Mammut
A Swiss ropery from 1862 that no longer spins its own rope — and is still one of the best mountain brands in the world.
Mammut started in 1862 as a ropery in a Swiss village and spent a hundred and sixty years becoming the complete alpine brand — rope, harnesses, helmets, hardware, packs, boots, and the Barryvox avalanche transceiver that a large share of the ski touring world carries. One thing the marketing does not lead with: since 2016 Mammut has not made its own rope. The Seon plant closed and the machinery went to Teufelberger in Austria. The rope is still excellent. It's just made by someone else now, and you should know that before you pay for the heritage.
- 1862Kaspar Tanner's ropery in Dintikon, Switzerland
- 2016Closed rope production in Seon and sold the plant to Teufelberger
- 800People, selling in more than forty countries
What we'd reach for
- Barryvox and Barryvox SThe avalanche transceiver a very large share of European ski tourers carry, and the one most Swiss guides train on. Nothing else on this site is designed on the assumption that someone will be digging for you.
- Smart 2.0 and Smart AlpineAssisted-braking belay with no moving parts — a shaped slot instead of a cam. Cheap, nearly unbreakable, and the Alpine version takes half ropes.
- Crag Classic and Crag Dry ropesThe everyday single ropes. Handle beautifully, wear predictably, and are the reason a lot of climbers are loyal to a rope brand at all.
- Alpine Core ProtectRope with an aramid layer between sheath and core, built for the sharp granite edges that end ordinary ropes. This is the interesting one.
- Wall Rider helmetHardfoam construction that got the weight down without going fragile — one of the helmets that reset expectations for the whole category.
- Sender, Ophir and Zephir harnessesOphir is the workhorse, Sender the performance one, Zephir Altitude the strippped-down alpine version you barely notice on a glacier.
- Classic HMS and Bionic carabinersPear-shaped lockers and the wider hardware range — solid, unshowy, correct.
- Contact and Magic slingsDyneema slings across the widths, including the ones you'll actually rack.
- Trion, Neon and Lithium packsAlpine and crag packs from a company that also owns an avalanche airbag business, which shows in how the harness systems are built.
In 1862, a man called Kaspar Tanner started twisting rope in Dintikon, a village in the Swiss canton of Aargau.
The company moved to Lenzburg in 1878 and to Seon in 1992, where it is still headquartered. The mammoth — the logo and the name — arrived in 1943. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a rope company became a mountain company: packs in 1989, sleeping bags in 2001, boots in 2003, avalanche airbags in 2011.
Today Mammut is roughly 800 people selling in more than forty countries, and it makes very close to everything you would need to climb, ski or walk in the Alps.
The thing they don’t lead with
In 2016, Mammut closed its rope production in Seon.
The reason was the Swiss franc: making rope in Switzerland had become uncompetitive. The mountain-rope manufacturing facilities were sold to Teufelberger in Austria.
So a Mammut rope today is designed by Mammut and made in Wels by the company that has been making rope since 1790.
We are telling you this for two reasons. The first is that “Swiss rope heritage since 1862” is a phrase you will see attached to these ropes, and heritage is exactly the right word — it describes where the knowledge came from, not where the rope comes from. The second is more useful: Teufelberger is the best ropery in the world, it is the brand we rate highest for cordage anywhere on this site, and a Mammut rope being made there is not a downgrade. It is closer to the opposite.
Just buy it knowing what you’re buying.
Barryvox, and the only product here designed for your worst day
Everything else on this site is designed to stop something happening. The Barryvox is designed for after it already has.
It is an avalanche transceiver: a beacon that transmits while you ski and, when you switch it to search, finds the people who are buried. A very large share of European ski tourers carry one, and it is what a lot of Swiss guides train on.
Nothing else in the AllEquipped roster occupies this space, and it is worth sitting with what the design brief must look like. The interface has to be usable by a panicking person wearing gloves at altitude, working against a survival curve that falls off a cliff after fifteen minutes. Mammut has been iterating on that problem since it bought into it, and the Barryvox S is the result.
The Smart, and the case for no moving parts
Mammut’s Smart 2.0 is an assisted-braking belay device with no cam, no spring and no pivot. It is a shaped piece of metal. The geometry does the work.
That puts it in the same small category as Black Diamond’s ATC — devices whose main virtue is the absence of a mechanism — while still giving you assisted braking. It is cheap, it is close to unbreakable, and Smart Alpine takes half ropes for multi-pitch.
Alpine Core Protect is the other product we’d point at: a rope with an aramid layer between sheath and core, built for the granite edges that finish ordinary ropes. If you climb where the rock is sharp, that is not a feature, it’s the whole reason to buy it.
Where Mammut fits
Rock and gym climbing. Crag ropes, Ophir and Sender harnesses, Wall Rider helmets, Smart belay, HMS lockers, Sender Wire draws — a complete kit from one brand, at the premium end.
Alpine and mountaineering. Zephir Altitude harnesses, glacier cord, Alpine Core Protect, lightweight helmets, Trion packs.
Ski touring and avalanche safety. Barryvox transceivers, probes, shovels, and the Removable Airbag System packs that came from the Snowpulse acquisition. Nobody else here goes near this.
Everything around it. Shells, insulation, mountaineering boots, sleeping bags. Mammut is one of the few brands on this site you could be dressed and equipped by entirely.
Why we rate them
Alpine safety is treated as engineering, not marketing. Barryvox and the airbag systems are serious pieces of design aimed at a narrow, awful problem, and the company has stayed with them.
The range actually connects. Rope, harness, helmet, hardware, pack, boot, shell. Very few brands cover that without something in the middle being an obvious licensing deal.
They know what they’re good at. The Smart is a cheap piece of shaped metal that outperforms devices costing three times as much. That comes from understanding a problem, not from a features list.
What we’d want you to know
Mammut was owned by the Swiss industrial group Conzzeta from 1982 until 2021, when it was sold to Telemos Capital, a London investment firm, in a deal that closed on 30 June 2021.
Combined with the 2016 rope decision, the picture is of a heritage brand under financial ownership making rational calls about what it manufactures itself. None of those calls have made the gear worse so far. It is still worth knowing which parts of the story are heritage and which are current.
Mammut is a mountain brand, not a work-at-height one, and the difference is not cosmetic: rope rescue, rope access, fall protection — three jobs, one pile of gear.
When we reach for a rope with an aramid core, an alpine harness, or a beacon we’d want a partner carrying, we reach for Mammut.