Summit Series at 25: The North Face Athletes on the Line's Real Life Impact

Climber Mark Synnott, who's been on the TNF team since 1997—prior to Summit Series' launch—is one of them. "The TNF gear and clothing we were using were all precursors to the Summit Series—and just as good, but the official launch of Summit Series really set the tone for what was possible for exploration with the best gear out there," he tells me.

In 2000, the same year Summit Series launched, Synnott undertook an expedition to Jannu, a 25,300-foot peak in Nepal. They brought along new metallic grey jackets with a ripstop pattern on them and synthetic insulation inside instead of down—early prototypes of what would become The North Face's Redpoint jacket. "I had been advocating for some time for a synthetic coat that was about the thickness where you could wear it as outerwear if it wasn’t too cold, but could turn into a mid-layer if it was super freezing," Synnott says. "We helicoptered from Kathmandu to Ghunsa, which is at around 10,000 feet. I put the coat on in the helicopter and I never took it off until the end of the expedition."

Now, synthetic puffy jackets are commonplace. And Synnott still has his Redpoint hanging in the closet.

Courtesy The North Face

The unique collaboration between product designers and high-level athletes produced other impactful pieces, too. Pro skier Ingrid Backstrom recalls how The North Face athletes pushed for women's-specific bibs. "For a long time, nobody thought that women wanted bibs for skiing," she says. Working with designers, they helped create new bibs that allowed for freer movement and the ability to go to the bathroom without needing to take off a jacket.

Some pieces of gear that have come through the Summit Series pipeline were one-offs, made specifically for particular expeditions. One such item was a three-person porta-ledge used by Renan Ozturk, Conrad Anker, and Jimmy Chin during their second attempt to climb the Shark's Fin on Meru, a 21,850-foot peak in the Indian Himalaya, which was documented in the 2015 film Meru.

"On the first expedition, we thought we could have three people in a two-person ledge and have the third person sleep below in a hammock," says Ozturk. "That didn’t work. It was way too cold below, so we had a custom three-person ledge built, which was a legendary effort by Conrad and the whole TNF team that made the difference."

Another notable prototype was the tent Synnott and teammates Jared Ogden and Kevin Thaw brought with them to Jannu, the North Face's first single-wall model. "It was made from a waterproof breathable membrane, which kept the snow and wind out, but breathed enough that the inside didn’t get completely covered in frost like many single-wall tents tend to do," says Synnott. According to him, it served as the basis for TNF's Assault series of tents, which is still in production today.

Other expeditions simply served as proving grounds for the work that The North Face's product team does. On a 2005 ski expedition to Baffin Island, off the Canadian mainland's northern coast in the Nunavut territory, Backstrom says that reliable gear was crucial for survival. "I remember waking up and it was sunny and in the morning in our tent it was -9° or something. That was the warmest that it got." Summit Series tents and Himalayan Parkas helped them fend off the elements, and putting butter on all their food helped them get enough calories.

In 2014, Ozturk and a team led by the late Hillaree Nelson set out on an expedition in Myanmar to summit an unclimbed peak and determine if it was the highest point in Southeast Asia. The approach involved miles of jungle trekking, in addition to the typical high-altitude fare. "The hard shells on this trip were put through so much abuse, going through the humid, wet zones as well as the high, cold, icy zones," he says.

Backstrom says that no matter where an expedition team is heading, the outfitting process is a highly collaborative one, with the product team and athletes working together to make sure gear contributes to a trip's success. "The North Face has a really good job of linking us with the actual product people. We go on trips with them. We meet them and we go camping and skiing and with them. So you get to really know and trust them," she says.

Courtesy The North Face

That collaboration between the innovation team inside TNF and a group of people committed to exploring the most extreme edges of the globe is what's kept Summit Series going for 25 years, and what makes the program unique, even within the outdoor industry.

"Being able to contribute to the evolution of Summit Series is really a one-of-a-kind thing that opens up both sides of the brain when dreaming up objectives. It takes it way beyond just the physical act of exploring," says Ozturk, "allowing you to wish for certain things in your gear and actually see that feedback utilized in the design process."