There are only a few wild places left. Within the Rocky Mountain Front Range lies 1.5 million acres of designated "Wilderness" spanning from Glacier National Park to Rogers Pass in Western Montana. Lying in the foothills of the Front Range is a small town called Augusta, Montana. Maybe you have heard of some of these places like the Scapegoats, Blackleaf, The Chinese Wall, Benchmark, or "The Bob". These are some of the landmarks that lie within one of the last wild places in Montana. So when we got the call from Amy Mills that they had been wearing our jackets back in The Bob during the 2020 backcountry season, and want to partner with us on development and testing it was an easy yes.

THE SEARCH FOR THE BEST COTTON IN THE WORLDWithin 15 minutes of landing in Lima Peru's international airport I was standing in the streets, with our design team members Orlando and Sonia.  This was the beginning of our quest to find the best factory partner for building our line of Rogue + Pima tee shirts, tanks, and fleece products.  Orlando and Sonia are veterans to the Lima game.  They have been travelling to Lima for over 30 years with some of the biggest brands in the USA to help them develop the right relationships with factories in Peru.  Orlando being Cuban and Sonia being Puerto Rican rendered my broken Spanish unnecessary.  I have travelled to Latin America many times in the past, and went to school for a semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The air smells like Latin America.  It’s slightly ...

WE HAVE BEEN MISLEAD ABOUT COTTON.Forever now we have been told that "cotton is bad," especially in the outdoor world.  We are told that it doesn't dry out quick enough, doesn't "wick", and that it is environmentally unfriendly.  If you have a background in the outdoor industry you may have heard the phrase "cotton kills".  We believe that phrase is used severely out of context.  One major misunderstanding is that there are many types of cotton.  In our garments we use 2 types of cotton almost exclusively; Peruvian Pima and Tanguis cotton.  The advantages of cotton in the outdoors are that it is healthier and non allergenic to wear, it absorbs water better than synthetic fibers which keeps you more comfortable, and it's also more breathable than synthetics (suprise) .  Besides the technical reasons, we...

NO, HIPSTERS DID NOT INVENT THE WATCH CAPAlthough the fact that it has been so heavily embraced by a new era of artisans and makers only adds to the timeless authenticity of this knit hat. The watch cap is just that, it’s a knit hat with a cuff that can be rolled up or down. It was traditionally made from wool yarns but now also out of acrylic and cotton. They can have a pom pom on top but the styles that are generally coined with the name “watch cap” generally do not.The term “watch cap” literally comes from members of the United States military who would “stand watch,” and the hat was such a symbol of that silhouette that we call the hat a “watch cap.”I think we can skip all the speculation from the 1500’s to 1800’s about how these hats came to be popular because most of...

UNCOVERING POTOMAC, MONTANAWe showed up at our Airbnb at 3PM. There is a Dragon and an Iguana in the living room, and I can throw a rock from the deck and hit the Blackfoot River. A weathering 1970’s Ford Maverick with a drum set filling all the seats is in the yard. A chicken coop is attached to the guest house, and old bamboo fly rods are hung above the Dragon tank. A large red deck overlooks “Dead Man’s Bend” of the Blackfoot. This is not the postcard you get from Glacier Park. This is today’s Montana, and this is where we made basecamp to test some upcoming products for Smith and Rogue. Product development isn’t just about how strong, waterproof, or lightweight the product is.We joined forces with our friend Alison Potts. Alison has grown up in the valley and lives in Bonner, Montana but kee...

Actually, we had no idea. It is an obvious metaphor, but we were recently thinking about if it is literally even possible and after some research this is the most legit response we could find on the World Wide Web from a Mr. Bill Cravens, BSMME, University of Michigan and Illinois Institute of Technology, he says…