50 Years of Guiding Experience Leads to Pretty Great Gear.
ABOUT BIGHT GEAR
Life’s too damn short to spend a single minute of any adventure hot, cold, sweaty, or annoyed by poorly placed zippers. Whether you’re a mountain guide (like us) or a weekend warrior (we do that, too), comfort equals enjoyment. But comfort also equals safety: In an alpine environment, a comfortable climber is a confident one, and that can make or break your climb.
That’s why we take our job so seriously: Because you depend on us like a climber relies on his or her rope partner. Our mission is to build functional, durable alpine workwear that’s so dependable you’ll never think twice about wearing it. Sounds easy, but it isn’t.
Gear development is often driven by corporate mentality, marketing fads, and superficial testing. Not at Bight. We’ve flipped the script and empower working climbers and guides to design our apparel. They hump loads in it, sweat in it, suffer in it, and celebrate in it. They know how it should function when shit gets real – and when you spill that post-summit beer. The result is reasonably priced clothing that thrives in any condition.
At its core, Bight is more than a business. It’s a calling and a labor of love, led by a small team of mountain-crazed craftspeople obsessively dedicated to one goal: reducing suffering in the mountains.
MACHINE LEARNING FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
All of our testing is human-powered. That’s where we got our start, and that’s still how we validate every piece we make. The RMI guide team is the foundation of this process. They wear prototype gear all around the world, and give us honest (sometimes brutal) feedback. That’s okay, though, because we’re here to get it right and improvement is a continuous cycle. Our Wear Test Program exists for that reason. Because “good enough” rarely is.
WEAR TESTING BY THE NUMBERS
• 2016 – Over 1.2 Million vertical feet of wear testing by our guide team of primary fabrics used in 76 sample prototypes to build 19 different styles.
• 2017 – Reached over 48 million vertical feet of wear testing and use of 143 prototypes by our team of 60+ guides, and thousands of RMI climbers on Mt. Rainier.
• 2018 – Project Vertical was born and we logged a mind-boggling 100 million vertical feet (and counting) of human-powered testing to date on mountains and outdoor playgrounds around the world.
• 2019 – New fabrics and prototypes continue to be added to our roster for our team of guides to beat up and try to “break.” It’s how our new styles are born and it takes time (and lots of climbing uphill!), but the mountains don’t compromise so we’re not about to either.
It's Pretty Simple
We think gear should be built on the mountain, by the people who are using it. As climbers and guides, we don’t just test product; we work in it, we sweat in it, we suffer in it, and we celebrate in it.
Once it’s dialed, we build it for you.