Through Adventuress Ty, Vaughn leads groups on zip lining, kayaking, bungee cord jumping, hot air balloon, and skydiving excursions.
By Blake Carter
Ty Vaughn found that her true calling is finding adventures in the great outdoors, and she’s been sharing those extreme experiences with many people over the last several years. She did not know that life would take her zipping around the world until her 40th birthday.
“I did not grow up in the outdoors,” Vaughn said. “I grew up in the Crenshaw area (a couple blocks away from Crenshaw High School). My parents didn’t do the outdoors. We didn’t go camping, or none of that. I had no background experience. So this was like an awakening for me.”
Vaughn’s favorite show on television is CBS’s “The Amazing Race,” which is a game show where teams of two travel around the world completing adventurous tasks.
“There was one episode where the couples were zip lining, and I thought that was interesting,” she said. “I had never done it, but it just looked really fun.”
Vaughn did a Google search, and the first zip lining company that popped up was on Catalina Island, so she booked it with her husband. Not long after that her life changed when they headed to the island for their excursion.
“It was our turn to step off the platform and have this experience,” she said. “As soon as I stepped off that platform it was absolutely life transforming. The fear was there initially, but the freedom of flight and having this experience of just holding onto these two handles and seeing the world from a different perspective and a different view; it was absolutely the most amazing thing that I had ever done. I was addicted.”
From there, Vaughn started booking zip lining trips around the country in Southern California, New York, at the Grand Canyon, and she went south of the border into Mexico. She was not the only Black person enjoying these thrills, but she was one of the few. She was doing this as a hobby until a friend of hers, who was a filmmaker, encouraged her to make a social media post inviting people “who look like us” to join her. Vaughn decided to do it one time to see what type of response that she would get. To her surprise she got a pretty large response.
Vaughn started out taking people to Pacific Crest in Wrightwood, which is about 85 miles from Los Angeles. She later began taking groups on other adventures, including river rafting, paragliding, kayaking, and skydiving. Another friend of hers urged her to turn this into a business because most people are not going to take the time to plan these excursions, but they would be willing to pay Vaughn to plan it. At that point she was getting groups of abut 50 people on each trip, so she created Adventuress Ty, partnering with her filmmaker friend.
“From that point on every adventure that we have posted has sold out,” she said. “All of them.”
Vaughn is able to introduce these adventures to people who most likely would not have done them on their own.
“I love what I do and I have so much passion for the extreme adventure and I did not realize that so many other people that were waiting to have their hand held as they go off into the zip line world or skydiving,” she said. “They just needed somebody to guide them. It was so enlightening to create a space for people to come to where they are facing their fears and the unknown.”
People do not need to have experience or special skills to participate in these adventures.
“I took 35 people to the Bridge to Nowhere (in the San Gabriel Mountains),” Vaughn said. “All of these people showed up at 5:30 in the morning. Thirteen of us (bungee) jumped, and the rest just came to watch. That is a 10 mile hike. Five going and five coming back. Most of the people weren’t hikers.”
One phrase that is pretty common among Black people when they’re talking about the great outdoors is, “That’s White people stuff.” Vaughn believes that saying is ignorant and that Black people should be doing these outdoor activities as well.
“If you have the desire, the money, and the time, do what you want to do,” she said. “It’s your life. I think that there has been a misconception that this is a cultural thing. It’s silly to say that this race does this and that race does that. That’s ridiculous. We (Black people) enjoy thrills just like anybody else does. We just haven’t been exposed to it. A lot of White people and other races, that’s their lifestyle. They grew up camping and going fishing. They grew up doing all of these things. We’ve been trying to survive. We have to go to work and we have kids to feed. I think that we don’t do these things because of a lack of exposure and a lack of information. But when I was out there bungee jumping, I saw multiple hiking groups out here that looked like us and that were participating in this bungee jumping.”
Vaughn has been doing monthly adventures since 2019. Later this year she’s taking a group to Belize, and in 2025 she’s taking groups to Niagara Falls, New Zealand, and on an Alaskan cruise. Her plan for next year is to do six international trips.
“There are some buckets list things that I want to do that aren’t local,” she said.
As for “The Amazing Race,” she would love to go on that show to seek out more adventures.
For more information about Adventuress Ty, visit www.adventuressty.com.
