Hi, I'm Tumbleweed.

My name is Mitch Collins, but on trail I go by Tumbleweed - I go where the wind takes me and I keep on rolling.

Every fleece on this site is cut and sewn by hand in Silver City, New Mexico, a small trail town on the Continental Divide Trail. I sew most of them myself. A couple of folks from town help me with cutting and finishing so I can spend more of my time at the machine. You can be sure that every fleece you order has been carefully made by hand by people who know where you've been, where you're going, and want to see you stay warm and hugged along the way.

How I got here

I started out hiking in New Hampshire, then did my first 100 mile trail in Vermont. They kind of grew from there...

My first long trail was the Colorado Trail in 2017. Then in 2019 I hiked most of the PCT. The pandemic pushed my next big hike back a year, and in 2021 I tackled the CDT.

The CDT is rougher, quieter and less traveled than the other big trails. I fell completely in love with it and have made it part of my mission to bring more awareness about it to the hiking community as well as help supply those hikers all along the trail and in Chama, NM before the northbounders reach the Colorado snow.

Supplies + fleece

In 2022 I noticed that hikers heading north through Chama needed gear, and nobody in town was supplying it. So I started a small store in a small shipping container designed to provide those hikers with what they might need for the next stretch according to the season.

Around the same time I started playing around with fleece and a sewing machine in order to create the gear I wished I'd had when I was on trail. With time, I started experimenting with a new kind of fleece - Alpha Direct. 

These days, fleece outsells everything else in the store and I'm always iterating on my patterns and colorways to bring you new designs.

The original Grid X Alpha

I was the first to combine classic grid fleece with Alpha Direct in one piece. The idea is simple: a warmer core, with fabric that dumps extra heat, so you stay warm without soaking yourself in sweat on a climb. Every fleece has a raglan cut and can be built exactly how you want it.

This year I redesigned the hood to be smaller and sleeker, sized the bodies up to fit closer to standard men's sizing, and added pockets and a bottom drawstring as options on custom orders.

Sewing the CDT

I save every empty cone of thread. Laid end to end, the thread I've sewn so far would stretch from the Mexican border to past Silver City, 160-some miles up the CDT. I'm sewing my way north, one fleece at a time. Follow along on Instagram to watch my progress! I can't do this without you - every fleece sold helps me move this (maybe silly) challenge along!

Come find me

If you're hiking the CDT northbound, stop in when you roll through Silver City & Chama. If you're not, build your own fleece here and I'll sew it for you to take on worldwide adventures.

Go with the wind, keep on rolling.
Mitch "Tumbleweed" Collins