Spuds Adventure Gear was founded in 2021 by Kevin "Spud" Parlato. He got the idea to start a hiking gear company in the middle of his Southbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. While hiking, he got an idea for solving one of his biggest pain points – storing trekking poles.

On the Appalachian Trail there are many fun rock scrambles where you need to use hands to climb up, down, and around rocks. The only issue with these scrambles was – what to do with the trekking poles while you're climbing? He didn’t want to take off his pack to store the poles, so he would let the poles dangle from his arms by the wrist straps. Unfortunately, the dangling poles would get in the way of climbing and cause potentially dangerous situations.

With plenty of time to think while heading south to Georgia, he came up with an idea to quickly store and retrieve the poles from the pack. Two months and 20 prototypes later, he developed the Stick Stashers – a quick connecting magnetic pole mount. 

With a goal to create products to help everyone enjoy the outdoors, he launched Spuds Adventure Gear.