Update: January 17, 2025: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to , which will go into effect on January 19 if the social media’s parent company does not sell the platform.

In 2023, Tatiana O’Hara, a content creator in Atlanta, Georgia, began to document her running journey on TikTok. She , and soon attracted a dedicated following of other beginnerĚýrunners. By the end of 2024, she had . “When people are looking for a run club for slower runners, they find me,”ĚýO’Hara said.

Now, what she has built is in jeopardy as a ban on the app goes into effect on January 19, 2025, unless the Supreme Court intervenes. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get that same searchability on other apps,” O’Hara said.

O’Hara is just one of thousands of creators and small business owners grappling with the impending TikTok ban.

In April, Congress passed a law banning the app beginning on January 19 of this year. The government says that TikTok . Outrage by many lawmakers and users of the app over followed. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, challenged the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on January 10, to determine its constitutionality.

As of now, TikTok continues to operate in the U.S., pending the Supreme Court’s decision, which will decide whether the ban will proceed. President-elect Donald Trump, who had previously sought to ban the app in 2020, has reversed his position and is now . Last month, he filed a brief with the Supreme Court requesting a delay in the ban to allow his incoming administration to negotiate a resolution.

Social media professionals and creator economy analysts have called the ban an “” for creators, and many users fear that the communities they’ve participated in will disappear overnight with no replacement.

TikTok’s Impact on Outdoor Access

The ban is set to have unanticipated ripple effects in the outdoors community. Though TikTok is seen as a hyper-online platform, built to maximize screen time, the app actually does more than other major social platforms to encourage people to get outside and explore nature, some users said. “TikTok lowers the barrier of entry to outdoorsy activities because the information is so accessible,” O’Hara said.

John Facey, a web and graphic designer in Queens, New York, credits TikTok with helping him discover a love of horticulture and environmentalism. Through his page on TikTok, he said, he met a lot of people who were interested in environmental science, local ecology, and issues affecting the environment. Facey even got tips for identifying plants along his hikes.

Andy Neal, an outdoor content creator who posts under the handle @andyfilmsandhikes, said that, “TikTok has played a significant role in democratizing the outdoors.”

While traditional media often depicts those hiking, biking and engaging in other outdoor sports as young, fit, and conventionally attractive, Neal said that TikTok, more than any other platform, has helped change those perceptions. “TikTok has given visibility to people of all body types, genders, and backgrounds who love spending time outside,” he said. “Compared to other platforms, TikTok has done a better job of making the outdoors feel inclusive…I’ve learned more about outdoor gear and educationĚýon TikTok than anywhere else because the platform encourages real conversations and storytelling, rather than focusing solely on aesthetics.”

Activism at Risk

TikTok’s hyper-curated algorithm and community-first approach have inspired millions to explore the natural world and to develop a deeper appreciation for nature. The app remains a hub for Gen Z climate activism, with creators like Elise Joshi and sound the alarm on climate change.

Jessie Dickson, a TikTok creator with 215,000 followers in Sacramento, California, said that TikTok’s capacity to mobilize people to action is unmatched. “Think of all the campaigns to or that only succeeded because of young people on TikTok,”ĚýDickson said. “Think of all the young people who on hikes is important.”

Dickson said that as an environmentalist and scientist, the ban terrifies him. “We are muting millions of young voices… so many areas of conservation are going to suffer without TikTok.”

TikTok’s short-form video format has also made information about outdoor adventures more accessible and appealing, especially to younger generations. Creators share , , and , lowering the barrier to entry for those looking to spend more time outside.

This content has translated into real-world action. Thousands of users have they discovered through the app. The platform has been credited with motivating people to take up hiking and nature walks, with users and the mental health benefits of spending time outside. Without the platform’s influence, some users will be pushed toward more solitary apps that are less about community and more about consumption. Creators said that people would have a harder time discovering outdoors activities and meetups around them.

The Business Repercussions

The ban will also affect thousands of small businesses, including many sellers of outdoor and sports equipment. “If I was interested in taking up kayaking, it is so easy to go on TikTok, follow ten people posting about kayaking, and see their Amazon storefronts,” O’Hara said. This seamless integration of content and commerce has been a boon for small businesses looking to tap into niche outdoor activity related markets.

Creators face financial peril as a major source of theirĚýincome may dry up with no real alternative. “The money I made on TikTok helped pay for my son’s daycare,” O’Hara said.

The platform has enabled influencers to monetize content through brand deals, live streams, and affiliate marketing. These income streams will disappear if the ban is enacted. “TikTok isn’t just another social media platform, it’s a launchpad for creators,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer.

While other platforms feature their own versions of live streaming and business opportunitites, Instagram and YouTube, TikTok’s primary competitors, just don’t offer the same ecommerce integration, monetization options, and discovery systems as TikTok, creators said. “One unique aspect of TikTok that I’ll miss is the live-streaming feature,” Neal said. “I’ve had incredible live streams while out on hikes, showing people beautiful spaces and having meaningful conversations in real-time. Other platforms don’t foster that same kind of live engagement.”

In response to the fast-approaching ban, some TikTok users which translates loosely into “little red book,” named after a propaganda book written by . ĚýThe app is lifestyle-centric and more similar to Instagram than TikTok. However, it shot to the top of Apple’s app store on January 14 as TikTok users desperately searched for alternatives to the platform.

“Do the great people of China like nature?” one new Xiaohongshu alongside a video of the view from a mountain top. “I’m an American TikTok refugee that posts simple nature content that highlights the greatness of the outdoors,” he .

Within hours of posting, he had gotten a reply from another Xiaohongshu user, who posts videos of their hikes. “Deep love of nature,” they replied.

Taylor Lorenz has reported on the content creator industry for 15 years. She has covered TikTok for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She has also amassed over 542,000 followers on the app.

The post What the TikTok Ban Means for Outdoor Communities and Creators appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Whump! My face plant is sudden, a cartwheel of flying ski poles and curse words into powder. The sting of snow on bare skin jolts my eyes open, and I hear a chorus of woo! erupt lower on the slope.

“Yeah, Fred!” a voice bellows. “You were a little too far forward—remember to keep your weight back.”

I brush myself off and schuss down the powdery hillside to my two companions, wondering how my 38 years of skiing experience seemingly evaporated in an instant. But I have little time to nurse my bruised pride—my new friends are already making their way up the slope for another run. I struggle to keep pace as we trudge toward the summit of this wooded hillside in Genesee, an upscale neighborhood in Denver’s western suburbs. I look to an adjacent hilltop and see the familiar elliptical sides of the Sculptured House, the mansion built by architect Charles Deaton featured in the 1973 film Sleeper.Ěý

The guy in front of me, Wade Wilson, is a wiry real estate agent from nearby Golden. In front of him is Alex Kaufman, also from Golden, who dishes out rapid-fire advice as we climb. Keep your weight over your arches, not the balls of your feet. You don’t edge the turns like on a normal ski, you just kind of waggle your knees. Don’t worry if you hit a rock, just let the skis do their job.

“You’ll get the hang of it, I promise,” Kaufman says. “Everyone sucks their first time.” Kaufman, 45, is a father of two, a youth soccer coach, and the chief operating officer of Kaufman Asset Management, a company that invests in affordable housing. But I’m here because Kaufman is also a budding social media celebrity in the U.S. skiing world, where fans know him as the Weird Foothill Guy.

The Weird Foothill Guy only boasts about 11,000 followers across his channels, but his audience includes ski-industry heads of state, outdoor journalists, and even a few official resort accounts. I started following him in 2023 and quickly became obsessed with his online musings. Like many snow-sports aficionados, he regularly posts about the shoddy state of American skiing: massive lift lines, $48 cheeseburgers, and miles-long traffic jams on Interstate 70, the main artery connecting Denver with the resorts. “Economic vitality!” he once tweeted next to a video of a January traffic jam that stranded some motorists for ten hours on the freeway.

But most Weird Foothill Guy content promotes Kaufman’s highly unorthodox style of backcountry skiing—one that seems to defy logic. He skis up and down slopes that are just a few miles from downtown Denver—hillsides with so little snowpack (and so many rocks and stumps) that your daredevil nephew wouldn’t sled down them, let alone tackle them on skis. Yet Kaufman navigates this terrain three or four days a week during the winter, often on his lunch break or before work. He floods social media with photos from these micro-adventures, alongside captions that express his radical view on the sport. Basically: Resort skiing sucks and I’ve discovered an amazing alternative.Ěý

Kaufman’s brand of skiing—which he calls Simple Skiing—relies on a bizarre plastic ski called the Marquette Backcountry, which looks like a cross between a child’s toy and a float pontoon. He did not invent these strange skis, but he has become their strongest evangelist. He keeps a small fleet of them in his garage, and lends them out to anyone who wants to try them, including me. Descending on them presents an ample learning curve, as I have just discovered. Ascending is similarly challenging. You don’t use climbing skins. The skis have fish-scale-like divots on the bottoms that grip the snow, similar to the ones on some cross-country skis.

Wilson and Kaufman speed ahead. Kaufman is wearing a pair of basketball shorts over tights and a flannel shirt. An orange handkerchief flutters from his back pocket. “I have the bandana in case hunters spot me,” he says. “I never wear ski pants—you get too hot.”

I soon learn this lesson, as my core temperature spikes under my preferred backcountry outfit. Snowmelt from my crash drips down my back and soaks my long underwear, and I wonder: Is this really better than a day at the resort?

I find my answer at the summit. Wilson and Kaufman have waited for me, and as I reach the top, I look down from our perch. Below us is I-70, packed with cars; a serpentine line of red brake lights stretching to the horizon. The traffic is barely inching along, and the nearest resort is still 45 miles up the road. I shift my gaze to the snowy slope below my skis. We’re completely alone, shredding untracked powder just 25 minutes from downtown Denver.

“We’ll be home eating breakfast before they’re in the parking lot,” Kaufman says. “C’mon, let’s hit another run.”

The post The Weird Foothill Guy Believes His Style of Skiing Is Better than a Day at the Resort. We Tried It Out. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Emojis are silly. But sometimes something silly gets lodged in your brain and you can’t stop thinking about it. Recently, reporter Meg Duff noticed that her phone was mis-classifying a handful of animal emojis, and an internet rabbit hole turned into a headphones smiley face.

The post The Mystery of the Mis-Labeled Mollusk appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

I was thinking about going to India with Hannah, or Bali with Ashlyn, maybe Morocco with Emily Rose. But then I came across Yosemite with Haleigh. Haleigh looked so happy. So carefree. Her arms open wide, embracing the wilderness. I, too, wanted to clasp my coffee mug while watching the sunrise and swing in a hammock slung between pines. It had been too long since I’d gone backpacking! I didn’t know Haleigh’s last name or anything about her. No matter. Haleigh made life outdoors look so easy. So perfect. On Instagram, at least.

Recently, the algorithm has been inundating me with women like Haleigh—pretty, approachable, adventurous, always on a trip somewhere lovely. And suddenly all of them seemed to be inviting me to join them. Trekking in Peru. Strutting through Parisian streets. Leaping into turquoise waters in Tahiti. “Travel with me!” their painstakingly curated feeds read, leading to links where all you had to do was click and pay, then pack a bag.

I wanted to go. Follow the followers. See what traveling with a travel influencer was all about. But India with Hannah sounded… far. Better, I thought, to stick a little closer to my home in San Francisco; drive my own getaway car. So I clicked Haleigh’s book-now button, put down a $600 deposit, and, when summer came, headed east to Yosemite, to meet up with a bunch of women I’d never met before.

Most of the dozen others had flown in. Strangers all, waiting at the airport for the sort-of stranger who’d lured them there. And then there she was, in the flesh at SFO: @, a lithe 32-year-old with a waist-length dirty-blond braid, wearing Stio pants and Chacos, walking toward a van full of her followers. And everyone was quietly freaking out.

“There was this fangirl moment,” Jeanne, a restaurateur from North Carolina, mother of four, and at 51 the eldest of our group, told me later. “No one said it out loud or anything, but you could feel it. This nervous energy. It was like: Oh, my God! There she is! She’s real.”

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A few months back, I posted on Instagram a short video of myself hand-writing something on my iPad, and someone commented, “You mean you actually write that stuff out by hand?” And I realized, I’ve never really explained how I make these handwritten and illustrated stories, so I thought I’d take a minute to do that in this video. (OK, it’s actually 3 minutes and 29 seconds)

And of course, here’s a handwritten and illustrated version of the above video:

The post How I Write and Illustrate My Outdoor şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Comics appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Every week I read a new story about tourists doing something stupid on their phone in a national park. It’s hard not to come away from the endless onslaught of touron news with the idea that social media is ruining our public land. But is there any empirical evidence for that? And isn’t visitation good for paying to keep our national parks in pristine condition?

A study published by the draws a significant link between social media exposure and visitation at individual national parks. It’s not a surprise that parks with ample shared photographs, videos, and geotags are more popular than parks without, but the study is able to demonstrate that even the most popular parks can still feel the effects of popularity on X/Twitter and Instagram. It provides a statistical model to suggest that the connection between social media and visitation offers lessons the NPS and its stakeholders could use to help address core issues like overcrowding and easing its enormous deferred maintenance backlog.

What Did the Study Find?

Between 2010 and 2020, total visitors to national parks increased from 70 to 90 million annual people. Much of this use has been concentrated in a handful of the most famous parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, and increases elsewhere are less predictable.

Visitation to California’s Joshua Tree National Park, for example, has increased by 2.5 times since 2000, but in that same time, the number people making a trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas or Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota has remained flat.

It’s tempting to try and attribute that to geography, seasonal weather, proximity to major metropolitan centers or ease of visitation. But remember we’re talking about rates of visitation, not theĚýoutright number. As more and more people visit parks, why are they concentrating their use in the same areas?

What Can This Tell Us About Overcrowding?

“A lot of that can be explained by a sort of positive feedback loop,” explainedĚýCasey Wichman, the economist who authored the study. “The parks you’d expect to be popular are also popular online.”

Wichman saidĚýsome of that popularity is down to certain easily photographed, “aesthetically appealing” locations. Think Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, with its iconic view of Half Dome. And he says that popularity can also be explained by name recognition.

“It’s like a checklist,” he said. People want to show off to their social media followers the fact that they visited that exciting and popularĚýpark.

“Parks with greater exposure saw dramatic increases in recreational visitation over the last decade,” wrote Wichman in the study.Ěý “On average, parks with greater exposure exhibit 16 to 22 percent increases in recreational visits, whereas parks with weaker exposure exhibit no change, or decreases, in visitation.”

And that’s a problem, not only because the most popular parks and their most well known photo locationsĚýare now overrun with selfie seekers, but also because the park service as a whole faces a massive shortfall in its maintenance budget, and the money visitors bring to less popular parks could help those address their own backlogs.

Nationwide, the NPS last tabulated that backlog at $22 billion. The park service’s annual budget, in comparison, is under . There is no existing plan to close that gap, but in the parks themselves, entrance fees and other money visitors bringĚýcan help.

“NPS sites can retain 80 percent of the revenue generated from entrance fees and other recreational fees,” Wichman explained.Ěý“Social media has poorly targeted revenue increases to parks that need it most.”

What kind of social media exposure is effective? Wichman found that it’s not posts made by the parks or their official affiliates themselves, but rather organic content created by visitors, then re-shared by their followers that draws the most eyeballs, and subsequently the most visits.

It comes as no surprise that photos and videos perform better than plain text.

After all, Wichman states in the study, “The notion that shared media influences visitation to National Parks is not new. In 1951, Time Magazine published Ansel Adams’ photographs of Capitol Reef and Yosemite National Park with the following description: “No artist has pictured the magnificence of the western states more eloquently than photographer Ansel Adams. This summer thousands upon thousands of tourists will follow Adam’s well-beaten trail up and down the National Parks fixing the cold eyes of their cameras on the same splendors he has photographed–and hoping, somehow, to match his art.””

WichmanĚýalso went to great lengths to control for variables. Could marketing campaigns run by non-profits connected to the parks, or local governments hoping to cash in on tourist dollars impact the results? Wichman created an algorithm that removed data chronologically adjacent to those. He did the same for factors like seasonal weather, and whether or not a park has significant name recognition.

Could Social Media Help Fund Our National Parks?

While Wichman’s study stops short of making any actual policy recommendations to the park service, its affiliated non-profits, or state and local governments, he says some of its takeaways are implicit.

“Think of social media as a form of advertising,” he says. “Peer influence matters when we make consumptive life choices. Encouraging people to share their positive experiences will inspire others to visit.”

How does this phenomenon affect less-visited (and perhaps less-photogenic) parks and monuments?ĚýWichman referenced the Okefenokee Swamp, a National Wildlife Refuge that straddles the Florida-Georgia border (Wichman teaches at Georgia Tech, I was born in Kennesaw).

“It’s just swamp,” he says, but goes on to explain that creating better photo opportunities for visitors, or amplifying their posts, could increase engagement, and with that, visitation and revenue, which could ultimately foster more widespread efforts at ecosystem preservation.

If managers of public land, or the non-profits and state and local governments that often fund marketing campaigns around those lands want to draw visitors to new areas, or distribute them away from only a few popular areas, they simply need to provide the selfie bait necessary.

Wichman says he was inspired to to put the study together after reading an şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř article in 2019 about the impacts of social media on recreation in national parks, and on other public lands. In that piece, I detailed the injuries and deaths attributed to social media in those places, along with their subsequent costs, while arguing that social media still created a net positive for national parks and other public lands.

“I wondered how much I could explain with data,” saidĚýWichman, of the study’s genesis.

Wichman told me that he chose national parks as the subject for the simple reason that that NPS tracks and publishes a lot more data than the United States Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or state agencies do. Most visitors to most national parks enter through gates and interact with services while there. That’s not necessarily the case elsewhere, but Wichman says his findings can be extrapolated to other forms of public lands.

The economist also explains that there are lessons to be learned from what’s not in the study. While parks provide an easily checked box for tourists at popular national parks and iconic views, other forms of public land are, by their nature, less likely to foster social media engagement. That may be an argument for skipping a geotag on your next outdoor selfie, or choosing to add oneĚýcould be a best practice for tourist boards, or state or local governments hoping to increase revenue from visitors.

Wichman sees benefits with the latter practice—a perspective that I share. Public lands are, heĚýsaid, an “iconic public good that we all have access to.” And, “The more people we can get to visit these places, the better.”

The post A New Study Finds Crowds at National Parks May Be Due to Social Media appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

If you’ve never heard the legend of Blowhole, I can tell you all about it, because I was there from the start.

My husband and I are dogsledders. , though we travel; when your life revolves around sled dogs, you’re always chasing snow. We met Blowhole in April 2018. I had entered the , an unsupported, 440-mile race between seven remote villages in the Alaskan Arctic, and I’d borrowed dogs from a few friends to fill out my team. One of them was a shaggy black and white two-year-old owned by Inupiaq musher Ryan Redington. Like most modern sled dogs, he was an Alaskan husky: a thick-furred, super-athletic mutt. He was named for the vicious wind tunnels that form on the Bering coast, the ones that threaten to throw you out to sea and, heck, halfway to Siberia. Blowhole.

The race started on ice. Blowhole pulled hard, muscles rippling under fur, as we crossed the wind-carved surface of Kotzebue Sound. No sooner had we reached land than he stepped into a moose hole—a deep, tube-shaped footprint left by the antlered beast. He charged on, but his gait was off; he’d tweaked a wrist. I unhooked his harness and made him ride with me in the sled.

It feels heartless, carrying a dog that wants to run, but not as heartless as what I did next—though I acted with genuine concern. In the village of Selawik, I left Blowhole with race volunteers so his wrist could rest and heal. He was given warm food, a straw bed, attention, and massages. I knew we’d see each other again when the race was over. But he was distraught. All he wanted was to keep going. He howled desperately as the other dogs and I continued down the trail without him.

Days later, after the race, my husband and I brought Blowhole back to Ryan’s place in Knik. Immediately after we left, we discovered that the brakes on our truck were barely working. We white-knuckled it to a repair shop, where a mechanic diagnosed the problem and scrawled it on our $1,200 bill: Brake lines chewed by dog.

The post Blowhole the Sled Dog Became a Social Media Star—But Was He a Criminal First? appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

When Marty Moose strolled into Santa Fe looking for a mate, he became a viral sensation in New Mexico. But that did nothing to help his search for love—and it created big issues for wildlife managers. Moose don’t usually wander that far south. Marty got a lot of “likes” and eventually his notoriety began to cause problems. Producer Steph Joyce explores why we all have such a hard time around celebrity animals.

The post The Trouble with the Internet’s Most Famous Moose appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Earlier this year, a popular guide and social media personality, @alpinetothemax, uploaded a video to Instagram. It showed a climber on the First Flatiron, above Boulder, Colorado, reeling in rope as he belayed a follower, who was off screen, through a single redirected piece. Apart from a frowning-face emoji censoring the belayer’s face, the shot didn’t seem out of place among the thousands of other “tech tip” videos populating climbing social media. “This post is not meant to dox this individual, but to provide an example for others to see their own blind spots,” part of the caption read. “Keep it constructive and productive.” Then the comments section exploded.Ěý

One user wrote that, “If you really care about their safety (and really felt that it was at risk), wouldn’t you have intervened in the moment rather than posted a secret video?” Another climber posted: “When I started climbing I was called out by a guide after an AMGA class for giving a bad belay. I nearly quit climbing on the spot because I was so humiliated… The fact that you made this so public is a really low blow. If you cannot give feedback to the person’s face, don’t post it.”Ěý

@alpinetothemax, whose real name is Max Lurie, is a 36-year-old guide based in Boulder. Over a decade or so of guiding, Lurie’s Instagram following has swollen to 85,000 followers, most of whom have gravitated towards his tech tip posts. Lurie is one of many American guides who have begun posting climbing tips to their social media pages.Ěý

“It’s a hard industry to make a living in,” Lurie told me of guiding, over the phone. Posting such content “does bring the clients in,” he acknowledges, “but that’s not the only reason I do it. It’s just a way of giving back to our community. But then, that’s where the good things stop. With posting come all the problems of social media.” Including, he says, getting into hot water for posting a video using recreational climbers as an example of what not to do. “I got kind of crucified for that one.”

 

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Lurie’s post and its fallout may be a telling waypoint in a larger shift in which climbing is taught—at least partially—on a screen instead of a cliff. Historically, climbers cut their teeth in a dangerous sport with the help of guides or mentors or a select set of instruction books, like John Long’s “Climbing Anchors” or the perennially updated “Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills.” Now, a new climber can follow, scroll, and like their way towards proficiency. Online, a seemingly limitless amount of information awaits.Ěý

The shift poses a set of questions important for our sport: Can aspects of climbing be taught online? Who gets to post, and why? How do new (and old) climbers sort through the wealth of content in order to tell the difference between the hacks and the experts?Ěý

Online learning levels the playing field, giving those who face social or financial barriers access to knowledge once passed from person-to-person. “The landscape’s really changed. [A guide’s] reach is now much further,” says Dale Remsberg, a 51-year-old IFMGA guide based in Lafayette, Colorado. Such content should be taken with a grain of salt though. “The responsibility lies on the person seeking out what to learn and how to learn,” notes Silas Rossi, an IFMGA guide who has started the Ascend Membership, an online mentorship program designed to augment in-person learning. Climbing is “very unforgiving, and it’s really hard for people to understand how much risk they’re assuming when they are just starting to understand what risks are really involved,” he points out. And there’s an added danger in misapplying a technique taken from a short video. “The risk is somebody that doesn’t know much about climbing uses all of your content and they misapply the technique and get killed. So, that’s scary,” Remsberg says. “It’s totally a recipe for disaster,” Lurie cautions.Ěý

An increased number of gyms means that climbers with the ability to climb difficult grades may never venture outside. And those with the strength to do so have very little knowledge of ropework and belaying. This rise in physical standards has quickly outpaced traditional methods of how climbers learn, sometimes with disastrous results. “Here in the Gunks we have an average of one death per year, and it’s not infrequently a new climber leading, or learning to climb with friends,” Rossi notes.Ěý

Jeff Yoo, an ER doctor as well as an experienced boulderer and sport climber, has noticed that “there’s such an influx of new climbers; [but] there’s not as many mentors around. And I think that’s a big issue in the outdoor climbing space we haven’t really solved.” This summer, Yoo, who has repointed multiple 5.13b’s and bouldered V12, began traditional climbing, a shift in disciplines he admits sent him into cognitive overload. “I made so many mistakes in my first days,” he recalls. Attempting the Oracle, a traditional route in Squamish that “could potentially become R- or X-rated” during an onsight lead like Yoo’s, according to MountainProject, Yoo took and weighted his third piece sideways, which failed and zippered out his lower protection. He hit his belayer before hitting the ground. Both were OK, and Yoo posted a video of the fall on his Instagram page. Looking back, Yoo realizes it was his assessment of risk, not his strength, that was unreliable: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

 

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Yoo doesn’t think that “online tech tips could ever replace the real life experience of actually placing protection and climbing above it. But it’s clear that more and more climbers are partially—or wholly—substituting in-person guiding or mentorship with some kind of online content.Ěý

All this begs a few questions: what are the safest and best ways for instructors to provide online learning, and what are the safest and best ways for climbers to use this new kind of information?

Everyone I spoke to for this article stresses that responsibility still falls on the user. “The thing I tell my students is to be skeptical,” Lurie mentions. “Don’t just take any information at face value.” Marc Chauvin, the former president of the AMGA and author, with Rob Coppolillo, of The Mountain Guide Manual, recommends paying for online subscription services to buy into a progression of learning, in addition to following tech tips from free Instagram handles. Remsberg cautions that “you can only learn so much online.”

But anyone can post content; for a new climber, it’s hard to decipher who is an expert and who isn’t, and how to filter through and apply complicated techniques. “There’s no oversight,” Lurie notes. Remsberg has noticed that “some of the pro climbers trying to increase their following are posting their own tech tips and some of them are wrong and flat-out dangerous.”Ěý

While niche techniques, like belaying a follower with a Mini Traxion, or simul rappelling might garner more clicks, oohs, and aahs than basic fundamentals, these nuanced practices are hard to boil down into thirty-second Instagram clips and can easily be misapplied with disastrous results.

Sean Sarkar, a climber with two years of ice climbing and a year of trad leading under his belt, who has used tech tips, subscription-based learning, and in-person guiding to progress, tries to ask the question: “Is this something different than I’ve seen before but is totally safe, or is this something that’s actually dangerous?”

For guides, especially in the United States, Instagram helps to augment wages, appease sponsors, and generate interest in a business. In the U.S., guides are typically paid less than their European counterparts, and work is more sporadic. “In [European] culture it’s very common to hire guides,” Remsberg points out. “Those guides always had a steady stream of work. They haven’t had to market themselves. I’ve had to be hungrier and figure out ways to gain clients and make money.” And where new techniques were once driven from outside learning, or from hard-earned information gleaned from accidents, there’s a potential they’re now being created to feed and maintain a social media presence, that some influencers are reinventing wheels just to remain relevant in a growing cottage industry. But the more unique the tech tip, the less applicable it may be.

To counter this, Rossi recommends paying attention to the fundamentals—even if they’re boring—and building good habits early. If you spend money on guiding and instruction (and there are plenty of climbers who never will), try to invest early in order to build solid foundational habits that will accompany you for the remainder of your climbing career.Ěý

So far, the new frontier of online instruction seems to have policed itself. “Within the guiding community there’s pressure,” Lurie says. “These people who have a big social media presence? They’re putting themselves out there. They know their colleagues will be watching, so there’s professional pressure.” Lurie mentions his reputation now precedes him at crags, which forces him to be sharper with his systems in his everyday guiding.

Even if education is the motive, the newfound ability for guides to film recreational climbers making errors or using outdated techniques should raise questions within the profession. Some level of knowledge is necessary in a deadly pastime. But on the other hand, so is learning from your own mistakes. There’s undeniable value in learning from others’ errors. Airline pilots in training review cockpit recordings of doomed planes to scour what went wrong; militaries implement after-action reviews to quickly absorb lessons from mistakes made in the field. None of these occur on such a public platform, however.

Finding the balance between education and shaming remains essential for climbing, and finding constructive ways to impart the knowledge should be paramount within the guiding community. “We definitely had a strong shaming vibe,” Rossi notes of climbing culture’s old-school education aesthetic.

It’s not difficult to imagine a future where the AMGA implements stricter guidelines for its members who post tech tips, cautionary videos, and information online, or extends their code of conduct to further encompass the internet, where so many beginners are now turning for information. Until then, perhaps it’s best to give weight—just this once—to a comment posted on the internet: “I would suggest following the rule in river sports to always post positive—showing the best way to do something is the most effective teaching tool.”

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You may know Strava as a fitness tracking app. Maybe you use it to keep track of your running, or bike rides, or hikes, or rollerblading. Maybe you use it as a social network, a way to keep up with your friends who also exercise. Maybe you use it to find out about local trail conditions, or to keep tabs on what your favorite superhero athletes are doing for training these days.

I use Strava for many things, but mostly I just want it to give me a sign that I’m not dying just yet.

Sometimes people say things like, “I’m not afraid to die.” Oftentimes they are men, playing a movie character who is about to do something heroic. Other times they are teenagers, and maybe not very smart, which is what I was at one time. This time seems to be growing further and further away in my rear view mirror. I would not say I am exactly afraid to die either, but the feeling is more like it would just be a huge bummer. Does anyone really know if there is an afterlife, and if there are breakfast burritos there?

So I run, which in theory will help me keep from dying for as long as possible, but of course you never know. If every day is:

Then running is one of my ways of getting busy living.

And when I run, I use Strava to track my mileage, elevation gain, pace, and a bunch of other metrics, some of which I don’t pay that much attention to because I am not THAT serious about running.

Strava also tells me how I did on certain segments of my runs, such as “Smokejumper Descent,” “Higgins to Footbridge,” and “Unnamed Rd Climb.” A couple weeks ago, for instance, I achieved my all-time personal record on a segment called University Ridge. That last performance was better than my performances on the same segment in 2021, and in 2020, when I was a younger man with slightly more elastic skin, smaller crow’s feet, and fewer gray hairs. I also don’t remember my feet being so sensitive to rocks on the trail back then.

But since I did so well on that segment last week, surely that means I am still getting faster, which means I am not quite yet entering the slow slide on the downslope into the hereafter, or into worm food, or whatever. That’s what the little gold “PR” icon means on Strava: I am not dying. Yet. Doesn’t it?

I am generally pleased with Strava. I don’t send messages to the folks who work there, asking for new features to be added (since I have no idea how coding works). But, hear me out: What about a notification when I achieve one more day of staving off my own mortality?

Every once in a great while, I get an email from Strava saying I’ve become the “Local Legend” of a certain segment, which basically means I’ve run the same route a bunch of times lately. It seems possible that Strava could also send me a quick message when I have PRed a segment—any segment, really—and thusly am still putting distance between myself and the grim reaper.

It could be just like the local legend email, but like this:

Is that too heavy of a lift? Again, I know nothing about coding. I’m just a regular guy running around in the woods, hoping to keep from entering Dark Mode for as long as possible.

The post I Just Want Strava to Tell Me I’m Not Slowly Dying appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.