CMI
Franklin, West Virginia — the Kirk family's machine shop whose ascenders arborists and cavers swear by, with a founding story even the company tells three ways.
CMI is the West Virginia machine shop behind the Expedition ascender — the rope-climbing tool that caving and arborist culture treats as a fixture — plus the pulleys and rigging hardware that fill out an American-made catalog. State records show Colorado Mountain Industries Corp. run by the Kirk family from Franklin, with Ron Kirk at the helm since 1978. The founding story is genuinely tangled — the company's own pages imply three different start dates — and this page presents the tangle rather than smoothing it, because that is what this site is for.
- 1978Ron Kirk takes the helm, per CMI's own team page
- 21CNC machine centers CMI claims in Franklin
- 1990West Virginia domestic filing for Colorado Mountain Industries Corp.
What we'd reach for
- Expedition ascenderThe staple. Cavers and arborists have run ropes through Expeditions for decades, and the NFPA variants carry the rescue paperwork.
- UltrascenderThe rope-ascent line's modern end.
- RP series pulleysThe rescue and arborist pulleys that anchor the rigging catalog.
- Lock PulleyThe specialty progress-capture answer.
- Rope JackThe arborist rope tool — leverage for tensioning lines that stubborn limbs won't give back.
- Texas Rig and foot strapsComplete rope-ascent systems, sold the way cavers actually rig them.
Every trade has hardware it stopped questioning decades ago. Ask a caver what goes on the rope, or an arborist what’s tensioning the line, and somewhere in the answer you’ll usually find an orange-anodized ascender from a machine shop in Franklin, West Virginia — population small, CNC machines twenty-one, by the company’s own proud count.
The founding story, told honestly
Here is a thing this site has never had to write before: we cannot tell you when CMI was founded, because CMI’s own materials disagree with each other.
The company’s pages have called 2017 its 53rd year in business — which implies a start around 1964. The team page says Ron Kirk has led CMI since 1978, growing it from a small spinoff. And West Virginia’s corporate registry shows Colorado Mountain Industries Corp. — yes, Colorado; the name survived the geography — with a 1990 domestic filing and name-change history behind it.
All three could be true at once — an early predecessor, a 1978 takeover, a 1990 reincorporation — but no source we captured stitches them together, so the brand card above carries no founding year at all. The same rule that left Ronin’s date and Leica’s blank: better absent than invented. What the registry does establish is the present: a Kirk family company — Ronald Jr., Marcia, Justin, Kristian among the officers — private, in Franklin, making its living the old way.
What comes off those machines
The Expedition ascender is the flagship and the folk hero — the toothed cam rope-grab that has hauled generations of cavers out of pits and arborists into canopies, with NFPA-rated variants for teams that need the paperwork. Around it: the RP pulleys, the Lock Pulley for progress capture, the Rope Jack arborists use to win arguments with limbs, and complete Texas rigs sold the way cave country actually climbs rope.
The materials list reads like the shop floor sounds: aircraft-grade aluminum, stainless springs, chrome-moly cams, made in the USA — with CMI’s own “where stated” scoping on the American-metals claim, which we pass along as written.
One honest sorting note, because the comparison is inevitable: against SMC, three hours’ flight west, CMI’s certification documentation is the homier of the two. SMC publishes UL-certified NFPA ratings with procurement-grade clarity; CMI lists NFPA variants and rope sizes per product, and a department building a documented cache may find SMC, CMC or Rock Exotica the easier paper trail. What CMI has instead is standing — the decades of users who never needed the paperwork to know what holds.
Where CMI fits
Cavers. The Expedition and the Texas rig are the culture’s defaults, and have been since before most of the culture was born.
Arborists. Rope Jack, RP pulleys, and ascenders that live in gear bags next to Teufelberger rope and DMM hardware.
Rope-access and rescue teams that know exactly which NFPA variant they’re ordering.
Not for: procurement processes that want one brand’s clean ratings matrix — see the sorting note above, written with affection. Not for gram-counting alpinists; this is trade metal.
Why we rate them
The tools earned their fixtures status. Decades of vertical caving and tree work run through these cams — reputation accumulated a pitch at a time, not purchased.
A family machine shop, still. Kirks in the registry, CNC centers in Franklin, and a catalog that exists because the tools work.
And the honesty cuts both ways. We told you their founding story is tangled and their documentation is homespun — because a site that promises to say who each brand is not for owes the same candor about what a brand’s paperwork is not.
When the rope goes up a tree or down a pit and the hardware just has to hold like it always has, we reach for CMI.