What’s New Outdoors: March 18

Everything you need to know about what's going on outdoors this week

Old sled dogs never die. Nature endures. Ski passes hit record prices even as season shortens. iPhones save lives in avalanches. And, Oregon may have found a solution to making wildlife funding sources more diverse. Here’s the stories you don’t want to miss from the outdoors this week.

A Dog Sled Racer Says Goodbye To Her Pack: Every time I read a Blair Braverman story I find myself wishing two things: 1) that I could write as well as she does and 2) that I could devote my life to spending time outdoors with dogs to the degree she has. Today in the New York Tims she tells the story of taking a team of old sled dogs into the wilderness, and talks about what made her a successful racer. Here’s a gift link that will allow you to bypass their paywall for 14 days. Give yourself half an hour and enjoy this one.

The State Of Nature In America: To mark Earth Day in 2022, President Biden ordered the creation of a peer-reviewed nationwide report on the condition of nature, modeled after the National Climate Assessment. Both have now been cancelled, but the nature report has found a source of private funding to continue its work. Published last week in draft form, what’s now called The Nature Record contains 868 pages and 15 chapters. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but the takeaways appear to be that while there’s a lot of threats and problems, there’s also a lot of resilience and opportunity. It’s an encouraging conclusion that we still have the chance to turn things around.

Record Prices, Little Snow: Epic passes for next winter went on sale earlier this month. With a base price of $1,089, skiing is now more expensive than ever before, even as resorts across the west are already closing for the season, amid record high temperatures and little to no snow. But the worst hit trails may be at Nordic facilities, which tend to set at the bases of the big alpine resorts, and that small difference in elevation has been enough to keep many closed all year. Virginia and I haven’t skied once this winter, something we’ll hopefully be able to correct next year, if it actually snows in the Rockies again.

Outside Is Out Of Ideas: Speaking on The Rebooting Show podcast, Outside Inc CEO Robin Thurston “opens up” about some of the struggles he’s faced in his effort to destroy every outdoor publication anyone ever cared about. Allegedly the company is now turning a small profit on $125mm in annual revenue. But, rather than the result of new user recruitment or strong ad sales, that appears to just be the result of firing everyone with any talent or experience at the company, and replacing them with a bunch of low-wage hacks who turn out the kind of slop even AI would be embarrassed of. Thurston claims that he’s now pursuing an IPO, but that seems like an unlikely outcome. The backstory here is after burning through $200mm in Sequoia Capital’s cash, Thurston is under immense pressure to deliver the return on investment he promised. He initially tried to sell the entire collection of brands he wasted all that cash acquiring in a single bundle that he initially valued at $500mm, but after finding zero interest, is now out of ideas.

One interesting revelation is the current revenue split. Advertising buys have fallen by 30 percent company wide, and he’s now found himself relying on “subscription” revenue to make up the difference. But while Thurston suggests that’s coming from content, I highly doubt that the collapse in readership has turned around since I was fired last September. The content being churned out over there is shockingly bad, with zero indication that any money is being invested in talent or even process. I suspect that things are as they were before: Gaia revenue is bankrolling the entire company. The problem there is that money is needed to reinvest in that product, which is now years behind competitors like OnX in the mapping app space.

To quote one investor I talked with about potentially putting together an offer for the business, “I’m afraid the odds of a good outcome for that company grow less and less every day.”

An EV I Actually Like: I always get in trouble for allowing the rational part of my brain to get underwhelmed by the current state of the electric vehicle. Manufacturers are busy exploiting consumer goodwill in naked cash grabs, rather than making any sort of effort to actually take advantage of the inherent benefits of the technology to make better vehicles.

Another thing I’ve found depressing for the last 30 years or so was the state of BMW. What was once a company that made simple, lightweight, well-engineered cars that were good to drive pivoted to making complicated, heavy, poorly-engineered crossovers that were immensely ugly.

But this new electric 3-series changes that. Not only is it genuinely good looking, but it’s an actual sport sedan, which is what BMW got famous for making. No word on weight, and obviously we’ll need to wait and see if if I can offer a genuinely engaging driving experience, but I’m actually bullish on this thing recapturing enthusiast appeal.

iPhones Save Lives: Turns out the survivors of California’s deadliest avalanche in Tahoe last month used their iPhones to communicate with rescuers, despite the absence of cell service. The newest iPhones, Google Pixels (what I use), and some other devices have begun incorporating a satellite-based emergency communication feature similar to that which previously required carrying a Garmin inReach device.

While there are arguments that expanding this feature so broadly will overtax first responders, its ubiquity is also going to save lives, which can only ever be a positive thing.

One company it will not be positive for though is Garmin. And while that brand is busy pushing feature iterations to its inReach range designed to enable it to compete with smartphones—cameras and touchscreens—they have to be sweating. Personally speaking from the perspective of a longtime inReach user, once I find a reliable way to communicate casually with my wife and friends from the field, I can’t wait to cut down the number of subscriptions I pay for and reduce the amount of devices I carry.

Oregon Wildlife Funding: Writing in OutdoorLife, Dan Collins explains Oregon’s new source for wildlife funding, which uses hospitality tax to pay for conservation.

The backstory here is that America has wild animals because hunters pay for them. This bothers everyone from people who hate hunting, to hunters themselves, but until now there’s been no good alternative. In contrast to conservation (managed use), preservation (protection at all costs) is just too expensive to expand beyond national parks and similar.

“Oregon lawmakers passed new legislation this month that establishes a new revenue stream for fish and wildlife conservation,” writes Collins. “The law, which goes into effect next year, raises the statewide transient lodging tax (also known as a hospitality tax) by a nominal 1.25 percent and directs this revenue toward programs that will benefit Oregon’s fish and wildlife resources.”

It’s anticipated the measure will add $30mm to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s $600mm annual budget. Hopefully that can expand further should it prove successful.

God Squad Has The Power (To Kill Endangered Species): It may sound like a bad Christian comic book movie, but the so-called “god squad” is actually something much worse. Late Friday night (when all good news drops), the Department of the Interior announced plans to convene the Endangered Species Committee on March 31, to consider as-yet unnamed measure to deregulate oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, the Bureau of Ocean Management announced plans to spend $5 billion to employ high-risk deepwater drilling techniques.

Those two things together paint a worrying picture. You can read more on E&E News.

What I’ve Been Up To: I’m trying to enact a regular publishing schedule that will allow me to publish a newsletter every weekday, and deliver regular topics and formats. As part of that, Wednesdays will be for these outdoor news roundups. That plan is off to a great start, because I already missed Tuesday, which I plan to use to publish fun gear videos.

After rumors began to spread that I was planning to pull out of my race for Montana State Senate, I needed to go ahead and announce that, and get all the paperwork sorted.

Why? Montana has a citizen legislature, which relies on real working people to take time out of their careers to spend 90 days, once every two years, making the laws that govern all of us. That time is compensated with annual pay of about $5,000. So it’s more volunteer work in politics than it is a new career in politics.

And while I knew this would be a money-losing endeavor going into it, I did not expect that raising my hand to be a part of a solution to our current predicament would cost me my career. The day after I announced my campaign last September, Outside used it as excuse to fire me, even though they’d previously given me the verbal go-ahead.

So I’ve been looking for a new job ever since. And not only has doing that while writing this newsletter and learning to run for office been a lot, it’s been compounded by the stress inherent to worrying about money. I held out longer than I should have, largely because I’m confident I’ll be able to find a significant step forward, but at the same time it was becoming evident that my campaign and the eventual office I was committing to were ruling out options for significant career advancement. I found myself having to choose between the change I could make through an exciting career, and the potential held by a seat in the state senate, and landed on the answer that allows me to earn a living.

I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to resist the gravitational pull of reality this time, but am excited about the potential a new career holds. And the good news here is that I now have more time to focus on continuing to build this newsletter, not just as a side hustle, but as one potential option for my primary platform.

As always, I appreciate the support you guys give me by reading, sharing, and subscribing to this work.

Top photo: USFS

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.