This story from a Connecticut paper about the waning interest in backpacking drops this interesting tidbit:
Even more dramatic is the drop in long-distance backpackers who set out each year to hike the entire 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. In 1999, 2,625 hikers left Georgia with hopes of hiking the entire trail. This year, that number fell to 1,150, less than half the 1999 number.
You’d think all the advances in lightweight backpacking would have more people out there.
Another interesting passage:
For example, the Appalachian Mountain Club says it has seen steady interest from hikers in its network of “huts” in New Hampshire’s White Mountains – they are large cabins where hikers can sleep in bunks and a staff serves hot meals. With the hut network, a hiker can travel for days in the White Mountains without having to cook or pitch a tent, getting by with a comparatively light daypack that holds perhaps a lunch, a sleeping bag and some raingear.
“People certainly continue to be interested in getting into the outdoors, and also interested in a bit higher level of service, if the activity we are seeing is any indication,” said Rob Burbank, the club’s director of public affairs.
This is like an argument for bringing back a universal military draft — so people have a more realistic notion of the idea of “roughing it.” Any camp-out that lacks live ammo and holllering drill sergeants has gotta be a good one.
One last snippet:
While backpacking participation is falling, other activities, such as kayaking or snowshoeing, are increasing. Snowshoeing participation, for example, has increased 83 percent since 1998. And day hiking remains one of the most popular outdoor activities in America, ranked third among all outdoor activities, with 34.2 percent of Americans saying they hiked at least once during the year.
Hmm… think how rich I’d be if I could get one out of every three Americans to send me a dollar.
We’ve certainly seen it in the Sierra Club. We seem to have little trouble filling up our classes, and a wide range of ages attend them. But each year, we’ve seen a strange and growing pattern among the participants: We filled our beginning backpacking class at the start, but by the end fewer and fewer of the registrants each year choose to go on the outings.
I’m convinced there are a number of uncoordinated yet synergistic forces at work here:
1) People born in the 1970s and later, raised in urban or suburban settings, probably never had the experience of unstructured play in natural, un-groomed outdoor spaces. They really don’t know what they’re missing, but think they’ll be bored with unstructured time where there’s “nothing to do”.
2) Nobody is marketing or advocating things that don’t make them money, like the experience of quiet solitude in a natural setting, so it’s not on most people list of desirable things to do.
3) Sensationalist media make time in nature and outdoor sports appear far more risky and scary than they actually are.
4) The “always on” nature of electronic communications, the virtual worlds like online games, cell phones, blogs, and so on are very addicting, and people actually resist being pulled away from all of that — often without realizing what they’ve given up.
When you add those up, you get less participation in the most rewarding of outdoor activities: Simply disconnecting from the artificial, man-made “environment.”
That’s my diagnosis anyway.