On Top Of His World Tiny Spokane Firm Carves Niche For Building Base Camps

In Steven Spielberg’s sequel to “Jurassic Park,” the bad guys will stay in a camp designed by Exploration Products of Spokane.

“The kitchen building has a triceratop mangle it, push it over a cliff, and it explodes,” said Tim Myhre, the company’s 39-year-old president.

Myhre and company are accustomed to creating camps that withstand the elements, dinosaurs excluded.

In 12 years, Exploration Products has designed dozens of base camps for excursions into inaccessible places. The eight-person company has worked for mining and oil firms, the U.S. Navy and Air Force, National Geographic, even a few film crews.

Employees have supervised the building of camps on every continent and both poles. Along the way, they developed a full line of outdoor gear they sell through mail order.

Exploration Products’ longest standing camp is in Greenland, where it’s been used for 12 years for pipeline maintenance.

Other camps stand for weeks or months, depending on their purpose.

“Basically what you have is a 50-person town in 20 crates,” Myhre said. “You take all of the stuff out of the boxes and you build a town.”

Every place they go has a different climate - from 60-below at the North Pole to 100-plus in the desert. There are diseases and political problems to handle.

Before going into a location to build a camp, Myhre taps the vast network of sources he calls the “been there, done that people” to learn about an area’s problems.

For example, said Myhre, “You can’t drive trailers into Cambodia because of land mines.”

One camp was designed to pull water directly from the Nile River, Myhre said, and needed a superior purification system. That required a bigger generator, which called for more fuel, and more frequent resupplying.

“Everytime you change one thing, it all shotguns out,” he said.

The company hooked up with Spielberg’s operation when the movie crew was looking for an outdoor outfitter that could design a modern remote camp.

“They didn’t want to just go in with pup tents,” Myhre said.

A National Geographic contact referred Universal Studios to the Spokane company. Myhre will fly to California to consult with the art director, and the scenes using the Exploration Products camp will be shot in Costa Rica within a few months.

Another Exploration Products employee is flying with the U.S. Air Force to Panama and Columbia, helping set up camp for an anti-drug operation.

Most camps are like small towns and can include anything from kitchens with stainless steel stoves to bathrooms with showers and dormitories with beds.

Some even have recreation rooms with foosball machines, pool tables and pop machines. That’s particularly important for people working in remote locations for weeks or months.

“It’s not like you can jump in the truck and go for a beer at Charlie’s,” Myhre said.

Myhre said his hardest job was designing camps for the U.S. Navy’s operations near the North Pole. Finding equipment that could withstand temperatures of 60-below with 20 mph winds was tough.

For employee Jon Gallagher, who has been with the company for five years, the most difficult job was setting up a gold mining camp in Russia. It was a challenge because 700 to 800 different items had to be ordered and itemized.

Rick Newman, a seven-year-employee, struggled with the nightmare of paperwork created when the Brazilian army hired Exploration Products to buy some clothing from a French company. The Brazilians were equipping a United Nations contingent and needed clothing that could withstand chemical warfare.

“I know how to say thanks in 10 languages,” Newman joked.

Most government clients - in the United States and abroad - do not tell Exploration Products all the details of why they need the equipment.

A 50-person camp will take Myhre and his crew about 45 days to put together and can cost anywhere from $750,000 to $1.5 million.

That’s a long way from the $10,000 loan Myhre received from his parents to start the business.

Myhre was building houses in Spokane in 1979 when a mining company hired him for a new division that specialized in setting up camps in remote places.

Myhre’s interest was piqued and he worked for the company until 1984. Then he borrowed money from his parents and bought the rights to the division.

The company grew quickly, breaking the $2 million mark after five years. Last year, Exploration Products took in more than $4 million in revenues.

The company has incredible growth potential, but Myhre wants to stay small. For a while, he said, the firm wouldn’t turn down a job and employees were working almost around the clock.

Myhre put a stop to that.

“I don’t ever want this job to become a job,” he said, slouching in his chair, sporting jeans and a T-shirt.

The only common thread among Myhre’s employees is that most are outdoor enthusiasts. Three are former employees of Mountain Gear, an outdoor store on North Division.

Though Myhre owns the company, he attributes his success to the effort his employees put into projects.

Last year, Exploration Products won a U.S. Air Force bid to build and deliver three camps for the anti-drug operations in Columbia and Panama.

Problem was, they had only 90 days to complete a project that generally would take between four and six months. By working 12- to 18-hour days, seven days per week, for two months, the crew of eight got the job done.

“That was a total group effort by eight individuals to make the impossible possible,” Myhre said. “There’s an exceptional cadre of talent under one roof here.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo