When Goose Juhl founded All Seasons Adventures in 2001, Park City’s summer identity was still taking shape.
Juhl, who had moved to Park City in 1977 and for years worked as a guide and in fly and ski shops, saw an opportunity to create a one-stop outfitter for visitors looking to hike, mountain bike, raft or fly fish.
Visitors then didn’t really know what else the area had to offer outside of skiing, he said.
“People started coming to town in the summer. Maybe they had bought a condo here or whatever, or just skied here in the winter and decided to see what summer was all about, but didn’t really have any guidance as far as what to do in the summer,” Juhl said.
So All Seasons began, providing guides who would pick guests up where they were staying, provide the equipment and transportation, lead them through an activity and bring them back afterward. The target was primarily families staying at Park City’s higher-end hotels.
That approach was convenient for visitors, but it also gave the company a foothold with the hotel concierges who helped guests decide how to spend their time.
It truly was humble beginnings, Juhl said. They began operating out of a linen closet at the Grand Summit hotel, sharing a desk in the lobby with employees who arranged BMW test drives for guests.
The timing of the company’s launch, in hindsight, wasn’t great either, Juhl said. All Seasons opened in 2001, just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks disrupted travel. The following year, the 2002 Winter Olympics brought thousands of people to Park City, but for a different reason.
Still, the company survived. Then it survived the financial crisis of 2008, and more recently the COVID pandemic. It also lasted through an ownership change — Juhl began transferring the business to now co-owners Spencer Byrne and Justin Brown in 2014.
So what’s kept it going for a quarter of a century? Its fundamental values haven’t changed.
“It’s always come down to customer service for us. Our reputation is built around reliability and showing up and doing a great job,” said Byrne. “We wanted everyone’s trip to be a success and to have fun and to have enjoyed Park City and all it has to offer. And that’s definitely something that we continue to strive for and deliver.”
Byrne joined All Seasons after moving to Park City in 2005 following stints working in the outdoor industry in Antarctica and as a raft guide in West Virginia. He began guiding for All Seasons in 2006, and remembers those linen closet days at the Grand Summit Hotel.
Brown started a few years later, in 2008, also as a guide.
By 2014, the two were preparing to become the company’s next owners. They began purchasing the business from Juhl, who gradually stepped away over the next several years.
Juhl, who hired both guys, said it became clear that they had the initiative to take on more work, and when they eventually approached him about buying the business, he knew it would be a great fit.
“It wouldn’t have been an easy business to sell just to somebody walking the street,” he said. “They knew exactly where we were going to go hiking, how to work with the clients and the hotels, just all the aspects of the business.”
Juhl first made the two partners and then phased himself out over five years.
“It couldn’t have worked out better for me because All Seasons Adventures was like my baby, and I was putting it up for adoption. Those guys, they’ve been really great with it,” Juhl said. “We’re all still really good friends.”
Not much changed in Byrne and Brown’s hands aside from a few location changes. As for becoming business owners instead of just guides, the two said that came with plenty of challenges.
“I think we both probably wish we had much broader business education,” Brown said with a laugh. “The main thing that guiding teaches you is nothing ever goes exactly to plan.”
A client may be unable to complete a planned hike. Weather can change. Guests can arrive late or have different expectations than anticipated. A guide has to be flexible, and so does a business owner, Brown said.
“You have to be a little bit plastic in all your decisions,” Brown said. “You don’t get to just give up and say, ‘Well, this didn’t work out.’ You have to make the best of it and persevere.”
That flexibility is crucial as Park City’s tourism and weather patterns shift.
Take this year, for example. It’s the first time the two have ever had a year with both no snow and heavy monsoons, which has limited their time out on trails.
There have been other changes, too. While staffing hasn’t ever been difficult, Byrne said when he started, most of All Seasons’ guides lived in Park City or elsewhere on the Wasatch Back. Today, maybe 10% of the company’s guides live in the area, and most commute from the Salt Lake Valley.
At the same time, the company has watched summer tourism grow into a much larger part of Park City’s economy, and more specifically the rise of corporate groups.
Brown said it used to be that corporate groups came in the shoulder seasons, when hotels offered lower rates and conference space was more accessible. Now, it’s basically year round, which is great for business, especially in a year like this one, when leisure travel seems down.
What makes All Seasons attractive for corporate groups is its ability to custom design a program, Brown said. One of their most popular activities — a catapult competition — was born from a custom itinerary that they eventually perfected.
All Seasons still offers many of the activities Juhl envisioned when he started the company, including hiking, rafting, mountain biking and fly fishing. Winter offerings include snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, dog sledding and trap shooting.
Snowshoeing has become one of the company’s most popular repeat activities, and the company has developed variations of the activity, including snowshoeing with s’mores and even a children’s treasure hunt, Byrne said.
Just like when they started, All Seasons is more family oriented compared to some of the more “adrenaline-junkie” counterparts, Juhl said. They found their niche in meeting people where they’re at.
Park City’s extensive trail network, spanning 450 miles, can be overwhelming for visitors, said Byrne. A guide can select a route that matches a guest’s abilities, help with equipment and logistics and provide assistance if something goes wrong, Byrne said.
For mountain bikers, that might mean changing a flat tire or helping with a mechanical issue. On the Weber River, with class 2 rapids, it can mean recognizing when conditions or a guest’s abilities make an activity unsafe.
Even experienced fly fishermen benefit from local knowledge, Byrne said. Guides know what is biting, where to go and which fly to use, so visitors who travel from across the country to fish Park City’s blue-ribbon waters can have a successful day.
All of those positive experiences get people to buy in on the value of the outdoors, Brown said. It’s why they love taking out families.
“We see more fulfillment of getting families out, getting those little kids rafting, because we need to take care of the outdoor world and the environment,” he said. “The only way people really will do that is if they enjoy it and they want to be out there. I think that starts out young. It did for both of us, and I think that you need to have that instilled in you, so you do take care of it.”
Byrne grew up visiting national parks and remembers the impact those experiences had on him, like being in Yellowstone National Park when the wolves were reintroduced to the land. Now he sees guiding as a way to introduce thousands of people to the outdoors each year and perhaps influence how they think about protecting those places.
“It’s just important not to forget what makes this community so great, and it’s the access to the outdoors. I ended up here for a reason,” said Byrne. “The amount of adventure we have out our back door was hard to replicate anywhere else.”
And Juhl, though he’s retired from the business now, has seen that same legacy.
“I feel really good that All Seasons Adventures has gotten a lot of people out into nature that probably wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it on their own,” he said.
