisted. I will not lie and say that these cool are wonderful work and make water in ice. But they are isolated like motherfucker. Regular ice had no chance in Death Valley's extreme temperatures. The crews (and I) replaced those at every aid station. Even with a red -shaped exterior, three inch insulation space, filled with under pressure polyurethane, a regular bag of small pieces of ice, had no chance. The key for longer cooler use is to first record an ice block. All of this has changed for us. My Tundra 35 turned into a freezer. The chocolate railways froze and loose beers turned into this beer -lushes.

In 48 hours under the most extreme heat in the world, my ice block remained. It felt a bit like a betrayal to throw it into the bushes at the end of the weekend. However, it was not a perfect experiment. We were too busy for the scientific method. The coolers spent some time in the air-conditioned rent, but it was a jeep wrangler who seeped into cool air like a sieve, and I parked in the sun for several hours. Conclusion were the coolers. Pack intelligent and you can keep temperatures in Death Valley over a weekend. If you are removed on a weekend, this is as good as you.

The culture of Yeti sales hunt and all accessory equipment that makes the brand has taken away the ultimate truth about Yeti: these coolers are professional outdoor technology. They are designed for commercial fishermen, backcountry hunters and ultrarunning crews. Are you exaggerated for your family beach picnic? Naturally. But there are enough worldly things in our world. Get a cooler that is capable of size, and maybe one day you will check a tundra 45 full of bear meat from a Siberian spear hunt. And then picnic on the beach.