The colorful history of the outdoor mullet
Originally published for Outside on December 27th, 2025.
You can see it poking out from the back of beanies at bouldering crags. Under helmets on cycling routes and mountain bike trails. At climbing gyms, usually accessorized with a mustache and without a shirt. The mullet is back, and it’s inescapable.
“It’s the rebellion haircut of our time,” said Sam Jobek, a hairstylist based in Los Angeles, California, who specializes in mullet cuts.
o maybe it’s obvious why the controversial look has always appealed to climbers, dirtbags, cyclists, mountain bikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts who see themselves as rebuking traditional society and balancing on the edges of it.
“Mullets are pretty OG dirtbag culture,” mulleted boulderer Keenan Takahashi said. “A lot of the OG legends in Yosemite had mullets.” Takahashi originally got his to honor his friend John Bolte, who died from rockfall in El Chaltén in 2022 and sported a truly impressive curly mullet. Takahashi’s kept it for three years now, carrying on the tradition of mulleted Yosemite climbers.
Wolfgang Güllich, the great German climber who first free soloed the quintessential Yosemite roof climb Separate Reality in 1986, is pictured shirtless in red-and-white striped leggings, ripped as all hell, his shaggy mullet and mustache upgrading the photo to unforgettable. After topping out the iconic El Cap route Iron Hawk in 1984, Russ Walling’s grown-out hair is unmistakably mullet-like—it’s the same with his friend, Yosemite legend Scott Cosgrove. The androgynous cut was also popular with women climbers like Lynn Hill in the eighties.
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Jesse Klein 