Ascend Outdoor started in 2024 in a garage in Boulder, Colorado. Our founder had just spent 30 nights on the Continental Divide Trail with a tent that failed in the first real storm, a sleeping bag that lost half its loft in one wet week, and a stove that would not light above 10,000 feet. We came home and made a list of everything we wished existed.

That list is our product roadmap. Each item has to earn its place — no filler SKUs, no seasonal color-of-the-year drops. If we would not carry it ourselves, we do not sell it.

Our field-testing rule

Every product spends at least 30 nights in real conditions with real users before it ships. We recruit testers from PCT / AT / CDT thru-hiker forums and pay them in gear + $500. We publish their unedited feedback in each product page, including the parts that were negative in v1 and how we fixed them in v2.

Where we source

Down is RDS-certified from a single farm in Poland. Fabrics come from Toray (Japan) and Dimension-Polyant (US). Cut and sew is in Tianjin at a factory we visit twice a year — that is where we started, that is where we still make everything.