About Girls Gone Hiking™: Why I Started a Community for Women Who Didn't Want to Hike Alone

Aug 7

Grab a coffee. Settle in. This is the real story of Girls Gone Hiking. Not the polished, business-card version, just the honest one.

I'm Melanie Jeske, and I'm the founder of Girls Gone Hiking™ (GGH). If you've found your way to this page, you've probably seen us on the trail, scrolled past us on Instagram, or heard about us from a friend who couldn't stop talking about a hike she just did with "her GGH girls." Before you join us on a trail, I want you to know who's actually behind this, and why it exists in the first place. Not the mission-statement version. The real one.

I'm writing this the way I'd tell it if we were sitting across from each other, coffee in hand, before a hike. No polish, no corporate voice, just the truth of how a small idea turned into something I never expected to build.

What Girls Gone Hiking Is Today

Let me start with where things stand right now, because it's honestly a little wild to type out.

Girls Gone Hiking has grown into a hiking community with more than 10,000 members across Utah, Minnesota, and our national community. We've led dozens of hikes together, on trails ranging from easy sunset strolls to full-day summits. We've built a team of hike leads and ambassadors. Women who show up week after week, not because it's required of them, but because they genuinely care about the women in their chapter.

Behind the scenes, there's a lot more structure than most people realize. We've written the waivers. We've built out safety procedures so that every hike, regardless of who's leading it, follows the same standard. We've created leadership training so hike leaders know exactly how to keep a group safe and welcomed, not just how to find a trailhead. We've secured insurance. We've built a community model that's designed to scale, one that can be handed to a new ambassador in a new state and still feel like Girls Gone Hiking.

On paper, that's a lot. It reads like something you'd find in a business plan, or a pitch deck, or an investor update. It's the kind of infrastructure that takes real time and real intention to build, and I'm proud of every piece of it. The training that keeps hike leaders confident, the insurance that keeps everyone protected, the systems that let a chapter in one state run just as smoothly as the one where this all began.

But none of that is the reason I started it. Not even close.

Why I Started GGH

I didn't create Girls Gone Hiking because I was the strongest hiker out there. I wasn't, and I'm still not chasing that title. I didn't create it because I set out to build a business, either. Honestly, I created it almost by accident, and it turned into something I never saw coming.

I need to back up a little first, because I think it matters. I've been an outdoorsy person my entire life. Being outside was never a phase I grew into or a wellness trend I picked up — it's simply how I'm wired, and it always has been. So when Girls Gone Hiking started, it wasn't me stepping into something new and unfamiliar. It was an extension of something that had already been part of me for as long as I can remember.

It started small, almost too small to notice at the time. Girls Gone Hiking began as an Instagram page, nothing more than a place where my friends and I could share the hikes we were already doing together. That's genuinely all it was supposed to be. A little digital scrapbook for a group of women who liked getting outside.

But life doesn't stay still, and it definitely doesn't stay in sync. My friends and I were all landing in different seasons of life at the same time, and those seasons started pulling us in different directions. Some of us were building careers and chasing promotions. Some were getting married. Some were starting families. Some were buying their first homes. Some were traveling, checking off places they'd dreamed about for years. Every single one of those things was good. Every one of them was worth celebrating. But none of it lined up on a shared calendar the way it used to when we were all just meeting up for a Saturday hike without a second thought.

Our schedules stopped syncing. The group hikes that used to be effortless to plan got harder and harder to actually pull off. So I did the simplest thing I could think of, I opened it up to the public.

I want to be honest with you about something, because I think it's the most vulnerable part of this whole story: I genuinely thought this would be a passing season in my life. A fun little chapter, not a foundation for anything lasting. I had absolutely no idea what I was actually starting.

Our very first hike as Girls Gone Hiking was Rattlesnake Gulch to the SLC Overlook. We still call it the trail that started it all, and we mean it literally… it's the exact trail everything traces back to.

What happened next surprised me in a way I still think about. Interest built faster and wider than I'd planned for or expected. Women started showing up. Not just to log a hike, but to be part of something bigger than a single trail. And then something else started happening that I couldn't have manufactured if I'd tried: women who met each other on our hikes started building real friendships. Not the kind of surface-level trail small talk you forget by the parking lot. Actual, lasting relationships. Friendships that carried on long after the hike ended, that showed up in each other's lives outside of GGH entirely.

I kept watching it happen, hike after hike. Women connecting with other women they may never have crossed paths with otherwise (different ages, different backgrounds, different seasons of life), all finding each other on the same trail. Real bonds forming out of something as simple as walking up a mountain together. And that, more than any number or any growth chart, is what convinced me to keep going. Not the size of the community. The depth of what was forming inside it.

What Girls Gone Hiking Actually Means

Girls Gone Hiking has never been about how many miles you hike.

It isn't about how fast you are.

It isn't about reaching the hardest summit, bagging the most peaks, or out-hiking anyone else in the group.

It's about community. Friendship. Confidence. Encouragement. Adventure. Mental wellness. Getting outside. It's about helping women discover they're capable of more than they think they are… on the trail and off it.

I want every woman to leave one of our hikes feeling more confident than when she arrived. That's the actual measure of success I care about. Not elevation gain. Not pace. Not who reached the top first.

I know, personally, what it feels like to want to hike and not have someone to go with. I know what it's like to want to spend more time outside, to want to make friends, to want to get healthier and more confident, to want to see beautiful places, but to feel intimidated by hiking alone, or hesitant to join a group where you don't know a single soul. I wanted to remove that barrier entirely, for every woman who felt exactly that way.

I wanted a woman who had never hiked a single day in her life to show up to one of our hikes and know, immediately, without question, that she belonged there. No experience required. No gear expertise required. No hiking partner required. Just show up as you are.

That's not a tagline to me. It's the entire reason this exists.

Every waiver we've written, every training session we've built, every ambassador we've brought on, all of it serves this one goal. Making sure the barrier to entry is as low as it can possibly be, so the only thing standing between a woman and a trailhead is deciding to show up.

My Vision for Where This Goes

My vision for Girls Gone Hiking is bigger than organizing hikes, even though organizing hikes is exactly where all of this started.

I want Girls Gone Hiking to become a genuinely nationwide community, the kind of thing where a woman can move to a brand-new city, knowing absolutely no one, and instantly have people to hike with. Where she doesn't have to spend months feeling isolated before she finds her people. Where the community is already there, waiting, ready to welcome her in on her very first week in town.

I want women to walk away from GGH with lifelong friendships, the same kind I've watched form on our trails since that very first hike up to the SLC Overlook. I want local ambassadors in every chapter who genuinely care about their communities, not because it's a job description, but because they believe in what we're building together. I want a brand-new hiker, lacing up her boots for the first time, to feel every bit as welcome as someone who's summited a dozen peaks and knows every switchback by name.

Hiking is the excuse. Community is the reason women stay.

That's the whole philosophy behind everything we've built, the waivers, the training, the insurance, the leadership pipeline, all of it. None of that infrastructure exists for its own sake. It exists so the community part can happen safely, sustainably, and in more places than just the corner of the map where I happen to live. It exists so this can outgrow me, in the best possible way.

You Belong Here

If you've read this far, here's what I want you to take away: Girls Gone Hiking isn't a business I built and then went looking for people to fill it. It's a community that built itself, largely because women kept showing up for each other on trail after trail, and I made the decision to protect that and keep growing it, on purpose.

Whether you've never laced up a pair of hiking boots in your life or you already have a favorite trail you could hike with your eyes closed, there's a place for you here. That's not a marketing line, it's the standard we actually try to hold ourselves to on every single hike. We hike together. We leave no one behind.

If you're ready to see what that looks like in person, find an upcoming hike near you, check whether your city already has a GGH chapter, or reach out if you don't see one nearby yet — we're actively expanding, and the next chapter might be the one you help start.

Come hike with us. Bring a friend along, or come make new ones on the trail. Either way, you won't be hiking alone. That was always the whole point.

Somewhere out there is a woman staring at a trailhead sign right now, wondering if she should go alone or wait until someone else wants to come. I started Girls Gone Hiking so she'd never have to choose between the two. I hope you'll let us be that someone else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need hiking experience to join Girls Gone Hiking? No. GGH is built to welcome complete beginners just as warmly as experienced hikers. Every hike is about connection and confidence, not pace or difficulty, so there's no experience requirement to show up.

Where does Girls Gone Hiking currently have chapters? GGH is active in Utah and Minnesota, with a growing national community and additional chapters in the works as we continue expanding across the United States.

Is Girls Gone Hiking free to join? Weekly hikes are free to attend. GGH generates revenue only through paid events and trips, so the core community experience stays accessible to everyone.

How do I become a hike leader or ambassador? GGH has a structured path for hike leaders and ambassadors, including training and support along the way. Reach out through the website to learn about current opportunities in your area.

What if there isn't a GGH chapter near me yet? Girls Gone Hiking is actively expanding into new states. Reach out to express interest in starting a chapter where you live — we're always looking for women who want to bring this to their own community.