Cottage Industry Highlight: Katabatic Gear

Katabatic Gear Quilt

Aaron Martray set out to hike the Colorado Trail in 2007.  While planning the trek he spent a lot of time thinking about how to reduce weight and began to focus on the sleeping system.  Aaron liked the basic idea of quilts as but was unhappy with what the current market had to offer.  He then did what a lot of thru hikers end up doing: making their own gear.

After laying out some design goals and experimenting on many trails Aaron eventually developed a cord clip attachment system to attach his Pertex ultralight quilt with DWR finish to almost any commercial sleeping pad.  This versatile system allows the quilt to transform from a draped sleeping quilt to an efficient sleep system quickly and easily.  The innovative Cord Lock attachment system takes the quilt and makes it warm and efficient when needed.  From summer blanket to midnight quilt in a snap.  

Realizing that his design provided a more efficient, versatile and user friendly method for using quilts in the backcountry Aaron founded Katabatic Gear and started producing his own product with just two models in the line, the ever popular Palisade and Sawatch.  

After seeing how successful his idea was Aaron expanded the line incorporating more feedback from his users.  Katabatic Gear has expanded to include five quilts covering temperatures from 0 F to 40 F.  Upgrades to the quilt lineup have included cords that work better with the Cord Lock attachments and using 900 fill-power down to lighten the lineup even more and finally, Katabatic Gear has also expanded each model to include a wide version for people looking for a little extra breathing space.

While continuing to primarily focusing on quilts, Katabatic Gear’s main target has always been to improve the sleep system as a whole.  In working towards that goal Katabatic has also added down hoods and bivys into their line.  When asked about future products Aaron says he has some other lightweight backpacking products he’s working on but he remains hushed about them.  I guess we, like many of his customers, will have to wait anxiously to see what new developments Katabatic Gear produces.

This story was originally posted January 17, 2012.