[1] From a rented workbench inside another man's shop, it grew to become an international brand outfitting mountaineering and scientific expeditions with down-insulated garments and sleeping bags.
Born outside of Eastsound, Washington on Orcas Island in 1899,[1] he grew up exploring the woods and waters of the Pacific Northwest, learning to fish before he was in school, and to hunt before he was a teenager.
[2]: 10 Bauer's father worked variously as the manager of a plum orchard, the caretaker of a country club, and as a carpenter on Seattle's first world's fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
At age 13, the young Bauer left school and went to work at Seattle's Piper & Taft, one of the largest sporting goods and outfitting stores on the West Coast.
"[2]: 22 That practice of spending a significant portion of the year in the backcountry became a hallmark of Bauer's operation when his business expanded enough to support his own space and he shifted its primary focus to outfitting outdoorsmen.
[2]: 42–43 The 1950s have been called the Golden Age of Himalayan Mountaineering, as twelve of the world's fourteen 8000-meter peaks were first summited in that decade, with the first being Annapurna in 1950.
In a letter to Bauer's partner, William F. Niemi, dated January 18, 1953, expedition leader Charles Snead Houston called it, "the finest article of cold weather, high altitude equipment I have ever seen".
[5] While unsuccessful in reaching the summit, the Third American Karakoram Expedition is widely admired for their heroic efforts to work together in surviving under catastrophic conditions.
On a hunting trip in eastern Washington in the fall of 1927, Bauer met Christine "Stine" Heltborg, a young beauty shop owner from Seattle.
[2]: 31 In addition to being an accomplished outdoorswoman, Stine Bauer was a champion markswoman, winning the Washington State Women's Trapshooting Championship eight years running, from 1930–1937.