The High Route Podcast

I think we all can recall our first time. You're scrambling around a digital facsimile of a library on the early Internet, and wham, you stumbled onto WildSnow. Lou Dawson, author of Wild Snow: 54 Classic Ski and Snowboard Descents of North America and curator of the website by the same name, is an integral part of the ski community's fabric. He's the first to ski all of Colorado's 14ers. And he's one of a few individuals to fastidiously research and document the ongoings of the backcountry touring scene. In particular, Lou allowed many of us to seek adventure deep in the mountains long before ubiquitous GPX tracks and the globe's backcountry were digitized and accessible with a finger swipe. 

Let's be direct: when it comes to the things we care about, it's often said that "it's hard to put into words" how we feel. But it's not tough regarding Lou's contribution to backcountry skiers, ski mountaineers, or (here's a nod to Gavin) the ski tourists out there. We are grateful for Lou's decades-long good work.

In this episode of The High Route podcast, what goes down is part back-of-the-bar conversation and part scholarly. (But really, they are not mutually exclusive.) Adam Fabrikant and Billy Haas, in their behind-the-scenes way, are keen on documenting local, regional, and global skiing from the perspective of going to the edge of where the dragons are, and descending remote lines in a particular style. Lou, throughout his career, has done the same, particularly as it relates to North America. So yes, they deep dive into the why and how of documenting the past and current status of making turns (usually in steep terrain) in the non-industrialized mountains.

Since it's Lou, and we couldn't help ourselves, we also talked about gear and technology and their place in driving deep adventure. 

You can find Lou's most recent work on his website. As many of you know, keep an eye out for his memoir Avalanche Dreams, which, fingers crossed, will be available sometime this winter. Again, thanks to Lou and his family for being part of the backcountry touring community and sharing their lives with the rest of us.   

Ok, so how did this all come to be? In episode 1 of The High Route Gear Shed Podcast (yes, we have a gear-specific podcast, and episode 1 focused on ski mountaineering ropes) Adam said this about the golden age of ski mountaineering.

Adam: "So I mean, today, ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon, we delve deep into the different options for ski ropes, some of the pros and cons, some of the nuances and a lot of our subjective personal preferences. But we've formed these opinions over, you know, hours, days and years in the mountains. And I encourage everyone to test this gear thoroughly before bringing it out into the big hills. But it's pretty cool. We live in the golden age of ski mountaineering, lot of options for ropes and belay devices to get us up and down the hills."

Here's Billy's response: "How lucky are we to be living in the golden age of ski mountaineering? That's, that's special ha. I don't know, maybe we could get Lou on the line and see if he agrees with that or something."

Fast forward a month or two, and we get Lou's response on the podcast.

Deep thanks to Adam, Billy, and Lou for the conversation.

You can find us at the-high-route.com. Yeah, there are two hyphens for redundancy, which is a good policy in the mountains. For weight weenies, hyphens weigh next to nothing. We are a reader supported website with free podcasts. Our podcasts are not free to produce or store on a server. If you are enjoying the podcasts, please consider supporting The High Route, you can find subscription information here. 

The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to start with.

About 50 years past the start of the Anthropocene (~1950), mountain towns were abuzz with people running on trails, rock climbing, backcountry skiing, and mountain biking. Rumor has it that even back then, there were complaints of crowded trailheads and spraying. And the athletes huffing and puffing up and down and across those hills likely hadn't conjured where they landed in the multi-faceted definition of the mountain athlete. Was the term "mountain athlete" even a thing? 

Nowadays, post publication of "Training for the New Alpinism," (2014) and "Training for the Uphill Athlete," (2019), we often find either ourselves or folks we know accessing professional coaching or simply reading up on how to become stronger, faster, and tougher in our mountain pursuits. 

Sam Naney and his wife Alison began Methow Valley based Cascade Endurance several years ago. Their business caters to mountain athletes seeking training plans, wellness tips, and general methods to keep the body and mind primed for a 12-month-long cycle of up and down and up again. 

The two were part of the first iteration of the mountain athlete coaching enterprise Uphill Athlete, and were offered a front-row seat to how mountain sport training culture has evolved. 

From weekend warriors to elite level mountain climbers, it's now possible to find myriad personalized plans. Hard to believe, a bit more than a decade ago, mountain athletes had to pilfer from well-founded running and cycling training principles. Terms like fast-twitch, slow-twitch, AeT and LT, and taper are part of the mountain craft vernacular.  

With the proliferation of plans and videos, and yes, podcasts, we jump into the fray to offer a few things in this episode. We learn more about Sam's backstory. And we take a 10,000-foot view with him to discern some basics regarding training best practices as we approach the touring season. Think of it as a toe-dip rather than full-body cold water immersion. And we'll learn how he once was a lab rat of sorts experimenting with roller skiing and hyperoxic training...something not to try at home.

You can find us at the-high-route.com. Yeah, there are two hyphens for redundancy, which is a good policy in the mountains. For weight weenies, hyphens weigh next to nothing.

The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to start with.

In episode 3 of The High Route Podcast, we bring together two high level practitioners of their respective crafts. Kelly Cordes and Adam Fabrikant.

If you are unfamiliar with Cordes and his work, you are about to familiarize yourself with a gem. He's a notable alpinist, mixologist, and even a better writer—which is saying something. If you haven't read his classic book The Tower, please do. It's such a good and in-depth read. Although a fine, very competent skier, Cordes comes to mountain travel as an alpinist first and skier second. 

Fabrikant is the opposite—he comes to the conversation more as a sharp end ski mountaineer seeking first descents than an alpinist.

For this reason, we wanted to bring the two together and learn about their similarities and differences when approaching more cutting objectives in the mountains. Although separated by roughly twenty years, Cordes and Fabrikant share similarities in how they have prioritized their lives around their mountain pursuits and made a go of it. 

The original intent of the conversation was to explore the idea of risk and risk management in the mountains and how that may evolve. Part of our prompt for the risk side of the discussion was a Will Gadd social media post where he writes about the classic equation Hazard X Probability = Risk. 

Gadd notes, "Hazard X Probability = Risk is a simple baseline tool for risk management. But get the probability or hazard level wrong and the equation is worse than meaningless because it leads to bad decision making and statements like, 'Driving to the mountains is more dangerous than climbing them.' Bullshit. Climbing the Grand Teton is about 250 times more dangerous per hour of activity than driving to the Grand Teton." There's more in Gadd's post; we encourage you to read and posit it. 

In the discussion, Cordes and Fabrikant eventually land on risk. But before we get there, we clarify the differences between "sketchy" and "spicy" and the quest and practice of becoming comfortable in high consequence terrain as an alpinist or ski mountaineer. 

You can find us at the-high-route.com. Yeah, there are two hyphens for redundancy, which is a good policy in the mountains. For weight weenies, hyphens weigh next to nothing.

The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to start with.

After a weekend day in the high alpine, where puffies, a biting wind, and turning leaves teased of winter, we're more in tune with the season—which is ski film season. The socials are beginning to buzz with the sending as production houses ramp up the visual and auditory volume. Now. Is. The. Time. To. Get. Stoked.

With that in mind, we took a small detour to visit one of the best in the climbing/adventure film business, Nick Rosen of the Reel Rock Tour and Sender Films. Rosen and his colleagues reliably shoot, edit, and produce often tense, funny, and heavy films with crisp storytelling and vertigo-inducing visuals. If you are intrigued and new to the Sender Films' catalog, "The Alpinist," an Emmy Award winning film, is a beautiful place to begin your journey. 

On this podcast, you'll find a few F-bombs and such. Really, there are far fewer F-bombs than on our skintrack banter sessions, where we discussed the spectrum of adventure films and why this podcast host should not be such a crank regarding modern stoke-focused ski films. Point taken.

Rosen knows his craft and practices it like a master. The end product of Reel Rock's and Sender's efforts—their fine human-centered films—are gifts to the rest of us. 

This is to say that Rosen and the host discuss ski films in the context of the broader adventure film realm. 

Learn more about Nick and Sender Films here, and find the catalog of Reel Rock films here. 

You can find us at the-high-route.com. Yeah, there are two hyphens for redundancy, which is a good policy in the mountains. For weight weenies, hyphens weigh next to nothing.

The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to start with.

Small tremors and more rattling seismic activity have tossed and turned the outdoor media landscape for several years at this point. For example, if you are a core surfer, cyclist, and skier, you know the drill—legacy titles, both in print and web-based, have morphed and may not resemble what you recall. 

There are many examples of niche and aspiring for just-beyond-niche publications that meet the needs of more core audiences while being reader-supported. Adventure Journal is one example of high-quality print. Escape Collective, which went live on March 1, is a site focused, for now, on the world of road cycling, with a minor footing in the gravel scene- they, too, are setting a high bar with a reader-supported model.  

The High Route Podcast focuses on making turns on snow: the human powdered kind involving skinning and descending on skis or a splitboard. The High Route’s website focuses on the same. And we aspire to be a reader-supported entity.

To the point here, Caley and a few others gathered steam after the Outside Media Group pivoted in a new direction with their cycling publications last fall. By March, Escape Collective dove into the media scene headfirst. By the end of July, they had covered the Tour de France from France and were on their way to viability. 

As backcountry skiers—and for what it is worth—you need to do something in the summer, and trail runners, climbers, bikers, whatever, you’ve got to take some calculated risks in your adventures. So you know what we mean when we say Caley and the Escape Collective staff took a chance. And so far, they have nailed the landing as a reader-supported website with moxy.

Are we nervous about starting The High Route? We are. But in a good way. And it’s good to know that Caley and his staff have forged a path. 

In this episode, the first of The High Route Podcast, we converse with Caley to get his perspective on the world of outdoor media and how Escape Collective navigates the stormy media-space seas and has made a go of it. 

The bottom line is that they and their earnest efforts have inspired us. By learning about Caley and his experience, you learn more about why and how we’re trying to make a go of it ourselves with The High Route. 

Thanks for listening. 

You can find the Escape Collective @escapecollective.com

You can find us at the-high-route.com: yeah, two hyphens for redundancy, which is a good policy in the mountains. For weight weenies, hyphens weigh next to nothing.

The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to begin with.