Life's a Climb but the View is Great: A Discussion with Paulina Dao

Paulina Dao (@paulinadao) is a Vietnamese-American adventure photographer, avid climber, and outdoor enthusiast based out of California. She is the founder of Bay Area Outdoor Women (@bayareaoutdoorwomen) and Little Grunts, a blog dedicated to outdoor recreation, travel, and gear reviews catered to petite women.

Sometimes it’s the first exposure to the outdoors as kids that fosters that deeper connection to nature when we are adults, even if we find ourselves drifting away from that connection from time to time.

Growing up at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains, the opportunity to play outdoors was endless. Despite not coming from an “outdoorsy” family, Paulina Dao has memories of her dad throwing her in the car at the buttcrack of dawn to drive four hours to the mountains for a day trip. As a kid, she spent the summers with her siblings at a camp in the mountains where she fell in love with the climbing wall and high ropes course in the middle of the Redwoods. When the time came she was too old to keep going to camp, her love and enjoyment led her to volunteer several summers afterward to be a camp counselor and high ropes course counselor.

Unfortunately for Dao, by the end of high school and beginning of college, her love for the outdoors had to take a backseat.

“My parents were very traditionally Asian and so they were like ‘you have to do all these extracurriculars like band, volleyball, leadership classes. You have to go to a good college.’ And that took up a lot of my time,” explained Dao.

But the outdoors was never too far away. Despite what might not seem like your typical hike or outdoor adventure, while she attended the University of California, Santa Cruz aka “the campus on the hill”, she found herself hiking every day through the Redwood forest on campus to get to class.

“I remember one day, my friend and I were super late for Chemistry or Calculus or something, and we were on the other side of campus and sometimes it’s faster to run or walk to class than to wait for a bus. So we were running through the forest, pretending we were Orks, singing Lord of the Rings music at the top of our lungs and we showed up to class a little late and super sweaty and everyone was like, ‘what is wrong with these people?’”

After she graduated college with a B.A. in Marine Biology, she realized she didn’t want to pursue anything in her field. She decided to temporarily move back home, but the lack of friends left in the area because they moved away after graduating college, left her in need of something to do during her free time. That’s when she found herself reconnected to a climbing gym she used to attend when she was younger. And life took off from there.

“Friends wanted to go climbing, they wanted to go hiking, and suddenly I wanted to go hiking all the time! And that’s kind of how I got my blog started. I had a little bit of money then and didn’t have any outdoor gear. A lot of my regular friends and coworkers didn’t really understand all the hiking and thought, ‘You willingly just walk for hours at a time? What?’ So, I kind of started this blog (Little Grunts) to talk about outdoor gear, specifically for petite women who look like me. It’s sometimes really hard to find clothes that fit because sometimes it’s too long and a lot of outdoor gear is really designed for a specific type of body. You have the tall, skinny, Scanadavian-ish body type that a lot of companies design for. So really, I was trying to put information out there on how stuff fits and that evolved into starting to talk about my adventures and putting together guides on how I did ‘XYZ’ and that became a resource to get people outside.”

Take it from a Full-Time Adventurer, Getting Started is Not Always Easy

“My first really big hike was Half Dome, and it was one of those things where I was at the climbing gym and one of my friends said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna apply for permits, I hope one of us gets it.’ And I said, ‘Alright, we’re going to Yosemite! I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I remember it being cold since we went in February and it was snowy.’

“I figured I might die out there so I didn’t want to get hungry.”

“So, I didn’t know what I needed to bring, but I knew I needed a backpack that carried water so I went to REI and bought a backpack. I was talking to the salesperson and asked, ‘Is this a backpack I can use to hike Half Dome? Will three liters be enough for me? What about snacks and food? How much snacks and food do I need to bring?’

“I didn’t know so I bought like 15 Clif Bars and like 2 pounds of trail mix. I figured I might die out there so I didn’t want to get hungry. I also had an old ski jacket that I brought because we’re going to the mountains and I thought it was going to be freezing. I didn’t have any leggings because I was used to hiking in shorts, like little tiny spandex shorts from my volleyball days. So ya, I didn’t really have any pants for hiking so I just wore jeans and a cotton t-shirt. And it was the worst trip ever!

“Our group had people of all sorts of abilities and some of them were marathoners and they were like, ‘we’re going to run up this thing.’

“And then there was me.

“I figured if I just keep eating and keep drinking water and putting things into my mouth then I won’t complain and my legs will hurt less.”

“My backpack had three liters of water, I had too many Clif Bars, like two pounds of food, and I’m wearing this ski jacket. We started off in the middle of the night, and it was pretty warm out but I’m wearing a ski jacket for some reason because I’m convinced it’s going to be cold.

“And suddenly, not even halfway to the top, I managed to drink all of my water and ate five of my Clif Bars. In my brain, I’m thinking, ‘This sucks!’. I figured if I just keep eating and keep drinking water and putting things into my mouth then I won’t complain and my legs will hurt less.

“But then I ran out of water! Three liters of water! Not even at the halfway point of this hike. Luckily with the Half Dome trail, it had some camping spots with pit toilets. So, thankfully, I got to use the bathroom multiple times there, on the way up and on the way down. I was just peeing so much! Like all over the side of the trail!

“There’s this section called the Sub Dome, which is right before the cables, and we were just sitting around this area with little holes or like dimple impressions in the rocks and I just had to pee so bad, so I thought, ‘Oh, let me see if I can pee in one of these holes!’ And then I was like, ‘This is so cool! I’m peeing in a hole inside a rock!’ I’m sure if I would go through old photos, I could find a ton of pictures of it. I was just so proud of my pee.

“It’s stuff like that when you don’t really know what you’re doing and you don’t know anyone to guide you, it can be really stressful and also a little intimidating to talk about. Like looking back now, I can laugh about it but after the hike, it was not something I could talk about because I was like ‘What was I doing? What was I wearing?’ I just didn’t know.

“...when you see someone who looks like you going out there and doing things, it makes you think, ‘Oh, this person is doing it, that means I can do something like that too!’”

“Having mentorship programs so people can learn how to go hiking or backpacking, but also learning best practices like picking up your trash, how to use the bathroom, or staying on the trail would be helpful. That stuff is sometimes not super obvious and I think having a mentorship program is really important because in some communities, hiking and going outside is not a priority.

“It wasn’t a priority for me growing up. My parents' biggest priority for us was studying and getting into a good college, becoming a lawyer or a doctor, and making a lot of money because they immigrated to the United States and basically worked their whole lives to give their kids a better life. Their idea of a better life was to accomplish all these things you had to check off.

“Or, if you are from a lower-income area, especially a lower-income suburban or urban area, you don’t really have access to people who go out and do these things because maybe they don’t know about it or it’s not a priority because they are just trying to make ends meet. Being able to have low-cost or free programming for people who look like you and mentorship opportunities is super duper crucial.

“I also think we need to tell more stories of people of color and LGBTQ+ people getting outside and doing cool stuff. I do think there has been a shift towards that in the last couple of years that I have seen. A lot of companies are starting to sponsor not only elite athletes but people who are making a difference in their communities which is really exciting to see because when you see someone who looks like you going out there and doing things, it makes you think, ‘Oh, this person is doing it, that means I can do something like that too!’”

Dao’s Advice for Newbie Adventurers

Sometimes the prospect of starting something new can be daunting because it’s too difficult to know where to begin. Dao’s advice? Start by reaching out to your network and see who would be interested in joining you on a hike, for starters. And if they’re not interested, turn towards local outdoor groups on Facebook or other social media pages. In California, for example, there are groups like Girls Who Hike NorCal, Bay Area Outdoor Women, She Explores, Hikers of Color, and plenty more.

“Trying to learn and do something new is scary. For me now, it’s just a hike. But, if you have never done it before and you don’t know anyone who does it, just going for a walk by yourself in the forest or in the mountains is scary. Especially if you are a person of color, a lot of trailheads are in rural areas. Or, if you are a woman, there’s a whole another layer of being a solo woman on the trail. And the reality is, you also need to have a car. To get to the really cool trailheads, really cool mountaintops, you’re not going to be able to get that close with public transportation. I mean, living in the Bay Area is really awesome, especially near San Francisco because there are so many trailheads in the city. Just in general here, it seems like everyone is hiking because it’s super easy and super accessible but once you want to get outside of the Bay Area and you want to go to Tahoe, Yosemite, Lake Berryessa, it’s much less accessible that way.”

Dao also emphasizes setting proper expectations, whether you are a first-time hiker, or an experienced hiker taking a new person on the trails. She says it’s important to be on the same page and upfront with your physical limits with your hiking group, and hopefully, they will be understanding and flexible enough to tailor a trip if things don’t happen to go as planned. According to Dao, a good thing to remember is, “As long as they are having fun, I’m having fun. We’re not here to crush miles or crush mountains or whatever. We’re just chilling.”

But what about gear? How does someone know what to bring? Is it expensive?

“For me, everything was expensive. You can use your gym stuff to a degree, but once you start doing more technical things, you need more gear. But gear is just really really expensive. I think that can be a big barrier to enter as well but it’s cool that there are big companies that are making gear more accessible like Eddy Bauer or Columbia even though people tend to look down on those because it’s not the ‘fancy’ brand but they make a lot of more affordable gear to get people out there.”

For those that are just starting out, however, you can probably get away with gym clothes or leggings, as long as it’s moisture-wicking and will keep you relatively warm and dry. Don’t skimp out on shoes, though! Dao says a good pair of shoes is one of the most important things to own for hiking, as well as a well-fitting backpack. Otherwise, if either one of the two doesn’t fit correctly, they can make you a pretty miserable hiker.

Want to see more from Paulina Dao and hear more of her tips? Make sure to check out her blog, Little Grunts, and check out stories like “Best Redwood Hikes in the Bay Area That Are Not Muir Woods,” and follow her Instagram for awesome content at @paulinadao.