The 29029 Podcast

At 29029, we have a mantra: KEEP CLIMBING.

The goal may be to accumulate 29,029 feet—the vertical equivalent of Mount Everest—but the mountain asks something more of you.

Can you keep moving when you’re tired?

Can you adapt when the plan falls apart?

Can you take one more step, one more ascent, check one more box?

Can you KEEP CLIMBING for 36 hours?

Along the way, we mark progress by traveling symbolically around the world—through the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents.

Kosciuszko in Australia.

Vinson in Antarctica.

Denali in North America.

Kilimanjaro, the Roof of Africa.

Elbrus in Europe.

Aconcagua in South America.

And finally, Everest in Asia.

For most of us at 29029, those mountains are names on the back of a bib. They are benchmarks—boxes we hope to check as we climb toward our own Everest.

But there are a few people in our community for whom those boxes represent something very different.

They represent passports and plane tickets. Months of preparation. Heavy packs. Crampons and ice axes. Bitter cold, brutal winds and impossibly thin air.

They represent the actual mountains.

In June of 2026, Louise McEvoy stood on the summit of Denali, 20,310 feet above Alaska.

But this wasn't simply another summit.

It was the seventh.

With those final steps to the top of Denali, Louise completed a journey years in the making: standing atop the highest mountain on every continent on Earth.

Seven continents.Seven summits.Seven boxes checked—not on the back of a bib, but across the globe.

And behind every one of those summits is a story about what it really means to KEEP CLIMBING.

Every year, thousands of people stand on stages and tell others how to overcome adversity.

Jake Thompson is one of them.

As a keynote speaker, author, and the voice behind Compete Every Day, Jake has spent years teaching people to embrace discomfort, honor their commitments, and become the kind of person who keeps showing up when things get hard.

But there's a big difference between teaching those principles... and living them.

Just seven and a half weeks after knee surgery, with business thriving and life going well, Jake chose to do something that made absolutely no sense to most people. He left to participate in 29029 Snowbasin.

Thirteen climbs. Almost 30 miles all uphill. Twenty-nine thousand and twenty-nine feet of vertical gain—the height of Mount Everest.

And somewhere on those climbs, the speaker became the student.

Every ascent came with a perfectly reasonable excuse to quit. Every lap forced him to confront the same lessons he has spent years teaching audiences around the world. Discipline over motivation. Commitment over comfort. Action over excuses.

After the event, Jake wrote something in a LinkedIn post that sums up his journey. 

"My worth was never going to be decided by a red hat or a missed cutoff. Only by what I left in the arena."

What happens when life hands you a microphone... and then hands you a mountain?

When your message is no longer something you speak, but something you have to prove.

At 29029, we often say that the mountain and trails don’t change you—they reveal you. They strip away distractions, exposing your habits, your fears, your stories, and ultimately give you the opportunity to become a stronger version of yourself.

That’s why 29029 exists: to challenge people so intensely that they have the opportunity to evolve into someone they couldn’t have become any other way.

But what actually causes lasting change?

Is it the challenge itself? 

The decision to keep going? 

Or is there something deeper happening beneath the surface?

Buckle up because you're about to find out how change really works. 

Read more about Kristy and her book "How Change Really Works" HERE.

Want to know more about 29029? Click HERE.

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Snowbasin 2023: Steve & Crystal Caruthers were the newbies on the mountain. In Steve’s words “unprepared both mentally & physically”.

12 months later…..

Snowbasin 2024: Steve & Crystal, were no longer the new kids on the mountain, they were trained, prepared, but the mountain is never easy. Crystal earned a red hat. Steve didn’t. Steve kept climbing.

Another year passed…..

Sun Valley 2025: Steve alone would take on this new mountain. More prepared holding a toolbox filled with lessons from the mountains he already climbed. He’d earn a red bib. Then a red hat. Easier but never easy and it wasn’t the red carpet moment that lingers in his memory. 

Coach Caruther’s, as we lovingly call Steve, has a lot to teach you about this thing we call 29029. He’s allowed the mountain to change him. He’s evolved into more than just a guy who was inspired by our co-founder Jesse Itzler and thought “it’s JUST hiking”.

The mountain didn’t change over three years. But Steve sure did. 

At 29029 there are a subset of participants who take on the challenge of a mountain or a TRAIL event as a group:

Some are families: spouses, kids with their parents.

Some are friends: building their relationships.

Some are co-workers, colleagues and leaders betting on the fact that doing hard things together creates exceptional opportunities for connection and growth.

Wei-Li Shao started out as an individual tackling a mountain after the mountains in his personal life got big and scary and he needed a new definition of what was possible for himself.

That first mountain at Snowbasin in 2023 changed Wei-Li. It challenged him so intensely that he needed to go back. There was unfinished business and untapped potential for growth. 

But he wouldn’t return alone. He would invite his team. At Snowbasin 2024 the Omada Health Team would celebrate Summit Saturday in red…..every single one of them!

The team's success translated into individual lives at work and at home. Omada as a company would make BIG moves in late 2024 and 2025 in lock step with their commitment and training to another challenge: TRAIL Park City. 

If you are looking for the cheat code to building and leading strong teams, keep listening Wei-Li Shao, Arvind Stokes and Lauren Fix have something to share. 

We hope you don’t mind if we pull back the curtain for this episode intro. This story is going to be powerful. This message is powerful. Listening might be hard , but we promise it will change your life and perspective.

Meet Amanda Melby.

We didn’t know the best place to start her story but it seemed right to let Amanda's own words speak for themself. So let's go back 98 weeks to an Instagram post on Amanda's profile.

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I wish you could sit in a room with Julie Youngblood. To feel her energy and joy is something special!

Julie is no stranger to the mountain. What started in 2023 in Snowbasin has continued year after year, to different locations and expanded far beyond just the Everests she’s achieved on the mountain. 

It started as a small group of colleagues and spouses, but the power of the experience had to be shared.  Enter the “No Days Off” community where Julie is a leader, a connector and an example of setting and reaching big goals to her colleagues in real estate.

At 29029, we ask you to step out of your comfort zone and allow the challenge to shape you into a better version of yourself. The goal isn’t that you get good at climbing mountains, but that you get good at life. "Finding Your Everest" and "Keep Climbing" should become a thread through every part of who you are.

This conversation is going to leave you with questions - Questions about how you show up on the mountain but also the deeper question of how you show up for the other Everests in your life.

Lace up your hiking shoes and let’s go for a walk with Julie starting back in Snowbasin 2023. 

Learn more about 29029 HERE

On an April evening in 2017, a small single-engine plane disappeared into the mountains of Washington State.

Somewhere near 5,000 feet on the snow-covered face of Mount Jupiter in Olympic National Park, metal met rock.

A distress call cracked across the emergency frequency — faint, urgent, alive.

High above the Pacific Northwest, a Delta flight en route from Seattle to Shanghai heard it. The pilots relayed the call. A Navy search-and-rescue crew lifted off from Whidbey Island in an MH-60 helicopter.

By 6 p.m., rescuerson that ]steep, frozen, unforgiving.

Two men were pulled from the wreckage. One of them was Mike Mequio.

Mike was in serious condition. There was substantial damage to the plane. But that was just the beginning of this story.

Sometimes the mountains that almost take your life become the very place that can give it back.

Mike is a survivor.

A man who faced a mountainside once in chaos and fear but chose to return to the mountains on purpose.

Not in a cockpit.

Not in an emergency.

But step by step.

Finding his Everest.

This story is about survival, healing and rediscovering who you are when you choose to KEEP CLIMBING.

At Whistler 2024 there was a different kind of green that covered the slopes of Blackcomb Mountain. Among the old-growth forest of towering trees every once in a while you’d spot a a green flash……flourescent green to be exact on top of the heads of the crew from Google.

Those hats belonged to Team Green Lightning. Some may argue there is nothing “lightening” when you are climbing 4 mile 3900 foot ascents up a mountain for 36 hours, but a team they were. Colleagues by day, turned cheerleaders and confidants on the mountain. 

Brian Goldstein was part of Team Green Lightening.

He had dabbled in endurance sport and always had a curiosity in his personality toward the extreme….but like us all it’s not too long before you find out that 29029 isn’t an ordinary endurance challenge, its a catalyst and an invitation to step into a new version of ourselves. 

At Whistler this year, we had a guest. His name was Tom. Tom walked around the world.

No! Really!…..He walked around the world on his own two feet with his dog Savannah. Who better to prepare you to take on a 36 hour hiking challenge than him?

Tom’s World Walk came after life threw him one of those curveballs; the ones you really don’t see coming, and the ones that change you from that moment forward.

Tom was 17 years old and lost his best friend to a tragic accident. Faced with his own mortality, he resolved to extract as much as possible from a brief life.

Knowing he wanted a life of adventure and understanding, he decided to go on a walk….but not just any walk… a walk around the world.

He spent the next eight years saving and planning, and at age 26 he started walking.

Seven years, six continents, and 28,000 miles later, he is one of only a handful of people who have traveled around the world on foot and his dog, Savannah, is the first dog to do so.

His world walk was a deep dive into the kindness of humanity and an amazing example of how far perseverance can take you.

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Read Tom's book, The World Walk today.