>>966921I can't tell if you are asking what people do in the outdoors in general, or maybe you just don't understand what mountains are... It's hard for me to conceive of an environment where you'd have access to outdoor recreation in "the desert" but somehow mountains are beyond your reach, especially since you hinted that you live in the US. All deserts in the US are closely bordered by mountains.
>muh delicate ecosystem trails consisting of pine and what few things can coexist with the needle rain,I have no idea why you think mountains are any more delicate of an ecosystem than the desert. Both have very slow rates of decomposition of waste and growth of plants and other flora. Just because you treat the desert as a wasteland and tear it up with an ATV doesn't make it any less delicate, from a conservation perspective, than mountains. On the contrary, ATVing is very popular in mountainous terrain, so there's one thing that you can do there. You'll probably be staying on trails in the desert to stay out of rocky areas or shrubby areas, so I don't see how it could be that different from what you're used to.
>and mountains being a series of pointy rocks with nothing of note happening.Whereas deserts are so empty that they don't even have the pointy rocks.
There is a lot of appeal in recreating in the mountains, but if it needs to be explained to you, you'll likely never "get it." I'll just sum up some of the main points, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them and I'll elaborate.
-limited time you can access mountains makes the experience more special, and the terrain more pristine
-range of elevations with their own ecosystems = more variety of everything
-huge amount of life, some animals very large, not found elsewhere
-environment feels prehistoric, pre-human
-less crowds and less idiots to interrupt the experience
-peak-bagging, fishing, rock climbing, long distance hiking, everything feels more special because of all of the above factors
