I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years digging into government data on outdoor recreation. But, getting to that data can be a pain. For every data dive I’ve written in the past, I’ve been pulling PDFs and Excel files from bad government websites, converting formats, cleaning the data, reading methods, and manually running my own analysis. It works, but it’s tedious, and it means the analysis lives in my spreadsheets and nowhere else.

So I built something. data.hereandthere.club is a free, interactive tool that takes all of this data and puts it in a more accessible format, for everyone. You can explore NPS visitation data for all 400+ locations in the National Park System from 1979 to 2025, and see the full BEA outdoor recreation economy data at both the national and state level from 2012–2024.

I’m not doing anything particularly revolutionary here. This data already exists, it’s public, but it’s a challenge to access and understand. I wanted to make it more accessible and more useful, both for people in the industry and for anyone who’s curious about how we use our public lands.

If anything is missing, broken, or needs to be improved, let me know. There’s a lot of ways to slice and dice, so it might be a bit overwhelming.

The timing of this “launch” is ideal…the NPS just released their 2025 visitation numbers. So let’s put the tool to work.

The National Park Headlines

• 323 million recreation visits across the National Park System in 2025

• That’s down 8.85 million visits (2.7%) from the record year in 2024 (331.9M)

• Recreation visitor hours: 1.39 billion (down 0.7%)

• Overnight stays: 13 million (down 2.4%)

The top parks are mostly the same, with a few that swapped places and the most notable change being the drop at Grand Canyon, which I’ll talk about later.

The NPS press release frames this as “public interest remains strong.” Which, sure. But also…the agency lost 24% of its permanent workforce in 2025. DOGE-initiated firings started in February, followed by a hiring freeze, early retirements, and probationary employee terminations. Seasonal hiring was way down, the Big Beautiful Bill clawed back $267 million in previously committed NPS funding, and a 43-day government shutdown ran through October and November.

So maybe a 2.7% decrease is actually kind of remarkable, given the amount of upheaval this year.

A Tale of Two Parks Systems

Visitation to the 63 national parks was nearly flat. The system-wide decline is being driven almost entirely by everything else. The NPS manages 433 units in total: 63 national parks, plus 85 national monuments, 31 national memorials, 25 battlefields, 58 national historic sites, and a bunch of recreation areas, seashores, parkways, and other designations. These sites sometimes get overlooked when we think about the “National Park Service.” But they drive a ton of overall visitation, and they’re where the steepest declines were last year. 84% of monuments saw visitation declines. 79% of historic sites. 74% of memorials. The national parks themselves were mostly fine (the avg % change across parks was +6.6).

Why? For one, national parks are more tentpole trips. You book six months out, you buy the flights, you reserve the rental hotel. You’re probably going regardless of whether the visitor center is fully staffed. These trips have real economic mass behind them, and states and local partners have a financial reason to prop them up. Utah spent $336,000 to keep visitor centers running at all five of its national parks for the duration of the shutdown. Colorado chipped in $64,000 to keep two Rocky Mountain visitor centers open for the final 20 days. At Great Smoky Mountains, a coalition of state and local governments, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and Friends of the Smokies pooled roughly $62,000 a day to fund full park operations through fall foliage season. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and Alcatraz City Cruises donated week by week to keep Alcatraz open and staffed.

The shutdown created a patchwork of open vs closed vs “kinda closed?” across the system. Parks and visitor sites that collect fees under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act could use available fee balances to keep basic services running, like trash collection, restrooms, road maintenance. Sites without fee collections, or with insufficient balances, had to seek DOI approval and often just shut down. Muir Woods closed. Fort McHenry closed. “Smaller” park units with less staff were affected at a higher degree by changes in staffing. If you’re running a staff of 10 and lose 4 at a park that needs a visitor center experience, that’s a much bigger deal than some of the national parks where trails stay open and some changes can be absorbed.

Some of the parks that stayed open captured displaced demand. Arches, which ended its daily permitting system early when the shutdown hit, ended up with a 16% gain in October year-over-year. Though, it’s worth noting that correlation isn’t necessarily causation here; nearby Dead Horse Point State Park also saw an October increase without any permitting system, and Goblin Valley was up 40%.

I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t be fully certain of the reason behind every decline. The methodologies for counting visitors vary quite a bit across the system, and it’s entirely possible that some of these decreases reflect fewer staff dedicated to counting and reporting rather than actual decreased visitation. I’m inclined to believe we’re seeing real declines because of closures, decreased international travel, and more, at most of these sites. But it’s a good example of how messed up things are right now. We can’t even fully trust the numbers because the people who collect and analyze them have been cut too.

The Biggest Movers

Outside of the the top 10, a few of the biggest year-over-year percentage changes tell some of the more interesting stories.

North Cascades was up 185%, from about 16,000 visitors to 47,000. This is a more of a rebound, not a sudden surge in interest. Wildfires in 2024 suppressed visitation well below normal. North Cascades still remains one of the least visited national parks in the system (57 of 63).

Crater Lake jumped 25%. A major construction project starting in 2026 will close the Cleetwood Cove Trail, the park’s most heavily used trail and the only permitted access to the lakeshore, for at least three years. The bump could be a “see it now before it’s closed” rush. It’s also possible some visitors saw headlines about a multi-year closure and assumed the whole park was shutting down, which may have driven urgency beyond what the actual closure warrants.

Grand Canyon was down 10%. The Dragon Bravo Fire hit the North Rim hard. Olympic down 2.6% after a 3,000-acre fire closed sections of the park. The Grand Canyon Lodge burned down and closures resulted in a 18% reduction to overnight stays. This is an impact likely to continue through 2026.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison dropped 26%…and this is yet another fire story. Wildfires over the summer destroyed infrastructure across thousands of acres and campgrounds and trails remain closed.

There are also a few fun/interesting things, like Isle Royale and Wrangell-St Elias having by far the highest average visit duration. Which makes sense, because, one is an island, and the other is…out there. But Kings Canyon and Sequoia were also quite high, probably because of a high percentage of backpackers. Golden Gate NRA and Blue Ridge Parkway have more raw visitors (albeit of a different kind) than the top National Park, Great Smoky Mountains.

What I’m watching for 2026

Honestly, 2026 is harder to forecast than usual.

Let’s start with gas prices. The war with Iran has spiked the national average to just under $4. Even if things somehow get resolved and the Strait of Hormuz opens soon, prices wont magically fall back below $3. That matters for park visitation because national parks are, overwhelmingly, road trip destinations.

Consumer sentiment also hit its lowest point of 2026 in March, and there’s a spending slowdown that hits exactly the categories that feed park visitation: discretionary travel, vacations, and big-ticket experiences. Morgan Stanley forecasts consumer spending growth dropping to 2.9% this year, down from 5.7% in 2024.

In a normal year, I’d say increased visitation from the World Cup this summer would result in tourism spillover to parks as international visitors tack on road trips and longer stays. But I have no idea how that’s going to play out this year. People are going to come, it’s a World Cup, after all, and we’ll probably get great articles written about that tourism boost. But I don’t think it will be as significant as it could have been. A meaningful amount of international travelers view the US as a less than welcoming destination, and I think the percentage that extend to longer stays around the even won’t be as significant.

Bookings for U.S. national park tours are currently down 42%, per Intrepid Travel. One UK travel agency scrapped its Montana, Washington, and California itineraries entirely. Canadian residents’ return trips from the US were down 24.3% in January 2026 versus January 2025. Add to that the DOI directive that raised entrance fees for non-US residents to $100 per person at 11 of the most visited parks, I’m not totally against that in practice, but it comes at a poor time. It’s just another negative-feeling headline for international visitors.

323 million people showed up to national park sites in 2025. A lot. But that number is more about the inertia of domestic travel demand than the true health of the parks, or visitation patterns. I don’t think the question for 2026 will be the headline count. There’s a decent chance it’ll be another banner year, there are a lot of people. But I think there’s open questions about whether the data will even be reliable, whether the smaller sites will keep bleeding out, and whether the parts of the industry that depend on international visitors are about to have a very bad year.

View the Full Interactive Report

What is “Outdoor Recreation”?

OREC isn’t a true “industry,” it’s a satellite account that aggregates economic activity across standard industry categories. The report takes industries like Manufacturing, Retail Trade, Agriculture, etc, and then figures out what parts of that data applied to outdoor recreation.

The definition is probably broader than most people expect. Yes, there’s hiking, and camping, and biking and stuff. But also gardening supplies. Kite flying. Pickleball. Oil and gas extraction. Golf. Flights. Boat manufacturing. Car rentals. So when you hear a “$1.3 trillion outdoor economy,” what they’re referencing is an amalgamation of connected economic activity that was somehow related to outdoor recreation; the BEA’s broad definition includes “all recreational activities undertaken for pleasure that occur outdoors.”

The Post-Pandemic Growth Spurt Has Slowed

When I look at the trends over the last few years, this is one of the bigger stories. Real GDP for outdoor recreation grew 2.7% in 2024, compared with 2.8% for the overall U.S. economy. It’s the first time outdoor recreation has grown slower than the broader economy since before the pandemic.

There was huge growth and interest after the pandemic but the deceleration has been precipitous (and predictable). In last year’s analysis, I wrote: “It’s encouraging to see that the growth of outdoor recreation continues to outpace the economy, but we’ll have to see in upcoming years if it can continue to maintain this trajectory.” Well, that growth has stalled a bit. Outdoor recreation is still growing, but in a much less exciting way.

A 2.7% growth rate is fine. It’s not a crisis. But for the last few years, the story has been “outdoor recreation is booming, growing faster than the economy, an economic force.” That story is over. What we’re seeing now is convergence with GDP growth.

Nominal vs. Real Growth

The $1.3 trillion is a nominal number. Adjusted for inflation, it’s closer to $990 billion, and the nominal number is growing more than the inflation adjusted one. A chunk of what gets reported as “growth” is just price increases. Lift tickets cost more. Hotel rooms cost more. The industry is raising prices faster than it’s growing participation.

There’s an interesting example in the ski industry. From 2017-2024, the value added increased 28%, but real value (inflation adjusted) actually declined 7%. I was digging into some ski industry data earlier this week (thanks to a Cody Townsend thread) that showed ski visits were down for 2023/24. And over that period skiing declined 2.5% in nominal dollars, but fell 6.8% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It’s probable that price increases in everything from lift tickets to lodging and travel are masking lower performance.

Boating Remains on Top, and Hunting/Shooting Grows

Boating/fishing remains the largest conventional outdoor recreation activity at $38.4 billion in value added. It’s been essentially flat for the last two years.

RVing continues a post-pandemic contraction trend, down from a peak of $31.2 billion in 2022 to $27.5 billion now. Last year I noted that production was down 47% and the resale market was getting hammered. That trend has accelerated. New registrations and shipments continue to fall, and some manufacturers are laying off staff. Used RV prices have dropped to pre-pandemic levels, and are increasingly hard to sell. By every measure of the manufacturing and retail market, RVing is in a sustained downturn, although a more optimistic analysis might attempt to position this as a “correction” (it’s not).

So why does the BEA still show $27.5 billion in value added? Well, RVs are still expensive, even with reduced sales, and it’s capturing all economic activity related to RVing: the millions of RVs already on the road, campground spending, fuel, maintenance, parts, accessories, insurance, and the travel and hospitality spending that RVers generate. New unit sales are falling, but the existing ownership is still large. The market is absolutely a bit vulnerable though, and those decreasing sales are likely to show up in the economic data in upcoming years more strongly.

Hunting, shooting, and trapping posted the largest gain among conventional activities, jumping 16.5% YOY. The category has nearly doubled since 2019, a trajectory that stands in contrast to flattening of growth curves elsewhere in outdoor recreation.

I’m not as tapped into this world, so it’s harder for me to nail down what’s driving this growth. But, election-year purchase spikes are a well documented phenomenon. Recreational and competitive shooting is also growing as a social hobby, particularly among urban residents and women, and competitive shooting clubs are growing.

Water sports are seeing a big decline. “Other conventional water activities” (paddling, surfing, SCUBA, wakeboarding, whitewater) dropped 31% from 2020 levels, driven by the same dynamic hitting RVs: a pandemic demand shock created a glut of durable equipment that doesn’t need replacing. According to the Outdoor Industry Association’s (OIA) 2024 participation report, participation is actually up, nearly 30 million Americans went paddling last year, but the economic value is falling because people already own the gear or can get it secondhand.

Hiking’s economic footprint vs. cultural visibility

There’s a disconnect between the importance we place on hiking, backpacking, camping and what the impact actually is. It’s one of the most important nuances to understand what the “outdoor industry” actually is, especially when people use the economic impact numbers from this particular report to bolster whatever point they’re trying to make.

The climbing, hiking, and tent camping category is the 5th largest of conventional activities, and the 9th largest if you include other activities. It’s responsible for 1.1% of total outdoor recreation value added.

The activities that tend to dominate outdoor media, brand marketing, and cultural conversation in one bubble of the outdoors generate less economic value than golf, amusement parks, festivals, hunting, and “productive activities” which include things like gardening. Now, you might say, “well, those things aren’t actually the outdoor industry,” but that’s a whole different conversation. If you want to use the $1.3T number, they are. If you want to strip those out, the whole story looks a lot less compelling.

A huge percentage of hiking and camping gear is manufactured overseas, while things like boats and RVs sold in the U.S. are also manufactured domestically. Those things get an economic multiplier in reports like these because there’s impact from the manufacture, sale, and use (and they’re expensive).

There’s an interesting paradox here as well: hiking, climbing, and camping doubled in absolute value from $3.8B in 2019 to $7.8B in 2024. But its share of total outdoor recreation value is stuck at 1.1%, where it’s been for the last 3 years. The activity is growing, but the other things that make up the report are growing too.

Supporting activities, primarily trips and travel, expanded from 50.1% to 51.5% of the total. Conventional outdoor activities as a whole shrank from 30.7% to 29.5%. So even if hiking sees growth, its relative economic importance is unchanged because the money spent on travel and hospitality infrastructure around all outdoor activities is growing faster.

“Supporting Activities” Drive the Majority of Economic Value

Supporting activities (travel, tourism, transportation, lodging, food and beverage, and shopping) now account for 51.5% of total outdoor recreation value added, up from 51.2% in 2023 and continuing a steady climb since the COVID-era (when people bought gear but didn’t travel).

Transportation alone generated $106.2 billion in value added, more than all conventional outdoor activities combined. The pattern is consistent across categories: people spend more getting to outdoor recreation and staying there than they do on the activities themselves.

The outdoor recreation economy is, at its core, a travel and hospitality economy. This shouldn’t be surprising. People don’t just drive somewhere to hike. They eat, they shop, they stay somewhere. The cute local coffee shop, the boutique motel, the brewery with the nice patio…that’s where most of the economic impact actually gets created.

If we break this down, the stereotypical RVer generates more economic value than the ultralight backpacker. The RV itself is domestically manufactured. The fuel, the campground fees, the restaurants and grocery stores at every stop, the longer trip durations, the shopping along the way. An RVer touches transportation, lodging, food, retail, and manufacturing in a single trip. A classic Boulderite buys a pair of trail runners (manufactured overseas), drives to the mountains, car camps for free, hikes or runs on public land, and maybe grabs a coffee in town afterward. The trail itself doesn’t generate economic value. Yes, it’s the reason people visit. But economically, the people who park at the viewpoint are generating similar value as the people on a 10-mile hike or overnight camp.

State-level Shifts

The states where outdoor recreation represents the largest share of GDP remain consistent: Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, Vermont, and Wyoming. These are economies where outdoor tourism is a major component of overall visitation. When outdoor recreation represents 5-6% of state GDP, small shifts in visitation or participation have big ripple effects.

Alaska’s jump from 4.6% to 5.3% represents the largest movement among the top states, likely driven by the continued growth of cruise tourism. Hawaii moved in the opposite direction.

The 2023 Maui wildfires devastated Lahaina, the island’s primary tourism hub, and the fallout lasted well through 2024. Visitor arrivals to the state dropped, their workforce shrank, and increased housing costs made it hard to recruit replacements. Airlines pulled capacity from underperforming Maui routes, which reduced seats to the state overall. All of that created a pretty vicious loop. When your economy is 6.1% outdoor recreation, a disruption like this hits differently than it does in a state at 2%.

California, Florida, and Texas lead in raw dollar volume, but outdoor recreation is a small slice of their overall GDPs (2-4%). What they do dominate is amusement parks — Florida and California together control over half of the national amusement park portion of the outdoor recreation economy. Theme park complexes like Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and Six Flags produce more economic value than entire “traditional” outdoor activity categories.

Who’s Vulnerable?

When outdoor recreation represents a significant share of a state’s economy, the risks become more concentrated. Colorado at 3.3% ($18.1B total) and Indiana at 3.3% ($17.1B) provide useful examples. Both states derive similar GDP shares from outdoor recreation, but the makeup and vulnerabilities are different.

Colorado’s outdoor economy is the most snow-dependent in the country. It’s the economic engine for mountain communities across the state, driving accommodation, food, retail, and transportation spending. But that concentration is also exposure — when snowpack collapses, as this season has hammered home, so does the entire supporting tourism ecosystem.

I’ve been a bit confused by Indiana the last few years, but never really dug into why they have a high proportion of GDP from outdoor rec. Turns out, Indiana’s GDP is mostly driven by RVs, specifically manufacturing. The state produces roughly 80% of North American RVs. TIL. This means their outdoor recreation economy is highly exposed to manufacturing cycles and consumer discretionary spending. The decreases in RV sales do not bode well for future reports.

The Political Subtext

The outdoor recreation economy is massive, even adjusted for inflation. Reports like this continue to push states toward adopting outdoor recreation offices and treating the sector as a serious economic driver. But the political interests within “the outdoor industry” are more fragmented than most coverage suggests.

The RV Industry Association’s PAC recipients for the 2024 cycle: seven of eight are Republicans, most with single-digit lifetime environmental scores from the League of Conservation Voters. Two represent Indiana’s RV manufacturing corridor. Bruce Westerman, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and lead architect of NEPA reform legislation, is on the list. Adrian Smith (R-Neb) has fought EPA emissions standards.

The American Sportfishing Association’s recipients split between parties. On the Democratic side it includes Jared Huffman (ranking member on Natural Resources, vocal critic of Westerman’s NEPA overhaul) and Joe Neguse (Boulder, big supporter of public lands). On the Republican side, Garret Graves has pushed for expanded offshore drilling and Buddy Carter is broadly pro-fossil fuel.

These industries can support public lands and environmental protections, but they’re not environmental advocacy organizations, nor are they as left-leaning as much of the hiking/climbing/camping contingent. They back whoever is useful to their industry. Sometimes that aligns with ecosystem protection (healthy waterways mean healthy fisheries) and sometimes it doesn’t.

Some “Back of Napkin Math”

Let’s do some quick “back-of-napkin” math. If you narrowed the definition “outdoor recreation” to just “conventional” outdoor activities, it would represent $371 billion in gross output.

Supporting activities (travel, lodging, food, transportation) aren’t broken out by specific activity, but if we assume a proportional contribution, you’d get to roughly $757 billion. That’s assuming conventional activities generate supporting spend at the same rate as “other” activities like amusement parks, golf, and festivals, but I think it’s probably more likely that those generate proportionally more air travel, travel, lodging, and food spending than hiking or fishing trips. That would mean the real number for a conventionally-defined outdoor recreation economy is more like $600-700 billion. Still significant. But nowhere near the $1.3 trillion headline.

The narrative needs updating. The post-pandemic boom is over. Growth is flattening. The activities that drive the most economic value are not the ones that dominate the cultural conversation. And the political interests within “the outdoor industry” are more fragmented than some coverage suggests.

If the outdoor industry wants to wield its economic influence effectively, it could start by acknowledging that the $1.3 trillion number includes theme parks in Orlando, RV factories in Elkhart, and gun shops in an election year. That’s not a criticism, it’s just what the number actually measures. I think advocacy gets weaker, not stronger, when it papers over those details.

An orange-painted Italian commuter train carrying Eliud Kipchoge, Caleb Olsen, Francis Bourgeois (the TikTok train guy), and a bunch of influencers through the Alps. Race sponsorships worth six figures. Team USA walking into the Olympics without a swoosh in sight. Nike’s All Conditions Gear (ACG) has been everywhere.

Nike relaunched ACG as its flagship outdoor brand, betting big that heritage, spectacle, and revamped product can speed run them back into the outdoor zeitgeist. But big budgets and LinkedIn posts about “world building” don’t guarantee success.

Does the spend match the substance? And will it work for trail running and the broader outdoor market, which has been dominated for the past decade by brands that aren’t Nike?

SPONSORED BY: You? If you’re interested in supporting indie journalism, reaching an engaged audience of travelers, brand leaders, and outdoor enthusiasts, and associating your brand with interesting topics across sport, the outdoors, and travel, I’d love to hear from you.

The history of ACG

ACG has been a lot of things. It started in the late 70’s after Rick Ridgeway and John Roskelley sent back their Nike LDVs from K2 with notes on how to make them better. Since then, it’s been reinterpreted several times. Through the 90’s and 2000’s, it leaned into technical outerwear and experimentation. Errolson Hugh later pushed it toward urban techwear, and James Arizumi brought it back toward a more retro, accessible, outdoors-first identity. It’s been a rounding error on Nike’s balance sheet for a long time, but it has a passionate fanbase that cares deeply about the history and the product.

Meanwhile, the outdoor market exploded over the last decade and Nike was barely in the conversation. Brands like Salomon, The North Face, Hoka, Arc’teryx, and On built devoted communities and ate into market share from multiple directions, particularly in China, where outdoor is booming and Nike has really struggled of late.

Nike Trail launched in 2014 but never got the investment that road running did. By 2025, ACG had heritage but less reach or performance credibility, Nike Trail had a decade of underinvestment, and Nike still had no real foothold in outdoor.

Folding Nike Trail into ACG and relaunching the brand is an attempt to address a lot of issues at once. ACG has name recognition, a visual identity that isn’t just “Nike but trails,” and enough heritage to at least start a conversation about performance credibility and make a play for the outdoor crowd.

The ACG Relaunch

The rollout has been aggressive. It started at the 2025 Western States, where Caleb Olson won in a prototype of the ACG Ultrafly and the now-famous Radical AirFlow top (the one that looks like you’re wearing a cheese grater). They folded Nike Trail into ACG entirely, previewed the new brand at UTMB, expanded their athlete roster, and announced race sponsorships at Broken Arrow Skyrace ($150K prize purse) and Gorge Waterfalls ($75K).

Then came the Winter Olympics and the massive marketing push and rebrand. A PR blitz, a Mars-themed indoor ultramarathon with Mental Athletic, Team USA wearing ACG, and of course, the train.

These are the kind of things that win advertising awards and get shared on LinkedIn. For a company like Nike, this level of spectacle is almost obligatory. They need the press hits, the LinkedIn posts about “world building,” the signal to investors and retail partners that ACG is getting real investment and will put them back on track in China and the outdoor market. You don’t get that with a grassroots word-of-mouth strategy. You get it with a branded train carrying Kipchoge through the mountains.

But obligatory doesn’t mean it all lands. The train activation had insane attention to detail, but why push a non-technical carbon-plated racing shoe on a bunch of folks hiking in the snow? Why is a tennis player here wearing a one-off custom ACG kit? Why invite so many people clearly incapable of speaking credibly about trail or the Ultrafly? The Mental Athletic indoor ultra race was a wild visual, but very dystopian and high-fashion-coded, nothing like the rest of the marketing. It was something that might feel right for a Salomon or Satisfy but for Nike and ACG the collab feels less like a natural partnership and more like buying into “coolness”.

I went into the Nike store on Oxford Street and the in-store visual execution is strong. But the gap between the tentpole marketing and the in-store reality is noticeable. It’s a lot of real estate for one or two fairly niche hero pieces alongside a more standard lineup of apparel that doesn’t feel that exciting.

All Conditions?

In a lengthy Bloomberg interview during the Olympics, CEO Elliott Hill talked about ACG in terms of “the trail running consumer” and “the outdoor market opportunity.” Not much about the style-forward audience who kept ACG culturally relevant for two decades. That feels intentional: the lifestyle side will only grow if the performance credibility is there. They’re not abandoning that crowd (the trail/hike/explore categories on the site make that clear) but performance is center stage right now.

That story has a few gaps right now. The flagship product of the entire relaunch is the ACG Ultrafly 2, a $260 carbon-plated trail racing shoe. Hill told Bloomberg that the shoe and its carbon plate brings “innovation” and “newness and freshness” to trail running. In a Huckberry Gear Lab segment that doubled as a long Nike ad, the host called it a “high-performing 4x4 SUV.” ACG’s footwear director framed it around “the everyday athlete.”

But…carbon plates have been in trail shoes since 2021, and plenty of brands are on their v3 or 4, with new, varying approaches to carbon plates. Some recently popular shoes like the Prodigio Pro (arguably the consensus best trail shoe of 2025) and the Norda 005 are instead focusing on advanced foam compounds and avoiding the stiffness and instability issues that plates can cause on technical terrain.

Believe in the Run called the Ultrafly “Some Conditions Gear,” specifically flagging stiffness and instability from the carbon plate. It seems to be a big improvement over the original, and a great shoe for fast, non-technical trails. It’ll be great for certain people in specific contexts. But a super-shoe-price-point, carbon-plated racer with 3mm lugs is not an everyday shoe for most people, not revolutionary, and it’s definitely not a 4x4. I think the upcoming ACG Pegasus or Zegama are the models that will bring the mass appeal (and better collab crossovers) for ACG, not the Ultrafly.

All Audiences?

Open the website and it feels like two different brands sharing the same name. The trail line is bright and offbeat, while the Hiking and Explore categories lean more gorpcore, with earth tones, on-trend flash-lit photography, and oversized fits. The problem is how it all sits together. Technical gear, gorpcore pieces, and basic activewear all appear side by side. It feels like multiple brand decks merged into a single Shopify collection.

These are on the same homepage

The trail tone feels deliberately un-Nike, which is probably the point. You can see the new ACG trying to channel the original’s irreverence, but I think the original had an edge and perspective that made it unique and isn’t replicated here .

When a brand known for athletic intensity tries to reposition itself as the “look how zany I am” outdoor friend, it feels a bit like something that felt safe and tested well in a agency deck. I hope they bring a bit more of the OG swagger back in future marketing.

Nike’s End Goal

Salomon is an obvious comparison, because they’ve managed to be both a credible performance trail brand and a fashion/lifestyle brand at the same time. But that crossover was slow and grew out of both organic adoption and deliberate choices over the last decade.

The North Face might actually be a better, though, because TNF operates at a scale more like what Nike is targeting. You see their puffers on every other person in London and New York, but the reason that works is because their performance history and story is what drives their lifestyle sales.

ACG has some of that history, but not at the right scale. It feels like Nike is trying to speedrun that journey, pitching ACG simultaneously to gorpcore fans, trail runners, hikers, the fashion-adjacent Olympics audience, and the Chinese outdoor market, all with one brand and one launch window.

Why I’m Keeping Tabs

I’m stoked Nike is investing in trail running and outdoor, and you’ll catch me watching for new releases. Most trail running brands don’t have this level of budget. That investment raises visibility for the entire sport and buys goodwill with the community. Yeah, the train is flashy, but high-dollar race sponsorships and prize purses are a massive boon to a sport figuring out growth and professionalization.

The catch is whether Nike sticks with it. They have a history of giving up on things, and the visual/marketing side of ACG feels a bit ahead of the product right now. Hill told Bloomberg “you’ll see us extend beyond trail running moving forward.” It’s hard to see exactly how committed they are and the exact shape of what ACG wants to be.

Success for ACG probably looks less like beating Hoka in trail and more like competing with the Amer Sports portfolio and The North Face for outdoor lifestyle. I suspect the size of the trail-specific market isn’t enough to keep Nike heavily engaged unless it’s doing double duty by building technical credibility for the lifestyle side of the line. The question isn’t really “trail running or gorpcore?” It’s whether Nike can become one of those brands that’s both credible and cool across outdoor categories.

Underneath all of it is China. The first standalone ACG store is opening in Beijing, not NYC, Portland, or London. China’s outdoor market is booming, and Nike has posted consecutive quarters of revenue declines there, while other outdoor brands have seen massive gains. ACG gives them a way to re-enter with a brand identity that is less weighed down by “Nike.” Trail running is the story for credibility. China is the story for revenue.

But, I just want to see what ACG looks like two years from now, when the launch halo has faded, we’ve seen multiple seasons of product, and the whole thing has to sustain itself on new, interesting releases and community interest rather than marketing budget.

Why do I mention this? Well, earlier this week, the founder and creative director of French running brand Satisfy, Brice Partouche, publicly shared a DM exchange with Nash Howe of Currently Running to his Instagram story. At the center of the callout was Partouche’s frustration that Currently was ripping off Satisfy and selling it at a lower price point. He called Currently…you guessed it…”parasites.”

I think the space is big enough for both Satisfy and Currently. This might be a bit niche, but the way it played out brought up some interesting conversations around Satisfy, brand building, and the state of “running culture”.

Currently vs. Satisfy

Currently is relatively new running brand started by Nash Howe. In interviews he tends to come across as earnest, passionate about running, focused on community, and acknowledges inspirations from the other big players in the space. The brand has grown quietly and organically over the last year. On the product side, their shorts use similar fabrics and have a strikingly similar silhouette and palette to Satisfy’s Space-O line at significantly lower price points. Did they take heavy inspiration from brands like Satisfy and Bandit? Yes, pretty clearly (Nash has said as much). Is their belt a (very) close replica of Satisfy’s Space-O belt? Hard to argue otherwise.

But Satisfy didn’t invent Space-O. They trademarked a brandable name for a fabric that other brands can source. Same with Ghost Fleece, which is Polartec Alpha Direct, and Auralite, which is Deltapeak. Their Ghost Fleece is effectively a “reinterpretation” of pieces brands like Senchi Designs have been making for years. The creative work wasn’t inventing new materials. It was mythologizing and branding existing ones. They’re impressively good at it, but it’s not the same as ownership or exclusivity.

Currently’s approach, a scrappy operation building a brand through social and direct relationships, is becoming more common. The barriers to entry to create a brand keep dropping and methods of sourcing fabrics, managing factory relationships, and running DTC stores, are increasingly more accessible. When I look at their website I see the inspiration from Satisfy and others, but I don’t really see Satisfy. But I don’t see anything particularly unique, either. I see a brand pulling from the same broad pool of references that a lot of running brands are pulling from right now: muted palettes, split shorts, similar fabrics, similar imagery. Does Currently feel meaningfully differentiated? Not especially. But it’s far from alone in lacking a truly unique, strong identity.

If a smaller brand iterates faster on product details and offers a similar silhouette at half the price, that’s not “parasitism”. That’s market pressure. Some of the feedback I’ve seen even suggests that Currently’s shorts, despite using similar fabrics, are actually better than their Satisfy equivalent.

Credit Where It’s Due

Partouche founded Satisfy with a vision: running as creative act, not a competitive performance grind. The running industry at the time was, in his words, “all performance, winning, and bravado.” Satisfy offered a new visual approach to a somewhat stagnant industry. Their MothTech t-shirts, cotton with “body-mapped” ventilation holes (whether you love them or think they’re ridiculous), are genuinely iconic in the sport-meets-streetwear aesthetic.

Satisfy genuinely resonates with a lot of runners. Their aesthetic feels casual rather than obviously athletic and you can (maybe) wear it to a coffee shop without looking like you just came from a track workout. The people who love Satisfy really love it. They’re not being duped; they’re buying into a brand that speaks to how they see themselves as runners.

I get the appeal. Anytime I’m in a running shop, I enjoy checking out the new Satisfy releases, and I think they’ve done more to push running style forward than almost any brand in the last decade. I just can’t personally justify the cost, and some of the styles just don’t feel me.

The same things that resonate with one group can alienate others. Satisfy’s branding and communication has put it in a category of apparel that says something about you if you wear it, and not everyone is comfortable with what it says. I showed up to a Satisfy-affiliated run club in London once and, while I had a great time, the implied status related to wearing $1000 worth of running kit felt weird. The brand has cultural baggage that not every runner wants to carry, especially at $260 for a pair of shorts. Currently’s Satisfy-esque aesthetic at a cheaper price point, without the Satisfy brand baggage, makes it a perfectly viable alternative for a lot of people.

The brand is full of borrowed references. Partouche has said that he “likes to move between cultures,” and the elements people tend to associate with the Satisfy draw from decades of fashion, military surplus, punk, Americana, and streetwear influences. The whole “French fashion brand co-opting punk and Americana for overpriced tee shirts” doesn’t sit well with everyone, but what Satisfy did, and did well, was take those references and build them into a new identity attached to running.

While there’s plenty to debate about how brands choose to copy or innovate, this is how fashion has always functioned. There’s an interesting principle called the “piracy paradox” that posits that the fashion industry thrives because of remixing, referencing and copying, not despite it. When a design gets widely copied, it loses its cool, which pushes the originator to make something new. And, enough versions of a particular look need to exist for people to recognize it as a trend in the first place. The fashion cycle ends up being moved forward by copying, not killed by it.

I think the fact that other brands are riffing on the aesthetics Satisfy helped define, is evidence that Satisfy succeeded. It’s probably annoying, and may or may not be cutting into Satisfy’s bottom line, but it’s also inevitable. It’s a signal to keep pushing forward, not a reason to publicly attack a one-person operation.

There’s a whole swathe of running brands that exist mostly as graphic tees, similar branding, and an Instagram account with motion blur photography. There is a lot of homogeneity across the “cool” running world, in both branding and product. There are only so many colors and ways to design a singlet or a pair of shorts. Most of these brands won’t succeed because, well, building a successful brand is hard, regardless of where your inspiration comes from. Currently will be up against the same odds. But remixing, experimenting, trying and failing is what pushes everyone forward.

Ironically, Partouche used a Fugazi lyric in one of his callouts about Currently. Fugazi was an influential punk band in large part because of how far they took their anti-commercial ethos, famously capping ticket prices at $5-10 and refusing to sell merch. Using their words to defend $260 shorts is…a choice.

It’s easy to celebrate borrowing and remixing when you’re the one doing it, and harder when someone else does it to you.

Who cares?

The running market has gotten big enough to hold a lot of different subcultures. Satisfy and Currently can coexist. So can fans of Tracksmith, Bandit, Janji, tiny sunglasses, Evo SLs, and the people who don’t care what brands are currently “cool” in New York, London, or LA. Add to that the people that love the running aesthetic but aren’t runners at all, and you’ve got quite a melting pot.

The “cool” running world remains a small fraction of the overall running market, which is actually dominated by Nike, Adidas, Brooks, Hoka, and the other big performance brands that most runners buy from their local run specialty shop.

But the fact that I’m even writing about a DM exchange between two brands most runners have never heard of says something about the influence this segment has. Fashion is a legitimate component of sport and activity, and the people who care about it care a lot. What happens in this corner of the running market tends to influence what shows up at bigger brands and retailers a few years later.

Satisfy helped define a look that’s been filtering into other brands and the broader market for a decade. Conversations like this one, even if they feel a bit like too-online, made-for-Substack inside baseball, can be interesting in the long view.

Let’s All Play Nice

None of this needed to be public. Public beef with a scrappy upstart almost never goes the way the bigger brand hopes. And it rarely looks good when the person calling someone a “parasite” has built their own brand, in part, from appropriation.

Ten years ago, if you wanted running gear that didn’t look like traditional running gear, Satisfy was one of the few options. Now, there’s a whole ecosystem of brands at different price points, different attitudes, different communities. The question for Satisfy isn’t whether Currently is copying them. It’s whether they can maintain their relevance in a market that’s gotten bigger, messier, and more competitive.

Read Part I here: The Ski Industry’s Climate Reality.

When does a ski actually lose performance?

One of the most interesting sessions for me came from Yessica Kurock and Alexis Lussier Desbiens at the University of Sherbrooke. Their lab has been building out standardized testing equipment and methodologies for skis. Basically, we as skiers love talking about ski performance and nitty gritty characteristics (flex, stiffness, edge hold, durability, etc) but we don’t really have a consistent way of quantifying those things. For a surprisingly long time, everything has been mostly subjective assessment, aka someone at Blister gives the ski a nice bend and tells you what the flex feels like.

Sherbrooke’s lab has developed devices that test skis in a much more scientific manner and can track actual base characteristics and performance loss over time. They tested their mathematical models against Blister scores and found only 10-15% error in describing ski feel, which is impressive for a purely mechanical measurement (and compared against subjective, if trusted, opinions). A lot of this work has been captured at https://soothski.com, where they offer a detailed comparator of skis they’ve tested. It’s a bit raw on the design and UX, but cool to look at if you’re interested in figuring out what exactly about a pair of skis you like, and what other skis might have similar characteristics.

But, what really caught my attention was the research survey on ski usage that Kurock has been conducting. She collected responses related to ski use and replacement from 1,217 skiers and 130 rental shops across 41 countries, covering nearly 180,000 skis in total. A few standout stats:

Rental shops replace 68% of their economy skis for cosmetic damage. Not because the skis lost performance or because they broke down performance-wise. But because the topsheet looks beat up. Which, makes sense on the surface. It’s probably easier to rent skis that don’t look overly used, regardless of performance.

Consumers, on the other hand, often replace based on a perceived loss of performance or just plain wanting something new. For Alpine skis, 46% replaced their skis because of “performance loss” and 42% to access new, better technology. For more intensive activities like touring, freeride and park, broken skis are a much stronger driver of replacement, with performance loss at a slightly lower rate.

I asked Kurock if they had data showing whether the replaced skis had actually lost performance. Not quite yet–that would require testing and re-testing skis over time alongside surveys, and they don't have the capacity right now. But if I had to guess, most consumers use "performance loss" as a convenient way to justify a new pair of skis. We're not actually that good at knowing when our skis stop performing and when we just want something new.

This opens up real questions for circularity. If cosmetic damage is a top driver of rental replacement, could we design more durable topsheets? Replaceable ones? If a ski has years of useful life left, how do we shift end-of-life behavior toward reuse instead of storage units and landfills? A significant amount of the shops surveyed said that their end-of-life solutions for rental skis involved mostly, often, or sometimes being trashed.

Designing for disassembly

Simon Jacomet from Jacomet Ski and Gian Reto Marugg from Covestro demonstrated SkiCycle+, a new system that uses thermoplastic adhesive films instead of epoxy resin to make skis. Epoxy is permanent; once a ski is pressed, those layers are fused together and can’t be separated into anything useful, which makes things difficult/impossible to re-separate for recycling. The thermoplastic adhesive is reversible. You can heat the ski, bend it, and the layers will come apart cleanly. That means each component can enter its own recycling stream.

The same property could theoretically also enable mid-life repair. If 68% of rental ski replacements are cosmetic, could there be a system where you can pull off a damaged topsheet and press on a new one without replacing the whole ski?

But, the distribution mechanisms in the ski industry aren't designed to take skis back or reprocess them. The technology is brand new, and it still needs to be proven at scale and adopted by manufacturers who have no particular incentive to switch from epoxy.

Grand Massif’s 2035 Plan

One of the most impactful presentations came from Frédéric Marion, general manager of Grand Massif, a network of resorts in the Haute-Savoie. Marion outlined the resort’s “Resilience 2035” strategy, which actively plans for a 30% reduction in resort capacity due to climate change.

This wasn't a sustainability officer presenting a plan or pilot project. This was the person running the resort saying: I made a decision and this is how we're going to operate moving forward. Grand Massif is modeling significant reductions in skiable terrain and actively stress-testing the business model. There was a contrast between Kitzbuhel’s “We’re testing electric snow grooming machines” and Grand Massif’s “The models look really bad and we’re actively having conversations with local businesses and our community about how we’re planning to shrink the resort to stay responsible and operational”

Multiple attendees I spoke to specifically called out Frédéric’s presentation as a standout, which tells you how rare it is to see that kind of full, committed action is across the industry. I'm hoping to speak with him soon for a deeper dive on the specifics and scope of their plan.

Recycled Carbon Fiber

Fairmat presented their recycled carbon fiber technology, which is production-ready and currently being used in equipment like DPS skis and CAPiTA snowboards. They use aerospace-grade carbon waste and mechanically recycle it without chemicals or high heat, then use AI-driven sorting to keep the output consistent. Fairmat's material produces roughly 3.4 kg CO₂e per kilogram versus 66.7 for virgin carbon fiber.

The Circular Economy

Sarah Dodge, from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, presented on circularity and the gaps between idea and implementation (the "valley of death") — R&D funding is available early and proven-at-scale technology attracts big investments, but in between there's a desert where demonstration-stage projects die. Felt particularly relevant given some of the technologies presented during the conference. Her examples of companies with circular success: IKEA reduced carbon emissions by 30% while growing revenue by 20%, and they've shipped over 25 million free replacement parts to extend product life. Arc'teryx's ReBIRD program doubled its business YOY, and is having to limit how many people can visit their centers. And Vinted (resale platform) became the number one clothing retailer in France in early 2025, ahead of Amazon, Shein, and H&M. (They already have a dedicated ski equipment category).

UTMB’s emissions approach

Fabrice Perrin from UTMB presented on their findings and plans around participant travel emissions. For the UTMB Mont-Blanc race, air travel accounts for 86% of the event’s emissions impact, with car travel another 13%. Their latest strategy is giving a 30% bonus on lottery chances for runners who comply with low-carbon mobility requirements, a compulsory carbon contribution from every runner and partner, and proof of residence verification to confirm compliance.

The whole verification process behind this sounds complicated (They mentioned developing AI to check the consistency of travel documents, which I’m a bit skeptical of), but it’s an interesting approach. Is it perfect? No. But they’re trialing it at their biggest, most high-profile event, the one that drives the most emissions, not a smaller race where the stakes are lower.

Who was in the room (and who wasn’t)

The room was full of people with deep technical knowledge and genuine commitment: sustainability officers, product folks, researchers, and material and recycling startups. But it felt like the leadership-level presence was light on the brand side. No C-suite. Nobody from sales, business, finance, etc. Many of the roles who have the most influence over what a company actually makes, and how they make it weren’t there.

That’s not a criticism of the conference. This is one of the (if not the biggest) challenges with all sustainability work. None of these innovative approaches scale until people goes back to their company and convince execs who are probably focused on selling more product year over year that adopting new approaches and technologies are important enough to make meaningful changes to legacy business models.

A few final observations

• Most people I spoke with agreed that Decathlon is doing some of the most interesting and significant work in sustainability and circularity right now, but consumers have largely no idea. They're the world's largest sporting goods company by revenue, they've achieved a 13% reduction in absolute carbon emissions, and their circular work is growing. They had an ill-fated foray into the US market, but their running brand Kiprun is making an attempt stateside this year.

• The summit is focused on hard goods, and this year they expanded to include federations and more materials tech. But, I’d be interesting in seeing representatives and talks from soft goods in future years. Some of the most ambitious brands on sustainability and circularity (Houdini, Norrona, Patagonia, etc) have strong ties to the ski industry and are primarily soft goods companies. It might dilute the “ski” focus a bit, but the problems are shared.

• I think destination marketing organizations would be a meaningful addition to the conference. We heard from Kitzbühel and Grand Massif, and from ski federations, but an interesting bridge might be organizations like Switzerland Tourism, Visit Austria, or more local DMOs. That “one level higher” perspective on the economic impacts of skiing combined with tourism/marketing changes and challenges might be a useful one.

Is it true? Hard to say. What does exist is a large body of evidence showing that people get injured training for marathons at extremely high rates, regardless of whether they use apps or not. Add to that the a massive influx of new runners and a running culture in flux, and it becomes easy to see why this narrative has taken hold.

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A Lot of People Run, and a Lot of People Get Injured

Marathon participation (and running in general) is exploding. In the US alone, there were over 430,000 marathon finishers in 2024, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Major races are setting participation and application records, and platforms like Strava report double-digit growth in marathon participation year over year. The 2025 London Marathon was the largest mass-participation marathon ever, with more than 56,600 finishers, and over one million applicants for the 2026 race.

But with that growth, across decades of research, different countries, and wildly different runner populations, the conclusion is remarkably consistent: training for a marathon injures a lot of people.

According to one study of runners preparing for the Utrecht Marathon and Half Marathon, nine out of ten participants reported an injury or illness symptom during a 16-week training period. Other research found that roughly 40% of marathon trainees sustain at least one injury, and some studies report yearly injury rates as high as 90%.

A separate study examining New York City Marathon runners found that 48% experienced injuries that impaired training, while about 9% suffered major injuries that prevented them from finishing the race.

These are extremely high injury rates, and they appear largely independent of whether runners use training apps.

Are Training Apps to Blame?

When millions of people are running, and somewhere between 40 and 90 percent of them experience injuries along the way (depending on how they’re measured), you’re going to see a lot of injury stories. As training apps like Runna grow in popularity alongside running itself, seeing correlations becomes unavoidable. Add social media algorithms that reward influencers and their dramatic narratives (and the subsequent responses to them), and every stress fracture starts to feel like evidence of a systemic failure.

But are runners using Runna getting injured at higher rates than runners following a PDF plan they downloaded from the internet? Higher than runners following a training schedule from a book? Higher than runners winging it based on advice from their local running club? Or even higher than runners using a coach? We don’t really know, because no one has studied this in a way that would actually answer the question.

The criticism of Runna rests mostly on anecdotes amplified by social media. Critics tend to point to concerns about ramping up intensity and volume, but there are no comparative studies showing that users of training apps (Runna or otherwise) get injured at consistently higher rates than runners following alternative training methods.

I did find one peer-reviewed study that looked directly at the relationship between running-related technology and injuries. It involved 282 recreational and elite long-distance runners and found that runners who used running-related technology “most of the time” or “always” had higher odds of reporting a running-related injury than those who used it less often.

But, RRT in this context meant almost everything. GPS watches, smartwatches, training apps, and platforms like Strava were all grouped together. If you tracked your runs in any way, you counted as a technology user. The study was cross-sectional, capturing a single point in time, and couldn’t establish causation.

There is likely a simpler explanation. The growth of running brings a growth in new, inexperienced participants. Runners who train more, push harder, and set more ambitious goals (that they may not be ready for) are both more likely to use technology and more likely to get injured. Runners are often being told to “listen to their bodies,” in order to avoid overtraining. But that advice is especially difficult for beginners who have no clear sense of what it actually means, or which signals are genuinely a problem vs manageable.

Interestingly, runners who used their data to modify their training did not show a higher injury risk, which lends credence to the idea that more experienced runners simply had a better idea of what to do with their data to help decrease their liklihood of injury.

That doesn’t mean the critics of apps are wrong. It’s almost certain that some plans push too hard for certain runners. But it’s incredibly hard to tell if it’s demonstrably worse than a bad coach, plan template alternatives or no plan at all.

The Runfluencer Problem

I think negative reactions to Runna are also a response to changes in running culture more broadly. The explosion of running-related content has created a world where platforms are saturated with influencers offering contradictory advice, delivered with absolute, often unearned, confidence. And for many, Runna is associated with that world due to their partnerships with influencers.

Everything must be Zone 2. Strength training is either essential injury prevention or a complete waste of time. You must run fast. You must run slow. High mileage is the answer. Low mileage is the answer. You should be a “hybrid” athlete. You should do these specific exercises. It changes week to week.

This advice comes from people whose credentials range from “ran a fast marathon once” to “took a weekend coaching certification” to “has 50,000 Instagram followers.” The signal-to-noise ratio is absolutely terrible, and the algorithms reliably amplify confidence over accuracy.

Good lord, give me the confidence of a 20 to 30-year-old man who ran a three hour marathon and now speaks in absolutes about training topics that are fundamentally nuanced.

Runna ends up as an easy target because it embodies several things people are already annoyed about: influencers, AI, monetization, and the intrusion of more technology into an activity that is simple at heart.

What AI Might Be Good At

One case against algorithmic training plans rests on the assumption that running is too individual, too context-dependent, too human for an algorithm to handle properly. A good coach, the argument goes, can see patterns that data can’t capture.

The problem is that most runners don’t have access to a great coach who knows them well. Coaching with that level of attention is expensive. For most recreational runners, the real choice is not between Runna and a great coach. It’s between Runna and the time and annoyance of manually modifying a generic plan found online, or training based on fragmented advice absorbed from templates, friends, and social media.

It’s worth pointing out that Runna plans aren’t exactly “AI-generated” in the way that some people might assume. Plans are still designed by humans and professionals, similar to plans you might find online and modify yourself. They use AI to monitor progress and adjust training recommendations based on how you’re performing, but the plans themselves are designed by humans, and likely not too dissimilar from what a coach would prepare.

It’s not better than a coach who knows you, but it’s selling convenience and just enough structure in a more affordable package. Does it adapt as quickly or as effectively? Harder to say.

Pattern recognition across large datasets is actually one of the things AI is pretty good at. In a previous role, I worked on a feature that analyzed thousands of municipal permit comments to identify recurring failures. At scale, LLMs were able to surface patterns that no single reviewer could reliably detect.

In theory, using AI to learn from millions of runners while reviewing one individual’s training could identify early warning signs of overtraining or injury risk that even experienced coaches might miss across large rosters. Runna may not be implementing this particularly well yet, and it is certainly not a panacea. But the idea itself is not obviously misguided.

The Middle Ground

The honest answer is that we don’t know whether Runna is injuring people. I hope someone is working on that particular research. What we do know is that running, especially marathon training, injures a lot of people, and it always has.

Runna feels like a convenient target because it sits at the intersection of several modern anxieties, but helping large numbers of new, inexperienced people train for demanding distances without getting hurt is genuinely difficult. No app, coach, or philosophy has solved that yet.

The summit brought together people who are serious about working on hard problems. Ski resorts, brands, startups, advocacy groups, and material innovators were all in the same room, learning from each other and trying to figure out what collaboration around sustainability and climate work actually looks like.

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The summit came at a particularly sobering moment. Many presentations highlighted how poor the ski season has been in the Western United States. Europe is doing better overall, but as of mid-January, conditions were still fragile, especially in Italy.

Day 1 opened with broad, high-level perspectives. Auden Schendler, author and former VP of Sustainability at Aspen Ski Co, set the tone, followed by Ben Aidan of POW Europe, Nick Sargent of Snowsports Industries America (SIA), and Jerome Pero of Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI).

Oliver Fritz, senior economist at WIFO (a non-profit, independent economic research institute in Austria), grounded the overarching issues in economics. He presented data on climate trends, the ski industry, and economic impact. For me, this was the highlight. Not because the news was good. It wasn’t. But it provided a clear picture of what is actually at stake, which is essential for evaluating the work the industry is doing in response.

The Economics Are Hard to Track

At a global level, skiing still looks healthy at first glance. There are ski resorts in 68 countries across nearly every major mountain range. Participation looks stable, with roughly 390 to 400 million skier visits per year worldwide. Equipment sales continue to hover around 10 million pairs annually, even after the post-pandemic inventory correction that drove an 11% decline in the 2024/25 season.

But, only a small fraction of resorts account for most skier visits. Just over 13% of global resorts generate nearly three quarters of all skiing activity. The industry is starting to cluster around altitude, latitude, and narrowing windows of snow reliability.

The overall impact of the industry is also poorly measured, which makes it harder for anyone to understand what's actually at risk. Lift tickets and ski resort revenues by themselves only capture a small fraction of the overall economic activity related to skiing. The real impact shows up when you include lodging, food, transport, retail, and induced spending across regional economies. Skiing affects regional employment, public services, and population retention. In many European mountain communities, it's the primary economic engine keeping villages alive.

Unfortunately, there isn't a clean global accounting of ski tourism's contribution to GDP. Countries measure it differently, if they measure it at all. In the US, it falls under the "outdoor industry satellite account," (which I’ve written about before) which groups everything from amusement parks to skiing to horseback riding to gardening. That generalization is why the "$1.3T outdoor recreation industry" is one of my least favorite, oft-cited stats in the industry.

Where data is more comprehensive, we do get a slightly better picture.

In the US, annual recreation revenue related to snow tourism is estimated at around $4 billion. In Austria, lift ticket revenue alone sits around €1.3 billion annually, but total tourism expenditure tied to skiing is over €8 billion, representing about 30% of the country’s tourism-induced GDP.

Skiing is an economic backbone of large parts of the Alps and specific geographic regions worldwide. The infrastructure supporting it, like lifts, snowmaking systems, access roads, and purpose-built accommodation, represents multi-generational commitments. So many things: local tax bases, public services, and property values, all depend on reliable winters.

What the Climate Data Shows

TLDR; Nothing good.

Across the Alps, warming has occurred at roughly twice the global average. Austria has experienced close to 3°C of warming above a 1850-1900 baseline, compared to about 1.5°C globally. Most of this warming has occurred since 1980, and winter temperatures are rising faster than any other season.

Ski seasons worldwide have already shortened, despite common claims that they are simply “shifting later” rather than becoming shorter. In the United States, comparisons show that season lengths have shortened by five to seven days on average, and there are possibilities of losses up to 33 days under low emissions projections. Similar patterns are evident across Europe.

Mitigation matters, but won’t eliminate impact in the coming years. In scenarios where we’re able to significantly manage emissions, warming continues but remains somewhat constrained. In the moderate and high emissions pathways, temperature increases will push snow conditions past critical thresholds across much of the world.

One of Fritz’s central points is that conditions will worsen regardless of what we do. The difference between scenarios is whether that worsening is manageable or catastrophic.

The Christmas Window

One way climate change destabilizes skiing is not through outright disappearance of snow, but through inconsistency.

A marginally shorter season is something the industry has learned to manage. Mega-corps like Vail and Alterra are able to hedge against variable seasons by pooling resources and revenues and selling season passes ahead of time, this isn’t a viable long-term approach, nor does it work for smaller resorts.

Data shows not just a loss of snow days, but an increasing variance around when snow arrives, how long it stays, and whether it aligns with time periods that matter the most from an economic perspective. Businesses, not just in the ski industry, operate on predictability.

The Christmas and New Year holidays sit at the center of this problem.

That window anchors the entire winter. It’s when staffing levels are set, drives a large portion of annual revenue, and is a time culturally associated with skiing. Historically, this period has been reliable enough that both consumers and resorts could plan around it with some confidence.

Under moderate emissions projections, without improved snowmaking capacity, reliability of Christmas snow in Alpine regions could fall from historical norms to 65% of resorts by 2050. In higher emissions scenarios, it collapses even further.

If Christmas reliability drops, changing behaviors can have knock-on effects. Families might delay bookings until conditions are confirmed, compressing demand into shorter lead times. Cancellation risk increases. Staffing becomes more difficult as seasonal workers face uncertain hours and resorts aren’t sure how much staff they’ll need.

This doesn’t even need to become a consistent trend. Years like this year in the Western US are likely to have knock-on effects almost immediately. How many people now have sub-par Christmas holidays anchored in their recent memory? Do you think they’re more or less likely to plan a Christmas trip around skiing next year? It doesn’t matter if there are good snow years mixed in with bad ones, the erosion of predictability can wreak havoc on balance sheets and in the minds of consumers.

Capital, Concentration, and Closures

Changes won’t affect all resorts equally. Elevation, latitude, and terrain diversity will increasingly be tied to the long-term viability of resorts, with high-altitude resorts above 2,000 meters (in the Alps) likely to retain viability longer. Large, interconnected ski areas with a wide elevation range have the flexibility to shift operations around based on conditions.

But lower-elevation resorts face a very different reality. Under even moderate warming scenarios, many already approach collapse. 186 French ski resorts have closed already, mostly for reasons already outlined above.

This uneven impact has the potential to create both stratification of capital and funneling effects rather than a general decline.

Investment will concentrate toward places at higher altitudes or with more favorable climates that have a longer shelf life, making it hard for smaller or lower results to attract the capital needed for investment in snowmaking or other adaptations.

Visitation will probably follow similar trends as lower altitude resorts are unable to compete, provide comparable experiences, and eventually close. This means that employment across the industry will both shrink but also concentrate. The ski industry will start to contract geographically (it’s already happening), even if overall participation looks stable in the short term. Resorts that survive will gain market power (and crowds, and the ability to raise prices because there are fewer options).

In Europe, ski-related infrastructure and real estate (lifts, snowmaking systems, resort housing, etc) represent an estimated €120 to €175 billion in capital. Under high-emissions scenarios where a majority of resorts become economically unviable, a significant share of that capital loses its economic purpose.

Housing markets might split between between high-altitude locations that retain value and lower-elevation communities that lose everything. Municipal budgets will weaken as tax bases shrink. Public services become harder to sustain. Younger residents leave in search of stable employment.

The Long-Term Participation Risk

The participation decline that Fritz outlined is a bit of a domino effect.

Maybe it’s obvious to point out, but the first participants the industry will lose are the most price-sensitive ones. If costs will continue to rise as resorts attempt to price in the impact of fluctuating seasons and visitation, the casual and occasional skiers will be the first to stop coming back.

Lower-elevation, small-scale, and closer to population center resorts serve as entry points for beginners and families. When these hills close, you lose pathways and opportunities to experience the sport at all. Parents ski less often. Children are never introduced. This participation loss can compound. A bad season affects participation and revenue in the short/medium term. A broken pathway for new skiers affects the future customer base.

What Comes Next

Tourism depends on climate stability, but tourism emissions are growing faster than the global average. Long-haul ski travel and other transportation is the dominant source of ski industry related emissions. As skiing concentrates into fewer viable destinations, travel distances will increase, intensifying emissions and accelerating the instability the industry depends on avoiding.

The industry has power to influence and intervene on things like transport access, pricing structures, rental/ownership models, circularity, material innovation, and advocacy.

Work is happening, and I’ll cover a few of the different approaches highlighted at the conference in future newsletters. It remains an open question whether those efforts are happening at the scale, speed, and urgency the problem demands.

This isn’t one of those times for nuance. Minneapolis is not that kind of story.

Alex Pretti was murdered by undertrained thugs that this administration has given carte blanche to do as they please, constitutional rights be damned. Government officials are fabricating narratives directly contradicted by the video evidence we’ve all seen. ICE is fueling fear and escalating violence wherever they go.

I’m just a guy with a newsletter, but it didn’t feel right to just move on to the next scheduled content. Call your reps, support, and take care of yourselves and each other.

– Kyle

The “Public Lands Caucus” fails its first major test.

In 2023, the Biden administration imposed a 20-year ban on mining near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, in response to a Chilean mining company’s proposal to mine copper, nickel, cobalt and other precious metals in the area. The ban was supported by conservation advocates on both sides of the aisle, in large part due to likely sulfuric acid pollution from mining activities.

Last May, the Public Lands Caucus was formed with the stated mission to “work across the aisle to advance policies for the conservation of and public access to public lands.” This was supposed to be a bipartisan coalition in Congress that could find common ground on conservation.

Last week, the House voted 214-208 to remove the ban on mining adjacent to the Boundary Waters. The decision carries consequences not only for the Boundary Waters but for other protections around the country. Republicans used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the ban. If Congress establishes that it can overturn protections with simple majority votes (enabled by the CRA), then every protection around the country becomes vulnerable.

And how did the Public Lands Caucus vote on this issue? Straight down party lines. All Republicans voted to allow mining. All Democrats voted against.

The caucus wasn’t tested on an issue where there might be disagreement about trade-offs. It was tested on the question of opening one of America’s most popular wilderness areas to mining operations and almost certain pollution–something opposed by both conservative and progressive outdoor advocates.

Ryan Zinke (Republican rep for Montana and former Secretary of the Interior), the caucus co-chair, didn’t just vote for the mine. He actively pressured colleagues to support the repeal. This isn’t just about Zinke (Wes Allen wrote a great piece focused on his involvement in more detail). When someone can simultaneously claim the mantle of a public lands champion (when it affects Montana and therefore his re-election odds) and also work to open the Boundary Waters to mining, it tells you that “conservation” has become so malleable it can mean nearly anything.

The messaging isn't the problem

Last year, I wrote about an advocacy organization called Nature is Nonpartisan (NINP), which formed with the goal of building bipartisan support for conservation. The effort includes familiar names from progressive environmental groups alongside conservative commentators and former Trump administration officials. Their homepage calls on supporters to “Take the pledge & tell your elected leaders that the environment is too important for partisan politics.”

I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I still think the impulse is right, and there are millions of people from both parties who care about public lands. But the problem isn’t whether people of either party care. The problem is whether that care produces meaningful outcomes.

It sure doesn’t seem like it.

Broad polling support for public lands protection (like 75% of Americans opposing public lands sales) doesn’t reliably translate into votes or opposition in Congress when in conflict with Trump or extractive interests. That support might help making things slightly less bad, but it’s not a bulwark against the power that Congress and this administration have to wreak havoc, no matter the “will of the people.” The Public Lands Caucus is just the most recent example. ANWR drilling, NPS cuts, the list goes on. The rollbacks the administration has been able to enact unilaterally with control of federal agencies is…extensive.

Even seemingly perfect political conditions for collaborative work around the Boundary Waters–strong bipartisan constituent support for protection, polling majorities, and a supposed public lands caucus–couldn’t overcome party lines.

In another example, Trump recently vetoed a bipartisan bill to finance clean drinking water for 50,000 Coloradans in a conservative district. The bill passed both chambers unanimously. Trump vetoed it anyway, likely as political retaliation against Lauren Boebert, who spoke out about releasing the Epstein files.

When the veto override came up for a vote, only 35 Republicans supported, and it fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. An extremely straightforward bill that had unanimous support weeks earlier couldn’t get enough Republican votes because crossing Trump was too politically risky.

This is why I worry about focusing on “messaging.” Messaging is important, and there are improvements to be made in how we talk to various groups about conservation, but I don’t think it’s the root problem we face at the moment. The Boundary Waters vote wasn’t a communication failure or a failure of both progressive and conservatives to align on an issue. The political will to protect public lands and the environment exists. It just exists almost entirely within one party’s elected officials.

I know that we need to keep working across the aisle on conservation, and I remain supportive of that work. Modern conservation is full of compromises.

NINP, as well as other conservative-leaning influencers and groups, are quick to drum up support/petitions/etc opposing the sale of public lands or in situations like the Boundary Waters. What they’re less quick to point out (or avoid completely) is the role they played in electing or platforming who was responsible (Republican lawmakers), and preferring to just reference “Congress” and recommend “contacting your representatives.”

It feels a bit like standing in a china shop and saying “We won't tell you not to put the bull in the shop, because that would be rude (and we brought the bull here). But we'll say ‘It’s awful that things are being broken’ once it's inside.”

We can’t pretend that both parties produce equivalent outcomes when holding power in Congress or the Executive.

What actually matters

A lot of people on both sides sat out the election in 2024, undermined progressive candidates, or voted third party because they were “so disillusioned.” And now, much like the media, they all get to generate an unending feed of outrage content as the administration and lawmakers they enabled are dismantling the things they claimed to care about.

Len Necefer wrote this week about how how outrage isn’t power, saying, “The people who voted “uncommitted,” or sat out, or told others that voting was complicity—they got to feel righteous. They got to perform moral clarity on a platform optimized to reward that performance. And they got to do it from a position of relative safety: citizenship, resources, mobility, options…This is not abstract. Today, it’s violent deportations. That’s defunded programs. That’s judicial appointments that will shape the law for decades. That’s the slow strangulation of the administrative state by people who understand exactly how power works and don’t need you to be morally perfect—they just need you to be absent.”

So, can we actually enact meaningful change as “advocates for the outdoors”?

I think the honest answer is: only if we’re willing to do the boring work of electing people who will hold the power that can affect positive conservation outcomes. That means voting, every time, even when the options aren’t perfect. As Necefer says, “if your politics is mainly a posture on the internet, you will be out-organized by people whose politics is mainly a plan in the real world.”

I’m not going to stay negative; I want pragmatic, non-partisan collaboration to produce conservation wins. I don’t want to tear down conservative advocates–they’re an important part of the equation around conservation. I hope future efforts will find more success. I hope NINP builds more successful outcomes, even if I’m currently less enamored with their approach.

The Boundary Waters vote isn't the end of bipartisan conservation work, and it still needs to pass the Senate. But for me, it’s a repudiation of the idea that we can find common ground and expect positive outcomes for nature without addressing the truth in front of our faces: until Republican politicians can reliably stand up to their party leadership, dear leader, and business interests, "Nature is Nonpartisan" will remain an aspiration divorced from how political power actually works. Don’t get fooled again.

And yet, my main takeaway was this: even when the problems are bigger than any one company or initiative can realistically solve, there are people trying.

Is every project good enough to drive the kind of radical change we actually need? No. But is the right response to throw up our hands and say, “what’s the point,” or to tear down anyone who is doing their best in an incredibly constrained system? For me, also no.

The world could use a little hope. There's enough chaos and bad news without tearing down the brands that are at least trying, even if they're not single-handedly solving the climate crisis.

Which brings me to a piece that’s been making the rounds this week, and to the reaction it sparked.

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Is Patagonia just a marketing trick?

Foster Huntington, who worked at Patagonia for about a year and a half in 2012–2013, published a thoughtful essay about his experiences there. It gained significant traction (particularly on Substack), with reactions ranging from “I’ll never buy Patagonia again” to people treating it as a shocking revelation that Patagonia is, in fact, a business, with all of the internal politics and issues that entails.

The piece highlights a few key experiences that resulted in his disillusionment with Patagonia. Yvon Chouinard was particularly harsh in a design meeting. The company had brand guidelines around not showing fossil fuel consumption in marketing. Patagonia did contract work for the US military from US-based factories but still did the majority of production offshore. The growth of the company is at odds with its messaging and marketing around conservation and climate change.

My purpose here isn’t to refute any of Huntington’s critiques; I enjoyed his prose and perspective. Most are fair, and some, like the outdoor industry’s relationship with the military and the challenges of US-based technical manufacturing have been covered extensively. I’m more interested in the reaction to his piece.

I’m not Patagonia’s biggest fan. I’ve written critically about them before, especially around the time they restructured ownership. I pointed out that conservative billionaires have used similar tax strategies, and that there is reason to be cautious about elevating Chouinard as one of the so-called “good billionaires.” I think Patagonia sometimes sucks up a disproportionate amount of oxygen in the industry, overshadowing the work other companies are doing. I’ve also questioned whether their marketing accurately conveys the scale of the challenges they face.

But even if we acknowledge the very real contradictions at the heart of their business model, there is little question that Patagonia is pushing the industry forward, and they’re doing more than 90% of similar brands.

Here’s what Patagonia’s scale has enabled: $140 million to grassroots environmental groups since 1985 through 1% for the Planet, which they co-founded. The ownership restructure sends an estimated $100 million annually to environmental work. They co-founded the United Repair Centre, whose repair infrastructure handles tens of thousands of items each year across multiple brands. Their Reno facility repaired 175,000 items last year. Worn Wear kept 212,000 products circulating. And that’s before you get into the activism and material innovation that’s pushed the entire industry forward. None of that means they’re solving climate change, or even hitting their own targets consistently.

Their own 2025 Work in Progress Report highlights many of the contradictions about their business pretty brutally. It shows they hit only 6% of their goal to source 50% of synthetics from secondary waste. They recover less than 1% of clothes designed to be recycled. Scope 3 emissions (supply chain stuff they can’t fully control), represent 99% of their environmental impact.

In my view, their failures don’t negate the work they’ve done in material innovation, repair infrastructure, or funding activism. Those are non-insignificant things that were driven by Patagonia’s growth as a brand.

Why does Huntington’s perspective resonate?

Huntington has spent years building a reputation as a kind of wandering outdoor philosopher-poet. He’s the “original” #vanlife guy, who opted out of a traditional path and built a life and career on his own terms. In many ways, he embodies the exact lifestyle Patagonia markets: authentic, adventurous, anti-corporate. When someone with that kind of credibility publishes a “behind the curtain” essay, it carries more emotional weight than a straight reporting piece.

This topic in particular resonates because it taps into something that many of us already feel: that sustainability marketing is mostly bullshit, that companies claiming to do good are just optimizing their image, and that there is always a more cynical truth lurking beneath the surface.

We love a good takedown, especially when it targets companies that market themselves (explicitly or implicitly) as better than the rest. There is often a weird sense of satisfaction in watching a “too good to be true” brand mythology collapse, in realizing that the emperor has no clothes. Or, in this case, that the clothes were made in the same factories as everyone else.

The “making a jacket that’s marginally less bad for the environment is a mechanism to stop global warming is akin to believing that the solution to alcoholism is drinking light beer” quote is catchy and damning. It works because it’s true, if lacking a bit of nuance.

But the path from where we’re currently at to a non-extractive (or even less extractive) economy will require companies like Patagonia working within the current system to invest in infrastructure, proofs of concept, new technologies, and activism to make a transition even remotely possible. That work will be imperfect by definition.

Scale creates leverage that can have different impacts than individual consumer choices. It's not just "marginally less bad jackets", it's using market position to shift supplier practices, fund litigation and activism, and help build infrastructure that makes alternative models more feasible in the future.

Systems aren’t going to transform overnight, no matter how much we want them to.

Writing off imperfect work

My concern is that for some readers, Huntington’s piece seems to function as permission to write off everything Patagonia has done as some kind of decades-long, carefully constructed con, all because the company fails to live up to expectations. Those expectations are partly of their own making, and partly a creation of consumers and media who elevated Yvon and the company to unhealthy heights of hero worship.

I’ve seen more than a few reactions that revolve around “Never buying Patagonia again”, or treat the revelation that Patagonia is a business as a huge betrayal. There’s a sense of despondency, that they’re “just another big bad brand that only cares about money.” I’ve seen too many reposts on this topic from people who are connected to gear development, purchase, advertising, promotion, and influencing, even if the companies they work with can’t hold a candle to Patagonia’s track record.

The average consumer doesn’t buy a new jacket because they want to solve climate change. They need (or just want) a new jacket. Given that reality, shouldn’t we want them to buy from a company that is at least trying to do better?

After all, what’s the alternative? If your goal is to not buy anything, and focus on secondhand and repair, amazing. Else, there are few brands to support that are objectively better. Even Patagonia’s most ardent detractors in the industry will begrudgingly acknowledge that they’re doing most things better than anyone else, they’re just annoyed by the marketing that can feel “over the top”.

The tensions are real

Huntington is right on many fronts. The most sustainable jacket is a used one. We need bigger, more radical shifts in how the clothing industry functions in order to affect real change. Patagonia’s workplace culture may well have been exactly as he described, and Yvon might be a bit abrasive. The gap between their brand marketing and operational reality is real, and it can be jarring, especially if you were influenced by Let My People Go Surfing or don’t keep up with their progress reports. Selling jackets won’t solve climate change. I’ve received emails from people at Patagonia who acknowledge wrestling with that tension every day.

But here’s a simple thought exercise: would the industry (or world) be better or worse if Patagonia didn’t exist? Or if they never grew beyond where they were at 10 or 20 years ago? An accounting based purely on the emissions math might say yes, but I find it harder to answer.

Would workers benefit from one less buyer influencing Fair Trade certification? What would grassroots organizations (Patagonia supported 842 in FY25) lose if funding from Patagonia disappeared? Would the shift away from PFAs have happened as quickly without Patagonia’s investment in research and development, or the pressure placed on the rest of the industry? Would issues like Jumbo Wild, Bears Ears, and dam removal have received the same amount of grassroots support?

The world is, undeniably, a bit fucked right now. All I’m trying to hold onto is the idea that imperfect efforts still matter.

We can criticize. We should criticize. These are worthy discussions. Everyone has their own line, and if feeling tricked by Patagonia’s marketing is yours, that’s absolutely valid. But we should also be capable of acknowledging effort, even when it’s flawed or falls short.

Perhaps that’s naive. But the alternative is writing off everyone who’s not solving everything perfectly, and I think that leaves us with nothing except our own sense of moral superiority, a few reshares, and a world that stays exactly as broken as it is.

This week I’m highlighting a UK-based company working in conservation; I know many of you are in the North America, but I want to be sure I occasionally bring a more global perspectives to issues affecting the outdoors, travel, and conservation (especially being based in London). Thanks for reading.

Kyle

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Abbey Dudas, marketing manager at Oxygen Conservation, a UK-based company that’s trying to prove something that sounds almost oxymoronic: that conservation can be profitable.

Oxygen bought its first estate in 2021, and four years later, they’ve acquired 14 estates totaling 50,000 acres across the UK. They made headlines when they sold carbon credits at £125 per ton, a world record that’s roughly 5x the market average.

But the question hanging over the entire operation isn’t whether they can command premium prices for carbon credits. It’s whether the model itself (venture capital meets conservation) can survive contact with the messy realities of making land pay for itself.

Three Models, Different Trade-offs

There are a couple of different ways that (roughly) similar approaches are is in action today.

The Tompkins Conservation Model: Buy it, restore it, donate it to the public.

When Doug and Kris Tompkins wanted to preserve Patagonian wilderness in the 1990s, they spent millions buying land in Chile and Argentina. The approach was straightforward: use their wealth to acquire land, restore ecosystems, then transfer it to the state as public land. Tompkins Conservation has donated over 2 million acres and helped create or expand 16 national parks. It’s a fully philanthropic approach with no goal of financial return. Kris Tompkins called it “capitalist jujitsu” in her 2020 TED Talk.

The Ted Turner Model: Individual-driven ownership. Buy it, work it, protect it.

Ted Turner owns 2 million acres across 15 ranches in the American West. The model combines conservation, hunting and fishing, and luxury ecotourism. Turner placed one of the largest conservation easements in U.S. history on his flagship Flying D ranch, permanently protecting it from development. But, the land is private. If you want to see it, you need to book a stay at a Turner Reserve property, where a single night can run you upwards of $1300.

The Oxygen Model: VC-backed ownership. Buy it, restore it, and then…profit?

Oxygen is backed by private investors who want to have a positive impact on the environment. They’re working toward what amounts to a proof of concept: that you can restore degraded ecosystems, generate carbon credits, run ecotourism operations, develop renewables, and practice regenerative agriculture while delivering returns that justify the initial capital investment.

They’re not alone. Gresham House, already the UK’s largest forestry manager with over 165,000 acres, and others, are making similar bets on natural capital. But Oxygen’s ambitions are particularly aggressive: they’re targeting 5x growth over the next five years, that’s 250,000 acres. It would make them one of the UK’s largest private landowners.

How Oxygen’s Model Works

Oxygen’s process starts with identifying degraded land like former shooting estates, overgrazed moors, drained peatlands, or plantations of non-native trees. As an example, beer company Brewdog originally purchased a Scottish estate in 2020, pledging to plant millions of trees as part of a brand carbon-reduction narrative. But, after sales declined in recent years, those initiatives were on the chopping block and Oxygen recently took over the Kinara Estate.

Oxygen then models the “natural capital” potential, which might include carbon sequestration, biodiversity net gain credits, and revenue from ecotourism or renewable energy projects.

The revenue model is diversified by necessity; each property will have different characteristics that lends itself to a tailored approach. Carbon credits make up a significant portion, they’ve sold credits under the Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code, UK government-backed standards that require rigorous verification. But, they’re also developing wind projects, running farm partnerships that practice regenerative agriculture, and operating ecotourism properties in Devon and Scotland.

The UK’s regulatory environment makes this model easier than it would be elsewhere. Both the Woodland Carbon Code and the Peatland Code have strict requirements: projects must demonstrate “additionality” (the carbon savings that wouldn’t happen otherwise) and “permanence” (commitments lasting 35-100 years for woodland, 30+ for peatland).

Average prices for UK carbon credits have more than doubled from £11 per ton in 2020 to £26.85 in 2024 (significantly higher than the global average of around $7 USD). Credits can’t be sold when trees are planted, only years later when they’ve actually sequestered carbon.

Oxygen’s £125/ton record came from selling what they describe as a “premium” product on their Leighton Estate: not just carbon, but verified restoration work with drone monitoring, GIS tracking, habitat creation…and a compelling story.

That premium is also likely driven because the credits can feel more “tangible.” Being located in the UK provides a sense of place, connection, and reality to buyers that is less easily replicated with an anonymous hectare of forest in South America.

Access, Conservation, and Decision-making

The Tompkins model prioritizes more universal access. Their donated lands became national parks. The Route of Parks in Chilean Patagonia now spans 1,700 miles encompassing 17 national parks.

Turner’s model restricts access but generates income through selective tourism. You can visit a Turner Reserve, but you’re paying a premium to do so. The trade-off is that limited visitation reduces impact on sensitive ecosystems while funding ongoing conservation work.

Oxygen lands somewhere in between. Access can vary; some properties remain private, others have ecotourism, and they’re also exploring partnerships with Camp Wild (similar to Hipcamp in the US) to provide wild camping access on other estates.

But fundamentally, these are private lands.

If Oxygen determines that certain areas need to be off-limits to maintain ecological value, that’s their call. If they decide to scale back public access to maximize carbon sequestration, they can do that as well.

The speed of decision-making this enables makes private conservation attractive. ”We have this ability to make decisions quickly, to do it at pace, do it at scale,” as Dudas puts it. But that cuts both ways. This is in contrast to community-based or federal/public ownership, where consensus-building can take years but also ensures that diverse stakeholders have input. That kind of engagement can lock up decision-making, but the people involved are typically the people who actually live on or near the land, whose livelihoods depend on access, and who have been there for generations.

Plans to build a wind farm in partnership with Low Carbon on Oxygen owned lands in Scotland have met with mixed community feedback, with concerns about culling a herd of feral goats (Oxygen identified as detrimental to the ecological landscapae after an 18-month review), aestheics, and other local recreation challenges. Some who work in rewilding and ecosystem restoration in the UK express a cautious pessimism about their approach, both from a funding perspective and how they approach partnerships and development. Oxygen has anticipated much of this feedback and has a ‘Criticize Us’ section on it’s website addressing some of the common issues.

The Original Question

All of this brings us back to the question we started with: Can conservation turn a profit? And, should land need to make money?

“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to make a profit on it,” Dudas acknowledges. “Conservation shouldn’t have to make profit. But at the moment, we live in a society where, unfortunately, it’s very profitable to destroy the planet. So we’re trying to find an alternative.”

That’s the pitch, essentially. If conservation can compete economically with extraction and development, then capital can flow to ecosystem restoration. Pension funds and institutional investors can have a viable reasoning to put money into restoration projects rather than fossil fuels.

But there’s an obvious danger here. Once you go down the VC-backed rabbit hole, you’re inevitably subject to pressures around scaling, maximizing revenue, and more – no matter whether you’re a tech startup or conservation organization.

Do they scale to hundreds of thousands of acres? Do they eventually exit by selling estates to other investors or taking the company public? The stated goal is to operate at “a landscape scale,” and eventually expanding to the US where there’s more land available. But conservation at scale requires permanence—a timescale of decades, centuries. Markets operate on quarterly reports and exit strategies, and that’s where the bulk of my skepticism about Oxygen lies. I’ve been at enough startups to know see what VC demands gan do, and know that changes in ownership often promise stability but later bring significant disruption.

This is a structural challenge that venture-backed conservation can’t easily escape. Philanthropists like the Tompkins can afford to be patient; their investment has no expectation of financial return. Turner’s model is owner-financed with no external investors demanding exits. Once you bring in institutional capital with return expectations and debt requirements, you’re inevitably forced into making different decisions even if your intentions are good.

Answers will take time

It’s far too early to have a clear answer about whether Oxygen’s model “works.”

The regulatory and carbon credit environment in the UK is more friendly to this approach than in most countries, and demand for high-quality carbon credits appears to be growing. But the voluntary carbon market is not without issues, and the history of conservation is littered with projects that looked promising until they weren’t.

The question of what we should do with land (who should own it, how it should be restored, who gets to access it, and whether it needs to generate returns) won’t be settled by any single for-profit company, NGO, or business model. We should be open to new approaches and experimentation in the conservation space; not everything is going to work. But we can be equally discerning about them. Every approach reveals what we’re willing to compromise to protect what’s left.

I ran on dirt almost every day. Sunshine, dry trails, and big mountain views.

Earlier this week, I managed to sneak in a long trail run in the English countryside. Thirteen miles along a stretch of the North Downs Way. It was an enjoyable day out, train-based runs from London are a delight, if a bit more expensive than I’d like. I took a 30 min train to Guildford, ran on undulating (mostly frozen) trails for a few hours, had lunch, then caught a 50 min train back to London in Dorking. Delightful.

I say “snuck in” because since then, the forecast has become a stew of “severe,” “wintry mix,” “freezing sleet,” and rain. As I’m writing this, it’s 34º F and raining. The ten day forecast looks much the same.

In many ways, Boulder is living and training on easy mode. Three hundred days of sunshine, options for running, biking, and skiing just minutes away, and a massive community of people who share your passions. I didn’t realize how deeply that shaped some perceptions about “the outdoors” until I started spending time in places like New York and London.

The sun sets around 4pm this time of year in London, so if you work a normal job, you’re probably running in the dark. It’s not cold and dry, it’s cold and wet. Outside of the city (or in the parks), trails tend to turn into kind of mud that wants nothing more than to swallow your shoes or see you fall on your face for months at a time. Winter running means accepting that you’ll be wet, muddy, and cold, all at once.

The thing is, people still showing up. I see runners on the trails or sidewalks in the absolute worst conditions. Headlamps on, covered in mud, grinding through miles in weather that would keep most people inside. Others are hammering out hours on a treadmill, a mental feat I’m equally impressed by. This weekend, hundreds of runners will take part in the Spine Race, a 268-mile race (plus slightly shorter options) along the Pennine Way in conditions that will likely be miserably hostile. Temperatures will range from 14-50º F, with likely rain or snow the entire way.

That’s the kind of mindset I want to carry into this winter.

At the end of 2025, I left my day job leading product design at PermitFlow. Leaving your job in this job market while living in another country is definitely not “easy mode”. But, I don’t regret it. In fact, I’m a bit excited. It just felt like the right time to make a change.

Many of you probably know me as an outdoor journalist, despite the fact that I’ve written for hardly anyone other than myself (except the partnership with Mountain Gazette).

But, I’ve spent my entire 15+ year career in tech, working as a product designer and doing just about everything along the way: design, strategy, programmatic SEO strategies, and more recently, leading design and sometimes pushing production code for AI-focused approaches to construction permitting.

I’m treating this winter as a bit of a “mental stretch”. A chance to take coffee meetings, attend events, write, and dig into things that have been harder to prioritize while working a full time role. I have a few regrets after turning down interesting opportunities over the last few years 😭.

Tomorrow, I’m stopping by the Adventure Travel Show in London. Next week, I’ll be in Bolzano for the Ski Industry Climate Conference, and then spending a few days skiing in Austria. I’m working on and thinking about pieces on national tourism promotion, for-profit conservation, how skiing and real estate investment reshape Swiss mountain towns, and the impact of “branded” trails on local tourism. And yeah, probably a few about the disaster that is the state of conservation and public lands in the USA right now.

I want to invest more time and bigger swings into the stories I tell this year. I loved speaking with leadership at Norrøna. I’ve had less luck getting folks from places like Strava on the record, but I’m going to keep trying.

So, here’s to skiing a bit more this winter, having conversations with interesting folks doing interesting things, sneaking onto some press trips, maybe breaking out my camera that’s been collecting dust on a shelf, and letting serendipity guide future opportunities.

And yes, I’ll be on the lookout for what’s next, whether that be in tech, writing, the outdoors, travel, or the holy grail: a blend of it all. Might not be easy, but it should be fun. Sometimes you’ve got to just put on your shoes (and a few extra layers) on and head out anyway.

Looking back at 2025

I wrote 27 newsletters in 2025, averaging around a 60% open rate. My gross audience is down since I spun out from Mountain Gazette – the friction of getting thousands of active readers to subscribe to the “new” newsletter was significant (if you’re reading this, I’m happy you made the jump 🙏). I’m going to put for focus on growth this year and plan to write at least weekly moving forward.

I ran my first race in several years. I felt “back in shape” for the first time in a while. And, I tried to make the most of living close to Europe.

Poland - Probably my biggest surprise of 2026. I booked a weekend out here because flights were cheap and I’d had the Tatra’s on my list for a bit. Ended up being a fantastic few days exploring the myriad of trails outside of Zakopane. A great balance of hiking, running, scrambling, all with great access.

Chamonix - Not much to say here. Chamonix is Chamonix. It remains one of my favorite spots both winter and summer. I did ski the Valle Blanche for the first time, which was a treat.

Switzerland - I spent a bit of time in places new to me (Verbier, Saas Fe, Kandersteg) and returned to favorite spots (Engelberg).

Around the UK - Edinburgh, the Lake District, Oxford, Dover, and a bunch of day trips outside London to run on trails in the countryside. I still need to spend more time in Scotland.

More - A very hot weekend in Annecy, a wedding in Menorca, and history lessons in Florence and Rome.

Thanks for following along. ❤️

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Gen Z Gets Fit

65% of Gen Z says they’re directly affected by inflation. Yet 30% plan to spend more on fitness in 2026, and 63% identify wearables as their biggest fitness investment in 2025.

Why is a generation under so much economic pressure treating fitness spending as non-negotiable? One explanation is the growth and normalization of fitness (specifically lifting) in influencer culture.

It feels more like the gym is harder to avoid as it’s grown as a sellable and brand-able model for influencers like Nick Barre, Sam Sulek, Alex Eubank and Faith Ordway. Every app has influencers serving up infinite variations of gym content, viral “daily fitness routines” and “hybrid athlete” training.

I don’t think the majority people see this type of content and immediately decide to run a marathon or sign up for Hyrox. But when you see this kind of stuff over and over in your feed, and follow other folks fitness journeys, over time it can shift what feels normal. Running becomes something people your age just do. Lifting feels less niche. Signing up for a race feels like a reasonable thing to try.

Run Clubs and the IRL Economy

Strava Clubs nearly quadrupled in 2025, with over 1 million clubs total. Running clubs increased 3.5x. Club events increased 1.5x versus 2024.

There has been a LOT written about run clubs this year. They’re the new dating app. They’re the new “third space”. They’re replacing bars. 37% of the survey respondents view run clubs as good places to meet people.

People are using fitness as a replacement for other forms of social interaction that have fallen out of fashion or moved online. If fitness is your primary source of IRL social contact, it’s no longer discretionary spending. It’s necessary social spending that happens to involve exercise.

The run club boom is definitely not evenly distributed. 27% of women and 20% of men said they view run clubs as only for elites, and this perception skews towards older athletes. Honestly this feels even slightly low to me, and it’s a feeling I’ve definitely experienced on my own, depending on the club. I’m rarely worried about ‘elites’ or pace, but there’s no question that certain clubs have a vibe. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s an interesting social friction that is occasionally involved.

If Strava’s fastest-growing use case is more tied to IRL connection vs training optimization, I’m curious to see how they continue to develop feature-wise. Advanced analytics matter to serious athletes, but social features and club infrastructure might matter to the growing user base. I think we’re likely to see this investment in club/social features continue, as well as development of the race search (and probably registration, eventually).

Staying Motivated

Gen Z is 75% more likely than Gen X to say their main motivation is a race or event.

There’s a real difference between being motivated by races and sunk costs and developing an intrinsic love for running itself. I’m never in better shape than when I’m training for a race, mostly because I’m too competitive to treat “finishing” as the goal. But I don’t race very often, and I love nothing more than a long run through the mountains or countryside with no time limits, no pace, and no one watching. A race is just a measurement of something I already enjoy, not the reason I do it.

Looked at cynically, the surge in race participation can feel more transactional: sign up, document the training, post the finish line photo, collect the medal, the Hinge photo, and the validation.

The running industry has done a pretty good job of creating ever-moving goal posts. Run a marathon, then a World Marathon Major, then all six Majors, and oh, just kidding now we’re adding more. There are similar pathways in trail, but more tied to increasing distances and UTMB.

What “Using Strava” Actually Means

72% of Strava users recorded a workout using the mobile app directly. Garmin was second, Apple Health third. 14 billion kudos were given in 2025, up 20% from 2024. Activities with photos get 3.1x as many kudos as those without.

I assume “used the app” means at least once over the course of the year, even if you use a watch most of the time, which maybe makes this slightly misleading. But if you’re a Garmin/Suunto/Coros user with a strong opinion about Strava as a platform, it’s worth noting that you’re already in the minority. This gap between power users and casual users helps explain why Strava’s product decisions often feel disconnected from the loudest user complaints.

There’s a strong case that Strava is not primarily an activity tracking app or even a training log. It’s a social network where the price of posting is physical effort. You share proof that you exercised, and in return the community delivers validation in the form of kudos and comments.

That feedback loop is not without criticism. For some people it can distort training behavior, encourage overtraining, and result in injury. Still, it is remarkable that they have managed to scale and monetize a social loop, reaching hundreds of millions of people, that is contingent on people being active. As far as social media tradeoffs go, exchanging likes for movement feels like a relatively healthy bargain.

A few more things

Of course, at least some of this has been carefully crafted for maximum PR effect. But, if I put my product hat on, I’d have a few follow-up questions (that I’m sure they’re looking at internally). Here are a few questions that feel critical to Strava’s long-term strategy:

• They’d never share this, but I’m curious where is the biggest growth in *paid* usage is coming from.

• 46% said they would use AI as a smart coach (aka Runna). I think there’s a lot to be written about this.

• Races are clearly big, but there’s probably some fascinating cohort analysis about training and usage pre/post “first” races.

• Are people in active clubs stickier than solo users?

• Hiking saw a massive growth in clubs (5.8x YOY), and I’m curious about how those folks use Strava vs run-focused users

• And finally, perhaps the least surprising news of all time, Boulder is a bit insane.

  

That’s the narrative Alt National Park Service has been selling on its social media accounts since 2017. A coalition of defiant park rangers and environmental scientists, posting anonymously in opposition to a hostile administration. Speaking truth to power from deep inside the bureaucracy.

But is that what Alt NPS really is? Or is it an engagement engine, turning real fear into mystique, crisis into content, and community into customers?

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The Origin Story

Alt NPS emerged on Twitter and Facebook in January 2017 after the Trump administration suspended an official NPS Twitter account for retweeting crowd-size comparisons. The narrative was compelling: park rangers risking their careers to speak truth to power from inside the system.

In those early months, AltNPS focused on climate facts, environmental issues, and park-related news. It felt like a helpful voice in a chaotic time. Sure, the “insider sources” narrative was shaky, but it seemed mostly harmless.

The account faded during the Biden years. Understandable, given that much of the attraction and engagement was resistance to the first Trump administration. The content shifted towards recycled memes and outdoor-focused HomeGoods quotes, the kind of stuff that plays well to a Facebook-centric audience.

But with Trump’s 2024 re-election, AltNPS re-emerged stronger than ever. The account now boasts 3.4 million followers on Facebook, nearly 300k on Instagram, and ranks among the most followed on Bluesky. The bio still reads “The official ‘Resistance’ team of the U.S. National Park Service,” but the focus of its posting has drifted far from pubic lands and deeper into generic political news and commentary.

Then, things got a little weird

In early 2025, as the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of government employees and DOGE was running rampant, AltNPS began posting cryptic messages:

“Forty-three.”

“Eighty-three.”

“Fifty-nine. Sixty-seven.”

On some of the posts they would then reply “The general public can disregard.”

The implication was obvious. These must be secret signals to an underground resistance network, meant to bypass surveillance and inspire coordination behind the scenes.

But, this feels more like theater than resistance. If Alt NPS was a resistance movement coordinating within the federal government, why post breadcrumbs on Facebook and Bluesky? There are dozens of secure communications platforms available. Signal. Encrypted email. Tools that actual activists and journalists use daily.

Some followers started asking uncomfortable questions about the numbers and the overarching narrative of the account. Others pointed out how closely this resembled tactics used by QAnon. Some critics were attacked as MAGA sympathizers by more “bought-in” followers of AltNPS. Accounts like AltWatchers arose to highlight some of the more ridiculous claims and framing in AltNPS posts.

By mid-2025, these cryptic posts largely ceased. Likely not because any operation ended, but because an increasing number of their followers were getting uncomfortable with how closely their posting strategies resembled right-wing conspiracy tactics.

More recently, AltNPS introduced a new style of post. The account started posting content that feels like political fan-fiction. Dramatized, viscerally descriptive stories about ICE raids or federal overreach, stripped of sourcing and built for emotional reaction, which honestly, feels almost as weird as the numbers.

The comparisons to QAnon are hard to ignore. The It Could Happen Here podcast recently devoted an episode to what they called “BlueAnon,” examining how AltNPS’s cryptic messaging and conspiratorial tone have become difficult to distinguish from the tactics of far-right movements.

Alt NPS trained millions of people to see coded messages in cryptic posts, to believe in secret coordination, to trust anonymous sources over verified journalism. They primed an audience for conspiratorial thinking. An audience that is more than happy to fork over cash for a t-shirt that shows that they’re part of the “resistance”.

The Real Business Model

Because that might be what this actually is: a business built on borrowed credibility. The AltNPS store sells $5 stickers, $25 t-shirts, and $42 hoodies. All branded with resistance slogans, park-inspired graphics, or a knockoff Smokey the Bear. Their “Drive with Care” sticker is almost surely AI-generated. They originally claimed to be making merchandise at cost, but prices have risen since then, and $25 is hardly “at cost” for a cotton/poly t-shirt.

Ourparks.org (where altnps.org now redirects to), is lacking in depth. Much of the content and imagery feels (or is obviously) AI-generated. Each national park has its own page, but they read like a ChatGPT prompt: “Give me three facts and a description of every U.S. national park.” For an account claiming to be run by a network of passionate park rangers, federal employees, and environmental scientists, there’s a stunning absence of specific expertise or original insight.

The Good

To Alt NPS’s credit, some money appears to flow to reputable organizations. After skepticism and criticism of a lack of transparency built up amongst followers through the first part of 2025, they announced 2 partnerships. They posted about donating $2500 to Los Padres Forest Watch (LPFW), and $5000 and $8000 in separate donations to the Yosemite Climbing Association (YCA). They also touted a $5000 donation to the Capital Food Bank, and encouraged others to donate.

A YCA representative confirmed a partnership and a donation, although they did not confirm the amounts and whether it came from an individual or organization, despite several follow-ups. LPFW didn’t respond to my request for comment, but they are currently selling AltNPS “Resist” stickers on their online shop. As far as I can tell, these are the first partnerships/donations AltNPS has publicly claimed in its eight-year history.

I was unable to find evidence of “Our Parks” existing as a registered organization anywhere. Not as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Not as an LLC. The only listed address is a virtual mailbox service in North Carolina. The only method of contact is a form on the website, which says “this form isn’t the right place to request to join the coalition.” I attempted to reach out, with no reply. Mother Jones recently covered a few confirmed “Alt” federal accounts, like Resistance Rangers but they were also unable to confirm anything information about Alt NPS, saying “The account didn’t respond to a message seeking comment and the people I spoke with for this story don’t know who’s behind it and consider it an impostor.”

Yes, secrecy might be expected from a resistance group. But nonprofits publish annual reports and file public forms showing exactly how money is spent, allowing people to have a level of confidence that the dollars they’re contributing are put toward worthy goals. Alt NPS offers nothing more than vague partnership claims, loosely unverifiable donation amounts, a virtual mailbox, and a merch store. The size of these donations would trigger transparency and tax receipts from a reputable organization.

So yes, it seems some money may have gone to good causes (at least recently, after community pressure). But how much? What percentage of merch sales? Who decides where it goes? Why these organizations? Why not a national group like the National Parks Conservation Association? If merch is being sold “at cost”, where are these donations coming from? We have no idea. In the best case scenario is that these donations are all legitimate, do the ends justify the means? I’m not sure.

The News Is Real. The Framing Is a Problem.

I can hear the criticism already. “Why write something negative? They’re not the problem, the stuff they’re posting about is.”

And, it’s partially right. The information Alt NPS shares is usually real news, real policies, real threats to public lands. That’s not the problem.

The problem is how they get that info and what they do with it. Alt NPS doesn’t break news or share insider info, although they’d like to make it seem that way. They just repackage it. For every post framed as a “leak” to AltNPS, there’s a comparable news story…posted hours or days before they share it. It’s a glorified aggregator account.

The cycle works like this: An outlet like NPR, the New York Times, Reuters, etc, will publish a story about administration activities, based on named sources, verified documentation, research, and more. Then, hours or days later, Alt NPS posts the same information, repackaged and reframed as “reports we’re receiving.” They summarize it on Facebook and/or across several Bluesky posts. The tone is urgent and emotional.

Followers share it widely, praising Alt NPS for “getting the word out” while simultaneously complaining that “the media isn’t covering this.” For nearly everything they post, it’s easy to find near word-for-word prose in a published article, but teh AltNPS version is often stripped of context, details, and credit.

Lately, they’ve started including occasional citations at the end of long threads on Bluesky, but rarely on Facebook, where their posts reach tens of thousands of likes and comments. Sometimes it’s a document dump rather than an article (like PDFs of court filings or screenshots of agency reports). But the content of the posts still mirrors the work of the journalists who actually did the reporting on said documents.

Alt NPS is taking the very outlets people claim “won’t cover this” or “we can’t trust anymore” and repackaging their work to create the illusion that they have a monopoly on “what’s going on”.

Look, I’m not going to say that the “mainstream media” has the greatest track record these days, and they’re by no means the only aggregator account out there. But, this approach plays into the worst conspiracy theories about the media: that mainstream outlets hide the truth and that all professional journalism is establishment propaganda. These are similar to narratives fueling right-wing media distrust. AltNPS is just selling those narratives wrapped in progressive aesthetics.

I’m left…confused

When I started looking into this, I thought I’d find something more definitive. Maybe a person to talk to. Or at least a clear explanation of what AltNPS is trying to be, good or bad.

But there’s no smoking gun. No leadership. No transparency. Just a rotating feed of vague resistance content, cryptic storytelling, and I’m left with more of a confused, melancholic takeaway than anything else.

AltNPS sells an understandably seductive message. We want to believe that there is a highly coordinated resistance that’s working against all the bad things. We want to feel like there are people fighting the good fight. And it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like we’re part of it because we reshared a post or bought a t-shirt.

We’re left with an odd situation. One in which an anonymous account is able to work the algorithms and share news in a way far exceeds many journalists, news outlets, and organizations, albeit in a distorted/exaggerated/engagement-optimized fashion.

Are they actively editing and de-contextualizing the work of others to make a few bucks off merchandise? It sure seems like it. But maybe it doesn’t matter.

Regardless, I don’t love the way it undermines the work of other journalists and dresses serious issues in the trappings of what we imagine a “resistance” to be like.

Support journalists by subscribing, or by sharing their work directly with attribution (I recommend Wes Siler or RE:Public for public lands focused work). Donate to advocacy organizations with transparent finances–there are hundreds doing verified, accountable work. Heck, follow AltNPS, if it makes sense for you. But maybe don’t buy a t-shirt from a virtual mailbox in North Carolina and hope for the best.

A social media account isn’t going to save us.

I’ll be at the Ski Industry Climate Summit (presented by Atomic and POW Europe) in January, alongside the Prowinter trade show. There’s probably a dozen interesting things to think/write about around that, and if you or a brand you work with will be there, would love to chat. I’ll also be back around Boulder for a week between Christmas and New Years, if anyone is around.

Before we get started, here are a few links for today. I’ve sent enough newsletters to know most people never make it to the ones at the bottom 😂.

Another Puffy Jacket - A cheeky site to share gear, links, and my snarkier takes.

Indie Outdoors - A directory of outdoor media worth your time

PackTrak - A simple tool for tracking your outdoor gear and optimizing pack weight.

There’s no shortage of outdoor and travel content these days. Gear listicles, travel guides, a new Substack newsletter launches every day. Some of it is good, some of it is great…and some of it is AI-generated. You open ten different gear guides and find the exact same take in slightly different words. Or you get a destination writeup that reads like a reworked press release. With the pure volume of good, the bad, and the “this gives me ChatGPT vibes” all blurring together, it’s hard to stand out.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I want this newsletter to be. Not just how to avoid blending into the noise, but how to make work that actually feels like mine. So far, it’s been focused on one part of me: the part that enjoys writing long, deeply researched articles on a range of topics. Nuanced. Thoughtful. But if I’m being honest, doing that all the time is exhausting. I can’t always be cranking out deep investigations into corporate sustainability reporting or how politics affects the economies of national parks.

And it creates another problem: I don’t like being in a box. Many writers and creators narrow their focus to a single sport or niche, which makes things easier to market and grow. But despite those advantages, I don’t really want to limit myself.

There’s another side of me that loves following trends, posting (informed) hot takes, and just reacting to what’s happening in the industry. My actual day job is in product, design, development, and startups (PermitFlow just raised a $54 million Series B). I like building things that people use. I like curation and connecting people to good work. But all that doesn’t always condense into a tidy one-line description. So, over the last few weeks, I leaned into all those different interests and built (or re-built) a few things that have been on my mind.

Always tinkering

Many years ago, I built a site called Another Puffy Jacket. The name was a joke…yes, here’s another puffy jacket to add to the pile. But it was also my way poking fun at the whole apparatus around gear and gear reviews. It was a satirical gear guide built on witty copy and humor, with equal parts jokes and real gear suggestions.

I recently resurrected it, moving it off Webflow to a custom retro-90s/Tumblr-style site I built from scratch. It’s got a few bells and whistles that make it easy for me to add things, create shareable images, and more. It’s a place for gear news, links, and some of my snarkier takes and intrusive thoughts. No content strategy. No business model. No idea if it’s a good use of my time.

While digging into the size and breadth of the indie outdoor media world recently, I realized exactly how much it has exploded. So I built Indie Outdoors, a directory of outdoor media worth your time. It’s all magazines, newsletters, blogs, and podcasts right now. It’s not comprehensive, just built off of various lists I’ve assembled over the years. Hopefully it helps people find voices and topics that actually interest them rather than PR-sicle content from the big conglomerates. And hopefully it grows with suggestions from folks who weren’t in my initial search (you can submit on the site).

PackTrak came out of wanting a tool for myself and curiosity about how complicated of an app I could actually build these days. It’s for tracking outdoor gear and optimizing pack weight. LighterPack has been around forever but has notable downsides, like being terrible on mobile. There have been multiple attempts to replace it over the years, none particularly successful. There’s nothing revolutionary here besides it being the one I built (and hopefully a bit more design polish). Feedback has been positive, with over 2,000 unique pieces of gear added so far, despite almost no promotion.

These projects are experiments, and they’re all loosely connected. They create a little cross-pollination of attention and new funnels to convert people to the newsletter. They create my own weird little outdoor ecosystem, a cluster of different content shaped by my curiosities, humor, frustrations, and whatever I’m interested in that day/week/month.

Mostly, though, I’m just making things I want to exist and having fun doing it. Hoping maybe someone else finds them useful, or appreciates them, or at least gets a laugh. In a world where everything is starting to sound the same, I’m of the mind that leaning into your own weirdness will work better than trying to optimize yourself into something easily explainable.

I might integrate Another Puffy Jacket into Here & There as more of a separate ‘digest’. I might not. I might add to it regularly or forget about it for months. I still need to migrate hereandthere.club off of Webflow. I might build brand new stuff. Most of it probably won’t work, but that’s the only way to find what does.

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What’s Changing?

Starting January 1, 2026, the new pricing structure will look like this:

For US Residents:

• Annual pass: $80 (unchanged)

• Ten “patriotic fee-free days” including Memorial Day, Independence Day weekend, Constitution Day (no, I had never heard of this either), Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, and Flag Day (which also happens to be Trump’s birthday)

For Non-US Residents:

• Annual pass: $250 (up from $80)

• Additional $100 per-person surcharge on top of standard entrance fees at 11 parks (Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Teton, Arches, Acadia, Joshua Tree, and Glacier)

• Excluded from all fee-free days

So if an international family of four wants to visit Yellowstone for a day, they’re paying the standard $35 vehicle fee plus $400 in surcharges. Alternatively, they could buy the new $250 international annual pass. That still appears to cover per-vehicle entry, so it could be more cost-effective if they’re visiting multiple parks. It’s honestly a bit of an odd structure to have the “a la carte” so substantially more than the annual.

They’ve also implemented digital passes, which are straightforward and overdue. Congress mandated them, the technology exists, and they make practical sense. You can store them on your phone, link them to physical cards, manage everything through Recreation.gov. This is a concrete improvement, but digital passes were actually mandated by Congress under the Biden administration.

The conversation around all of it is more complicated.

The Math Doesn’t Quite Math

The Interior Department estimates the new pricing structure will bring in $90 million per year. That assumes international visitation holds steady, which seems unlikely given that international visitors to the US have already seen a precipitous decline.

Here’s a few things that have happened recently with National Parks.

• The National Park Service has a $22 billion maintenance backlog

• The recent government shutdown resulted in an estimated $41 million in uncollected fees

• The “Big Beautiful Bill” rescinded $267 million slated for NPS funding via the Inflation Reduction Act

• Since January 2025, the agency has lost around 25% of its permanent workforce

Placed against current needs and recent cuts, $90 million feels small.

This new revenue stream generates roughly a third of what was just cut, about twice what was lost during the shutdown, and less than 0.5% of the maintenance backlog per year. $90 million is not an insignificant amount but it’s not addressing the roots of any problems.

I don’t actually have an issue with differential pricing for international visitors, as a concept. Ecuador charges $200 for international visitors to the Galapagos while nationals pay $30. The Taj Mahal is 22x more expensive for foreign visitors. Machu Picchu is about twice as much. New Zealand charges international visitors more for popular hikes. There are other examples as well. The logic is straightforward: taxpayers have funded the infrastructure and conservation work that makes these places accessible and protected, and differential pricing is one way to reflect that investment.

Outside of actual visitor caps and more stringent reservation systems (which have their own challenges), pricing is one of the few tools available to manage heavy visitation. And, if you’ve spent time in a popular National Park in the last few years, you’re probably aware of the challenges with high-volume international tourism. There’s a reasonable case to be made that higher fees could both fund better management and moderate demand. Whether they’re well-considered amounts, I think is another question.

That said, the timing and optics are terrible. The US is the only country among 184 studied where foreign visitor spending is expected to fall in 2025. International tourism has been declining since early in the year. Tariffs, immigration enforcement, travel advisories from European governments, and visa processing backlogs have all contributed to travelers reconsidering the US as a destination.

Sure, the pass increases might be a drop in the bucket in the overall cost of an international vacation. But if a family decides that additional surcharges are the “cherry on top” of an already abrasive US foreign policy and goes somewhere else, it’s not just park entrance fees that disappear. It’s revenue for hotels, restaurants, guide services, gas stations, etc.

The $90 million in new revenue could help park budgets marginally, but it may not offset what the broader tourism economy loses if international visitation continues its decline.

Symbolism Isn’t Stewardship

What’s most striking to me about the announcement is how much of it feels more about symbolism than anything else. New physical pass designs feature Trump alongside George Washington for US residents, while international visitors get a photo of Glacier National Park. The announcement details “resident-only patriotic fee-free days” and makes sure to note that Flag Day is President Trump’s birthday. There’s substantial focus on framing things around “bold, patriotic designs,” “America-first” pricing, and exclusion of international visitors from free days.

Putting Trump’s face on the pass is a bad idea, and I’d say the same about any sitting president. You could make an argument for Teddy Roosevelt, but even that would be problematic. These passes used to showcase photos of real landscapes and wildlife, chosen from the Share the Experience photo contest. That felt…right.

Making it about whoever currently holds office turns a parks pass into a politicized campaign artifact, which is something it absolutely shouldn’t be.

The announcement mentions “Revenue generated from new fee policies will be invested directly back into America’s national parks, supporting upgrades to visitor facilities, essential maintenance, and improved services nationwide.” But that’s a bold statement when the administration has taken an axe to both funding and staff. The parks are being treated like assets to be branded and monetized rather than long-term conservation challenges requiring sustained investment and institutional capacity.

What we’re left with is heavily politicized positioning on a product that’s becoming harder to deliver. The announcement is heavy on “America-first” messaging while the parks themselves are losing the staff, funding, and institutional capacity that actually make them accessible and functional. You can’t paper over a $22 billion backlog and a gutted workforce with $90 million and a redesigned pass.

Anyways, hope you enjoy today’s newsletter, it’s a dive into Patagonia’s more recent report and what I see as the takeaways. Thanks for reading!

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Patagonia’s 2025 Work in Progress Report opens with a statement from CEO Ryan Gellert: “Patagonia is a paradox. Our charter mandates we follow social and environmentally responsible practices, yet every product we make takes irreplaceable resources from the planet. Our existence seems counter to our purpose. That tension is not lost on us.”

It’s a stark acknowledgement of the contradictory role Patagonia plays in a global system built on extraction. But the report also offers a detailed map of what is working and what is not, even when you are trying harder than almost anyone else in the industry.

You could read this report in a number of ways, and given the amount of press Patagonia generates, you’ll probably see a variety of takes. Some as a celebration of progress, others a critique of ambitions that are currently falling short. Both readings would be accurate. Both would be incomplete.

The outdoor industry has spent years putting Patagonia on a pedestal as proof that a different kind of capitalism is possible. But I think this feels like the first time they’ve more directly acknowledged the true scale of the walls standing in the way of success.

The 6% Problem

In 2018, Patagonia set a goal to source 50% of its synthetic materials from “secondary waste” such as fishing nets, textile scraps, and agricultural waste by 2025. They reached 6%.

That is not a typo. Six percent.

The report maintains that setting such an ambitious goal was intentional. “We wanted to move past single-use plastic bottles as our main recycled synthetic waste stream.” But it’s genuinely hard to take mixed, contaminated waste and transform it into high-quality technical fabric. Roughly 80 percent of Patagonia’s recycled synthetics still come from plastic bottles, because bottles are the only waste stream with infrastructure that actually works (currently). This means Patagonia remains deeply tied to the virgin plastics economy even as they try to build alternatives.

And when it comes to closing the loop on the clothing that they sell, they get back less than 1% of what they make. Of what does return, only about 20% can be recycled again. The rest is sitting in warehouses in Reno, Europe, and Japan, waiting for systems that do not exist yet.

Patagonia’s Synchilla Snap T fleece, made from 95-100% recycled polyester, produced 209,000 pounds of scrap material for 395,000 pullovers in FY2025. And once that pullover is bought, worn, and hopefully returned for recycling, there are a few key issues that challenge its suitability for recycling. The pullover has five different trim materials, all of which need removing before recycling; none of those currently have end-of-life solutions. They go into storage.

This is Patagonia, the company that’s been thinking about product recycling for about as long as anyone, and they still can’t close the loop on a “simple” fleece.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Salomon’s Brigade INDEX helmet achieved full recyclability by designing around a single material family from the start. When customers return the helmet, it can be ground down and recycled without disassembly. But, that’s just one case, albeit a good one. Some product categories might allow for the material simplification that makes recycling actually work better than others.

Why Scope 3 Emissions Matter

The recycling challenge is primarily technical: a confluence of current materials science and recycling abilities/economics. But Scope 3 emissions reveal something fundamentally harder. They reflect the limits of what any one company can control in a globalized supply chain. The vast majority of environmental impacts are happening in parts of the supply chain no single brand can fully see, let alone control.

Scopes 1 and 2 cover emissions from owned facilities and purchased electricity. For Patagonia, those are tiny. Scope 3 includes everything else in the product lifecycle: fiber production, material processing, dyeing, shipping/transportation, product use, end of life disposal. It represents 99% of Patagonia’s total emissions. So, while it’s laudable that “98% of [Patagonia’s] owned and/or operated electricity comes from renewable sources”, it’s not much of a dent in their overall emissions.

The Supply Chain We Can’t See

Scope 3 emissions are often things that individual corporations don’t have very much control over. Energy choices at production facilities. Global shipping logistics. The apparel supply chain is not built for traceability.

A single jacket might include cotton from India, recycled polyester from Taiwan, nylon from Japan, and zippers from China, all assembled in Vietnam. Energy grids differ from region to region. Regulations change across borders. Tracking is a muddy patchwork of educated guesswork, trust, and incomplete data stitched together into something that is often presented like certainty.

But that doesn’t mean Patagonia isn’t trying to move the needle.

One example from the report: they are running a pilot program with a supplier in Taiwan to replace a coal boiler with a steam boiler. Patagonia helped fund the equipment, which is projected to reduce that facility’s emissions by about 27,500 tons a year, roughly a 30 percent reduction. This approach has the potential to lower emissions for every brand that uses that factory, not just Patagonia. They’ve has been working in concert with other brands like Burton, New Balance, REI, Gore and the Outdoor Industry Alliance (OIA) to fund studies into textile mill electrification, but it is still a small effort in the context of a massive industry.

Even that approach reveals the limits. Why would a supplier overhaul its energy infrastructure if Patagonia is only a small part of its overall capacity?

The brands with the most purchasing power to drive supply chain change are often the ones least committed to sustainability, while the committed brands lack the scale to force systemic transformation. Patagonia can work with individual facilities, demonstrate proof-of-concept, and hope these practices spread. But they can’t reshape the energy infrastructure of entire textile manufacturing regions in Asia.

The report makes it clear that Scope 3 is not just a sourcing problem. It is an infrastructure problem that demands investment across entire regions and countries. It is a data problem where reliable emissions measurement often does not exist. It is a relationship problem that requires years of collaboration and trust.

Patagonia’s efforts are not enough to deliver the speed and scale of decarbonization the climate demands. That will require public investment, policy pressure, shared standards, and infrastructure that no individual company, even one as committed as Patagonia, can build alone.

What’s working

While Patagonia struggles with recycling infrastructure that doesn’t exist and supply chain emissions they can only partially influence, all is not lost. Despite failures and challenges, Patagonia has built working models for the circular economy, material investments and more.

Their Reno repair facility fixed nearly 175,000 items in FY2025. In Europe, they helped found the United Repair Centre, which employs resettled tailors and repaired 14 thousand Patagonia items in FY25. Their Worn Wear program generated $13 million in revenue and kept more than 212,000 products in circulation instead of requiring new production. Honestly, those numbers are significantly larger than I would have expected, and a testament to how programs like this can work.

This is circularity that scales because the systems already exist and resale has built in incentives. Customers trade in gear and receive credit or repaired gear. Patagonia retains customer relationships and avoids manufacturing new products. Yes, there are challenges with reverse logistics (most companies aren’t set up to process products flowing backward through their supply chain instead of forward), but these are surmountable. And companies like Archive and Tersus have popped up to service the space. The economics align in a way recycling still does not.

Over 93% of Patagonia’s polyester and 89% of nylon are now recycled. They provided seed funding to in 2014 that helped develop the NetPlus, “a 100% recycled material that reduces the need for virgin plastic and helps prevent used, discarded fishing nets from polluting our oceans.” More than 150 styles now use NetPlus recycled fishing nets, which has since expanded to partners like Nike, Yeti, and Costa. 29 more use ECONYL® 100% recycled nylon, an alternative sourced from industrial and post consumer waste.

And, after almost two decades of R&D, Patagonia has eliminated PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances, aka “forever chemicals) across all new products. Given how widely these chemicals are now understood as a health risk, that milestone matters. It’s a push that has had wide-ranging effects on the regulatory and manufacturing of the entire outdoor industry.

I’m not even touching on their work around corporate responsibility, advocacy, trade practices, and conservation, which could fill another newsletter.

These aren’t just small wins. They’re the kind of operational changes that require years of relationship-building, technical expertise, and financial commitment that many brands can’t (or won’t) make.

Recalibrating Expectations

Patagonia is still selling jackets, and more of them than ever. Critics are not wrong to point that out. But they are also repairing 175,000 items a year, keeping hundreds of thousands of products in circulation, eliminating PFAS, investing in decarbonization and conservation, and openly documenting where they are falling short.

The pedestal we have put Patagonia on has attracted both adoration and backlash. But there’s a simple truth here. Patagonia is a company trying to do better inside a system that makes doing better extraordinarily difficult. They have succeeded in ways that matter, and they have run into ceilings that will not move without structural change.

The industry needs Patagonia to keep pushing, experimenting, and showing what is possible. But even Patagonia cannot build the future alone. Circularity and decarbonization require regulation, shared infrastructure, and coordinated investment.

Patagonia knows this. They’ve been transparent about it. The real question is whether the rest of the industry (both outdoor and wider textile/fashion), and the policymakers who shape it, are willing to help build what even the most committed companies cannot build on their own.

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All because he cut a switchback.

This wasn’t just about trail ethics. It was about what happens when outdoor performances become spectacle and when Strava posts and record-seecking clashes with the rules that keep public lands intact. The incident became a story not because of the severity of what happened, but because of how it was framed and how the government responded.

The whole thing is bananas, but somehow entirely fitting in 2025.

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What Actually Happened

The facts are straightforward. Sunseri, a North Face-sponsored trail runner from Idaho, went for the FKT on the Grand Teton. On his descent, he used a shortcut down an old climbers’ trail that bypasses a series of switchbacks.

His GPS track showed it clearly. On Strava, he acknowledged it openly: “I made the decision to cut the last switchback and avoid the Congo line of hikers that would be heading up Lupine Meadows Trailhead. If I had to make this choice again, I would 100% make the exact same choice.”

He added that anyone who disagreed was welcome to attempt the speed record themselves, talk to former record holders, “Or fight me. Whatever.”

Unfortunately for him, the trail was closed and marked as such on both ends. The National Park Service was not amused, nor was much of the outdoor community. Though Sunseri offered to help with trail maintenance or improve signage, the Park Service pursued a formal citation.

Grand Teton officials charged Sunseri with violating federal regulations (36 CFR 2.1(b)) prohibiting off-trail travel to cut switchbacks. This is a misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. FastestKnownTime.com, the unofficial arbiter of speed records, rejected his time. The North Face scrubbed their Instagram posts about him. Sunseri went from celebrating a record to facing prosecution.

It is worth noting that his defiant Strava post, combative tone, and refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing likely played a major role in the Park Service’s decision to pursue charges. When you publicly mock regulations while your sponsor promotes your achievement to millions, you are effectively daring authorities to make an example of you.

A Park Service public affairs officer said the case was being taken seriously because of its public nature: a sponsored athlete posting to social media and a brand promoting the content widely. But many felt the federal misdemeanor charge, a proposed five-year park ban, and 1,000 hours of community service were wildly disproportionate to one closed shortcut. In May 2025, on the eve of trial, the NPS operations deputy director sent an email withdrawing support for the prosecution, calling it over-criminalization. The U.S. Attorney’s Office pushed forward anyway.

The case began attracting political attention. The Pacific Legal Foundation represented Sunseri pro bono, and U.S. Representatives Harriet Hageman of Wyoming and Andy Biggs of Arizona, both House Judiciary Committee members, criticized the prosecution as government overreach. Despite this, in September, federal judge Stephanie Hambrick found Sunseri guilty, and sentencing was planned for late October.

Instead, on the day of sentencing, surprise plea deal was proposed: 60 hours of community service, a wilderness course, and a year of probation, with the conviction eventually cleared. But Hambrick questioned whether political pressure influenced the offer from the new, Trump-appointed, U.S. attorney for Wyoming. “It’s an interesting message you send to the public,” she said. “If you whine and cry hard enough, you get your way.” She declined to accept the deal and requested 30 days to review.

But before that hearing could occur, President Trump issued a full pardon in the same week he pardoned individuals convicted of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, and former members of Congress. The judge’s skepticism proved prescient.

A double standard?

While Sunseri clearly broke the letter of the law, how it was handled is up for debate. He was not the first person to cut that switchback during an FKT attempt. Multiple prior record attempts used the same shortcut. Iconic ultrarunner Kilian Jornet cut the switchback on his attempt. None faced charges.

Sunseri’s legal team argued the closure was not adequately marked. Park officials countered that both he and local athletes knew it was closed. Local Jackson Hole athlete Kelly Halpin, who was subpoenaed to testify, said she specifically advised Sunseri not to use the shortcut.

Meanwhile, nearby Delta Lake is technically off-trail, yet hundreds of visitors hike there daily in summer, trampling fragile alpine terrain. The Park Service does not station rangers there writing tickets. Platforms like AllTrails and dozens of blogs promote Delta Lake despite it not appearing on any official NPS maps.

And it is not just Grand Teton. The current “car to car any route” FKT on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park cuts the official trail significantly, including in lower, clearly marked sections.

But Sunseri did more than cut a switchback. He was part of a production in which crew reportedly blocked parking lots, including handicapped spots, and filmed without permits. Then he publicly bragged that he would do it again. That is not an honest mistake. That is someone acting as though rules do not apply. Casual entitlement from sponsored athletes is a high-profile way to erode shared norms. If a North Face athlete can take over a trailhead and document illegal activity for promotional content, what message does that send?

Still, pushing for the most severe punishments? Continuing prosecution after the National Park Service withdrew support? That’s where things get murky. Most people would agree Sunseri was in the wrong (and acted like a jerk about it), but there’s a valid argument to be made that the prosecution became grandstanding, and eventually backfired.

Switchback culture

If you explained this story to a European runner, they might be confused. In much of Europe, particular in many races in the Alps, cutting switchbacks is normalized. Athletes are expected to choose the most direct line. Here in the UK, fell running has no set course at all. You get up and down however you choose.

But in the United States, our outdoor norms are more conservative. We’ve cultivated a kind of wilderness puritanism, particularly as it applies to National Parks, one born out of necessity. These are some of the most visited natural places on Earth, and they’re managed by agencies with finite staff, shrinking budgets, and an impossible mandate: protect delicate ecosystems while accommodating millions of visitors a year. Strict trail etiquette is one way we try to limit impact. Seemingly small actions, like cutting a switchback (especially if widely shared or normalized), can scale into real damage. Between overcrowding, poor wilderness ethics, and social media, rules are there for a reason.

And yet, the reality is messy. Who among us hasn’t accidentally or intentionally cut a switchback at some point? I’ve spent plenty of time off trail to reach certain peaks or ridge lines. Some things are “clearly” bad, like going off boardwalk in Yellowstone. Others are more vague–a “you know it if you see it” scenario. Things can be messier than guidelines (or Instagram commenters) suggest.

That said, I think what’s unfolded here is not an exploration of the nuance present in backcountry travel, but instead a reframing of the incident as a symbol of government overreach. While many of the loudest critics came from conservative voices wary of federal authority and regulation, frustration with public land management isn’t confined to one side of the aisle. Athletes, wilderness advocates, and access-focused organizations from various political backgrounds have long debated the role of enforcement, trail access, and land-use policy. This case tapped into broader tension over who sets the rules, how consistently they’re enforced, and who gets held accountable.

The end of the story

A sponsored runner pushed boundaries and acted like the rules did not apply. The Park Service responded with prosecution. The legal system continued long after practical value disappeared. Political actors turned it into a symbol. And eventually, presidential power erased any consequence.

What should have happened? Probably a citation, a fine, maybe a short-term park ban. Instead, it became a proxy culture-war flashpoint, one that let Sunseri’s advocates reframe it as a debate over federal overreach, regulation, and personal freedom. That framing likely influenced the administration’s decision to even consider a pardon.

Meanwhile, the Grand Teton remains the same. The switchback is still closed. Delta Lake still draws crowds. The Longs Peak FKT? Still up on the platform that rejected Sunseri’s time.

There’s room for debate over how this should have been handled. But what’s undeniable is that an instance of particularly poor judgment spiraled into one of the most unlikely outdoor stories in recent memory…one that somehow reached the highest levels of American government.

I just spent a few days in Italy with friends, visiting Florence and Rome. The trip became an inadvertent experiment in where AI actually helps versus where it gets in the way. The short version? The best moments were unplanned. But having a tireless, knowledgeable guide in my pocket? Pretty nice.

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Where lists fall short

I’m not much of a planner, hence why although I’d love to spend an extended amount of time staying/skiing somewhere in the Alps this winter, I haven’t booked anything yet. But in Florence, one of our friends we were traveling with is an impressive planner (think spreadsheets, itineraries, months ahead of time) and he uses ChatGPT extensively (he’s taken to just calling it “Chad”). One way he used it for this trip was to map out potential day-trip routes and sights through Chianti: first by e-bike, then by Vespa. ChatGPT gave us solid suggestions, the kind of stuff you’d find in a decent guidebook or blog post. It provided a good foundational recommendation for our days, but the best experiences still ended up being driven by local recommendations and spontaneity.

Case in point: while e-biking, we stopped at an organic winery not because it was on any list, or even recommended, but because it looked interesting as we were biking by. Ottomani turned out to be one of the best experiences of the trip. Eight friends started it together (ottomani means “eight hands” in Italian), and they make wine using organic techniques, including aging in clay amphoras made in nearby Impruneta. Our guide around the property was a former ER nurse who’d changed careers to work in wine, and she gave us the best crash course on cultivation, Chianti terroir, and the business of winemaking that we got anywhere. None of us are heavy wine drinkers, but the clay pot wine (I think the IGT Toscana Sangiovese Amphora) was a universal favorite from our entire time in Italy.

Ottomani didn’t come up in ChatGPT. We didn’t pick it out of a “Top 10 Chianti Wineries” listicle. It doesn’t have 1200 reviews. It was complete serendipity.

On our Vespa day, we changed tack just a bit to prioritize a town our extremely friendly rental guy suggested over another. We later made some course adjustments, taking the Vespas to explore a few gravel roads that were, let’s say, “techy” on the little 125cc motorbikes. Our winery choices were hit and miss, but that’s life. One tasting felt pushy and commercial. Another was delightfully friendly, had dogs running around, and was generally a great vibe, great view, and great wine. Both ended up being more spur of the moment choices, as we got shut out on a few others we found online that were busy, closed, or not doing tastings.

In Florence we did wait in line at l’Antico Vinaio (it moves pretty fast), a sandwich shop that I’ve now found out is huge on social media. It has four locations on the same street, taking over the entire Via dei Neri with people waiting for a focaccia. The sandwich was good. Was it significantly better than a sandwich from almost anywhere else in Florence? Maybe not. But they’ve captured the algorithm/influencer crowd. If you really want to try one, there’s also a location in the train station without the lines (but lacking the ”I did the thing” social media video vibes).

This one isn’t ChatGPT’s fault, it’s TikTok, Instagram, and also a thousand travel bloggers creating the same feedback loop. I actually asked ChatGPT a few times for sandwich shops and it didn’t come up in the initial recommendations, which was interesting. Reliance on social media, blogs, and Google can limit you in many of the same ways that ChatGPT might.

Where it works

Rome changed my perspective on AI while traveling.

I’m the cliché guy who thinks about the Roman Empire regularly. I grew up reading Greek and Roman mythology, when someone asks “what time period from history would you visit,” I’d say the Pax Romana (particularly the reign of Augustus or the Five Good Emperors), and I can give you a rough timeline from the founding to the fall. I’ve read a few books (working my way through Pax right now). Visiting Rome has been on my list for years.

The city is overwhelmingly crowded and layered with 3,000 years of history. Two-thousand-year-old facades next to 15th-century churches next to modern buildings. Just looking at an impressive facade, there’s an equal chance it was commissioned by a pope 500 years ago or an emperor 2,000 years ago. For someone like me, the sheer amount of sights and history is simultaneously fascinating and paralyzing.

I’m not a fan of guided tours (of which there are thousands roaming around the crowds of Rome). I prefer wandering at my own pace, stumbling upon things, and letting curiosity and my fast-walking feet take me to whatever is next. But, I also enjoy actually understanding what I’m seeing, not just taking selfies. I’m one of those people who will spend an hour on Wikipedia after a brief conversation about a random topic.

I spent one late night walking solo through Rome with ChatGPT as my guide (highly recommend, fewer crowds, still great vibes). The process was simple: I’d tell it where I was, ask for interesting spots nearby focused on ancient Roman history (less interested in religious stuff, medieval churches, etc), then wander and use it for deeper context on things I encountered. It works particularly well if you use AirPods and the voice chat feature: no need to constantly pull out your phone, just have a conversation. You can interrupt, clarify, and ask more detailed questions. It’s kinda scary good. A typical interaction: see an interesting old thing, check the name on a plaque or Google Maps, ask ChatGPT to tell me more.

Near midnight I spent 20 minutes sitting in the Piazza della Rotonda, eating gelato, staring at the Pantheon, and learning about the architectural genius of the Pantheon and the concrete technology that made that dome possible. “Tell me about the Pantheon.” “More about the engineering.” “What were Marcus Agrippa’s most significant victories?” “How did Agrippa influence Augustus’s reign and later emperors?” “Why did Hadrian leave Agrippa’s name on the Pantheon when he rebuilt it?”. Yes, these are things that are possible to just Google, but nowhere near as easily.

The next day this same process worked especially well. The Colosseum has a pretty detailed museum and history, but in the densely packed areas of Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum, there’s an overwhelming amount to see and surprisingly sparse signage. Maybe I wanted to go deeper than the single plaque about the Domus Augusti (the residence of Emperor Augustus), or understand the significance of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine. I was able to both satisfy my own curiosity and also play tour guide for the rest of the group (although I think they tired of my factoids long before I did).

For me, at least, the experience was significantly enhanced by how I was able to interact with ChatGPT. Even as a Rome buff, there’s only so many ruins you can look at that are just “wow, cool old thing”, vs. “This is what it is, why it was important, and how it fits into the overarching story of this place”. I think it honestly really elevated what I took away from visiting here.

Finding the balance

The lesson from this trip isn’t that AI makes travel better or worse. It’s that it’s a tool, and like any tool, it works well for certain jobs and poorly for others.

AI excels at synthesis and context. It’s a tireless expert that can help you understand what you’re seeing, suggest routes based on your interests, and answer the tenth follow-up question without getting annoyed. It doesn’t need to follow a particular route, and it doesn’t care if I stop for an espresso or to read a book in a random piazza for an hour. Depending on how you interact with it, it might give you the same popular spots as the rest of the internet, or it might unlock something new an unique that you’d never have known or found. It might be redundant, or save you a ton of research time on something more complicated. But, it will never know that the winery that looks interesting from the road will have a former ER nurse turned winemaker who’ll provide one of the most enjoyable experiences and best wine of the trip.

In my opinion, the best travel experiences will always require putting yourself in position to be surprised, and equally, to be disappointed. To talk to Luka. To stop at the random winery without looking at reviews. To take the side road. To sit in a piazza at midnight and soak in the history in front of you.

Finding that balance between plans, must-see sights, and comfort with ambiguity isn’t an AI or no-AI problem, it’s the tension at the heart of modern tourism. The way we travel today is shaped by the way social media algorithms, guidebooks, SEO and more influence our decisions and habits. But, that’s part of the fun. The point isn’t to travel without tools; it’s to figure out how to use them in ways that get you the kind of travel experiences that are right for you.

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I started running in high school cross country team. After graduating I planned to continue at UC San Diego, but an early-season injury sidelined me and I switched to ultimate frisbee instead (which kept me in surprisingly good shape). After college, running faded to occasional training and the odd race—until 2020, when I spontaneously signed up for a 50K with two months to train. That race went well, and for a few years I maintained good fitness, racing here and there at varying levels of competitiveness.

Then, last year, I tripped and fell on my face while on the Dirty Bismark loop outside of Boulder (one of my favorite “fitness test” runs). The fall resulted in knee issues that were enough to knock me out of Desert Rats, and then became a persistent injury that followed me through several false starts at recovery and a move to London.

In Boulder, the outdoors were constant—trails ten minutes from your door, movement woven into daily life, a community designed around physical activity. In London, even with its great access to green spaces (for a major city), everything requires more effort. You can’t just squeeze in a quick trail run or hike before dinner. You plan, you train, you take the train. The mountains of Europe are “close” but not close. Being injured and far from the mountains felt like a double whammy. The frustration was real.

Eventually I connected with a great PT in London who got me back on track. I started running with consistently decreasing discomfort and even returned to my local track meetup. I was beginning to recognize myself again.

Then, just as things were trending up, I pulled a hamstring doing 200-meter repeats at a track workout. Nothing too serious, but another speed bump. On trips to Annecy and the Polish Tatras, I stuck to hiking.

It wasn’t until Switzerland, toward the end of summer, that everything came together. We spent a few days in Engelberg at the Ski Lodge. One particular day after climbing the Fürenalp via ferrata, Sarah turned me loose for a solo run toward Surenenpass. The trail climbed steadily and I pushed hard, alternating between jogging and power hiking. My planned turnaround time came and went—I was too close to the pass not to finish.

After a brief moment at the top of the pass, I turned around and headed down as clouds began to build. Not long after I started descending, I heard the first peals of thunder. Hoping to avoid the storm, I picked up the pace, out of Zone 2 and more toward “racing downhill”.

I didn’t outrun the storm 😂.

The rain started coming down in sheets, but it was that kind of summer storm energy that feels more theater than threat (not that Colorado summer high alpine panic). I was soaked within minutes, but I wasn’t cold, wasn’t too exposed, wasn’t too far from home—and I couldn’t stop smiling. If anything, I picked up the pace even more, careening downhill on clean doubletrack and sections of techy singletrack. My feet danced over slick roots and loose rock, I felt fast and in control, and overall I just felt good.

Eventually, I did get out of the storm as I dropped into the valley, still dealing with the after effects of soaked trails but it was sunny again, and I was enjoying the waterfalls on either side. Eventually I made it back to return my ferrata gear 30 min early (snagging a top 5 Strava descent in the process).

It’s hard to describe that ecstatic, slightly defiant joy of flying downhill at full speed after months of feeling benched. It’s wasn’t really about running fast. It’s was about the quiet, hard-earned triumph of feeling like myself again.

While writing this I wondered if there might be some long, oddly specific German word that perfectly encapsulates “the joy of feeling fit again”. While I couldn’t find a true dictionary word, German tends to support smashing words and concepts together to create new ones. The closest I could get is Wiedergenesenheitsfreude, which translates roughly to the “joy of recovery”. But, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and I’ve been reliably informed by German speakers that “this doesn’t really make sense”. Whelp.

Injury changes your relationship with movement, especially when your sense of self is wrapped up in it. Trails feel farther away. Your identity takes on a little wobble. Frustrations build. You forget exactly what it feels like to have your legs just work.

That’s the tricky part about building your identity around physical capabilities: it’s inherently unstable. Your body will fail you at some point, and when it does, you’re left figuring out who you are without the thing that’s been defining you. Most of the time, injury isn’t a matter of if, but when. Push hard enough, long enough, and something will give. And when it does, you have to learn how to manage the frustration of not being able to do the things you love, of watching your fitness slip away, and plan things around what your body will and won’t let you do. There’s an inherent challenge in tying happiness to activities that you might not always be able to do.

But the same drive that gets you injured in the first place is what brings you back. We’ll get hurt, we’ll rebuild, we’ll doubt, we’ll find our flow again. You learn to live through the downs because the ups are worth it. And when you finally do get back, when your legs work again and everything clicks on the trail, you try not to take it for granted.

Sarah snapped this photo of me heading out toward the pass, mid-air, leaping down the trail like a little kid. I think it sums it all up pretty well.

Now, looking ahead to what to train for next and also trying to figure out some longer term time in the Alps this winter (If you’ve got suggestions, lmk).

Thanks for reading.

I you have feedback, suggestions, or future collaboration ideas, my inbox is open. Reply to this email or message kyle@hereandthere.club.

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A few weeks ago, Bill Amos announced on LinkedIn that his company, NW Alpine, was closing. After 15 years of making technical alpine apparel in the United States, the company was done. Amos had not just been a proponent of American manufacturing but had built the entire identity of NW Alpine (and his online presence) around it. The decision wasn’t driven by failure in the traditional sense, but by what Amos sees ahead.

NW Alpine’s closure matters not just for what it says about one small brand, but for what it signals about an entire industry facing unprecedented turbulence. I spoke with Amos recently about his background, the challenges brands are up against, and his predictions for what comes next.

A Bit of Background

Amos founded NW Alpine in 2010, starting with 100 pairs of soft shell pants, and grew a small but loyal following of outdoorists who were fans of the American-made approach and high quality technical gear. Seeking more control over production, he later launched Kichatna Apparel Manufacturing, which grew into a 40-person factory in Salem, Oregon, producing gear for NW Alpine and contract clients like Cotopaxi and Fleo.

The pandemic marked a turning point. When hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchase orders were cancelled, the factory pivoted to making PPE. But when Chinese exports resumed, the PPE business evaporated almost overnight, leaving the factory overstaffed and leading to necessary downsizing.

Supply chain disruptions made matters worse. In 2022, REI’s distribution center crisis led a key client to cancel orders for the rest of the year. Amos closed the factory that fall, though it took a long time to fully wind down operations. By the time he turned his attention back to NW Alpine, the outdoor industry was entering what he calls “probably one of the most challenging times in the market.”

A Perfect Storm

As Amos navigated the factory closure, the broader outdoor industry’s pandemic boom had given way to economic headwinds.

The data paints a sobering picture. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, outdoor market retail sales reached $28 billion in 2024, up 1% compared to 2023. But that modest growth masks deeper problems. Casual product categories are driving more sales than technical gear. During the post-pandemic boom, brands overproduced, which then led to a discount cycle with negative impacts across the industry. Casual users tend to buy less and buy on sale. As I wrote for OIA earlier this year, “The post-COVID discount cycle, with prevalent blanket promotions and endless markdowns, has trained customers to wait for the next deal. This undermines specialty retail, devalues premium products, and creates a dangerous dependence on discounting to move inventory.”

Then came tariffs. Trump’s return to office brought sweeping tariff policies affecting the outdoor and manufacturing industries (I wrote about it here). And while there may be a place for targeted tariffs to bolster domestic production, even the most committed domestic manufacturer operates within global supply chains. U.S. manufacturing lost 42,000 jobs from April through August 2025. And even if you wanted to bring some of that manufacturing onshore, “We don’t make sewing machines here,” Amos points out. “Almost everything is imported from China, Japan or Germany, and those all have tariffs on them now.”

The retail closures deepened the trend. Next Adventure, a beloved Portland outdoor gear chain, announced its closure after 28 years. Summit Hut is closing after 55 years. Orvis announced it would close 31 stores and five outlet locations by early 2026, following layoffs representing 8% of its workforce in 2024 and another 50 layoffs citing tariffs in June 2025. Dick’s closed 5 of its 8 Public Lands stores in 2025. And according to Wes Allen, Principal at Sunlight Sports, there’s a rumor that REI plans to close 2 of its flagship retail stores.

Coresight Research estimates that approximately 15,000 stores are expected to close in 2025 across the U.S., driven by “weak consumer demand, inflation, and investor expectations.” While this affected all retail, outdoor specialty stores face unique pressures from casualization and increasing competition from D2C and ecommerce.

The problem with NW Alpine wasn’t execution. By most measures, NW Alpine was doing well. The brand was growing revenue (up 50% YOY) and had eliminated the factory overhead that had nearly sunk the business. But “doing ok” isn’t enough in an industry where the middle market is collapsing.

The Consolidation That’s Coming

The outdoor industry projects confidence publicly. Participation numbers hit record highs. The “$1.3 trillion” economic impact figure gets repeated endlessly on conference stages, in think pieces, and in press releases about the industry’s “power.” But if you start to dig into the financial statements of the major players (or chat off-the-record with a few folks), a different picture emerges.

The dirty secret is that many of the outdoor industry’s most visible players are standing on financial quicksand. And when that ground finally gives way, the question isn’t whether there will be consolidation, layoffs, and closures—it’s who will be left standing to pick up the pieces.

VF Corporation, the behemoth behind The North Face, Vans, Timberland, and Dickies, carried just $642 million in cash against $5.7 billion in total debt as of Q1 FY2026. A debt-to-equity ratio of 4.39 means VF owes more than four times what it’s worth. Debt isn’t inherently a bad thing, and this isn’t untenable, but it’s also not exactly the most stable. VF recently sold both the Supreme brand ($1.5B) and Dickies ($600M) specifically to pay down debt, but remains highly leveraged. This isn’t a company well-positioned to weather a prolonged downturn.

Layoff trends tell the same story across the industry. Patagonia quietly reduced its headcount in 2024. Orvis cut 8% of its workforce in October 2024, another 50 employees in June 2025. REI has gone through several rounds of layoffs and restructuring, scaling back expansion plans from 30 stores annually to just four new locations in 2025.

“Looking at what Patagonia’s done, layoffs and all that, everybody is just financially stressed,” Amos says. “If they’re financially stressed, how are the smaller guys expected to survive?”

Columbia Sportswear, meanwhile, has $579 million in cash and $481 million in debt, a more manageable ratio. While Columbia withdrew its full-year guidance citing “macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies,” its balance sheet may provide something its competitors desperately lack: a bit of breathing room. If the predicted negative effects pan out, Columbia has the security to go shopping. The question is whether they plan to use it.

Recent investment crowdfunding by smaller outdoor brands has also revealed uncomfortable truths. Wefunder and similar platforms require public financial disclosures, and the numbers often don’t support the overhead structures these companies have built. “I feel like the value of crowdfunding is getting people that don’t understand the financials well enough to support things because they like it,” Amos observes. “Like, oh, it feels popular in my community, it must grow.” But if you dig into the actual financials, these are not healthy businesses, especially in this market.

The confluence of factors is unprecedented. The inventory glut from pandemic overproduction created a race to the bottom on pricing. Specialty retail is contracting. Casualization means technical brands are fighting for a shrinking pool of committed enthusiasts. Consumers face an average $1,300 in additional tariff costs per household, and the uncertainty that tariff policies has injected into the manufacturing, pricing, and purchasing strategies of both brands and retailers means that some brands are likely to take a (big) hit from betting the wrong way heading into 2026.

“I feel like we’re just like canaries in the coal mine at this point,” Amos says. “When one of the big brands goes down, it’s going to be crazy.”

Can Made in America Still Work?

Despite NW Alpine’s closure, Amos hasn’t abandoned the idea that American manufacturing can succeed in outdoor apparel. “Now is actually a really good time to start an apparel factory because equipment is dirt cheap,” he notes. “I think we could replace our entire factory, probably 100 machines, for $10,000 to $15,000 that we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on initially. That’s how bad it is.”

But equipment is the easy part. What’s really needed are modern lean manufacturing processes, experienced management (Amos believes only a handful of people in the U.S. could execute), and, most importantly, vertical integration to control margins.

The advantage would be responsiveness. “You could respond to demand, change a purchase order and have that done in like a week, which is unheard of,” Amos explains. “When you’re talking like nine to 12-month lead times from Asia, you’re already a year behind where the consumer is.”

The irony is that companies that could possibly make American manufacturing work are the ones least likely to try it. They’re already successful with their current models, and the risks of bringing production in-house are significant. The companies most motivated to try it (the small brands trying to differentiate themselves) lack the resources and expertise to execute.

What Comes Next

When asked what advice he’d give entrepreneurs eyeing the outdoor apparel market, Amos doesn’t mince words: “Don’t start an outdoor apparel company right now.”

He does clarify–he still thinks there are opportunities ahead for brands, he’s just extremely wary of the next few years and feels that opportunities will lie in whatever comes out of the shakeup, not the immediate future. His decision to close NW Alpine underscores a hard truth about running a business in uncertain times: sometimes the smartest move is recognizing when the game has changed.

“We’re not in a position where we have to close down right now,” he explains. “We’re liquidating that when we still can, when people have money to buy stuff and there isn’t a flood of product coming into the market. If you’re going to panic, panic first.”

It’s a lesson that runs counter to the entrepreneurial mythology of perseverance at all costs. Sometimes quitting while you’re ahead is the right move.

When I asked Amos about his personal goal in winding down the business, his answer was straightforward: “To get out of it, still solvent and not financially ruined at 44.”

By that measure, at least, he succeeded.