Twin brothers carve a path as snow sports engineers
UW alums Bryce and Tyler Kloster are the makers of Karakoram bindings for splitboards and snowboards
By Derek Belt
UW Magazine
October 2023
A lifelong snowboarder and certified Level 3 instructor who taught lessons at Alpental for 10 years, Bryce Kloster knows how to shred. But something felt off about the splitboard he borrowed from his wife on a crisp winter day in Utah’s Wasatch mountains.
A splitboard is a snowboard that comes apart lengthwise in the middle so that each half can be used like skis. You hike up the hill in a fusion of snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, snap them together at the top and savor the ride back down. Most splitboarding is done in the backcountry and away from the more popular ski resorts.
Bryce was no stranger to this kind of touring, and he didn’t complain when his boots felt wobbly that day in the borrowed bindings. He had a better idea. “We’d always wanted to do something in snowboarding and really wanted to engineer something, but we didn’t have an idea we thought we could build a company around,” says Bryce, who was designing boat lifts at the time for a small business in Kent. “I called [my brother] when I got home and was like, ‘This is what we can do in snowboarding!’ I was pretty sure we could figure something out that was better than what I was just using.”
Today, Bryce, ’03, and Tyler, ’03, Kloster are co-owners of Karakoram, a North Bend-based manufacturer of high-performance splitboard and snowboard bindings. The identical twins, both mechanical engineering majors at UW, assemble all of Karakoram’s gear in-house at their 14,900-square-foot shop across from city hall with a stunning view of Mount Si high above.
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