Grassroots Network

Grassroots Insights from the Backcountry

At a time where we are witnessing the erosion of frameworks and regulations that have protected our public lands for decades, the grassroots work of our community is more important than ever. We are excited to showcase some of this work in a new Backcountry Impact Report: Insights from the Backcountry 2025/2026. If you’re already a part of our community and contributing to this work, thank you. If not, we hope this report will inspire and empower you to join our community as we work to protect wild snowscapes in every way possible.

Historically, human-powered winter recreation uses such as backcountry skiing and snowplay, have not been captured in the U.S. Forest Service’s National Visitor Use Monitoring (NVUM) survey, which is the country’s primary federal recreation dataset. So, it has been hard to create an accurate picture of who is using our nation’s winter wildlands and how. While this report is in no way comprehensive, it aims to start addressing the data gap by pairing industry data with grassroots partner information and our own field research to paint a picture of the current state of backcountry winter recreation.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• Lower and more variable snow years (like the 2025/2026 season) are reshaping recreation patterns, access, and visitation.
• Grassroots organizations and volunteers are carrying a growing share of stewardship and education work to maintain and grow winter backcountry recreation.
• Major gaps still exist in winter recreation data, especially around quantifying dispersed and non-motorized use.