That's an easy one! Shim'Tar, my 5yr old Swiss Shepherd, is by my side nearly all day and all night, every day -- rain or shine, work or play. She reminds me every day that we have to carve out time for some fun and keep a positive outlook. Bonus is that she's probably my best sales rep:)

I spent 13yrs at Black Diamond Equipment. I started in 2002 in the Mail Order department. From there I worked my way through the organization via various roles in Sales, Marketing, Quality Assurance and eventually into Product Development. In my final role at BD I spent 3yrs in China building a Development Engineering Department. It was a long, exciting journey where I had the forture to work with numerous departments and teams. And that wealth of experience set me up nicely to branch out and start my own business.

One of those moments was on a rock climb called Outer Space in Leavenworth, WA back in 1991. My climbing partner and I were new to longer, multi-pitch routes. We misjudged our timing and ended up stranded on the wall after nightfall. We spent hours using the spark of a fueless lighter (yep, no headlamps) to build anchors to rappel back to the valley floor. On one rappel in particular, I was so concerned about leaving an expensive cam device (I was a dead broke college student at the time) that I opted to remove it as the second anchor point and use only a 1/2" sling around a nub of granite nearly the same size to rappel into the darkness. It's not uncommon to rappel off of larger rock features. But this one was really really small. I survived. But, man, I think about that rappel anchor choice as one of the things I would NEVER do again.