Washington Trails
Association
Trails for everyone, forever
Washington Trails
AssociationTrails for everyone, forever
Two hikers who want to make the outdoors more accessible are working together to get the right gear into more people’s hands. By Jessi Loerch
Last year, Dante Garcia and Jas Maisonet both attended Refuge Outdoor Festival, a 3-day event hosted by Golden Bricks Events geared toward getting people of color outdoors. They enjoyed a chance to spend time with community — although they didn’t actually meet at the event. Afterwards, people kept saying they needed to meet each other.
Dante and Jas took the hint and they connected. They soon realized that everyone had been right. Dante, the co-founder of the app Community Gearbox, was creating a way for communities to easily share gear among people they already knew. Jas, the creator of QPOC Hikers, was building community for folks who identify as queer people of color with an interest in the outdoors. Jas and Dante realized that, together, they could do more to support both of their goals.
Dante grew up in the Seattle area, where he was constantly exposed to the outdoors and outdoor activities. His friends had fancy stuff — stoves, tents and the like. But he simply couldn’t afford it. Living in the city, however, he craved time in nature.
Attending community events, like Refuge Outdoor Festival, is a great way to connect with like-minded people. Photo by Lilly Poppen
“The connection to the outdoors is a profound one,” he said. “Being able to jump in a lake or climb out on a ridge or see wildflowers … It’s healing and it connects us to something much larger than ourselves. I believe everyone should have access to that.”
But that access was a challenge. If he wanted to get outside, he had to borrow items from friends. He wants to help other people easily access outdoor gear to create an easier path to the outdoors.
With that goal in mind, Dante helped co-found Community Gearbox. The goal of the app is to help people share outdoor gear with other people in their community. In its first year, about 300 people used and helped test the new app, and shared over $120,000 worth of stuff with each other.
When Jas was growing up, camping meant sleeping in a tent with all the cousins in the backyard while visiting their family in Florida. After college, a former classmate invited Jas out to California for a week of camping at Yosemite. Jas walked onto the plane with their giant sleeping bag from the 90s as a carry-on. Their friend brought them a tent and a blow up mattress.
“Being outside for a week was super eye-opening,” they said.
Experiencing the Milky Way and a starry sky is a great way to connect with nature. Photo by Arnab Banerjee
Jas got to experience spending a night under the stars in a whole new way, and they found a new way to explore their passion for photography. With their friend who also studied photography, they took time lapse photos of the stars and the lights from headlamps on Half Dome.
Thanks to the help of their friend, Jas’s trip was a lot more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise.
“She helped me out, and I want to pay that forward,” they said. “I want to help people have the gear they need to have more comfortable experiences outside.”
Jas later moved to San Diego, where they found abundant hiking. When Jas moved to Seattle, they were looking for community and a way to explore the abundance of trails in the area.
“I wanted to create a space where people can share experiences and stories in a very healing environment,” they said. “I wanted to find a way to make honest, genuine connections with people who identified like me. A queer person of color who loves the outdoors.”
QPOC Hikers has grown and adapted over the years to meet the needs of its community. Now, they gather about once a month to hike or to learn together.
When Jas and Dante met, virtually at first, they immediately saw the potential for how they could work together. QPOC Hikers could benefit from helping its members share gear, and Community Gearbox was working to make that possible. In 2022, Dante and Jas applied for and received a grant from King County which supports organizations looking for creative ways to reduce waste. The grant helped them work together to improve the app and create in-person gear swaps.
Their first in-person event was in May. They offered a gear swap and had local organizations tabling and sharing information. About 50 people came together and swapped around $3,000 worth of gear. Jas and Dante received good feedback from the event’s participants, and are excited to use what they learned to plan similar events in the future.
Gear libraries, like WTA's in Seattle and Puyallup, can help get communities outdoors. Photo by Zyanya Alvarez
“We have social norms around individualism,” Dante said. “But we are social creatures and we have a drive to take care of each other.”
The early users of the app were folks who knew each other already, like a large group of friends. But Community Gearbox would also work well for groups like QPOC Hikers, whose members are all connected through the group itself.
Jas and Dante really believe that gear should never be a limiting factor — and yet they both know it is. Finding ways to share gear is good for people. It gives them a more comfortable way to enjoy time in nature and it’s good for the world. The more we can share gear, the less we have to produce and the less we have to strain the world’s resources.
When Jas first moved to Seattle, they learned that they needed different gear for hiking in the wet Pacific Northwest. And they’ve seen that need in QPOC Hikers as well. They’ve tried to do annual backpacking trips, but gear has been a challenge.
“I keep hearing ‘I don’t have gear, I don’t know what to do,’” Jas said.
In the future, they’d both love to never hear “I don’t have gear,” so they can instead focus on the joys of building community in the outdoors.
Dante and Jas continue to collaborate together, along with Vicki Shaw — who recently joined Community Gearbox as a co-founder — to increase access to gear and strengthen community for QPOC Hikers and similar groups. They’re currently working towards a first release of the app to be piloted by local outdoor groups in the new year as part of the Seattle Public Utilities' Waste Free Grant, which they recently received. If you’d like to connect with the team, pilot the app, and/or get involved, you can send an email to hello@communitygearbox.com.
