REI’s popular adventure trips are back
When REI Co-op announced in January 2025 it was sunsetting the travel business it ran since 1987, its loyal, adventure-loving customers were filled with feelings.
One Redditor said the news was “sad” and that taking a trip with REI Experiences had been “on their bucket list for retirement.”
Another lamented the 400 employees who lost their jobs in the closure and wanted to know how shutting down Experiences would impact REI’s nationwide network of partner operators that had handled logistics and guiding for its many day tours, classes and adventure trips.
Numbers from REI’s press release about the closure shed light on the company’s abrupt decision. The division had apparently served 40,000 customers in 2024, which sounds like a lot but counts for just 0.4% of all co-op business.
Turns out, running tours around the world lost millions of dollars a year, wrote now-retired CEO Eric Artz, and that pulled resources away REI’s core retail model. The closure eliminated 180 full-time jobs and 248 part-time guide positions, and every trip already booked for 2025 and 2026 was refunded.
Travelers pose at the entrance sign for Denali National Park and Preserve during the first REI x Intrepid Travel group hiking and kayaking trip in Alaska.
(Bradley Mahnke)A year later, the trips are back thanks to a new partnership with Australian-based adventure travel company Intrepid Travel, and REI executives say the closure was never meant to be permanent.
“We told ourselves this is not the end of travel and experiences for our members,” REI business development head Payam Abbassian said in a recent meet-and-greet during a press trip to Alaska, where I was among six travel writers and content creators invited to experience the partnership’s inaugural Alaska Hike and Kayak trip.
As Experiences was closing, Abbassian said Rei would “deeply listen to the customer and the member and understand what model we want to bring it back in.”
That process surfaced one truth: customers missed travel experiences. “So, it was top priority to figure out what to do,” Abbassian said.
A wildlife sightings chalkboard at the entrance to Kenai Fjords National Park logs recent animal encounters, including a Steller’s jay spotted at 8:43 a.m. near the entrance.
(Megan DeMatteo)Why Intrepid
REI searched far and wide for an ideal adventure travel operator to partner with, and the company said none matched Intrepid on scale or values. “There are a lot of adventure travel operators in the world, but there was not one that even came close to Intrepid, who is like the equal of REI in their world,” Abbassian said.
Leigh Barnes, Intrepid’s president for the Americas, described his interest in courting REI as dating back roughly a decade, to when he visited REI’s SoHo store in New York around 2015. “This is like Intrepid personified in a physical location,” he recalled thinking at the time, and he looked for the right time to get in touch with the company.
Once the two sides finally sat down together, the match came together fast. “Immediately from the first conversation, I was like, this is a partner,” Abbassian said.
Interestingly, Intrepid already owned Wildland Trekking, one of the companies that forlorn REI members pointed one another to in Reddit threads seeking alternatives to their beloved shuttered Experiences trips. An early nod of approval from the REI community? Time will tell.
Kayakers paddle through Resurrection Bay near Seward, Alaska, as low clouds settle over the surrounding hills during the first-ever REI x Intrepid Alaska hike and kayak trip.
(Megan DeMatteo)How REI trips differ with Intrepid
The old Experiences model relied upon REI staffing and managing every trip itself, including instructors, trip leaders and third-party tour operators as needed. Now, Intrepid handles the traveler’s trip from start to finish. That’s good, since Intrepid has specialized in small-group tours since 1989 and has experience designing deeply immersive trips in over 100 countries.
Travelers can choose from two types of adventures: REI Exclusive trips created specifically for the REI community, and REI Recommended trips, which are existing Intrepid Travel itineraries selected by REI’s team. Destinations range from off-the-beaten-path National Parks to bucket-list experiences like hiking Patagonia or Japan’s ancient pilgrim routes. For now, activities include hiking, backpacking and kayaking.
REI Exclusive trips give REI Members a 15% discount on booking price, and REI Recommended trips add on a 20% coupon for REI Members to help them buy gear at the co-op after booking.
Upon registering, customers receive a curated packing list along with their itinerary and can talk their needs through with an REI “green-vest” staff member in the store before embarking on the trip. For the technical stuff, Intrepid partners with local guide companies who provide specialized guiding and equipment such as crampons and paddle gear.
For all trips, 1% of what customers pay funds the REI Cooperative Action Fund and goes back into outdoor access projects.
A juvenile bald eagle, still lacking its distinctive white head feathers, perches on a dock piling in Seward, Alaska.
(Megan DeMatteo)REI Alaska hike and kayak trip review: A first look at the new Intrepid Travel adventures
I joined the first departure of REI’s new Alaska Hike and Kayak adventure with Intrepid Travel to find out what the experience is like.
Over seven days, I traveled with a group of seven fellow adventurers through some of Alaska’s most iconic landscapes. Our itinerary mapped out a journey from Anchorage to Denali National Park, the Matanuska Glacier and finally to the coastal town of Seward. Bradley Mahnke, our knowledgable guide, handled the logistics and shared knowledge that helped the group experience Alaska in a meaningful way.
A closer look at the journey
From Alaska’s interior wilderness to its glacier-carved coastline, here were some of the moments that stood out most during our week:
Megan DeMatteo holds an ice cream cone in front of Wild Scoops ice cream shop in Anchorage, Alaska. The shop specializes in handcrafted Alaskan ice cream flavors.
(Angela Rodriguez)Kicking things off in Anchorage
The trip started with beers at 49th State Brewing, where Intrepid’s Leigh Barnes and REI’s Payam Abbassian toasted the new partnership. For dessert, we tasted regional ice cream flavors like Alaskan Fireweed and Wild Blueberry at Wild Scoops.
The next day brought a visit to the Anchorage REI, the co-op’s third highest volume store in the country, even though the city has only about 300,000 people. Store manager Jason Priest said the easiest way to spot a tourist gearing up for an adventure is from their shopping cart of rain jackets, sunscreen and bug spray—pro tip: prepare to stock up when your plane wheels touch down!
Hikers make their way along a rain-soaked trail through the coastal rainforest near Tonsina Point outside Seward, Alaska.
(Megan DeMatteo)Learning about Alaska’s Native heritage
Then, we headed to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where six traditionally built house sites tell the story of Alaska Native Peoples, who still live and thrive across the state’s varied geography, from its temperate rainforests in the southwest to arctic regions up north. In Alaska there are 227 recognized Alaska Native Villages.
Our interpretive guide Channing explained how Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian carvers built totem poles that function almost like books to record clan lineage with Eagle and Raven symbology. Around us, red cedar walls swelled in the rain to seal out drafts from the wind.
Next, we learned that native builders in Alaska’s barrier islands region cleverly learned how to make shelter from driftwood that had been strewn throughout the coastal archipelago by gusts of wind averaging 50 to 90 miles per hour. We touched a few sea otter pelts—the densest fur on Earth—and learned about how the practice of trapping otters became illegal after the Russian fur trade.
A spread of skewered shrimp and elk, black beans, rice and coleslaw covers the table during a lunch stop at Skewed North in Talkeetna, Alaska, alongside a lemon raspberry hibiscus seltzer meant to evoke local salmonberries.
(Megan DeMatteo)A lunch stop in Talkeetna, then Denali
From Anchorage, our route north to Denali National Park passed through the unforgettably whimsical town of Talkeetna before entering the park’s wilderness.
A second full day in Denali brought sweeping mountain views and a visit with the park’s working sled dogs, whose 15,000-year partnership with humans traces back to wolves following early hunters for scraps.
Denali’s first superintendent, Harry Karstens, was a musher himself and used his own dog team to patrol against illegal hunting of Dall sheep.
Intrepid Travel tour leader Bradley Mahnke playfully applies glacial silt as a facial mask during a hike on the Matanuska Glacier—a bit of comic relief for the good sport tasked with keeping up with an all-women press trip.
(Megan DeMatteo)Hiking on ice
Next came the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska’s largest road-accessible glacier, where we donned crampons and helmets for a hike across ancient crevasses and ice formations shaped over thousands of years.
The drive south to Seward followed. Along the way our van traced Turnagain Arm’s dramatic coastline.
A harbor seal peers out of the water in Resurrection Bay near Seward, Alaska. Our own seal sighting came and went too fast for a camera, one of those moments better lived than photographed. Photo credit: Robson Abbott (Getty Images)
(RobsonAbbott via Getty Images)Coastal wildlife sightings for days
In Seward, we had two full days on Resurrection Bay. Most memorably, we were lucky enough to experience the thrill of tandem kayaking past otters, seals and bald eagles (silently of course—we didn’t want to scare them!). Kayaking was paired with a hike through the lush coastal rainforest of Tonsina Creek Trail.
Separately, during a four-hour wildlife cruise with Major Marine Tours, we learned about the barrier islands blocking the water’s swell to protect the harbor, and a stretch of shoreline where a massive 1964 earthquake and tsunami dropped land nearly seven feet in under five minutes, drowning a forest into what locals now call a ghost forest.
Hikers pause at a marker showing the glacier’s 2005 edge along the Exit Glacier trail in Kenai Fjords National Park, a visible reminder of how much the ice has retreated in just two decades.
(Megan DeMatteo)Before the drive back to Anchorage, the group made a final stop at Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park for one last glimpse of ice.
Intrepid’s style of small-group solo travel like this left me with a group of new instant-besties, some fascinating trivia tidbits to impress my friends and most importantly, knowledge of the land comprising our 49th state, stretching back to time immemorial.
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Disclosure: The author was a guest of Intrepid Travel. Hosting organizations do not review or approve articles before publication. All observations reflect the author’s independent review.
How this was made: AI assisted with structure, formatting, interview transcription and metadata. All reporting, product testing, research, interviews, fact-checking, writing and editing was done by Megan DeMatteo, an independent writer and editor who, like many solo creators, handles the full workload of a traditional newsroom team.
