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Backpacking Light
Backpacking Light ("BPL") is the primary operating name of the Beartooth Media Group, Inc., based in Bozeman, MT.
Backpacking Light's Mission is to promote multi-day, backcountry travel in a self-sufficient ("backpackable"), lightweight style.
BPL engages in the following activities:
- Media publishing. BPL publishes the website backpackinglight.com, the book division Beartooth Mountain Press, and formerly, the print magazine "Backpacking Light".
- Community Membership. BPL offers an online membership program that gives subscribers access to restricted content, similar to a magazine subscription, and a cooperative-style discount program that provides members with discounted pricing on gear and apparel sold in BPL's online gear shop, and education courses.
- Education School. BPL operates the Wilderness Trekking School, a skills-based outdoor school with expedition-style courses in lightweight trekking, long distance hiking, packrafting, and snow travel, and short courses on a variety of topics of interest to the lightweight backpacker. The school is based out of a remote mountain retreat center in the Gallatin Mountains of Montana, and courses travel primarily through designated Wilderness areas of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming (predominantly: the Lee Metcalf, Absaroka-Beartooth, Teton, and Washakie Wilderness Areas).
- Specialty Retail. BPL provides a variety of both house-branded and third-party outdoor gear and apparel through catalog and internet mail order via the backpackinglight.com website.
- Manufactured Brands & OEM. BPL manufacturers and sources its own brands of gear and apparel, but its scope is generally limited to serving its core user and membership base, focusing almost exclusively on products targeted at ultralight and lightweight backpacking.
BPL was founded as a publication in 2001 by Ryan Jordan and Alan Dixon, and as a corporation in 2003 by Ryan and Stephanie Jordan. Ryan Jordan remains as the company's President and CEO.
