Wall Street-backed firms with less-than journalistic mores are aiming at commoditizing not just larger publications, but even niche outdoor blogs. A fraught future could be nigh for the entire world of outdoor written content.
Lou Dawson, the first person to descend all of Colorado’s fourteen-thousand foot peaks on skis, is a consummate storyteller and supporter of alpinism. His seminal book Wild Snow, published in 1997, recounts his legendary accomplishment, interspersing history and notes on American alpinism throughout. But what may be his most lasting contribution to ski culture – especially backcountry skiing – is his long running blog by the same name. While WildSnow.com long has been a go-to for news on the latest touring gear, it has also served as the recorder of the sport’s development and ethos. Dawson's blog found a delicate balance in its tone: aspirational as much as it was lofty, gear minutia as much as it was constant treatise on the direction of the sport. Wildsnow.com framed the zeitgeist of backcountry skiing.
The blog’s content mostly stayed the course after Dawson sold his site in 2019 to Doug Stenclik, owner of Cripple Creek Backcountry, an eminent player in the online ski touring retail space. Stenclik took over the site with the wish to continue Dawson’s legacy while also driving business to his shop, and Dawson would remain firmly in place, continuing to set the tone of the blog.
But in late 2022, as Dawson’s voice became less prominent on WildSnow.com, Steclik sold the blog to AllGear Digital, a collection of click-for-commission review sites mixed with other outdoor content previously known as Loa Digital Media. With a $40 million financing from New York City-based capital firm Bardin Hill Investment Partners, AllGear Digital swiftly took over not just affiliate-link review sites, but niche outdoor blogs as well.
Thus WildSnow.com’s storied arc as a foundational and independent pilar of outdoor written content had been subsumed under a corporate banner with Wall Street funding. It was a shocking sign that even the small, independent blogs in the outdoor culture – long the arbiters of a uniquely genuine ethos – could be subject to takeover and commoditization.
But we’ve been here before. More accurately, there were signs of what was to come. The alarm was evident in and out of the outdoor world, and it grew louder as Y2K and our previous ways of life disappeared into the past. Print media is on its way toward the exit for good, was the warning, and if we all didn’t come to our senses, stop scrolling on our smart phones, and fork over some subscription money, it would be all our fault.
They were right, of course. Many a solid source for honest, straight-forward, independent content in our world of outdoor pursuits has met its demise in the wake of the new free-content paradigm. But scarier more than what we have lost is what we now have: AllGear Digital has found a way to make money and survive in this internet age, albeit in a mutated long-form; a strange mix of marketing/click-for-cash masquerading as news and important content. AllGear Digital has now purchased sites with deep goodwill that were built as thought-provoking entities, and their model shows how usurping these sites’ content and twisting it toward soft marketing revenue streams can work.
Several publications – like Adventure Journal and Mountain Gazette – still fight for and publish meaningful, even printed, content. But the tide has shifted evermore with the momentous first wave of internet influence that doomed most long-form. And commoditized, soft-paid content now threatens to reign supreme in the outdoor world.
The culture of the outdoors has changed remarkably over the decades. What was once a small cadre of enthusiasts enjoying enchanting and undiscovered places with minimalist gear has morphed into millions of adherents spending enormous sums of money on constantly evolving equipment created out of an exceedingly competitive marketplace. The outdoor economy accounted for a staggering $862 billion in 2021. And that hasn’t gone unnoticed; the influence of capital-backed firms has permeated much of the outdoor culture, with myriad gear producers now being owned by corporate parent companies. The scene’s written media mirrors that transformation.
The arc of Outside, the long-standing leading magazine in outdoor, may frame the culture’s transformation as well as anything, showcasing how the culture has constantly wrestled between big money and big ideals. Founded in 1977 by Rolling Stone creator Jann Wenner, heir William Hearst III, and Jack Ford, the nascent publication set out to “do for the outdoors what Rolling Stones did for rock ‘n’ roll,” as Hearst told The New York Times in May of 1977. Like the counterculture at large, Rolling Stone was by then far from its revolution-leaning tendencies of the 60s, now following the ever-gluttonous, ulcer-creating exploits of the likes of rock stars and celebrities. While reporting on “how Life in the Fast Lane ate a hole in [Don Henley’s] stomach” may not have had the high mindedness of covering the anti-war movement, Rolling Stone was still the voice of a generation. And by the late 70s, that generation strove for personal freedom, bodies and protest movements be damned.
Outside thus began with high-minded roots, catered to a new-era, self-absorbed ethos, and enjoyed some old-world business connections to boot. As the outdoor movement gained momentum throughout the 80s and 90s, the publication solidified its position as the leading voice of the outdoors. Adventure journalists like Jon Krakauer cut their teeth there, where his influential works Into The Wild and Into Thin Air both first found life as articles for Outside. The magazine successfully charted what the outdoor experience encapsulated; it was the marker for the culture, much like Rolling Stone was for the music of its day.
But developments far outside any outdoor editor or writer’s control would soon upend the position of all written content, Outside being no exception. The internet and its constant evolution brought innumerable changes to the relationship that written media had with its consumers. Rife with free articles and information on various websites, the World Wide Web ate into the readership that previously purchased subscriptions. Whether completely transitioning to an online format or a hybrid, essentially all publications were forced to embrace the internet.
The newly internet-facing magazines followed the rest of the web – content was almost always free and leaned on ad revenue to make up the difference, not unlike how newspapers and magazines had long created income. But no advertising windfall quite came for the online magazine world. While tech firms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon were able to commoditize their platforms successfully, “newspapers and magazines…struggled to increase digital ad earnings for years.” What’s ensued is large scale merging, with “legacy media companies…getting sold and consolidated in an attempt to become more competitive in a digital world.”
The outdoor media world has endured the same fate. As large firms have moved to take online market share and consolidate readership, both large and independent outdoor media companies have been targeted for inclusion under corporate umbrellas. While it’s little surprise that many of the sizable publications have become part of this process – many smaller sites – even blogs – have been purchased, becoming cogs in the stable of corporate online apparatuses.
While Outside still reigns as the supreme outdoor publication, they have unavoidably followed the trend of consolidation seen in the sales of print giants like Time and even Rolling Stone itself. In February of 2021, Pocket Outdoors, owner of a slew of other outdoor related titles – including Backpacker and Ski – acquired Outside from longtime owner Larry Burke. This acted as the pinnacle of CEO Robin Thurston’s breakneck purchase of a multitude of outdoor assets – including non-print entities such as GaiaGPS and Warren Miller Films – and folding them into a single pay-for service. Consolidation had come to the outdoor media world, and in a sweeping fashion, with Outside controlling arguably the most read and most influential media entities in the culture.
But these moves were ones of desperation. In July of 2021, The Washington Post reported, as part of an illuminating piece on the conglomerate’s transformation, that “Outside appeared to be running on fumes,” and that “Outside Online acknowledged its financial struggles when it appealed to readers for donations, and Thurston said the magazine had furloughed a number of employees.” The battle to create wide reaching umbrellas of content was one undertaken with business survival in mind. The creation of mega-conglomerates was an attempt to make online outdoor publishing profitable, something that had remained elusive.
This strategy has permeated further into outdoor media, with smaller, core, and even niche publications being purchased by large firms. This includes Powder, arguably skiing’s most legitimate and core magazine. American Media Inc., owner of such decidedly un-oudoorsy titles as Men’s Journal and National Enquirer took over Powder and the rest of TEN: Publishing’s Adventure Sports Network’s titles in early 2019, setting off a slew of lay-offs and angry reactions. Many feared what this meant for an independent-minded (but long corporately owned) publication like Powder.
Feelings of dread were prescient: roughly 18 months later American Media Inc. shuttered Powder with no plans of restarting the magazine on any platform. In an October 2020 note editor Sierra Shafer stated that “our entire editorial staff will be placed on indefinite furlough, effective November 20, 2020, when operations of the magazine, our website, and our social channels will be paused. We do not know if or when this hiatus will end.” Shafer went on to write in a “Final Note from Our Editor” that “we have worked tirelessly to be critical, funny, affectionate, and honest—as the first editors intended—even when that meant turning the microscope on ourselves and looking inward.” Regardless, Powder was shuttered as a long-form entity, its corporate owner instead using the name to push e-blast vacation package marketing over creating new content. Thus Powder remained in protracted hibernation until being reborn and revamped into a platform borne on click-through: rife with social media-linked articles teaming with ads.
The loss of independent voices in outdoor media from incorporation into investment-firm backed conglomerates is thus a real threat and is already happening.
While the new Outside has taken the path to consolidating power through acquisition, many niche channels have for years filled the void where consumers demand independent, thoughtful written content. Still, many of those entities have themselves staggered through transformations before finally being incorporated into larger organizations.
Enter again Lou Dawson’s WildSnow.com. The seminal backcountry skiing and touring site began in 1998, converted to a blog in 2004, and had a nearly 15 year run as the voice of the scene. Dawson, the ski alpinist-turned writer served as the main author through most of the blog’s history, but was never averse to giving other voices a platform. Articles by such notables in the ski world as professional skier and filmmaker Noah Howell and telemark pioneer Paul Parker found their way onto the site, as well as numerous other pieces by a stable of sharp, hard-skiing enthusiasts.
Dawson eventually chose to shift gears, selling the blog to Wild Snow contributor, friend, and businessman Doug Stenclik in 2019, writing that “Doug, as an independent publishing company, will gradually take over majority ownership of the site, in continued partnership with me.” Dawson elaborated further to Blister Reviews editor-in-chief Jonathan Ellsworth in a late-2021 podcast, saying “I still really enjoy blogging, have a huge emotional place for the site. It’s nice because I can stay involved and I didn’t have to do the corporate sellout.” Dawson spoke more to his desire to keep the site core to backcountry skiing, continuing “luckily Doug saw the value in it and decided to step in and keep it going and I’m just forever grateful to that because the body of work on there is huge and it achieves more and more value as it becomes somewhat historic.”
But WildSnow.com would not stay independent. Stenclik sold the blog to Bardin Hill-financed AllGear Digital in December of 2022. Eric Phung, cofounder and CEO of AllGear Digital – which owns a stable of review sites whose revenue model is based on click-for-commission affiliate links – stated that Bardin Hill’s $40 million infusion and AllGear Digital’s subsequent purchasing of several niche-sport blogs (including The Inertia, a surfing site analogous to WildSnow.com) was enacted as “an opportunity for our group to double-down and reach significant scale.”
WildSnow.com, like the large mainstream media players, like the bigger outdoor content creators, had been folded into a Wall Street-backed, conglomerate apparatus. The mindset of scalable growth to increase asset value in the portfolios of investors had seeped all the way down from the most corporate written media sources all the way to niche sports blogs covering surfing and backcountry skiing.
While it’s yet to be seen exactly what AllGear Digital has in mind for WildSnow.com, there seems to be at least some feeling that they can commoditize the site’s branding to bring added value to their financier’s investment strategy – a far cry from the site’s previous position as backcountry skiing’s core blog, echoing alpinist ethos. Instead the site is at risk of becoming a copy of its sister webpages, like GearJunkie, where outdoor equipment is reviewed in listicle format: large, bold affiliate links wait to whisk websurfers to virtual shopping carts, where AllGear Digital makes their money invisibly in the form of commission. Speaking on Ellsworth’s podcast, Dawson ironically concluded that it “would have bummed [him] out if somebody had taken the site and changed it into a clothing site or something.”
The loss of independent voices in outdoor media from incorporation into investment-firm backed conglomerates is thus a real threat and is already happening. As the landscape of long-form content has changed over the years, sports media conglomerates have dutifully become more creative in their ability to commoditize even the most autonomous sources of information for their financial backers – those sites that have steadfastly remained independent are now at risk of becoming wealth creators for a decidedly sterile demographic: Wall Street. Humble, genuine content – from the top down – is in danger of becoming part of these firms’ money–first agendas.
There are reasons to be hopeful for the future of outdoor media. Notably, two Powder alumni now helm separate print magazines that strive to be alternatives to the corporate-owned, online world they feel has basterdized long-form outdoor media. Those are Steve Casimiro’s Adventure Journal and Mountain Gazette, owned by Matt Rogge.
Both magazines serve as their own repudiation of the current direction of media. Casimiro’s Adventure Journal started as a blog in 2008, and added a quarterly magazine in 2016. Casimiro has been a vocal critic of corporate takeovers and subpar content, becoming one of the main crusaders against the tide of the current paradigm in outdoor media that has wrought havoc on long form and its depth.
Rogge purchased legacy publication Mountain Gazette in January of 2020 and reorganized the magazine as a large format, bi-yearly. His philosophy clearly opposes of the prevailing movement in the outdoor world, saying on Mountain Gazette’s about page that “media, especially outdoor media, is broken. The old advertising model is dead, the new way of delivering content is too reliant on affiliate sales and pay-to-play gear reviews.” It seems readers have reveled in the alternative that Rogge’s created, where advertisers are carefully chosen, and the magazine’s gigantic 11” x 17” format gives photographers a unique platform for their work, not to mention ample room for long form articles. The formula appears to have legs – Rogge goes on to say that “it's working. We sold out of our first revival issue in six weeks. We’ve sold out of every issue since then.”
But while these two independent magazines show there is potential for long-form’s survival in outdoor media, big money’s presence – long a factor in the fates of the larger publications – has finally crept into the realm of small, niche outlets for outdoor media. And the conglomerates with Wall Street financing are modeled on making revenue streams first – their philosophy stems from making millions for their investors, at rapid scalability, now using even the smaller niche blogs to achieve their goals. Outdoor media – even the favorite, funky, small outfits – is at danger of being utilized by forces whose main goal is not tied to authentic content creation – or even an outdoor-oriented ethos at all.
AllGear Digital is one of those firms. Though the content of the sites has all the markings of at least somewhat rich content – and their stable of sites now includes aforementioned core, recently independent blogs – any depth of content is inextricably linked to meeting the demands of their large Wall Street investor, not their readers or the outdoor culture at large. And AllGear Digital’s business methodologies show that.
In their own words, AllGear Digital “owns & operates a diverse set of media properties focused on new products, the outdoors, and active-lifestyle pursuits.” Their sites include GearJunkie, Switchback Travel, The Inertia, Bikerumor, iRunFar, ExplorersWeb, and WildSnow.com. Each of these sites – with the exception of WildSnow.com and The Inertia – is openly propelled by an affiliate-link for revenue model, with every article on these sites beginning with “Support us! [We] may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Learn More.” The ‘Learn More’ link takes one to a lengthy privacy policy which mostly details how AllGear Digital collects user data, in part stating that it may be shared with non-affiliated sites via “advertising, analytics and business partners” and that they “may share aggregated or pseudonymous information (including demographic information) with partners, such as publishers, advertisers, measurement analytics, apps or other companies.” Not only does AllGear Digital’s business platform focus on pay-to-play affiliate links, but also the collection and selling of user information.
Against this reality, AllGear Digital works to create a veneer of authenticity, with subsidiary sites pushing the narrative of being part of a genuine outdoor paradigm. Switchback Travel states that “much of our revenue comes from affiliate links, but we always retain complete editorial independence and never receive any financial compensation from manufacturers for reviews.” While the sites may indeed enjoy the freedom to pursue topics they deem fit for their content, the sites are fundamentally indebted to their affiliates, and admittedly generate revenue when their affiliate link strategy works; they are indeed compensated from manufactures through commissions. As none of the sites charge a subscription fee, none of the sites are reader supported. AllGear Digital thus creates content that approaches soft sales and marketing for their affiliates, all the while strategically creating the illusion that they are core content creators.
Besides being indebted to their affiliate program revenue model, AllGear Digital is obliged by their massive funding from Bardin Hill. Bardin Hill Investment Partners, previously known as Halcyon Capital “is a global investment management firm with core competencies in credit strategies, including distressed, stressed and performing credit, as well as liquidations and cash-outs, litigation-driven investing, merger arbitrage and event-driven equities.” With their $40 million investment in AllGear Digital, the opportunistic capital-creation mechanism that is Bardin Hill demands returns, and “strives to generate superior risk-adjusted returns for clients.” Though any ownership stake that Bardin Hill takes in AllGear Digital is not immediately evident, it’s clear that they dictate what measures of success mean for the conglomerate, and that they demand a return for their investors.
AllGear Digital and its financier strategically position their content as being independent, unbiased, and genuine; that the content exists for the benefit of the reader. But when that model goes hand in hand with successfully commoditizing affiliate programs that rely on information gathering and commissions from purchases at linked partner sites, it becomes clear that creating solid content for its own sake is not the firm’s main strategy. And this scheme is now poised to affect the content at sites that once enjoyed unconstrained independence. Where this investment strategy ends is unknowable, but its wide implementation could create a sea change in sports media and threaten its independence and impartiality.
The world of outdoor pursuits has been one marked by decades of individuals pursing freedom, beauty, and transcendence from everyday existence. But as so many have discovered the intangible riches available to them in nature, they have become a force; an economy of their own whose buying power and financial potential is enormous.
The interest of investors is nothing new in the outdoor space – they have come along since the beginning when there were just glimmers of riches to be made. But we now live in a world where commoditization is as rampant as trailheads are busy. It’s not just consumables that are commoditized, it’s the very soul of the culture – its written content. And the investors and their financed firms have become exceptionally creative in their pursuit of the dollar, now creating conglomerates who produce a facade of depth while making their revenue stream not from their content but from affiliate programs.
This age marks an eerie turn in the fate of thoughtful media in general, but in particular in a realm that so often holds itself on-high for its genuineness – the outdoor culture. As Adventure Journal’s Steve Casimiro told Ben Hewitt of originoutside.com, publishing his magazine meant “not wasting people’s time with clickbait or lame stories, and it means telling the truth, even when the truth might be hard to hear.” But this stance has become a minority in outdoor media, perhaps not in proclamation, but certainly in execution. Not only have the most-read outlets become subject to conglomerate control and diminishing content – the most authentic, the most candid niche sources are now the target of take-over. Many may have never come across the likes of WildSnow.com. But sites like it carry the spirit of the outdoor world beyond its modern consumerism.
Every corner of the outdoor media world is now potentially subject to the fate of WildSnow.com. And with that comes the endangerment of the very thing that makes the outdoor world so appealing: authenticity. Without more paid subscribers, without more business models that rely on the voice of reader dollars - not commercialized content for the benefit of commissions - outdoor media’s future is more fraught than ever.
