Behind the REVOLT: Building a Climber With the Guy Who Actually Climbs

Most gear gets developed in a warehouse somewhere, run through a spec sheet, and shipped out with a marketing budget behind it. That's not really how the REVOLT came together, and you can tell the difference the first time you get your hands on it.

XOP brought in a guy who climbs full time. Not a part-time hobby, not a weekend warrior, his actual job is climbing trees and reviewing gear so other hunters don't waste their money the way he did fifteen years ago on a cheap climber he was stuck using for three years because he couldn't afford anything better. That's the whole reason he started making videos in the first place, to save other people from that mistake.

 The XOP REVOLT is a flat-pack hand climber built with direct input from a full-time mobile hunter, developed to match the mobility of a lightweight hang-on while functioning as a true climber. At 11.7 pounds it is among the lightest full-featured climbing stands available, using a NOMIC cam lock system and MicroTrac belt for a fast, silent ascent, and a GUIDE LOCK system that collapses the stand to a 1¾-inch profile for transport. It was field-tested on a public land Kansas hunt before release, with feedback from that trip directly shaping the final product.

So when XOP set out to build a hand climber that could compete with the mobility of a lightweight hang-on setup, which is a genuinely hard thing to pull off, they didn't just ask an engineer to hit a weight target. They asked the guy who was going to be standing in the tree at 45 minutes before daylight what actually mattered. How do you pack your stuff on this thing. What straps do you reach for. Where does a pack need to sit so it doesn't get in the way mid-climb.

That back-and-forth is where a detail like the built-in shelf came from. Nobody set out to design a shelf into the climber. It happened almost by accident, a byproduct of solving the "where does my pack go" problem, and it ended up being one of the features that makes the whole system click. That's what happens when you build gear around a real workflow instead of a checklist.

Then They Took It to Kansas

Prototypes and product photos only tell you so much. XOP took the climber out to Kansas for a public land hunt to see how it actually performed when the terrain got ugly and the schedule got tight.

If you've hunted public land in the Midwest, you know exactly what that trip looked like. Long walks in, some over two miles on foot before first light. Fingers of timber running down into a river bottom, three or four of them stacking up in the same terrain feature, the kind of ground that takes real map study to read correctly before you ever set foot on it. A levee to walk around. Thick CRP on one side of the river, heavier timber on the other. The kind of spot where you're not hunting a single tree, you're hunting a whole system of terrain and hoping you picked the right piece of it.

That's exactly the environment a climber has to prove itself in. Not a manicured food plot with a perfect tree already picked out weeks in advance, but real public ground where you might change your mind on where to sit twice in one morning based on what the wind is doing or what you just glassed from four hundred yards out.

The trip had everything a real hunt has. Three bucks inside twenty yards in the first ten minutes of a sit. A buck that busted the hunter clean, staring him down before he'd even settled in. Good rattling response during the tail end of the pre-rut, five bucks called in from the base of a tree on day one alone. And it had the parts nobody puts in a highlight reel: a hit deer that took hours and a dog tracker to run down, a solid two and a half days of searching before they got an answer.

That's worth sitting with for a second, because it says something about how this whole thing was put together. They didn't cut the rough parts of that hunt out of the video. Losing a blood trail and bringing in a tracking dog isn't the stuff of a polished gear commercial, but it's real hunting, and leaving it in says they weren't trying to sell a fantasy. They were showing what the stand does when the hunt gets hard, which is exactly when gear actually gets tested.

By the end of the trip, on a day well past the halfway point of the hunt with time running short, the payoff came. A mature buck at distance, a clean shot, and genuine excitement on camera, the kind that isn't manufactured for a sponsor.

What Came Out of That Process

The stand that resulted from all of that, prototype conversations, real climbing feedback, and a public land trial by fire, is the REVOLT. It's a flat-pack hand climber that weighs 11.7 pounds, which puts it among the lightest full-featured climbers you can buy. For guys used to hauling a heavier traditional climber a mile or more into public ground, that weight difference isn't a small thing. It's the difference between a hunt that's enjoyable and one you're gritting your teeth through before you're even in the tree.

The REVOLT runs on what XOP calls the NOMIC cam lock system paired with a MicroTrac belt, which is built to grip the tree without the squeaking or metal-on-metal noise that's plagued climbers for decades. Once you're at height, the ICONX pivot block and LOBLOCK slide rail let you transition from climbing mode to a stable hunting platform without wrestling with a second set of hardware. When it's time to pack out, the GUIDE LOCK system folds the whole thing down to a 1¾ inch profile, which is a genuinely useful detail on a long public land walk where every inch of bulk on your back matters.

The stand also connects directly into XOP's broader carry system. It integrates with the Gamma TS, which turns the stand itself into a frame pack for the walk in and doubles as a way to pack out gear or meat on the way back. Pair that with the Guide 10L for scouting days or in-season sits, and you've got a full mobile system that's meant to move together instead of five separate pieces of gear fighting each other on your back.

None of that came out of a lab. It came out of a guy who's climbed more trees than almost anyone in the industry, giving honest feedback about what actually works, and XOP being willing to build around that instead of around a spreadsheet.

The Price Part Matters Too

Here's the detail that tends to get buried under all the technical talk: the REVOLT isn't priced like the premium, boutique climbers it's built to compete with. XOP set out to build something with legitimate high-end functionality and then, in the words of the guy who helped develop it, put a blue-collar price on it. Roughly half the cost of comparable climbers on the market, with, in his opinion, twice the usability.

That matters more than it sounds like on paper. A lot of hunters get priced out of premium mobile setups entirely, and end up stuck with the same kind of budget climber that guy was using fifteen years ago, the one that works fine until it doesn't, and that you're stuck with for years because replacing it isn't in the budget. Closing that gap between what performs well and what's actually affordable is a bigger deal for the average public land hunter than any single feature on a spec sheet.

Watch the Full Trip

The video above walks through the whole process, from the early product conversations about pack straps and shelf design to the actual Kansas hunt where the REVOLT got tested against real terrain, real weather, and a hunt that didn't go according to plan more than once. It's worth watching in full if you want to see how a piece of gear like this actually comes together, built by someone who climbs for a living, tested in the kind of country most of us hunt, and priced so it's actually within reach.

If you're looking at building out a full mobile system around it, XOP's climbing tools collection and packs and gear lineup cover the rest of what pairs naturally with the REVOLT, from the Gamma carry system to the packs built to run alongside it.