PAT MORROW
Dr. Bezruchka crossing Everest's Khumbu icefall.
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THE WORLD IS a smaller, more dangerous place, say the security experts of our post-Cold War era, but they're just jealous. While they sit desk-bound in DC, trying to make a plausible new enemy out of Afghanistan, adventuresome tourists are visiting the place. Once we were bombing Vietnam; now we're mountain biking there. Once Antarctica was the frozen province of Scott and Amundson; now Zodiacs deposit us on its penguin-lined shore. Once only Hillarys and Whittakers climbed Everest; now anyone with $65,000 to spare can make the ascent.
Times have changed for tourism. The whole world's become an open travel market—with previously remote destinations easily available to those holding enough of that global currency, the almighty US dollar. Nothing's off limits for those willing and able to pay. The higher the price tag, the more desirable the trip, especially for affluent, educated types who sneer at Disneyland's masses, towering white cruise ships, and cushy package tours.
In their place, an entire adventure travel industry has sprung up to cater to a fast-growing clientele. Many of these businesses are located in the outdoors-mad Northwest, and many locals have gone on their treks, climbs, and whitewater rafting expeditions. Some have also died. Several have been injured. Many have been sick, scared, or lost—yet, wallets in hand, they keep coming back for more.
Indeed, the adventure travel biz is thriving in part by selling the image of danger, with some high-profile accidents ironically serving as marketing tools. (As many attest, Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's first-person Everest disaster account, has had an effect far beyond climbing circles.) At the same time, the long-boom economy has produced unprecedented demand for such out-of-the-way excursions, with knowledgeable, moneyed customers eager and able to pay with a single click of the mouse. The result is a cycle of spending and exploring that already has Seattle companies sending its clients to the bottom of the ocean and the top of the world.
Rupees and baht
The adventure travel business amounted to some $230 billion in 1998, according to generous estimates by the Colorado-based Adventure Travel Society. Of that spending (which includes equipment, food, airfare, etc.), roughly $100 billion went to guides, outfitters, and companies—which the ATS claims represents some 20 percent of overall US travel outlays in all categories (collectively worth $541 billion). Half of all Americans had taken an adventure travel holiday during the prior five years, according to a 1997 survey by the Travel Industry Association of America. The TIA also estimates that adventure travelers spend an average of $395 per day on such excursions (on a median basis), which is considerably more than your run-of-the-mill package tour. The same survey reveals that—baby boomer image notwithstanding—64 percent of adventure travelers are classified Gen X.
Moreover, "adventure travel" itself is a somewhat elastic classification, encompassing scuba diving to hunting to guided climbing to watching lions from the comfort and security of a chauffeured Land Rover. Yet none of those activities come cheap. Excluding taxes and airfare, your average foreign trekking itinerary runs around $3,000. Extreme elements add more to the bill. Climbing Aconcagua or Kilimanjaro runs about $4,000 on expeditions organized by Seattle's Alpine Ascents. The bill hits $23,000 for Antarctica's Mt. Vinson, one of the prized seven summits (each being the highest peak on its continent).
If altitude sickness and frostbite aren't your bag, how about cycling through Vietnam with REI Adventures ($3,045), hiking Peru's Inca trail ($2,390), or sea kayaking off Baja ($1,195)? Closer to home, Seattle's woman-oriented Adventure Associates will take you skiing in Yellowstone for $1,595. A three-day weekend with Mazama's North Cascades Heli-Skiing runs up to $2,425. In what the industry calls the "soft" spectrum of adventure travel, Seattle's Zegrahm Expeditions will give you the full tour of Patagonia for $6,850 or retrace the Alaskan coastal voyage of the 1899 Harriman expedition—we don't know who he was, either—for $6,990.
Who can pay for such trips? Plenty of people. "It used to be doctors and lawyers," says Alpine Ascents' Matt Lepisto of his mountain climbing clients. Now, in our dot-com era, many other professionals are entering the thin air of affluence. "It's certainly changing to a more broad and general segment of the population. We fall into the higher end of the disposable income type of market," he adds. Accordingly, his company can afford to gear its rates—and goals—to niche customers eager to trade their wing tips for crampons. Meanwhile, competitors flock to grab a share of the alpine guiding business. "Half the companies out there weren't therefour years ago."
Indeed, the ATS boasts that adventure travel is "the fastest growing segment of the travel industry." It says there's been 8 percent to 10 percent growth annually over the past decade. (The more conservative TIA has tracked 5 percent to 6 percent increases over the same span.) Why the boom? Beyond consumer prosperity and curiosity, ATS president Jerry Mallett says, "We're definitely media-driven." He points to the proliferation of books, TV shows, and magazines glorifying once-remote regions. "The publications both feed and benefit from it," he notes, naturally citing Into Thin Air as well as A River Runs Through It (both the book and the movie), which created a surge of interest in fly-fishing vacations, especially among women. Thinking back to the '70s, he recalls a similar consumer effect from the film Deliverance. "Everyone wanted to do it!" he says of whitewater paddling. The irony that that movie, like Krakauer's book, detailed death and disaster in the outdoors is not lost on him. Does such notoriety paradoxically benefit the adventure travel biz? "I think it does," Mallett concludes.
The money trail
