Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1094: Angie Marie - Climbing Volcanoes Revisited

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Ep. 1094: Angie Marie - Climbing Volcanoes Revisited · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey friends, thanks for joining the Adventure Sports podcast again today, Kurt here.
0:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you are not imagining things.
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the third episode this week, and for those of you who did not hear the announcement on Wednesday, I'm going to try that for a while.
0:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We had such a beautiful outpouring of guests wanting to be on the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to honor them by getting their content to your ears before it grows stale.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to do three episodes a week.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That'll be two fresh episodes and flashback Fridays, which will be a replay of an older episode.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really excited about this momentum.
0:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope that you enjoy it too.
0:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This episode today is a revisited episode with Mason interviewing Angie Marie Mason and Angie visit about encouraging people to get into the outdoors that
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe are not in a group of people that normally get into the outdoors as much as others, and encouraging people to experience all the wonderful things that we've all grown to love so much.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So without further ado, here's Mason.
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were talking to Angie Marie about climbing the five cascade of volcanoes or the five that she did.
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There's more than that.
1:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But the big, big mountains in the Pacific Northwest that stand all alone.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They're huge, like Mount Rainier, Mount St.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Helens.
1:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Angie wanted to climb these five to help raise money.
1:43
[SPEAKER_01]: for young girls and women to go on adventures.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Angie has spent her entire career making the outdoors more inclusive from folks with different abilities to more gender inclusive so that folks feel comfortable.
1:57
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of hurdles for a lot of people and how she did this project was through the Karen project, a site and
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: a project that basically is all about getting women outdoors and helping fundraise for other people to get outdoors and do these awesome adventures.
2:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So she started this adventure fundraiser through the five cascade volcanoes in Oregon and Washington, including Mount Rainier and documented the journey.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It was awesome.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Angie's awesome.
2:26
[SPEAKER_01]: She recently also did the Everest Basecamp track, which is amazing.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Couple week adventure multiple week adventure.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: through the Himalayas.
2:36
[SPEAKER_01]: She's done a lot of incredible things.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I love about this story is she just got invited one day.
2:41
[SPEAKER_01]: She got invited to go somewhere, had someone she knew said, can I come?
2:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's how this whole thing got started.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how this life got started in the mountains.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I find it so often, if you just invite people to go with you, even people that you don't think might be interested or have any skills as long as you're not putting them in danger, invite people.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the best ways to get people to actually go on an adventure.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: plan a weekend trip plan a day out in the woods of hiking and just invite somebody you never know what that can start and a lot of us you know the whatever passion we have started out with something as small as that so if you love the outdoors
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say you're doing an injustice to the people around you, your family, and your community by not bringing others with you.
3:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm one that love solitude as well, and we can still do adventures that are mostly solitude adventures.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I know with Angie a lot of this time was spent alone, but find those opportunities to bring people with you because we need more people in the outdoors, especially those who have not historically been able to go or have more obstacles.
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go ahead and jump in.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Angie, thank you for being on.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find more about her and what she does in the show notes and also find the fundraiser at the Karen project as well.
4:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And her blog, by the way, is outspired.org.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's jump in.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright folks, you heard a little of Angie's story in the intro, but now we're going to hear Angie's story in full.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Angie Marie, welcome to the show.
4:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks so much, Mason.
4:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just telling you how it seems like there are so many episodes that are like, I just walked through every state.
4:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And a month, I just climbed the tallest mountain after surfing the biggest wave of my life.
4:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And it feels really cool to be on a show where there are so many people with all different sized adventures.
4:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think something I want to hammer home today is that you can choose your own adventure and it's more about the journey behind it.
4:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So it seems fitting to be here.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're going to fit right in.
4:50
[SPEAKER_01]: This is great.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm very excited to hear about these this cascade volcano link up or adventure you did as a fundraiser, but I want to hear.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: First, I actually always ask this, where are you coming from and where is home for you if those aren't the same place?
5:08
[SPEAKER_03]: At this very moment, I'm on the sixteenth floor of a hotel in San Francisco overlooking Market Street.
5:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I love San Francisco, but I am not from here.
5:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I used to be a mass hole.
5:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes I'm still a mass hole when I'm in a bad mood, but Massachusetts, boarden raised.
5:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I was lured into the desert of Utah.
5:27
[SPEAKER_03]: What I thought would just be a summer gig white water rafting.
5:30
[SPEAKER_03]: That was actually a whitewater rafting company for people with disabilities and disadvantaged backgrounds.
5:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So obviously it was life-changing and within a month I knew I am never leaving the West.
5:41
[SPEAKER_03]: However, I did get sick of the desert, dryness and some burns all the time.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So then I was motivated to go to the Pacific Northwest where I live today.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side and I think I've pushed as far west as I'll probably ever go.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, Columbia River Gorge, Washington side near Vancouver, Washington.
6:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Outdoor persons paradise, like world-class kayaking, mountain biking, all the wind and water sports.
6:07
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there's the people who just resort to trail running and hiking like me, but you could do really whatever you want there.
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I've bifed through there once and traveled a few times.
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing place.
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: How's the weather like you're around being there all the time?
6:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, fellow mass hole over here are actually your east coaster.
6:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess you probably don't get snow down in Florida, but from Boston winters, I'm like, how are people complaining about Pacific Northwest winters?
6:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I will take a little bit of drizzle over a three feet of snow in my driveway that I have to shovel out any day.
6:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the summer spring summer fall pretty much perfect fantastic weather winter.
6:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it gets drizzly rainy, but I can't complain.
6:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I will take it any day.
6:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And the mountain is very there, forty five minutes an hour and you have skiing that's there almost year round.
6:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fantastic.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's, yeah, that was skiing.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're, it's kind of like a thing they talk about a lot of thing that's, uh, there's a lot of pride.
7:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember, you know, if they didn't like to lie, they were skiing.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it great, but nonetheless, you're skiing.
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, imagine how good it is most of the year.
7:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So right, the August, no, an organ is basically the January snow and New Hampshire.
7:14
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There we go.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: There we go.
7:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do not envy at all the weather in the Northeast.
7:20
[SPEAKER_01]: People don't realize that a lot of these, like we were in Colorado for years and people are like, you know, how do you deal with that cold?
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially from back Florida.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You just don't know.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You just think high mountains, big mountains, you're, it's going to be worse.
7:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, it's really mild compared to
7:35
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of other places, especially the Northeast.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious, how'd you go?
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You said it was that white water rafting experience.
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: How'd you get involved with that?
7:45
[SPEAKER_01]: What led you to even be aware of that and want to do something like that?
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you a part of a family that was outdoorsy or encouraged as type of stuff?
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Or did you have to figure it out on your own?
7:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Every big decision that I've made in my life has been one of those shrug.
8:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess I'll just try it out.
8:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So I didn't come from a hardcore outdoorsy family.
8:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely was raised to enjoy being outside going for nature walks.
8:13
[SPEAKER_03]: My dad and I would go hiking, but it was never anything hardcore, but you know, when you're in college and you have that rough semester of the courses you're in and the stupid boys and all of that, sometimes you just need to get out.
8:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I figured, well, I went to Moab once when I was a teenager on a family vacation.
8:29
[SPEAKER_03]: There was something, you know, magical place.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There's something about that desert that just draws you in.
8:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
8:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So after that hard semester in college, I was looking for summer internships.
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I found a company for adaptive sports and I saw that they had an internship for a white water raft guide.
8:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought, I'll never get this.
8:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not qualified.
8:46
[SPEAKER_03]: They were like, no, you're enthusiastic enough.
8:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You might as well come on out.
8:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got to be making five hundred dollars a month.
8:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I learned how to be a rough guide out in the desert of Moab on the Colorado and green rivers.
8:58
[SPEAKER_03]: But the main point of that entire job was to bring adventure to people who aren't usually given those opportunities in life.
9:06
[SPEAKER_03]: People who are in wheelchairs don't usually get advertised to go white water after.
9:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So you wouldn't see yourself represented in the media in advertisements and you would think, well, I'm in a wheelchair.
9:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't swim.
9:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't go white water after.
9:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were there to prove that wrong.
9:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So you would take out people with traumatic brain injuries, people who had recovered from strokes, people with multiple sclerosis.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And all of these people had very specific needs and very specific ones.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But the common thread was that there's dignity and risk.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And if you want to be able to get out and adventure, you should have the resources to do that no matter what your background is.
9:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that sounds like some, basically with the range of, of potentially different abilities, that sounds like some very specialized skills in equipment.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What was some of the reactions by some of the folks that got to do some of this stuff for the, you said it was life changing, I'm sure that was because of how it changed people's lives that you saw.
10:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the reactions are overwhelmingly positive.
10:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, these are people who aren't usually given the chance to see these areas let alone experience and outdoor sport within them.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And we always started and ended our trip with a community circle of sorts.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So you'd stand around, you know, what's your name?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Where are you from?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What are you looking forward to?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And that's your kind of break the ice opening circle.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And our closing circle at the end of the trip usually had tears.
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[SPEAKER_03]: in a good way, you know.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I could do this.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't know.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I could paddle.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't know that I could sleep under the stars for one night out in the desert.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So definitely people were blown away by their own strength.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They were blown away by the compassion and empathy of the guides.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It was a very community-centered organization.
10:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It was definitely less about hit the door, brown cloth, classified rapids, and a lot more about
10:58
[SPEAKER_03]: How can we see each other as just fellow humans and how can we make this the most fun experience and most empowering experience for everybody on this trip?
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So from there, it sounds like it was in something to do forever because you weren't keen on being in the dryness of the desert forever.
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So what was next for you?
11:17
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the next step?
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually it's for a lot of people on this show that have a career path of any sort to what they're doing here.
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no guidebook for it.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just the norm in this world.
11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What was your story there?
11:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, since college, I've kept a Google Doc called What do I do with my life?
11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just flipped the things that inspired me.
11:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So I went back to that Google Doc.
11:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But OK, I'm going somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
11:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably came up with two hundred jobs to our different links to different jobs or areas that I was interested in going.
11:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's when I landed on the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington and I became a professional Girl Scout.
11:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, it was one of those, I'll just do this for summer and then you get sucked in for five years because of the mission.
12:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm a very mission minded person.
12:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I love the outdoors and for me, my, I think my calling in life is really to expand those opportunities in the outdoors to
12:12
[SPEAKER_03]: people who aren't usually given those opportunities.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So I really loved my time with the Girl Scouts.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I was their outdoor program specialist.
12:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So I did a lot of planning and coordinating and even guiding, taking girls and their troop leaders outside.
12:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We did first time camping weekends.
12:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We did some more white water aftering, although I didn't go at those ones.
12:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I've retired from that.
12:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And I created curricula to help Girl Scouts get outdoors and learn outdoor skills.
12:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So kind of the full range of
12:41
[SPEAKER_03]: teaching and empowering girls and their leaders because a lot of times you would find that troop leaders weren't confident enough in their outdoor skills to take girl scouts on the adventures that they wanted to like take snow camping for example right how cool if you're a kid and you think I can camp in the snow I mean for most kids that would be super cool you want to go snow camping
13:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you don't have the adults to help you leave that trip, I mean, Girl Scouts is a girl-led organization.
13:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So the girls have to be the ones to decide where they're going, make their packing list.
13:15
[SPEAKER_03]: If the adult troop leader has no idea how to assist them in those steps, then they're just not going to go.
13:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, it was how can I make these opportunities more available to both the adults and the children?
13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's something that I'm still seeing to this day in the entire industry.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not really catering to adult beginners, right?
13:37
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many options for intermediate to advanced people to go on retreats or to go on these big trips and adventures.
13:46
[SPEAKER_03]: But what if your fifty years old and you've never been on skis before?
13:49
[SPEAKER_03]: There's not as many options for you.
13:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm interested in trying to make
13:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Those big outdoor adventures and small outdoor adventures more inclusive and more welcoming to first-timers and I was able to do that a lot in my work.
14:00
[SPEAKER_01]: As you zoom out and look at more communities and other communities that might not even have, you know, it's not even the scouts to girls' couch where they're like expected to do some of that stuff or like you're going to learn some of that stuff or at least you're going to be aware that it exists.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You see just like a huge lack of opportunity to get out there for girls and women specifically or I know that all of society is separate, but it's obviously it's going to be worse with girls and women from your experience.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you see that as true?
14:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, myself, I've experienced sexism in the outdoors plenty of times and I am white and I'm able bodied and I just have a lot of privilege.
14:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And so to know that I'm experiencing sexism in microaggressions myself, I can't imagine how intimidating it would be for somebody.
14:53
[SPEAKER_03]: in a more marginalized community to try and get out there and do those adventures that they're craving.
14:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Let alone the financial input of how much do I actually have to pay to go on a hike.
15:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It can be surprisingly a lot.
15:06
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're trying to go skiing at a resort, I mean, a one day pass in some places.
15:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's, you know, a very complex question, it's a complex system.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have the answers, but
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: In everything I do, I am trying to make the outdoors seem more approachable and more accessible.
15:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's why this past summer of twenty twenty two, I decided, you know what, I want to step up my mountaineering game.
15:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to go explore more mountains, but I don't want to do it just for me.
15:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to do it to inspire other girls and women to look at those mountains and volcanoes and their backyards and think, if I want to climb that, I can and I will find the resources to do it.
15:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So I signed up to be an ambassador for an organization called the Karen Project.
15:51
[SPEAKER_03]: They help women usually, but probably anyone, create and design their adventure fundraisers.
15:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And adventure fundraiser can be anything from.
16:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to I'm going to.
16:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why water kayak down this river wearing a costume.
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
16:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm the one who loves costumes or anyone else has done that.
16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the point is you can create your own adventure.
16:14
[SPEAKER_03]: However, you want it to look like and you turn it into a fundraiser.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, I said, I'm going to climb five cascade volcanoes.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm going to raise grant money for the Karen project to write grants for organizations that help girls get outdoors.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That is awesome.
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Back in twenty nineteen we had.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in twenty twenty we had one of the twenty nineteen ambassadors for the Karen Project Julia Alexiac who walks from downtown Denver Union Station to Rocky Mountain National Park.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: which was like, you know, heck of a long walk.
16:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally doable from like a through hiking point of view, but definitely a crazy thing to do by a lot of people's standards and people around her to just showcase like difficulty of access and to bring awareness that for a lot of folks.
17:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was how we were first introduced to the Karen project, but always been blown away by this melding of adventure and purpose or adventure and awareness.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So how did you settle on this cascade volcano's adventure and tell us about the fundraiser?
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: What were you trying to do?
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: What trying to positive change were you trying to make?
17:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a quick message break in here from the folks that help make this show possible.
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That is plenty of that for now.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back into the episode.
17:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I moved to the Pacific Northwest in twenty seventeen and they'll tell you about the volcanoes when you grow up in Massachusetts.
17:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So I had no idea that places like Mount Hood, Mount Rainier really existed.
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they were just pigments of my imagination and then to see them especially flying into the city for the first time.
17:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It just took my breath away and I thought, wow, wouldn't it be so cool if I were a person who was able to climb those?
18:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But that probably will never happen.
18:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I just didn't really, it didn't seem approachable.
18:05
[SPEAKER_03]: see a lot of people that look like me in, you know, climbing mountains in the media.
18:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's changing now, but I definitely never considered it even an option to start mountaineering while I was growing up.
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Until the spring of twenty seventeen twenty eighteen.
18:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Somebody from my ultimate frisbee team in the Columbia Gorge said to email to all the women and said, hey, I'm looking to climb Mount Adams this weekend, anyone want to join.
18:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't really know this woman, but I'm like, this is an opportunity that fell in my lap.
18:36
[SPEAKER_03]: How could I say no to that?
18:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So I emailed her back and we ended up climbing Mount St.
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens that weekend and it just blew my mind away.
18:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Mount St.
18:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens isn't even a huge mountain, right?
18:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the A. D. three, a D. six hundred feet tall.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a non-technical in the summer.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: You can get up there without even touching snow usually.
18:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So for a lot of experienced mountaineers, they would laugh and a lot of them do, right?
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, oh, small mountain.
19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But for me, that was such a pivotal moment to actually stand on top of the mountain that I had stared at and thought I can't ever get up there.
19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: There's just no opportunity.
19:13
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no way.
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So that now my friend Katie and I are very, very close friends and she is my adventure mentor and alpine buddy.
19:21
[SPEAKER_03]: She introduced me to how to wear crampons, how to use an ice axe, how to read terrain.
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And from there, it just snowballed into more and more mountains.
19:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So I, I had, you know, I was looking at Mount Reneer.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I can see Mount Reneer from my area sometimes and I thought, wow, that's like five year plan, right?
19:40
[SPEAKER_03]: someday I'll be able to get up there and I figure you know what if I'm doing I want to do an adventure fundraiser this summer why not shoot for the moon so I really just put feelers out there for all the mountains in the area I figured whatever lambs in my in my lap will happen.
19:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So we started with Mount St.
19:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens again we typically do that together at least once every year.
20:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Mount St.
20:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens was, oh, we had such a late snow pack in twenty twenty two.
20:06
[SPEAKER_03]: That was lovely.
20:07
[SPEAKER_03]: That also got in the way of road conditions, avalanche conditions were pretty sketchy at times.
20:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So I didn't even get started on this fundraiser until early June when I would normally start getting out into the mountains and like March.
20:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got a little bit nervous, right?
20:23
[SPEAKER_03]: When you're trying to raise three thousand dollars and you have a couple months late, it's a little bit nerve wracking.
20:28
[SPEAKER_03]: But it kept me motivated, right?
20:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes you need that reason to get out there and do those adventures you love because life gets in the way.
20:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you have that external motivation, like a fundraiser that people are relying on you for kind of gives you that kick to get up there.
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So we started out with Mount St.
20:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens.
20:46
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a fun, our intention, a Katie and I like to set intentions for our climbs and our intention for that was to shake off the cobwebs.
20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think our lesson from that first climb of the summer was to never get complacent.
20:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Even, again, it's a smaller mountain, non-technical.
21:02
[SPEAKER_03]: However, we did see a skier on a slope adjacent to us, trigger a small slide.
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, he was fine and was able to get out of it and the slide stopped, but it was
21:13
[SPEAKER_03]: really humbling to remember, this could happen anywhere, an avalanche could happen anywhere.
21:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't carrying, we were going up a route that doesn't have avalanche terrain in it.
21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We weren't planning to go in avalanche terrain at all, so I didn't bring my avi gear, but had that man been buried, I wouldn't have had my any rescue equipment.
21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's just a good reminder, like no matter where you're going, there are risks, and you have to always be diligent in watching your terrain.
21:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And we are going.
21:41
[SPEAKER_03]: We saw people going down the descending, the wrong slope, which would lead them out into the wilderness in a way that they wouldn't be able to get back to the car and they would have to call for help.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We saw people glistating with crampons.
21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So it does a good reminder, like even if you're doing a smaller mountain, you have to stay on top of it.
21:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, small, small mountain in eight thousand foot mountain higher than anything east of the Mississippi.
22:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to remember your standards there.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but different, right?
22:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, tree line and New Hampshire is like what somewhere between probably four and five thousand feet and that's still under tree line and on the West Coast.
22:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, different.
22:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I was equal, but different.
22:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, I agree, but you're right.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're, you're running a volcano that forty years ago, absolutely exploded, literally.
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, you know, it's just, you've got to remember that it, yeah, it's a few thousand feet lower than some of the others, but it's still an enormous mountain, an amazing experience, nonetheless.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The fun razor was climbing five mountains as I look at your page.
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I see like six one two three four five six mountains listed seven mountains listed.
22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: What were the five?
22:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So Mount St.
22:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens was the first, then I climbed Mount Hood, which is the tallest point in Oregon.
22:58
[SPEAKER_03]: After that, I attempted and did not summit Mount Baker.
23:02
[SPEAKER_03]: We had whiteout conditions the whole time.
23:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I actually got to climb Mount Reneer, which was magical.
23:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, I thought that would be a five-year plan, and it somehow worked out the summer.
23:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I wrapped it up with a little celebration climb on Mount Adams and brought somebody who had never even worn crampons before.
23:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was like a nice full circle and it by exposing somebody to the beautiful outpine that they had never seen before.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be honest, when I find a Seattle, I've never climbed her near.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you fly in, it's so daunting.
23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so massive.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone that has seen it's like,
23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like it should be very, yeah, it should be daunting.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look at it.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the frickin' thing.
23:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't see people on that thing.
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you find?
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: like your ability was greater than you realize like I'll put it I'll back up a little bit I often find when I'm hiking elevation which I don't get to do much anymore but when I do it I'm so surprised by how far you can like the normal average person average fitness can go Elevation wise in a short amount of time you just there's always those moments where you look down at your car or add down and you see the park and on you're like oh my god we came from there only like an hour ago yet it's hard but
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it doesn't register just how far you've actually gone.
24:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.
24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you get that since with these mountains because I would think the same thing if I was looking at it right here.
24:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I am always astounded by how much mindset makes a difference.
24:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just did the ever space camp track last month in the guides from Nepal set a million times.
24:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about a positive mindset.
24:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You need that mental attitude.
24:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what's going to get you to base camp.
24:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It's what's going to get you to camp one.
24:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to get you to the summit of Mount Everest.
24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, physical ability matters a lot, but the mental mindset is the game changer.
24:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, when I'm climbing these mountains and I'm having that moment of holy shit the car is two miles below me and if I squint I can see it and how did I get this far my own two feet.
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: What really keeps me going is just that.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I feel really good about myself.
25:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, yes, I did do that and I can do more and I've done more before and I'll do more in the future.
25:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I think about the more traumatic events that I've had in my life.
25:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I had a life threatening surgery.
25:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I was at the finish line for the Boston Marathon bombings and those were both in my early twenties when I didn't want to accept help.
25:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't really know anything about therapy.
25:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I just didn't know how to work through those really traumatic events.
25:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And so now I look back on those that I've healed from and I have gone to therapy since
25:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think if I could get through those extremely difficult chapters of my life, then I can climb out right near.
25:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I can climb more than that.
25:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I can probably climb to Nali because I know how hard it is to get through the mental pain.
25:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I will put myself through physical pain.
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: No problem.
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really taking care of the mental mindset that I think makes a big difference for me.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of that, yeah, holy cow, I didn't know that about some of the things you've gone through for that.
26:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I did know that you were on the Everest Space Camp, or you did that trek, because we kind of worked together, so I didn't know you were out for that, but I'd love to hear about that, but I do want to keep asking about the cascades of volcanoes adventure.
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you say was,
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: just a moment you really had to lean into that mental mindset because it sounds like some of it was just like, I don't know, seems peachy maybe it's just your demeanor gratitude, you see pretty pretty excited and positive no matter what but was there a moment that really was like, oh man, what did I sign up for here?
26:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there was one.
26:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So Mount Baker up near the border of Washington and Canada was my bailed summit.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't say failed.
26:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I say bailed summit because we decided as a team that we would have to save it for another time.
26:55
[SPEAKER_03]: We decided I actually joined a group of people I hadn't met before.
26:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a group of trail runners and endurance athletes who wanted to try out melding, mountaineering and fast packing.
27:08
[SPEAKER_03]: We'd actually decided to go for the park glacier route up Mount Baker, which is not as often climbed as the main routes and it's a lot more more technical.
27:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't call it a beginner route.
27:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, I haven't done the whole thing.
27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But we wanted to test out having a more minimalist mindset.
27:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I was going to just bivvy on the mountain, not bring a tent, bring very little and just try that out.
27:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So we get to the trailhead at artist point and it is just white out from the get go.
27:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I never saw the summit of the mountain at all.
27:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just very difficult visibility.
27:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Right at towards the beginning once we got to the steeper slopes.
27:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We haven't had our ice axes out yet because they weren't necessary at that point however.
27:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I lost my footing and started sliding down the slope and I had to use my hiking pole to self arrest.
27:59
[SPEAKER_03]: My hiking pole broke from that self arrest.
28:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So just from the beginning, right, very frustrating.
28:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This does not what we plan for, but I was still in that enthusiastic mental state of things like, oh, well, we can tape up my my hiking pole and even though the visibility sucks, it'll still be a fun adventure.
28:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I kept that up for most of the day and we were hours and hours behind schedule.
28:21
[SPEAKER_03]: We were planning to get to a camp high on the mountain and then have an alpine start the next morning to attempt the summit of Mount Baker.
28:29
[SPEAKER_03]: However, the visibility shut down in the people that were leading our group had us keep pushing for we all agreed we would keep pushing forward.
28:38
[SPEAKER_03]: We started to descend this extremely steep slope and at this point a lot of the athletes I was with were just so tired they were kind of over it.
28:47
[SPEAKER_03]: a couple of them had that he were brand new to mountaineering.
28:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And for some reason, we did this more advanced route for the very first time using crampons and an ice axe.
28:56
[SPEAKER_03]: They were just overwhelmed.
28:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So we descend this slope and we end up totally cliffed out.
29:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You can tell through the near a hundred percent wide out that if we took five steps forward, we'd be walking over a cliff.
29:07
[SPEAKER_03]: There was no way to traverse it.
29:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The only way to get out of there was to go back up.
29:13
[SPEAKER_03]: this extremely steep slope.
29:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's when a couple of people in my group started breaking down mentally.
29:18
[SPEAKER_03]: They were definitely freaking out and that's when I realized, you know, I'm totally okay if we don't sum it.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I had never so far in all of my climbs and decided
29:31
[SPEAKER_03]: to turn around.
29:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I've, I had only had summits and successful summits up until that point.
29:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was sitting there on the cliff seeing the way out and thinking, yeah, I would much rather survive and not have a son than to try and push this risk.
29:46
[SPEAKER_03]: That's also when I had to tap into that positive mental mindset and use work on my soft leadership skills in the mountain to help everyone else stay in a positive mindset.
29:56
[SPEAKER_03]: There were tears.
29:57
[SPEAKER_03]: They were freaking out and I found that the best thing I could do while the while the people leading us were talking it out was to kind of just logically walk these people through my thoughts.
30:06
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was telling them like, oh, yeah, I mean, no, this isn't a good place, but if we stay right here and don't move, we are safe right here.
30:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Totally sucks that we're awake way past when we wanted to be but we do have one way out and it's to go back up and you know just kind of telling them logically I'm not going to sugarcoat it right I'm not going to say wow but this is so fun we're still in the mountains no it totally sucked and we are all in a very low mental place right there but if you can just keep it real and say here what our options are no it's not ideal but we're probably going to be totally okay
30:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the best I could do to kind of manage the panicking that was going on.
30:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So in those situations where I'm not feeling great about things, I find it if I have the job of trying to keep other people with it and slightly more positive or at least neutral about the situation, then that makes me feel better as well.
30:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like I have to have a job to keep myself performing well.
31:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, that's actually great to know about yourself, too.
31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Or to learn, I don't know if you already knew that or you learned it there.
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, did you ever have a moment like that or a moment where you had to step in and be that anchor with your experiences white water rapping?
31:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I didn't have a lot of scary moments white water rafting.
31:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We did some class for white water, west water canyon, gates, gates of the door, cataract canyon, out in the southwest.
31:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But usually we had, you know, good water conditions, very experienced guides that I never really had one of those oh shit moments white water rafting.
31:41
[SPEAKER_03]: There was one time where I wasn't on the ores, but we were in
31:46
[SPEAKER_03]: a raft with two repeat participants.
31:50
[SPEAKER_03]: They would come rafting every year and they were a married couple who both had cerebral palsy.
31:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So people with cerebral palsy don't have a lot like a hundred percent motor control.
32:00
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't able to swim, but they were able to float wearing a PFD.
32:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you can float and keep your head above water, we will take you rafting even if you can't move anything else in your body as long as your head can stay up.
32:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was my job in this raft to basically keep those people in the boat or pull them back in if they fall out.
32:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The man on the ores was going through big drop three and cataract canyon, which is one of the bigger raffids of that section.
32:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And he just hit this hole that almost turned our boat completely vertical.
32:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And I felt this weird, I couldn't even explain it, but it's like this superwoman energy came into me and time slowed down and I basically see us dropping straight into this hole.
32:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I see the two
32:44
[SPEAKER_03]: keep the two rafters start to like their bodies are about to fly out of the raft and I have this huge moment of I just throw myself forward and grab the bolt and bear hug and throw us down onto the bottom of the raft.
32:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember thinking like, I look pretty cool right now.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any cameras?
32:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish I was so remote out there but the three of us are just lying there on the floor of the raft and I look up and I see the ores men just standing up like oh you guys okay down there and I go get on the ores.
33:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So we finally get on the ores somehow we don't flip.
33:15
[SPEAKER_03]: He's able to spin us out of there.
33:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like that was a life-threatening situation.
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Thankfully, you haven't had any life-threatening water situations, but those little moments add up, right?
33:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that every time you have a little mini ocean moment, you're preparing yourself for what if things actually go bad.
33:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not afraid to
33:36
[SPEAKER_03]: get afraid.
33:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to test my abilities in the outdoors.
33:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't ever want to put myself in a situation where I'm actually in life threatening danger.
33:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But if I do have a few of those moments where I really have to force myself to think and to act mindfully, I think that builds up resiliency for if anything ever does go wrong.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's two stories.
33:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It does feel like things were going wrong to me.
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not to you, but if it would have been me, yeah, I would have felt like, oh, this is, this is one of those moments.
34:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But hey, that's, that's incredible that you're able to think so logically during that time and to consider that not be in like, oh, it thinks going to have gotten worse, but that's awesome.
34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So, all right, after that crux, going back to the cascades trip, after that crux of Baker,
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the rest of the trip like what was finishing it out?
34:26
[SPEAKER_01]: How did that feel and how do you feel like you did as far as reaching your goals of the message and the purpose behind it?
34:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So after the whole, you know, finding out, oh, shoot, we're on a cliff and we can't go anywhere.
34:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We were able to all get out, took forever, but we just went back up that slope.
34:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And once we got to the top, there was definitely some collective relief, but also exhaustion.
34:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're like, we just gonna find somewhere to sleep tonight right now.
34:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So we went another probably, you know, quarter mile half mile and decided to just clear some rocks out of this
34:57
[SPEAKER_03]: rocky area on the top of a cliff, try and make it flat and just vivvy there.
35:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So in some ways, I still met my actually in always.
35:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I met my intention for the trip, which was to go take a more minimalist approach, be really mindful about the train and build my skills in that way.
35:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to use just my tarp, my little cheap foam pad, and then my air pad, and got to sleep under, well, it was under the clouds didn't see the stars didn't see the summit, but it was a really cool experience still to be able to camp
35:26
[SPEAKER_03]: more that so few people ever get to even walk by and to know I am on this huge mountain in Washington state just like in on top of a pad in a tarp and I'm totally fine.
35:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That was really cool.
35:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We decided as a group that we would wake up at two a.m.
35:43
[SPEAKER_03]: three a.m.
35:44
[SPEAKER_03]: for a.m.
35:44
[SPEAKER_03]: to check the conditions, but
35:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We were still socked in.
35:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So we decided to sleep in practice our group, our group skills the next morning.
35:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It was still very successful.
35:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that just speaks to it's not about the summit.
35:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And so often we see the summit selfie.
36:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have some fun summit selfies.
36:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally get it.
36:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It's great.
36:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's one of those cheesy, it's about the journey.
36:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Things, you know, it really is because I learned so much from that Mount Baker trip.
36:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And from all these mountains that had I not reached the summit on any of them, it still would have been worthwhile.
36:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And I still would have taken a lot of lessons that I can then pass on to say, Girl Scouts or anyone or a friend that hasn't been out, even on Mount St.
36:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Helens before, I could take them and teach them through these lessons that I've learned, even if I'm not accomplishing the summit.
36:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So as a part of the fundaries are I really did want to show people the behind the scenes moments that we don't see when we're just seeing that some itself on Instagram.
36:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to tell them the hard parts and show you know you get like I have weird chafing and weird places in my digestion on my last climb of the summer was so bad.
36:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And now that I've been to Nepal in the first space camp, I can't really complain about that day, but it was still bad in the moment.
36:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So I just wanted people, I wanted to document things and pictures and I wrote a blog post about each of these mountains that goes into detail of our intentions, exactly what happened, what we learned from it.
37:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I want readers to take away that it's more or about the journey in the learning than it is about the summit.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of agree more, there's so many adventures that I'd never finished in the sense of the way I was trying to or
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: unexpected happen, but always so glad to have gone out there and given it a shot.
37:33
[SPEAKER_01]: As far as achieving your goal of getting more girls and women in the outdoors, tell us about some of the other things you're doing to work on that, because that sounds like a core passion.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a quick message break in here from the folks that help make this show possible.
37:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That is plenty of that for now.
37:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back into the episode.
38:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm still figuring out exactly how I'm going to continue.
38:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I know I know I'm going to meet that mission in my life, but I recently, well, not recently anymore, but at the beginning of this year, I quit my job because I realized I need to work for myself.
38:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just that type of person.
38:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I need the total time and creative freedom.
38:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've been freelancing since.
38:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm still figuring out how do I work for myself in a way that meets that personal mission of getting more women and girls competent and confident in the outdoors.
38:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like you're not meeting that mission right now?
38:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's a good question.
38:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Technically, I believe my funders are still open.
38:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore, I am still collecting money if anyone wants to donate five dollars.
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So in that way, I'm still working towards the mission.
38:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm still writing blog posts at trying to empower people to get outdoors and learn skills.
38:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I try and have this ethos of, I'm not the fastest, and I'm not going the furthest, but I am going to have the most fun.
39:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So if I can spread that stove to anyone, I'm in the outdoors with, even if it's not in, you know, paid work.
39:07
[SPEAKER_03]: If I'm just going out with a group of people,
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I take that enthusiasm and try and make this ordinary trip a little more extraordinary.
39:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So I like to bring, you know, hike those charcuterie boards up Mount Hood part, you know, there's like this beautiful campsite that it's a highest up you can get on Mount Hood without getting off trail.
39:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We had this beautiful shirkutary black tie night of where your fancy clothes and bring a few bottles of wine that are extremely heavy, but why not just have fun.
39:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not trying to win an award and we're not trying to set the fastest known time.
39:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's no shade towards people.
39:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I know people who have a lot of fastest known times.
39:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just not that's not the way that I like to approach the outdoors.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: No, same.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely not.
39:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for me, it takes, and I can be competitive, right?
39:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, fuzball don't like, I will be you Mason.
39:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I challenge you if we ever meet in person.
39:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I would be very competitive.
40:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But when it comes to the outdoors, I noticed this doing, you know, in high school and college, I would get too obsessive about numbers, or I would get
40:13
[SPEAKER_03]: To nervous about like, well, I have to perform well that I actually performed worse because I figured I'm not even going to try then because if I don't try, then I can't fail even though, you know, that doesn't make sense, but I figure why push myself because it's just going to stress me out more.
40:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And thankfully, my mind has shifted on that over the past decade.
40:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, I do push myself, but it's not in the sense of I'm going to push myself to be the fastest or the furthest.
40:39
[SPEAKER_03]: For me, I'm pushing myself to learn new skills.
40:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm pushing myself to work on my mindset and to work on both those hard and soft skills too, right?
40:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about improving.
40:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't need to be the best, but I do need to be improving my attitude and my skills.
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I do that.
40:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I like to run ultra snow.
40:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm training for my third ultra marathon.
40:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And so far, I honestly have not pushed myself to my max because I know that would take the fun out of it.
41:03
[SPEAKER_03]: If I'm staring at my watch constantly trying to hit goal paces and trying to, you know, podium, I just know from my own experience that that is going to make it feel like work and not play and I want to insert play into my life as much as I can.
41:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So if that means taking an ultra marathon race, signing up for it and then running it like a fun run and maybe wearing a two-two or something, I'm totally going to choose that option as opposed to pushing for my fastest time ever.
41:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, that's not everybody has a different reason for being out there and a different method for what they're signing up for.
41:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just mine.
41:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I think we share that same view of it.
41:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd say mine is have more fun than anybody.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And also bring as many people as I can to experience it, too.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That has been, I will never be fast and don't want to, you know, frankly.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, you're right.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I would take all the fun out of it.
42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Heck, when I went back back and in your Simity.
42:03
[SPEAKER_01]: couple weeks ago it was if you looked at our pace it's not fast it's not they were taking lots of pictures were stopping and talking and sitting and exploring and centering more than anything and you got to you know it's not going to be the right fit for anybody well you mentioned something earlier or right before that answer about leaving your full-time job
42:25
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you feel that has helped you get closer to this purpose that we've been talking about getting more women and girls in the outdoors?
42:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And why was your job a barrier to that?
42:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that my job was necessarily a barrier to that because the Girl Scouts mission.
42:42
[SPEAKER_03]: It still is so meaningful to me.
42:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think I'm still fulfilling that mission.
42:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that when I am working under constraints of bureaucracy and having to go to team meetings that I don't want to go to because I'd rather just be diving into the work myself.
42:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's where I get limited is when there's
43:02
[SPEAKER_03]: who much structure or too many guidelines to follow.
43:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've done so much life coaching, I guess probably not a ton, but I've done a lot more thinking in the past few years of what do I really want to do with my life?
43:17
[SPEAKER_03]: What are my strengths?
43:18
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I make the most impact?
43:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And that led me to make the hard decision that I don't know exactly what it is, but I know that I need to be doing it for myself and not for a company or an organization at this point.
43:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's just like my built-in programming that I came with.
43:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish I could choose to be happy like a nine to five, but it's just not going to happen.
43:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
43:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you heard of the Clipped in Strength Assessment?
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That sure rings a bell.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I'm actually not a huge fan of person.
43:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I hate the Myers Briggs.
43:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why it just seems very binary.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I recently took the disc personality test.
43:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I didn't like that one either.
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
43:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt it was accurate for me, but yeah, I'm always worried about resistance at first, where I'm like, that's not true.
44:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then as the months go on, I'm like, man, I'm totally an eye on this, but I've been the cliffs.
44:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So the Clifton Strings Assessment is different in the sense that it, so there are thirty-four different strengths that this assessment says that humans can have.
44:19
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, empathy is a strength.
44:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And but these actually really, really low on my list that I have friends who have very high empathy.
44:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So we make a great team.
44:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's thirty four of them and every human has these strengths in a different order.
44:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Your top like five to ten in that order are those things that really make you tick.
44:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, it's like that built in programming of these things come naturally for me.
44:40
[SPEAKER_03]: These are what drives me and my work in my passion.
44:43
[SPEAKER_03]: in my relationships.
44:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there are the things in the middle that you can work on a bit and then there are those traits towards the bottom of your list that no matter how hard you try to improve them, they'll probably never come naturally for you.
44:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, my top five, I'm noticing are showing up a lot in my work and in my mission.
45:02
[SPEAKER_03]: My top strength is futuristic, meaning I have a vision for the future, and I want to make it come to life.
45:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I have learner.
45:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I've said that a million times, right?
45:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm always trying to learn new skills, learn new ways to get outdoors.
45:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And my number three is significance, meaning I always want to make a greater impact.
45:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I'm signing up for adventure fundraisers.
45:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why I'm blogging.
45:25
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why I'm
45:26
[SPEAKER_03]: creating a storytelling night in my community so that I can have some sort of impact.
45:31
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just the way that I am.
45:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, you know, when it comes down to that big question of, but why, you know, why are you summoning Mount Everest?
45:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you through hiking?
45:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And it can be so hard to answer and there's that whole like because it's there, which I think is actually a pretty valid answer because
45:49
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't really explain why we are the way we are.
45:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why my strengths are those strengths.
45:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why I have this innate need to make an impact on other people with what I do.
46:00
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just the way it is.
46:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I can take my passions and use my strengths to make these projects come to life, I don't think I need a why on why I'm doing these things.
46:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just the way I am and it's how I feel fulfilled.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you think you're going to stay fulfilled?
46:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I know doing adventures like this, doing the ever space camp.
46:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are life altering experiences.
46:26
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think will it be pursuing adventures like this for the foreseeable future?
46:32
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you envision it or to ask it another way?
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Has there been any body that you that you see farther down this road than you?
46:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, that's a great question.
46:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if I necessarily have anybody in mind of, ooh, that I want to be that person in the future.
46:50
[SPEAKER_03]: However, I get inspiration from other women every day.
46:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And something I've thought a lot about is the power of group experiences and affinity communities, so getting, say, a bunch of women together, I can see myself someday running outdoor retreats.
47:05
[SPEAKER_03]: where we're really focusing on that, most fun, not fastest, not for this aspect of adventuring.
47:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're getting a bunch of women together, whether there be killers or back of the packers, middle of the packers, or even elite women, but the common ground that we all share is we just want to get out there and have fun and leave feeling more confident in ourselves, more confident in our skills.
47:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So I do think retreats and more outdoor learning opportunities and events are part of my future.
47:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been writing more so I think writing more pieces.
47:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I've written a couple pieces about being what it's like to be a woman in the outdoors and like the microaggressions that I've experienced.
47:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think spreading the word about that is helpful.
47:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I've had so many great conversations with men to about how this shows up in the outdoors and how we can all do better.
47:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that we're trending in the right direction.
47:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, even though I've had these sexist comments in my life, I'm seeing a lot of amazing allies and people like you who are spreading the stoke on everybody's adventure and not making it this elitist exclusive industry in world, but instead welcoming everybody who wants to be there.
48:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'll speak in in of that.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Could I quickly ask you about some of the other things you do?
48:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
48:25
[SPEAKER_01]: About the gorge story.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The speak easy.
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that yours?
48:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that?
48:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Such a good pandemic outcome.
48:37
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what?
48:39
[SPEAKER_03]: All of twenty, twenty were about to enter the first COVID winter and everyone's like, how am I going to ever see anyone again?
48:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And especially, you know, those Pacific Northwest rainy winters that everyone's afraid of.
48:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what are we going to do?
48:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So my friend, she also shares a couple of my top strengths like a cheever.
48:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was like, well, I'm just going to build the best patio in towns that we can sit six feet away from each other and hang out.
49:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So overnight, basically, she just like hand builds this amazing little patio on her tiny little ADU apartment.
49:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And that became kind of the hub for there were about four to six of us in our community and we just became great friends.
49:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We called ourselves the patio crew in every Friday.
49:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We would sit around the patio and tell stories and get to know each other.
49:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And now we're an extremely close group.
49:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And one time as we were sitting around telling stories during this pandemic winter and the rain we thought why not someday when the pandemic is over create a community storytelling night and it would be like this kind of feel where we're intimate and close together and getting to know each other.
49:39
[SPEAKER_03]: But community wide so that actually started about a year after we all started hanging out so in the fall of twenty twenty one we.
49:48
[SPEAKER_03]: pitched a few places in town.
49:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, can we host an event here?
49:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I basically overnight just made up this whole branding on social media and just made the info packet and all of that.
49:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We called it the Gorge Speakeasy Storytelling Night because it has a sort of secret Speakeasy vibe.
50:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, you know, the great play on words, the Speakeasy about us genius.
50:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, we started just over a year ago.
50:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And every month, the first Wednesday of the month in Hood River, Oregon,
50:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We invite the community to this amazing event space called the ruins.
50:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's this cute little wooden interior with the cute little bulb lights and all that.
50:25
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a stage.
50:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a theme that we offer every month.
50:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We've done an adventure theme.
50:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We've done taboo, which was really fun.
50:34
[SPEAKER_03]: This next coming month has the theme of the family.
50:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And then storytellers can sign up to tell a story around that theme.
50:41
[SPEAKER_03]: if they want to will usually have seven to ten storytellers on stage every month.
50:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in between the stories, we share little mini stories that are anonymous and written down by the audience and put in a jar.
50:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The reason I'm so into this event is because I am see it and my friends and I put it together and it has been a huge success to the community and a huge part of this event.
51:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Actually, I would say the entire point of this event is it's storytelling that gives back to the community.
51:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, this need for significance and impact in my life.
51:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We choose a different local cause or nonprofit in our community in the Columbia River Gorge and every month, the audience can make whatever donation they want at the door or throughout the night to support this cause.
51:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So we've done a lot of environmental organizations.
51:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We just did one for foster care legal advocates last month.
51:32
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many amazing nonprofits in our community that we want to support and we figure why not give back to them through the art of storytelling.
51:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what I do every first ones they have the month.
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: How much work is that?
51:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like a lot.
51:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, but the way that it kind of came to me as one of those light bulb moments of, oh, this is my volunteering right now.
51:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I've always like to have some kind of volunteer work and then pandemic made that really hard, right?
51:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Like none of my previous volunteer work was available.
52:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually, I was with Search and Rescue in my county.
52:07
[SPEAKER_03]: at that point.
52:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And when the pandemic started, I think there was, you know, it especially in America, there was that huge reckoning with a lot, you know, there was the pandemic.
52:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there were, there were a lot of more people coming to terms with racism in America.
52:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just saw a lot of really toxic behavior coming from my search and rescue team that I morally felt like I couldn't be there.
52:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know
52:31
[SPEAKER_03]: a lot of rural area search and rescue teams have these weird issues and we don't need to get into it that much but I know I'm not the only one that thinks this and I just felt like this isn't the volunteer work that is a fit for me right now and I wish it were different and I wish
52:46
[SPEAKER_03]: that there was a search and rescue team that had a better fit for me and my values, but it just wasn't it.
52:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So when we started the storytelling night and I noticed how much work I'm putting into it and making it come alive each month, I realized, oh, this is my new volunteer work.
53:01
[SPEAKER_03]: We have had such overwhelmingly positive feedback about how
53:05
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, seeing these people on stage, they're your neighbors.
53:08
[SPEAKER_03]: You might not even know them, but we all can't live in the small community.
53:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You're seeing them share these vulnerable stories.
53:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them are really funny.
53:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them are really sad.
53:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them are really touching.
53:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's subconsciously creating this shared empathy and connection and compassion that you wouldn't have without hearing these people tell stories.
53:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So I am through this, what I'm calling volunteer work of making this storytelling night.
53:32
[SPEAKER_03]: come to fruition.
53:33
[SPEAKER_03]: It really is making a difference in the community even though it's a lot of fun.
53:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would encourage anyone listening like if you're really into the outdoors, you can volunteer and it doesn't have to be even outdoors.
53:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can host an adventure story telling night and that can count as volunteer work.
53:49
[SPEAKER_03]: You can, you know, we always need trail workers out in Oregon and Washington because wildfires will mess up the trails.
53:56
[SPEAKER_03]: You can set up a recurring five dollar donation to a nonprofit of your choice every month.
54:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You can just speak up when right trip reports.
54:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually was amazed by writing trip reports of my volcanoes.
54:09
[SPEAKER_03]: This summer, how many people sent me messages saying that they found it so useful and made the mountains seem more approachable and that the beta was really helpful.
54:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think even just if you don't have money, if you don't have time, you can use your words to give back to the community and volunteer in a sense.
54:26
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, thank you so much for listening.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It means the world to us that you choose to listen to this show.
54:32
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to help us further, you can leave a review on iTunes, share us with your friends or family.
54:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes a long way to grow in the show.
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also support us financially through patreon.com slash adventure sports podcast.
54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Link is in the show notes.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, if you have an idea of who could be a good guest for the show, we're always looking for people to tell their story about the outdoors or adventure.
54:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone, please reach out, email us at infoedadventuresportspodcast.com.
55:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And until then, get out there and have some fun.