At Kluane Mountaineering, a Tradition of Small-Batch Down Gear Lives On

Author

Amelia Arvesen

How the Edmonton, Alberta-based brand maintains a 50-year legacy of making expedition-grade down jackets and sleeping bags in a modern world

Published: 03-17-2026

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In 2012, Dylan Lynch was seeking out the best sleeping bag that could support his extreme winter camping habit. In this search, he came across an obscure hunting message board online that mentioned Kluane Mountaineering, a brand he had never heard of before. A quick internet probe revealed a shock—the company's headquarters were just down the road from where he lived in Edmonton, Alberta.

Back then, Kluane (pronounced Kloo-AH-nee and named after the national park in Canada) didn’t have an Instagram, didn’t have a website, and, Lynch discovered, didn’t even have a sign out front. Locals and insiders just knew where to look for the warmest duck down sleeping bags and alpine jackets, all made to order and by hand in the 1,400-square-foot basement shop on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, where winter temps can drop below negative 35 degrees Celsius.

Kluane had operated that way since about 1970, when two broke law students, John Faulkner and Jim Brown, started sewing gear for themselves, friends, and their small following of devoted customers. The company maintained its small and mighty identity when a woman named Betty Squires bought it in 1982 and ran it as a one-woman show. Not much inside the shop had changed when Lynch walked inside for the first time—and even now, more than a decade later, it still hasn’t.

Kluane HQ | Courtesy Kluane Mountaineering

Down Gear With Grit

At Kluane HQ, faded maps, black-and-white photographs, hand-painted signs, and posters curling at the edges cover the wood paneled walls. Bolts and rolls of fabric stick out from a wooden shelf. A taxidermy deer head mounted to the wall serves as a hat rack. A pair of wicker snowshoes sit above the vintage floral couch. Headless mannequins wear puffy jackets and vests.

“It is the coolest place in the world, very much like a time capsule of stuff you wouldn’t expect to be a thing still,” Lynch, 39, told Field Mag. “I told people 14 years ago...one day I’m going to run that shop.”

Dylan Lynch in Paris | Courtesy Kluane Mountaineering

Nevermind that at the time, Lynch didn’t care about clothes and had never touched a sewing machine. He worked as a photographer, but, in his early 30s, went back to university for a degree in clothing and textiles. He thought he’d move to Vancouver to work for Arc’teryx or Lululemon, all the while dreaming about spending his days off at Kluane Mountaineering.

Squires became a mentor to Lynch, and by the time she started planning to retire on her 65th birthday, Lynch was ready to take over. He bought the company in March 2024 (which also marked the brand’s first Instagram posts), and views himself as a steward of Kluane's past, present, and future.

The cover of a 1970 Kluane catalog | Courtesy Kluane Mountaineering

Kluane Mountaineering has the storied history and grit that a lot of brands starting out today wish they had. No high-budget marketing campaign can match the heft pulled by a historic feat, like how the first Canadian group to walk to the North Pole wore Kluane puffies and slept in Kluane sleeping bags. Kluane kit also kept the Edomontonian adventurer Hank Van Weelden warm during his winter 2016 attempt at cycling from the South Pole to the coast of Antarctica (he called it quits on Christmas day). “We’ve got a picture of him with his bike,” Lynch told us.

People reach out on a regular basis to donate archive-worthy jackets or share old photos of family members wearing Kluane gear. Say your dad happened to buy a down jacket in the ‘80s: Lynch can probably sift through the records and find the handwritten receipt from that order.

Barry Blanchard at 26,000 feet on the northeast flank of Everest with custom Kluane Mountaineering mittens, 1988. Original photo by Marc Francis Twight | Courtesy Kluane Mountaineering

Stewarding Kluane’s Future

Even if the office feels like a relic of the past, Lynch is making sure the brand doesn’t fade with time. By bringing Kluane into the 21st century, Lynch has seen growth in sales and awareness. But he is being extra careful not to abandon the brand’s ethos. He never wants the company to get so big that its operations can’t happen under one roof or that he can’t be part of the process.

To that end, Kluane still only offers the same three products it has for the past 56 years: a sleeping bag, an inner parka, and an outer parka (as an off-menu offering, you can get a vest by requesting an inner parka without the sleeves). If you want to place an order, you can’t just click “add to cart” on the website. You either have to walk into the store or reach out by email. Lynch will respond with photos of all the fabric they have in stock at that moment. Once you pick your length, fill, cuffs, colors, and more—you can get as wild as you want, like choosing different fabric for a jacket’s hood, pockets, body, collar, lining—and send your measurements, one of the employees (there are five full time, two part time) will sew your order from start to finish. Before a jacket is yours, you’ll just have to wait four to eight months, and drop an average of $950 USD.

Aside from being handmade, part of the delay comes from the fact that Kluane now takes wholesale orders. For the last two years, the company has sold through its entire allotment of 300 to 400 pieces during Paris Fashion Week Men's in January. You can now find Kluane gear in 14 retailers around the world, including the luxury menswear store Drake’s in London, and 45R and Bshop in Japan.

Photos courtesy Kluane Mountaineering

But under Lynch’s leadership, handcrafted, made-to-order, and small batch will contine to be the Kluane way. Sure, to save money he could order patches for 25 cents from China instead of sourcing them from a family-owned company in Canada. “But I can tell customers ‘This is from the Laven family. Here’s a picture of their French bulldog’—there’s a lot of value in that for me,” he said.

With the world getting more corporate and impersonal, it’s comforting to know that a place still exists where you can call and hear the doorbell ringing and sewing machines buzzing in the background—and talk to not only the owner of the company but also the very person who will be stitching the baffles of your next down jacket.

Looking for a Canadian adventure to go with your Canadian gear? How about following in the footsteps of our writers and rafting the Tatshenshini River or exploring Quebec's Chic-Choc Mountains?