In 1969, Seattle engineer and lifelong mountaineer Larry Penberthy formed Mountain Safety Research as a one-man crusade dedicated to improving the safety of climbing equipment. The fuel behind Larry's passionate fire was a simple belief that still drives our team today:
The idea that better, safer, more reliable equipment is the key to unlocking greater adventures.
From that notion evolved a pioneering outdoor company whose innovations have revolutionized the way people experience the outdoors worldwide. Today, we're a close-knit team still obsessed with designing the most reliable, high-performance gear possible, using our knowledge of engineering and science to find better solutions to the challenges of the mountains.
At MSR, we are engineers, tinkerers and passionate outdoor users–each with strong perspectives on how a product should work based on our own experiences in the wild places we love. But collectively, we believe that innovative solutions are bred by challenging convention, and that functionality, simplicity and reliability are the governing elements of enduring design.
Today, many MSR products are still hand-built on manufacturing lines just a floor below where we concept them.
And we're still driven to engineer gear for those who believe a trusted companion can be as simple as a 20-year-old stove that burns strong on family backpacking trips, to a water filter that provides the safe hydration needed to fuel the greatest expeditions into the farthest reaches of the globe.
Committed to Keeping Timeless Gear Alive
MSR’s founder, Larry Penberthy, wasn’t just a tech-minded engineer, he was also a passionate outdoorsman. He knew that having respect for the outdoors was one of the best ways to preserve these precious wild places. To him, this meant building his gear to last as long as possible, so that excess resources needn’t be used up to replace it. That dedication to conservation is still alive today.
Manufacturing and Social Responsibility
MSR strives to leave an increasingly positive handprint on the world in which we create and use our outdoor products, and our Manufacturing and Social Responsibility Report outlines our responsible actions to date and path for the future. We are committed to minimizing the social and environmental impacts of our products, suppliers and operations through better materials, safer chemicals and smarter packaging.
MSR is a founding member of the Outdoor Industry Association Sustainability Working Group, a coalition of more than 300 outdoor brands, suppliers and manufacturers dedicated to addressing our most important sustainability challenges. This group launched the Higg Index, our industry’s first sustainability measurement tool. MSR is one of the first hard-good brands to voluntarily use the Higg Index to examine our practices in material traceability, chemical management, social responsibility and other core competencies.
