Samaya Is on a Mission to Reclaim Mountaineering's Soul With UL Gear

Building a Better Tent for the Alpine

Pipers was introduced to high mountains at an early age—he made his first trip to the Himalayas when he was nine, spending six months in Nepal and India while his parents worked traveling medical gigs. This childhood experience and the historic culture of mountaineering in the region would later influence Samaya, which means "a pause in time" in Nepalese. A secondary Buddhist interpretation views samaya as a self-engagement to elevate oneself spiritually and physically.

"I like that because I think the bivouac is really the meaning of time," Pipers said. "You are not making any sport or any activity—you're just making a pause."

Pipers began climbing competitively when he was 12. After earning a spot on the French National Climbing Team in the lead discipline, he spent seven years traveling all over Europe to compete. When he enrolled at ENSAIT he'd attend class in the morning and train in the afternoon. But after graduating at 22, Pipers decided to pursue design over a climbing career and in 2020 he released his first round of 500 Samaya2.5 tents.

“I didn't want to wake up at 35 years old and say, okay, I'm a great athlete, but I have nothing else. And climbing is not easy to leave," he said. "I wanted a new challenge and I wanted to work deeper but you cannot do both, I think. So you need to make a choice.”

With the Samaya2.5, Pipers sought to create a better tent for four-season use and bivouacking on high elevation mountainsides. The alpine tent world is full of older designs and was ready for new technologies. Black Diamond's Eldorado, for example, was originally made by Todd Bibler in the 1980s, and it's still sold today.

Pipers saw significant flaws in these older tents. The single-wall designs often used for high-altitude camps are lighter and more wind-resistant than double-wall options, but they struggle with condensation and gas permeability. Sleep in a poorly ventilated single-wall tent and CO2 builds up, which is particularly unpleasant at high altitude, where breathing is already difficult. Cook inside one and you risk carbon monoxide poisoning. Traditional bivouacking kits are also often somewhat heavy at an average around 22 pounds, and Pipers hoped to cut that in half.

To achieve those lofty goals, Pipers developed NanoVent, an electrospun membrane that allows for precise calibration of waterproofness, breathability, and air permeability. For tent walls—which face less pressure than floors—he optimized for breathability and air permeability while maintaining weather protection. The result, in the Samaya2.5, was a tent that breathed but was more waterproof than most other tents on the market.

Samaya uses Dyneema composite fabrics for its Ultra models, which are intended for very intentional, fast missions in the mountains. Lighter and more durable than Nanovent, the Dyneema fabric is biosourced, derived from wood waste from the forestry industry. Production happens in China but materials are shipped exclusively via train to reduce environmental impact. “We tried to produce in Europe but there was no way. There's one factory in the world that could produce this, and we're really close to them. We do a lot of R&D innovation together,” Pipers said.

Though Samaya began with four-season tents, deep ties to the French tradition of bivouacking drew it to making three-season models too. Bivouacking, a style of camping akin to what's often done during longer backpacking and bikepacking trips in America, involves setting up a temporary camp at night and dismantling it at sunrise, with an emphasis on Leave No Trace principles. For this reason, bivouac shelters are often small, lightweight tents, or a simple bivvy bag—a lightweight slipcover used by alpinists to protect their sleeping bags from the elements—under the stars.

"For me, the meaning behind bivouacking is to take a moment to just be alone or with friends and be close to nature, which is really important for me,” Pipers said. “Taking time in that environment really helps you reconnect to yourself and with your spirits."

Samaya has grown dramatically in the three-season tent category since launching them three years ago, indicating their prevalence in the bivouac, bikepack, and thru-hiking scenes. Their three-season tent sales are quickly catching up to their four-season tents. But Samaya is still best known as a mountaineering brand and is deeply tied to the big mountain culture of the Alps and the Himalayas.

"By Fair Means"

The Alps are the cultural focal point of European mountaineering and there’s no better gateway to them than Annecy. A small French city an hour and a half from Chamonix, Annecy provides the kind of instant access to alpine peaks, vertical faces, and glaciers that we can only dream of in the United States. For Pipers, growing up in Annecy didn't only foster a love for climbing, it cultivated a unique approach to big mountains that would later grow into Samaya's ethos.

At the core of that is Albert Frederick Mummery philosophy of climbing "by fair means." Mummery, an English mountaineer in the late 1800s who put up many first ascents in the Alps, practiced "romantic mountaineering,” a way of climbing that holds respect for the mountain and avoids using artificial aids that damage the rock. Mountaineering "by fair means" suggests that how something is accomplished matters as much as the accomplishment itself. The difference lies in what mountaineers refer to as "style"—or, how a climber navigates a space of freedom and self-imposed guidelines in the absence of formal rules.

Many of those rules were tossed out the window as peak bagging became more popular and accessible, not to mention lucrative. Since the 1990s, a more capitalist form of mountaineering has held sway, and nowhere more obviously than on the world's 8,000-meter peaks. Referred to as siege style, this is often the approach of modern mountaineering, where multiple stocked camps, fixed ropes, porters, supplemental oxygen, and a large safety net are deployed to bolster the chance of a summit. Siege style is more comfortable and has higher success rates, but requires greater resources and leads to environmental degradation through human and material waste. Maybe you've read the headlines about all the trash on Everest.

Though siege style mountaineering currently dominates on the world’s most prominent peaks, Pipers isn’t interested in creating gear for those types of expeditions. He’d rather work with self-supported climbers and argues that less-experienced climbers might have richer experiences on 6,000-meter peaks, where their abilities are better matched and there aren't queues other climbers leading up to the summit. Strong climbers can put their skills to the test on 6,000-meter peaks, too—Samaya athlete Nick Russell’s recent splitboard descent of Papsura, a 21,100ft leviathan in northern India, is a prime example.

“I don’t say that we should not go to 8,000-meter peaks," Pipers said. "I say that only people that can go there should go there. And people who do not have the skills or the experience, just find another peak that is doable for you.”

Samaya athlete Kílian Jornet also noticed the problems with modern mountaineering after his Everest expedition, writing on his blog, "The consequences of such a massive gathering of climbers became evident when I witnessed the accumulation of waste and human waste in the moraine around the base camp. This pollution not only affects the immediate surroundings but also seeps into the rivers, ultimately impacting the valleys that are fed by the glacier."

Pipers and Samaya athletes practice alpine style climbing. It's a romantic notion emphasizing a fast, light, self-sufficient method where climbers carry all their gear, food, and shelter. Alpine style and "by fair means" have always been associated with a smaller impact on the mountain, but in modern times they're strongly linked to environmental protection too.

"Destroying the mountain to make the summit possible is not my vision of mountaineering," Pipers said.

The Samaya High Camp

To create the highest level tents for alpine style missions, Pipers needed an innovation lab comparable to what larger brands like Arc'teryx or Salomon use, so he established Samaya High Camp. Part of their Annecy headquarters, the High Camp is a design center with an impressive array of scientific machinery that pushes the limits of their materials and designs. There's a 20-square-meter cold chamber reaching -30°C where testers sleep in tents surrounded by sensors and a homemade wind machine that generates 60-mile-per-hour gusts. Artificial rain tests for leaks, and textile equipment measures tensile strength, abrasion, and UV degradation.

There’s a reason other alpine brands like Salomon have their design center in Annecy, too. The small city offers unparalleled access to the Alps, a real-world testing ground that's critical to the R&D process.

“We can just take a lift in Chamonix and we are on an almost 4,000 meter peak and we can just sleep there and really live the same conditions as an expedition,” Pipers said. “So we have that environment to help us to design products that are really cutting edge.”

Lab testing can only go so far though, which is where Pipers’ climbing connections and professional athletes come in. Samaya’s access to Chamonix is ideal for R&D when products are ready to leave the Samaya High Camp, but it's the day-after-day use by athletes who bring Samaya gear on their own projects in mountains around the world that proves their trailblazing design. Colin Haley, a Seattle-based fast and light alpinist best known for his traverses of the Torres in Patagonia, is part of the Samaya family. Kílian Jornet, one of the most famous alpinists in the world, ran up Everest twice in a week while camping in a Samaya tent. The aforementioned Nick Russell, a Patagonia athlete, used Samaya tents on his Papsura mission too.

With their focus on the scientific process and innovation, it's no surprise that Pipers draws inspiration from Arc'teryx. "When Arc'teryx put the first jacket at $900 thirty years ago, that was a big push and I think that’s what we’re doing with our tents," he said. “When we launched at €1,000, everyone said a tent shouldn't cost that much…Now we sell them at €2,000 to €3,000. That's the only way to bring new things to market because the materials are so expensive."

These days, however, Samaya might be more akin to Patagonia than Arc'teryx. Innovation is crucial, but so is the philosophy guiding why a product gets made at all. Today, Arc’teryx seems equally focused on cladding the Seattle tech bro but Samaya's intention has held firm since the beginning. The designs and fabrics might be technologically advanced, but their fundamental purpose is still to help people pursue alpine-style missions in harmony with the mountains.

Are Samaya Tents Worth the Price?

For those with the budget, the ability to purchase the most innovative products is reason enough to support Samaya. There are long-established alpine tents on the market with serious followings, like the Black Diamond FirstLight and Eldorado, and the Mountain Hardwear Trango 2, but the majority of these brands still use dated fabrics and designs. The First Light is actually lighter than many NanoVent Samaya tents but the fabric isn’t waterproof.

"If you want to save a kilogram, you choose Samaya 2.0," Pipers said. "If you want to save $400, you choose Black Diamond."

It’s the smaller brands like Samaya, Tarptent, and Locus Gear who are making four-season tents that use the newest fabrics and save the most weight. Of these smaller brands, Samaya has the strongest alpine background key to creating a high-performance, ultralight mountaineering tent.

Prices and product specs are only one part of the consideration though. Like everything with Samaya, it’s really a question of philosophy. Alpine versus siege, romantic versus capitalist, innovation versus market safety and shareholder profits.

"We make products to connect to nature," Pipers said. "There's no sense in making bad products." It's gear designed to enable alpine-style ascents—self-sufficient, low-impact, focused on the experience rather than the trophy. By fair means, to borrow Mummery's iconic phrase. In Pipers' view, that's the only means that should really matter.