20 years of freshies sgb weekly features bca

20 Years of Freshies! SGB Weekly features BCA

May 21, 2015

Backcountry Access Reflects on 20th Season: Backcountry market shows signs of maturing as industry leader ticks over two decades. Article by Sporting Goods Business.

In their May 2015 issue, Sporting Goods Business has recognized BCA for being at the forefront of the snow safety industry. Check out the story from SGB managing editor Aaron Bible.

Backcountry Access Reflects on 20th Season: Backcountry market shows signs of maturing as industry leader ticks over two decades.

Bob Wade opened the Ute Mountaineer in Aspen, CO, in April of 1977 and was one of Backcountry Access (BCA) first dealers. The shop has been backcountry focused since the beginning, helping a fledgling touring market grow in the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond. Regarding the backcountry trend that has been infusing the flat winter sports market for a half dozen years now, Wade said, Was on the front side of it.

We're growing every year in avy airbags and safety equipment, said Wade, explaining that even if the ski/boot/binding market is showing signs of maturity, there's still lots of growth left both among current backcountry consumers and those converting into lighter weight gear from alpine skiing or as uphill exercise skiers. When it comes to those backcountry accessories, no one has been on the cutting edge of the market, riding its growth wave for the last 20 years while also heavily infusing innovation into the marketplace, more than Boulder, Colorados BCA.

BCA was born Memorial Day weekend in 1994 when Bruce Edge Edgerly and Bruce Bruno McGowan got down to business that following Tuesday out of Bruno's condo in Boulder. Like most great outdoor-brand stories begin, the two were paddling and skiing buddies, looking for better, safer ways to push their adventures to new heights.

Both of us were very frustrated at the time, I was on tele gear, and you really had to take a step back on that stuff, tone down the performance level said Edge. In the extreme skiing movement, we saw a whole new style of skiing that was really turning us on. It was high-performance skiing in semi-dangerous terrain.

The BCA team worked the next two decades developed better, more affordable bindings, beacons, probes, airbags, and shoveling techniques with a focus on avalanche safety education.

What BCA did as a company was to build products to improve the experience of newcomers to the backcountry scene. The Alpine Trekker allowed alpine skiers to earn their turns without having to buy a new binding and boots, just an adapter and a pair of climbing skins, said Couloir magazine founder and backcountry industry stalwart, Craig Dostie. In a similar way, the Tracker DTS allowed newbies to be able to search proficiently, without much practice, for buried (practice) beacons. This has continued to be a company philosophy, aiming not at the professional, experienced skier, but at novices. This has helped fuel growth in backcountry participation by raising the bar of performance while lowering the bar to the entrance.