Ryan DeLena is currently studying at Northern Vermont University. He was pictured on the cover of Backcountry Ski Maps (2020) and has climbed and skied throughout the United States, and in Canada, Chile, Argentina, Svalbard, and Antarctica. Ryan is also a skilled rock climber and avid hiker. As a child, Ryan DeLena had difficulty controlling his emotions and was placed in therapeutic schools that relied on detrimental methods of behavior modification, such as physical restraint. Despite interventions from a team of doctors and heavy medication, nothing seemed to help. In 2010, Ryan was voluntarily committed to a mental hospital for further evaluation. His parents, Rob and Mary Beth, were counseled to place him in a group home, but they refused.Two years earlier, after an impulsive decision to take Ryan skiing, his father discovered a different child than the version experts were so sure about. By Ryan's second day of skiing, he was executing advanced runs. With each conquest in the winters that followed, his father began to question the path laid by the professionals paid to judge him. He later convinced Ryan's mother to fight the medical and educational complexes over Ryan's care and school placement. Together, they fostered the freedom Ryan needed to pursue his dream of becoming a professional ski mountaineer.Written in two voices, their book "Without Restraint" is a joint father-son memoir told with both pain and levity, struggle and strength, adventure and heart. It is the story of a misunderstood boy, a father’s growth, and a shared love of the outdoors that formed their unbreakable bond.