At 21, I impulsively moved from Boston to Moab and became a river guide. Although it was the catalyst for my dream career, it was also the first time it was obvious to me that patriarchal problems don’t stay indoors.
One month into my new job, a friend told me that a male guide from another company was telling people I was a tease, because I wasn’t interested in hooking up with him. My body tensed and my brain whirred: Do I avoid him now? Be extra nice to him, but not flirty? Be cold and risk being called a bitch?
I was more comfortable paddling through gnarly whitewater than I was spending time 1:1 with certain people in the industry. But it was a small town, and word traveled quickly, so I kept my mouth shut and continued on with the cultural routine: paddle, drink dollar beers all night, sleep, repeat.
3 seasons of river guiding and I suppose I’m lucky(?) that — despite a Boy Scout Scoutmaster pulling me off the raft and into the river by my ponytail, groups of men placing their cash tips into my tank top, and a rescue training full of men completely ignoring my voice in the mock rescue even though I was the only one tying the correct knot — I never experienced rape in the outdoors.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard many stories since from paddlers, climbers, runners, and other outdoorswomen who have experienced assault and/or rape in nature spaces, often near their work environment.
The same culture that makes a river season magic makes it easy to hurt someone and get away with it.
The best part of hosting a podcast is making new friends. Thanks to See Her Outside, I met Acadia Gantz: midwife, run coach, ex-ski patroller, lifelong river rafter.
Acadia and I worked and lived through the same seasonal worker party culture: Drinking to cope with the full-on physical and mental demands of the job, stumbling back home alone at night, sometimes going days without seeing another female guide.
Years ago, Acadia spent a season guiding at a river company in Idaho. For weeks at a time, she was the only woman guide at her outpost. The crew ran full-day trips and camped together in a field, and there was a lot of drinking to unwind.
One week, a male guide with a lot of lore around his name showed up to work. He was well-liked by leadership and other guides alike. After the usual post-work drinking and partying, he followed Acadia back to her tent. She didn’t tell anyone what he did, because she thought her job would be on the line.
A year later at the same outpost, the male guide returned. Acadia prepared by staying sober and keeping distance. But he followed her and when she locked herself in her car for protection, he tried to yank the doors open and screamed at her through the window. That’s when Acadia realized: last year’s incident was an assault; she hadn’t done anything wrong.
Still, Acadia knew enough was against her to keep her from reporting him. There are factors that many female guides have to consider before speaking up, since what’s normal in the culture is also what makes it easy to get away with assault:
Your coworkers are your roommates, your friends, and your ride home. What if by reporting, you lose your community?
HR is a person you’ve met maybe once, in an office 100 miles away. What if they ignore me or even think I’m the issue?
The day ends and you have cash tips and minimal home responsibilities. Booze is the easiest thing to spend it on.
Your assailant could be friends with your boss. You can already imagine how that would go.
Your paycheck depends on the people around you. There’s a hierarchy of who gets the good trips each season, and guests expect a perfect, tension-free experience.
Everyone scatters when the season ends. (Including him.)
Even when reported, a man can get off with a lil’ slap on the hand. 🙄
Years later, Acadia bravely reported her assailant because she’d learned he’d assaulted another woman. The company decided to open an investigation, and instead, the man quit. He got to leave on his own terms.
It isn’t just one river or sport. In Outside’s 2018 survey of 4,176 people, about 70% said they’d been harassed in the outdoors or while working in the outdoor industry. In 2016, a federal inspector general found “a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and hostile work environment” in Grand Canyon National Park’s river district.
Even the policies that look like progress can do damage. When Acadia worked ski patrol at Park City, the mountain had a rule of ensuring there would be one woman per patrol team. It sounded like equality, but what it actually did was keep every woman patroller apart from each other, with a lack of female friendship/mentorship and a male management chain all the way up.
Hearing that, I thought of my own experiences in male-dominated sports spaces and how I spent too much of my life thinking, “I guess this is just the way it is.” Younger me figured these were our problems as women to manage. No wonder there were so few women, let alone Black women and queer women or anyone with identities and backgrounds that leave them even more vulnerable to party culture and seasonal outdoor work culture.
Acadia went looking for a story like hers. When she couldn’t find one, she wrote it.
For years after the incidents, consuming media about assault would trigger Acadia. Once she started working through trauma (we talk about how in the ep!), she started carefully picking stories to help her process her own story into words. After a while, she noticed the lack of stories in the raft guide space. “There are other river guides who have gone through this... where are their stories?”
This past April, Acadia published her story on her coaching site. It was the first time many people close to her, like her parents and coworkers, heard about it. Stories started coming back: Messages from other survivors, apologies from people at the company, connections to amazing people doing the work to prevent assault and rape in outdoor spaces. Acadia’s mom wrote her a letter to share how proud of her she was.
Of course, there are many instances where sharing your story and speaking up is not safe or supported. It’s easier said than done to “find someone you can talk to.” But for those of us who feel called to share the hardest stories, we can have an impact on others searching for stories like their own and hopefully get more dialogue in workplaces and media around outdoor rape culture.
Dismantling rape culture in the outdoors: Ideas for outfitters and adventure businesses
Pay a therapist to show up after any traumatic incident. Acadia’s crew once had a traumatic boating accident and the company barely responded. (IMO, a few hundred dollars for a counselor is cheaper than a crew that burns out and leaves every year.)
Build a reporting chain that doesn’t run through the assailant’s buddies. A woman struggles to speak up when the person who attacked her is best friends with the boss.
Actually have a reporting plan, and one that can work mid-trip. Who does a guide call from the bottom of the canyon? What gets sent over the sat phone? When does someone evacuate?
Stop isolating women and calling it equity. Put women on crews together. Make sure someone on your leadership team wants to mentor them.
Normalize stress relief / free time activities that aren’t just drinking.
Get trained. Respect Outside and A-DASH Collaborative both work with outdoor businesses on this.