Dan Ransom
Primary Outdoor Sports: Packrafting, Backpacking, and Canyoneering
Job: Owner Sockdolager Equipment
Favorite Beverage: Dirty Chai
Sunrise or Sunset: Sunset
Non-Outdoor Hobbies: Making Things
Go-To Trial Snack: Pepperoni
Favorite Season: Fall
Guilty Pleasure: Dr Pepper
Book Recommendation: The Emerald Mile
Three Words to Describe You: Selectively Optimistic Tinkerer
“My dad was a scoutmaster and I have three older brothers. All of them were into outdoor stuff. When I was younger, one of my brothers climbed. One of them was big into backpacking and fishing. I always looked up to my older brothers and then with my dad being a scoutmaster, I was always able to go on trips when I was younger than most kids.
I was doing big 50 mile backpacking trips with my dad when I was 11. For me, that was what summer vacation always was. When I got out of school, it was the thing to look forward to every summer.
That was where I started. However, I also was really lucky because I had awesome scout leaders when I was younger which makes a big difference. We used to go camping once a month just for scouts which gives you a ton of experience when you're really young. By the time I got to high school, I was getting motivated to do trips by myself.”
“Early on in my life, I was taught to believe that fulfillment would come through some sort of feeling. Not everything in life is supposed to make sense, but you're just supposed to feel confidence. They would call that faith, but it always left me anxious. And, I think when I was outside, I would always find a peace that I didn't have in my normal life.
People would always ask me like, ‘Oh, when you're in church, don't you feel the spirit?’ And I'm like, ‘No, I don't.’ But, I can promise you that if I'm on a river and I watch a sunset, I do feel something then. It feels like peace and it feels like contentment and it feels like what I would expect that kind of confidence to feel like in normal life.
So I think that really replaced a lot of those feelings that I was taught I was supposed to have my entire life, but I never really had. I think finding that in the outdoors made me feel like there can be a whole different source for those feelings.”
“I think the real turning point for me was when I left Mormonism. I basically left an entire world behind, my friends and most of the network that I had. I found a group of canyoneers and they were all shapes and sizes, all ages, socioeconomic status, everything, just a whole motley crew of people.
I was trying to find my tribe again and I didn't have a bunch of people that I was hanging out with all the time. So I was often driving down to Southern Utah to hang out with these people who didn't care what religion I was or what my personal story was. They just wanted to go do outdoor trips every weekend.
During that stretch, when I was trying to reinvent myself and kind of figure out what I was going to do, those people were super foundational for me because I would spend 40 or 50 or 60 days a year just down in the Colorado plateau, canyoneering or backpacking or whatever, just totally disconnecting from all of the stuff that I'd left behind.
That was huge for me because it gave me a lot of time to grow. That was when every Monday I'd be like, ‘Okay, what can I do this week so that I can get out at Thursday night at 5 PM?’ so I can blast down to the desert and have a three day weekend. It was all consuming. You know? That was really when it became a big part of my life.”
“I always joke that I met all those people through online dating, because this was early days of forums, pre-Facebook, pre-Instagram. There were people in these different places. I was in Utah and these guys are in Arizona and then there would be people in the Pacific Northwest. They're all kind of canyoneering or doing projects, but kind of only in their own little world. But, they might occasionally post on these forums.
I made friends with a lot of people just because I was posting photos on these forums. Then people would be like, ‘Oh, you seem like you're into this. You might be interested in this trip that we're doing.’ And so it would kind of form that way.
It did feel kind of like internet dating back then though because I made a lot of partners off the internet. Maybe that is normal. I'm not sure if it is or not.
I felt like I'd kind of replaced a lot of my previous relationships and friendships and was just trying to find a whole new Identity really. So, I was hyper motivated back then to get out as much as I could.”
“I started in backpacking which is a very individual sport. I mean, it feels weird to even call it a sport. Right? But, in backpacking, you just load up a pack with almost nothing. It's the simplest, easiest, outdoor pursuit you could do. At least one of them.
And so, I always did that early on. It was like, ‘Oh, I'm just going to go backpack.’ I might go solo. I might have some friends, but it was just so easy, you could just go do it. I had confidence. There were few things that would intimidate me. So there was never a barrier to whatever I wanted to go do.
It naturally progressed into canyoneering, which is basically just backpacking with ropes. You're just using ropes to access canyon systems, mainly. So you're backpacking, but it's backpacking on steroids in some ways, because the scenery is way more intense. Canyoneering gets you into places that are just wild. So that's cool.
All of a sudden, that evolved into, ‘Well, how do we get into even more remote, inaccessible canyons. And in the Grand Canyon in particular, the only way to do it is with a pack raft. So over a course of six or seven years, I evolved from only backpacking into canyoneering and then all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh, I want to use a, use a boat.’ Then you get the first little taste of whitewater and you're like, ‘Oh, whitewater is actually the most fun way to experience the backcountry.”
“I'm just way softer now than I used to be, mainly just because I'm not as disciplined as I used to be. So doing the big, romantic, hard trips are just harder and I don't have as much stamina to want to do them.
My ultimate trips used to be these big canyoneering trips specifically in the Grand Canyon, which is the ultimate multisport trip. Sometimes, they'd be 30 days long. You would have to be running the river and then you would have to go do backcountry trips away from the river, carrying all your backcountry gear with all your canyoneering gear. Sometimes you would have to packraft back to your car. So it was really elaborate, really complex. But, you felt a serious sense of accomplishment when you finished them because it was such a project to go complete. Plus down there, you could see these incredible places.
I think that's always the consistent thing for me, seeing unique landscapes and geological places is super special to me. Like today, we're floating down the North Fork Crooked River and when we went into that little gorge section. I love that, even though it's probably not world class by most people's standards. But, it's something I've never seen. So when I get to experience it the first time, it's super cool. I think any trip that has that element has always been cool to me.
But, I think I'm less into the expeditions now than I used to and more into really obscure stuff. I really like packrafting things that I can hike into and hike out of which tends to get you into unique places. It's a really interesting vehicle to be able to go see places that sometimes are super close, but make you feel like you're way out there.
To go hike what we did today would have been serious work, but to go float it and just walk back to your car is pretty cool. Pretty easy. I definitely think that packrafting is the element that I look for now though. I like trips that are multisport and kind of atypical, but I'm also not a glutton for punishment. I'm not really looking for Type 2 fun anymore at this point in my life. I like to trend as much to Type 1 as possible.”
“I think sometimes you feel like you have to be doing exceptional things to have those big payoffs, but that's not true. I forget this myself sometimes. But, someone could go paddle Class II and have the time of their life and it could still be just as much fun for them as someone who goes and runs Class V. You know? But, it feels weird when you're like, ‘Oh yeah, I really want to go run some Class II rivers today.’ I'm always like, ‘Oh man, people think I'm so cheesy or not hardcore or something.’ It is really easy to be self-conscious outdoors at the same time as feeling really the opposite, feeling content.”
“Whenever I’m going out there, I've always thought it's nature granting me passage through its place and showing me something. That's the perspective I was raised in. Every time I go backpacking, it's like I'm going to travel through this and I hope that I'll be given safe passage or that I'm not going to have a bunch of shit go wrong. I was going into nature to have an experience with nature.
Some of those people that were really influential when I came up were always really big on that idea of finding passage or safe travel, the experience from A to Z. The completion of going through a canyoneering canyon has a very distinct start and finish. You're going through a technical section. When the technical section starts, there's no escape until you get through the end. So there was always this very distinct completion of that experience. But, it was never like, ‘Oh, I'm going to kick the shit out of this Canyon.’ It was more like, ‘How are we going to figure out how to move through this Canyon and see it and experience it in a beautiful way/’”
