After two miles of miserable dust and dirt road driving, I finally arrived at ZETA’s off-grid home. in an undisclosed location in southeastern Colorado. As I get out of my car and fight the strong wind to close my door, Robby Rodriguez comes from behind the wooden gate to greet me, first dusting off his hands before giving me a big handshake. The beautiful Mora Kerala, Robby’s partner in crime and life, appears soon after, with long hair in a braided bun.
The two formed ZETA., a cottage business founded by Mora and Robby in 2025, two years after they met on the Continental Divide Trail.
“I saw him and I just knew he was a kind spirit,” Mora recalled. “I knew it wasn’t him just here to walk, and I felt the same way.”
Tired of the usual talk of the route, Robby and Mora quickly went beyond the basic weights and what routes they have traveled and instead dove into their creative projects, dreams, and desires, while being completely inspired by the beauty of the CDT around them.
Mora, a social scientist by trade, product designer by night, and Robby, a graphic designer by day, seem like a rare match made in heaven. Mora’s art-making focuses on human emotions, intelligence, and the depth of the human condition in areas beyond their understanding. Robby worked for decades in advertising in Los Angeles before giving it all up to ride the CDT.
“It’s not really a unique story: I sold part of my possessions, put the rest in storage, and hit the trail without training at all. I knew I needed motivation, a mental reset, to start over,” says Robby, but I would argue that his story is unique.
After climbing a bunch of the CDT together, they knew they were going to start their next chapter together, and fittingly Mora had already bought an abandoned property in Colorado, surrounded by grasslands before the landscape turned into the Rockies to the west. They moved there, lived in their cars, and converted a shipping container into a workplace.
ZETA.’s condensation-proof, high-value R-value trekking pole shelter
“We are both interested in material things. They are the things that really inspire us. From the bright colors on the rock to the mud in the cow pond, we love it all,” said Robby beaming. “Hiking is a great way to experience all the nature and materials as you move from climate zone to climate zone.”
“We have also committed to our complete intolerance to the cold.
It’s only natural that they would turn to a favorite fabric of classic ultralighters: Polartec® Alpha™ Direct fleece. They chose to immerse themselves completely in this fabric, working for a year before the launch, exploring the unique properties of this mesh wool fabric.
“Alpha™ is about conflict: openness versus warmth, raw power versus weakness… it’s full of symbolic and essential elements that go beyond any fabric we’ve ever experienced,” Robby says poetically.
“It made sense to push the limits of this fabric. Could Alpha™ be a shelter? A way to keep your things warm in your pocket? We started to explore,” recalls Mora.
“We like to ‘make your own gear’: there’s something about receiving something handmade that someone made in their garage, and for us, an abandoned tractor trailer,” says Mora. (The couple thinks the bowl was left at the site in the 1990s.)
Their first official product launch is exclusively with , accompanied by an art exhibition at an art gallery in Denver, Colorado, which will later travel to Los Angeles in the fall and Queens, New York in 2027. Their gear ranges from a large comforter for your spoon, a potty bag, a zippered lantern, a ditty bag, a small black shelter bag.
And where will ZETA go. get out of here?
“The sky’s the limit, and the sky is big out here!” Robby laughs. “Future fabric lessons will follow. We’re already getting our hands on the next important thing as we continue our Alpha™ Direct journey.”
Stay tuned to see where these up-and-coming duos take us next!
ZETA.