09/10.19 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 83
At first glance, Pattie Gonia’s
Instagram profile (@pattiegonia) looks a
lot like every other glossy adventure feed,
with dozens of shots of dreamy outdoor
landscapes. In her first Instagram video,
Pattie wears a green technical shirt and
matching hat while carrying hiking poles
and a backpack, with the mountains of
Colorado’s Never Summer Wilderness
looming in the background. Scroll down
too quickly and you’ll miss the twist: her
patent-leather boots with six-inch heels.
Pattie, whose name is a play on you know
which brand, is the drag-queen alter ego
of 27-year-old photographer Wyn Wiley.
(Wiley refers to himself with male pronouns
and to Pattie as she or her.) In that first post,
from October 3, 2018, Pattie eats hot Chee-
tos, dances to Fergie, and declares herself
the world’s first backpacking queen. Within
a week she had more than 12,000 follow-
ers, a number that grew to over 150,000 in
less than a year. Her fans leave hundreds of
emoji-laden comments, praise her outfits,
and invite her on hikes. She’s been featured
on the websites of Backpacker, Elle, and
Vogue, fielded a deluge of attention from
advertisers, received DMs from Fergie, and
even attended the Tony Awards.
Few people have seen anyone quite like
Pattie on the trail before, and that’s the
point. It’s still rare for someone to step be-
yond the traditional bounds of gender and
sexuality in outdoor media. While the in-
dustry takes baby steps toward fixing that,
Pattie is charging ahead. “It is very emo-
tionally vulnerable,” Wiley says of the Pattie
persona. “What people are looking at is me
figuring out myself.”
Wiley grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, “an
active kid in every nontraditional sense of the
word.” He figure-skated, skied, did musical
theater, and sang and danced in show choir
(in the Midwest, a taxing physical activity).
He credits the Boy Scouts with some of his
first powerful experiences in nature, and he
worked his way up to Eagle Scout. Wiley says
he felt accepted, to a point, when he came
out as gay the summer before college. “I had
it said to my face, We’ll accept you for being
gay, but don’t become one of those gays,” he
says. “Don’t become feminine, don’t ever do
drag, stay in your straight-passing gay lane.”
Wiley’s voice was higher when he first came
out, but then he lowered it, finding the reg-
ister he still uses today. “When you change
yourself to be who people want you to be, it’s
a tattoo and a scar.”
After college he picked up rock climbing
with his brother and took regular camping
and skiing trips with friends. He built a ca-
reer as a photographer, teaching workshops,shooting portraits, and doing commercial
work for brands, including Adidas. At a cre-
ative conference in February 2018, he tried
drag for the first time, dressing up in those
six-inch heels and taking the stage name
Ginger Snap—a nod to being a redheaded
photographer. “It was a really powerful ex-
perience,” he says. “It was crazy to look in
the mirror and see another gender, and to
strip back a lot of my straight-passingness.”
To mark the event, he posted photos to
his Instagram account. The next day he lost
5,000 of his 70,000 followers. “The mes-
sages started streaming in, calling me every
word under the sun,” he says. “A lot of people
who I really thought were in my corner un-
followed me.” He put the boots back in his
closet. “That felt vulnerable,” Wiley says. “I
have mad respect for the drag world, but I
thought, Maybe it’s not for me.”
Wiley still isn’t sure what made him take
the boots back out of the closet last fall for
a four-day group backpacking trip on the
Continental Divide Trail. At stops along
the route, he pulled out the heels and strut-
ted while friends took photos. He created
the Pattie Gonia account shortly after the
trip. Wiley has come to realize that Pattie is
helping him quash all those fears of being re-
jected for expressing himself. “How special
to have a new playground to figure out your-
self on. For me, Pattie is that playground,”
Wiley says. “I think that’s why a lot of us go
outdoors. It’s my place to leave behind all the
judgment of the world and just be me.”
Each new post brings a small delight.
Pattie soundtracks wilderness scenes with
Beyoncé and Ariana Grande, wears out-
fits made of recycled materials, and makes
pop-culture homages. (She loves Broke-
back Mountain.) Solemn moments gazing at
sweeping vistas? Not so much. “It’s making
light of something that can be so serious,”
says Karen Wang, a photographer, through-
hiker, and friend of Wiley’s who took pic-
tures of Pattie in Seattle. “Some people are
like, ‘Oh, my gosh, those heels—she’s gonna
fall down!’ Or some ultralight hiker will be
like, ‘Those heels are going to be so heavy.’
Y’all are missing the point!”
Given the size of Pattie Gonia’s following,
it’s no surprise that outdoor companies have
come knocking, looking for opportunities to
reach her fans. Wiley was initially resistant
to turning Pattie into an influencer—a word
that makes him cringe. But in April, Pattie
wrote a post naming brands that had ap-
proached her with free gear and that agreed
to donate it, at her request, to those who
need it more than she does. A month later,
she shared her evolving thoughts on spon-
sored content in another post. Wiley sayshe knows that gear recommendations aren’t
why people follow Pattie, but if sponsored
posts help her organize group hikes and lift
up nonprofits, they’re not out of the ques-
tion. “It’s about trying to do it the right way,”
Wiley says. “What hasn’t felt right so far has
been, Buy from this brand!”
He’s also wary of using Pattie’s platform
for personal attention. Instead, he often
steers the conversation toward activists he
admires, like Jenny Bruso of Unlikely Hikers
or Jaylyn Gough of Native Womens Wilder-
ness. He wants to highlight people doing
hard work for equity, inclusion, or the en-
vironment. “For every one of me, there are
tons of people fighting for diversity in the
outdoors, in courtrooms, in companies,” he
says. “Those are the real forces. What would
it look like to have sponsored advocates?”
For now, Wiley seems content to simply
use his persona to spark conversations about
who belongs in the outdoors. In January,
Wiley attended the Outdoor Retailer trade
show in Denver, which attracts thousands
of industry insiders. The crowd tends to-
ward athletic gearheads who gush over the
feel of the latest performance boxers. Pattie
showed up the second day in a blinding-
white off-the-shoulders dress, complete
with a matching wig and platform boots.
All eyes were on her, she later wrote on In-
stagram, “many with smiles and equally as
many others with looks of hate, furrowed
eyebrows, and so many ‘what the fucks?’
after I passed by.” Pattie had the grace to
stop, smile, and explain why she was there.
“Queens, there wasn’t a conversation that
started that way that didn’t end with a hug
and me getting glitter on their sleeves,” she
wrote. Still, Wiley couldn’t help but notice
that a lot of those same people had wanted to
talk business opportunities when he showed
up presenting as a man the previous day.
Wiley’s on the road more than he’s home
in Nebraska right now, and wherever he goes,
Pattie Gonia is there, too. As far as plans for
growing her account, he says, “It really is
just, What’s the week ahead? Who’s gonna
be around me? What can we do together?”
The first time he took those boots out of the
closet, there was no real plan, either, and
he wants people to know that it’s not always
an easy process. But he got a lot more out
of it than he expected—as did thousands
of others. “If there’s anything Pattie could
leave a legacy with,” he says, “I’d want it to
be: whatever those boots are for you, put
them on.”SENIOR EDITOR ERIN BERGER
( @ERINEBERGER) RUNS THE CULTUREHA CHANNEL AT OUTSIDE ONLINE.
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