Outdoor research

A passion for human powered adventure inspired the birth of Outdoor Research, an outdoor gear company based in Seattle, Washington. After 27 years, their passion remains as strong as ever, but their goals have expanded to embrace a greater mission: our customers’ experiences of human powered adventure. Over the years, we’ve learned it’s not simply about what we think. It’s about listening to our customers and building their ideas into our products.

Our focus is on creating functional solutions for human powered adventure and how we do it is the fun part! Through our Lab Rat program, any user of OR gear can report back to us on how our product worked during their adventures. Lab Rat feedback...

Learn more and become a Lab Rat, find that cheese!

Backcountry Access

At Backcountry Access, our mission is to save lives, not just pump products. As a leader in our industry, we need to be responsible about sending people into the backcountry. They need to be equipped not just with products, but with education. That’s why we’ve invested so much in research and education.

We pride ourselves on being the “knowledge leaders” of our industry. A visit to our research page shows that we’ve been doing our homework. Developing products and saving lives must be grounded in research and reality. You’ll see that, like our products, our research challenges conventional wisdom about such issues as avalanche statistics, receive range, shoveling, and multiple burials.

When we talk about “fresh tracks” and “fresh ideas,” we’re not just talking about skiing powder and developing products. We’re talking about our whole approach to snow safety, rooted in thorough research and placed in proper context with even more important things like education and knowledge.

Icebreaker

Premium Merino Wool clothing in sport specific designs.  Get the info on how this clothing can work for ewe.

Founders Story

Icebreaker, like many great things, started by accident.

In 1994, an American girlfriend introduced me to a merino wool farmer she had stayed with as she backpacked around New Zealand.  
Brian Brakenridge lived on an isolated island in Marlborough with his family and 8,000 sheep. He had developed some prototype thermal underwear made from 100% pure New Zealand merino wool. 

He threw me a piece of this extraordinary....Read the rest of the icebreaker story