Life gets a bit easier when others forge a path for you. Caley Fretz of Escape Collective provides his perspective of the outdoor media landscape and his new venture’s place in it.
Caley Fretz on the Champs Elysées as he closes out Escape Collective’s coverage from the 2023 TdF. Courtesy photo
Small tremors and more rattling seismic activity have tossed and turned the outdoor media landscape for several years at this point. For example, if you are a core surfer, cyclist, and skier, you know the drill—legacy titles, both in print and web-based, have morphed and may not resemble what you recall.
There are many examples of niche and aspiring for just-beyond-niche publications that meet the needs of more core audiences while being reader-supported. Adventure Journal is one example of high-quality print. Escape Collective, which went in early March, is a site focused, for now, on the world of road cycling, with a minor footing in the gravel scene—they, too, are setting a high bar with a reader-supported model.
“At the end of the day, when the shoe really drops, you have one boss, right? And it’s whoever is keeping your lights on. And for us, that’s the audience. And that is massively massively freeing. And they know that and so having that conversation with people is actually quite easy, because that’s something that people understand, I think immediately, is the fact that, okay, if I give you my $100, you kind of work for me, you work for 1000s and 1000s, of other people too. So it’s not like I can just come in and demand that I want a story about something, you know, we’re going to work for what the majority of audiences is looking for. But at the end of the day, that sort of consumer sentiment was really what guides our whole sort of content strategy and editorial product. And that’s a pitch that makes sense to people.
—Caley Fretz on the reader supported model at Escape Collective.
The High Route Podcast focuses on making turns on snow: the human powdered kind involving skinning and descending on skis or a splitboard. The High Route’s website focuses on the same. And we aspire to be a reader-supported entity.
To the point here, Caley and a few others gathered steam after the Outside Media Group pivoted in a new direction with their cycling publications last fall. By March, Escape Collective dove into the media scene headfirst. By the end of July, they had covered the Tour de France from France and were on their way to viability.
Escape Collective logo: catchy and to the point.
As backcountry skiers—and for what it is worth, you need to do something in the summer—and trail runners, climbers, bikers, whatever, you’ve got to take some calculated risks in your adventures. So you know what we mean when we say Caley and the Escape Collective staff took a chance. And so far, they have nailed the landing as a reader-supported website with moxy.
Are we nervous about starting The High Route? We are. But in a good way. And it’s good to know that Caley and his staff have forged a path.
In this episode, the first of The High Route Podcast, we converse with Caley to get his perspective on the world of outdoor media and how Escape Collective navigates the stormy media-space seas and has made a go of it.
The bottom line is that they and their earnest efforts have inspired us. By learning about Caley and his experience, you learn more about why and how we’re trying to make a go of it ourselves with The High Route.
You can find the Escape Collective at escapecollective.com and @escapecollective.
Here’s the podcast plug before we go further. You can find The High Route Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts.
Thanks for reading and listening.
And if you are interested in music, the theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming, (Thank you Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here. So many good songs on this album. And if you think you’ve spotted a UFO in the past, or visited the 7th dimension, “Beautiful Alien,” is a good tune to begin with.
