The week of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB), Chamonix transforms from a bustling Alpine town into the undisputed international epicenter of trail running. UTMB is the sport’s most prestigious race and biggest annual gathering, bringing together the world’s elite ultrarunners and thousands of equally committed fans. Across several races, the main event sees competitors cover 174 kilometers and climb 9,700 meters as they circle Mont Blanc through France, Italy, and Switzerland.
So it was here, beneath the tallest mountain in the Alps, that Nike brought us to experience what’s next for ACG, its outdoor imprint. Over five days, we climbed, hiked, ran, foraged, camped, and followed one of the world’s most demanding trail races through the night. The trip moved through ACG’s three dimensions — Trail Run, Hike, and Explore — to demonstrate what happens when All Conditions Gear is taken out of the city and put back into the conditions that informed its name.
ACG occupies a space of its own. While it has made a serious name for itself among outdoor enthusiasts, it feels equally at home in fashion. Its archive has kept it culturally relevant even during periods when its place within Nike’s performance lineup was less clear. Now, ACG is making that purpose clear again: an outdoor performance brand built around running, hiking and exploration.
Our first introduction to that ambition came through an unreleased prototype trail running shoe called Picklejus.
The name comes from pickle juice, the near-mythical electrolyte remedy endurance runners turn to when cramps hit, yielding a very strange name for a very serious shoe. Picklejus is ACG’s pinnacle big-mountain trail runner, designed around the long climbs, punishing descents, and volatile terrain faced in races like UTMB.
We first saw it inside ACG’s Chamonix pop-up, where the design team unpacked the shoe’s construction before sending us outside for a short test run. That became the rhythm of the week: introduce a product, connect it to a specific activity, then test it in the conditions it was designed to handle.
Behind Picklejus are three years of athlete input, 10 research studies, 20 prototypes, and testing with more than 100 runners. It is also the first ACG footwear innovation developed through the Nike Sport Research Lab, bringing Nike’s full performance machinery into a category more commonly associated with specialist outdoor brands.
At its center is a soft ZoomX core designed for cushioning and protection, surrounded by a firmer ZoomX ring for stability. A trail-specific Flyknit upper secures the foot, while water-repellent yarns and a gaiter-inspired cuff help keep water and debris out. Underneath it all is GOATEK, ACG’s new proprietary traction system.
The name comes with some history. Earlier ACG footwear used a traction technology called "G Tek." GOATEK carries that same spirit and lineage, reviving a piece of ACG’s technical vocabulary for a more ambitious performance era.
Nike says GOATEK provides 45 percent more wet traction and 25 percent greater abrasion resistance than its previous all-terrain outsoles, and has been tested over more than 18,000 miles of rugged mountain terrain. Those figures sound impressive in a presentation. On wet rock and loose dirt, it becomes much more meaningful.
The following morning, the product changed with the activity. For a Via Ferrata and hiking session, we switched into the Zegama Hike. The shoe takes the lightweight, responsive DNA of the Zegama Trail and adapts it for the comfort, durability and support required during longer days on foot.
We climbed, hiked, ate lunch outside and spent the afternoon foraging before returning to basecamp for a Wild Chef dinner. If Picklejus introduced ACG’s ambitions in Trail Run, this was our entry into Hike. The footwear rotation made the wider strategy tangible: there was no supposedly universal outdoor shoe.
It also made “All Conditions” feel broader than weather. Conditions change with terrain, temperature, pace and purpose. Running up a mountain asks something different of you than carefully making your way across one, but both rely on trusting what you have underfoot.
The next morning, the mountains raised the stakes. For a longer trail run near the Aiguille du Midi, we could choose between the cushioned Zegama Trail and the faster, more responsive ZoomX Ultrafly. I went for the Ultrafly. On shifting mountain terrain, product descriptions quickly become physical. Cushioning, stability, and traction stop being abstract benefits when you can feel every change in the ground beneath you.
That afternoon, we hiked to an ACG cheering zone and watched runners move deeper into UTMB as the light disappeared. We stayed outside through the night, surrounded by the landscape that shaped both the products and the visual language around them.
For Chamonix, ACG introduced Chamo Camo, a camouflage pattern informed by the granite, limestone, sandstone, forests, shadows and lichen found around Mont Blanc. It appeared across the race kits worn by ACG athletes, as well as a wider footwear and apparel collection.
Camouflage is usually designed to help its wearer disappear. At UTMB, where every brand is competing to be seen, Chamo Camo did almost the opposite. By borrowing directly from Chamonix, it gave ACG a recognizable identity within it. The collection became a link between the brand’s technical and cultural sides. So, performance gave the product a reason to exist, while design gave it relevance beyond the race.
The following day moved from Trail Run to Explore. After an adventurous morning, we returned to Chamonix for the UTMB finish line and a visit to Sentier, where the Chamo Camo collection was presented in full. It revealed another part of ACG’s proposition. Not every outdoor experience needs a race number. Exploration may mean climbing, rafting, or paragliding. Sometimes it's simply choosing a direction without knowing where it leads.
That playfulness matters. As ACG becomes more technically aggressive, it risks resembling its peers in the outdoor industry. But the bright colors, strange names, and irreverent attitude is what makes ACG, ACG. Picklejus may be the result of biomechanical research and thousands of testing miles, but it is still called Picklejus.
At the finish line, the distance between product research and reality became very small. The gear we discussed throughout the week was now worn by athletes running on exhaustion. Every decision made in a laboratory was called back to on the mountain.
ACG’s next chapter is not simply about remaking a culturally loved outdoor label as a performance brand. It is about proving that technical credibility and knowing irreverence can scale the same terrain.
