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Thrills for Sale: Deadly Adventures
The Travel Critic · October 21, 1999

Dog sledding in Alaska. Off-roading in Baja. Running with the bulls in Pamplona.

Marc Madnick has done it all, and that's just for starters. Next year, the 34-year-old father of two is heading to Morocco to cross the desert. "I'm also planning to go shark-cage diving in South Africa soon," he says.

But Madnick is no modern-day Marco Polo. He's the chief executive of an Encino, Calif., software company, a self-described "couch potato" and part of one of the biggest travel industry trends since the advent of air travel.

Half of all Americans take "adventure" trips, according to a recent study by the Travel Industry Association of America. Almost one-third of the respondents to a recent DuPont-commissioned poll described their vacations as an "adventure." And 40 percent of travelers answering a recent Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown survey said they want to visit a "remote or untouched destination" on their next getaway.

Sounds like a great opportunity to spend a lot of money. Or get yourself hurt.

The TIA study reveals that the riskier the trip, the more expensive it is. So called "hard" adventure travelers - the folks going rock climbing or diving - shelled out $51 per visit more than the softies doing the camping or canoeing.

"Intuitively, we know this is benefiting the travel industry," observes Peter Yesawich, chief executive of the Orlando, Fla., marketing company that bears his name. "Adventure travel appeals to the sport utility vehicle crowd that expects to explore the Amazon by day and return to white linens and a fine Cabernet for dinner."

You can't blame tour operators for trying to cash in on this market. But it's the risk that concerns me. No one keeps statistics on the risks of these exotic trips, but there's lots of anecdotal evidence that these treks can turn deadly.

Jon Krakauer's page-turner Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster detailed the fatal misadventures of inexperienced tourists scaling Mount Everest. The same year it was published, six sailors died when a devastating storm hit a Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. And this summer, 19 adventurers were killed by a flash flood while they were practicing the dangerous sport of "canyoning" in the Swiss Alps.

What's so puzzling is why people continue to put themselves in harm's way, and why tour operators keep letting it happen. "There's a lot of publicity that makes it sound like anyone with $70,000 could get to the top of Everest without a problem. And it's true that some of the companies that offer expeditions aren't necessarily strict about who they take," says Larry Johnson, co-author of the upcoming book Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine. "I think there's something lacking in the typical American's life, and people want a little bit of a challenge."

Books like Johnson's aren't exactly helping. Despite a somber and often reverent tone, and chapter titles such as "More Like War than Adventure," the manuscript is not without its escapist qualities. I can't imagine some readers not wanting to climb the highest mountain on Earth after they're done with it.

Even though The Perfect Storm : A True Story of Men Against the Sea wasn't about thrill-seeking tourists, per se, author Sebastian Junger's contributions to the big-game fishing business shouldn't be discounted, either. People read books like his then crave an adventure on the high seas.

If part of the reason for this surge of interest in adventure travel is our dreadfully boring lives, then another part surely must be this media frenzy over anything remotely adventurous.

When Norman MacLean's 1976 novella A River Runs Through It got turned into a movie, Aspen's Hotel Jerome, which isn't even in the story, was so overrun by wannabe anglers that it introduced a special fly-fishing package tied to the film and book.

After the theatrical release of The River Wild, West Virginia tourism officials noticed a 30 percent increase in white-water rafting-related tourism, even though West Virginia isn't mentioned once in the movie.

Roberto Robles, Guatemala's director of tourism, told me he credits "recent books and documentaries on adventure travel" with a 10 percent increase in visitors to his destination. "They no longer just look for a vacation that offers sandy beaches and tropical fruit drinks," he says. "They want an intense, action-packed experience to write home about."

I asked Phil Keoghan, host and executive producer of the Travel Channel show Phil Keoghan's Adventure Crazy, what he made of this media-induced adventure travel madness.

"Adventure travel is portrayed as something your can do without any preparation," he responds. "I believe people have a false sense of their own mortality and are pushing themselves beyond their own capabilities. They're living dangerously."

Couldn't have put it better myself. Not only are we creating a market for avaricious and irresponsible tour operators, who will take any out-of-shape vacationer on a dangerous trip. We're also paying too high a price to quench our insatiable thirst for adventure. Some of us will just get taken for a lot of dough, but others will undoubtedly lose their lives.

There must be a better way of getting our thrills than having an adventure that's to die for.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.