A $3.50 Ice Axe and the Storefronts It Beat In 1934, a University of Washington-trained electrical engineer named Lloyd Anderson went shopping in Seattle for a new ice axe and came away unimpressed by what the going retail price bought him. The Outdoor Store, then the city's main supplier of mountaineering gear, wanted …

A Figure at the Edge of the Frame The composition recurs across half a century of REI catalog covers: a wide-angle landscape frame, sky and ridge occupying the majority of the image, and somewhere in the lower third — or pushed to the edge entirely — a single figure. A climber reduced to a bright point against a …

Same City, Same Gear, Two Voices Two outdoor outfitters were founded in Seattle within eighteen years of each other. Both sold serious gear to serious users. Both built their early businesses substantially through the mail. And yet a customer reading an Eddie Bauer catalog and an REI catalog side by side would hear two …