The Outdoor Enthusiast Next Door: Lou Yuhasz (Part 1)

Filed in archive Interviews on May 29, 2007

This week's Outdoor Enthusiast Next Door is Lou Yuhasz, of Steel Valley Outdoors, "a blog dedicated to improving the quality of life for residents of the Mahoning Valley". When he's not is blogging, he works at a large HMO. Check at the Steel Valley Outdoors here.

Why do you love the outdoors?

My Father. I know it's cliched, but that's how it goes. My father has always been an avid outdoorsman. When I was seven, he moved the family to Montana and just recently got my brothers and me involved in a local volunteer search and rescue team. I only hope that I can be the same kind of parent to my daughters.

Favorite outdoor activity/sport and why?

With all the options open to us here, I still enjoy hiking and camping the best. I think our fast paced culture intrudes on our outdoor activities a lot: that we feel we have to be "doing" something like bike riding or climbing or Kayaking and that slowing down just to appreciate our surroundings get short shrift. I really enjoy just relaxing, not having a set schedule and just meditating outdoors. I do these things to relax and recharge, and I don't feel that I have to push myself all the time.

What's the inspiration behind Steel Valley Outdoors?

As I mentioned above I was involved until the birth of my second daughter with a local search and rescue Team, U.S SARR Corps. This organization really opened my eyes up to the many activities I have available in Northeast Ohio. Until I joined them, I thought of us as primarily a hunting/ fishing community. But part of U.S SARR's philosophy is a modular approach to rescue. We don't have a single, major activity or location, Unlike say, Mt. Hood, or the Colorado River where you can say, OK , the majority of our time is going to be spent on technical or whitewater.

Because of this, I began to think of a clearinghouse to bring all these different communities together and let each one now what the others were doing. The Mahoning Valley area is still a terribly depressed, rust belt area. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one is there isn't a lot of boosterism around here. People up here in the Northeast corner of Ohio seem to feel like forgotten stepchildren, Even though we're only an hour away and half way in between two major cities (Cleveland and Pittsburgh).

Ayway, one day on our local drive-time afternoon radio show, they were asking the question why no companies are attracted to our area. All the usual suspects were dragged out: union mentality, high taxes, foreign competition. Eventually the "conversation" steered around to quality of life issues: our climate sucks, and who wants to relocate here when they could go to the Southwest. I was furious. I mean, Seattle rebounded quite nicely from the collapse of the aerospace industry in the 70s and no one ever accused them of having a great climate (apologies to all the mossbacks.)

So, I was really furious and started thinking about actually putting up the website to promote outdoor activities in this area. I got an account on a host, and started to play around with it. I don't have any training, and the first site was a static template provided by the host that was pretty awful. It wasn't until I discovered blogging software that I really was happy with the direction the site was taking.