Utility bike: A bicycle built for hauling children, gear, or grocery bags full of organic quinoa and local honey.

Chamois: A diaper-like pad first used by cyclists around 1900 to prevent saddle sores and chafing on their nethers.

Tech binding: A lightweight binding system that transformed backcountry skiing and put telemarking on the path to obsolescence.

You can now use clipless pedals with sneakers when you want to ditch your bike shoes

Chip timing: The practice of using a small wearable transmitter to track race participants’ times at regular checkpoints along a course.

Crowdfunding: A method of raising capital to launch commercial ventures in which small individual donations are made through an online platform.

Direct to Consumer: A business model in which a company sells its products via its own website, catalog, or store, reducing retail markup and passing the savings along to the consumer.

Dithering: The intentional degrading of a satellite’s signal to discourage unauthorized use, which deterred citizens from tapping into the Department of Defense’s Global Positioning System, or GPS, for ten years.

Bill Bowerman: A legendary Oregon track coach who cofounded the shoe company Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964; 14 years later, it became Nike.

CamelBak: A hands-free hydration system that can be carried in a backpack.

Gear companies know how to make packs lighter, jackets more waterproof, and skis burlier. The only problem: young people couldn’t care less.

Base-Camp Duffel: A large, 155-liter bag often seen loaded on yaks in Nepal’s Khumbu region for a few simple reasons: it can take a beating, it has straps that convert it into a backpack, and mountaineers know that it can carry all their gear.

Royal Robbins: Climber, businessman, and archetype for the modern clean-climbing ethic, which espouses the use of removable protection instead of pounding pitons into rock.

Double Plastic Mountaineering Boot: A highly reliable style of footwear that prevents frostbite in alpine environments.

Lifa Shirt: The first commercially available base layer made from polypropylene, released in 1970 by Helly Hansen.

Rollerblade: A roller skate with soft, linearly arranged wheels offering fast, smooth glide.

Sports Bra: A groundbreaking invention that lets women participate comfortably in a range of vigorous athletic activities.

Rubbermaid Bin: A polyethylene storage container commonly used for gear.

Camouflage: A varying pattern of earth-colored prints designed to obscure the wearer from view, worn by hunters and members of the U.S. military

Jacques Cousteau: A French explorer and arguably the most prolific marine scientist and ocean conservationist of the 20th century.

Denali Jacket: A popular performance fleece garment made by the North Face and commonly seen on mountaineers and college students.

Duct tape: A cloth-backed metallic gray adhesive that fixes anything worth saving.

SUP: Short for stand-up paddle-board, a stable floating platform that combines the cool of surfing with the practicality of a spin workout.

Teva sandal: A water shoe that came to define a generation of river athletes.

The raw materials that make up the tools for hiking, running, paddling, skiing, and cycling. These 36 building blocks are indispensable to the design and function of gear, from mankind’s first wool layer to the latest lab-born membranes. (Some things just look better in print. To see this in all…

Portaledge: A collapsible sleeping platform for climbers.

A category of gear that came into being in the late 1960s as more and more skiers ventured beyond resort boundaries.

Telescoping front forks and articulating rear frame triangles that absorb bumps and shocks.

Gone are the days of rangers in fire lookout towers. Now, mountain-top cameras are being used to spot smoke and flames.

Waffle: A repeating inverted cube shape adopted by sporting-goods manufacturers, beginning with Nike, which used the pattern on the sole of its iconic waffle trainer.

Founders of the Recreational Equipment Co-op (REI), which the couple started in their West Seattle home in 1938 as a way to help climber friends gain access to cheaper ice axes and harnesses by ordering bulk gear from Europe.

A cooler company whose two-inch-thick, double-walled products are so effective that its creation, in 2006, began a new era in rafting.

A bindingless monoski invented in 1965.

Fat shoes: Shoes with roughly 20 millimeters of foam underfoot

Phil Knight: Cofounder of athletic-shoe company Nike.

The brand of zipper that is likely keeping your britches up at this very moment. Headquartered in Tokyo, 81-year-old YKK (short for Yoshida Kogyo Kabu­shikikaisha, which translates as ­Yoshida Company Limited) was founded by Tadao ­Yoshida, who started making cus­tom zippers to take advantage of breaks and…

Fat Skis: Skis that are at least 115 millimeters underfoot.

P-cord: Parachute cord, also known as paracord, the world’s most versatile survival tool.

Recall: A request by a manufacturer, and usually the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), to return a product after the discovery of safety issues.

Filson, a Seattle-based maker of high-quality leather goods.

Sunglasses designed to protect a pilot’s eyes against high-altitude sun.

A packable device producing fire for camp cooking.

Elk Skin Gloves: Hand protection made from the skin of the great wapiti.

Howard Head: The founder of ski brand Head.

The surprising tendency for technical products and trends from the outdoor world to find their way into mass culture.

Caves, tepees, wall tents, those green canvas triangles that caused hypothermia in so many Boy Scouts—in one form or another, ideas borrowed from these flawed shelters appear in their modern descendents.

Puffy: A lightweight jacket insulated with duck or goose down or synthetic fill.

Dutch Oven: A large cast-iron pot and the campfire cooking vessel of choice for pioneers, cowboys, and river guides.

Repurposing: Taking a product and adapting it for a different use.

Lululemon: A yoga-apparel brand founded by Canadian entrepreneur Chip Wilson in 1998.

Little Things: Those items that mark the difference between a miserable experience and a joyous one—pit zips on jackets being a prime example.

Catalog: A magazine-like print presentation of a company’s or retailer’s products.

Duluth pack: A heavy canvas rucksack, patented in 1882 by French Canadian Camille Poirier in Duluth, Minnesota, along the shores of Lake Superior.

Westfalia: A breed of Volkswagen camper van prone to expensive repairs, yet beloved by those who own them and coveted by road-trip dreamers everywhere.

An instrument of mass exhibitionism.

Greg Lowe: Inventor of the internal-frame backpack.

Kite: A lightweight aircraft—often erroneously considered a toy—propelled by the wind and controlled by a user on the ground via a line or set of lines.

Vasque Sundowner: A svelte hiking boot that serves as a testament to how well-made products can endure despite evolving design trends.

Hummer: The civilian version of the military’s Humvee off-road vehicle, which was produced by AM General from 1992 to 2006.

Polarization: A lens technology that cuts glare created when light reflects off materials like plastic and glass.

Washing a single polyester jacket can send 1,900 tiny synthetic micro-fibers into waterways, where they can soak up toxins and get eaten by fish. So what is the outdoor industry doing about it?

How a humble wooden fishing craft became the quintessential Grand Canyon ride

Therm-a-Rest: The first mass-market inflatable sleeping pad.

The world's leading design center for outdoor footwear—everything from featherweight climbing shoes to hard-shelled mountaineering stompers—is a small city in northern Italy where craftsmanship reigns.

Jeep: A four-wheel-drive vehicle first produced for the U.S. Army during World War II.

Odor Control: The relentless attempt by apparel makers to tame human stink.

And how it's going to change the way you see all of your stuff

Jogging Stroller: A stroller that allows parents to run and, theoretically, get their toddlers to nap.

Headphones: Any device used for playing music close to or within a wearer’s ears.

Vibram: A vulcanized-rubber sole that revolutionized footwear.

Pack Raft: A small inflatable raft that can be rolled up to fit in a backpack.

Nike+: The original wearable technology for athletes.

Blake Mycoskie: A 38-year-old philanthropist and entrepreneur who founded Toms Shoes (originally Shoes for a Better Tomorrow) in 2006.

Lumbersexual: A fashion-conscious male urbanite whose clothing and accessories project an aura of rugged manliness.

Thule: A company founded by Swedish outdoorsman Erik Thulin, originally to make fishing gear.

Surfboard Fin: A structural element, usually made of wood or fiberglass, attached to the bottom of a surfboard to aid maneuverability.

Leatherman: A multitool invented by Tim Leatherman after wishing he had a pair of pliers while working on a rust-bucket Fiat with a pocket knife during a 1975 European road trip.

Nalgene bottle: A durable, wide-mouthed vessel originally designed to hold chemicals.

Doug Tompkins: Businessman and crusading conservationist who cofounded the North Face and Esprit.

Heart-Rate Monitor: A device that measures a wearer’s heart rate; particularly useful for monitoring exertion in athletes.