Find the pack that howls back.
About Us:
Jarid Rose
Jarid is a husband, father, and adventurer based in San Diego. He may have started off as a flatlander but earned his mountain man bona fides after the third cow incursion. For over a decade he's been the man with the plan, organizing the bucket list trips his crew builds their year around. Somewhere between the campfire conversations and the miles logged on lumpy ground he realized that what made those trips matter wasn't the scenery. It was the friends he was doing it with. ManScouts is his attempt to make sure every man who's looking has somewhere to howl.
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It was one of those restless nights, I had already been up too late, the blankets were too warm but the air uncomfortably cold, the pillow angle was for crap and the street light gave the room a dreamy glow. As my mind ping ponged through all the ways I was defeating my REM it hit me, what was keeping me up wasn’t anything I was doing, it was all the things I wasn’t doing. Taking inventory of my life I saw that while I was providing for my family, crushing the grind, and doting on my partner I wasn’t taking care of myself. All the responsibilities that gave me purpose were now robbing me of fulfillment. I used to wake up before the sun to set off an adventure, now I would spend those grey hours catching up on paperwork while the baby slept. Weekends that were once spent tromping through the woods were now spent putting a house in order that never ended up being clean. And now instead of kicking back beers with the boys I would spend those hours doing some wholesome shit with the family. I was proud of the life that I had built, I had built something wonderful but I forgot to forge something for myself.
For weeks I tossed and turned wrestling with this uncomfortable truth. As the calendar turned a spark began to return, I noticed that instead of chewing through this question with dread I began to examine it as an solvable dilemma, its was no longer daunting, it was now just a puzzle. What had changed? My circumstances were the same, yet my outlook had improved. Then it clicked, it was summer, in a few short weeks I was due to adventure out on my annual Man Trip. At this point the boys and I have been setting out on this annual trip for a decade. Each year we would venture off to one of this country’s great wild jewels. Yes, the scenery was breathtaking but the trip was so much more than pretty places. Each trip had followed a predictable pattern, the planning, the execution and the decompressing, each phase held its own value. The planning generated excitement as we literally mapped out our route. The execution, well I don’t need to explain the value there but then there was the decompression. It was in this phase that I could take all the energy I had just found and apply it to my life. I now had the vigor to tackle the inevitable struggles I would encounter.
Each year these trips were an annual highlight but why? I had taken other trips, even my honeymoon, but none of them were able to recharge me like the Man Trip. There was something special there. It wasn’t that we did anything exciting, we essentially just walked for days on end only to end up sleeping on the lumpy ground. What made this special? As the planning started up again I began discussing this with my buddy Brando. Between picking routes through Yosemite we would philosophize about what was so damn special about this tradition, because he saw this truth too. As one theory after another was raised then dismissed I saw through to the truth of what we were doing. The planning, the walking and the reminiscing were just excuses for us to talk and spend time together. It wasn’t the trips that kept us coming back year after year, it was the friendship. My mood turned when the planning started because suddenly I was talking to my buddies again. The trips were epic, not because of the elevation but because I was able to overcome something with my brothers. The vigor didn’t come from the caveman TV, it came from the talks we had around the campfire.
These conversations didn’t just happen when the smoke wafted into our faces or when we were out exploring cool places. We spoke during every phase of the trip, nothing was held back, we lived up front with one another which allowed us to make those elusive breakthroughs that our lives needed. What I’m describing is community, it's nothing complicated and it shouldn’t be something rare, yet it was. Having a cadre of friends you can count on shouldn’t be something exceptional, it's something that we should all have yet most men have never had a group they could be real with. I saw this first hand when a new friend was going through it, he felt alienated from his boys. I hadn't known him long enough to gauge if he needed to talk it out over a beer, mull it over while walking miles or game it out over cards but I wanted to be there for him so I put it out there asking him “what's the best way to show up for you?”, he was befuddled, no one had ever asked him that before. Despite having a circle of lifelong friends he had never had the privilege of actually being seen.
When the time came to start planning year 12 I told this story to Brandon. He was the other Man Trip stalwart, the one I had planned every trip with, not single year missed. Hearing this story, he didn’t blink. This wasn’t news to him, he had seen this situation play out before. What surprised me was when he suggested that we needed to do something about it. Brandon has spent his career supporting individuals who have found themselves at loss, confused, or even in trouble because of lack of connection and social supports. He had been hearing peoples pain for years during his career in addiction counseling and more recently at 988 suicide prevention. The biggest issue he sees time and time again is that individuals don’t have anyone to turn to in their time of need. Hearing me recognize the same truths he saw every day is what would spur him into action. He felt deeply, it's time to start helping people before they have found rock bottom. So on our next call instead of sorting out the next hike he asked me to start a new adventure with him , it was time to launch ManScouts. Join us. Find the pack that howls back.
Brandon Wilcox
Brandon grew up feral in the farm country of Southern Idaho, chasing sunsets, jumping off cliffs into water that was definitely too cold, and developing an undiagnosed obsession with finding out what's at the end of every trail. Spoiler: it's usually another trail.
When he's not saving supporting lives professionally, he's saving his own sanity somewhere on a trail with a pack on his back and dirt in his beard. Backpacking isn't a hobby for Brandon. It's basically a personality disorder he's decided to make meaningful.
Perfectly imperfect. Chronically outdoors. Genuinely believes a good trail and an honest conversation can fix most things, or at least make them more bearable.
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I've known since I was a kid that nature was where I was supposed to be. I couldn't have told you why back then. I just knew that the second I was outside, in the woods, in the mountains, anywhere that wasn't four walls and fluorescent lighting, something in me settled. Something exhaled. It wasn't until I grew up that I started to understand what that feeling actually was. And honestly? It changed everything about how I see people, how I do my work, and eventually, why ManScouts exists.
Nature isn't just pretty. I mean, sure, it's stunning, and standing on top of a mountain after a brutal climb will never get old. But it's more than that. Nature is a teacher. A healer. It's one of the only places left where awe still shows up uninvited and wonder exists in fullest. It's where you remember that you're small, and somehow, that's the most comforting thing in the world. Those feelings? They don't live in your inbox. They don't show up in back-to-back meetings or while you're scrolling through your phone at midnight. But out there? They're everywhere.
I've spent years in behavioral health, working alongside people who were carrying more than most people ever see. And one of the most powerful things I ever learned to do was simple, get people outside. Not as a cure-all, not as a replacement for real work, but as a starting point. A reset. Time and time again, I watched people come back from nature calmer, clearer, more connected to something they couldn't quite name but desperately needed. That never got old either.
But here's the thing I kept running into. Even the people who had access to nature, even the ones who loved it, still felt like something was missing. They'd come back from a weekend in the mountains and be right back in the same fog by Tuesday. And the more I sat with that, the more I realized it wasn't about the mountains. It was about connection. Connection to themselves, to their environment, and most painfully, to other people.
I became a little obsessed with male loneliness, especially years into running the local chapter of 988-the national suicide lifeline. Like, read-everything-I-can-get-my-hands-on obsessed. And the piece that hit me harder than anything else was Dr. Vivek Murthy's parting report to America, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." If you haven't read it, I can't recommend it enough. Murthy lays out in painful, undeniable detail how disconnected we've become as a society, and how badly it's wrecking us, especially men. But what I loved most wasn't the diagnosis. It was the prescription. He calls it the Triad of Fulfillment, three things that research shows men genuinely need to thrive: meaningful relationships, acts of service, and a sense of purpose. Three things. That's it. And most of us are walking around starving for all three.
So I started asking myself, how do I become part of the solution? How do I take everything I know about nature, about healing, about what men actually need, and build something real out of it?
Turns out, my best friend Jarid was asking himself the exact same question, likely more from a personal lens, but nonetheless he was building something out in his head and wanted me to come along for the ride.
So as we were packing up for another annual backpacking trip, he came to me with this idea, this vision, and I just remember thinking, yeah, that's it. That's the thing! Because what Jarid was envisioning wasn't just another outdoors group or a weekend retreat where guys drink beer around a fire and call it brotherhood. What he was picturing was something intentional. Something that could actually move the needle on all three pillars at once. Something that could take what we learned on the trail and apply into our everyday lives. And that's ManScouts.
It's a brotherhood built around nature, service, and purpose. It's getting after hard trails with people who have your back. It's doing something that matters beyond yourself. It's finding your people and actually feeling that, not just saying it. For me, this isn't just a passion project. It's the thing I've been building toward my whole career without knowing it. It's the answer I kept searching for in every book, every session, every late night trying to figure out how to help men not just survive but actually come alive.
ManScouts is for the guys who have always felt the pull of something bigger. Who hear the howl of the wild and the quiet ache of needing real connection and know deep down those two things were never supposed to be separate.
We built this for you. Come howl with us. And find the men who howl back.
Set & Setting
Set and Setting isn't just a name. It's a philosophy. The set is the mindset you bring. The setting is where it all unfolds. Get both right, and something powerful happens.
Every great experience in life comes down to two things: how you show up, and where you show up. ManScouts is built around both. We create the conditions for something real to happen, and then we get out of the way and let it.
The surest way to thrive in every situation is to always be prepared. ManScouts facilitates this by encouraging each member to build a formidable mindset. These tools are forged at our virtual campfires. The initial series of conversations will be held weekly during the month leading up to our first adventure. After the inaugural expedition these conversations will be open to the entire community with a subset being reserved for each adventure’s cohort.
These conversations build skills for both the forest and the concrete jungle. For the forest, knots, navigation, nutrition. The practical stuff that keeps you alive. While these skills will keep you alive, they do nothing to help you live.
For that we dive deeper to speak about the questions we all have but are often too intimidated to think of let alone discuss. What's holding us back? What is it in life we are craving? Whether the life we're living actually lines up with what we say we care about, or if we've just been too busy to notice the gap.
Each virtual campfire will explore values, perspectives, and challenges that shape our lives. These principles will be given perspective in group discussions, the point is not to find answers but to lodge these questions firmly into your psyche ensuring that each day the questions get turned, so that a new facet can be considered.
With the questions formed we head out beyond roads and onto the retreat. The retreats are intended to push both mind and body into new spaces, like steel sharpening steel as our bodies struggle through the miles only to reach new heights. The soul being soothed by the confidence gained from the self sufficiency of existing within one uncomfortably large bag. Achieving these physical feats spurring our minds to forge new pathways boldly setting out for novel solutions to the questions we have been encouraging to haunt us.
As the sun crosses the horizon we will challenge these questions together and on our own. Asking not only what lies ahead but also striving to understand where we came from. Not all of the questions will be answered, in fact it's probable that not even one will be resolved but it is certain that progress will be made.
Even after the last of the dust has been washed off it may not be clear what new revelations have been discovered. To help crystallize what's been learned one week after the return we will reconvene for a debrief around a digital fire. We will spend the time sorting through the new while launching forward with new intentions. Committing to a new trail, one we will embark on in brotherhood together. Knowing that from here on out when we howl out into the lonely night we will hear our brothers howl back.