Gear Innovations and Mountain Legends: Mike Parsons on Five Decades of Outdoor Adventure

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, I am joined by entrepreneur, author, innovator, and longtime leader in the outdoor space, Mike Parsons. Mike has spent more than five decades helping develop equipment for people in the most tough environments. He has helped with major expeditions, and he has also helped with George Mallory's 1924 Everest attempt. So we're going to be talking to Mike, and as he says, innovation also provides success and failure, and you have to experience both to be able to innovate new products. So, Mike, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you. Why don't you start off with a really really stimulating subject? Um I'm writing my memoir currently. In the title, uh My Whole History as uh for 50 years as a gear maker uh includes the whole history of lots of mountaineering, backpacking, outdoor activities, and so on, and making gear for those. But no one has told the story in the context uh of innovation or from a gear maker's perspective.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

What originally got you started in developing equipment for the outdoor industry?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Um, well um the word strategy way back in the uh late 50s, 1960s, uh was not a word that was normally used. And so um uh my father had started the business uh just in the great uh recession of the late 1930s, opened a bike store, and then the war came in, and he was uh everything was controlled for a war economy, and so consumer products weren't being made, and so um uh needs must. Uh he managed to obtain some bikes to sell, but repairing was uh a large part of the work, and he realized that uh his uh my mom and her sister knew how to sew, so he managed to uh obtain two sewing machines and uh start producing um uh accessories for the shop uh made from canvas and leather, which uh you might call back bags or panniers or something like that. That's how he that was the basic start. But in the post-war scenario, then um the bike market collapsed because the big trend was towards uh climbing, that's what excited people, and so people sort of somehow made their way to our door and realized that we had the capability of making rucksacks, and so there was no strategy, the business was collapsing. I left school at 18, all my friends going on to university looking down on me for joining a small, a small workshop on a bike store.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Well, I know you often talk about how innovation is people at the leading edge trying to solve a problem. So, can you share an example to where a real-world problem led to a breakthrough piece of equipment?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Oh, yeah. Um well, um this is not theory on my part because uh I had a period uh in the 80s where I was invited to be the uh researcher and uh co-teach, of course, at Lancaster University Management School uh in the UK. And uh that what that research led to um was looking at what the Harvard um uh professors were uh writing about, and um that was about they named they named it lead user innovation. In other words, the the lead user is someone who meets the problem before other people and has to solve something to overcome it. And so that goes back directly. That's the that that that's a sort of Harvard proof of concept that what I was doing was working with leading-edge mountaineers, and they said this is what we want, we want a um well, um the equipment they didn't have wasn't suitable, and so people came along. One famous mountaineer came along through the door and said, Oh, hi, how do? Um you might have heard of me. I'm Don Willens. Um, I live up the road. You're making a pack for a friend of mine, Joe Brown. Would you make one for me? Now we had no such thing as strategy, uh, this was just an automatic can-do operation from me. The strategist became much later. Uh, but the business at that time was failing, and we needed things to make. And so this lead, these two mountaineers that um I mentioned, uh, John Willens and Joe Brown, these were the two leading um working class mountaineers emerging at that period. Until then, uh the class structured British society, uh, the skiers and mountaineers were all in the um upper levels of society, and then suddenly in the 90s, the working class people came in, and they are the people who had the um the energy, the motivation, the aspirations to do uh more things, uh, to climb steeper things, to climb the Himalayan uh summits, and they needed solutions.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Well, let's talk about some of the major expeditions that you have supplied equipment for and uh what that taught you about preparation, equipment, and human resilience.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Okay, here's a very practical one. Um after making the back for Don Willens, then he was going to Patagonia. Patagonia is right down the southern tip of uh South America. Uh, it gets really, really terrible winds coming through from the Pacific, and it's well known for its extremely severe weather. And uh in trying to climb uh the rock mountains there, he found that the tents wouldn't stand up, they blew down. So he searched around the local estancia and found uh sufficient wood to build a box-like structure which would stand up against the wind, and he sort of carried that up piece by piece up to a suitable point on the mountain where it could be safely installed. When he came back from that expedition, he realized that that was not that was not the way to go. He couldn't hope to find uh uh wood just anywhere like that. So he said to me, Oh, you know that um um heavy canvas, cotton canvas that you're making my rucksack from. I said, Yes. He said, Well, if I brought you some an angle iron frame, like a box, about six feet, seven feet long, four feet high and square, could could you make me uh a cover for that? I said yes. Uh it'll be heavy. He said, doesn't matter. Um, and so that that was the first step. Some years later, Chris Bonnington was organizing uh his expeditions to make the first ascends via the face routes on Himalayan climbs. The history of climbing is that uh people go to the summit initially by finding the simplest or shortest or easiest or safest rope up the mountain. And then the successive climbers are thinking they're wanting uh to make a name for themselves, they're wanting a little bit more adventure, so they say, okay, let's let's find the harder way. And so the Bunnington expeditions of 1970, Anapurna South Face and Everest in 1975, Everest Southwest Face, they were direct face routes, and those were the first face routes that had ever been done on Himalayan routes. And so Don came back again, and we modified those again so that they could be uh carried up by the porters onto up the um up the ice fall and into the uh uh western comb of Everest and placed into lots of precarious positions. They could be dug out and the box would stand up to the wind, but it was as in Patagonia, but it would also um um also not be crushed by falling snow, whereas a wedge shape, typically a wedge-shaped tent is uh uh would not only not stand up to the to the um wind, but if placed in such a steep uh snow wall or position, the uh loose snow coming down, which we call spindrift, would simply crush the tent. And so these box tents um uh solve that problem. And uh they became very famous because Bonington's um books, both on Annaprener and Everest, were published uh around the world uh in five languages: English, uh French, German, Italian, um, Korean and Japanese. And so the pictures of these of my women's boxes were around the world. So my brand name became dramatically visible because my brand name was on the side of the tent. It wasn't a strategy that we're going that way, it was a can-do. Yes, we would love to be involved in helping to solve that problem.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Well, I know your your research with George Mallory's 1924 Everest clothing was fascinating. So talk about what surprised you most about what climbers were wearing nearly a century ago.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah. There was an interesting start. Um my involvement and collaboration with uh Professor Mary Rose at Lancaster University began by uh a call from her out of the blue. I didn't know her at that time. And um she was a textile historian and wanted to branch away from the comparisons between productivity uh and machinery and so on, between UK and USA textiles. And because she was an outdoor person, she wanted to have a look at uh uh the history of clothing and so on. So she pulled me into that. And in doing so, she made a quotation to say that George Bernard Shaw, the Irish writer and poet had described the 1924 Everesters as dressed for a picnic in Connemara, that's a place in the west coast of Ireland, and surprised by a snowstorm. And I said to her at the time, well, I don't think that's correct, but I don't have any direct evidence because I just don't know the history exactly, and I don't know that anybody does know the history of what they were really using. It's something of a myth. However, my response to her created a realize in her mind that I had a different thought pattern than other people she had spoken to, and we started to engage in and wrote books. As we were writing a book, we became involved with an organization in the UK and close to us called the Mountain Heritage Trust. And after George Mallory's body was found on Everest in 1999, um the some of his clothing and his boots were taken from his body. There was a certain amount of controversy, controversy over that, and sent back to the Maritime Heritage Trust, to which we were uh involved with and working with. And they put a very small display on as Tony Blair, the Prime Minister Tony Blair at the time was opening the exhibition, and for that quick display, they just showed one of the two very small pieces showing a label proving that it was Georgie Mowley. And I said, uh, is there anything else? Anything else? Is this all there is for anything else? Oh no, they said there's two boxes there. So the day after I went there and uh unscrewed the boxes and uh found all the layers, uh the uh layers of fabric um interleaved with tissue, but the original blood was still on the layers. So I thought, hmm, hmm. This is this is very sad. Um I mean I don't mean emotionally sad because the guy had been dead for an awful long time. I meant sad in terms of uh not wishing to leave it there as a blood-caked relic. I just thought, hmm, something more should be done here. And so I called Professor Mary up and said, Do you happen to know anybody who is an expert in the reproduction or replication of ancient or disused or damaged textiles? And she said, as a matter of fact, I do. And so we ran a three-year project costing £25,000, involving five different universities, and we fully replicated all six of his layers. We didn't replicate the boots, but we researched the boots and weighed them and so on. Um and the replication was um good enough to be tested in the lab and tested on Everest. So we found somebody who took the garments up to 25,000 feet and he found them very comfortable. And but for the bad weather, he would have been confident to have summited in the garments. The uh laboratory tests at uh Loughborough uh gave them a good rating, they were similar to the rating of uh clothing for uh polar explorers. However, at this point, the missing layer, a key missing layer, there were six layers, the key missing layer was a down jacket, and uh that had been invented for the first time about a couple of years prior in 1922, but the others laughed at it, so it wasn't replicated and used in 24. Uh so you know we we showed that his garments were extremely good. The outer layer uh was made from Burberry Fabric, which is a company which is well known in the UK, and uh since the 19 uh 60s, they transferred into the fashion garments. But in this period from 1900 to 1920s or 30s, then Burberry outerwear was used by all the polar explorers and mountaineers and so on. And so this with these were extremely good fabrics, and so the research supported my simple gut feeling that there were a lot of good fabrics out there and that there will be something probably better than we thought.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Well, I know you've written extensively about keeping dry and staying warm. So, what are some of the things that people misunderstand about staying safe and comfortable in extreme weather?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Oh, oh, thank you. That's an interesting question. Uh I just completed um uh three days ago, I did a um a full-day uh course called Performance Layering, and this was um a course for outdoor professionals and uh margin leaders. And it's the the the the course uh I run with one other colleague uh is actually rated for CPD, continuous professional development. You know, uh people With qualifications, whether it's mountaineering or medical or whatever, are required to do uh regular training to keep themselves uh updated. And so the start of my talk then was uh okay, garments do not produce warmth. We do. And so the beginnings of my talk were about uh how the body works, and to keep ourselves warm, we have to eat and drink the right amount of liquid and the appropriate amount of calories and the right type of calories and so on. So that generates that's generates not only the heat, but it uh fills the muscles with uh the right thing to uh keep us going on the hills or during the day for anything, and so on. So after that, then we got people to explain, we got people to understand the there's only four different types of fabrics, so there's uh knitted, uh woven, braided, and non-woven, so we got people to understand what each of them do or don't do, yeah, what they're good at, um, and and so on, so that they can make a better selection, so they could get a better performance from their existing garments or to make a better or more appropriate next purchase.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Well, after working with climbers, expedition teams, manufacturers, and innovators all around the world, what separates someone who faces a difficult challenge versus someone who finds a way to overcome a difficult challenge?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Um well the first innovators were often creating things themselves or going along to some operation or so on to say, could you make this uh for me? Nowadays, this is now grown from like small workshop operations to uh uh the whole of the outdoor industry is a multi-billion dollar uh industry when you include uh footwear, running footwear, tents, uh uh sleeping bags, uh and so on. Yeah. And so um the problem nowadays is uh not availability, not having to solve the problems, but to understand more clearly uh what the governments do and don't do. And so I run a little uh talk called uh myths, marketing and misunderstandings uh because um the marketing people uh in garments nowadays don't necessarily uh are not necessarily terribly expert on how the fibers, the fibers, the textiles and everything works and how it's put together. You know, that essentially uh there's fiber choice, there's fabric choice, there's laminate choices and all sorts of things. So it's a quite a quite complex world of outdoor garments, and that world is changing now very rapidly. After many years of innovation, it's now changing rapidly again because of the requirements, uh some of the legal requirements in the EU for garments which are um repairable, recyclable, uh, all coming under the name or word of sustainability.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Well, you've traveled to 52 countries, climbing, skiing, cycling, and exploring. So talk about one particular adventure that changed the way that you see yourself and the world. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Um well, first of all, I was um I was a I started life as a bike runner and a uh and uh hill runner. And so the thoughts of climbing with some of these leading-edge people was a little bit scary, but gradually, step by step, I increased my skills and experiences. Um and a couple of interesting ones, uh the po uh during the uh whilst Poland was still under communist or Russian rule and Russian rule, uh the Polish climbers were particularly experienced in how to uh keep warm and dry in very difficult cold conditions. Um they didn't have much in the way of modern clothing layers, as we did already by that time, but they had traditional layers, but they succeeded because they were experienced and good at technique. Anyway, I agreed to supply the Polish leader Andrzej Zavara with equipment and some clothing uh for his expedition, indeed, the first winter expedition going to K2. So I agreed to accept his invitation, why don't you come along? And I go, uh right, okay. Um so I spent uh a month on the Bantora Glass Glasgow um minus 30, minus 35 degrees, um and learning how to deal with that. Uh sleeping in tents, carrying our tents, uh, with porches as well, of course, and so on. And uh I did hope that we when we got to base camp that we would I would be able to do some climbing, but uh time had run out, and one of the members uh was was uh diagnosed with a serious uh uh uh thing and had to be evacuated uh by uh a military aircraft and so on. So lots of lots of scary, lots of scary things. So yeah, just using the tools, using crampons, using axes and so on on a regular basis uh every day for a month, um then you know the the risk is the is of um uh uh hypothermia or uh getting frostbite and so on. So you have to learn how to not merely keep warm and dry, but you have to learn how to uh release all the sweat as you work during the day, then your clothes become very uh uh soaked with sweat, so you need to be able to uh get in your tent and know how to rotate your clothing, but how how do you then dry it off? Well, there's no strokes, there's no heating, so you have to have some system of uh keeping your socks uh rotating socks, so you put a pair of socks around your body uh during the day so it dries them out, and then you the your your damp ones you you change into those at the end of the day and put your damp ones uh uh in your sleeping bag and dries out. So there's all sorts of small techniques that help you survive, and then uh knowing how much to eat and drink and keep yourself well hydrated is uh quite a discipline. And I as we were coming back, I did um uh make a mistake, I got separated from the group and uh um took a wrong turning um as we came lower down and uh I had to bivy out on my own, uh having got lost, but uh I re recontacted the group uh in the in the morning because they were a little bit concerned as to where I got to. So and then I I had another experience which is interesting. Uh uh in um in Alaska, I was invited to um uh uh climb uh McKinley, now called usually Denali in Alaska. So we uh we used skis, we used telemark skis to uh ascend that, pulling polks and everything. And uh two of the members of our expedition were were foot armed ski instructors and extremely good. And so whilst most of us most of us except those two left our skis at 14,000 feet, um, these two carried their skis uh through to the summit at 20,000 plus, and they made the first telemarked ski descent of the face route from uh from 17,500 uh down to uh things. So I remember looking at uh his load and surrender, he's something like uh 35 kilos, like 60 pounds, and I said, Jeez, you're not going, you're not trying to ski down there with that load. Here, give me some of this, you know. So I uh I carried some of his load down a uh a steep route, but not the ski route. I was uh, you know, so yeah, lots of interesting experiences. And then I I was invited to go um uh dog sledding, which I uh in in in uh northern Europe in the polar areas, and I wasn't sure about dog sledding, but it was quite an amazing experience to to work with dogs. Um quite cold because you weren't working that hard because at times you were assisting the dogs, but you had to learn each dog by name, pair it up with its correct harness, uh, look after them, and as you stop for the day, you immediately had to take them out of the harness, uh, chain them down at minus 35 degrees, and you're thinking, cracking. Uh, then you had to feed them immediately, chain them out so that they won't uh they couldn't fight each other and so on. So, yeah, huge variety of experiences.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Well, the outdoor industry has changed dramatically over your career. So, what innovations do you believe have genuinely genuinely changed outdoor adventure? And what trends do you feel are more hype than substance?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Um the major I think I think the major problems that had to be solved were frostbite. Um the first 8,000 meter summit climb. There are 14 8,000 meter climbs in in the world. And the French mountaineers summited Anaperna in 1950, and that book sold a thousand copies, a million copies. Uh it was a very exciting story, but also horrific because the Leaf Slimer got crossbite and had several toes and many fingers removed. Many years later, I he became the mayor of Chamony in France. Many years later, I still remember shaking hands with him, and his handshake, of course, was rather distinct because he had only two fingers. Um and so creating footwear which uh prevented frostbite was uh a very long-term project. And initially, the footwear manufacturers were using leather and they were insulating the boots with felt and not realizing that once the boot becomes soaked soaked with water through the leather and into the felt, which is wool, although wool should be warm when it's full of water, it is not. So the whole boot then freezes, yeah, and so that's what happened. And so um the revolution on footwear was quite enormous and could be said as toll saving. As far as the pre future goes, then um the problems are not so much uh creating new products, although the industry does and still comes out with all sorts of marketing stories, which is sometimes quite mythological and so on. Um but it's about creating garments which are not carrying uh harmful chemicals or or not using harmful chemicals. So um so floral compounds uh have become known as forever chemicals because they don't disappear and dissipate, and the production of fluorinated compounds, so like PCFE, which is nonstick used on non-stick fry pans, um the manufacture of it is um has caused serious health uh problems, car uh and is has been accepted as carcinogenic. So all compounds, all those compounds have had to be eliminated from garments, which has caused a whole new uh rethink, yeah. And um also there's plenty of chemicals which are um very good performing, but when mixed together, then the resultant fabric is not recyclable. But for the future, for sustainability, uh fibers need to be able to be separated, and so there is a big change coming over the next five years, some of it driven for safety reasons, some of it driven for sustainability reasons, and the EU come upcoming EU legislation um which the US manufactur which the USA as a body would like to avoid, but can't do so because the USA is a very big market, will have to also correspond with those uh rules as well.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Um, I'm not directly involved uh nowadays with um uh garments uh uh design. Um the the the bigger mission is nowadays is that people don't really understand. Uh I don't think manufacturers are making a good job of explaining what's there, which is why I'm running uh the courses under the banner of Outdoor Gear Coach. And so people need to actually learn how to use that. Um well, quite good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Well, some people can keep up with everything that you're up to, they'll watch your contact info.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Big burden.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

So people can keep up with everything that you're up to, they'll add your contact info.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they they need to learn how to um interpret, both interpret the marketing terms used to be able to pick up a pick up a garment and understand what it does for them. Which many years ago in the Mallory area era, you could do so, but today there's such a lot of um amazing things all mixed together, uh, and also the skills have declined. So um teaching skills and understanding is uh uh a particular passion of mine which I'm following.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

Do you have a website?

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yes, it's called outdoor gearcoach uh.co.uk. And there's lots of interesting articles on there which are not only talking about uh modern gear, but I look right back at the very history of garments, which goes back probably about 40,000 years. First garments uh um were probably, according to the uh archaeologists, probably around 40,000 years, and those were the garments which enabled people from the warmer latitudes uh uh in uh Africa and uh Southern Europe to extend further and further and eventually make their way into uh North America via Alaska and so on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

All right, ladies and gentlemen. So to keep up with everything that Mike is up to, visit outdoorgearcoach.co.uk. Please be sure to follow Rate Review, share this episode to as many people as possible. Pick up Mike's memoir. Also, to keep up with all things living the dream, visit www.curveball337.com. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Mike, thank you for all that you do in the outdoor space, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.