Outdoor industry courts youths

On rafts, in kayaks or around their neighborhood parks, Jeff Steed is hoping to convince a distracted demographic to embrace the outdoors.

Since learning how to camp as a child, Steed — who is now 19 — has loved the outdoors. His passion, however, is not generally shared by a lot of other teenagers, an attitude he is attempting to change through volunteer work with CityWILD, which is essentially an outdoor outreach program for Denver's inner-city youths.

"We take them out for a hike or a climb, or if we can't do that much, we'll at least take them to a city park to try to motivate them," Steed said between turns on a climbing wall Thursday at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Tradeshow in the Salt Palace. "We try to take them to the outdoors or bring the outdoors to them."

It is exactly that kind of work that the Outdoor Industry Foundation anticipates will bring youths, especially teenagers, into the wilderness. Steed is also the type of young outdoor enthusiast the OIF wants to develop as a spokesman to can sell the outdoors to fellow teenagers.

To that end, Steed is one of approximately 30 athletes under 25 years old who have been tabbed as Outdoor Idols. As a group and as individuals, they are trying to promote outdoor recreation as fun, easily accessible and, most importantly, cool.

"Other sports have their Tony Hawk or Tiger Woods" who have helped make skateboarding or golf, respectively, into popular sports for teenagers, said Eugene Bachman, the director of the Outdoor Idols programs. "Outdoors haven't really had the role models, at least until now."

Bachman said that one of the best things about the Idols is that they all have a wide range of interests. Steed, for example, is a rafting guide, a kayaker, a backpacker and "anything else that can get me out of the house," which can appeal to youths who seldom focus on one thing at a time.

A study conducted by the foundation was discussed during a Thursday forum at the show. The report shows that while the majority of children are still doing some sort of an outdoor activity at least once a year, less than half of surveyed teenagers are even getting out once annually.

That trend is even worse for teenage girls and minorities, both of whom drop significantly in participation in their early teens. While the reasons are multiple, the potential problems for both the outdoor industry and the inactive youths are even more daunting.