The Outdoor Industry Kind of Wants Your Participation
There’s an expert problem in our outdoor spaces. We desperately need the people who know our wild world the best to steward participation and avoid the temptation of protecting it by preventing its use altogether.
For better or worse (and research would argue it’s significantly for the better) more people are going outside. According to a study by Penn State and published in the journal Land, around half of adults in the United States participate in outdoor recreation, and post covid 20% of those are new to the outdoor space.
This is both exciting and nerve wracking. How do we encourage exploration of our outdoor spaces, something that has a wide, positive social impact, while keeping our wild places wild?
The best way to learn outdoor sports is to have someone show you. A wild eyed cousin, a sneaky bad ass coworker, a friend of a friend who always has wild game in their freezer to share. The vast majority of people who go fly fishing or backcountry skiing, or freediving, or hunting or [insert outdoor activity] go with a friend or family member first. Whether it’s using a circular saw, swimming in the deep end, sending it on your first slope, or hunting wild boar - we learn best together.
Our world desperately needs people en masse to fall in love with the gential glaciers and peaks gigantic, as our buddies Whitman and Muir once waxed. If we want our outdoor places to stay wild while inviting more people into them, we need to incentivize those connections and reward the best stewards of our outdoor spaces. The oligopoly of commercial permits and well intended bureaucratic processes are failing their intended purpose; to create an inviting, safe, and wild space for outdoor activities.. It’s time for experts to open their doors and pick up the torch.
“Guided operations are often fully booked out, over priced, or difficult to get in contact with. This is forcing adventurers inwaiting to try things on their own that they aren’t prepared for,” a member of the National Forest Service recently told me. “Backcountry skiing has gotten more and more crowded. With a lack of options to really fulfill the demand, most people are leaving the resorts, buying skins, and venturing out on their own.
This is leading to problems. Some are inconsequential but annoying etiquette issues like poaching lines, others are more serious like causing avalanches resulting in serious injury and occasionally, fatalities. Almost none of these faux paux are intentional, and could all be avoided if we had people who were genuinely interested in showing people the ropes. Right now it doesn’t feel like we have enough of those.”
“Climbing guides are just trying to get by and enjoy the sport they love. When people with skill don’t feel respected, they tend to exaggerate some of the difficulties and dangers within that skill set,” an outfitter in Zion lamented, “It’s frustrating and a bit baffling to me that the climbing community has an ‘it’s too dangerous to learn’ approach instead of a, ‘how do we make it more approachable to learn basic safety skills’ outlook.”
This is oversimplifying it, but the underlying principles are true. It’s not impossible to learn how to tie a knot and belay, roll a kayak, properly release a fish, ski a backcountry line, or freedive to 10 meters. We need to stop pretending that these are superhuman feats of strength instead of what they are. Important but feasible skills best learned when taught by someone who already knows how to do it. Our outdoor leaders need to start extending their hands and stop building imaginary barriers behind the facade that it’s too dangerous for your average person, because the data shows that they’ll eventually try anyway.
There is a difference between being reckless and preparing for the variable danger that comes with leaving your front door. It’s reckless not to encourage people to try an outdoor sport, it’s irresponsible to not let them know their outdoor dreams are totally possible if they take some time to learn.
Edward Abbey wrote, “Why wilderness? Because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.” The unpredictable nature of… well nature, is one of the reasons we leave the safety of our homes in the first place. We need to show people how to do it without signing their death notice. We need folks interested in exploring to know that it’s 100%, totally, possible to accomplish your outdoor goals, which often aren’t anything other than to safely enjoy a moment in nature.
A lot of the gatekeeping and skill peacocking emanates from outdoor experts, professional or otherwise, who feel they’ve worked hard to learn the intimacies of their favorite places to do their favorite thing, and fear showing others how and where will cause them to lose something they love. I empathize with that, but it’s far better than the alternative. Would you rather pay Madison Square Garden prices for a band you heard for free three years ago, or have them stop making music all together? I don’t think our outdoor spaces are much different.
“One of my best guides told me recently he’d rather keep his favorite route for himself and his friends than add to the crowd. This is understandable in theory but it’s becoming impossible to keep our hidden gems hidden. We might as well invite people with open arms and teach love and respect of the places we hold dear.” The reality is we no longer live in a world where it’s realistic to keep the best of places to ourselves forever.
For every one gatekeeping expert it takes ten open minded and excited outdoor stewards to invite new people in. If we collectively create a path for newbies to become competent, not only will our wild places be better cared for, they’ll get more of our public resources. Places feel less crowded when we share, not when we conquer and keep. Sometimes the tighter we try to hold something, the worse our grip can become. We have an ignorance problem more than we have an overcrowded problem for a lot of our favorite areas and activities.
Even worse, we often blame people for being new. We blame them so often, every sport has a name for newbies who want nothing more than to start their journey to expertise, and everyone started at some point. Kook (surfing), Jerry (skiing), Gumby (climbing). We need to stop discouraging our bright eyes outdoors folks and start setting them up for success. Those words should carry light hearted endearment, not malcontent. The outdoor boom is giving experts an opportunity to build the outdoor space they hope to exist.
People have been learning the best way to experience the outdoors for millenia, and they’ve been learning by showing each other how. Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. Chouinard and Thompkins. When experts help bring in new excited people and work together, the world of outdoor recreation progresses. We need to continue this time honored tradition or we’re going to destroy the very places we are trying to protect.
