Rab Newsletter
Sign up today and get the latest updates directly to your inbox
Rab® Heritage
The Rab brand is renowned for producing outstanding quality clothing and sleeping bags, suitable for extreme cold environments and high altitude mountaineering.
When Rab Carrington started making sleeping bags in Patagonia over 30 years ago, he did so to pass time and earn a few bob while he was waiting for customs to release his climbing kit. A talented climber, Rab spent much of the 1970s on ground breaking expeditions around the world and in doing so gained the best education possible to understand what climbers needed from their kit.
In 1968 in the Dolomites when everybody else was climbing in mountaineering boots, Rab used rock boots on routes such as the Phillip-Flamm and the Tre Cime.
It is this approach to climbing that enabled Rab to design performance sleeping bags and down clothing. By first deciding what functions the gear needed to achieve and then designing for that purpose.
He combined his knowledge of the mountains with the skills he had learnt in South America and set up shop at home in Sheffield, UK. Rab made kit for climbers, by climbers and in the mid 1980s he became the first manufacturer in the world to use Pertex® in the production of sleeping bags and down jackets.
His legacy continues with us, a group of people dedicated to making products for the most extreme conditions in the world. Our passion for the outdoors, our long standing partnerships with performance material suppliers and Rab’s pioneering ethos have allowed us to continue to push these limits.
The original ethos of Rab remains core to current product development; a strong focus on using functional designs and high quality fabrics to produce premium gear for mountaineering and polar travel.
