Travel With Arc’teryx: Brand Launches ‘Trips’ for Adventurers

Arc’teryx Trips help you experience remote and magical outdoor playgrounds while honing technical skills.

Pull out your credit card now if you want to be one of the first to travel with Arc’teryx on its just-announced, immersive travel experiences: Arc’teryx Trips. Sign up, and you’ll build technical expertise in the sport of your choice in a stunning location. And you’ll join elite-level guides, instructors, and like-minded adventurers.

In 2020, Arc’teryx will run 11 small group trips to 10 locations, from Canada’s Chilcotins to Corsica. And if these bespoke trips are anywhere near as popular as Arc’teryx’s Academies, they will sell out before you finish reading this story.

Arc’teryx Trips

With Trips, Arc’teryx plans to fill what it sees as an unserved niche in branded adventure travel. Where REI and Butterfield & Robinson’s excursions cater to adventurous beginners and affluent explorers, Arc’teryx Trips will cater to intermediate to advanced participants in the sports for which Arc’teryx makes gear.

Jurgen Watts, Arc’teryx senior manager of brand partnerships and spokesperson for Arc’teryx Trips, said the idea for Trips came from an ongoing conversation about how to enhance consumers’ positive experiences with the brand. With the company’s well-established guide relationships in adventure epicenters around the world, pairing the two made sense, he told us.

“We’ve asked our guides to take the muffler off,” Watts said. “Our guides have been asked to teach the whole time and to let people absorb as they can. We want people to come away feeling that they’ve learned a ton. That will be a win for us.”

Arc’teryx Trips: Guides, Locations, Cost

So, customers save the time and effort it would take to plan a trip. And they won’t have to stress about being guided by a surly, cigarette-smoking Chamonix local berating them up Cosmiques Arête.

Instead, Arc’teryx hand-selects IFMGA-certified guides and brand athletes in curated locations. In the Chilcotins, for example, runners fly to a remote lake in a floatplane to start the trip. Meanwhile, Wind River alpine climbers horse pack to base camp. And in Chamonix, rock climbers stay in a private alpine hut and have a one-on-one guided experience unique to their skill set.

All Trips will have four to 12 guests, and costs range from $2,300 to $7,600. That does not include travel or all the gear. Because these are intermediate-to-advanced treks, Arc’teryx leans on travelers to have some of their own trusted equipment, like harnesses, shoes, and helmets.

Here’s an overview of the inaugural Arc’teryx Trip itineraries:

Arc’teryx Trips vs. Academy

This isn’t Arc’teryx’s first foray into travel. The brand has hosted up to 1,200 people annually at mountain festival-style Arc’teryx Academies for 13 years. The oldest is a Squamish, British Columbia, a climbing festival with 230 participants.

The biggest is the Chamonix alpine climbing and mountaineering Academy, capacity 450, that sells out in 19 minutes. And the 3-year-old Jackson Hole, Wyoming, backcountry ski and snowboard Academy now welcomes 200 participants.

Watts said the new trips aren’t a travel division Arc’teryx plans to spin off. With all 2020 trips full, Arc’teryx will host 200 clients total. He told us the 5-year Trips plan is to fine-tune brand storytelling and to involve fans in innovation and product launches.

It’s also a vehicle to reiterate to consumers that Arc’teryx cares about equity. With Trips, Arc’teryx has highlighted its female guides, and in 2020, it will host three women-only trips.

Watts also said he expects summer 2020 to be “learn by doing.” With the Trips division just launching, Watts said his team already has a million other trip ideas. But first, Arc’teryx wants to nail what makes its Trips special and different.