Take Off Like a Man on These High-Adrenaline Guy Getaways The golf course just doesn’t cut it any more. Today, Type-A men are turning to extreme vacations to bond and blow off steam—together ENLARGE Scaling the Alps with Swisskisafari. PHOTO: SWISSKISAFARI By JEN MURPHY Feb. 18, 2016 2:07 p.m. ET LAST FEBRUARY, Morgan Callagy found himself a very long way from his home and office, which was precisely where he wanted to be. After a day heli-skiing in untouched powder in the Italian Alps, the London-based general partner at private-equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson and 9 of his closest male friends had crossed the border to Val d’Isère, France. There, at La Folie Douce—an après-ski bacchanal where neon-costumed revelers dance to Europop and drink Jägermeister shots served on wooden skis—Mr. Callagy and his crew boogied on the rafters in vintage Bogner ski suits and blond mullet wigs. Enough diversion? Not at all. After the sun went down, the guys swapped their wigs for headlamps and snow shoes and trudged a mile through the woods with their guides to an abandoned mountain farmhouse, where they sat on pointedly rugged animal skins around a candlelit table and ate a meal of côte de boeuf cooked on an open fire and washed down with multiple rounds of Génépi, a potent herbal liqueur. “For those few hours, we got to forget all about the real world,” Mr. Callagy said. “It was one of the most memorable days of my life.” ENLARGE ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW JOYNER A 44-year-old father of three, Mr. Callagy is a member of the growing ranks of men traveling with groups of male friends on testosterone-rich trips variously dubbed guy getaways or bro-cations. These often over-the-top adventures are opportunities to bond, blow off steam and, in the age of Facebook and Instagram, digitally boast a bit. “Today’s type-A male traveler needs more than a shady palm tree and swim-up bar,” said Owen Gaddis, a luxury travel manager with custom tour operator Absolute Travel. “They crave constant engagement in their leisure time as much as they do in the workplace,” Mr. Gaddis said. Eleven Experience, which manages a collection of six fully staffed luxury lodges from Colorado to the Bahamas, is one of several companies that have sprung up recently to meet hard-charging types’ growing appetite for trips that both push the boundaries of luxury and push them out of their comfort zones. The company charges $31,500 to $128,625 a week for its properties, including the price of its skiing and fishing guides. Mr. Callagy, a self-described Eleven junkie, has been to all of the company’s properties. “My friends and I refer to Eleven as man-camp meets Neverland. Experiencing something unique and challenging with friends is what these trips are all about. My life would feel incomplete without them,” he said. ENLARGE MOUNTAIN TIME | Eleven Experience offers fully staffed fishing lodges and ski chalets from Colorado to the Bahamas, along with expert guides. PHOTO: ELEVEN EXPERIENCE Other ...

1. Take Off Like a Man on These High-Adrenaline Guy Getaways
The golf course just doesn’t cut it any more. Today, Type-A
men are turning to extreme vacations to bond and blow off
steam—together
ENLARGE
Scaling the Alps with Swisskisafari. PHOTO: SWISSKISAFARI
By JEN MURPHY
Feb. 18, 2016 2:07 p.m. ET
LAST FEBRUARY, Morgan Callagy found himself a very long
way from his home and office, which was precisely where he
wanted to be. After a day heli-skiing in untouched powder in
the Italian Alps, the London-based general partner at private-
equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson and 9 of his closest male
friends had crossed the border to Val d’Isère, France. There, at
La Folie Douce—an après-ski bacchanal where neon-costumed
revelers dance to Europop and drink Jägermeister shots served
on wooden skis—Mr. Callagy and his crew boogied on the
rafters in vintage Bogner ski suits and blond mullet wigs.
Enough diversion? Not at all. After the sun went down, the guys
swapped their wigs for headlamps and snow shoes and trudged a
mile through the woods with their guides to an abandoned
mountain farmhouse, where they sat on pointedly rugged animal
skins around a candlelit table and ate a meal of côte de boeuf
cooked on an open fire and washed down with multiple rounds
of Génépi, a potent herbal liqueur. “For those few hours, we got
to forget all about the real world,” Mr. Callagy said. “It was one
of the most memorable days of my life.”
ENLARGE
ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW JOYNER
A 44-year-old father of three, Mr. Callagy is a member of the
growing ranks of men traveling with groups of male friends on
testosterone-rich trips variously dubbed guy getaways or bro-
cations. These often over-the-top adventures are opportunities
to bond, blow off steam and, in the age of Facebook and

2. Instagram, digitally boast a bit. “Today’s type-A male traveler
needs more than a shady palm tree and swim-up bar,” said Owen
Gaddis, a luxury travel manager with custom tour operator
Absolute Travel. “They crave constant engagement in their
leisure time as much as they do in the workplace,” Mr. Gaddis
said.
Eleven Experience, which manages a collection of six fully
staffed luxury lodges from Colorado to the Bahamas, is one of
several companies that have sprung up recently to meet hard-
charging types’ growing appetite for trips that both push the
boundaries of luxury and push them out of their comfort zones.
The company charges $31,500 to $128,625 a week for its
properties, including the price of its skiing and fishing guides.
Mr. Callagy, a self-described Eleven junkie, has been to all of
the company’s properties. “My friends and I refer to Eleven as
man-camp meets Neverland. Experiencing something unique and
challenging with friends is what these trips are all about. My
life would feel incomplete without them,” he said.
ENLARGE
MOUNTAIN TIME | Eleven Experience offers fully staffed
fishing lodges and ski chalets from Colorado to the Bahamas,
along with expert guides. PHOTO: ELEVEN EXPERIENCE
Other travel companies catering to groups of adrenaline-infused
men include the U.K.-based Secret Compass, which takes
clients white water rafting in South Sudan and mountain biking
in Afghanistan, and White Desert, which specializes in
Antarctic glamping trips, complete with a slightly shivery
Champagne lunch and the opportunity to sauna at the Russian
research station. Though it would be easy to dismiss these trips
as stereotypical manifestations of the Peter Pan complex or
stunts for alpha males looking to push their limits in the wild,
the men who take them say that it goes deeper than that. Charles
Field-Marsham, a Toronto-based entrepreneur, has taken ski
trips with the same five guy friends for the past decade. “It
sounds corny, but meaningful relationships keep you happy in
life and one of the best ways for men to build meaningful

3. relationships is through travel and sports,” said the 47-year-old
father of three.
Howard Chudacoff, a professor of urban studies at Brown
University and author of “The Age of the Bachelor,” said that
historically the saloon, pool hall and barber shop served as male
retreats where men “could joke and swear and complain about
relationships or jobs and find the support they didn’t
necessarily get in their family life.” Today, Mr. Chudacoff,
said, traveling together to chase some physical high has taken
the place of communing in those low-risk sanctums.
Having skied throughout North America, Mr. Field-Marsham
and his group were looking to raise their game. “We wanted to
be pushed physically, but also wanted luxury,” he said. He
reached out to Danielle Stynes, founder of Swisskisafari. For a
minimum of $1,000 a day per person, Ms. Stynes creates what
she describes as a James Bond holiday. “My trips appeal to men
who have it all and who think they have done it all,” she said.
To deliver what she promises, she employs helicopter pilots, ski
guides and an avalanche expert who has a doctorate in snow
forecasting.
Ms. Stynes said that 90% of her business is guy groups.
“They’re fit and competitive and really want to feel like they’ve
earned the end-of-day wine and gourmet meal,” she said. Mr.
Field-Marsham said a highlight of his group’s trip was skinning
(climbing uphill on skis) two hours to Switzerland’s 1,000-year-
old St. Bernard monastery, where they lunched with monks
before spending the rest of the day skiing downhill. “That’s an
experience my friends and I will talk about for the rest of our
lives,” he said.
WHERE THE BOYS WERE // MALE BONDING THROUGH
THE AGES
384-322 BC | At all-male symposia in Ancient Greece, garland-
wearing aristocrats kick back on lounges and talk politics over
lengthy meals. Games of skill and live musical performances
add amusement.
1878-79 | A 21-year-old Theodore Roosevelt goes camping in

4. Maine along with William Wingate Sewall and Wilmot Dow, on
one of the first of Teddy’s countless guy trips.
1904 | A group of avid outdoorsmen founds the Explorers Club
to “unite explorers in the bonds of good fellowship.” Honorary
members include Walter Cronkite and John Glenn. Women were
admitted in 1981.
1918 | Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John Burroughs and Harvey
Firestone—who dubbed themselves the “Vagabonds”—take the
first of many summer trips together.
1940s | Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway’s bromance begins
with a pheasant-hunting trip in Idaho.
1960s | Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter
Lawford and Joey Bishop ricochet between Miami, Las Vegas
and Palm Springs on a red-blooded hunt for hedonism and
handmade suits.
2004 | Looking to test their endurance and get a fresh
perspective on the world, actor Ewan McGregor and adventurer
Charley Boorman take a 20,000-mile, 12-country motorcycle
trip from London to New York City.
2015 | President Obama hangs out in the wilds of Alaska with
adventurer Bear Grylls, drinking tea made from catkins and
eating salmon picked over by a (real) bear.
Glenn Mason, a vice president of sales with United Parcel
Service, Inc. in Atlanta, and his group of 20 cycling friends buy
out Hotel Domestique, a luxury property in South Carolina’s
Blue Ridge Mountains, for a long weekend each summer. The
hotel caters to hard-core riders who want to pedal from morning
to noon, then lounge by the pool and dine on upscale grub like
Wagyu flat iron steak. Each time they visit, Mr. Mason and his
group tackle a brutal 100-mile ride. “Halfway in there’s a 1.5-
mile stretch that has inclines of 22 to 28%,” he said. “It beats us
up, but completing the 100 miles together creates a special
bond.”
Andrea Mason, his wife of 28 years, said she welcomes Mr.
Mason’s annual trip because he’s increasingly animated as it

5. nears and returns energized. “Some people might see it as
selfish to go away without your spouse, but it’s good for our
marriage,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to tag along and ride 100
miles. And when Glenn’s away it’s my time to relax.” She said
that she takes advantage of his absence by dining out more with
friends.
Michelle Sharpes, whose husband, Brian, the managing director
of investments for UBS in San Francisco, takes four ski trips
with a group of 10 guys each winter, also sees an upside to his
regular disappearances. “We get so wrapped up in our roles as
husband, wife, father and mother,” she said. “A few days to step
out of those roles and just be Brian or Michelle is really
important.”
Norman Howe, president of the active travel company
Butterfield & Robinson, said he’s seen such a rise in demand
for guy-getaways that he’s considering tailoring itineraries
specifically to groups of men. “The first thing men do when
they go away together is stop shaving,” he said. “It’s a primal
expression of their freedom from authority and constraints.”
Men who want to give their primal side an especially brisk
workout might consider traveling to Indonesia’s remote Sumba
Island. Though headhunting has thankfully been banned there,
travelers can still go into the jungle with villagers to spear hunt
wild boar. “It’s a very macho, chest-thumping society,”
said Carla Petzold-Beck, general manager of Nihiwatu, a five-
star eco-resort on the island that is popular with surfers.
Even men with no particular affinity for Vladimir Putin-style
machismo find benefits in guy getaways. “There’s something
about being outside in the middle of nowhere with guys that is
very different from being on a tennis court or golf course,”
says Hal Schroeder, the president of Concept Services, an
Austin-based company that sells food-service equipment to
restaurant chains.
ENLARGE
British Columbia’s Nimmo Bay fishing
lodge. PHOTO: JEREMY KORESKI

6. Mr. Schroeder and a group of male friends make annual
pilgrimages to Guayacaste, a dove-hunting lodge in Argentina,
and to Nimmo Bay, a heli-fishing lodge in British Columbia. He
describes himself as a mildly enthusiastic hunter and fisherman.
“That’s not really the point,” he said. “The point is escaping to
a place where you can just be a guy. That doesn’t mean acting
crude, but just not having to deal with responsibilities or
routines. There’s the saying, ‘boys will be boys.’ If you let us
be boys once in a while, we’ll be better men for it.”
He was so smitten when he visited Nimmo Bay 15 years ago
that he told the owner to sign him up for the same week every
year for the rest of his life. He visits with around eight friends,
most of them tennis buddies. “We land on a remote glacier for
cocktails chilled with glacial ice and a lunch served with
silverware and linen napkins. The staff snuggle you up with
warm blankets and you have the fire going and might get to see
a grizzly bear attack something. It’s really like the wild
kingdom.”
Mr. Schroeder admits he could probably forgo glacial-ice
martinis and just go camping, rather than spend $150,000 to buy
out a lodge for a week. But, he said, life is about collecting rich
experiences. “When you’re successful, material things are easy.
Experiences are what you take with you.”
Create a well written essay that answers the following questions
thoroughly and completely. Use information from your eText,
the article and other sources. Cite all sources. Use good
grammar, complete sentences, and the correct words.
QUESTIONS:
1. What are some of the key elements of a so-called 'bro-
cation'?
2. What characteristics of men's lives today would help explain
the growing popularity of bro-cations?
3. For marketers who want to learn more about men and the
reasons why they participate in bro-cations, what marketing

7. research methods would you recommend and why?
4. Besides high-end vacation services, what's another industry
or product category that might capitalize on the bro-cation
trend? What should marketers in this industry/product category
do to pursue this market?
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