A toast to Col and Liz

By Kenny Stocker

A toast to Col and Liz, celebrating their spirit of adventure and camaraderie.

This weekend Alpkit Col (some of you may know him as ‘The Chunk’) is getting married to Liz. We couldn’t let him go without being sure he was of sound mind so a couple of weeks ago we headed down to the Green Man festival. It is never easy to keep these things a secret, so we invented an official Alpkit engagement at a LandRover Show. We nearly blew it. our alibi was the week following, luckily for us Col had other things on his mind. Despite being disappointed he was not going to get to drive a LandRover after all, the festival got the Chunks stamp of approval, and we were satisfied everything was going to work out just fine.

Festival goer
Festival goer
For those of you who don’t know, Col is one of the founding members of Alpkit and original micro boulderer. He is also officially company secretary but he doesn’t really like to talk about that. As well as getting on with everyday chores he takes the product shots on our site and designs all of our tees. Never one to shirk the less glamorous tasks he the least likely to suffer from mispack in the packing room. Col is usually first off the mark dealing with returns, he really is a beast on the shop floor and probably the only one of us who truely understands the returns system Jim put into place (Jim himself included). Many of you who have ordered on his day will have already enjoyed his special attention. Other talents of note include doubling as a capable Wolfenstein engineer, and making guest appearances as a retro 90s kayaker.

Despite his stature Chunk lives a gentle and frugal life. He realised from an early age it was better if others bought the latest, techiest and highest capacity kit. One 30l sack for all eventualities, if it didn’t fit in his bag it went in someone elses. Standard issue kit included a toothbrush, a jar of Black and White pomade and his trusty Pentax ME Super, 50mm prime lens, loaded with a single HP4 film to last him for a 2 week trip. This was way before lightweight was fashionable.

On the day itself we will calm nerves by sneaking in a quick 9 holes before proceedings. Col and Liz will be taking time out for their honeymoon after the wedding. We are not invited so Alpkit business will go on as normal meaning we have to let Nick back in the packing room, but don’t tell Col this!

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