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ike so many great enterprises, the outdoor industry

rose from humble origins, growing slowly as Amer-

icans became more interested in being in the

outdoors to camp, hike or ski. And ironically, had it not

been for World War II, outdoor sports and recreation-

al activities might not have flourished as they have.

The war prompted the formation of the U.S. Army’s 10thMountain Division, a unit that exposed men to skiing,climbing and living outdoors. After the war, the skills somevets of the 10th Mountain Division used to survive in battlewere applied to help shape the beginnings of America’s skiand outdoor industries.

Joining those active 10th Mountain vets outdoors were thou-sands of other GIs and war-weary citizens who soughtsolace in the mountains and backcountry.The more time they spent outdoors, themore they started needing better gear andapparel. And they went looking for it.

GEORGE RUDOLF: THE SKI HUT, TRAILWISE ANDDONNER MOUNTAINAmong those who supplied the growingnumber of outdoor enthusiasts early onwas George Rudolf, arguably the fatherof the modern outdoor industry.

In 1935, schoolteacher Rudolf and hisregular skiing buddy, engineer Phillip VonLubkin, opened a small ski shop in Berkeley,Calif. They called it The Ski Hut and it costthem $750 to open the doors, albeit withlimited business hours since the two menkept their day jobs.

At the time, California’s Sierra Mountainswere a popular spot for ski mountaineering, an activity Rudolfdescribed as, “touring out to the neighboring peaks and,after lunch, making one glorious run back to the lodge.” Tosatisfy skiers’ demands, Rudolf and Von Lubkin startedimporting gear from Europe.

Hoping to expand their customer base, the two menapproached the Southern Pacific Railroad with the idea of

selling ski gear on the regular weekend ski trains from theSan Francisco Bay area to Sierra ski areas.

The plan was approved and as their Southern Pacific skitrain sales flourished, rival Western Pacific Railroad askedthem to start selling on its ski trains, as well.

By 1941, business was so good that Rudolf quit teachingand devoted all his time to The Ski Hut. Ironically, the UnitedStates declared war a few months later, and Von Lubkin waswhisked off to Washington, D.C., to work in the Pentagon,while Rudolf stayed close to home working at the Alamedashipyard south of Oakland, Calif. The Ski Hut was shuttered.

The two men re-opened The Ski Hut postwar in 1946. Ayear later, Von Lubkin was paralyzed in a skiing accidentcausing Rudolf to take over complete control of the store.

In a 1991 interview, Rudolf recalled those early days: “Thelate ’40s and early ’50s was a very creative period. Gerry

Cunningham, Alice and LeRoyHolubar, Dick Kelty and Eddie Bauer—all these people were working on gear.And all kinds of consumers wanted toget into the mountains after the war.”

During the early ’50s, The Ski Hutretail store became a fixture onBerkeley’s University Avenue andexpanded its offerings to includesleeping bags made to the company’sspecifications by Thomas Black andCompany of Scotland.

Importing sleeping bags ended whenRudolf formed Trailwise, his owndomestic sleeping bag, tent and apparelmanufacturing company. Among manyTrailwise landmark products was theultra-slim, ultra-light and warmSlimline down sleeping bag.

Domestic production in hand,Rudolf turned to importing and

formed Donner Mountain Company to bring inEuropean-made gear and apparel. Among the brands thecompany made famous in the United States market was theItalian-made Pivetta boots. Years later, Donner Mountainwould produce boots and shoes abroad under its own labelincluding some of the first boots to use Gore-Tex linings.

Over the years, Rudolf’s various enterprises served as thetraining ground for many individuals who would become the

industry tPaying homage to the early pioneers who pavedthe way for the outdoor industry’s formation.

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y trailblazersB Y B O B W O O D W A R D

second-generation leaders of the outdoor industry. Those peopleincluded Bob Swanson, George Marks, Peter Noone, KateLarramendy, John Schelling and Allen Steck.

GERRYJust as George Rudolf’s trailblazing career as a retailer, importerand manufacturer wasstarting in 1935, so too wasthe design and manufac-turing career of GerryCunningham, a continentaway in New York state.

“I was in high school, anavid skier, and unhappywith the way an ordinaryrucksack swung around onmy back when I skied,”Cunningham said. “So Idesigned a nice flat packthat would stay close tothe body.”

Next, he started makingand selling climbing skinsand was planning tobecome a full-timedesigner and maker of skigear when the United States entered World War II.

“I was fortunate enough to serve in the 10th Mountain Division.I used to lie in my little old mountain tent designing equipmentwith my buddy Bob Schwartz to pass the time.”

At war’s end, Cunningham was back in Utica, N.Y., with hiswife, Ann, making rucksacks and climbing packs and writinga regular column for the National Ski Patrol magazine. “Inreturn, I asked for their mailing list,” he said. Armed with thatlist and later with the lists from every mountaineering club inthe United States, the Cunninghams went into the mail-orderbusiness as Gerry.

By 1946, Gerry’s mailing list had grown to 10,000 names,and the Cunninghams moved operations to Boulder, Colo.

Thirteen years in Boulder went by before Dale Johnson(founder of the Frostline kit business) became the Cunninghams’partner in 1959, and in 1961 George Lamb (later of Alp Sport,Alpine Designs and Camp 7 fame) joined Gerry to overseesewing operations.

By the time Lamb arrived, Gerry had two Boulder storesand a San Francisco store to complement the thriving mail-order business. The company’s hottest product was the KiddieCarrier, the first modern infant/child-carrying pack.

Following the Kiddie Carrier’s success came the popular

CWD (controlled weight distribution) pack in 1963 and theroomy Camponaire backpacking tent in 1966.

Looking back on the ’50s and ’60s, Cunningham once said,“This was the golden era. Ann and I traveled all over the countryand tested our gear on bike trips, canoe trips, horseback trips,etc. The only reason I went into business in the first place wasbecause nobody was interested in my stuff except the people

who used gear.”

HOLUBARAnd the people who used gear were beating a path to thedoor of another Boulder, Colo., resident, LeRoy Holubar,who, along with his wife, Alice, had started a small gearcompany out of the basement of their home.

The Holubars went into business in 1947, as LeRoyonce told us, “to supplement my grand $150 per monthteaching salary from the University of Colorado” wherehe taught math for 30 years.

Active in the Colorado Mountain Club during the war, theHolubars got their start in business selling surplus Army gearto club members at the end of the war. Eventually that ledto importing gear from Europe, including the much sought-after Molitor ski boots and Kronhoffer climbing boots.

Eventually their boot business became a bit over-whelming, and the Holubars decided totake a step back andbranch out into

making tents, sleepingbags and packs.

“Alice got interestedin sleeping bags,”Holubar noted in aninterview late in his life.“She took some of the newsailcloth that had come onthe market and made bagswith the baffles runninghorizontally instead oflengthwise. She stitched thesebaffles in, not through, thebag. She followed the samedesign with the jackets.”

Holubar’s down bags andjackets set the constructionstandard of the day andbrought in a huge order fromthe Arctic Institute of North America, a move that promptedHolubar “to get my sales license and go into business for real.”

The Holubars eventually moved operations from the base-

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ment of their home to a Boulder storefront in 1962. LeRoy thenquit teaching, and he and Alice devoted all their energies to thebusiness until they sold it in 1968.

ALP SPORTAs the Holubars were winding down ownership of their business,another member of the group of Boulder outdoor pioneers of the’50s and ’60s, designer and sewing ace George Lamb, wasramping up yet another new outdoor gear and apparel venture.

Lamb’s interest in design and manufacturing dated back tochildhood when he made a pair of holsters for his new cap pistols.In the process of turning out his first product, he ruined hismother’s sewing machine but gained valuable experience.

From shooting cap pistols, Lamb progressed to dreamingabout climbing, but there weren’t many climbing opportunitiesfor a kid living in Indiana. That changed when his parents diedand he went to live with an uncle in Oklahoma and attendedsummer school at the University of Colorado.

Eventually, he enrolled at the University in 1951. “After threeor four years of rock climbing in Colorado, ” he noted in an inter-view 15 years ago, “I got more interested in mountaineering.There wasn’t any good gear available unless you waited monthsto get it from overseas, so I started building my own. That’s howthe first Eiger pack came into being.”

Upon graduating from the university, he joined the Army’sMountain Training Command (MTC), which replaced the 10thMountain Division after the war. “I skied, climbed, instructed….It was terrific,” he told us.

Terrific, but the fun was cutshort by a skiing accident thatsaw him reassigned first to runthe craft shop at Fort Carson,Colo., and then to the biggerMTC craft shop at Camp Hale,Colo. At Camp Hale, Lambused the large craft shop indus-trial sewing machine to makepacks for the Holubars.

Discharged from the Army,he supervised the sewing lineat Gerry, but soon becamediscontent and went back toschool on the GI Bill. In hisspare time, he started Alp Sport.

“Alp Sport started in 1960, andwhen I graduated in 1964, I facedthe choice of finding a job ormaking Alp Sport grow. So I gavemyself $75 a week and opened an Alp Sport shop,” he said.

Alp Sport’s unique products, like the Normal parka, the firstdown-filled ski parka with no stitches in the smooth outer shell,were immediate successes.

The Normal parka’s success got the attention of Massachusetts-based Alps Sportswear who asked Lamb to change his companyname. He did. Alpine Designs became his apparel label, and AlpSport remained as his hardgoods label.

CAMP 7After selling his company in 1969 to General Recreation, Lambstayed on as a consultant but eventually left to form yet anothercompany, Camp 7, in July 1971.

Camp 7 had a mete-oric rise, netting $4million in sales in itsfirst year in business.Over half of the saleswere to the Japanesemarket, but when thatmarket suddenly driedup, it left Lamb indebt and forced himto close the companydown.

Looking back atthat time, Lambnoted in 1991 that hestill saw a lot of people wearing Alp Sport and Camp 7 downjackets. “We produced great products designed to last a lifetime.”

KELTYNot quite a lifetime but more than a thousand miles west andsouth of Lamb and Boulder, an outdoor gear revolution hadbegun in Southern California. Leading the way with inventivenew products were several aircraft industry engineers, mostnotably Dick Kelty.

Kelty worked at Lockheed prior to and during the war. Inthe 1950s, he began making aluminum pack frames and pack-sacks at his home. The frames were bent by hand over wood

mandrels in Kelty’s home garage, while the packsackswere sewn in the family living room by his wife, Nina.

In 1953, Kelty made 29 packs, which were sold to hisfriends out of his home/store.

By word-of-mouth, sales grew to such an extent thatthe Keltys opened a small store in Glendale, Calif., andstarted working with a limited dealer network includingHighland Outfitters in Southern California, the Holubarstore in Boulder, and Mary King’s Gerry store in SanFrancisco.

All was good except that Dick Kelty didn’t like havingto put the ends of his pack frame into his pant’s backpockets to stabilize his load while hiking. So heattached a plain webbing belt to the frame ends andbuckled it across his waist. That stabilized the load andled to his inventing the padded waist belt.

With padded belts, Kelty’s A2 and B2 packs becamemust-haves for avid backpackers. Sales grew and alarger production and retail facility was opened inGlendale.

In 1968, all manufacturing operations were moved to Sun Valley,Calif., where Kelty introduced its famous Tioga pack in 1973. Thatsame year, the Kelty family sold the company to new owners.

EDDIE BAUERUnder new ownership, Kelty would eventually diversify frompacks, even dabbling in making down jackets for a time. And ifthere’s one garment that stands out as a landmark product in theearly days of the outdoor business, it is the down jacket origi-nally created by Eddie Bauer.

Bauer’s inspiration for the jacket came during an ill-fatedfishing trip in 1928 when he came close to dying fromhypothermia. Recalling an uncle’s story about how his life wassaved by wearing a quilted goose-down coat during the Russo-

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Japanese war, Bauer started tinkering withdown jacket designs. In 1936, he unveiledhis Skyliner jacket sold exclusivelythrough his family’s Seattle generalsporting goods store.

During World War II, Bauer received agovernment contract to make down-filledflight suits, and since his products werethe only ones to bear a private label, thebrand developed a loyal following amongveterans and their families.

Postwar, Bauer was deluged with somany requests for his down jackets that hecreated a mail-order catalog business in1946. That business remained familyowned until the Eddie Bauer companywas purchased in 1971.

RECREATIONAL EQUIPMENTINC. (REI)About the same time Bauer unveiled his firstdown jacket, a Seattle Transit engineer andavid mountaineer, Lloyd Anderson, wentshopping for a new ice axe.

The first shop he checked had one forsale for $20. TheEddie Bauer storehad one for $17.50.Eventually, Andersonfound a store thathad one for $7. Theonly problem was, ithad to be importedfrom Austria.

When the ice axefinally arrived, itactually cost $12and it wasn’t fromAustria but Japan.T h i s u p s e tAnderson so muchthat he com-plained about it to

anyone who

would listen. Onewho listened was aSwiss-born climbingpartner who gavehim a catalog fromS p o r t h a u sP e t e r l o n g o i nInnsbruck, Austria.

Anderson orderedan ice axe from theAustrian retailer, andwhen it arrived with alanded cost of $3.50,he and his wife, Mary,started ordering moregear for their climbingfriends.

Then, in 1938, the Andersons and 23climbing friends sat down and formedRecreational Equipment Inc. (REI) for thesole purpose of importing and sellingoutdoor and climbing gear and apparel.They based their company on the princi-ples of England’s Rochdale Cooperative:collective ownership, open membership,competitive pricing and profit distributionthrough an annual patronage dividend.

L.L. BEANAs REI started up in Seattle, L.L. Beanwas already a successful hunting andoutdoor gear retailer in Freeport, Maine.

The company’s namesake, Leon L. Bean,had been orphaned at age 12 and earned hiskeep through his formative years by doingeverything from trapping and hunting toselling soap door-to-door. In his 20s, heworked in his brother’s clothing store, buthis mindset was on a bigger project—making the world’s best hunting boots.

After much experimentation, Bean tooksome rubber overshoe bottoms, stitchedlightweight uppers to them and took themout for a test. They worked perfectly, and

Bean’s Maine Hunting Shoe was born.In 1917, the L.L.

Bean Maine HuntingShoe store wasopened in Freeport,Maine. Fishing andcamping gear andsupplies were addedto the store’s retailm i x i n 1 9 2 7 .Incorporated in 1934,L .L . Bean wou ldb e c o m e f a m o u snationwide for itsmail-order catalogsand, in 1951, forkeeping the Freeportretail store open 24 hours a day, 365days a year.

STEPHENSON’SWARMLITEThat turn of retailinggenius brings to mindthe genius of anothertype. That of JackStephenson, the manmany consider themost creative of theearly outdoor equip-ment designers andmanufacturers.

Also a formeraircraft industry

engineer (Hughes inCalifornia), Stephenson, like many of hisfuture gear-making colleagues, got his startmaking gear in the mid-50s because hedidn’t like what was on the market.

“Instead of quitting backpackingbecause of the miserable gear, I took thesewing skills my mother taught me torepair my sailboat sails, got some spin-naker fabric and started to work on apack,” he said.

Later, his first attempt at making asleeping bag so impressed a fellow Hughesemployee that he asked to buy it.Stephenson was soon soliciting ordersfrom other employees and friends.

“That was in 1957 when I found myselfin business,” Stephenson said. His nextproject belied his uncanny ability to createoutside the given design norms of the day.The product was the Jackpack, a back-pack with an aluminum pack box.

The Jackpack led to other creations allmade under Stephenson’s Warmlitecompany name. Among his products wereseveral results of forays into perfecting thevapor barrier principle for outdoor gear.

“I discussed the principle with thepeople at Hughes for years because I hadtrouble keeping my hands and feet warmwhen I went skiing. I first used a plasticwrap under my gloves and socks, and laterswitched to baggies, bread bags and thosemolded plastic socks you wear over yourfeet when you paint,” he said.

“We had so much luck with the feetand hands that I decided to try otherthings. A sleeping bag was tops on thelist because I’d go to bed cold, close upmy down bag and wake up in the middleof the night soaking with perspirationand stuck in a wet bag the rest of thenight,” he added.

Stephenson’s Warmlite products weresold via mail order from his ruralhome/production facility in NewHampshire. And, like everything else hedid, his catalogs ran counter to the norm inthat they featured photos of his “naturist”family using Warmlite gear in the buff—

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pack on their backs.In the early 1960s, Fletcher started off

on a solo backpacking trip from theMexican border to the Oregon borderalong California’s eastern flank. His adven-ture was serialized by the San FranciscoChronicle and became the subject of his1964 book “The Thousand Mile Summer.”

Readers marveled not only at Fletcher’sintrepid nature in going it alone, but also inhow he did it carrying only 55 pounds and1 ounce of gear, without water, all of whichwas lovingly displayed in a two-page photospread in the book.

Adding some spice to the story wasFletcher’s background: A former BritishArmy commando, the knockaboutWelshman had been a hotel manager, afarmer in Kenya, and a road builder inRhodesia before catching a cattle boat tothe United States. On arriving in New York,he hitchhiked across the country, endingup in British Columbia, Canada, spendinga mere $10 to make the trip. He prospectedfor gold in British Columbia before movingto the San Francisco Bay area where hebecame a writer.

Fletcher followed up “The ThousandMile Summer” with “The Man Who

Walked Through Time” in 1968. Itchronicled his extended 1963 hikethrough the Grand Canyon.

His last major work, “The CompleteWalker,” became a hiker’s and back-packer’s bible.

So with good reading matter andplenty of great gear and apparel to makeany outdoor adventure more enticing,a generation of outdoor enthusiastsventured into the backcountry. They, likelater generations, owe a debt of grati-tude to the trailblazers who had the fore-sight to know that the gear and apparelthey created and sold would help makeoutdoor recreation an integral part ofthe American way of life.

Remembering the history of the outdoorindustry, its individuals and its companiesis very important. There is strength in historyand heritage. SNEWS® has been coveringthe outdoor industry since 1983. Realizingthat no other industry publication is bettersuited to remembering, correctly, the historyof our still relatively young industry,SNEWS® will be publishing regular histor-ical accounts at www.snewsnet.com.

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tephenMatera

Jack Stephenson

an inspiration to many future outdooradventurers who, as teens, undoubtedlytreated Warmlite catalogs with much thesame reverence as Playboy magazine.

COLIN FLETCHERIt’s never been documented whether ornot those Warmlite catalogs inspired other“naturists” to go naked into the back-country, but it’s well known that writerColin Fletcher’s books inspired thousandsof people to get out into the wilds with aP

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