Peter Hutchinson, founder of Mountain Equipment and PHD died aged 81 on Friday last week.
PHD had been very much on my mind last week. I’d been using two of the sleeping bags and other bits and pieces last week as I work on a long overdue review and then the winter sale post popped up on Facebook, complete with a purple Yukon jacket which had to be commented on of course. Then the news of Peter’s passing.
I only met Peter once when Phil and I went down to the factory for a visit. I was struck by the no nonsense, practicality of the man and the company as well as a joyful geekiness in his approach to the gear they made. He and Peter Elliott made a great double act and it was enlightening, educational and best of all, fun.
A workshop in a Victorian mill seemed the perfect place to find Peter and it took me back to my early years spent in similar environments where I watched blokes of a certain age weaving magic out of nothing. Steel stock or goose down, doesn’t matter, apply imagination and skill to either and I still think it’s a kind of magic when something good comes out the other side.
PHD has been a constant in my life for ten years or so and it’s part of a handful of elements that have made all the things I’ve done in the mountains not only more enjoyable that they might have been otherwise, but just possible. That’s thinking at work, not marketing.
Here’s to Peter and his generation of fellow innovators, the ones that did it all first.
