Today we’d like to introduce you to Mason McCord.
Hi Mason, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in 1990 and grew up in Alpine, UT. I was a huge, indoorsy nerd who fell in love with the outdoors through the Boy Scouts. As a 16-year-old with a bright yellow Jeep, I drove my first vehicle all over the trails around Alpine (now all closed to vehicle traffic, thanks to Suncrest…) and up AF Canyon to camp and explore the old mining roads.
I got pretty dang good at technical offroading just learning from experience on my own what would get you stuck and what would get you over some crazy rocks. I wanted to be an outdoor adventurer and goal setter, and did things like bicycle across the USA (twice), hitchhiking to Portland and back for college, and some challenging outdoor things. I took a lot of breaks from college and bounced around various schools – BYU, then Dixie State, UVU, switching majors all the time.
I was a History Education major at UVU when I took a sea kayaking class and discovered Outdoor Recreation was an actual degree, so I switched to that. I’ve always been a big nerd who loves saying stuff about stuff, so I thought Park Ranger would be a good career for someone who wanted to share fun facts in a beautiful outdoor setting.
I ended up doing an interpretive internship through UVU at Capitol Reef National Park in 2016. The Park Ranger training was fantastic, and I loved living in the park, but I realized the federal government was not going to be the job for me, and all I could think about as our Park Ranger trainers drove the newest slate of seasonal interpretive rangers around the backcountry was: This place is utterly incredible. You have a whole national park to yourself.
This is the best-kept secret in Utah! I would love to show people the backcountry the same way we rangers in training got to see it. The Cathedral Valley was my favorite place, but no one ever visited, I wanted people who had no idea it existed to see it. I ended up in a pretty bad auto accident so my internship ended early, but Capitol Reef had become my favorite National Park in the country, and I had my new dream of starting a guide shop in Torrey. It was during this internship that I met 1st year Park Ranger Allison Moist, and we became friends.
I dropped out of college and got my first guide job that spring 2017 at the Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort – thanks to my neighbor, owner, and my parents LDS bishop, Steve Neeleman. The pay was terrible, but it was a foot in the door – I realized for guiding you don’t need a degree, just experience in the field. I quickly rose up the ranks because I was admittedly quite competent and a hard worker, but it was a chaotic mess behind the scenes. The next season in 2018, I ended up as an assistant manager of recreation.
The entire time I kept notes on how not to run a guide shop and told my friends there about my dream of a guide shop in Capitol Reef – but because the park is much quieter, I didn’t think I’d ever get a guide job there and it would be quite the struggle to start a business. Eventually, my idea pivoted towards multi-day Mighty 5 tours in a nice offroad van. I did ultimately get fired for not following the rules and hosting an employee poker night with alcohol involved.
I went to camp out near Bryce Canyon for a couple of weeks, then decided one morning to get some coffee at a hotel cafe between Panguitch and Bryce. I decided to google guide jobs and saw a Jeep Tour guide position with Backcountry Safaris, in all places, Capitol Reef National Park. The job was set to expire in only a couple of days. I called up the number, did a video interview that afternoon, and was driving there to start the next day.
I arrived at the Capitol Reef Resort at the end of August 2017. The person who was supposed to train me on the route and info took me on a tour they cut short, then bailed the next day, leaving me to figure it out. But luckily I have an amazing sense of direction and remembered all a ton of information on the park from my Park Ranger training, so I was out the next day taking out tours kicking butt like I’d done it for years.
I was the one and only employee for Backcountry Safaris, and with fall I was working up to 10 days straight, mostly 14-hour days. Exhausting work but great pay compared to the Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort. I liked the autonomy I had as the only employee for a company based in Jackson Hole, my interaction was mostly texting my bosses. I worked the next season on my own, then in 2020, COVID happened.
Capitol Reef National Park was closed for the month of March, but was one of the first places to reopen in the whole country by mid-April. I was back to tours, and it quickly became the busiest year yet for me with everyone who’d canceled their travel plans that year choosing to visit southern Utah. I needed some help keeping up with the tours, so I convinced my bosses at Backcountry to let me find a friend to work with me.
Allison Moist, who was more a distant acquaintance at this point, had lost her Park Ranger job at Denali National Park thanks to COVID. I convinced her to stop living off unemployment on her dad’s couch and come out with her boyfriend for the free housing the chance to show off her favorite National Park for some real money and no uncomfortable uniform, and the chance to see more of the park instead of answering questions at a Visitor Center.
Allison liked the work, and I told her about my dream of doing tours and showing off Capitol Reef the right way, with a focus on providing Park Ranger knowledge, doing guided hikes, and overnight trips like backpacking and base camps, instead of being business owners in Wyoming who only saw dollar signs. She got on board, and Backcountry Safaris treated us terribly.
If they were so busy without passion for the place, we figured we’d be successful. Also, we loved stargazing, Allison had been the official stargazing ranger for Capitol Reef and I’d started a program of my own at the Zion Ponderosa, so it was a chance for both of us to show off the stars in one of the darkest places in North America. And get some telescopes of our own (haha).
After the season ended in October, me and Allison got right to work on our business endeavor. I always loved sharing the story of the Land of the Sleeping Rainbow, the name given by the Navajo to the area due to its layers of bright colors, and how they transform throughout the changes in lighting of the day and season, and the color changes from wildflowers popping up and fall color changes.
So despite reservations from friends and family who thought the name would make people think we were “Gay” or would confuse people, we went with Sleeping Rainbow Adventures over any of the more generic names we brainstormed. We filed our LLC as a 50/50 partnership in November 2020 and got to work getting the business together to launch tours in March 2021.
Me and Allison did a great job of sharing the work. We bought two Jeeps and filled out enormous amounts of paperwork and forms. We eventually found a home in Torrey to rent, with the upstairs being renovated, so once Allison got there we shared a tiny basement – I had a bedroom, and she had a mattress on the floor of the living room. We worked 14 hours a day every day and while it was hard work, we loved it and quickly became true best friends.
Our insurance delayed our launch to early April. We had made friends with the local hotel owners and workers and begged them to send us some tours. We distributed rack cards and made some posters for a grand opening, a stargazing night at the Torrey town park. We got two of our guests from tours at Backcountry Safaris to write us two reviews on Tripadvisor so we didn’t appear completely unknown.
We started taking out tours thanks to the hotels, it started slow, but we got 5 5-star reviews after 5 5-star reviews. By the beginning of May, we were already so busy we needed to hire our first employee. Our first year was a success beyond our wildest expectations – I and Allison had figured we’d be the only employees for our first couple of years, and it would just be two Jeeps, but we had to buy a third Jeep by August 2021, and when it came time to plan for 2022, we figured we’d need to hire two guides.
Unfortunately, I and Allison’s friendship ended that fall, but business-wise we seemed primed for success. Financially successful in our first year, Allison’s networking paid off when the SBA organizer of her Women’s Business Group selected Sleeping Rainbow Adventures as our district’s official Small Business of the Year.
2022 was quite a learning experience. We had our two full-time guides and a part-time guide, and we still did tons of tours ourselves, though we were focusing on more of the custom tours, guided hikes, and stargazing. Our professional relationship unfortunately deteriorated, we dealt with numerous employee shenanigans, and despite a large increase in revenue, we were both extremely drained and exhausted – as a business owner you never really get time off and the hours and days were extremely long. And it was time for a “divorce” for me and Allison.
Initially after agreeing we needed to separate, Allison mentioned $100,000 as the price to buy me out. I didn’t want to give up something I’d dreamed about for years and had worked so hard for, but that number seemed fine since I wanted to travel the world living out of a suitcase. When it came time to meet with a mediator and discuss the sale, she offered $40,000. Insulted and at an impasse, we were supposed to go with an auction led by the mediator. But I was so offended and didn’t really discuss the deal with anyone, so when it came time to start the auction, I offered her the minimum number I’d take to sell the business and it’s assets, $80,000. She agreed instantly.
This year in 2023, it was quite the learning experience to handle the business on my own, Allison was much better at the monotonous form filling out, and planning for growth based on a ridiculously good offseason of pre-bookings. I hired an office manager, three full-time employees, and an intern. I got a new office and guide shop in Loa rented. Everything was going great until mid-May 2023, then the calls and business started to slow. By June, we were having our worst months ever, everyone in Wayne County, Utah was feeling the pinch.
At the end of the month, I had to let go of everyone but my office manager (who was demoted to a guide) and intern. It was a quiet struggle and marathon, entirely different from the first two seasons when our finances and tours came easy. It was a sigh of relief to make it to the end of the season, but Sleeping Rainbow Adventures is still intact and looking forward to 2024. I’m so proud of our very real 5-star reviews, it’s been a team effort but I’m glad we built a real brand and reputation and we are by far the best-reviewed tour company in the area.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The first year was smooth despite extremely hard work – year 2 was a struggle due to personal relationships, and learning the hard way how difficult it is to hire someone who turns out to be good employees.
Year 3 was quite a financial struggle. Many great lessons learned along the way for a college dropout who prefers to learn through experience.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sleeping Rainbow Adventures?
Outdoor tours of Capitol Reef National Park and the surrounding area. A focus on passionate, knowledgeable friendly guides. A commitment to being the best tour company in Utah. We mostly offer Jeep tours, stargazing programs, and guided hikes, although I’d love to expand to more unique, custom trips and backpacking/overlanding base camps.
We just want to show off the possibilities that exist in southern Utah that most visitors (and quite a few Utahns) don’t even realize exist. I am proud we’ve built something that see’s returning guests and quite a few recommendations. I’m proud of our very real reviews, and I love getting to take people to stunning places they couldn’t get to on their own, and sharing my passion and knowledge for the best kept secret in southern Utah, Capitol Reef.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
As a college dropout, I’m self-taught on most everything, including learning how to use telescopes and astronomy and the knowledge of stars, web design, and SEO for the website I built, vehicle repairs and maintenance, and how to make financial projections and formulas for determining all sorts of numbers for the business.
I have quite a few epic personal achievements I keep to myself as well, since my style of guiding is to get other people to open up and share about their lives – I don’t get to talk about myself all that much in life.
Pricing:
- 3-5 hour tour: $400 for 1-2 guests and $500 for 3-4
- 6-8 hour Jeep tours: $550 for 1-2 adults, $650 for 3-4.
- Guided Waterfall Slot Canyon Hike of $350 for 1-4 people
- Stargazing – public nights are $35 per adult. Private stargazing tours start at $250 for the first 1-4 adults.
- Spring backpacking trip (3 days, 2 nights) to Halls Creek Narrows- $1000 per person
- Many more tours and prices on our website.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sradventures.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sleepingrainbowadventures/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sleepingrainbowadventures/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingrainbowadventures2689?app=desktop
- Other: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60758-d23215675-Reviews-Sleeping_Rainbow_Adventures-Torrey_Utah.html
Image Credits
Mason McCord and Allison Moist
