Yeti Pipe Co.

Yeti Pipe Co. is a one-man pipe workshop operating in the state of Montana in the United States. The name behind the brand is Micah Cryder; he carries out all of the production himself and states that he treats every pipe as a separate design. The brand name comes from the legendary abominable snowman of the Himalayas.

According to Cryder's own account, two reasons come together in this choice: it fits the mountainous, untouched feel of the landscape he lives in, and it lets him take a small jab at the pipe world's solemn tone.

Founding and Training

Cryder started out at seventeen, trying his hand at carving a pipe on the bench of his high school shop class; the account has it that this first attempt, meant as a gift for his father, was undertaken together with his brother and came out a failure. He didn't give up the pursuit even so, and in the early 2010s turned production into a full-time trade. Much of what he learned came from the online forums where pipe makers gather; while he counts himself part of a generation raised without a master, he ties the real leap forward to the in-person lessons he took. The decisive figure in those lessons is Premal Chheda of the Chheda Pipes workshop; Cryder says he could not have reached his current level of craftsmanship without Chheda's guidance. Among his contemporaries, he names Todd Johnson and Alex Florov as makers whose work he follows closely, and from the generation before him, Bo Nordh and Rainer Barbi.

Records indicate that Cryder made one of the pipes chosen for the seven-day team at the Greater Kansas City Pipe Club's 2013 pipemaking competition.