Cowboy Professional: A Cultural Study of Big-Mountain Tourism in the Last Frontier

Abstract

Is Alaska home, or merely an iconic travel destination? A peripheral frontier, or a lived in, centered place? In this short talk, Forest Wagner presents his research about Alaska and its unique Big- Mountain Tourism. In addition to reflecting on his twelve years of experience leading the Outdoor Studies program, Forest interviewed and surveyed Alaskan big-mountain guides and their clients in two geographically exceptional landscapes: the Central Alaska Range and the Coast Mountains. These efforts revealed that the sometimes contradictory motivations of outdoor professionals and their unique clientele are layered in notions of authenticity, and that experiences in wild places in small groups often create a near ideal democracy. The story of Alaska's big-mountain tourism is more than one of an industry growing up. This is the story of Alaska and its evolving and often contested notions of identity.