As Intrepid launches its latest series of Active-ism adventures – designed to blend adventure with advocacy – we meet one of its guest trip leaders before she heads to Yosemite.
‘The combination of drag and climate, they seem ridiculous, no?’ says drag queen and climate activist Pattie Gonia in her 2024 TED Talk, dressed in a pink Barbie-esque ‘trashion’ dress made from thrifted shower curtains and upcycled flamingo pool inflatables.
‘I thought so too,’ she confesses to an audience rippling with laughter. ‘But then in 2018 on a backpacking trip in the middle of my quarter-life crisis, I put on a pair of six-inch heels and strutted the trails for the first time as Pattie Gonia’.
Right there on the Continental Divide Trail in Colorado, a new identity was born. The video of photographer and queer community organiser Wyn Wiley transformed as Pattie went viral as she danced about, eating trail snacks and announcing herself as the ‘first queen’ of the outdoors scene.
Using visibility to broaden inclusivity
But why, you might ask, did drag seem like a natural conduit for climate activism – or a ‘megaphone’, as Pattie puts it, to express her views? Because too often big issues like environmentalism come shrouded in downbeat, negative language devoid of joy. And joy and humour are what drag does best – making it the ideal antidote.
So, in an effort to defuse defeatism, Pattie went about spreading the glitter-scattered gospel, using the fun and flamboyant creativity of drag to get the message across.
‘Joy is a form of resistance,’ says Pattie. ‘When I’m out there in full drag, hiking boots and heels, I’m not just making a statement. I’m showing up exactly as I am in spaces that haven’t always welcomed people like me. That visibility matters. It says: “we belong here too”. It invites people to reimagine who the outdoors is for and what activism can look like’.
The upbeat approach worked, with Pattie since gathering a community of 1.5m followers on Instagram, co-founding the Outdoorist Oath to bring about better BIPOC and queer inclusion in the outdoors, and raising more than USD 2.5 million for climate action. This included a 100-mile trek in full drag in 2025 that raised USD 1 million for eight non-profits alone, to expand access and make the outdoors more equitable for all.
She’s also been recognised by TIME Magazine’s 2025 TIME100 Creators List, lauded by National Geographic as one of its 33 ‘agents of change’ – alongside actual Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard – and is currently touring with a drag show that combines her key cornerstones of humour, climate action and social justice.
Becoming an accidental activist
‘I wasn’t trying to be an activist,’ Pattie explains. ‘I just wanted to exist in nature exactly as I am. It honestly started out as joy. Me, in drag, hiking in the backcountry trying to feel free in a world that often told me to shrink’.
A key issue that Pattie has been vocal about recently is the proposed USD 1 billion cut to the National Park Service (NPS) in the United States, which risked the closure – or reduction of services – at 350 historic sites, as well as job losses and cuts to key cultural programmes designed to bring Indigenous history and community stories to life.
For now, as of January 2026, the cuts have been rejected by Congress, but it still poses a threat that could still reemerge in future budgets.
‘What’s at stake with the National Park Service cuts is so much more than just hiking trails and scenic views,’ says Pattie. ‘When we cut funding, we’re not just cutting jobs. We’re cutting access, truth-telling and opportunity.’
We talk about the practice of ‘snitch signs’ – government officials putting up signs asking visitors to report if the history being told at certain sites is ‘too negative’.
Pattie speaks passionately about the subject, saying we shouldn’t stop talking about slavery at Harriet Tubman’s site in New York, where she fought for civil rights and acted as a key figure in the Underground Railroad movement to help enslaved people escape from the American South to the free states in the north and Canada. And we shouldn’t sanitise the truth at Manzanar in California, one of ten American concentration camps, where Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
‘No, ma’am. That’s not history. That’s erasure,’ she says. ‘These spaces belong to everyone and that means everyone’s stories deserve to be told – the beautiful and the brutal. If we erase history, we erase the people it impacted. And that’s exactly why now is the time to fight – not just for the land, but for the truth that lives on it.’
Celebrating the climate movement
So, as Intrepid rolls out a new collection of Active-ism trips – designed to blend adventure with advocacy – Pattie was obviously a natural choice to lead one of four curated adventures to US National Parks, along with fellow activists Wawa Gatheru (aka Black Girl Environmentalist), climate campaigner Michael Mezzatesta and Leah Thomas (aka Green Girl Leah).
‘These Active-ism trips matter,’ she says. ‘They’re not just about visiting beautiful places – they’re about understanding what’s at stake and learning how to take action. For me, what started as a personal journey became a mission because being out in these places changed me. When you experience these landscapes firsthand, it doesn’t just create memories; it creates responsibility.’
Her fun, informative style of communicating serious messaging leaves me in no doubt that Pattie will be taking to the trails of Yosemite with the same joyful zest for life that’s underpinned every six-inch step of her journey since she was born in the backcountry in 2018.
Pattie agrees: ‘We have to celebrate the climate movement. We have to party. We deserve more than doom and gloom… Because this is the only planet with a Beyonce on it.’
How you become an outdoors activist too
Although Pattie’s trip might be sold out, you can still join one of the other thought-leaders on an Active-ism adventure. But even if you can’t, she has some words of wisdom for how you too can move through the world with purpose and pizzazz.
‘If you want to make an impact, start local, start loud and start with love. You don’t need to summit a mountain to make a difference. Volunteer at a local park. Share the stories of communities being erased from the outdoors. Sign the petitions. Donate if you can…’
‘But also: bring someone with you. Especially someone who’s never felt welcome in those spaces before. That’s how we change the face of the outdoors: not just through policy, but through presence. That’s how movements grow.’
Advocate for our wild spaces by exploring Intrepid’s latest drop of Active-ism trips today.
Images: photography by Claire S Burke, Mike Fernandez, Evan Benally Atwood and Karen Obrist.
