Arête

The AEVN Arête began with climbing.

For a long time, climbing was just part of my life.

I spent most of my twenties bouldering. Between semesters in college, I’d head up the East Coast looking for somewhere new to climb. I competed, set competition problems at my local gym, made my own climbing holds, and somehow justified having a climbing wall in my living room for more than a decade.

One competition in Miami stands out more than most.

Let’s just say the evening had become slightly more psychedelic than your average climbing comp by the time I found myself working across the roof of the gym.

I ended up taking second.

Years later, I put this watch together and that memory came straight back.

The Arête has a green pearlescent dial cut through with metallic gold veins, but the strange part happens under the heavily domed crystal. Look at one numeral and everything seems normal. Move your wrist slightly and another stretches, bends or slides away.

You can almost never get all of the numbers to look straight at the same time.

It’s a little trippy.

Underneath all of that weirdness is a proper field watch. Huge luminous numerals, simple hands, a coin-edge case and a reliable automatic movement. There are no mountains printed on the dial, no carabiners, no obvious climbing references.

It just reminds me of climbing.

Stone, movement, strange lines, solving problems, and a few nights from that era that are probably better left slightly blurry.

Some watches tell time.
This one bends it a little.