What Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There Got From This Seven Day Project

What Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There Got From This Seven Day Project

More Than a Single Campaign

When Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There signed on to this seven day solo project across Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta, none of us were thinking about a single ad or a single post. The goal was a body of material broad enough to serve each brand differently, built around one real expedition rather than a staged shoot designed to look like an expedition. I want to walk through what each brand actually walked away with, because I think it says something useful about what this kind of project can deliver compared to a more traditional commercial shoot.

This is not a sales pitch. It is an honest accounting of what seven days of real, sometimes chaotic, solo work in the mountains produced for three companies who took a chance on a project that had no guaranteed outcome and no script beyond the plan I built before leaving South Lake Tahoe.

Gear Shown Doing Its Actual Job

The most direct thing all three brands got was footage and photographs of their gear being used the way it is actually meant to be used, not staged in a studio or posed in a backyard. A tent or sleep system gets tested differently when it has to survive a night on public land during a long drive, or a two night push into Horse Camp on Mount Shasta at around seven thousand nine hundred feet, than it does in a controlled demonstration.

That authenticity matters commercially in a way that is hard to fake. Consumers looking at outdoor gear increasingly want to see it used in real, sometimes difficult conditions, not just presented cleanly under studio lighting. This project gave each brand exactly that, gear photographed and filmed during genuine use, including moments when things did not go smoothly, like the second load I had to carry into Horse Camp after underestimating what the first trip could reasonably include.

A Story Bigger Than Any Single Product

Beyond individual product shots, each brand also became part of a larger narrative about a real seven day solo expedition. That narrative context gives their gear a story to live inside, rather than existing as an isolated image disconnected from any larger meaning. A product shown at the summit of Mount Shasta, just over fourteen thousand feet, after a day that included a forgotten helmet, a rescue situation, and hours of demanding climbing, carries weight that a product shot in isolation simply cannot match.

This kind of embedded storytelling also gives brands flexibility in how they use the material afterward. A single dramatic image works for one kind of post. A quieter, more honest moment, like gear packed for a second carry after a mistake, works for a different kind of story about resilience and problem solving. Having both kinds of material, tied to one coherent narrative, gives each brand more creative options than a traditional single day commercial shoot typically produces.

Each brand also got material that connected naturally to the others without ever feeling forced together. Big Agnes gear appeared in van life and camp moments, Crazy Creek and Out There products showed up during the Shasta push and the summit work, and none of it had to be artificially separated into three isolated shoots. That overlap reflects how outdoor gear actually gets used on a real trip, layered together rather than presented in isolation, which is part of why the coverage reads as believable rather than like three separate advertisements stitched into one trip.

I think that overlap also matters for how the brands themselves see each other within the project. None of them were competing for attention in a way that made any single company feel shortchanged, since the story never treated one brand as more important than another. Each got its moments woven into the larger narrative where it made sense chronologically, based on what was actually happening on the mountain that day rather than an artificial rotation designed to keep things evenly balanced.

Content That Multiplies Over Time

Seven days of real material does not get used up in one campaign. Behind the scenes footage like this tends to have a long shelf life, since it can be recut, resequenced, and redistributed across different platforms and different moments well after the original trip has ended. A brand can pull from this material for months, finding new angles and new stories within the same underlying seven days depending on what they need to communicate at any given time.

That multiplication effect is part of why a project like this makes commercial sense for a brand even though it required significant trust upfront. Nobody knew exactly what would happen across those seven days. A closed park entrance, a rescue situation, a wrong turn on a hiking trail while carrying skis, none of that was scripted. But that unpredictability is also what makes the resulting content feel genuinely different from a planned, controlled shoot, and that difference is valuable precisely because it cannot be manufactured on demand.

Trust Built Through Honesty

I think the less tangible thing all three brands got from this project is trust, both from me as someone willing to show the unglamorous parts of the work honestly, and from anyone who eventually sees this content and recognizes it as real rather than staged. Modern audiences are good at spotting content that feels manufactured. A seven day solo trip with real mistakes, real fatigue, and a real emergency along the way does not read as manufactured, because it was not.

That kind of trust is hard to build through traditional advertising and easier to build through honest behind the scenes storytelling, which is exactly what this project was designed to produce from the start. Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There did not just get photographs and footage. They got a story about their gear that people are more likely to believe, precisely because the story includes the hard parts alongside the impressive ones.

What This Means for Future Projects

Looking back at the full seven days, I think the biggest lesson for any brand considering a project like this is that the value comes from letting the expedition be real rather than engineering it to look a certain way. Every difficult, unplanned moment on this trip, the closed entrance, the second carry, the near miss on Lassen, the rescue on Shasta, ended up contributing to material that felt more valuable, not less, than a perfectly planned and controlled shoot would have produced.

For brands thinking about similar partnerships, my advice is to trust the process and resist the urge to over script a real expedition. The unpredictability is not a risk to be managed away. It is often where the most valuable and most believable content actually comes from, and this seven day project across Lassen and Shasta is the clearest proof of that I have delivered in a decade of doing this work.

Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.