We all know the brand names like North Face, Columbia and Patagonia. Today, they are as much a fashion brand as they are/were technical gear manufacturers. But, what is the origin of those brands? They started out as somebody trying to do something better. And when I say somebody, I really mean a person making or modifying a piece of gear to suit their needs. When I was on my hunting trip, I saw this sleeping bag that my dad was using and it triggered me to memories from the late 1970s.

I don’t think that it is a secret that I grew up in a family of traditional values. That also include stereotypical roles and interest as well. My mom was a sewer, she still dabbles a little today but nothing like back then. Somewhere, somehow she ran across this company called Frostline. The premise was that a consumer could purchase a kit and sew their own technical gear.

I was pretty young, but I remember taking a trip to Spokane to pick up this kit. Spokane was about eight hours away. I am pretty sure my dad was working there as well. We picked up a pair of cowboy boots that he had made out of elk hide and went to the Frostline store. We also went and saw where he traditionally elk hunts along the way. It was a long, three day weekend of driving basically.

Frostline offered kits to make sleeping bags, tents, parkas and other things. This was the days where the transition was being made for wool and canvas to nylon and Gore-Tex. This sleeping bag wasn’t the only thing my mom made. She made rain gear for my dad, vests (I still have mine, but my 2nd grade me quickly outgrew it) and sleeping pads that I used my entire youth in Boy Scouts.

By today’s standards the gear was heavy and maybe even sub-standard in performance. It was however revolutionary for the time. Obviously, it was good enough to still be around today. I was surprised at how many recent articles were around praising the kits. I think it is pretty niche subject but there was certainly staying power in people’s minds.

There are two primary motivators to make your own gear. One would be to save money and the other would be to have something unique or custom. Of course, our side of the fence was to save money. But, the truth is some of this stuff was stuff I had never seen. We had one sporting goods store in town and this was my first synthetic, mummy bag.

That’s not to say that if we lived in Jackson Hole or Vail or some other outdoor oriented town that type of stuff wouldn’t be so unique but I think that this was a way to get stuff that really wasn’t on the market. You have realize that before the internet, if you didn’t know something existed and where to get it, it wasn’t exactly easy to find.

Today, I am not sure people would put that much effort into building their own gear. $150 might seem like a lot of money to pay for a sleeping bag, but the truth is by the time you put 20 – 30 hours into it, it doesn’t seem that insane to pay that amount of money.

There are definitely parts of me that wishes this company was still around. I think that it would be cool to go on a trip with a backpack that you have made. I still occasionally noodle the idea of what it would cost to build my own gear brand since I can never find exactly what I want. Like, I want a backpack that holds my laptop, fits under the airplane seat, has a sunglasses pouch and holds a water bottle with full access to the bag interior and not a lot of extra pockets and zippers that add bulk, cost and little functionality.

My current bag has most of that, it doesn’t fit under the seat well and it has tot many small pockets. It seems like the more pockets you can claim, the more the price goes up but the less value that they have. All of those protrusions and separations diminish the overall capacity of the bag itself and then it turns out you can add much less stuff then the size would indicate. I have other thoughts on other items like range bags and such, but that’s a topic for another day.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a little known piece of Americana that I thought would be fun to share. It is neat that it is still getting used today. This country was built by people wanting to build the better mousetrap and this is one example. Why do you think I have a sewing machine in the first place? It gives me ability to do some of my own modifications if I ever spend the time to figure out how it works.