–By Brian Clark, for WisBusiness.com
When Tania Burke was growing up in Pewaukee, she often hiked with her family at Devil’s Lake State Park near Baraboo.
“I loved it,” said Burke, president of Madison-based Trek Travel, which has been leading bicycle tours around the globe for more than two decades.
Starting this fall, though, Trek Travel will embrace hiking and walking by offering weeklong trips in Scotland, Ireland, Portugal and Italy. Come 2025, Trek Travel’s jaunts will expand to more challenging terrain in the Italian Dolomites and French Alps, Burke said.
In high school, she traveled with her contractor father to Arizona’s Grand Canyon and California’s Joshua Tree, rambling on trails while he did projects for the National Park Service. Later, while guiding bike tours for Backroads, she also led walking trips.
And when she lived for a time in Aspen, Colo., she hiked to the top of five of the state’s “Fourteeners,” peaks that tower above 14,000 feet. She also trekked to the top of several volcanoes in Chile.
“So yes, I’ve long been passionate about hiking,” she said.
“And when we started Trek Travel back in 2002, hiking was included as a possibility,” she said.
But with its close ties to Waterloo-based Trek Bicycles — where her husband, John, is president — the company focused on cycling adventures.
Though walking, sea kayaking and whitewater rafting are offered as single-day options on some bike tours, hiking-only trips remained on the back burner as the company continued to grow, Burke said.
She said business boomed during the pandemic, when many people turned to cycling and outdoor vacations. Since then, she said business has continued to increase. E-bikes have become popular and opened up more options for cycling trips.
“But at a wedding last summer, a good friend who has done around a dozen Trek Travel trips sheepishly said she was going on a hiking trip with a competitor,” Burke recalled.
“Then the friend added, ‘But if you offered those, I would definitely go with you. And that got me thinking,” she said.
Burke said her friend is getting a little older and still biking, but is now mixing up her trips with walking, one indication that the active travel industry is evolving.
And the potential market is huge, said Trek Travel spokesman Jake Fergus.
In the United States alone, there are 59 million active hikers, which is more than the total road cycling global ridership based on recent estimations, he added
Burke said she assembled the company’s leadership team last August to discuss the pros and cons of adding hiking and walking trips.
“We also surveyed our cycling customers and decided to proceed because they said they’d prefer to hike with us because of our hospitality and the quality experience that Trek Travel creates.”
But not everyone was convinced.
“Some people said ‘stick to bike tours,’” she said with a chuckle.
Burke said she believes the demographic for hiking trips is a little older than those who cycle with Trek Travel, where the average age is in the 50s. The more avid hiking offerings coming next year will probably skew younger and be in the 40s, she said.
As for the trips this summer, she said they won’t be too difficult, with Scotland and Portugal ranked 2 on a scale of 4. Ireland is 2-3 and the Cinque Terre Italian trip is a 3.
“It depends on the terrain, the length of the walk, the elevation gain and things like that,” she said. Typical days will cover 8 to 10 miles, with stops for lunch and possible cheese farm or ruin visits. Prices range from $3,500 for Portugal to $5,400 for Italy.
And while participants certainly don’t need to be a marathoner to enjoy a hiking trip, Burke said they’ll need to break in their hiking boots or shoes — and legs.
“It’s just like with cycling where you need to log time in the saddle,” she added.
In Wisconsin, she suggests hiking in her old haunts around Devil’s Lake, which offers a 500-foot vertical gain, the single-track trails at Blue Mounds State Park or other county or state parks.
Burke said the guide-to-hiker ratio will be as low as 1-to-3. And some of the leaders will also be cycling guides who know the terrain.
Burke said the trips went up on the Trek Travel website in March and the response has been good.
“It makes sense for us,” she said. “And some people said, ‘what took you so long?”
Brian Clark is a Madison-based writer and photographer who also contributes to the LA Times and Chicago Tribune.
