It’s late August at dusk in Chamonix. Runners fasten their bibs, ready for the night after months of preparation.
GPS watches glow like fireflies, vests are packed with just enough to keep them warm. Hitting the trail, once a shepherd’s line, they pass through inflatable gantries and a crowd of bells and cameras. Crews rush to capture their next campaign before the dark swallows the light. There’s two races unfolding: one of endurance, the other of exposure.
This is the story of shifting priorities - when nature, once at the centre, became the backdrop for advertising human ambition.
The trail opportunity is no story of adventure, but a quiet study of extraction. What we call reverence for nature hides a form of conquest: one that crowds its territories, exploits its imagery, and floods it with the very gear that threatens it. In our will to celebrate the outdoors, we’ve mastered it instead, shaping it to our own image. The same logic that once exhausted our cities has reached the horizon. Once free of billboards, nature has become the billboard itself.
The outdoors are composed of countless natural spaces populated by a fragile equilibrium and diverse living ecosystems. Their survival builds on millions of years of adaptation to earth’s shifting rhythms, now disrupted by human activity. Rising temperatures have intensified hydric stress, accelerating soil erosion. Other geophysical tensions, such as permafrost thawing that periodically induce landslides, have reached critical levels in 2025. These environments are in constant evolution, yet the pace of change has become unnaturally visible. They remind us that mountains, forests, and valleys are not inert sceneries but living organisms, cradles of unique biodiversity, and far from being infinite playgrounds.
The years after COVID-19 laid the foundation for a growth in outdoor frequentation, reaching unprecedented levels mainly driven by two dynamics.
At an individual level, months of confinement translated into an urge for outdoor recreation. What began as occasional walks in nearby parks progressively expanded on a global scale, amplified by social media. Places such as the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Italian Dolomites now record an alarming average of 14,000 visitors per day in summer peaks.
At a collective level, trail-running events have multiplied in scale and scope. The French UTMB Mont-Blanc, founded in 2003, recorded only 67 finishers in its first year. In 2024, there were 1,760 finishers and 2,761 starters, and even more than 8,000 applications. Beyond Chamonix, the UTMB progressively expanded into an event promoter and global circuit, hosting more than 46 trail-running races worldwide.
Together, these two dynamics reinforce the impression that nature itself has turned into a calendarised venue.
"What once meant “respect for nature” has turned into a romantic projection: a desire for the experience rather than the responsibility it entails.”
These tendencies show an unprecedented movement of outdoor recreation after centuries of rural exodus. Yet, in most cases, individuals coming from urban environments have limited awareness of local ecologies and rural customs. Such patterns stem less from negligence than from the transposition of urban behaviors into fragile environments. Risk assessment too often relies on itinerary apps and unfiltered online advice rather than on local communities holding deep knowledge of the environment they live in. The consequences are tangible: noise, litter accumulation, and trail erosion increasingly threaten wildlife. Also, a more tragic reality unfolds: negligence now costs lives, with over 100 deaths recorded in the Italian mountains alone in 2025. What once meant “respect for nature” has turned into a romantic projection: a desire for the experience rather than the responsibility it entails.
The very experience of renaturation itself holds deep value in someone’s quality of life. As Damien Bettinelli of Les Others magazine aptly observes, “Luxury is rare; nature is increasingly rare - so it is becoming a luxury. The new luxury may simply be silence, fresh air, and natural scents.” The benefits offered by nature, coupled with its growing endangerment, have made it a privilege. The more individuals move towards the outdoors to seek a breath of fresh air, the more we collectively contribute to suffocating these fragile spaces. This paradox has been amplified by social media and capitalized by brands, harvesting the imagery of a world in bloom.
"The outdoors have turned into a marketing language, made accessible to anyone. Rather than letting the public appropriate a product over time, brands instrumentalise the outdoors to legitimise the introduction of new product lines.”
By referencing the outdoors, brands cultivate a calculated proximity to nature. This strategy makes use of a subtle cognitive bias: associating visual cues of nature with reassuring values such as care and responsibility. Yet, this emotional shortcut replaces accountability with suggestion. By appealing to our instinctive attachment to the natural world, brands humanize their image without having to justify the limits of their sustainability efforts or their leap into new product categories to open a new market. Too often, functionality is relegated to an aesthetic stance. Outdoor and high-fashion collaborations seem like the logical consequence of this mutation.
The outdoors have turned into a marketing language, made accessible to anyone. Rather than letting the public appropriate a product over time, brands instrumentalise the outdoors to legitimise the introduction of new product lines. Yet, the recurrence of this strategy dilutes the very idea of nature, producing a form of symbolic exhaustion. Once celebrated, nature no longer commands the frame; it has become the canvas.
There is absolute beauty in what pulls us into the outdoors - the virtuous reconnection to oneself through movement and the experience of vast elements. Yet, this growth has become relentless: trails have turned into highways, perfect shots have replaced contemplation, and the quest for better grip is never ending.
These signs show that we are drifting off track. In trying to master the landscape, we mirror the very system we sought to emancipate ourselves from, built on domination, acceleration, and optimisation: the foundation of extractivist orders. We first returned to natural spaces seeking peace and spontaneity, yet brands, events, and even us ourselves have taken over the narrative, dictating how we should experience the wild.
If nature is set to continue to heal and to inspire us, we need to equally give back by paying attention and setting aside, even momentarily, our consumption reflex. As temporary guests in these spaces, we should learn how they work as part of a longer quest to redefine human belonging. The future of the outdoor industry doesn’t lie in mastering nature, but in learning how to cooperate with it.