High in the thin air of Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, Christina Lustenberger paused to look up. A mere 900 feet above her, the snowcapped summit of a granite spire known as the Great Trango Tower soared to over 20,600 feet. Scaling its bulging face felt like climbing on a giant basketball, the world falling away into empty space on all sides. Her pack, pulling on her petite five-foot-six frame, was heavy with skis and climbing equipment. Her toeholds in the snow were shallow. The hanging glacier a few hundred feet to the right calved relentlessly, each time sending the energy of the place up through her feet.

She and her two expedition mates, American ski mountaineer Jim Morrison and Canadian professional skier Nick McNutt, were perched together below an enormous horizontal crevasse that stood between them and the summit like a dragon guarding a castle. They’d already been climbing mixed rock and ice for several hours. This chasm was bigger than they’d expected—probably bigger than anyone would have expected, given that this behemoth spire had only been climbed a handful of times, and only in summer. They had traveled there in April 2023. Likely no one had even thought to ski it before Lustenberger, or Lusti, as she’d been nicknamed, dreamed up this expedition.

Lusti, 39, had spent the previous decade quietly blowing open the doors of what’s possible in the mountains. The feats revealed herÌęas one of this generation’s great explorers, one who moves through seemingly impassable terrain in remote ranges with a combination of ski mountaineering, technical alpinism, and genuine creativity. Her racing career laid a hard-charging foundation: she skis with graceful, powerful style. If you’ve never heard of her, it’s because she’s more interested in drawing improbable lines than in proclaiming her lengthening list of first descents on Instagram.

Lusti examined the problem of the crevasse. It yawned at least 25 feet wide, bisecting the full 600-foot width of the slope. To cross it would require building an anchor, belaying one of them into it to climb up the other side, then building another anchor there to create a fixed line. If they succeeded, they could possibly reach the summit that day to win an elusive prize: skiing a first descent on their first attempt.

But Lusti is as calculated as she is creative. Years ago, when the industry and her fellow skiers were just waking up to what she could do, she often thought about the inherent risk of following this path: a career-ending injury, losing friends to the mountains, the possibility of her own death and what that would mean for the people she loves. Back then there was something else, too, harder to articulate: a sudden can’t-touch-the-bottom feelingÌęwhen she imagined her full potential, realizing that what she was truly capable of might be off the current map. In such terra incognita, she determined, only mastery, humility, and careful decision-making would keep her safe.

But in the months leading up to their April 2023 expedition, Lusti had been wondering whether even those cultivated qualities were enough. Her mentor, accomplished ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson, was supposed to be here, in the Karakoram, on the team. But Nelson had been killed in a fall while skiing off the summit of 26,781-foot Manaslu, in Nepal, just five months before. The question of risk haunted Lusti anew ever since.

It was already late afternoon, leaving the trio less time than they would have liked to tackle a crux this complicated. They decided to retreat, armed now with the knowledge of the obstacles they faced.

But once she had her feet back on firm ground, the sense that the world was falling away wouldn’t disappear.

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When the SOS message beeped on Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer’s satellite device, she was piloting her 36-foot sailboat, Minnehaha, alone through the remote vastness of the Southern Ocean. She was two and a half months into the Golden Globe, an old-school, solo, nonstop sailing race around the world—run without use of most forms of modern technology, a challenge that many in the maritime community consider the greatest in sailing—and she had the lead. Fellow competitor Tapio Lehtinen’s boat had suddenly sunk, leaving the Finnish sailor adrift in a tiny raft far off the tip of the African continent. NeuschĂ€fer changed course, sailed some hundred miles through the night, found the little raft in the huge and heaving ocean, and shared a glass of rum with Lehtinen before safely transferring him to a giant bulk carrier that had detoured from Singapore to help with the search. Then she turned the Minnehaha to the wind and kept racing.

Even after rescuing Lehtinen, NeuschĂ€fer retained the lead in the perilous contest, which ultimately forced 13 of 16 entrants to drop out. When she crossed the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne, France, on April 27, 2023—after 30,000 miles and 235 days without stepping off her boat—NeuschĂ€fer became the first woman to win a circumnavigation race, crewed or solo, that involves navigating past the three great capes at the bottom of the world.

NeuschĂ€fer, 40, doesn’t like the focus on her gender. She’s prouder that the win made her the first South African to win a round-the-world sailing event. “I think it’s quite a pity that the attention is due to the fact that I’m a woman rather than a sailor,” she told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “I like to be on the playing ground as an equal.”

But the playing ground itself isn’t equal. Historically, women were barred from working on ships, and in our time they remain wildly underrepresented in sail racing, chartering, and sail training, and on superyacht crews. Discrimination still exists; in February, French sailor Clarisse Cremer, who holds the current record for fastest woman to sail solo around the world, was dropped by her sponsor in advance of the 2024 VendĂ©e Globe after she took a break from sailing to give birth to her first child. Race organizers changed the qualifying process, increasing the number of sailing hours competitors needed to complete in the year prior to the event. (She has since found a new sponsor and is working toward qualifying for the race.)

In fact, NeuschĂ€fer doesn’t like the spotlight, full stop. Competitors were required to send daily text message updates for race media, and hers often read merely: text. But she does acknowledge that there are positive aspects to the staggering amount of press coverage she received. “If there are women out there who’ve had a tough time getting into the sailing industry—or any industry that’s male dominated—and they feel, ‘She could do it, maybe I can also pursue my dream,’ then that’s a good thing,” she says.

The coverage has also helped draw attention to the Golden Globe. While other major circumnavigation races—like the VendĂ©e Globe and the BOC Challenge—involve expensive, high-tech boats that race at high speeds, the Golden Globe hearkens back to a simpler era. The inaugural, legendarily disastrous Golden Globe was run in 1968, when nine men vied to be the first to sail solo, nonstop, around the world. Only one man finished the race. The rest sank, abandoned the journey, or, in one harrowing case, slipped into the sea in an apparent suicide. The Golden Globe was revived in 2018 and is run every four years. The course follows the same perilous route as the original: from Europe down the coast of Africa, around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin, and South America’s Cape Horn, returning north along the east coast of South America, and crossing the Atlantic back to Europe. Competitors, who are barred any outside assistance, sail with much the same technology used in 1968, in small boats, navigating with paper charts and sextant, catching rain for water, and communicating by radio.

NeuschĂ€fer likes the Golden Globe because it’s old-school, which makes it more affordable than other sailing races. “It’s accessible to anyone who’s interested in adventure,” says NeuschĂ€fer, a veteran thrill seeker. She cycled the full length of Africa at age 22, riding more than 9,300 miles through jungles and across the Sahara Desert, and sailed National Geographic and BBC film crews to wildly remote locations in the Southern Ocean. When she’s alone in the calm waters of the tropics, she sometimes drops sail and jumps into the ocean, swimming away from the boat “to get that feeling of vastness, that sense of eternity.”

If the buzz around NeuschĂ€fer’s Golden Globe win “inspires people to follow their dreams to whatever degree,” she says, “then it has its worth in that.”

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On the evening of April 27, as the sky darkened over the Atlantic coast of France, a 36-foot sailboat drifted slowly on a windless sea. South African sailor Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer, 40, stood alone at the helm of Minnehaha, whose once-white hull had gone dingy with algae. An entourage of rubber Zodiacs, motorized crafts, and other sailboats surrounded her as a welcome into the Les Sable d’Olonne harbor. Their occupants were the first people she’d seen in months. She hadn’t stepped off her sailboat in 235 days.

The leisurely pace of the fleet belied the magnitude of the feat NeuschÀfer had just accomplished. When she finally crossed the finish in the full dark of night, she became the first South African to win a round-the-world sailing event, and the first woman to win a circumnavigation race via the three great capes, crewed or solo.

And the Golden Globe is no average sailing race.

Where modern circumnavigation races like the Vendee Globe, BOC Challenge, and Whitbread Round-the World involve expensive, high-tech boats that race at high speeds and can evoke an elitist image of sail racing, the Golden Globe has only been held three times, and hearkens back to a simpler era. Competitors sail small boats, navigate with paper charts and sextant, catch rain for water, hand-write their logs, communicate by radio, and cannot accept outside assistance. The original race was run in 1968 when nine men vied to be the first to sail solo, without stopping, around the world. No one even knew if a boat could survive 30,000 miles straight at sea, or what might happen to the mind of a sailor alone for so long.

Only one man finished. Twenty-nine-year-old Robin Knox-Johnston sailed back into Falmouth Harbor, in southern England, nearly a year after he’d left it. Along the journey, his water tanks polluted, the sails tore, and the self-steering broke. The radio malfunctioned a month and a half in, and his only contact was sightings from other ships to confirm he was still racing. The other eight competitors sank or abandoned the journey, most in spectacular fashion. Bernard Moitessier, the favored winner, slingshot a message onto the deck of a passing ship that he was abandoning the Western world for Tahiti. Donald Crowhurst sailed in circles while transmitting fake radio reports to fool the world into believing he was winning, then slipped into the ocean in an apparent suicide. The Golden Globe was deemed a voyage for madmen and it was not repeated.

It was only revived in 2018, and it’s a retro race in every way. The course follows the same dangerous route as the original race: from Europe down the coast of Africa, under the three great capes where the infamously violent Southern Ocean roils unobstructed by land, before returning northward along South America. Racers stop at a series of three gates along the way–Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Cape Town in South Africa, Storm Bay in Tasmania–to drop film. But they »ćŽÇČÔ’t leave their boats, making the race nonstop over the course of several months. Many in the marine community call it the greatest challenge in sailing. The 2018 race delivered its share of adventure: daring rescues of fellow competitors dismasted in a cyclone, a massive rogue wave that somersaulted one boat and left it slowly sinking three days’ voyage from the nearest help.

NeuschÀfer finished sixth place to the first race gate in Lanzarote, The Canary Islands. But she soon cruised into the leading fleet to arrive second to the Cape Town, South Africa, gate. By day 164 of the race, 12 of the 16 entrants had dropped out or been forced to quit due to equipment failures, and NeuschÀfer was first to make it around Cape Horn. She outran a storm and was barely able to speak through frozen lips on her weekly check-in call with race headquarters. Even after she sailed 100 miles through the night to rescue fellow racer Tapio Lenin, from Finland, who radioed for help after his boat suddenly sank in the Southern Ocean, NeuschÀfer retained the lead. Over the last days of the race, Indian Abhilash Tomy tailed NeuschÀfer in a tossup for first, until it became apparent on April 26 that Tomy would be unable to close the gap.

Throughout the race, NeuschĂ€fer appeared uninterested in spotlighting her performance. Her communications were terse; competitors were required to send daily text messages for race media, and NeuschĂ€fer’s often read only: Text. When race founder Don McIntyre asked her how she felt at having become the first woman to win a nonstop circumnavigation race, she said, “I entered as a sailor, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m a woman so… great,” and trailed off, appearing at a loss for more to say about it.

Jean-Luc Van den Heede, the 76-year-old French sailor who won the 2018 Golden Globe, says that such a challenge doesn’t discriminate on gender. The fact that a woman had yet to win it is largely due to the fact that women in sail racing are still rare; consider that throughout the vast majority of history, women were barred from working on sea ships at all. Van den Heede was on hand to welcome NeuschĂ€fer to Les Sable d’Olonne. “In this kind of race,” he told me, “there’s no difference to me between a man and woman.”

NeuschĂ€fer is no newcomer to improbable solo pursuits. When she was 22 years old, she cycled the full length of Africa: over 9,000 miles through jungles and the Sahara Desert. She’s an experienced Southern Ocean sailor who’s taken National Geographic and BBC film crews to wildly remote South Georgia Island—the lonely landmass that Ernest Shackleton sailed to, then famously crossed on foot to secure aidÌę for his stranded men after his ship Endurance was crushed in sea ice. She says that, while solo sailing in the calm water of the tropics, she’ll sometimes drop sail and jump into the ocean, swimming away from the boat “to get that feeling of vastness, that sense of eternity.” Golden Globe race organizers have called her a “real loner, reminiscent of Bernard Moitessier”, the sailor from the first Golden Globe who abandoned the race for the tropics

NeuschĂ€fer’s not the first groundbreaking female in solo sailing or racing. In 1988, Australian Kay Cottee was the first to circumnavigate solo, nonstop, and unassisted via the Southern Ocean. The following year, Tracy Edwards assembled the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race also via the capes. In 2005, Brit Ellen MacArthur became the fastest person to sail solo nonstop around the world, and in 2012 at 16 years old, Laura Dekker was the youngest person to circumnavigate alone.

And in 2018, at 29, Brit Susie Goodall became the first woman to race the Golden Globe. Goodall’s well-publicized status as the only woman, particularly when the circumstances of her rescue after her boat was pitchpoled in the Southern Ocean abruptly flipped the public narrative around her from lone heroine to damsel in distress. The situation also highlighted the few roles women have traditionally been allowed to occupy in cultural narratives.

Of Neuschafer’s win, Goodall says, “She’s made history. And that’s amazing. But what she’s done also speaks for itself. The sea doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman. Anyone finishing a race like that is amazing.”

Some would argue that we’re past the point of needing to label female accomplishments and firsts; that rather than leveling the existing playing field, such emphasis only serves to create a separate one. And as women’s accomplishments stack up, it can seem as though barriers to entry and skewed participation levels for women in the outdoors have been all but eliminated.

But just in February, French sailor Clarisse Cremer, who holds the current record for fastest woman to sail solo around the world, was dropped by her sponsor in her 2024 bid for the Vendee Globe circumnavigation race after she gave birth to her first child, and “after race organizers introduced a rule change that penalized her for taking maternity leave,” .

Katie Gaut, a sailor out of Bellingham, Washington who’s had her captain’s license for twenty years and teaches women to sail, watched the progress of the Golden Globe in 2018 particularly to follow Goodall and did the same with NeuschĂ€fer. “I’ve been in the marine and sailing industry practically my whole adult life,” Gaut said. “It’s so male-dominated and there are very few women in boating, much less sailing. I know how hard it is just to get a sailing job locally. So watching those women do what they do at that level… I can’t imagine how many obstacles they had to surpass to get where they’re at.”

Gaut watched the live feed of NeuschĂ€fer crossing the finish line. It brought her to tears. “It’s empowering for myself, for every little girl, for everyone out there that of course women are capable, and they can beat the guys. We’ve just never gotten the chance because there are too many hurdles to even get to the start line.”

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Our little rubber Zodiac boatÌęwove around icebergs eight stories high and entered a fjord flanked by high mountain basins. Jagged peaksÌęcalled nunataksÌęrose 5,000 feet into the Arctic clouds, forming a skyline to rival any Patagonia silhouette. Our native east GreenlandÌęguide, Julius Nielson, cut the motor and pointed to two fleeting spouts of water to our left. A humpback whale breached, her calf surfacing beside her a second later. Drifting beside their rhythmic rising, our small group was awed into silence.

But it was far from quiet on these northern waters. The explosive breath of the two creatures echoed against the intermittent thundering created by restless tidewater glaciersÌęand another sound: the soft crackling of thousand-year-old air bubbles streaming to the surface, released from icebergs broken off from the vast Greenland ice sheet.

I noticed tears falling down my cheeks. This place had staggered me.

I was boating through Sermilik Fjord as part of a trip with , a company that specializes in responsible adventure travel. Once a relatively obscure spot on the globe, Greenland has been making headlines lately for both trivial reasons () and consequential ones. ItsÌęiceÌęsheetÌęis melting at an alarming rate. But those science-heavy climate-change stories often fail to convey the magnitude of this place. Even as someone who considers myself a conscious environmentalist—having gotten a master’s degree in environmental studies and spent the past decade doing advocacy work—this in-person experience made me want to enact more serious change than any article or statistic has inspired.

So when I was sitting in the Reykjavik airport in Iceland on the way home and saw an article from popÌęup in my feed about how the best thing we can all do to combat climate change is stop traveling, I couldn’t help but feel irked. ItÌęwas spurred in part by a recent that found that the environmental impact of tourism is responsible for 8Ìępercent of global emissionsÌęfrom transport, shopping, and food. (It should be noted that calculate air travel as only 2 to 2.5 percent of global emissions.) The piece was authoredÌęby an established travel writer who’s already gotten to see the world, and it was essentially telling people that they should feel guilty for doing the same.ÌęFrankly, it pissed me off.

Not only that, but it missed an important point. Travel is what opens our eyes to what’s at risk—from fragile ecosystems and disappearing wildlife to warming oceans and people struggling—and inspiresÌęus to fight for it. Could seeing a place actually be worth the 8Ìępercent of global emissions? Especially when that number, while not insignificant, seems diminutive next to the for our buildings and homesÌęor the . In fact, mounting studies show that tourism plays a big role in preservation of the natural world.

The research on how travel has a positive effect on conservation is still relatively new, and one of the most compelling ways to measure it quantitatively is through people’s willingness to pay to see and conserve our environment. “Dollar value is the best way to turn heads to show that nature is valuable,” says Court Whelan, director of sustainability for Natural Habitat șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs. A from the World Travel andÌęTourism Council shows that wildlife tourism generates five times more revenue than illegal wildlife poaching worldwide. Thanks to tourism, an elephant is than dead; India’s tiger population has increased in major part because a single wild tiger is in tourism; and several experts agree that gorillas are right now because of tourism. Other similar studies abound for pandas, one-horned rhinos, wolves, polar bears, and other species at risk.

“There’s no amount of PowerPoints or David Attenborough specials or magazine articles that come even close to having a personal experience with the things we’re protecting,”Ìęsays James Sano, vice president of travel, tourism, and conservation for theÌę, which protects wildlife and vulnerable places and communities.Ìę“People can read about Glacier National Park, but that doesn’t hold a candle to someone actually going there.” Those personal experiences, at destinationsÌęlike Glacier—whose namesakes are melting so fast that Ìęit will have to be renamed—spur new behaviors toward conservation, and the WWF has the data to prove it. “Travelers contribute [money]Ìęat significantly higher levels to our conservation work, on the order of 27 times more compared to those who »ćŽÇČÔ’t travel,” Sano says about those registered with the company’s membership program.

Not only can travel help enact change on a personal level, but it can initiate change onÌęa federal level, too. Once governments see how many tourism dollars are going into their natural attractions, they often realize the economic viability in preserving them.Ìę“Many countries know that without natural resources and cultural resources, tourism doesn’t work,” says Casey Hanisko, president of the , citing recent efforts in Jordan and Japan.Ìę“InÌęJordan, the development of the Jordan Trail as a tourism asset focused on adventure travel hasÌęensured that the land and communities around it are protected,” says Hanisko. Meanwhile, in Japan, “while its cultural appreciation for nature makes it more naturally focused on preservation, with almost 30 percent of its lands protected, its aging population has made the country more focused on adventure-tourism development, to support a need to bring in international visitors to replace their declining domestic-tourism market.”

In Greenland,Ìęout on Sermilik as we followed in the ripples left behind by the whales, Natural Habitat’s Nielson told us that this fjord used to freeze solid in winter with sea ice, making a nearly seamless connection between his village of Tiniteqilaaq and the glaciers descending from the ice sheet across the channel. That ice sheet isÌęthe second largest in the world, behind Antarctica, and accounts for the vast majority of the polar ice cap. It’s two miles thick at its centerÌęand stretches 1,500 miles north to south, covering 80 percent of Greenland.

But Sermilik no longer freezes in winter, Nielson said. And this past summer, scientists measured unprecedented melt of the ice sheet while watching parts of its center . Most of the icebergs we threaded through broke from the Helheim Glacier, just north, which has been calving from its sister, the Midgard Glacier, that seals off the fjord to the east. Neilson relayed a conversation he had last week with a sailboat captain who hasÌęlong given tours to this isolated region and believes that in ten years the Midgard will be gone completely, that he’ll be able to sail straight through the fjord to the ocean. Nielson thinks it’s more like seven years.

As we passed by these ancient pieces of ice devolving into sea, the low clouds muted everything to gray. After my eyes adjusted, I was struck by a kaleidoscope of color, with each layer of ice taking on a different shade. Then the clouds suddenly partedÌęand revealed a bright blue sky that put our surroundings into new focus.

Watching the clouds part, I was struck by a feeling of heartbreaking clarity, similar to that of understanding something fully for the first time. It’s this moment that Sam Ham, a professor of communication psychology at the University of Idaho, identifies as the transformative lynchpin. Ham, who has been studying environmental interpretation in tourism for nearly 20 years,Ìęexplains that it’s not just the act of travel that will lead to measurable transformationÌębut the interpretation of the experience.

Ham pioneered this concept when he consulted with adventure-cruise company in 1998 on its small-boat GalĂĄpagos Islands program. In 1997, owner Sven Lindblad had a hunch that if the company asked its passengers to donate to local conservation efforts at the same time they were asked to tip the crew at the end of the journey, they’d jump at the chance. Lindblad raised $50,000 that yearÌębut believed the sumÌęcould have beenÌęmuch higher. He brought in Ham, who designed a new approach that was all about helping clients interpret Charles Darwin and the animalsÌęand connecting passengers to the environment. At no point were travelers asked to give, but donations to the Ìęincreased by a staggering 270 percent the next year.

Upon returning home from our close-up with the impacts of climate change in Greenland, my fellow travelerÌęKim BorovikÌęfound herself imagining the flight path of an aging banana she bought in the tiny Tasiilaq grocery store while there, leading her to a habit of basing her produce purchases off the origin labels in her own supermarket. Another new friend from the trip, Linnet Tse, began conscious attempts to reduce food waste, which of global emissions,Ìęby being more strategic with purchases and eating out less. As for me, I dove headfirst into the rabbit hole that is carbon offsetting. I’d never offset my travel before, but now I wanted to figure out how to do it for my upcoming flightsÌęto Tanzania.

I found numerous companies that will calculate travel emissions and offer projects that travelers can invest in to offset their trips. I decided to use , a Swiss nonprofit that’s certified with strict third-party auditors like CDM, Gold Standard, and Plan Vivo. The website provides options for calculating individual parts of your trip, from a flight to a car ride, as well asÌętrip’s entire carbon footprint. Carbon emissions are measured in metric tons, so offsets are measured in equivalent reductions of metric tons, which are priced anywhere from . My flights from Missoula, Montana, to the Kilimanjaro airport via Amsterdam weighed in at 4.7 tons of CO2, which translates to a cost of $135, a shockingly small price to pay and in this case went to helping small farmers with reforestation in Nicaragua.Ìę

The effectiveness of carbon offsetting has seen , which is why it’s crucial to choose projects with third-party certifications. But spending my money on programsÌęlike reforestation, renewable energy, andÌęwater-filtration systems for villages in developing countries, so that people »ćŽÇČÔ’t have to cut wood and burn it to sanitize drinking water, are all worthy add-ons inÌęan effort to beÌęa more conscious traveler in general, whether that means flying less orÌęmore thoughtfully.

Not every travel experience will be transformative or lead to behavior change, and offsetting flights doesn’t giveÌęus carte blanche to turn up the taps, but the answer is not to stop traveling altogether. In fact, nowadays, there are as many answers as there are innovative solutions. One of my answers is understanding the impact, both bad and good, of the trips we choose to take. When that understanding leads to concrete steps towardÌęinvesting in climate-change solutions, or when our valuing a place or species through tourism is a driving force in conserving it, then yes, travel is worth the carbon footprint.

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Jeff Scott’s life as he knew it ended on a bluebird spring afternoon atÌęRevelstoke Mountain ResortÌęin southeastern British Columbia. On the last day of the ski season in 2010, the then 25-year-oldÌęhit a roller gap he’d been eyeing all morning. He came up short, landed flat, and was knocked out cartwheeling.ÌęThe crash left him a C5–6 quadriplegic, with no feeling below his collarbones or in his triceps,Ìęand limited hand movement.

Scott would no longer lead his wildland firefighter team in the summers or spend his winters exploring the backcountry on his sled and snowboard. He’d snowboarded since he was a kid in Burns Lake, in northern B.C., and started pushing limits on drops and speed in the relatively undiscovered big-mountain landscape around Revelstoke in its early days as a resort town. “The mountains are a part of who I am,” Scott says. “I grew up with them being my playground. That freedom and exploration that the backcountry represents
” He pauses for a long moment. “You can’t ever have that returned. But maybe you can at least experience the feeling of bottomless powder.”

That’s why, eight years after his accident, 33-year-old ScottÌęhas become a pioneer on one of the last frontiers of snow: backcountry adaptive skiing.

Anyone trying to get into sitÌęskiing will encounter scant resources and abundant obstacles—and that’s before heading off-piste. Adaptive skiers can’t just walk into the ski shop and choose a sit ski, becauseÌęthere are few companies making such equipment, and itÌęoften needs to be customized to the level andÌętype of injury. James Eger, head of , likens it to ski boots, which should be well fit and without play to best control the ski. “Same with a sit ski: it should fit snug on the body to the level of the athlete’s ability,” he says. “If the injury level is low on the spine and you have [the use of] abs, chest, and back muscles, then the sit ski probably doesn’t have much of a back, and the skier can muscle that around. If the injury level is high, you need a lot more of it attached to you.”

This need for specific performance based on body shape and balance points, unique to mobility levels, is also why there’s no market for sit-ski rentals. Adaptive ski programs have become common atÌęmost major resorts in the last two decades, and some of the biggest suchÌęprograms, like those in Crested Butte, Colorado,Ìęand Park City, Utah, sometimes have enough equipmentÌęin their kit to outfit an adaptive athlete with a sit ski—if it matches the specifics of the user’s needs. That’s a big if.

Sit skis can range from $3,000 to $12,000 for advanced customization. Some organizations subsidize this cost for people looking to overcome this massive barrier to entry—like the , whichÌępromotes the progression of adaptive adventure (Scott became its executive director a few years after his accident).Ìę

Scott made his way back onto the snow a year and a half after his injury, working through a steep learning curve.Ìę“To be put in a body that doesn’t move the same way and learn a new sport was straight-up challenging,”Ìęhe says. “Just the physics of it is complicated: In not having triceps, I can’t recover from any fall on my own. I have to be very calculated in my movements. And in not having sensation, I have to anticipate movements, because I can’t always react in time.”

Scott’s injury is high on his spine, and because of the limited feeling in his hands, he can’t hold outriggers for balance and direction the way many sit skiers can. He drives the ski’s motion with his upper body, using his arms as rudders; another person skis behind him, holding a pair of handlebars on Scott’s customized sit ski, taking cues from his movements. That person is often Eger, one of Scott’s partnersÌęin expanding the landscape of adaptive skiing, whoÌęridesÌęa pair of antiquated tele skis that hang off his boots at improbable angles for landing the jumps that he and Scott favor.

The pair met in 2013 when Eger relocated to Revelstoke from Crested Butte, where he’d volunteered with the Adaptive Sports Center. Eger began running lessons for Revelstoke Adaptive around the same time that Scott took the helm as executive director of the Live It Love It Foundation. With their shared taste for extreme adventure, they partnered Revelstoke Adaptive and the Foundation to build a big-mountain sit-ski camp at RevelstokeÌęMountain Resort (RMR). Whereas most adaptive ski programs are teaching more beginner to intermediate levels on a regular basis, the RMR campÌęteaches athletes to expand their comfort zones in the mountain’s steeps, cliffs, and famously deep powder.Ìę

But Scott still yearned for the backcountry.ÌęExisting models for getting a sit skier into the backcountry generally involveÌęsnowcats, helicopters, or occasionally sleds if the level of injury permits. “I’ve done these scenarios over the years, and it’s always a major production,” says Eger. “You get someone from their wheelchair into the cat, load the sit ski, load everyone else, get the ski off, unload the person, fit them up in their sit ski, make sure they’re sorted, and redo it all for the next run.” Devoted friends have carried skiers into the backcountry on their shouldersÌęor lined them upÌęsnowfields on ropes. Some programs, like , use plywood ramps and several volunteers to muscle a sit skier into a cat while still in the ski, to at least eliminateÌętheÌęstep of transferring an athlete in and out of the sit ski.

But the bottom line in every case is that those methods are exhausting and time-consuming, and the adaptive skier has to rely heavily on others to move them around. The biggest problem, in Scott’s view: there’s usually only one sit skier in a group of able-bodied skiers,Ìęand with so much energy and attention focused on them, it robs the adventure of any feeling of normalcy.

Scott came face to face with these problems on his first day in the backcountry after the injury; one friend had a mini cat, and several others joined in to take Scott on a few runs in the mountains above Revelstoke. “I was blown away at the lengths my friends were willing to go to,” he says. “Knowing that not everyone had friends with those kinds of resources or experience was disheartening.”Ìę

He wanted to figure outÌęhow to get a sit skier easily into the backcountryÌęand—better yet—do it with a group of sit skiers to normalize the adventure.

The solution he envisioned was a one-of-a-kind trailer that sat with its belly on the snow. It would have a flat ramp so sit skiers could simply slide into it at ground level on their own with minimal assistance, and it would closeÌęinto a tailgate to secure skiers inside while in motion. It would be towed behind a snowcat and hold up to four sit skiers. Over the course of three years,ÌęScott raised funds through Live It Love It for the design and build. It finally emerged in early 2017, lookingÌęlike a teardrop trailer on steroids, with sled skis instead of wheels, aluminum siding with open-air windows, a windshield to protectÌęagainst any snow kicked up by the cat, and a ground-level ramp that closed into a tailgate. He christened it the Lunchbox.

Its maiden mission was slated for that April at Mustang Powder Cat Skiing in the heart of B.C.’sÌęMonashee Mountains. Scott had pitched the ideaÌęto the operation the year before, choosing MustangÌęfor its location, noteworthy variety of terrain, andÌęgenerosity in donatingÌętime, guides, and lodge space. Scott assembled a team of athletes to help him test the Lunchbox: Samson Danniels, the 2012 Winter X Games mono-ski cross gold medalist who has figured out how to surf, speed-fly, and snowmobile since breaking his back in 2005; Josh Dueck, the famed Paralympian who was the first to pull off a backflip in a sit ski; and Amanda Timm, the first woman to sit-ski theÌęexpert-only Delirium Dive terrain at Banff’s Sunshine Village ski resort.

Despite last-minute rigging with plywood and wrenchesÌęand the threat of high mid-April freezing levels that threatened to abort the entire mission, the trailer performed without a hitch. The sit skiers shredded several lines through bottomless powderÌęwith an efficiency that represented a new independence of movement.

TheÌętest was deemed such a smashing success that Scott took the Lunchbox publicÌęthis year for a three-day cat-ski trip at Mustang. Live It Love It raised funds,Ìęand Mustang kept costs low so the trip would be freeÌęfor participants (a regular three-day cat-skiing trip at Mustang costs $3,500). Live It Love ItÌęran a lottery to give seats away, and sit skiers could also win one through 2018’s Live It Love It Send It adaptive competition at RMR—the first-ever big-mountain adaptive competition in the world, to Scott’s knowledge. The grand prize was a three-day trip to Mustang with a seat in the Lunchbox the following week.ÌęÌę

“Democratizing backcountry access for adaptive athletes is a huge factor in the operation of the Lunchbox,” says Scott. “Anyone can take the big-mountain camp at RMR, enter the competition, and win a seat.ÌęOr they can enter a lottery to win a free seat. In my mind, that’s the epitome of openness.”

There’s one other, more subtle, factor that differentiates Scott’s project from existing modelsÌęlike snowcats, helicopters, and sleds.Ìę“The real glue that we didn’t even think about coming into it is the time we get in the lodge after skiing,” says Dueck. “Anyone who’s had a good day in the mountains knows that the stoke level is like a runner’s high, with a clarity of mind that allows for profound realizations. Sharing that is what mountain culture is all about: what nature provides as a teacher that makes us better people for it.”

That feeling isÌęeven more profound as an adaptive skier, Dueck explains. “The backcountry is about experiencing something they never thought possible. There’s still a component of fear, but you find a way to get down the mountainÌęand realize your capacity for overcoming challenges. You come out with an elevated perspective, so that now some of those everyday challenges in life seem a little more manageable.”

Scott is already moving on to his vision of creating the first-ever adaptive-backcountry competition, where sit skiers find a zone, pick their lines from the bottom, and ski them, all rider judged.

“Backcountry adventure is about progression,” he says. “That’s what the Lunchbox can offer. It opens it up for sit skiers to go as far as they can go. We’re blazing trail, and the ideas are endless from here.”

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When I moved from Los Angeles to Montana in my mid-twenties, I became well acquainted with the clichĂ©s of mountain-town dating, went through a period of swinging singledom, and then met the man I thought I might marry. Years later, we became each other’s greatest heartbreak. I emerged in my thirties to the same small-town dating scene of my twenties and found it no longer fit what I was looking for.

Unlike much of the ski-town crowd, I »ćŽÇČÔ’t live in a van or a tiny home (although I’ve been known to live out of the back of my truck for weeklong stints). I’m a classic weekend warrior, generally working full-time as a freelance writer and marketer. I like to have money in my bank account and an adult home, and I tend to choose a nice bottle of wine over a night at the bar these days. I chase winter, but I put down roots where I land instead of blowing through in a hedonistic storm. I want a mountain man who’s similarly mature, adventurous, and self-sufficient (did I mention employed?).

I’d like to think depth in a relationship and the mountain lifestyle aren’t mutually exclusive. But when the pool of single men is notoriously overcrowded with Peter Pans and 40-year-old ski bums, the search for a mature, healthy relationship starts to resemble a quest for the holy grail.

And so I set out on my quest in ski towns across the world in search of real romance. These are my dating dispatches from a year traveling through three different mountain locales.

The Hazardous Ski Lift Meet-Cute

Missoula, Montana

What It’s Known For: More nonprofits per capita than literally anywhere else; ; and Snowbowl, the local ski hill with unpredictable southern exposure and the best Bloody Mary around.

The Scene: I’d spent the fall of 2015 in Missoula without meeting anyone of note, and I was ready to give up. Enter winter and Snowbowl’s aging two-person ski lift, which has been sneakily matchmaking the locals for years with its interminable rides and frequent breakdowns.

One day in December, I yelled, “Single!” and hopped on the lift with another single dude. We were well into acquainting ourselves on the slow ascent when the lift lurched and stopped abruptly. As we hung there for 45 minutes, waiting for our death-defying rappel rescue by the ski patrol, we talked about work, passions, and life goals.

Before we’d even been lowered to the ground, I decided I would ask him out. He beat me to it.

The Outcome: Bachelor #1 and I dated for several months. Over the course of this relationship, I became deeply familiar with the iconic commitment-phobia of lifelong ski bums. This category of man can typically be found on the ski hill or in the backcountry for as many days as there’s snow. He doesn’t work in winter, holding down summer seasonal jobs long past his twenties to fund his powder habit. While Bachelor #1 bucked many of the common stereotypes, he was unable to fit anything (or anyone) into the ski bachelor lifestyle he’d been living for so long. I ended it in favor of finding someone for whom I would be a priority (and in favor of chasing winter).

The Swiping Experiment

Wanaka, New Zealand

What It’s Known For: Mellow vibe, Treble Cone’s big lines, and badass Kiwis.

The Scene: I left Missoula in the spring of 2016 to chase winter in New Zealand and landed in the paradise that is Wanaka. In the spirit of adventure, I decided to try dating apps for the first time. I quickly encountered all the classic hazards of small-town Tindering, including repeated awkward encounters in our only grocery store with that dude I accidentally Superliked and running into all three of my most recent matches in the lift line.

I met Bachelor #2 when I commented on the speed-flying photo in his profile. He offered to take me out, and I was booked for my first full-day outdoor Tinder date.

We drove to the Old Man Range and sledded around in search of an appropriate learning slope. He gave me a quick safety talk on how to operate the wing, and I took off on my first attempt—promptly crashing after about 45 seconds in the air. I hit the snow laughing, lucky not to have injured myself spectacularly. The wing wasn’t so lucky: I’d grazed the only rock on the entire slope during the crash, tearing a hole in Bachelor #2’s $2,000 piece of gear and effectively closing the door on a second attempt (and a second date).

After that, I decided to expand my Tinder search into neighboring Queenstown. I matched with Bachelor #3, whose beat-up truck was a little too beat up to make it over the icy pass. He hitchhiked over to Wanaka for our first date, wearing a costume tiger onesie in the hopes that it would facilitate being picked up on the side of the road. I gave him points for guts.

The Outcome: We drove my slightly more-functional station wagon to the shores of Lake Wanaka and made dinner over a fire. We dated for the rest of my stint in New Zealand, making time for ski missions between his 50-hour-a-week startup gig and my budding freelance career. Only my expired visa interfered with what could have been an endgame romance.

The Too-Friendly Town

Revelstoke, Canada

What It’s Known For: Drool-worthy big-mountain terrain on Rogers Pass, a legendary snowpack, and ’s extreme vert.

The Scene: Revelstoke is renowned as a seasonal ski destination, its population of almost 7,000 swelling by as much as 2,000 people in winter. When I arrived there for the winter of 2017, I was in the market for a lasting relationship, but little did I know I’d be viewed as a nomadic ski bum myself.

I met Bachelor #4 at the resort. He was smart, funny, a badass skier—and a local. We went on one of those dates that evolves from skiing to beers to dinner. In this case, it evolved into dinner with his best friends, the ski-town equivalent of meeting the parents right off the bat. However, Bachelor #4 was the male version of me: mid-thirties and looking for a lasting relationship. Ultimately, I couldn’t prove to him that I’d still be there when the snow melted, and that was that.

Shortly after, I broke my ankle in a high-speed ski crash, effectively ending my run on the Revelstoke dating scene. After all, being laid up with a broken bone is not an ideal way to meet men in a ski town. That is, until I crossed paths with Bachelor #5, one of #4’s best friends whom I’d met on that fateful dinner date.

Bachelor #5 was a recovering ski bum just trying out the professional life, and he offered to take my broken self out on his snowmobile for a sunset sled after work. Having suffered a season-ending injury of his own the previous winter, he understood my craving to get into the mountains—whether I could take turns or not. I brought Montanan IPA to share, he brought local red wine, and we had an unexpectedly awesome happy hour on the cat track.

The Outcome: The next morning, I snuck out of his house and ran smack into Bachelor #4, who was picking up #5 for a morning ski mission. I decided that while this overlap is part and parcel of mountain-town dating, it was more than I could handle—a decision that also, unfortunately, precluded me from dating about 82 percent of Revelstoke’s male population.

My quest for the holy grail of meaningful relationships is ongoing, but I refuse to let all the clichĂ©s of mountain-town dating win. Somewhere out there, among the 40-year-old ski bums and seasonal liftees, there’s a unicorn in ski pants looking for a dawn-patrol partner before we both head to our full-time jobs. It’s only a matter of time before we run into each other on the mountain.

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In February 2014, Wendy Fisher stood at the top of a steep chute in the Whistler backcountry, camera trained on her, as she prepared to drop into her first big line in eight years. Mike Douglas, a director for Salomon Freeski TV stood next to her. “Any thoughts of the kids?” he asked.

It was a natural question. Fisher was filming , about Fisher’s return to big-mountain skiing after taking years off to prioritize motherhood. Out loud, she said, “I’ve had a few, yeah. But I can’t think about them right now. I’ve got to think about me.” The truth was she wasn’t focused on her two sons, ages 10 and 12, at all at that moment. “I was thinking that I was scared again, but it was so rewarding.”

Fisher is widely credited with helping to pioneer extreme skiing. An Olympian and World Cup competitor, she broke into extreme skiing during its emergence in the mid-1990s, winning championships and starring in films for Matchstick Productions and Warren Miller. Then she had her first child, Aksel, in 2005, and everything changed for her. “I remember holding him in my arms and thinking, ‘What did I just do? I could be in Alaska skiing. I just screwed myself.’ Because I fell in love with my kids.”

Fisher is one of only a few women in the big-mountain industry—mountaineers, pro skiers, and guides—and one of even fewer who are raising a family. That world hasn’t allowed for much nuance in how moms are portrayed or accommodated. In 1995, when American climber , a media firestorm ensued over her choice to risk her life in the mountains as a mother. Today, popular media celebrates mountain athletes and guides who are new moms as “having it all,” while rarely acknowledging the weight behind their decisions. Little attention is given to the realities of starting a family in the guiding and sponsored-athlete industries, where the mainstream model of motherhood doesn’t fit. As a result, women like Fisher have had to blaze their own trails.

“I always knew I wanted to be a mom, but when I was younger, I was too focused on skiing to admit I wanted it, even to myself,” says Ingrid Backstrom, 39, one of most well-known freeskiers in the world. She held a common perception that once she had kids, she wouldn’t be “allowed to do anything rad.” In 2017, Backstrom had her daughter, Betty, and went on to release Lineage, a film documenting her mission to ski the top 25 lift-accessed lines in North America, traveling with her then ten-month-old.

“I thought I had to do all these things and get it out of my system before kids, because then it would be over,” says Caroline George, 45, a mountain guide and pro skier based in Switzerland. “But life isn’t so linear. Once it’s in your system, you can’t get it out. And I never wanted to say to my daughter, ‘I had you and I couldn’t accomplish my dreams.’” At 35, George realized she wanted children but resolved that having a child wouldn’t change the way she lived her life. She mountaineered halfway through her pregnancy, ski-toured all the way through it, and continues to guide now.

Fisher agrees. “I »ćŽÇČÔ’t want my kids to hear, ‘Your mom used to do that,’” she says. “I want my boys to look up to me as a fiery skier on these big lines that people »ćŽÇČÔ’t usually expect to see women skiing.” Still, Fisher says, “It’s a weird mental thing just to decide to have kids in this industry.” Most women, at the age they’d think about having kids, have worked for years to earn a certain level of credibility and training, and it’s hard to give that up.

Penny Goddard, a mountain guide and avalanche consultant based in Revelstoke, British Columbia, had her daughter in 2012, halfway through her guide training. “I »ćŽÇČÔ’t want to be a poster girl for this imaginary dream,” she says. Goddard recalls a period of serious soul searching to decide whether she would even complete her training, which involved significant time, a tremendous amount of pressure, and long stints away from her daughter after giving birth. And there were financial implications: Goddard’s husband put his career on hold to take over a big share of the childcare. “I asked myself why I wanted to do this and if my ambition was getting in the way of motherhood,” she says. “Now that those hardest years are behind me, I’m glad we did it, but it was heart-wrenchingly difficult.”

Mountain guide Lilla Molnar, 46, based in Canmore, Alberta, encountered similar childcare hurdles when she had her daughter, Ella, in April 2012. But she was able to mold her place of employment, the massive Canadian Mountain Holidays guiding system, to her needs. She’d bring her infant daughter to the lodge with her during her multiweek guiding shifts, along with her mother, mother-in-law, or her husband, fellow mountain guide Marc Piche, who joined when he was off work. To Molnar’s knowledge, this had never been done before. “I never thought, ‘Now I have to change my lifestyle to suit having a baby,’” she says. “I looked for solutions rather than going back to the drawing board on how I would live my life.”

Social media has in some ways supported that kind of attitude, giving women the freedom to blend family and big-mountain adventure while demonstrating to their employers (or, often, their sponsors) that such a thing is possible. To announce freeskier Tessa Treadway’s pregnancy in 2013, her husband, Dave, a fellow pro skier, wrote a letter to their sponsors, including Rossignol, from their unborn son’s perspective. “Hi. My name is Kasper,” it read. “I want to be a skier like my mom and dad. Will you sponsor me, too?” The family has been living out of their camper with their two sons for the past three years, traveling the West and . Now they can’t keep up with social media requests from resorts, guided ski operations, and lodges. “Lots of different companies want us on their team to promote skiing as a family,” Tessa says. “We’ve carved out a new market for ourselves.”

For athletes who make much of their living from sponsorships, the image of motherhood hasn’t been part of their brand content until fairly recently. In 2001, a rumor circulated throughout the outdoor world that The North Face had dropped pro climber Lynn Hill from its sponsorship because of her pregnancy. In fact, Hill’s contract had simply expired, but the rumor added to a climate in which female athletes were gun-shy about announcing pregnancy to their sponsors.

Jessica Hollister, director of consumer communications for The North Face, says the brand is very supportive of motherhood within its athlete team as part of a conscious move to share more images and stories of female explorers. “That applies to women who are getting out and pushing boundaries in all stages of their lives—including becoming a parent.” The brand has already featured images and films spotlighting Backstrom with her daughter. It also sponsors ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers and big-mountain skier Hilaree O’Neill, both of whom went before Backstrom in integrating motherhood into ski mountaineering careers. “As sponsors, we owe it to them, and the sport, to recognize and honor all of their contributions,” Hollister says.

“Companies are realizing that audiences want more of a story than the image of a hot, young ripper who parties all night and shreds all day,” says Izzy Lynch, a pro skier and former big-mountain competitor on the Freeride World Tour Circuit who had her son, Knox, in the spring of 2017. “They’re letting us grow up. I was really proud to be skiing and shooting while pregnant.”

At the same time, there’s the danger that once an athlete has children, she’ll fall into the default box of “mom athlete” in the public perception, a phenomenon that doesn’t happen nearly as often with men. “Ever since I gave my first interview at 22, I’ve been asked about having kids,” says mountain guide Melissa Arnot, who, in 2016, was the first American woman to summit Everest without oxygen. “I finally started replying that until we ask that question of men, I’m not willing to answer it.” Arnot, 34, gave birth to her daughter just three months ago. “I’ve been able to hold on quite tightly to my identity. The person I am is a mountain athlete, a stubborn pursuer of what’s out of the norm. I »ćŽÇČÔ’t have interest in chasing the ‘mom athlete’ persona, even though there’s a certain pressure to do that.”

Regardless of public perception, some mothers do make the choice to cut back on high-risk, time-consuming adventures as part of their career. Treadway acknowledges that she’s stepped back from skiing big lines. “If we want to ski something big, it’s easier for Dave. I’m more the primary caregiver, and he’s more the breadwinner—he’ll still go out on those epic missions,” she says. This was her own choice, she notes. “I wanted to not miss out on that time in their lives and be there for my sons. And we’re promoting to people that adventure isn’t over when you have kids.”

All the mothers I spoke with acknowledged that they gave no small consideration to the risk inherent in their careers—something that lots of people who »ćŽÇČÔ’t work in the industry have opinions about. “The activities we do can be perceived as overly risky by people who aren’t engaging in them on a daily basis, even though we’re trained for them to the highest level,” Lynch says. “If everything goes right, then it’s fine, but if something goes wrong, then I’m the negligent mom.”

DesLauriers questioned whether her risk tolerance would change after having children. “When I was pregnant with my first,” she says, “I remember looking up at the Grand Teton and wondering if I would be the kind of parent who would get over the fear and go climb and ski something like that.”

DesLauriers had already skied off the Grand twice and knew exactly what it would take. She questioned if she’d physically be able to do it after childbirth. “But I have always said that I play hard and I rehab hard. And coming back from pregnancy is like rehab,” DesLauriers jokes. “I trained really hard, but I could never be out for more than two hours at a time, because I was breastfeeding constantly.” The day she went for the Grand, DesLauriers fed her daughter at 11 p.m., put her back to bed, started hiking at midnight, and summited at 8 a.m. “We had to drop in whether it was soft enough or not, because I had to get back to breastfeed,” she says.

Women like Treadway and her colleagues are demonstrating that there are as many ways to be a mother with a big-mountain career as there are mothers. Simplifying their stories as “having it all” or not being a “good enough” mom doesn’t do service to the gravity that motherhood deserves, whether or not a woman decides to have children.

“I hope more people feel comfortable to make the choice that’s right for them—and that the choice isn’t limiting,” Backstrom says. “It should be a celebration of everyone’s individual DNA and choices and less about projecting our expectations onto anyone else.”

The post Kids and an Exciting Mountain Career? It’s Complicated appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In January 2018, a helicopter lifted off the ground in British Columbia’s Purcell Mountains, leaving a knot of 11 skiers crouched in its wake. Shannon Werner stood up and led the group down the slope, tasked with finding the best powder turns—and keeping them alive in the remote backcountry terrain.

Werner is a ski guide with the Canadian Mountain Holidays–run wilderness lodge Bobbie Burns. She works at the lodge for two weeks at a time, and each day is packed. It starts at 6:30 a.m. with a guides meeting, then she spends the next eight hours skiing up to 40,000 vertical feet; making calls about runs, conditions, heli drop-offs and pickups; managing the group; and ending at 8:30 p.m. On her days off, Werner is an avalanche forecaster with , putting in long days analyzing snowpack across the country. From the time the snow starts falling until well into spring, Werner rarely has a day off.

In the midst of all this, at 38 years old, she’s deciding whether or not to have a child.

This decision can be uniquely weighty for women who are big-mountain professionals, including mountaineers, pro skiers, and guides. These jobs are particularly rife with logistical hurdles for mothers: They are heavily male-dominated, centered on risky endeavors that require top physical fitness, and often involve multiday, potentially high-consequence missions in the backcountry. While there’s been some progress over the past few decades, women are still fighting for workplaces that »ćŽÇČÔ’t revert to the status quo of requiring them to choose motherhood or career, especially if they want to move up the ranks.

Werner is part of the (ACMG), in which only 9 percent of ski-trained certified guides are women. In its U.S. counterpart, the American Association of Mountain Guides (AMGA), 8 percent of ski guides are women. Worldwide, only 105 of the 6,937 mountain guides certified by the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA) are women. Forecasting programs also tend to have few women in top positions; Werner is the only woman in a full forecasting role at Avalanche Canada.

“Of course [the decision to have kids] is why the numbers are smaller. It’s not about women being fit enough or strong enough or not having the right academic background,” Werner says. “I know motherhood is possible, but for me personally at this point in my career, I have to be strategic and plan it. It’s not an easy industry to just let it happen.” She knows that having kids would mean major changes to her professional life.

A ski or mountain guide’s career path is a particularly intense illustration of the logistics facing any big-mountain professional. It’s a lengthy process requiring several years of dedication to top physical fitness and nearly continual stints in the backcountry during winter. For most national associations, certification involves demonstrating several years of backcountry skiing experience, belaying experience, and basic alpine climbing systems. According to , guides must also demonstrate the physical fitness to ascend and descend 4,500 vertical feet per day.

Those are just the prerequisites. Training then involves several seven- to ten-day courses and certifications, including an alpine skills course, ski guide course, avalanche training, and backcountry medical training; a one- to three-year stint as an apprentice guide; and, finally, passing a multiday guide exam to become a fully certified guide. To become an IFMGA mountain guide, candidates must complete all three certifications in rock, alpine, and ski. It can take anywhere from two to ten years to complete this process, with most guides estimating an average time of four years. And it’s difficult to take time off in the middle of the process.

Some associations have tried to develop maternity policies that fit into this long process. For example, the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association (NZMGA) has what’s called a lapsed member policy. “This means you can hold your professional development requirements while taking a leave of absence for as long as you need,” says Anna Keeling, an IFMGA-certified mountain guide who works as a trainer and examiner for NZMGA. “You can pick up where you left off in terms of guide exams. But the danger, of course, lies in the loss of fitness, hard skills, or confidence. You’ll need to train back to proficiency.” But NZMGA is unique in having such a codified policy; ACMG and AMGA »ćŽÇČÔ’t yet have formal maternity-leave policies for pregnant members or aspirants.

Beyond the lack of official policies, other obstacles remain for new mothers trying to return to this work. Once certified ski guides like Werner join a heli-ski or cat-ski operation, they’re headed up by a lead guide who directs all logistics for running the program on the mountain. It generally takes four to seven years of experience at any given operation to become a lead guide there. “If that’s something you want to work towards, you have to be there full-time,” Werner says. “So if you got pregnant and had to leave your operation for a stint, and they didn’t find a town-based job for you for those first couple of years, you’d have to start all over at another operation—and even if you’re an experienced guide, it would take another several years to get to lead guide.”

Danyelle Magnan, a 39-year-old ACMG-certified ski guide and avalanche technician who’s training to become a full avalanche forecaster, remembers sitting down with a mentor early in her career to talk about her professional aspirations. She recalls being asked whether she planned to start a family. “At that point, I hadn’t really thought about whether I wanted children,” Magnan says. “But I remember them saying that if guiding were in my future, having kids would be a setback. That the ACMG certification requires a lot of commitment, and you wouldn’t want to give up something you’d worked so hard for.” Magnan says that didn’t steer her away from her commitment to a big-mountain career, which was something she’d wanted to do her whole life, whereas having children has never been one of her life goals.

Both Magnan and Werner are enjoying high points in their careers, trained to the unique level of knowledge and field time required for avalanche forecasting. “You’re in your late thirties by the time you’re a major contributor to the industry as a pro guide or forecaster,” Werner says. “That’s why the choice of starting a family absolutely steers your professional decisions. Having a child would definitely affect my career for a few years, and that’s how it should be, because I’d want to give my child and family 100 percent. But it would be a hard transition with my career.”

For pro skiers, that career peak—as a formidable competitor, as coveted talent in ski films and brand content, and for expeditions—generally happens smack in the middle of prime childbearing years.

Lexi DuPont, 29, is a pro skier sponsored by Eddie Bauer and K2 who’s been featured in films like and . “I have friends who are getting married and having kids, and I haven’t even touched my full potential. Every season, I get better. I »ćŽÇČÔ’t want to interrupt that constant progression; I want to maximize it as long as possible.”

Several female pros are on the same page with waiting to have children for physical reasons. “Pregnancy is akin to an injury in the sense that you have to look after your body and prioritize things other than your sport,” says Kim Vinet, a 34-year-old pro skier based in Revelstoke who has already interrupted her career for a couple winters due to multiple knee injuries. “I’d always planned to adopt even before I became a professional athlete, and so I’ve never had to worry about losing my capacity for fitness with pregnancy.”

DuPont points out that a mother would be likely to take at least a year off from intense skiing while having a baby, “whereas a father’s going to keep hard-charging every day until the baby comes and likely get to keep skiing while a mother attends to recovery, breastfeeding, and all the other biological realities of having a baby.”

Lynsey Dyer is a pioneer in amplifying women in the big-mountain industry. She founded , which aims to increase the participation of women and girls in outdoor activities, and , the production company behind the only all-women ski film Pretty Faces. Dyer has watched many of her industry role models transition to motherhood. “I had this vision that those skiers got what they needed out of the pro ski life and were ready to have kids. I wanted to tell myself that everyone makes this beautiful transition from wanting the glory and the freedom. But it isn’t the pretty story we want to hear; it’s hard, and it’s uglier and messier and more real than I ever wanted to see it. They still want the glory and the freedom, and that transition is hard.”

For one thing, Dyer feels that many women aren’t given the option to prioritize their career after having kids, because they can’t make the travel and training work if their partner isn’t willing to take care of kids and everyday logistics full-time. “If you »ćŽÇČÔ’t have a supportive husband, the question becomes whether you can afford for someone to take your place for your kids,” Dyer says. “It’s the unsaid truth about this whole industry. Lots of people could climb mountains if they could afford it.”

Almost every woman I interviewed used the word “selfish” at some point in the conversation with regard to wanting to put their career and ambitions first. It’s a common narrative in Western culture. But when taking into account the heavy factors that big-mountain professionals weigh in thinking about whether to bring children into their lives, the question arises: Can we create another narrative? It may be time to make room for alternative trajectories of motherhood—as well as the trajectories that »ćŽÇČÔ’t involve children at all.

Dyer feels that female big-mountain professionals wouldn’t have to give up their careers to the same degree if we flipped the industry concept of “adventure wives” on its head. In the male-dominated mountain world, it’s often the case that while the husband is out on expeditions, missions, or working in the backcountry for long stints, the wife usually stays behind to care for the children and everyday logistics. It’s still rare for both partners in a relationship to split childcare evenly, let alone for the man to take on the majority of care while the woman pursues an outdoor-based career. “We should celebrate that role of the supportive man, because it’s new and not necessarily ‘cool,’” Dyer says.

DuPont believes it would also help if pro skiers felt more valued in the ski industry beyond always finding the next big line, shooting films, and keeping up a nonstop adrenaline-filled social media presence—she would like to find additional ways to enrich her career if she started a family. “I wouldn’t continue my ski career the way that I am now if I had kids. You want to be there and dedicate your time to them, and the skiing takes a backseat,” DuPont explains. “But then you have to go back to your definition of what it means to grow as an athlete. Maybe it means developing product, creating, or getting that next generation involved, and that’s just as important as a medal or getting the next best trick. We can continue to grow the sport in other ways beyond being just the gnarliest chick.”

While professional skiing doesn’t require certifications and courses the way guiding does, it does call for a tremendous amount of dedication to develop and maintain the skills and strength necessary to stay relevant in the big-mountain world, which generally means pushing limits in the backcountry to deliver the content that sponsors and media expect. Adding the equally tremendous dedication of the traditional model of motherhood into the mix can often seem like an impossible proposition.

Diny Harrison, the first Canadian woman to become an internationally certified mountain guide, talked over the idea of kids with her husband just after she finished her last guide exam, in 1992. “I was with someone who I felt secure with and could support a family. But then he said, ‘Of course, if you have children, you can’t work as a guide anymore,’” she says. “And that was the end of that conversation, as I had just worked so hard to become a full guide that I wasn’t going to give it up.”

Harrison muses that if she had children, she might have made the decision herself to step back from her career, but to be told from the get-go that she had to choose between the two meant she sided with her career—which has been an illustrious one, and she has no regrets. Harrison has skied and guided all over the world and now guides with Mustang Powder in British Columbia. She also works as an instructor at the , an all-female ski mountaineering course, passing on her knowledge with an aim to bring more women into the sport—whether motherhood is in the books for them or not.

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On December 4, President Trump signed an executive order shrinking Bears Ears National Monument, prompting tribal and environmental groups—as well as major —to file lawsuits against the administration. Though many people see legal actionÌęas the only hope for protecting these lands, it’s not.

A significant chunk of the land just released from itsÌęnational monument statusÌęsits in the Manti La Sal National Forest, which is smack in the middle of a planning process that includes considering those areas for an even higher protection status: that of Wilderness.

It’s not all of Bears Ears: approximately 92,504 of the acres removed from the monument designation are on Utah state land,Ìę11,121Ìęare private,Ìęand 894,381 sit on Bureau of Land Management propertyÌę(whichÌęwill continue to be managed under the 2008 Monticello Field Office Management Plan).ÌęThe opportunity lies in the remaining 256,479 acres that fall under U.S. Forest Service management inÌęthe Manti La Sal, which is currently heading into year two of a four-year process to revise its 1986 Forest Plan.Ìę

While revising its plan for how landsÌęwithinÌętheir boundaries are managed, Manti officials are also required to identify places that may be suitable for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. This highest level of protection for federal lands would prohibit permanent roads andÌęstructures, motorized-vehicle use, and any kind of development.

The forest planning process is also designed so that the public has a sayÌęevery step of the way. That’s in addition to state, local, and tribal governments—parts of MantiÌęin particularÌęhave historical and cultural value to Utah’s Native American groups.ÌęOf course, it’s not a perfect system.ÌęAnyone who’s ever tried to participate in this process will point out that it can be incredibly confusing. The Forest Service has gained a reputation as a dusty bureaucracyÌęthat doesn’t prioritize clarityÌęfor the public.

Officials hopeÌęto change that with a recently launched project called , presented as an easy-to-navigate website with information on how to participate in USFS decisions. There are short films, infographics, and podcasts meant to spark discussion about what national forests mean to all types of users—from boaters and family campers to hunters and anglers. It’s run by a partnership between theÌęUSFS, the Idaho-based NGO Salmon Valley Stewardship, and the media company More than Just Parks.Ìę

“It’s a matter of knowing how and when to comment. It’s not enough to say, I like hiking in that spot,” says Elizabeth Townley, the coordinator of Your Forests Your Future. “If you want that land to be recommended as Wilderness, you have to craft your comments around Wilderness values. So if you say, ‘I love hiking in that spot because it represents an opportunity for outstanding solitude and hiking is a primitive recreation,’ that’s much more likely to have an impact.”

The website lays out what Ìęare, as defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964, in an infographic accompanied by a minute-long film. It also has a short on forest planning that explains when and how people can have a say in designing the future of their public lands. EventuallyÌęthe website will connect people to all of the 154 national forests and 20 grasslands in the U.S., with real-time updates on where each currently isÌęin the forest planning process and the opportunities for public participation—includingÌęthe Manti La Sal.Ìę

In July 2017, Manti’s managers wrapped up a 30-day public comment period on theirÌęDraft Assessment, which provides an overview of existing conditions and trends in the forest. The next opportunity for people to speak up will be an online public comment period startingÌęJanuary 26 and running through February 29. Beginning in May 2018, a series of open houses—public meetings to give updates on the process and solicit feedback—will focus on setting goals and objectives for the revised Forest Plan components.Ìę

Now, Utah has a notoriously scant record of actually passing Wilderness into law. The state had zero acres protected in the original 1964 Wilderness ActÌęand currently has less designated Wilderness, at 1.1 million acres, than any Western state. A significant forest Wilderness bill hasn’t passed in Utah since 1984. Which is why it’s all the more important to speak up in January.Ìę

“Because of the strong anti-public-lands-protection stance of some Utah politicians, local Forest Service officials are not used to hearing good things about wilderness,” says Tim Peterson, a Utah WildlandsÌęprogram director with the Grand Canyon Trust, which has been working to secure Wilderness recommendations for qualifying lands across the forest for many years. “Utah politicians had an outsized influence on Trump’s shrinking Bears Ears, against the wishes of the public. But national forests are public lands owned by all Americans, and the more people that reach out in support of robust Wilderness recommendations, the better.”

Elected officials do still play a role in the process ofÌęprotecting lands as Wilderness. While the Manti can recommend areas for Wilderness, it’s up to Congress to formally grant that designation. But there’s a catch, which is why public participation is so critical: even without official Wilderness designation, an area can be identified under the Forest Plan as beingÌę“managed for Wilderness values.” For example, if those 250,000-plusÌęacres that were released from Bears Ears National Monument were identified under the Manti La Sal Forest Plan as having Wilderness values and managed as such, a proposal for oil and gas explorationÌęwould be rejected, because the area isn’t managed for that use.Ìę

“Forest planning can be dry stuff. Those involved seem to skew older and older, and the process stretches on and on,” says Peterson. “The agency has always expressed a desire to get more people more involved in planning, and I hope Your Forests Your Future can engage a new generation. History is written by those who show up, after all.”

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Lydia Bradey always knew she didn’t want kids of her own. She knew that when she was 18, and had already summited both of New Zealand’s most famous peaks, Mount Aspiring and Mount Cook. She didn't change her mind atÌę19, when sheÌęattempted the south face of Alaska’s Denali, nor atÌę26, when she becameÌęthe first woman to climb an 8,000-metreÌęHimalayan peak, Gasherbrum II in the Karakorum range, alpine-style without oxygen.Ìę

In 1986, after Gasherbrum, she made the decision to get sterilized. “I wanted to travel the world, be a mountaineer, and have adventures,” Bradey, who is from New Zealand, recalls. “It was a pretty simple decision at the time.”Ìę

In 1987, she became the first woman to summit Everest without oxygen.Ìę

grew up as the only child of a single mother. From a young age, she learned that being a good parentÌęrequired an incredible amount of time and attention. With her climbing career gaining momentum each year, she didn’t have those hours to give to a child. “I didn’t want to risk doing something so very important badly,” says Bradey, now 55.Ìę“And for me, there were other things in the world than having children.”

When she raisedÌęthe topic of the tubal ligation procedure—sterilization—with doctors in her early 20s, they advised her that she was too young to make such a decision. But in her mind, her chosen profession as an expedition mountaineer and the required months spent traveling should have been added justification for procedure. “I remember being frustrated because the doctors would never ask me what I was passionately interested in. I felt that had they understood, they would have reacted differently, along the lines of ‘Oh, well if you want to be a mountaineer, now we understand—so yes, we’ll give you a sterilization.’”Ìę

Bradey’s decision wasn’t widely publicized. SheÌęmentioned it just once in her 2015 memoir . When she had the sterilizationÌęprocedure, most of her inner circle supported her. Many of her friends lived similar lifestyles, also undertaking big expeditions of their own. Comments of “Good on you” were the norm.Ìę

The topic of motherhood in mountaineering wouldn’t ignite the public's attentionÌęuntil 1995, when British climber Alison Hargreaves died on K2 in a violent storm. Hargreaves was one of the best mountaineers of her generation, also summiting Everest without supplemental oxygen and soloing all six of the classic north faces of the Alps in a single season. But rather than being remembered for her skill, she was attacked after her death as irresponsible and selfish for being a mother of two who indulged in such a risky career.Ìę

“When I started mountaineering, I would see men who were fathers pushing themselves and taking risks,” Bradey writes in her memoir. “And it seemed to me that their wives and girlfriends back home were in the dark about what was going on. So men got away with what they were doing and it was only when women who were mothers started climbing that the spotlight fell on the subject.”

While Bradey’s trajectory is unique, the factors behind her decision are well-known to women who are big mountain professionals, including mountaineers, guides, avalanche forecasters, and pro skiers. Weighing whether or not to have children means considering how much time would be sacrificed that would be spent pursuing these endeavors, not to mention the time required to hone skills and achieve necessary physical fitness for these jobs. There are also expectations (both internal and external) of mitigating risk as a mother, which raises concerns of potentially limitingÌęgrowth as an athlete. Often, it’s literally weighing career against family—a weighty decision for any woman, even more so when a profession depends on high-consequence multi-day missions that require top physical fitness.

It's not that Bradey made the decision lightly, and she admits that over the years, her thoughts about having children began to evolve. “You begin to meet young people and you start to think about how having children would be rewarding,” she says. “As you get older, you see that parenthood is a compromise.”Ìę

In her early 40s, Bradey began the process to adopt a child. “When I was very young, the concept of adoption came up a lot,” she explains. “I’d decided when I was little that if I were to have children, I wanted to adopt.” By that time, she had started a career as a physiotherapist and was guiding locally in New Zealand. SheÌęfinally had the time she thought she needed to devote to a child.Ìę

“I felt blessed in that I didn’t go through the agonizing period of making the decision of whether I wanted children based on the pressure to do it before a certain age or to make sacrifices in my climbing,” she says. “I was unencumbered with the grief, stress, and complication of such a choice, and instead it became a simple emotion to explore.”

ButÌęas she came to the last step of the adoption process, she happened to go back to the Himalayas in 2004 to guide a high-altitude expedition. “I realized how much I loved big mountains. I wanted to be back there. So I pulled the pin on adoption,” she says.Ìę

On that expedtion, Bradey noted thatÌęonly one woman on the team had children. “She had enough money to have a permanent full-time nanny who’d become part of the family, and she could afford to call her children on the satellite phone for a half hour every day,” Bradey says. “I reckon if I could afford to have a permanent nanny and I could do full-time adventures, I would definitely have had children, and I’d have had no problem being a Himalayan guide.”

Since 1988, Bradey has summited Everest three more times, claimed first ascents of Antarctic mountains, and is a sought-after high-altitude guide for missions all over the world. While she views the big-wall climbing she did in her early twenties and summiting Everest without oxygen as some of her finestÌęachievements, she's most proud of her guiding career post-2004.Ìę

“Being a mountain guide at altitude is a big accomplishment,” she says. As she wroteÌęin her memoir, “It enlarges my life.”

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