So much focus leans toward the white-dominated outdoor industry’s story that most pass by the people of color’s story existing in the same space.

Whether overlooked, a misnomer exists about people of color in the outdoors space or literal representation is lacking due to factors like access or economic stature, the outdoor industry and its subsidiaries are still ‘lily white.’

But for three Latina and Asian women, telling stories from places like the wintry landscapes of Wyoming’s Teton Range through a three-film series titled ‘OUTLIER’ from Colorado-based Afuera Productions, the attention is gaining traction.

The women have been spending winter 2023-24 documenting their snow riding, experiences in the mountains and sharing life-stories, but told from the eyes of people of color, for the second film ‘OUTLIER: COMMON.’ The first film, ‘OUTLIER: TRUST’ has been live online for about a year currently and has been featured in 13 film festivals. 

One of the women, filmmaker Dani Reyes-Acosta, opened up about filming, her life and the challenges she is navigating with her fellow women while making the film series.

“Afuera was born from this idea that we can do better as an industry, and as a project, looking to be more than (just) film,” Reyes-Acosta said. “As a platform this production company was meant to serve not just this project, but also the impact on community events we create in partnership with non-profits and other organizations.”

Filmmaking is in Reyes-Acosta’s blood too. She grew up in Los Angeles, California with her mother setting the template, who was living in the broadcast media space while Reyes-Acosta was a ‘twinkle in her mom’s eye.’

“By the time I was moving into adolescence she was no longer in that space, but we were still getting pulled into working in production, mostly at talent, meaning I got to be on camera,” Reyes-Acosta said.

Brand story telling was a natural step as Reyes-Acosta became an adult, and for the last ten or so years, she’s moved into documentary-style film making.

Afuera’s mission: Take on journeys into wintry mountain ranges to amplify women’s voices in outdoor media, honor the land upon which we roam, uplift underrepresented athletes and filmmakers and support equitable pay in outdoor media.

Afuera is also busy crowdfunding currently, looking to reach a goal of $26,101 by April 4 to help with concluding production costs for the second film.

“We don’t just tell BIPOC stories, or women’s stories, or Latina stories, so I put together a team that is representative of the people’s stories’ we are telling so that we can really speak with cultural resonance both behind and in front of the camera,” she said.

“If you don’t have people behind the camera that are resonating with the people in front of the camera, there can be some really big misses,” she said of the challenges the outdoor industry faces.

Being in outdoor spaces like the Tetons for Reyes-Acosta and fellow woman skier Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada and snowboarder Nina Aragon, Reyes-Acosta said “the Tetons are not just a proving ground in the sense of ski and splitboard mountaineering, provided a gateway to understand more of our journey as outdoors people as well as rapping our heads around what community means.”

What Reyes-Acosta is trying to create through the OUTLIER series is and understanding of how exploring identity, community and belonging all play in our survival of our species. In laymen’s terms, “it means what do the roles of these concepts play in who we are as people growing up in the world, both as outdoors people and just people living in what feels like a chaotic and difficult world,” she said.

Episode two, COMMON, explores the idea of community, while episode one, TURST, explored the idea of identity. Episode three, GOOD, is going to explore the idea of common good.

“In the year and three months that we have been shooting COMMON, we have seen how several forces are just unpredictable and very reflective of our personal stories,” Reyes-Acosta said. “Nina is a PhD candidate, new mother and professional snowboarder trying to learn to balance all those things and navigate, and I as the film make, athlete and entrepreneur, are pulled in all these different directions including taking care of my mom who got cancer last season.”

Whether navigating in the snow versus navigating in life, Reyes-Acosta thinks there will always be a challenges in both and what she is trying to do through film is show those reflections and the connections between them.

The crowdfunding push from Reyes-Acosta and Afuera Productions is looking to fulfill final costs for final in-field production and post-production on OUTLIER: COMMON.

Some money is coming in from brand funds from the likes of Fisher Ski, Deuter USA, Weston Backcountry and ANON Optics, but Reyes-Acosta is hopeful the outdoor community will help see the project through because of how the docuseries stories are being told and by the messages portrayed and lived from the three women in front of the camera.

“The idea with crowdfunding production was the put the power into the hands of the people,” she said. “What we saw was that people want a story like this. I’ve had so many people come up to me and say it really resonated with them.”