Point Break: Mountaintop Extracts Pauses Production

Before the recreational gold rush swept through New Mexico, there was a moment—a window—where product still held soul. My first real experiences as a medical patient wasn’t about percentage or gimmicks. It was at Urban Wellness off Paradise, and it was a cart: Mountaintop orange Powerade flavor, full-spectrum, and wrapped in a terpene pinwheel that broke down exactly what you were inhaling. It was exactly what i hoped the industry would be, and felt like someone gave a damn.

The menus back then were modest. If you wanted vapes, you had three names: Pharmers, Bloom, and Mountaintop. Pharmers was built for the purists—gas-heavy, no fluff. Bloom had polish, the kind of brand you'd hand to your mom. But Mountaintop? Mountaintop was for the believers. The people who still thought this plant was medicine. Not marketing.

Their products weren’t overhyped. They were thoughtful. Built with intention. You could feel the difference in every puff, because it came from a place of care—real caregiver energy. But then rec opened up, and the market spoke. And what it said was: “More. Cheaper. Faster.” Quality got drowned out by flashy packaging, volume discounts, and billboards littering the I-25 corridor. Legacy operators, the ones who actually gave a damn, started to fall. And now, Mountaintop has paused production—another casualty of a system that rewards margin over mission.

Mountaintop has hit pause. Maybe they’ll return. Maybe they won’t. But it hits harder than most because they weren’t just another name on the shelf—they were a north star. A reminder of how things could be.

Some losses aren’t loud. They don’t come with headlines or drama. They just leave a hole. And when you can’t explain why something hits you like it does, it’s usually because it mattered more than you realized.

Mountaintop wasn’t just a brand—it was a vision. A high-water mark for doing things right; one that we may have let it slip through our fingers, in a market that too often chooses easy business over good business.

And unless New Mexico figures out how to balance hype with heart, we’ll keep burying the best parts of this industry, one legacy at a time.