How onX Offroad Opens Up Overlanding

Rory Edwards is the general manager for onX Offroad, the overlanding navigation app from pioneering outdoors wayfinding brand onX. In keeping with onX’s exploratory mission—“The call of the wild is in all of us,” as the company asserts—he tackles backcountry expeditions and other far-flung adventures from his home base in Ennis, Montana. As Wildsam gears up for the release of its first overlanding book (and the digital guide that goes with it), we sat down with Rory to talk about the app, exploration, the ethic of the outdoors and the satisfaction of hitting a mountain lake with no one else around.

Wildsam: What brought you to a career that marries tech and the great outdoors?

Rory Edwards: I’m Montana born and raised. I think my kids are eighth-generation Gallatin County. I was taught to take care of land—make sure I didn't tear things up, leave things how I found them.

Whether it was hunting, fishing, camping, dirt bikes, or whatever it might be, I grew up enjoying the outdoors. I went through college and ended up in the tech industry. In fact, in in 1999, I was pretty much the only person I knew who coded full-time for a living, but also raced dirt bikes on the weekend. 

When I got married, we bought a Jeep Wrangler and outfitted it. We'd go on 10-day camping trips, and I think it was before the concept of “overlanding” was a major term in the industry. 

New place every night—that was the plan. Get to, ideally, a mountain lake. Maybe fish a bit, maybe throw the boat out. And then head out the next morning, on the adventure, finding the next lake. 

And how did that build toward your involvement with onX Offroad?

RE: onX Offroad allowed us to really look at this group that has a high need for planning and a high need for navigation, two things that we could provide quite well. We wrote out what we believed the entry point of the solution was, with just one core idea in mind. Where can I go out—today, tomorrow, next week, or next year? Where can I go, legally, and have a good time with the vehicle that I own?

Where can I camp? How hard will the road be? What am I gonna get into when I'm out there? 

Am I going to be crawling over large rocks, or is it going to be a fairly easy gravel road? Am I going to see a waterfall? 

Would you say the resulting service is more for the seasoned overlander, or the “overland-curious” type?

RE: They all share the same problem. Can I make a plan? What do I do if I get in trouble? Less experienced folks might be more concerned with safety aspects or familiarity with gear—maybe you don’t know how to run your winch yet. But it really comes down to the same core needs.

One of the ideas we built onX Offroad around is, can I get 20 years of information in 20 minutes? Meaning, can we pack the knowledge that someone would acquire by traveling a region for 20 years into a 20-minute experience? If that happens, and we can make it to that level, I feel like we've become more successful in providing for you as an overlander. 

How does onX’s broader commitment to the ethic of the outdoors play into Offroad?

RE: The foundation we have with onX is that access and stewardship are major parts of our brand. In all of the products that we have, within the motorized space, and then specifically within the overland space, we care. The reality is, if people aren't going, and no one knows about a particular location, and it doesn't get used for five years, it's ripe for closure. It's ripe for trading that trail for another extension of a more popular trail. If trails and roads simply don’t get used because people don’t know about them, they disappear for future generations as well.

I'm 50 years old. I’ve seen so many areas closed in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming. Access can’t be taken for granted.

And how does the information, which leads to that access, play out in field in your experience?

RE: I just went on an overlanding trip over the last week and a half or so. We traveled to a completely new area, 10 hours from home. We had some rough plans, rough ideas. We camped every night in a new place. We had a plan for one day that involved hitting two waterfalls and two lakes. We got to the first waterfall at 8 o’clock in the morning. By 10 o’clock, we’re headed to the next spot, and there’s a mile-long line of cars parked along the side of the road.

We opened onX, picked a new place to go on a 40-mile dirt road. We camped on a lake that was 100 miles long—right on the shore. We, saw one boat on the lake, and saw zero other people in the entire area for two days straight. 

if you take a platform like onX, and you have the opportunity to look a little further, you find these places that are off the beaten path. That allows us to then branch out, take the population of those of us that like to get outdoors, and spread this out in a more even way. Which is, in turn, a way to, like, take care of the land a little bit better.