From an Underserved Market to an Industry Standard: The Mountain Ridge Gear Story

Mountain Ridge Gear didn't start as an equine company.

When we founded the company in 2009, much of our business centered around everyday-carry gear, military-style backpacks, duffels, and other heavy-duty sewn products. Those early years taught us a great deal about materials, construction, durability, and what it takes to build equipment that can stand up to hard use.

By 2015, however, we made a major decision: Mountain Ridge Gear would refocus on the equine market.

That decision eventually put us on a path we never could have fully anticipated—and helped change what people expected from equipment made specifically for donkeys.

An Underserved Animal

When I began seriously looking at donkey packing equipment around 2015 and 2016, I was surprised by how few good options existed.

There were pack saddles being sold for donkeys, but some were essentially small pony saddles being marketed for donkey use. The accompanying rigging was often equally basic. Breast collars and breeching might be made from simple cotton webbing. Leather components were often plain, unfinished vegetable-tanned leather. Adjustment commonly relied on Conway buckles, which worked but weren't particularly convenient for someone regularly fitting and adjusting equipment.

More importantly, I didn't see much evidence that the equipment had been designed by starting with a simple question:

What does a donkey actually need?

At the time, donkeys were still frequently treated as something of an afterthought in the equine world. Equipment was often scaled down or adapted from gear intended for horses and ponies rather than designed specifically around a donkey's conformation and needs.

I thought they deserved better.

Building a Pack Saddle Specifically for Donkeys

In 2016, I partnered with a good friend with more than 30 years of mule-packing experience who is also an outstanding craftsman. Together, we developed what became our 18-inch donkey pack saddle.

The goal wasn't to build an inexpensive recreational saddle or simply shrink an existing horse saddle.

We wanted a serious working pack saddle designed around a donkey—something suitable for an animal that might be used regularly on the trail, in the backcountry, at events, or anywhere dependable equipment and animal comfort mattered.

We paired the saddle with BioThane® breast collars and breeching rather than the basic cotton and unfinished leather rigging commonly available at the time. To the best of my knowledge, Mountain Ridge Gear was the first company to offer a dedicated donkey pack saddle system using BioThane breast collars and breeching.

That was only the beginning.

Setting a Standard Without Realizing It

Looking back, one of the most interesting parts of our story is that we weren't trying to set an industry standard. We were simply trying to build better equipment for donkeys.

We were doing things we weren't seeing elsewhere in the donkey equipment market. We incorporated BioThane breeching and breast collars into a complete donkey packing system. We focused specifically on donkey conformation rather than simply adapting equipment designed for ponies. As we learned more, we continued developing better cinches, pads, rigging, and saddle designs around the needs of the animal.

At the time, I wasn't thinking about whether Mountain Ridge Gear was changing an industry. I was thinking about the donkey standing in front of me and asking:

How can we make this work better for this animal?

That question has driven a lot of our innovation.

Over time, something interesting happened. Features and ideas that were unusual when we introduced them began showing up elsewhere in the donkey equipment market. Customers also began comparing other products to ours.

Without really setting out to do it, Mountain Ridge Gear had helped raise expectations for what dedicated donkey equipment should look like and how it should perform.

That's what I believe an industry standard should be. It isn't something a company gets to declare about itself. It's something you earn when customers begin expecting from the rest of the market the things you helped introduce.

We take considerable pride in having helped move donkey equipment forward, but we aren't interested in standing still.

The same question that drove us in 2016 still drives us today:

How can we make it better for the animal?

Never Stop Improving

As more people began using our saddles, we kept learning.

I studied how saddles sat on different donkeys. We looked at placement, bar contact, cinch position, breast collars, breeching, padding, heat, moisture, body condition, and the differences between minis, standard donkeys, mammoths, mules, horses, and ponies.

And we kept changing the equipment.

That philosophy has become a fundamental part of Mountain Ridge Gear: a product is never finished simply because we're successfully selling it.

If we find a better material, we test it. If we see a recurring problem, we look for a solution. If something can be made stronger, easier to use, or more comfortable for the animal, we ask whether we can improve it.

Over the years, that approach expanded well beyond the saddle itself.

We developed cinches specifically with equine comfort in mind. We spent years searching for materials that could improve airflow under pads rather than simply adding more felt or padding. That work eventually contributed to the development of our TrailBreeze and ComfortStride® pad systems, designed to help heat and moisture escape while maintaining protection where the animal needs it.

We've continued improving our traditional sawbuck saddles and rigging while also developing an entirely different approach to saddle fit through the ComfortStride® Adjustable Pack Saddle.

More Than 2,000 Donkeys Later

Since entering the donkey pack-saddle market, Mountain Ridge Gear has outfitted more than 2,000 donkeys.

What is especially interesting is how diverse those animals—and their owners—have become.

We've built equipment for serious backcountry packers and hunters. We've outfitted pack burro racers. We've watched the beverage burro industry grow from an unusual idea into thriving businesses serving weddings, corporate events, restaurants, private parties, and other gatherings.

And we've helped plenty of people who aren't trying to race, hunt, pack into the wilderness, or operate a business at all.

They simply love their donkeys and are looking for another way to spend time with them.

Those different communities have taught us an enormous amount. A saddle used for miles in the backcountry presents different challenges than one used repeatedly at events. Racing exposes different issues. Miniature donkeys present different fitting challenges than mammoths. An overweight pasture donkey isn't shaped like a conditioned working animal.

All of that experience goes back into the equipment we build.

More Than Equipment

One of the things I'm most proud of at Mountain Ridge Gear isn't something we manufacture.

It's the time we spend helping people.

Each week, we spend countless hours on the phone answering questions that often go well beyond which saddle someone should buy.

Customers call us about properly setting up and positioning their saddle, adjusting breeching and breast collars, choosing and positioning cinches, determining saddle fit, and getting their particular donkey comfortable with new equipment.

But the conversations often go beyond equipment.

We talk about donkey behavior. We talk about training. We help new owners understand why their donkey may be reacting a certain way and how to introduce new equipment without turning it into a negative experience.

A great deal of what I've learned came from spending multiple years personally working with and training numerous wild donkeys.

Working with those animals taught me lessons I could never have learned simply by building saddles. You learn to pay attention to body language, pressure and release, trust, patience, and how quickly a donkey can associate an experience with either comfort or discomfort.

Those experiences have influenced the equipment we build, but they've also given me a tremendous amount of practical knowledge that I'm able to pass along to other donkey owners.

And we don't charge for that help.

We consider it part of what we do.

If you purchase equipment from Mountain Ridge Gear and have questions about setting it up, fitting it to your animal, or getting your donkey comfortable with the equipment, we want you to call us. We'd much rather spend time helping someone get it right than have a donkey uncomfortable because equipment was positioned or adjusted incorrectly.

That commitment isn't going away as Mountain Ridge Gear grows.

We'll continue answering the phone, sharing what we've learned, creating educational resources, and helping people become more knowledgeable and confident donkey owners.

Because ultimately, selling someone a good saddle is only part of the job. Helping them use it correctly is just as important.

Growing Beyond the United States

Another exciting change we've seen over the past year and a half is the increasing international reach of Mountain Ridge Gear.

We're shipping more saddles and pack equipment overseas, putting Mountain Ridge Gear equipment on animals far beyond the trails where we originally developed it.

Every international order is exciting because it means someone thousands of miles away found us, researched our equipment, and decided that what we're building in Colorado was worth bringing across an ocean.

To me, that's a strong indication that the Mountain Ridge Gear name—and our reputation for quality pack equipment—is beginning to travel well beyond the United States.

It's also a reminder that the need we recognized years ago wasn't uniquely American. Donkeys, mules, horses, and other pack animals are used around the world, and their owners face many of the same challenges with saddle fit, comfort, durability, and dependable equipment.

We're proud to see Mountain Ridge Gear becoming part of that international community.

And as our international business grows, we'll continue doing what helped us get here: building equipment for the animal first, listening to the people actually using it, and continually improving what we make.

There's something pretty special about walking into our shop in Colorado and seeing a saddle we've built getting boxed up for a donkey on the other side of the world.

Where Mountain Ridge Gear Fits in the Market Today

Today, Mountain Ridge Gear occupies a very different place in the donkey equipment market than we did in 2016.

We aren't trying to adapt horse equipment to fit a donkey.

Donkeys are one of the animals we design around.

Our equipment can now be found across the beverage burro community, pack burro racing, recreational donkey packing, backcountry packing, hunting, and among owners simply looking for quality equipment that allows them to do more with their animals.

In many of those areas, Mountain Ridge Gear equipment has become a standard against which other donkey pack equipment is compared.

That didn't happen because we declared ourselves an industry leader. It happened one saddle, one customer, one animal, and one improvement at a time.

More than 2,000 donkeys later, we've earned a tremendous amount of experience.

Now we're ready to apply it more broadly.

The Next Chapter: Mules, Horses and Ponies

Much of what we've learned from thousands of animals has led us to the next stage of Mountain Ridge Gear.

The ComfortStride® Adjustable Pack Saddle takes a different approach to one of the oldest challenges in packing:

Saddle fit.

Instead of requiring one fixed bar angle to fit every animal, the ComfortStride system uses pivoting bars that can conform to an individual animal's shape. Depending on the application, those bars can remain floating or be tightened into a fixed position once the desired fit is established.

That opens possibilities well beyond donkeys.

We're now applying the lessons we've learned to saddles for mules, horses, ponies, mammoth donkeys, standard donkeys, and miniature animals.

Our goal is ambitious.

We want Mountain Ridge Gear to become as respected for pack equipment across the broader equine industry as it has become within the donkey community.

But we're not starting from scratch.

We're bringing with us everything we've learned since 2009 about American manufacturing and building heavy-duty gear. We're bringing what we've learned since 2016 from outfitting thousands of donkeys. We're bringing years of material testing, saddle fitting, product development, customer feedback, and watching our equipment perform in the real world.

Most importantly, we're bringing the same philosophy that got us here:

Don't build something simply because that's the way it's always been done. Build it around what the animal needs.

Comfort. Durability. Craftsmanship.

Those three words describe where Mountain Ridge Gear is headed, but they also describe what brought us here.

Comfort means remembering that the animal comes first. A pack saddle isn't successful simply because it carries a load. It needs to fit correctly and allow the animal to do its job comfortably.

Durability means building equipment for actual use. Whether it's headed into the backcountry, onto the race course, or to hundreds of beverage burro events, we expect our gear to work.

Craftsmanship means continuing to build our equipment here in America and caring about the details—even the ones most customers may never notice.

In 2016, we looked at the donkey pack-saddle market and saw an animal that deserved better equipment.

So we started building it.

We didn't set out to create an industry standard. We set out to solve problems.

The standard followed.

More than 2,000 donkeys later, we're still learning, still answering the phone, still improving, and still innovating.

And as Mountain Ridge Gear moves further into the mule, horse, pony, and international pack-equipment markets, one thing won't change:

The animal comes first.

That's where we started.

And we're just getting started.