Welcome to Quandary Magazine
In our increasingly structured and civilized world, we’re preserving the spirit of outdoor adventure. Our story is built around Quandary Peak; a mountain that became the flashpoint in a heated debate about costs and crowding in the outdoors.
Quandary Magazine is for readers who feel crowded out, and yearn for the hidden gems and mountain heroes working magic to keep the wild spirit alive. We bring beautiful places to you, within the pages of our collectible-quality print magazine, while serving as both investigator and advocate for our outdoor community.
Sadly, legacy publications have long since abdicated this role, opting instead to transition into the world of web-first content churn, optimized for search engines — not human readers.
The Quandary Quandary
Quandary Peak — one of Colorado’s famous 14ers — does a great job illustrating the problem facing the outdoor community. Its location, the (relative) ease with which it can be climbed, and a plethora of summit selfies plastered online, make it an attractive goal for hikers. The bar of entry in terms of skill, preparation, and effort just feels lower for less experienced visitors. The numbers back this up.
In 2020, trail trackers clocked 50,000 visitors during summit season, the most on any mountain in the state, and far more than the tiny trailhead parking lot could accommodate. Hikers left their cars wherever they could, before snaking to the summit in an unbroken conga line.
Many found this distasteful, particularly the local government. Most solutions to trail crowding fit into two categories: you can go the mitigation route; building more resilient trails, repairing damage, and instilling respect for the outdoors in newcomers to the community. Or, you can prevent the impact altogether and gatekeep these delicate environments, through a combination of secrecy, private ownership, and government restriction.
Gatekeeping is winning these days. Local governments have started charging for the privilege of accessing trails that used to be free,1 while seasoned hikers safeguard the location of their favorite vistas — fearing they’ll become littered with empty hard seltzer cans, and full pet waste bags.
I spent a great deal of time in my documentary, “the Alpine Amusement Park,” exploring the impact of crowding. I won’t rehash it all here; if you’re interested, I’ve embedded the whole thing below so you can watch, free. But I will say: the conclusion wasn’t what I expected.
The issue stems from a problem that cannot be solved through public policy: the erosion of our sense of community responsibility. It’s not that too many people are on these trails, it’s that too many people feel comfortable disrespecting our shared spaces — and one another.
The long-term solution must be a cultural shift; one that course-corrects the kind of behavior we tolerate in the great outdoors.
At Quandary Magazine, we want to shape that conversation by sharing authentic stories, and uplifting the people working tirelessly to protect the spaces we love. We hope you will join us!
Housekeeping
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Bonus Picture for Reading the Whole Thing:
One might be forgiven for assuming these access fees went toward maintaining the trails. Paying them would be more palatable if they did. But they don’t. In 2022, I asked the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative if they saw a penny from those Quandary reservation fees. They told me the city was not sharing this revenue with them.
