WHOA Plus GAL, Andrea DiMaio, got on a call with Kara Hardman, one of the members from the 2019 Curvy Kili Crew trip that started WHOA plus. Kara and her friend Arwen Turner, co-founded Thicket Adventure, a brand creating plus size hiking clothing with a mission. Here is their conversation.

What was your relationship with hiking and the outdoors before Thicket existed?
Before hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro with the Curvy Kili Crew, I hiked the Salkantay trail in Peru and was living in Denver and went on hikes regularly. A lot of my outdoor life centered around my dog, Brecken, and when she passed away, that relationship changed drastically. It got too painful and heavy, and I wasn't ready to deal with those feelings yet. So my outdoorsy life shifted toward working at a horse rescue, which still got me outside in all kinds of weather. That became my version of "outdoorsy" for a while.

I moved to Vermont in 2024. The first winter, I barely did anything since it had been a long time since I'd dealt with a real northern winter. I had to slowly rebuild what "outdoorsy" looked like there. It's a lot less intense now and I'm not summiting as many mountains as I used to. It's slower and more mindful. I stop a lot to look at mushrooms and moss and birds. My relationship with the outdoors has kept changing over the years, and honestly, I'm still figuring out what it looks like now.

What was the moment that convinced you plus-size hikers needed better gear than was on the market?
It goes back to the OG Kili trip that we both were on. In the Facebook group for it, there were tons of messages – did you find this, did you find that? So many questions about clothing, so few answers. And that's not fair. If it had been straight-size gear, there would've been twenty options. Even the few things that did exist for us were things like, "this was made for farmers, but it should work for hikers I guess."

On that trip, I got really sick and I was wearing leggings. Leggings aren't easy to clean in the field, but the bigger problem was that once they got wet, they never fully dried. Not until I was off the mountain and could get them into an actual washer and dryer. They stayed wet or damp the whole time. It was like putting on a wet bathing suit, not fun, and the chafing from wearing the leggings wasn't great either.

Kara on Kilimanjaro in 2019 wi the Curvy Kili Crew

How did Thicket actually come to be?
I was getting ready to hike Kili and living in Denver at the time. There was an Unlikely Hikers hike happening, and I went. Arwen went too. The way we actually met was that her husband asked to pet my dog, Brecken, and they hit it off. While the two of them were enjoying each other's company, Arwen and I started talking. I mentioned I was on the Curvy Kili Crew, and she got excited as she'd been following the Curvy Kili Crew online.

After that, we just started meeting up to hike together around Denver. One day, after a hike, we were grabbing food and Arwen said she wanted to make plus-size hiking pants. I said, "I'm in! What do I need to do?" Arwen's idea was to start with market research in the form of a survey. We put it out on our brand-new Instagram account and got 1,300 responses within a month! That's when we knew plus-size hiking clothes, specifically pants, were a real, widespread need. That's why we started there.

We then went to Boulder and visited a bunch of the outdoor retail stores, bringing a straight-size friend along to try on pants for us. We bought four pairs we liked features on and brought them home to help with the initial design. We networked our way to our tech designer, Adrienne, who was a godsend. She helped design the first pair. The first sample was bad. We went through two or three more prototypes before landing on one we liked. Then we found a women-owned manufacturing rep out of LA, Lefty Productions, who helped us find our manufacturer and finalize that first edition. We still work with them today.

Tell me about the design of the Brecken pants. What makes them special for plus-size bodies, and why aren't they just a resized version of straight-size pants?
A lot of other companies start their plus sizes at something like a size 8 and just add inches as they size up. We started with a size 24 as our base. That's what makes these different from any other plus-size pants out there. We perfected the size 24 first. To do that, we took a bunch of measurements from myself and my co-founder, Arwen, and our designer built a 3D model from that combined data. We like to call it a Kara/Arwen baby, ha ha.

Every square inch of the design had intention behind it. We started with a stretchy yoga-style waistband, because we know bodies change. Mine changed just during the time I was on Kilimanjaro, since I got sick and became very bloated on the trail. I wanted the waistband comfortable enough to wear all day, sleep in, and hike in again the next day, so people doing extended backpacking trips wouldn't have to carry extra clothing weight. The waistband has an inner cord for additional adjustment and they're also quick-dry and water resistant.

From the waist down, there are two four-way stretch fabrics. There is a lightweight, breathable one, and a heavier one in the high-friction areas like the butt, knees, inner thighs and calves. That fights chub rub and makes the pants more durable and less likely to tear while adventuring. There are four pockets total, all sized to fit the largest phones on the market. There are two lower envelope pockets and two zippered side pockets to keep things secure.

You can roll the pants up at the bottom to cross water, or button them up if you're petite, which is our current solution for different inseams until we can offer more inseam options. (Andrea interjects here: I’m 5’2” and they stay up!!)

Tell me about the two fits you offer, since that's different from a lot of straight-size pants.
We have nine sizes, from 14 to 30, and two fits: the booty fit and the belly fit. Offering both gives people a more custom fit depending on whether they carry more in their belly or their booty. It helps prevent that butt gap you get when bending or squatting. Having a range of sizes also lets people wear the pants the way they actually like them. Some folks size down for a tighter fit, some size up if they prefer them to be looser.

Has being in the outdoors affected your relationship with your body, or with body positivity or body liberation, in any way?
Yeah, 100%. Especially when you slow down and look at all the different shapes and sizes of the trees, the plants, the animals, the leaves. A mosquito versus a dragonfly. Can you imagine thinking a sequoia is bad because it's big and tall, and a skinny little maple next to it is good? Can you imagine having a thought like that about like a leaf or a bug or anything? That is so absurd to have a thought like that and we, humans are nature so how can we think like that? Think about it, it’s almost time for all of the people to start making their way here to Vermont to see all of the different colors of fall leaves. If they were all the same, people wouldn’t be coming up here to see them. So if bodies were all the same, how boring would that be?! I think everyone needs to let bodies be and stop worrying so much. Go do something better with your life. That’s what Thicket is all about. Even if that’s looking at a leaf because that’s a sweet thing to do.

What's the feedback been like from people who maybe have never had real technical gear that fit before?
Yeah, I tend to cry a lot. We get a lot actually, things like “thank you, these are so comfortable” probably weekly. But I”m thinking about one specifically that we got. We got a special email from someone. This woman's husband got an educational approval to go into the backcountry to study mountain goats in a place where it’s a restricted area and not a lot of people get to go. He was accepted to do this study and he could bring one person with him. His wife really wanted to go but she wasn’t going to go because she didn’t have the gear. And then she found us. Then she was able to go and live in the backcountry with her husband and study goats. He was going to be gone for 3 months and she was just going to stay home because the weather was going to be wet and she wouldn’t have been comfortable without technical gear and she got to go because she found Thicket!

It’s cool to hear. So many people have felt like they didn’t have permission to go and be outside but now that they have the right gear, they feel like they now have permission.

What's it like building a gear brand in an industry that has historically ignored fat adventurers?
It still does ignore fat adventurers. My background is in construction, and in that industry I had to fight to prove I belonged. This feels like that. I recently went to Outdoor Retailer in Minneapolis, and we were the only brand there that was exclusively plus-size, and the only brand offering anything past a 4XL, maybe even a 3XL. I constantly feel like I'm pushing my elbows out, taking up space. It can feel like going to war in those spaces so you have to have tactics. You have to convince people this is worth it to them. You're not going in looking for a fight, but you do need strategy, even a little trickery.

I went in as the plus size expert. I said to people, “ I know you think that plus size people are going away and I can’t convince you now that that’s not true, but in 2 or 3 years, you may realize that’s still not true so I’m going to give you my card and then you can come to me and I’ll help you with whatever you need whenever you’re ready. “

I asked some retailers with physical stores whether they see plus-size customers coming in. Many said yes. So I told them: "When you're ready to start providing for that population and taking their money, let me know." We are going to slowly claw away at their sense of diet culture until they’re fully body liberated, one small piece at a time. We need to let people slowly go through the process and realize they can be on the other side of diet culture.

What's next for Thicket?
We're working on shorts, coming out next year. I was actually supposed to send Andrea the prototype to try, but I liked them too much and kept them for myself.

We're also developing the Joey pant, a one-fabric "fit and flare" style. No firm release date yet. We're being picky about getting the fabric right so it doesn't make noise when it swishes. We think birders will like those especially, and it should solve a fit issue some people have had with the Brecken pants around larger calves.

We're also researching sun shirts, and there will be more limited-edition colors of the Brecken pants over time. We're looking to do a small run in a 33-inch tall inseam to see how it performs.

We're collaborating with Birdie Blue on a bag made from pants we haven't been able to sell returns with a defect, things like that, so nothing goes to waste and we can be a little more sustainable.

And we'll be at Seattle Fat Con in February 2027, so come say hi if you're in the area.