OutVentures was created in 1994 by Ed Ferguson, after a recent move from the East and a desire to explore his own "backyard".

"I moved to Seattle in December '94 and joined Ski Buddies shortly thereafter.  I lived in North Carolina, Atlanta, and DC and they all had well established clubs, despite having much less to offer in the outdoors.  I was amazed to find no significant outdoor club here with three national parks and one national monument in our backyard! 

There was the informal Sunday morning hiking club.  I also noticed an ad in the SGN for "Young men for the great outdoors" which I think was a response to the Sunday club, but they had no activities.... and a small nascent spin off group from Ski Buddies -I'm not sure if they had a name or not at the time.  So, I got involved, and began to apply what I knew from the hiking groups in the southeast.  I was president of Summer Buddies for the first two years and got it off the ground, then Jeff Roberts took over the helm.  I worked closely with Anthony Vincent in the early days who created a gorgeous print newsletter. 

It was a tremendous amount of work getting people to lead trips and get commitments in advance for the monthly newsletter, writing articles, printing and mailing the newsletter.   We had some big turnouts for our launch events (R-Place, REI), and managed get a full calendar of events going for the summer."