Gear Review: The Trailbrush

 

It's a little bit of a cliché in the ultralight, alpine, or other disciplines where going light and fast is the crux. Cut your toothbrush in half. It might be a little less convenient, but you can survive without the whole handle, and think about the fraction of an ounce you'll save! The Trailbrush (by Trail Stuff) took that to heart. Why even buy a full-sized toothbrush if you're going to cut the handle off anyway? In this case, you buy just a brush head that's designed to fit snugy to the top of your camp sport. The whole thing weighs just 0.156 ounces and takes advantage of the spork you're probably already carrying (it works best with a handful of popular sporks, including my Sea to Summit AlphaLite). "Will this make a significant difference in your base weight? Probably not," they admit on their own website. "But it's still an awesome subtraction from your gear list." 

 

I'm all for cutting unnecessary weight. I'm by no means a weight weenie, but if you can double up the usage of certain things or trim redundancy, why not? But it's all gotta work. The Trailbrush is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it's not quite as great. I was impressed with how snugly the brush fit onto my spork, considering it works with a couple different utensils and looks like it was 3D printed. It never popped off and didn't wiggle as I was brushing. But that meant it was a little bit difficult to remove and more or less stayed where it was. That meant eating dinner with my toothbrush as much as it meant brushing my teeth with my spork. Food gets places it shouldn't be, tooth paste gets places I didn't want it. The contours of my spork meant that spitty-toothpaste would drain down the handle of my spork mid-brush, ending up all over my hands. There are probably ways to deal with this and keep each respective end clean, but it didn't feel quite as hygienic as I might want for an item whose only purpose is to clean my mouth. 

 

Again, I'm all for cutting an ounce here or there, but I have a hard time wanting to sacrifice very much for such insignificant gains. And every time I tasted toothpaste in my mac and cheese, that's what I felt like I was doing.