Two alums are putting lessons learned at Tech to use in life and business, crafting high-quality, lightweight gear for their fellow long-distance backpackers.
Like most successful small businesses, Chicken Tramper Ultralight Gear began with a problem.
A few months before graduating from Michigan Tech with a mechanical engineering degree, Austin Gongos '18 was assembling his gear for a thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). The daunting trek stretches 2,650 miles along the highest portions of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges, from Campo, California, near the US/Mexico border to Monument 78 along the US/Canada border in Washington State.
Completing the PCT requires a unique mixture of ambition, stamina, and lightweight gear. Gongos's problem was his backpack. The one he had weighed over four pounds, an unnecessarily heavy load for an expedition on which every ounce would matter. The ultralight packs available—which weighed under two pounds—were too expensive and not made to last.
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
