Please Note: All Material on this page, and in all my "History of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com. A major contributor on this page is George Marks of Sierra Designs...Your contributions are welcome if you have material about The Ski Hut and its products, or about other vintage gear manufacturers! Email me!

Begun even earlier than GERRY in Colorado, George Rudolph's "The Ski Hut" was probably the single strongest influence and source for modern, lightweight backpacking and climbing gear during the 1950s and 1960s for persons on the West Coast...The Ski Hut was formed in 1935 in Berkeley, CA by Mr. Rudolph and a partner Phillip Von Lublein. World War II closed up the shop until 1946, the same year that GERRY resumed its business.....During its early years, Ski Hut was not so much a gear-making innovator company as it was a importer and supplier of the things that climbers, skiers and backpackers needed. Sometime in the mid-1950s, Mr. Rudolph created "TRAILWISE," and thus began the period of Rudolph's company creating its own designs and products. In the late 1950s, Mr. Rudolph formed "Donner Mountain Company" (DMC), which was mainly an importer, and which was responsible for the late 1960s craze about Pivetta boots from Italy (I owned two pairs and was wild about them!)...... Ski Hut dominated the West Coast during that distant era before the birth of the twin Bay Area giants, The North Face and Sierra Designs. George Marks, one of the co-founders of Sierra Designs, writes, "...that is after all where Bob (Swanson) and I met and where we got our start in the outdoor industry. Hap Klopp (North Face), too, among others." After Ski Hut's Justus Bauschinger left, designer Mark Erickson took over. Meanwhile, Justus went on to found Class Five.... George Rudolph was affectionately known as "The Grey Ghost" and was a neighbor to George Marks until he passed away at age 89 in about 1990. (information from George Marks interview. Image of Mr. Rudolph is compliments of Mr. Marks and shows Mr. Rudolph in late in his life).

Colin Fletcher, whom many regard as the Father of modern backpacking due to his many influential books about the subject, did much to publicize Trailwise gear. Click here for my page about this famous person in the History of Gear.

One of The Ski Hut's signature products was their trend-setting "Slimline" sleeping bag (above), designed by well-known climber and employee Allen Steck. Originally designed with no zipper at all to save weight, it didn't sell well enough that way, so a zipper was introduced. Many proud owners of Slimline bags have contacted me about how well this very lightweight bag has worked for them. In the image above, the orange Slimline and blue Chevron bags still have 8 and 10 inches of loft respectively, despite dating from the early 1970s! The Chevron was Trailwise's serious winter bag, while the Slimline was the lightest; the Norrland (not shown) was a wider cut bag rated to zero degrees (a popular warmth category of the time). Click here for notes from a sleeping bag salesman of that time.

The Trailwise "Fitzroy" tent* illustrates the company's willingness to experiment with new design concepts. It was designed by Phil Scott as a strong 4-season mountaineering tent, and a key feature (shown in pic) was its canted poles (cantilever poles), allowing it to eliminate the bothersome front and rear guy lines. It also featured an optional ridgepole, makes it stronger and more self-supporting....This tent was rather higher and roomier than many of theA-frames of its era. True, its basic design is still that of an A-frame. To see an even more radically-conceived A-frame design that also eliminated the front/rear guylines, visit my page about the Rivendell Bombshelter (which also used a ridgepole).

The Fitzroy was neither a geodesic design, nor a design like Jack Stephenson's Elliptical Arc design

My best information about the status of Ski Hut/Trailwise is that the company and brand are both defunct for some 20 years or more, although many used Trailwise items can be found on eBay...... An ex-manager at Trailwise reported to me that Mr. Rudolph sold Trailwise/Ski Hut to Saska Skiwear, which later sold it to the Boss Glove company in about 1978. Sales reached $2,5000,000 in 1979, the company was booming, and outfitted the first Women's expedition to climb Annapurna.

Another correspondent thought that the Ski Hut was shut down in about 1980, with Trailwise brand going away in about 1981--- however, another reader recently sent me a 1982 Trailwise catalog, with prices very much higher than just a couple years before; by this time, Trailwise was under new ownership (Boss Glove) and was now based in the Upper Midwest! Their product line became less and less tents and sleeping bags, and more and more apparel, reflecting major changes in the philosophy of the old company vs. the new one (incidentally, the Boss Glove Company is still alive and well)......The man who started it all, George Rudolph, retired to Point Richmond, California... Mr. Rudolph was also apparently the owner of Donner Mountain Corporation (DMC), which reportedly shut down a few years prior, and he was also an investor in the Walrus Tent company founded by Bob Swanson and George Marks in 1984.(George Marks interview)

A History of Gear Requiem: The Ski Hut/Trailwise, 1935-1978 under original founder George Rudolph, then R.I.P in about 1982.

Please Note: All Material on this page, and in all my "History of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com

Get an authentic Jensen Pack!

Eric Hardee, a vintage gear lover near Seattle, WA has legal use (via Don Wittenberger) of the authentic Rivendell pack blueprints and has been sewing/selling custom Jensen/Rivendell packs via word of mouth advertising for many years. Eric can sew up an original Jensen or Giant Jensen for you--- Contact him! He is a true lover of this pack. His email is ewak3@juno.com. Tell him that you heard about his packs from Bruce at OregonPhotos.com

Notes: The name "Fitzroy" has interesting derivations. As a name for a climber's tent, I am sure that Fitzroy was chosen due to its association with a famed rock tooth of a peak that rises out of the Patagonia Ice Fields in the southern tip of South America. But what is not so commonly known is that this peak was named after Robert Fitzroy, the Captain of the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin's ship. Capt. Fitzroy rounded the tip of South America at Cape Horn in 1830, and while in the area, took aboard 4 "Indians," which he took to England to "civilize." One died of smallpox in England, and Fitzroy became so guilty he talked the Admiralty into footing another mapping expedition, this one with a personal goal of returning the remaining 3 Indians to their homeland! For extra company and justification on this second voyage, Capt. Fitzroy took aboard Darwin, an untried young naturalist who was to change how we view the Natural World.

Notes from Paul H., who sold quality backpacking gear in NYC in the early 70s: "...the Trailwise Norrland was the 0 degree semi-mummy that Trailwise offered. It's competition was, as I stated in another email, the H'br (Holubar) Timberline, the sd (Sierra Designs) 200, tnf (The North Face) Chamois, and the Class 5 class 2. .This 0 degree class was by far the most popular type of bag at that time, and all were priced about the same and had similar dimensions etc. I remember in the summer of '73 Backpacker Magazine came out with an article comparing all these bags in this class, using about every criteria one could think of; some of those early issues are of course a true wealth of technical and commercial info. Anyway I remember the article placed the Holubar Timberline just like one point or whatever above the Trailwise Norrland for the #1 spot. I remember thinking they had it all just right, too." Paul remembers, " I worked at Paragon Sporting Goods in NYC in the summer of 73, and then worked for Kreeger and Son for a year or so after that. As I said earlier, I saw a lot of different equipment come on and off the shelves."