Why Tea Summit Club Started With Alpha Direct
In April of last year I hiked the W Trek in Chilean Patagonia. This was the beginning of my ultralight gear obsession. Living in Vancouver Canada, I was always into backpacking/camping but this is the trip that started my ultralight obsession. However I was less concerned with the weight of the gear and more so its overall effectiveness. My fascination was with the fabrics, construction styles, materials used, packability, etc. You’ll never catch me on the mountain cold soaking my dinner to save a few extra grams…
During the research I kept running into the same recommendation, Alpha Direct mid layers. Ultralight, breathable, the best warm to weight ratio out there. The main issue was that every option I found was sold out.
So I decided to make them myself, no pattern making background, no manufacturing experience. I had convinced myself that I needed these midlayers for this trip which in hindsight actually feels true. I ordered some alpha 120, borrowed a sewing machine, and made a rough hoodie and a pair of leggings.
The Trip
Mountains create their own weather and Patagonia is no exception, they don't care about your plans. It turned out colder than I'd anticipated, and those rough, homemade prototypes ended up being one of the most important pieces of gear I packed.
Patagonia mornings brought really heavy dew, It felt as if a cloud had formed in my tent and was raining all morning. This was nothing like I had experienced before. Everything inside the tent was wet except the Alpha Direct. Its ability to stay dry was shocking in the moment, especially comparing it to the other gear that looked like it went for a swim. Knowing every morning that I will have a dry layer to put on was a massive morale boost. Something that I think can be the difference between a good trip and a bad one
Getting into camp after a long day of hiking, pulling on the Alpha Direct leggings, and sliding into my sleeping bag. That specific kind of fluffy warmth, dry and light. It’s hard to describe until you've felt it after a cold day on trail. It's about as comfortable as backcountry camping gets.
These moments are really where Tea Summit Club started. Not as a business plan, but as a piece of gear that worked exactly when I needed it to.
Why Alpha 90 First
My early prototypes were with Alpha 120, it's what got me through Patagonia. But as we built out the first real Tea Summit Club products, we landed on Alpha 90 instead. It's a more versatile weight, still warm enough to matter on cold nights, but breathable enough to wear through a wider range of conditions and activity levels. I found myself taking off the 120 hoodie soon after we got moving because of how warm it was. For a first product line, versatility mattered more than pushing warmth to the max.
Where We're Headed
Tea Summit Club is starting with Alpha Direct because that's the first gear that proved itself to me in the conditions that mattered most. But the goal isn't to be an Alpha Direct company, it's to build thoughtful, purpose driven gear for backpacking and camping more broadly, starting with the layer that changed how I thought about comfort on trail, and expanding from there.
If you've ever had a piece of gear quietly become the thing you can't imagine your trip without, you already know why we started here.
