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I too was extremely lucky to visit the Ventura headquarters on a random trip to the area several years ago. I was going to get a "surf lesson" from Chipper (who I was half-jokingly told was the highest paid receptionist in the world) but he needed to reschedule. By happenstance, Yvon was there and he was going to hand forge a piton in the old tin shed ... the piton would be auctioned off (for the AAC I believe). Chipper said, "I can't surf right now but you can go watch Yvon make a piton if you want ... oh here is Yvon right now ... Yvon, meet (my name), (my name), meet Yvon." So I turn and there he is. He's tiny, he smiles, we shake hands quickly, and he's out the door. I'm like, hell yeah ... I want to watch him make a Piton. Chipper quickly walks me over to the tin shed, opens the door and shoves me into the standing room only shed filled with Patagonia employees who look at me like "who is this interloper?" for a split second before returning their attention to Yvon, who has started doing his thing. Over the next 30 minutes Yvon narrated as he took a piece of iron, heated it, hammered it, forged it, bent it, ground it with the original metal working machines (all older than me). It was as if nothing in the tin shed had changed in decades ... nothing had been cleaned or moved. It was exactly as it had been. And Yvon busted out a perfect Angle piton as expertly as if it was 1960-something. A bit of Tin Shed action can be seen in the awesome movie Mountain of Storms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympydy7f1Mg I look back on it now 12 years later as if it was a dream ... but no, I was there. Like the author of the article, I am a 90's guy who found my callings via the Patagonia catalog (I still have my 1st one, Spring 1992). I moved from Kentucky to the mountain west after high school and over the years became a climber, ww kayaker, skier, surfer, mtb'er, etc ... just like Yvon, but never to his level ... dude was an athletic badass before his time. He's also in reality an avant-garde political, social, business and environmental badass well beyond our current understandings IMO. I feel very lucky to have met him and watched him make that piton. |
As it turns out, I had stood next to Yvon in the cafeteria without realizing it. Chipper told him about me but this was November 2018 and there were huge nearby wildfires. Yvon said he had to help his community.
Chipper also took me to the tin shed and for the rest of my visit people treated my visiting it as a sign of honor so I took it that way. Since visiting it, I've noticed the phrase "tin shed" in a lot of their literature and now I know why.
Incidentally, I buy clothes almost only from thrift shops, which means no Patagonia. Their stuff doesn't make it to second-hand, which I conclude is a mix of their fixing policies and quality of manufacture.