Anyone who is not in the adventure travel market might want to consider jumping into it head-first. A recently released study shows that adventure travel has been growing 65% year over year since 2009. It is now a $263 billion industry, and it’s still growing.

When it was released in August, the 2013 Adventure Tourism Market Study, a consumer-research report by George Washington University conducted in partnership with the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), indicated staggering growth in the adventure travel sector between 2009 and 2012 — a rate of expansion that surprised even the study’s sponsor.

“We expected growth — we expected big growth — but not at that level,” said ATTA President Shannon Stowell.