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GayOutdoors.com

By Robert DiGiacomo (Philadelphia Gay News).

Mike Boisvert loves the outdoors — he’s into hiking, biking, backpacking and paddling — and likes to test himself physically.

He’s climbed to 19,200 feet in South American and is planning a spring Himalayan expedition to Nepal. But as a longtime member of the Chiltern Mountain Club, a gay, lesbian and bisexual outdoors organization, the Manchester, N.H. resident realized there was no one place to find information on outdoor activities and trips and related equipment and skills. So two years ago he started the Web site Gayoutdoors.com.

"What I’m trying to do — there’s no central information clearinghouse for all those kinds of clubs," said Boisvert, who recently relaunched the site. "No one is communicating with each other. I’m trying to use the site as an avenue for other clubs to communicate with each other...People love it because they get to meet new people. There are a lot of pluses in this sharing of information."

Boisvert, who works as a bank auditor, has benefited personally from the site — he met his current boyfriend through an activity last spring. "People are looking for other people to do [activities] with and preferably gay people," Boisvert explained. "A lot of people have met each other through doing this — finding boyfriends or even just friends, friends who last for a long time, not like friends you meet in a bar and don’t see again.

"They’re trying to find a place where people can meet comfortably. It’s a really good atmosphere to meet people." Beyond providing a social outlet, GayOutdoors.com offers a section called Go Groups, where site users can develop an outdoor club where they live. "I’m trying to provide as many roads as possible for people to do things and get outside," Boisvert said. Perhaps most importantly, Boisvert says, the site is a free link to the often costly world of outdoor activities. Most outdoor clubs charge membership fees and use paper newsletters to distribute information about events and activities, although the public often can participate.

"When I discovered the Internet, I thought to myself, this is so much easier for people to access outdoor things and it’s free," Boisvert said. "A lot of people are prevented from doing things outdoors because of the cost associated with it. On the Web, it has access to everybody." That "everybody" doesn’t include as many lesbians as gay men, a situation Boisvert would like to remedy. "We wish we had more women," Boisvert said. "We need more women trip leaders. If men lead trips, women have the perception it’s a men’s club."

Towards that end, for his trip next May to Nepal, Boisvert has arranged for the group to be lead by Angela Hawse, a seasoned guide who is also a lesbian. He hopes the group will become the first gay team to climb Island Peak (20,305 feet). "I’m using a tour operator that lets you design the trip the way you want to," Boisvert said. "With a lot of outfitters, you have to do it their way. I select my dates, what I want to do...I specifically wanted gay guides." He is especially looking forward to this trip because when he led a gay and lesbian trip several years ago to the 23,000 ft. Mount Aconcagua on the Chilean-Argentinean border, the group had to turn back at 19,500 feet.

"We had excellent weather the whole time," Boisvert recalled. "There was a storm coming in and we didn’t have guides to save ourselves some money. We were apprehensive and we didn’t know what to expect with the storm coming in. We said we’re having such a great trip, why risk it and we came back down." For the nearly monthlong Nepal trip, Boisvert is optimistic of the expedition’s chances of meeting its climbing goal.

"To get that high and do all that work and turn around is so frustrating," he said. "So in Nepal we have a really good chance of going up." The spring trip is part of Boisvert’s preparations for his ultimate outdoor aspiration. "Hopefully, one of my goals, through GayOutdoors.com or some other means, is to have a gay and lesbian team on top of Mount Everest," he said. "It would be an awesome thing to accomplish."

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Hiking, backpacking, camping or vacation adventures, GayOutdoors [GO] has been the LGBTQ outdoorzy community leader for the last 22 years. We are an informal group of diverse hiking enthusiasts in the United States with a shared love of the mountains who prefer hiking with friends. We invite you to join us on our hikes, to post hikes for other members to join you and to share your hiking photos, stories and advice.

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