The Banks Fry-Bake Company has been the proverbial one-pony show since 1979.  So, let me introduce myself. My name is Pam Banks and my father, Pete Banks and I designed the Banks Fry-Bake pan after a backpacking trip in the Canyonlands of Utah in 1977.  I was a newly certified NOLS Instructor who was smitten with a lifestyle of living out of my backpack. My Dad ran a metal forming business named Bomco, Inc. situated in Gloucester, Massachusetts. We had carried a cast iron skillet on our backpacking trip since I refused to buy Teflon pans (which I felt would be thrown away too readily after camping use) and I owned no other type of frying pan. My Dad thought I was nuts to carry cast iron and suggested that we design a pan together, voilla.

     In 1979 NOLS and I teamed up to purchase the first production run of pans after several prototypes had been tested in the field on NOLS courses and by Instructors then working for the school. Around 1980, the concept for an Alpine model pan was hatched under a boulder in Bonneville Basin in the Wind River range of Wyoming while staring at an MSR windscreen. Production of the Alpine model pan started in 1988.

     Both the Expedition model pan and the Alpine model pan have changed only very slightly since the first production run in 1979 though after a decade of Bomco, Inc. producing them Northeast Metal Spinning (N.E. Metal Spinning ) took over the job and continues to manufacture them today.

    N.E. Metal Spinning is a small business located in Atkinson, New Hampshire. They purchase aluminum which has been manufactured in the United States and do an expert job of cutting the aluminum to size and then spinning it to the shape of the pan. The pans are then taken to Dav-Tech Plating, Inc www.dav-techplatinginc.com. in Marlborough, Massachusetts where they are hard anodized and returned to N.E. Metal Spinning for my pick-up.

     This web site would not be possible without the help of my friend Doug Millen (mastermind of NEice )who spends his time designing houses and websites when not out rock and ice climbing or kayaking.

     This one pony show would not be possible without the help of all those mentioned above and all those of you who have turned your friends, students and co-workers onto the Banks Fry-Bake pan. Thank-you.