More Than 800 Portlanders Have Joined the Women’s Outdoor Club

Lillian Hardy didn’t expect to start an 850-member club.

On a sunny day in mid-June, Hardy posted to her brand Landdd’s Instagram, inviting women and woman-identifying individuals to join her at a “secret river spot” in Oxbow Park near Troutdale. She created a corresponding WhatsApp group to share logistics and directions. More than 30 women came, but the WhatsApp group exploded overnight, reaching 300 members in less than 24 hours. It was clear Hardy had tapped into something women were hungry for—to be outside and in community with one another.

Dubbed the “Women’s Outdoor Club,” the WhatsApp group now has over 850 members and 13 subgroups. Members organically branched off to create gear-swap chats, plan rideshares and coordinate backpacking plans. There’s even a group for people seeking jobs. To Hardy’s surprise, the Instagram handle @womensoutdoorclub was still available too, which speaks to the tenor of the industry.

“It’s quite singular to be one of the only females doing this in the U.S.,” Hardy says, “especially in the outdoor space, which is so oversaturated with the male gaze.”

Since that first river day, members have gathered to paint watercolors next to a waterfall, to clean up Short Sands Beach, and to hold a giant “girl dinner” picnic in Laurelhurst Park, where Hardy sold screen-printed T-shirts with the cheeky phrase “Girls Gone Wild.” Sometimes Hardy partners with outdoor and lifestyle brands to co-host the events.

“I can’t explain how nice it was to be outside with only women,” says Joey Beso, a yoga and Pilates instructor and founder of jewelry brand Hold This for Me who recently attended a waterfall hike Hardy hosted with the French outdoor brand Salomon. “It’s not something you think about, but being in a safe, women-centered space felt like such a relief.”

“It’s a sanctuary,” Hardy says. “I want to protect it and make sure all the girls are having an authentic experience.”

The Women’s Outdoor Club is not Hardy’s first foray into community-minded gatherings. She started the annual Portland Art Book Fair and has been hosting events with her company, Landdd, for years. In simple terms, Landdd is a design-forward outdoor store in Old Town, but it doubles as a home base for a slew of events Hardy organizes, both in and out of nature.

When Landdd first opened in 2022, Hardy arranged the bright, high-ceilinged shop as a design studio and showroom with a small retail footprint selling homewares. She found the building, a former ambulance garage where EMTs would wash and refuel their vehicles, on Craigslist while living in Mexico. She rented it blind and renovated it herself—hammered every nail, did the electrical, and even sourced aluminum for shelving.

“I touched every inch of this property,” she says.

Today, those aluminum shelves hold a range of books and goods with personal connections—Hardy’s favorite tea, Doctor Stolberg Rest + Digest; olive oil from her friends’ brand, Psyche. There’s also genuinely cool outdoor gear from hard-to-source brands, like lightweight day packs from Pa’Lante and backpacks from the Scandinavian brand Klättermusen.

“I want Landdd to carry things you otherwise wouldn’t find in Oregon,” Hardy says. “The ethos is really, where does it come from, how is it made, and can we get it around here?”

The result is a unique assortment that carves a niche for those of us who maybe haven’t seen our taste reflected on the shelves of legacy outdoor retailers or other independent shops in the area.

The event component of Landdd started organically a few years ago. After a slow period, Hardy decided to put on workshops, hoping that pooling like-minded people together might bring more people in.

“There was this whiplash of being alone that everyone experienced during COVID,” she says. “We were afraid of being too close but also eager to meet people outside of our social bubble. Landdd cracked that wide open.”

The first Landdd workshop was with artist and floral sculptor Manu Torres, of Portland floral design studio Florescent. After that, Hardy pulled in more local makers and international artists. But she soon realized everyone was yearning for a bit of fresh air.

“People wanted to be outside, I wanted to be outside, so I knew we had to take Landdd outside.”

The name “Landdd” ironically came full circle. Before expanding beyond the store’s walls, it was just a word Hardy liked. Now, it feels like a premonition.

Landdd’s events moved outside in early 2025. The first was a botanical tour of the trails around Coyote Wall, a prominent basalt cliff on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Botanist, arborist and author of Flowers of the Columbia River Gorge Mario Catani guided the tour, which was co-hosted by local clothing company Earth\Studies and Japanese camping brand Snow Peak. After learning about local flora from Catani, participants met in a meadow where they were provided with paints to illustrate what they saw.

“There’s something really special about being outside with a group of people, noticing the same things, asking questions, laughing, sitting on the ground, just being present in a place together,” Catani says. “Those are the kinds of experiences people actually remember.”

Brooke Lyons, a sound bath practitioner who attended one of Catani’s botany tours this spring, felt the same. For her, the partnerships Hardy orchestrated with local companies were another draw. She and the group she went with started the day with coffee from Upper Left and finished with Marigny wine while listening to music under an inflatable installation from Earth\Studies.

“That’s one of the things that makes Landdd’s events special—the collaborations,” Lyons says. “The events are always thoughtful, intentional and anything but ordinary.”

These days, Landdd hosts multiple outings each week. One recent gathering centered on making leather journals inside a 102-year-old dairy barn, another involved hiking across the “living ice” at Mount Hood’s Eliot Glacier, and yet another involved an afternoon fly-fishing on Frog Lake. Closer to home, there was a neighborhood bike ride that ended at Duality Brewing for beers and airbrush tattoos, as well as a 5k jog that landed at a Guss Mobile Sauna.

Not all of Landdd’s events cost money, but some do. “Nature is free,” Hardy says, though some activities require gear rentals and trained guides, or perhaps special hosts.

“If we are charging for something, I promise all of your senses will be activated,” Hardy says. “You’ll leave having made something, ate or drank something, and hopefully have a new friend, too.”

SHOP: Landdd, 714 NW Glisan St., landdd.org. Noon–5 pm Saturday and Sunday.