Sopris Unlimited

Charlie and Sandy Hackbarth have enjoyed their decades serving this community and will cherish their memories of the trail, but it is time to pass the torch.

The good news is that as of January 1, 2025, Beau and Kirstin Baty, along with the Sopris Unlimited Amish manufacturing team, will be keeping the Sopris brand going. Sopris Unlimited will become part of Wilderness Ridge Trail Llamas in 2025.

Gingeriches/Waglers

We’d like to introduce you to our Iowa family, the Gingeriches and Waglers. This multi-generational family of Old Order Amish have been manufacturing our gear since the beginning. Few companies can boast of such a unique relationship: our partnership is collaborative and strengthened by true respect and friendship on both sides. We are very thankful to have such exceptional partners.

Our History

During the winter months of 1982, Charlie Hackbarth and his Uncle Tant, a skilled harness maker and compulsive inventor, designed a pack saddle for Charlie’s first pack llama. In 1985, Charlie launched a line of llama pack equipment called Mt. Sopris Llamas Unlimited, named after the mountain that dominates the view at our original location in Carbondale, Colorado. In 1998, when the town of Carbondale outgrew us, we moved to the small town of La Veta in the south-central mountains of Colorado, where the twin Spanish Peaks towered over our office.

Our superior line of pack equipment and care products for llamas and alpacas established our name within the camelid community, but our customer base has grown to include owners of goats, sheep, reindeer, yaks, and donkeys. In 2010, we officially expanded our line to include all smaller pack animals and livestock and renamed our company Sopris Unlimited.

Sopris Unlimited is a company with close ties to the Amish. We believe our unique relationship, which has survived for over thirty years, is more viable today than ever. Our history with the Amish began in 1982 when Charlie Hackbarth's eighty-two-year-old Uncle Tant and his Amish friend Menno Hostetler, by Charlie's persuasion, became involved in designing a pack saddle for llamas.

Charlie Hackbarth has spent the last thirty-five years packing with llamas and building Mt. Sopris Llamas (now Sopris Unlimited) into a globally-known brand. A firm believer in the health benefits of hiking and the value of the pack animal in bringing people and their families back to nature, Charlie has also consistently contributed to the larger lama community through education and awareness efforts. After teaching llama management, training, and packing classes at the Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, for several years, Charlie took his act on the road and spent fifteen years conducting training and packing clinics for llama organizations and private groups across the country. He founded the RMLA Pack Festival, a four-day family event where packers sharpen their skills and swap stories on the first trip of the season, and has served as a past president of Rocky Mountain Llama Association and on the pack committees of both the International Llama Association and RMLA. Charlie also served as advisor to Llamas Magazine and authored the column “Tales of the Trail” for that publication. In 2006, these stories were put together in a book entitled Tales of the Trail.