Marmot

Marmot is an outdoor clothing and sporting goods company founded in 1974 as Marmot Mountain Works. The company was founded in Grand Junction, Colorado by local resident Tom Boyce and by two University of California, Santa Cruz students, David Huntley and Eric Reynolds, who wished to make their own mountaineering equipment. Tom Boyce had secured an order for the climbing apparel used to make the movie Eiger Sanction starring Clint Eastwood. Huntley made the original prototype gear that Boyce was using on the Wolper Productions/ National Geographic documentary Journey to the Outer Limits, about the Colorado Outward Bound School. It was during this documentary production that cameraman Mike Hoover, who later worked on the Eiger Sanction, saw the equipment that Tom was using during the portion filmed in Peru. Just prior to Christmas 1973 Mike Hover called Boyce and placed the order that led to the formation of the company in Grand Junction. In 1976, another meeting would change the future of Marmot when Reynolds met Joe Tanner of W.L. Gore & Associates. Within a couple weeks Marmot had sewn prototype sleeping bags using the then-new Gore-Tex fabric for field testing.