Some people thought humanity would return to outdoor activities post-COVID. They were wrong.

Queenstown, New Zealand

As a professional mountain bike journalist, I've spent the past 15 years embedded in outdoor sports culture. For years, the dialogue surrounding participation in outdoor sports generally — and mountain biking in particular — was, "How do we get more people outside (and on bikes)?"

Then COVID struck, and some people thought that everything had changed. The bike boom was in full swing, and the industry went crazy — ordering massive quantities of bikes in the expectation that they'd be able to sell them to the masses of humans who would now and forevermore join those of us enlightened enough to realize that happiness isn't found behind a screen or in a bar, but outside in the forest.

Until it all came to a screeching halt.

Now, the bike industry is floundering, with brands going out of business left and right. And it isn't just mountain biking — the downhill ski industry is posting declining participation numbers, and major companies are swallowing millions in losses. Hiking is even down, too — in 2023, the fewest number of people climbed Colorado's 14ers since the Colorado Fourteener Initiative began collecting data 9 years ago, marking a 37% drop from the pandemic peak.

Sure, some organizations show metrics that, on the surface, appear to show growing participation in some sectors — but these data points generally come from orgs that are invested in showing that the outdoor industry, which they represent, is growing. When you analyze the data, generally over the past few years, top-line participation is growing, but in order to count for this upward trend, you only need to have participated in an outdoor sport once in a given year. A more relevant data point: core participation is generally falling, meaning that the number of people who frequently participate in outdoor sports is on the decline.

COVID didn't change anything. Going outside is still countercultural

During the COVID years, when I published articles about the importance of going outside every single day, I think it was easy for people to say, "Well yeah, of course people are going outside more and more often."

While some people — including vast swaths of the industry I worked in — thought the world had fundamentally changed, after years spent analyzing and writing about trends of outdoor participation and humanity's move to a sedentary, indoor lifestyle, I was convinced that COVID would not be statistically relevant.

And it seems I was right.

True change doesn't happen when we're forced by outside circumstances to conform to a lifestyle that we weren't all that interested in in the first place. Instead, true change must come from within — it has to be deeply rooted in our values, and not peripherally located in a government agency that says we can't go out to the pub down the street.

This means that going outside in a post-COVID world is still a countercultural act. Those of us who value the beauty of the natural world and put ourselves in it day after day after day are not the average — we are way outside the norm.

While COVID wasn't enough to prompt the masses to change, I still truly believe that the more people can experience for themselves the power of living an outdoor lifestyle, the more people will join our countercultural movement of living lives connected with nature. But this change doesn't happen if it's imposed top-down — it only truly takes root when it grows organically.

The work isn't done yet

I'll be honest: sometimes I feel like I've written everything there is to write about the Outside 365 lifestyle. I've shared my manifesto and my crucial tactics with you. I've responded to the common objections, like lack of time, job pressure, living in a city, the cold, and even getting sick.

But when I see that COVID was a statistical anomaly and that the trend continues downward, it's clear that the work is not over.

There is more we must do here. More that can be done to share the beauty of nature with the couch-bound masses.

I'm not done yet.