I Don’t Want a Fancy Adventuremobile. A Sedan Gets Me There Just Fine.

Cars are tools, not jewels. Just ask my friend Brian and his Fiat 500. While I eye-rolled him for years from a place of Subaru superiority, Brian, with the help of his trusty mini-steed (adventure pony, perhaps?), logged more trail hours than our entire friend group combined. We all spent time on mods, maintenance, and the mechanic bills that went with them. Brian, however, tucked his ego away and found the whip that not only did the job but kept him out on the open road. Oh, and parking? Yeah, that guy zipped circles around us every day of the week.

When it came time to upgrade my wheels recently, I scanned forums and used car sites, hoping to find the next dream vehicle to support my outdoors lifestyle—while still holding onto my Seattle city existence. If the onslaught of recommendations and ranking was dizzying, the price tags were downright vertigo-inducing. Sick of it all, I remembered Brian. Maybe I’d been barking up the wrong tree entirely. Maybe I didn’t actually want a fancy adventuremobile. After all, a sedan could get me to the trailhead just fine.

There’s a lot to love about a mobile basecamp, but do I really need it? After years of being groomed to think that I had to wake up on a memory foam mattress in my vaulted ceiling Sprinter van, accompanied by a nice pour-over courtesy of my solar-powered built-in stovetop, I had to take a hard look at some facts. First off, I don’t even drink coffee. Second, I live 45 minutes from the trailhead—what am I doing exploring a second home (and mortgage) on wheels?

As a casual hiker, my car should be a means to a trail’s end; get me there and let my body do the rest. The thing isn’t bagging peaks, so why does it need all of the hypothetical gear to do so (rope, axe, first aid kit, shovel, etc.) strapped to its exterior while it sits in the parking lot? At this stage of my outdoors recreating, everything I need is in my pack. The rest is just an advertisement for a product I’m not equipped to sell.

The more I pull back the layers of my adventure rig conditioning, the more I realize how personal of a problem this has become—and how easy it is to solve. Find the right tool for the project. If it’s a four-wheel drive minivan for your ski adventures, great. If it’s a smart car with just enough room to strap down your canoe, hey, that’ll get it done. Nobody ever talks about the shiniest hammer, but they’ll always remember a job well done.

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Kade Krichko is a well-traveled feature writer and an aspiring ski gossip columnist whose work has appeared in SKI, Powder, The Ski Journal, and more. Outside of skiing, Kade has published stories with The New York Times, ESPN, and Deseret, among others, and he is currently the editor of the award-winning print travel magazine Ori. In addition to seeking out slushy bumps and steep trees, he is fluent in two languages and has gotten lost in many others.