Forrest Mountaineering Catalog 1983

A personal Forrest story:

In 1993 I worked for a small outdoor gear shop in Colorado Springs that also had an outlet in Denver. One day while rummaging around in the warehouse I discovered a treasure.

In a few dusty boxes marked “FM stuff” were hundreds of catalogs,  a bunch of hand carved wooden signs, dozens of stickers, brochures, pens, and other items from the old Forrest Mountaineering store in Denver. I seems my shop had moved into the Platte street location after Forrest closed up and had inherited anything they had left. I was intrigued but at the time (I was 21 or 22) I had little real understanding of the interesting history of what I had found. What I was most interested in were the fifty pound boxes of Lost Arrow pitons! There must have been 300 pitons of various sizes in those boxes. It seems Forrest Mountaineering, and later my shop, used them for displays and hanging merchandise. We pounded them directly into the wall.

Thinking back on it now I always kick myself for not immediately acquiring all that stuff and preserving it somehow. But, it was not to be. I had no way to keep it and little reason to suspect that I should have bothered with it. I am almost certain all the boxes were eventually tossed out. The shop was sold after the original owners decided to retire and the new owners and staff eventually closed it for good a few years later.

One interesting note: Many young broke Colorado Springs climbers in the early 90’s started their bigwall rack with display pitons from that store!