Death of backpacking?

[Mags]

Interesting read. Are done in the day activities the "death" of backpacking? Will there be a resurgence?
http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.12/the-...of-backpacking

[Miner]

If backpacking is dying, why do I still have problem getting the backcountry permits that I want?

[rocketsocks]

Very nice and pointed find, and that's why..."I hike for hikin" good stuffs!

[rocketsocks]

Give every kid you know a book on the subject...maybe this one for your holiday of choice, but be prepared to take em when they ask...and they will ask. .....gotta get when they're young.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_1br60ok1es_b

[johnnybgood]

So many distractions today for the Gen Xer's or whatever they're called. Hiking also takes effort and isn't glamorous.

[Venchka]

I wonder if the 7-10-14 day self contained trips to the backside of nowhere might not be dying. Everybody seems to want Point A to Point B linear trips with re-supply/lodging/etc. around every corner.
I yearn for the former. I hope my old bones don't dictate the latter.

Wayne


Sent from somewhere around here.

[sympathetic joy]

I believe in hike your own hike but if trailjournals.com is any indication slackpacking is the new backpacking.

[rocketsocks]

I wonder if the 7-10-14 day self contained trips to the backside of nowhere might not be dying. Everybody seems to want Point A to Point B linear trips with re-supply/lodging/etc. around every corner.
I yearn for the former. I hope my old bones don't dictate the latter.

Wayne


Sent from somewhere around here.

I believe in hike your own hike but if trailjournals.com is any indication slackpacking is the new backpacking.

Both excellent points, as well as the HMHDI rhetoric that pervades, like faster farther, shelter to shelter, town to town, and the cookie cutter trail to trail....Bring back the bushwhack. Bushwackers untie!

[Mags]

So many distractions today for the Gen Xer's or whatever they're called. Hiking also takes effort and isn't glamorous.

Gen Xers are my age +/- The distractions, for most of my peers, are called kids.

As for not getting permits, I suspect tighter regulations more than anything!

[Odd Man Out]

On the train down to Roanoke a couple weeks ago, the train was mostly empty going toward the last station. I used to empty seat to take out all my gear and repack and reorganize. In the next seat there was an elderly couple traveling with two grand daughters. I'd guess their ages to be 8-10ish?? Anyway, the girls (especially the older one) was very intrigued with all my gear (I got the impression they had never hear of or seen such stuff before). They asked lots of questions and thought the idea of backpacking sounded really cool. I suggested that she should go out and do some hikes with her family. Hopefully I recruited a convert for the next generation.

[Mobius]

Per the article: "...kids aren't interested in hauling 40 pounds into wilderness on a forced march..."
To be fair, I wouldn't enjoy lugging a 40 pound pack around anywhere either.

I'm perfectly happy backpacking in the 20-30 pound range though. In the wilderness. At a pace I chose myself.
I see a lot of new folks on the trails too. They aren't necessarily young. Most of the newer folks I've met seem to get into (or back into) in their 20's and 30's.

[Trebor66]

I've been taking my son hiking since he was five. He's right now and asks me to take him. He often says that he wants to thru-hike after high school. Pretty cool to hear from a eight year old....

[rocketsocks]

On the train down to Roanoke a couple weeks ago, the train was mostly empty going toward the last station. I used to empty seat to take out all my gear and repack and reorganize. In the next seat there was an elderly couple traveling with two grand daughters. I'd guess their ages to be 8-10ish?? Anyway, the girls (especially the older one) was very intrigued with all my gear (I got the impression they had never hear of or seen such stuff before). They asked lots of questions and thought the idea of backpacking sounded really cool. I suggested that she should go out and do some hikes with her family. Hopefully I recruited a convert for the next generation.

Plantin' seeds.

Per the article: "...kids aren't interested in hauling 40 pounds into wilderness on a forced march..."
To be fair, I wouldn't enjoy lugging a 40 pound pack around anywhere either.

I'm perfectly happy backpacking in the 20-30 pound range though. In the wilderness. At a pace I chose myself.
I see a lot of new folks on the trails too. They aren't necessarily young. Most of the newer folks I've met seem to get into (or back into) in their 20's and 30's.

the majority of hikin my son and I did when he was young were day hikes. In one regard I regret this, not spending more time and chasing the all mighty overtime dollar, in another he's pretty stoked now with some of our plans, pretty cool he still wants to hang, dat ain't bad.

I've been taking my son hiking since he was five. He's right now and asks me to take him. He often says that he wants to thru-hike after high school. Pretty cool to hear from a eight year old....

Sounds like he's got it in his blood.

[SCRUB HIKER]

Just because it's written nicely in a publication doesn't mean it's true. The article doesn't cite a single statistic -- the closest it gets is citing a person in the packmaking industry who says secondhand that backpack sales are down. That doesn't mean backpacking is down. Backpacks are something you might buy once and then use for 20 years, or borrow from a friend.

Basically, I don't buy it. It sounds like all this writer did was ask a bunch of old guys in Moab for their thoughts on the topic ... not the most rigorous way to make a point. If all this article offers is anecdotal evidence, then I'm going to counter with my own, which is my Facebook newsfeed. Someone's posting pictures of their latest backpacking adventure virtually every day on there, and most of the time it's not the people who I know from the AT or PCT, it's friends from college.

[sintixerr]

I'm about to leave on my first long hike (40% of the AT) in a couple of weeks and my friends' responses (mid 20's to low 40's) have all been positive and a little jealous, but my interaction with them has left me with the impression that either A)It's never really occurred to them that backpacking was an option, or B) they don't really know how to extricate themselves from day to day life in the city, even if they wanted to. (A) seems to have a lot to do with, which such an inundation of marketing for commercial entertainment, awareness of other options just get lost in the noise. (B) is probably a long term life skills, cultural shift that's not limited to camping. Obviously there are those that just don't like hiking, but I don't feel like there's an active, general rejection of it...at least anecdotally in my circles.

(And, hi, first post here...)

[Leanthree]

This article is horribly written and full of nonsense and anecdotes. The conclusions may or may not be true but the fact that an older person only knows older people who backpack is absurd at best. Additionally, if he has so many friends who are older who backpack then how is it dying? That there are few young people in the canyons of Utah that this particular author's friend hike on is such a silly notion to take as a fact that backpacking is in decline. An expert who has been hiking his whole life in exceptionally rugged terrain is not running into young hikers. This has nearly nothing to do with the popularity of backpacking on the whole.

There also are admittedly many young backpackers in Outward Bound style courses. But the article just tosses away that fact. Sorry, are these people not backpacking?

The only "facts" about decreases in backpacking are about an increase in daypack sales and a decrease in heavyweight boot purchases. The former might have to do with a wide variety of things, my best guess is that school bags are increasingly bought for comfort rather than cool. Also, an uptick in daypacks doesn't mean that multi-day backpacks are decreasing in popularity. To the boot issue, trail runners are increasingly popular among backpackers versus the heavyweight boots. It has nothing to do with how many days anyone is hiking or that backpacking is becoming any less popular.

In fact, according to real actual research, Backpacking is growing reasonably quickly. Full Report Here: http://www.outdoorfoundation.org/pdf...pation2013.pdf

The key finding is that in 2006, 7,067,000 people participated in "Backpacking (overnight)" while in 2007 8,771,000 people participated. That is an increase from 2.6% of the population to 3.1% of the population. It is a reasonably steady increase as well so it doesn't look like statistical noise. That is an increase of about 20% in 8 years. Sorry.

The article is garbage and the publisher should offer a clarification and a promise of higher editorial standards.

[SCRUB HIKER]

Also, let's say for the sake of argument that backpacking really is on the decline around Moab. That's probably because no one around Moab has any incentive to promote to backpackers. Economically, backpacking supports no one except the City Market for buying rations and the taco shops for reentry face-stuffing, and backpacker dollars would still be a drop in the bucket even if backpackers were still as numerous as they apparently were in this unspecified halcyon past. _Of course_ everything in Moab is tailored to the four-wheelers, family road trippers and dudebro mountain bikers dripping with Arizona or Silicon Valley tech money. Backpacking, an activity that by nature rewards parsimony and self-sufficiency, is not where the money's at for Moab, which has so much else to draw in more well-heeled visitors. A place with less infrastructure and more wildness, like the Lost Coast of California, would be a better place to look if you want to find the rare and elusive Under-40 Backpacker.

[Mags]

Your link shows a slight decrease actually among youth 6-17 from 2006 to 2012 actually.
And a decrease from from 2009 - 2012 for 19-24 yo

Which was the point I believe.

Further more, NPS statistics show an overall decrease in overnight backpacking:

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/07/decline-of-backpacking.html

The link embedded in the article is no longer working, but some internet sleuthing brought up this:

https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSRepor...lendar%20Year)

Which showed a 200k+ decline in backcountry use in 2013 vs 2000. Compare it to 1979 and the difference is nearly 700k+ more. Feel free to research more. As a side note, OVERALL overnight use (car camping, lodging such as huts) has declined by 2 million since 1979 vs 2013. Keep in mind the country's population in 1979 was 225 million. Now it is 316 million.

Also:

http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2013/08/is-declining-attendance-at-national.html


I agree the trailrunner and similar comments were stupid but I think the overall idea is fairly sound. "Done in a day" is more popular.

The article did have a bit of sour grapes about it admittedly.

[rocketsocks]

While the title of the article says dying, I took it to read changing as I progressed though. Over the last couple of years I've noticed many who come to the trail do so as bus riding, bring a bag lunch, day hikers. I think the activity ebbs and flows, which one were in now I haven't a clue. But seeing other hikers in the dead of winter this past year was not what I expected at all, and there were a lot. When I hiked back in the 80's the trail was desolate, you were lucky to see another during the week. Coarse I wasn't a trail rat back then either, just a guy who like to go hiking.

[Leanthree]

Your link shows a slight decrease actually among youth 6-17 from 2006 to 2012 actually.
And a decrease from from 2009 - 2012 for 19-24 yo

Which was the point I believe.

That is an excellent point...that the article should have referenced. I honestly would have been happy with a single sourced number--even if it was cherry picked.

Your reference list is good as well, especially the National Parks one. Thanks for sharing. This makes it even more of a shame that the author, with data that could have easily made his point. A well written story on a trend has both anecdotes AND data. A boring one has just data. A garbage one has just anecdotes.