Outside Podcast

People are drawn to the mountains for all kinds of reasons—the desire to challenge themselves physically or emotionally, a hunger for risk or perhaps solitude, the need for a sense of accomplishment. But for some, the appeal is both deeper and far more complicated. So it is with Sequoia Schmidt, whose father and brother died on K2, the world’s second-tallest and most dangerous peak. That tragedy ultimately propelled her into the mountains herself—to, as she says, “find my soul.” In this episode from our friends at the Strangers podcast, we take a remarkable journey with Sequoia, one unlike any other climbing story we’ve ever heard.

This episode is brought to you by Belize, one of the world’s great adventure destinations and a country that’s created a comprehensive and common sense COVID-19 safety system for travelers. Learn more about how you can safely experience the wonder of Belize at travelbelize.org

In 2001, when Caroline Gleich was 15 years old, her half-brother Martin died in an avalanche while skiing in the Utah backcountry. That tragedy didn’t prevent Gleich from becoming a professional skier—quite the opposite—but it has led her to develop a unique approach to managing risk. The truth is, avalanches are largely predictable: they only occur on certain slopes and under certain conditions. The problem is that such slopes and conditions coincide almost perfectly with the most fun skiing and snowboarding in the backcountry. This often leads people to make dangerous decisions, especially when they’ve been lucky so many times before. In this second episode of a two-part special exploring our relationship to the hazards of avalanches, Gleich talks about her long journey to becoming comfortable in the backcountry and how she believes we can stack the odds in our favor, even in the most unpredictable environments.

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Lake Hartwell Country, a largely undiscovered region in the mountains of South Carolina that’s one of the best adventure playgrounds anywhere. Visit lakehartwellcountry.com to start planning your trip now.

It was a glorious powder day in the Sierra Nevada when three friends set off into the backcountry at dawn. They had tons of experience and all the essential emergency gear, so they were unfazed by the fact that the local avalanche center had listed the danger that day as considerable. As the trio saw it, if you wanted to enjoy good skiing conditions in the backcountry, you had to accept some risk. But then, in an instant, a slide buried one of them and the other two began a frantic search to find him and save his life before he ran out of air. In this episode, the first of a two-part special exploring our relationship to the hazards of avalanches, we chronicle a miraculous survival story and ask what we ultimately learn when we make it through worst-case scenarios.

This episode is brought to you by Belize, one of the world’s great adventure destinations and a country that’s created a comprehensive and common sense COVID-19 safety system for travelers. Learn more about how you can safely experience the wonder of Belize at travelbelize.org

When a groups of friends in their twenties set out to climb Mount Rainier, they felt like they were ready for anything. But on the upper slopes of the peak, trouble found them. A storm moved in, and members of the party began to suffer from altitude sickness and dehydration. As climbers began turning around, two decided to push on: an aggressive military athlete who was on a quest for the summit and a first-time mountaineer who wanted to prove herself. It didn’t take long for them to end up in the worst kind of scenario—lost, exhausted, and increasingly delirious. Their survival depended on working together, and over many difficult hours, they took turns saving each other. But out of their darkest moments, something magical grew.

This episode is brought to you by Belize, one of the world’s great adventure destinations and a country that’s created a comprehensive and common sense COVID-19 safety system for travelers. Learn more about how you can safely experience the wonder of Belize at travelbelize.org

It sounds like something out of a James Bond film: a robotic exoskeleton that helps you ski better. But the real thing exists. A San Francisco–based startup called Roam has developed a breakthrough device that pairs clever mechanics with artificial intelligence to give your lower body a boost when you need it most. For able-bodied skiers, it’s a performance-enhancement tool that will let you ignore your creaky knees. And for athletes who’ve suffered debilitating injuries, it’s a chance to once again experience the kind of unadulterated joy that comes from linking turns down a mountainside. Outside contributing editor Nick Heil guides us through this report on the technology-assisted future of sports.

This episode is brought to you by Belize, one of the world’s great adventure destinations and a country that’s created a comprehensive and common sense COVID-19 safety system for travelers. Learn more about how you can safely experience the wonder of Belize at travelbelize.org

It began as every surfer’s dream: an empty point break, a rising swell, and a good friend to share the rides. But what happens when you’re out there and the waves just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger? So it went for William Finnegan at a break off the Portuguese island of Madeira. This happened decades ago, back when surfers had to more or less guess at the conditions they’d encounter on any given day. In this episode, Finnegan, whose surfing memoir Barbarian Days won the Pulitzer Prize, shares one of his most harrowing experiences in the water. He and another longtime surfer were stuck out past the impact zone in a remote section of seas as night descended. Exhausted and frightened, they were forced to decide how to go about saving themselves.   ​​​​​​​

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Sonos, maker of the Sonos Move, a portable smart speaker that delivers detailed sound and rich base in every kind of room and outdoors. Learn more and order yours at Sonos.com

Serious surfers train themselves to be ready for difficult moments: a brutal wipeout, being held down underwater by waves, losing a board and being forced swim a mile to shore. Then there are the kinds of experiences that nobody is really prepared for, like getting pushed out to sea by winds or currents and set adrift where nobody can see you. To get through that scenario alive, you need extraordinary fortitude. In this episode, we revisit one of the most surprising tales we’ve ever told on the Outside Podcast. We imagined what it might take to survive being alone for days on a surfboard in the open water—and then found someone who endured exactly that.

This episode was brought to you by Whoop, the fitness tracker that gets you training smarter by giving you feedback on every moment of your day. Learn more about how Whoop can help you reach your potential by training and recovering smarter at join.whoop.com.

As it turns out, being a grown-up novice offers all kinds of surprising benefits. Just ask journalist Tom Vanderbilt, who spent a year attempting to pick up a variety of challenging skills, from surfing to singing to drawing. Ultimately, he didn’t become amazing at any of these things, but his humble quest taught him something far more valuable: that despite your age or how busy you think you are, introducing yourself to a new skill is one of the most life-enhancing things you can do. Vanderbilt chronicled his efforts and hard-won wisdom in his latest book, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. For this episode, Outside magazine’s editor, Christopher Keyes, gets Vanderbilt to explain what really happens to us when we dare to be a beginner again.

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by L.L. Bean, a company that wants to help you experience the power of being outside this winter. Visit llbean.com to find inspiration and how-to advice for active outdoor fun this season, plus ready-for-anything outerwear to keep you cozy. L.L. Bean, Be an Outsider.

Serious athletes are used to digging deep. But there’s pushing yourself, and then there’s what climber Emily Harrington did on November 4, when she became the first woman, and the fourth person ever, to free-climb the Golden Gate route up Yosemite’s El Capitan in a single day. It was an insanely challenging endeavor: a 3,200-foot ascent up the sheer granite wall using only her hands and feet. For Harrington, it was the culmination of a long effort that included a fall on El Cap in 2019, which sent her to the hospital strapped to a backboard. In November, she was just a few hundred feet from the top when she took another bad fall, this time smashing her head. With blood pouring down her face, she had to decide whether she could keep going. In this episode, Harrington talks to Outside contributor Stephanie Joyce about why she’s still terrified at the beginning of every Yosemite season and how falling is what actually allowed her to get to the top.

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Vermont, a state that is open for the very best in winter adventures so long as you take some extra steps before traveling. Learn more about how to plan the getaway you need this season at VermontVacation.com.

Ask a professional adventurer to share the most important lesson they’ve learned from their time in the wild, and you’re bound to get a good story. Which is exactly why we posed this question to Steven Rinella, host of the Netflix series MeatEater, and Krystle Wright, an adventure photographer based in Australia. For Rinella, a dangerous decision on a trip to Alaska’s Arctic made him see how being steadfastly committed to a goal is a kind of recklessness. On a footloose pilgrimage to the American Southwest, Wright realized that sometimes the best approach to a creative project is to just wing it and hope everything works out. In this episode, the two talk about seminal experiences that helped shape their careers and lives, and that offer the rest of us invaluable guidance for our own trips.

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Bose, maker of the new Bose Frames Tempo, high-performance sports sunglasses that deliver high quality audio. It’s the sound you expect from Bose with everything you need from sport sunglasses. Learn more about how they can elevate your running and cycling at bose.com.