1) Slow to Wick, Slow to Dry

Sweat during ascent, then the shirt clings to your body, and you feel a sudden chill when you stop, when the wind picks up, or when you settle in for the night. This is the most common challenge hikers face.

Wicking works through capillary action, sweat needs a path and enough surface area to evaporate. You can sweat more than 2L on a single hike, and once you sweat faster than the fabric can move and release that moisture, it saturates. That's rarely an issue on a dry, sunny day hike. But at higher elevations (every 1,000m climb means about a 6.5°C drop in temperature), in changing weather, or overnight, that wet fabric chills you fast. That's why fabric needs the right material and construction to keep up with your sweat.

Our approach: We design our fabric construction to make point-touch wicking contacts for capillary action, and on the surface side, it's designed to spread moisture to maximize the evaporation surface. So the fabric wicks and dries faster, and this wicking ability is built into the fabric construction itself, so it keeps performing wash after wash, trip after trip.

2) Odor Buildup

On multi-day trips, there's no laundry day, so whatever your base layer can't manage on day 1 compounds by day 3. Odor occurs as a result of bacteria buildup, and it happens on any fabric that stays damp against your skin for long enough.

Our approach: We approach this from two directions. One is drying fast, since bacteria need moisture to grow, so the less time your fabric stays damp, the less chance odor has to build up. The other is an anti-bacterial, anti-odor finish, applied to the fabric, that directly suppresses the growth of the bacteria responsible for sweat odor.

3) Fabric Wear

Ultralight, breathable natural fiber knits are sometimes also the most fragile. Long days under a loaded pack, or friction against rock or trees, can wear through them faster.

Our approach: Our lineup includes both a synthetic fabric series and a hybrid series. The hybrid series keeps the natural feel of fibers like ramie or merino, spiraled together with synthetic fiber, so it holds onto the comfort of natural material while gaining long-lasting sweat absorption and durability. Across both series, we also knit the fibers densely, creating a fabric surface that resists snagging, which increases overall strength and durability, all while keeping the end product ultralight.