Our Mission
Backcountry Squatters builds an inclusive outdoor community by providing opportunities for leadership, personal growth, and professional development.
This is accomplished through chapters that offer events for community building, DEI education, and honing technical skills.
Where the Journey Leads
Find Your People. Start Your Adventure.
Whether you’re new to the outdoors or already leading the way, there’s a place for you in Backcountry Squatters. With chapters on college campuses nationwide, our community is here to welcome you.
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More Than Just a Club
Being a Squatter means finding community, learning new skills, and growing as a leader. Members gain access to outdoor trips, workshops, DEI education, and pro deals that make adventures more accessible. Most of all, it’s about finding confidence and belonging in the outdoors.
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Grow Into a Leader
Backcountry Squatters empowers students to take on leadership roles within their chapters, gaining real-world skills in organizing trips, hosting events, and fostering inclusive communities.
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It Doesn’t End at Graduation
The Squatter experience doesn’t stop when college ends. Our alumni network connects former members with career opportunities, mentorship, and a lifelong community that continues to grow stronger every year.
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Help Us Empower the Next Generation
Backcountry Squatters is more than an organization — it’s a movement. By donating, sponsoring, or volunteering, you help us expand chapters, create more opportunities, and keep the outdoors accessible and inclusive.
Core Pillars of Backcountry Squatters
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When Backcountry Squatters members recreate together, they build life-long friendships and support networks that will see them through greater challenges to come.
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Backcountry Squatters invests in outdoor education for community members to increase women’s and non-binary individuals’ representation, participation, and leadership in the outdoor industry and community.
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Backcountry Squatters members educate themselves about historic and present forms of discrimination along racial and ethnic lines, sexual orientation, gender identity, class and religion. Our members learn about power and privilege in order to create an inclusive environment.
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Real growth happens outside. Backcountry Squatters members benefit from the connections, confidence, resilience, capability, health, and creativity that outdoor recreation provides.
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Backcountry Squatters gives women and non-binary individuals a safe environment to develop their unique leadership and collaboration style, often for the first time. Our members write their own narratives of what leadership looks like today.
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Through a relationship with the natural world, we have a strong desire to protect public lands, support the environment, and understand the importance of climate change— voting, donating, and shaping the world by doing so.
MORE THAN JUST A MARK
symbol for femininity
focal point of the summit represents the goal and lifting each other up to get there
tree + mountains + sun represent the great outdoors
sun + mountains create a person that appears to be embracing nature and their body