Field NotesStories

This year, Big Agnes is celebrating its 20-year anniversary, or as we like to say #20yearsinthedirt.  Founded by Bill Gamber back in 2001 and based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Big Agnes has grown into a successful, sustainability-focused, global leader in the outdoor industry.

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. After our 2022 Bob Swanson Memorial Exploration Grant winner Jean Marie Gossard was called on to fight wildfires for this summer, she chose to give up her nomination and 7,000 mile thru-hike on the Great Western Loop.

How do you share your adventure stories with friends? Blogs, social media, good old fashioned around-the-campfire storytelling? When our friend Patrice La Vigne wrote and published her first travel memoir, Between Each Step: A Married Couple’s Thru Hike on New Zealand’s Te Araroa, we knew we had to get the story behind the story.

Little did we know, our wedding would be the last event many of our friends would attend before a year of social distancing kept us from our usual recreation schedule. Being quarantined as newlyweds for all those months felt similar to living in our Copper Spur on the AT all over again.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. (Jan. 17, 2020) – Big Agnes, the Steamboat Springs-based outdoor brand, announces a redesign of its 2020 Apparel Collection.

You probably know that the Continental Divide Trail is close to our hearts, and geographically it’s located right in our backyard. We found ourselves recreating on the CDT through enough summers to wonder how we could help maintain it.

At Big Agnes, when we say we sleep in the dirt, we mean it and we do it. There’s no better way to develop and test product, no better way to walk the walk of an outdoor gear brand than to immerse ourselves as much as possible into the trails, campgrounds, and amazing public lands that surround us here in Northwest Colorado and beyond.

As you can imagine, relocating 14 miles of a National Scenic Trail onto public land that doesn’t currently exist is no small task. First, we have to think about where the CDT could go – how to get from point A to point B if it wasn’t on the road, based on scenic views, natural resources, property boundaries, terrain, water sources, and more.

"We were the furthest away from home we’d ever been and completely out of our comfort zone. But we made it back in one piece (unlike the girl who chipped a tooth from the wind blowing a rock at her…). "I’m pretty psyched to forever look at a map, point to this tiny little island off the coast of Argentina, and call it 'home'."

Something pretty powerful happens, however, when the depth of your vulnerability somehow parallels the level of trust your team has developed in one another. It allows you to feel all the feels: the frustration, the defeat, and the absolute rawness of the accumulation of the days.

"To be back on the CDT in September, 2017 doing trail work with my co-workers and the founders of Big Agnes, was one of the most fulfilling moments of my life. More than anything I have done, the CDT forged me into the person I am today. It is a privilege to walk the CDT and share the responsibility of caring for it with the Big Agnes family."

We understand that gear gets used–often hard–and hopefully for a long time. We want your Big Agnes gear to have the longest, healthiest life it can, and we’re here to help that happen.