No Tan Lines, No Wi-Fi, No Women: Why Guys Are Hiking Mountains in Nothing but Boots

There's a Google Calendar invite floating around the Pacific Northwest right now for a hike you won't find on AllTrails. The dress code is listed as 'optional, but strongly discouraged.' Around fifteen guys show up to these things — accountants, a paramedic, one retired postal worker named Gary who owns exactly zero shame. They hike six miles through Douglas fir country wearing boots, socks, hats, and a smile.

If that sounds like a fringe experiment, the numbers say otherwise. Men's outdoor naturism groups have popped up in at least a dozen states over the past five years — nude kayaking outings on Midwest rivers, clothing-optional fishing weekends in the Ozarks, even a naked gardening co-op outside Asheville that sells heirloom tomatoes to very confused farmers market customers.

The Rules Are Simpler Than You'd Think

Every group we contacted has a code, and it's remarkably consistent. Sit on a towel. Bring your own everything. What's said on the trail stays on the trail. And the big one: this is about being naked, not about seeing anyone naked. Eyes up, always.

'People assume the worst,' says Derek, who runs a nude paddling group out of Missouri. 'Then they come once and realize it's the least sexual room they've ever been in. It's just dudes arguing about kayaks.'

The male-only aspect is a deliberate choice, not a dodge. Organizers say the absence of anyone to impress — real or imagined — is the whole point. Many members are straight, married, and describe their first outing as 'the least awkward thing I've done since joining a bowling league.'

The First Fifteen Minutes Are Brutal

Ask any first-timer and they'll describe the same ritual: the parking lot bravado, the moment of truth at the trailhead, and the immediate discovery that nobody — and we mean nobody — is looking at you.

'I stood there like an idiot holding my shorts for a solid minute,' one Portland hiker told us. 'Then Gary just starts walking up the trail like it's nothing, and I realized the only person grading me was me. So I dropped 'em and caught up.'

That's the recurring theme: the fear of judgment dissolves the second you realize the group has collectively agreed that bodies are just bodies. Cellulite, scars, dad bods, surgery marks, the weird toe — all of it, out in the open air, unremarkable.

Fitness Trend, Social Club, or Something Else?

Skeptics call it a novelty. The members call it the best part of their month.

There's a real case for the wellness angle — outdoor exercise, vitamin D in places that have never seen it, the documented mood boost of skin contact with air and sun. But the men we spoke to kept circling back to something less measurable: friendship without armor.

'Guys my age don't make friends anymore,' said a 52-year-old from the Ozarks group. 'We have coworkers and we have wives' friends' husbands. This is different. You can't posture when you've got nothing on. Everybody's on equal footing. Literally.'

Whether it's a movement or just a very committed hobby, the groups keep growing. The Cascades hike has a waitlist. The Missouri river trip booked out in March.

So if you've ever wondered what's happening deep in the national forest while you're stuck on your third Zoom call of the day — it's Gary. Gary's having the time of his life, and he doesn't need a towel to prove it.