Packaging Tourism

The ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Vacation

By Courtney Lowery, 2-14-06

Aaron Kampfe and partner David Heinzen in a photo taken for a book on male couples titled Men Together`.

For years now, Aaron Kampfe's gay and lesbian travel company, OutWest Global Adventures, has been offering a Montana ranch vacation on his family's 12,000-acre spread near Red Lodge. But now the trip has been renamed the "Montana 'Brokeback Mountain' Ranch Vacation" - and demand is so strong that Kampfe is adding extra dates.

Kampfe, who owns OutWest with his partner of nearly 20 years, David Heinzen, says, "We're the real Brokeback Mountain, only nicer and less tragic." And the OutWest site has some further reassurances: "The scenery and the cattle drives will remind you of riding with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal; however, the lodge is far more comfortable than a tent and the food is much better than beans from a can."

Never mind that the movie is set in Wyoming, and was filmed in Canada; it's set off something of a ranch rush among gay vacationers all across the West.

Dan DiStasio, the marketing director the Florida-based gay travel company Alyson Adventures, says he's seen a 30 to 50 percent increase in interest in Western trips. Four weeks of the "Splash!" Grand Canyon trip are already booked and the "Butch Cassidy Days" trips in Wyoming's Grand Tetons are going fast too.

Does the surge in business have anything to do with Brokeback? "Absolutely," says DiStasio.

Kampfe reports that OutWest's other western packages, including trips to Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies, have also been big sellers this year.

Outdoor adventure travel remains a tiny niche within the booming gay and lesbian travel industry. Kampfe, an avid outdoorsman, recognized the opportunity back in 1995 and started OutWest in Missoula. The company, now based in Red Lodge, offers hiking, biking, sea kayaking and other activity-based trips in Europe, Africa, Asia and all three of the Americas.

The week-long Montana trip is to the working cattle ranch where Kampfe spent his childhood. The ranch, now run by Kampfe's sister, hosts guests 16 weeks out of the year, and OutWest usually books three or four of those weeks. The ranch sits in the shadows of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness 30 miles northeast of Yellowstone National Park. Guests bunk on the ranch and ride alongside real cowboys and cowgirls herding and driving the 2,000-head of cattle.

Kampfe says he aims to offer a comfortable environment for gays and lesbians to experience a cowboy culture.

"Most people think it's the 'Macho West,'" he says "But we make it safe and we make it OK.

"There are a lot of stereotypes of rural culture ... that it's homophobic," he says. "But when I came out at 17, it wasn't a big deal. It was 'OK, you're gay, get back on the horse and get back to work.'"

Life, happily, doesn't always imitate art.

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