The fastest-growing frontier in the LGBTQ+ marketplace. A short read on the trailblazers Pattie Gonia and Mikah Meyer, the queer outdoor organizations, the gay campground network, the national-parks travel economy, the gear industry's courage tests, and the climate movement's unmistakably queer new voice.
The Big Picture
The wilderness never asked anyone to come out — which is exactly why generations of queer people went in. The new outdoors movement just made the invitation explicit, and put it in six-inch heels on a mountaintop.
A decade ago "LGBTQ+ outdoors" meant a hiking-club listing and a campground directory. Today it's one of the community's most visible movements: a drag queen on National Geographic's honors list, a gay man's national-parks record covered by CNN, twenty-plus national queer outdoor nonprofits, and an outdoor industry actively — if unevenly — courting the audience its imagery ignored for a century. The demand side was always there; CMI's LGBTQ travel research has tracked strong community participation in outdoor and adventure travel for years. The community was always outside — it just wasn't in the catalog.
The full LGBTQ+ Outdoors Market Guide — a companion to our LGBTQ+ Marketplace Guide — maps it end to end: the history, the economy, the outdoorist segments, the trailblazers, the organizations, campgrounds and queer lands, national parks, adventure travel, the gear industry, climate and queer ecology, and marketing best practices. What follows is the short version.
Who's on the Trail
The queer outdoorist spans six segments: the crew hiker (the group-outing generation, joining Unlikely Hikers or a local queer hike for community first), the parks pilgrim (road-trippers and passport-stampers inspired by the Mikah Meyer model), the campground loyalist (the gay campground network's seasonal regulars), the backcountry set (serious backpackers and climbers, often out via Venture Out trips), the land-connected (faerie-sanctuary and rural queer households — the deepest, least-marketed-to tier), and the eco-activist generation (Gen Z's climate-native queers — Pattie Gonia's audience).
Four behaviors decide the sale. Safety scouting precedes every trip — visible welcome signals (Outside Safe Space's symbol, inclusive outfitters) genuinely route itineraries. Group-first adoption — most newcomers enter through organized queer outings, not solo trips, making the organizations the market's front door. Representation converts fast — after a century of absence, seeing queer bodies in outdoor imagery still lands with outsized force. And joy is the aesthetic — the movement's visual language is celebration, not conquest.
The Trailblazers
Between them, Pattie Gonia and Mikah Meyer handed brands the two playbooks that work: joy, and welcome you can see. The full guide profiles both in depth.
In October 2018, photographer Wyn Wiley laced six-inch boots on a trail and posted the first Pattie Gonia video — the debut wave gathered over 100 million views. The mission fused environmental and LGBTQ+ activism: queer joy in wild places, climate awareness with a beat. Honors followed (Time's Next Generation Leaders, National Geographic's "33"), along with the co-founded nonprofit The Outdoorist Oath and a 2026 environmental drag tour taking climate activism to stages nationwide — drag-brunch energy, movement-building outcomes.
On April 29, 2019, Meyer became the first person to visit all 419 US National Park Service sites in one continuous journey — three years on the road — making him the first openly gay man featured in a major outdoors-recreation ad. He converted the platform into Outside Safe Space, the program whose rainbow-tree symbol lets outdoor professionals, businesses, and parks signal LGBTQ+ welcome on uniforms, storefronts, and trailheads — simple, scalable, and exactly the signage this market's safety-scouting audience looks for.
The Infrastructure & the Industry
The organizations are the market's front door: The Venture Out Project (backpacking trips plus industry inclusion training), Unlikely Hikers (Jenny Bruso's body-liberation movement), The Outdoorist Oath, Out There Adventures, and 22+ more in Field Mag's growing census. They convert the hesitant — the first queer group hike is the industry's single best customer-acquisition event — and they're sponsorable at human scale (trip scholarships, gear libraries, guide training). Beneath them sits the community's own outdoor real estate: the fifty-year-old gay campground network, the Radical Faerie sanctuaries and women's lands, and a new queer-land wave — fifty years of proof that this market camps.
And the catalog is coming out. The North Face × Pattie Gonia 2023 "Summer of Pride" drew a national backlash — and the brand held, ran it again, and banked the loyalty this posture predicts: the outdoor category's defining courage test, passed. REI's inclusive imagery, a young tier of queer-owned gear brands, and fit-beyond-the-binary technical apparel round out the frontier. The lesson for gear brands: partner with the movement not around it, put queer bodies in the main catalog year-round, and hold through the noise — the test will be re-administered, and the grade compounds.
The Takeaway
This audience checks the trail conditions, the weather, and your brand's spine before every trip. So show the welcome, don't just claim it — visible signals (Outside Safe Space symbols, org partnerships on the hangtag, queer guides on the trip page) convert the safety-scouting audience, and queer bodies belong in the flagship imagery year-round, not the June microsite. Partner with the movement's own voices (trailblazer collaborations and organization sponsorships carry the credibility), target the journey precisely with outdoors data selects geo-targeted to gateway towns and gear retail, and calendar the seasons — ski weeks in winter, parks season in summer, campground weekends all summer, fall color road trips.
Above all, hold your ground. The backlash test comes with this territory — budget for it, brief leadership on it, and remember The North Face's grade: holding position is the whole strategy.
This page is the summary. The complete guide goes deep across 16 chapters — a hidden history of queer people outdoors, the outdoors economy, the outdoorist segments, full profiles of Pattie Gonia and Mikah Meyer, the organizations, campgrounds and queer lands, national parks and public lands, adventure travel and tour operators, the gear industry, climate and queer ecology, and the marketing playbook with campaign spotlights. Choose a one-time purchase or subscribe annually for all of Pink Media's guides and ongoing updates.
About
Pink Media is a leading LGBTQ+ digital media and marketing network with offices in New York and Los Angeles, led by President Matt Skallerud — active in the LGBTQ+ digital space since 1995. Through the #ILoveGay network, reaching over 1.5 million followers, Pink Media connects gear brands, parks and destination marketers, tour operators, campgrounds, and the queer outdoor organizations themselves with the community's outdoorists — destination and gateway campaigns with outdoors data selects (display, mobile, video, CTV with ACR) geo-targeted to parks gateways and retail trade areas, #ILoveGay Today interviews with outdoor leaders and founders, and PR amplification. A company with INFLUENCE!
Key sources include the CMI LGBTQ Travel Study, Gallup, LGBT Capital, Field Mag's organization census, and the movement's own institutions. Explore our LGBTQ+ Outdoors, Camping & Hiking market page, call (323) 963-3653, or visit www.PinkMedia.LGBT.