Gay hiking

Strap on your best outdoor walking boots and head for the great outdoors with the Gay Mens' Hiking Group. Their event schedule includes ski trips, family camping trips, rafting trips, and backpacking trips. Concern for how LGBTQ-friendly a group trip will be can keep queer folks from signing up for group outdoor adventure trips.

LGBTQ outdoor groups are out there, helping queer folks build wilderness skills and feel comfortable in the woods. Trips range in length from day hikes to multi day backcountry trips. For springthe Boston Queer Scouts chapter is organizing indoor bouldering, bug identification, Arnold Arboretum Walks in Jamaica Plain, and a queer outdoor themed book club.

Outdoorfest will be held in the Catskills — which means you hiking find me there! The rest of us struggle to see ourselves represented outdoors. The group was founded with the idea to create spaces gay LGBTQIA+ people to interact outside of the city's bar scene.

Most group hikes are less than 3 miles long with less than feet of elevation gain. Location: Washington, DC Mission: Adventuring LGBTQ+ is the oldest gay outdoors club operating in the DC metro area. Group hikes are paused right now.

Hiking with a group is a great way to make friends and increase your outdoor skills while doing an activity you love. As ofUnlikely Hikers is going through a reorganization period. Queer Scouts Seattle is hosting a seedling swap, crafternoon, and book club.

We favor popular trails over more remote ones out of concerns for our safety. The program follows the Outward Bound model of teaching technical skills, fostering youth leadership, and self-discovery, and building community through service and outdoor adventure.

Any hike longer than that is clearly marked, so you can decide whether to opt in. This woodsy gang of dudes takes day trips to nearby mountains, forests and nature trails. It made it more acceptable to commit to a long-distance hike. The Venture Out Project offers wilderness trips for queer and trans folks, plus day hikes organized by volunteers.

Today, the group organizes beginner-friendly hiking, camping, and biking trips, among other get-togethers. Trips are for adults, with separate youth trips available for ages Overnight trips include sober raft trips on the Colorado River, family camping in New England, an Allagash River canoe trip, and queer forest bathing and mushroom identification walks.

Recent trips have included a winter hike in the Hudson Highlands and a vigorous 10 mile hike in Harriman.

Find a LGBTQ outdoor

You can find your local chapter on their website. But there are some stereotypes about outdoors access that can keep people from setting out on trails. Their Instagram community is still very engaged — you can tag unlikelyhikers, mybodytookmehere, and fatandoutdoorsy if you want to be featured, but these days the group is branching out with accessible group hikes and meetups.

Unlikely Hikers was founded by Jenny Bruso as an Instagram community. Everyone is welcome at Unlikely Hikers — including queer hikers, BIPOC hikers, chronically ill and disabled hikers, hikers of every size, and those with mobility and access needs.

Queer Scouts Worcester has some spring walks planned on the Bicentennial Trail and Mount Wachusett, and indoor bouldering. These seven LGBTQ outdoor groups run outdoor adventure trips for queer people. We stick with day hikes while dreaming about longer backpacking trips.

From pop culture notions of who gets to be a hiker to tongue-in-cheek roundups of hiker stereotypes — from outdoor magazines, stereotypical images of hikers tend to be cis white male.