Rocky Mountain Outfitter celebrated the store’s 50th anniversary with former employees and friends in June, looking back on decades of being a community hub for recreationalists of all kinds.  

At the June party, admirers of Rocky Mountain Outfitter spilled from the Kalispell Main Street store into the back lots, enjoying free beer, live music and good local food, according to owner Jandy Cox, who has worked at the store since 1989.  

Throughout the years, the staff continues to feel like family, he said. There were 80 former employees invited to the celebration.  

“So many of those people are what I would consider family or friends or people that I had a lifelong connection with. I think we had over 350 people come to the event,” Cox said. “I think we drank well over 400 beers that night as a group. We had a silent auction of gear where we raised almost $3,000 for Foys to Blacktail Trails,” Cox said.  

Cox has been heavily involved with Foys to Blacktail Trails, a nonprofit that works to expand public land and recreation opportunities between Foys Lake and Blacktail Mountain. It’s one example of how the staff at Rocky Mountain Outfitter are not merely selling outdoor gear but have a first-hand involvement when it comes to recreating in Northwest Montana.  

Cox, much like his predecessor and close friend Don Scharfe, is an avid climber and skier. This is true for the store’s employees throughout the years, who are sought out for their knowledge of the surrounding area as much as their opinions on what gear to buy.  

This has given them a lot of credibility, according to Scharfe, the store’s founder who retired in 2018. 

“It has a real vibe that people love, no matter who moves in. Sportsman [& Ski Haus] gets bigger, all those box stores move in — it doesn't really affect us. Every year the store does well,” he said.  

What sells most has changed through the decades, like kayaks from the 1990s through the early 2010s to backcountry ski equipment in recent years. But the selection of brands and expertise is what keeps people coming in the doors, according to Cox.  

Because the store is small in size, it’s imperative that the selection strikes a balance between quality, exclusivity and not breaking the bank.  

“Right now a lot of my kind of favorite brands are from the UK or from Norway, but some from the U.S. as well ...  Over the years, we've kind of introduced brands that have subsequently grown and gotten to be everywhere, like Arc'teryx, The North Face and Patagonia,” Cox said.  

In that way and others, Rocky Mountain Outfitter can be seen as a catalogued history of recreation movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. When Scharfe opened the store in 1976, he was about to ride a wave of a new generation eager to get outside and enjoy the outdoors.  

“I ended up talking my parents into loaning me $9,000 and then I lived in the store on and off for two years ...  it was a different time in the 70s. The North Face and Sierra Designs just opened — this was before Patagonia. So, all these companies were evolving while all these young baby boomers wanted to go hiking and climbing. And I caught the peak of that wave,” Scharfe said.  

Scharfe was still riding that wave through the active 80s when he eventually met Cox, a climber freewheeling through the Mountain West. Cox grew up in Washington, D.C., and made a decent amount of money as a bicycle messenger in high school. It was enough to take trips wherever the young aspiring climber wanted to go after graduation — including buying a VW bus and embarking on a long road trip.  

“I'd also been working at outdoor shops on the East Coast. So, I already had a real introduction to the outdoor industry. When I traveled out here, I really fell in love with the area, fell in love with the community and had an opportunity to work here part-time while I also taught climbing,” Cox said.  

The friends he met during this time would connect him with Scharfe and introduce him to the growing climbing community in Northwest Montana.  

“[Scharfe] is an iconic figure in the community. And by the time I got here, the store was very well established and already a hub for outdoor specialties — like climbing, mountaineering, cross-country skiing, backcountry skiing and backpacking. And he had been prolific in all those things,” Cox said.  

Though Cox would leave to work and attend college in Colorado, he eventually returned to Rocky Mountain Outfitter to become a manager and buyer in 1994.  

His role hasn’t changed that much since then, aside from his duties as a business owner. When Scharfe retired in 2018, Cox purchased the business and building from his former boss.  

But there were changes on the horizon in 2018. REI opened its doors later that year, which was “sobering,” Cox said. The presence of a big box store so similar to what they offered caused some angst, though eventually the impact proved minimal. However, a global pandemic would soon cause more ripples in the operation.  

Cox remembers having to lay off staff and close the doors — though it didn’t seem like they were closed for long. The Covid-19 pandemic forced people outside and once again the store was riding a wave of new outdoor enthusiasts looking for gear.  

“The pandemic was an amazing boom. Like, we’ve never had before and haven’t since seen those kind of sales. I was the only one answering their telephone, like 16 to 18 hours a day with people calling, and wanting to buy outdoor gear,” he said.  

Though the pandemic rush has cooled, the store is continuing to serve new customers who have moved to the Flathead Valley in recent years to enjoy the outdoors.  

Leading up to their latest milestone, those who love the store didn’t want the 50th anniversary to go by quietly. The party was organized by former employee and marketing partner Colton Born, who also decided to make a film about the outfitter. 

Born hunted down a black-and-white TV that played clips of an interview between Cox and Scharfe throughout the night of the party. The film is titled “Happy Place” and is a celebration of Rocky Mountain Outfitter, while speaking about their relationship to the community and some of the struggles a small retail store faces in 2026, Cox said.  

“[The party] was kind of emotional. Don was there, and throughout the night, it was amazing how many people would say to both of us, ‘Thank you for keeping this running, for having this be a part of our community.’ ... It was inspiring to feel like this is going to continue,” Cox said. 

Cox said the Flathead Valley is a community that loves to “cherish and take care of its own.” Active people like to live here because of Glacier National Park and the various outdoor activities to be involved in, and Cox said part of that lifestyle is having a small shop like Rocky Mountain Outfitter that provides quality gear and advice for those who walk through the doors.  

Like the old gear that adorns the walls, the historic murals of Glacier Park and the statue of a man repelling from the front facade of the building — the Rocky Mountain Outfitter people love is not going anywhere.  

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4440 or [email protected]. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at dailyinterlake.com/support. 

    Rocky Mountain Outfitter in downtown Kalispell on Tuesday, July 14. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Rocky Mountain Outfitter's 50th anniversary celebration included live music, good food and free beer. (photo courtesy of Colton Born)
  

    Attendees of Rocky Mountain Outfitter's 50th anniversary party gather in the store. (photo courtesy of Colton Born)
  

    Partygoers don Rocky Mountain Outfitter's 50th anniversary shirt at their June celebration. (photo courtesy of Colton Born)
  

    Rocky Mountain Outfitter founder Don Scharfe talks with former employees at their 50th anniversary celebration in June. (photo courtesy of Colton Born)