Today, mountain sports are still heavily dependent on fossil-fuel-based transports, especially private cars. This well-established habit is no longer compatible with current environmental challenges, including both climate issues and local pollution in mountain areas. While mountains are often seen as pristine natural spaces, the car-based, fossil-fuelled modes of access, paradoxically contribute to their degradation.

The Change Your Approach campaign offers a different vision: a mountain that is accessible in other ways — to everyone, including those who do not own a car — through sustainable mobility that is more respectful of ecological balance and more aligned with the values shared by many mountain sports enthusiasts. By focusing on the issue of mobility, the project highlights a commonly overlooked paradox: in seeking out nature, we often end up harming it.

In the early 2000s is when the “Change Your Approach” campaign began. The first ski touring guidebook accessible by public transport dates back to 2001. Currently, the main project within the campaign is the creation of an awareness toolkit. This specific project started in 2024 and has been completed in June 2025.

The campaign is mainly aimed at hikers, climbers, skiers, mountaineers, ice climbers, mountain bikers, and paragliders. Mountain Wilderness also works with mountain professionals and clubs to support a different experience of time and space in mountain environments — one that encourages immersion, local engagement, and the use of sustainable mobility.

Mountain Wilderness France:

• Organizes car-free mountain outings, creating friendly, inspiring events. For example, the event “Saturday is for Bike-Skiing” brought together 80 bike-skiers in January 2025 who rode from Grenoble to go skiing. For 40 of them, it was the first time they had ever carried skis on a bicycle.
• Encourages mountain enthusiasts to choose alternatives to driving — such as trains, buses, and bicycles — to reach their destination. Mountain Wilderness France organized 11 public and national contests that brought together hundreds of participants and highlighted the many ways to reach the mountains differently.
• Creates mountain guidebooks with routes accessible by public transport. At this point 19 brochures have been published covering all French mountain ranges. The organisation’s website features thousands of public-transport-accessible routes, along with ecotourism initiatives like local food, crafts, and mountain agriculture.
• Runs outreach events to promote car-free access to the mountains — such as film screenings and testimonials from athletes and amateurs — aimed at both dedicated sportspeople and family audiences.

In 2024, the organisation developed a new tool to further this effort: the awareness toolkit. Its goal is to equip mountain federations and professionals with practical resources to concretely change their approach in the mountains. The toolkit supports the organization of car-free outings, public awareness initiatives, and communications around sustainable access without cars. It contains 20 tutorials and is structured into four key sections:

1. Inspire action – by triggering emotion through inspiring stories of Change Your Approach outings and community events, as well as a selection of free-to-use films and photos.
2. Convince – through clear, data-driven and rhetorical arguments that demonstrate the need for — and feasibility of — change. This includes tools like a carbon footprint calculator for mountain outings.
3. Take action – with practical guides on how to plan a car-free trip and advocate for better infrastructure. For example, how to equip your bike for bike-climbing or bike-ski touring.
4. Advocate – with guidance on how to address public authorities to request improvements in existing transport services or the development of new infrastructure (e.g. secure bike racks at trailheads).

Change Your Approach is therefore an invitation to rethink habits. By promoting soft mobility – public transport, cycling, walking – the project aims to reduce the environmental impact of mountain practices while enriching the overall experience. It encourages people to rediscover meaning in how they reach the mountains: more slowly, more mindfully, and more connected to the landscapes and communities they travel through. It’s an opportunity to immerse more deeply in mountain environments — to taste local flavours, support local economies, choose multi-day crossings rather than rushed day trips, bivouac or stay in a hut, and engage with the people who live in the mountains.