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Peter Frick-Wright: From ���ϳԹ��� Magazine, this is The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast.

Paddy O’Connell loves two things in this world, fresh pow and his wife, Carly. Luckily, Carly loves fresh powder too. It’s a straightforward relationship between the three of them, the rare love triangle without a lot of jealousy or trust issues. Thing is, every summer, all the snow melts. They have to spend half of every year without their shared favorite activity.

So, when Paddy O got the opportunity last year to go to Chile to ski in the southern hemisphere at Ski Portillo, and they said he could bring Carly with him, and the trip lined up with their one year wedding anniversary, it was all very meant to be. And when Paddy got back, he filed this story about how it seems like the couples that ski together stay together. And why is that? Maybe love isn’t blind. Maybe its goggles are just all fogged up.

Here’s Paddy O.

Carly: My seat's like coming off the hinges. Oh my god, don't. That's how you find the

Paddy: Don't take your seat apart.

Carly: That's how you find the emergency life vest.

Paddy: This is my very inquisitive wife Carly inspecting the safety equipment on the first of a handful of flights we took this past summer on our way to ski in Chile.

Are you excited?

Carly: Yeah.

Paddy: Of all the things we do outside together, skiing is our favorite. So we figured that the best way to celebrate our very first anniversary as a married couple would be to head south for a schooshing adventure in the Andes Mountains.

Plane arrival announcement. : Bienvenidos a Santiago, la horca ocho, veinte de la mañana. Por favor, permanezcan. It's our pleasure to welcome you to Santiago.

Paddy: After we landed, Carly and I took a shuttle 100 miles northeast of Santiago, gained nearly 7500 feet of elevation in three-ish hours…

Okay. We're here. Beautiful. Nice.

and arrived at the resort we'd spend 6 glorious days exploring, Ski Portillo.

This place is super rad. It's like one of the most picturesque. ski resorts I've ever been to in my entire life. I cannot wait to go skiing.

Paddy: But first, Carly and I sat down in the Hotel Portillo for a little chat about our vision for this trip, a habit we've developed over the course of taking many adventures together. As author Anne Lammott has put it, expectations are just resentments waiting to happen.

Or as I say, "Honey, let's talk through our goals instead of just racing out there and going for it, m'kay?"

That humming in the background is from the snow guns outside frosting the slopes, a sound for die hard skiers like us that's as romantic a serenade as listening to "Watermark" by Enya.

Carly: My goal is to ski enough. To eat three course meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Paddy: My goal is to ski enough to feel guilt free about having dessert at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And, I wanna, get into these mountains, you know, feel like I'm on top of something and looking far into a giant range.

Carly: Yeah.

Paddy: And then the third thing that I'm really focused on doing is, making out with you whilst wearing ski boots.

Carly: Those are three good objectives for an anniversary trip.

Paddy: Do you want to make out with me in ski boots?

Carly: Yeah, let's make out in ski boots.

Paddy: Yeah, dog!

Paddy: Well that was easy! At this point, I was sure the trip was going to be amazing. I mean, skiing with your partner in Portillo, it had to be, right?

And because Carly is upsettingly talented at every sport she does, including being a stupidly wonderful and beautiful skier, I knew there would also be a lot of this...

Paddy: Oh, it's so good. Carly's destroying it. Not not surprising. Probably the best athlete here.

Carly: That's not true.

Paddy: That is 100 percent true.

Another skier: Carly makes it look fun, and we go hack it up.

Paddy: She's like, hey, if you guys would just please leave that for me. Have you tried to just be better or more athletic?

What I wasn't prepared for, but definitely should have been, is what would happen when I shoved a microphone in the face of my introverted wife one too many times during the first few days of the trip.

Paddy: Are you okay?

Carly: Yeah, you’re just asking me questions and it's like I didn't have the answer and I feel dumb because I don't.

Paddy: You're not doing it wrong baby, this is the point that oh my god, these are stressful for me we're just having a conversation and I don't want this to be I don't want this to be stressful for you. I want this to be fun.

Carly: But you asked me the same question like four times and I was like, I gave you the answer.

Paddy: Okay, well, this is my job. That's what I'm supposed to do is ask the same question a lot. Why do you get so nervous? It's just you and I.

Carly: I'm nervous.

Paddy: Because do you, do you think that the microphone is plugged directly into the internet?

Carly: Yes, it's into the world.

Paddy: Okay. Thank you for giving me an interview, ma'am.

Carly: What? I need to go relax.

Paddy: So uh, yeah... making a podcast with your sometimes shy wife is, um, difficult. And, well, ya know...marriage is also difficult. Especially the whole communication part. This is why Carly and I do something as decidedly unromantic as discussing our goals for an adventure when we could be out playing in the mountains.

That habit, like many of our other relationship navigation tactics, is derived directly from our shared outdoor experiences. We began dating during the early days of the pandemic, and since then we have done all kinds of crazy and fun shit together. Camping trips. Backcountry skiing. I took up endurance running just so I could join her in taking on an insanely difficult trail running race.

Each endeavor has strengthened our connection, or, well, at least it feels that way. I don't really know. So as we skied our asses off in Portillo, that became the thing I wanted to understand: What exactly happens to couples who adventure together? Do awesome and sometimes extremely difficult trips have a special power to bring us closer?

Paddy: Perhaps not shockingly, Carly and I are not the first couple to look to Portillo as the place to celebrate love while shredding the gnar.

Ellen Guderra: Aspects of romance in Portillo we get a lot of that like people celebrating anniversaries, but also like engagements. We've married people at Tia Bob's. We have a little place that we call the chapel over here. It's a hill that you have to kind of hike to a little bit.

Paddy: This is Ellen Guderra, who runs Portillo with her husband Henry Purcell and his son Miguel. The Purcell family has owned and operated Portillo since the 1960s. Ellen first came to Portillo in 1980, fresh outta college and looking for a job.

Ellen: I came as a 22 year old low level ski instructor for one season only, but I was so impressionable and this place is so, so beautiful that I really never forgot it.

Paddy: Flash forward to the early 1990s and work travel brought Ellen back to Chile for the first time since her fateful ski season at Portillo. On a whim, she called up Henry.

Ellen: I said, Hey, remember me? I taught. For you back in 1980, and he's like, Oh, yeah. And so we, so we got together for lunch. And, that lunch that same day turned into a dinner because we just kept talking. And as he says, we've just never stopped talking. And now it's, 30 years that we've been together.

I think Henry and I are soulmates.

What just attracted me so much to him is that he had this sense of adventure and, and I, I just found him to be very authentic and very cool, and I like a good adventure too. And so, I think we both are people who were willing to take a risk and change our lives.

Paddy: In Ellen's view, embarking on an adventure with your romantic partner offers a lot more than just fun and thrills. It can be transformative.

Ellen: I have a favorite stanza of a Tennyson poem, Ulysses, where it goes something like, “All life is an arch whose margin fades forever and ever as I move.”

And I feel like when you go through this tunnel into the unknown, like when I moved to Chile, or when anybody even comes on a vacation to Chile for a week in Portillo, you're going through this tunnel and you're gonna come out and you're gonna see this new world. And actually, like when you showed up and we walked out on that deck, you did that. You came out of that tunnel and you looked at those Tres Hermanos and that lake and you went, wow, that's it. That's the moment. And I love that. and everybody who comes to Portillo, they will have that.

You know, all life is. It's an arch whose margin fades forever and ever as I move. And I think it's really cool.

Paddy: The notion that adventure can be a doorway to a different and more meaningful and perhaps more romantic world certainly resonates with me.

There she goes.

You're hearing Carly and I make the first joyous turns of our anniversary trip.

Yee hoo hoo hoo hoo! It’s summer, and I'm having so much fun!

Portillo is an easy place to have fun. The all inclusive resort sits next to the kick-you-in-the-mouth beautiful aqua blue Laguna Del Inca lake and is surrounded by dramatic and precipitous 15,000-foot peaks.

That last, like, lake run we took, like, fall line towards the lake, that might be on the all time list right there.

Carly: Yeah, I feel like we should be doing that more each day.

Paddy: Carly and I bounced all around the resort's 1200-plus acres of skiable terrain. We had warmer temps during our stay and creamy spring-like snow conditions, perfect for working on our goggle tans while wiggling down jaw-dropping runs.

I think the snow and that little couloir, little shot. That's super good. That snow was great.

Some of the best skiing required boot packing.

Just a little hike to earn 28 extra empanadas. Yeah.

Always worth the effort

Oh. My. God. skiing a thousand miles an hour. In Chile. For our first wedding anniversary. Yeah. This is pretty frickin badass, dude!

But skiing increible runs here is just one way to have the kind of transformative experiences that Ellen was talking about. There are also, the super easy, all-joy, all-pleasure options.

For example, you can ski in a torch light parade at night.

Alright, the torches are being lit, and my hands are covered in kerosene. Carls, you go in front? Alright.

Carly: Yeah just don’t light my…

Paddy: Yeah, I'm not lighting you on fire. I won't light your butt cheeks. I'm good.

There is the delicious food…

This is a good empanada.

And don't forget the spa...

I was like covered in so much like massage oil. I was like a slippery little salamander.

Carly: Yeah.

Paddy: And there's also dancing, there's a lot of dancing...

I guess it's time to dance.

I don't think Tennyson had discotheques in mind when he penned Ellen's favorite line from Ulysses, but he should have. In Ellen's view, all the experiences Carly and I had at Portillo can make all the difference in a relationship. I mean, they definitely worked for her and Henry.

Ellen: You know, it's challenging, marriage is hard, and especially when you have kids and careers and whatnot. But we kept talking and we kept taking trips together and traveling together and finding those times when you can reconnect

Paddy: She has one simple suggestion for Carly and me.

Ellen: My advice would be just to keep talking.

Paddy: Ellen is not the first person to tell us this. In fact, we've heard it a lot in our first year of marriage.

Carly: The thing that we've been told by so many people is to just make sure we're talking. And that takes effort. A lot of effort, And I guess the surprise there is like, How much talking is needed to keep everything going. Like the wheels on the bus.

Paddy: Here's the thing, though: Carly and I already do a great job of talking, when we're outside. Sometimes though, when we're back at home, my emotions and my sensitivity can get the better of me. Which, as one expert explained to me, is a common issue.

Hannah Eaton: I think couples who are really passionate about the outdoors definitely face some different or unique challenges than couples who are more of those city mice. But I think what is really important is identifying what your values are as a couple and then making sure that you're living out those values on a daily basis.

Paddy: Oh, boy. That sure sounds like some hefty work. Can't we just go skiing and talk in the hot tub?

Carly: Come on in. The water's real nice.

Paddy:Okay, I'm coming in.

More on that, after the break.

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Paddy: Carly and my trip to Ski Portillo in Chile to celebrate our first anniversary was everything we'd hoped for: outrageously fun but also relaxing, a soft adventure that set the stage for romance. Over our 6 days there, it really did feel like we grew closer and were communicating more and more openly.

Oh. God, I love skiing. Hey, I love you.

Carly: Love you.

Paddy: So, what was going on? I mean, of course a deluxe trip to a spectacular mountain destination is going to make it easy to love the one you're with, but is something happening at a deeper level, or is this just what the good life does for us? To answer that question, I turned to a relationships expert who had already proven to me that she knows her stuff.

Hannah: My name is Hannah Eaton. I'm a marriage and family therapist. I largely specialize in preventative relational health and couples therapy.

Paddy: Four years ago, I spoke to Hannah for a story about my bumbling attempts at internet dating and the unique challenges that outdoorsy folks like me face in our relationships. Her ideas about being the person you truly are rather than the one you believe your partner wants you to be, and that love is a place to give rather than take were life changing for me.

Paddy: I took your advice to heart. I really did. And then in March of 2020, I met my wife. So thank you very much for your advice.

Hannah: You are so welcome.

Paddy: Hannah studied under and then worked with Dr. Julie and John Gottman, who's revolutionary work in couples therapy made them two of the most influential therapists of the past quarter century.

Hannah: I teach a lot of their skills related to communication, conflict management, friendship, romance, intimacy, etc.

Paddy: In 2017, Hannah founded Sequoia Immersions, a combination of conventional therapy mixed with wilderness retreats. She believes that sharing outdoor adventures with your partner has a deep and powerful impact on your intimate connection.

Hannah: These beautiful, profound, deep, playful, adventurous, meaningful experiences that become really positive memories and a part of our identity. And, I think they become some of the cornerstones of our relationship. I think they actually serve as a sense of glue and just creating even more bonding and intimacy with your partner.

Watching your wife ski down the slopes and seeing her in her joyful element and you experiencing joy. There's that sense of cheering for your partner.

Paddy: Yeah, have fun. Oh yeah, babe. Yeah, Carls. Yeah, babe.

Hannah: That can contribute to your continued attraction and sense of romance with your partner.

Paddy: Oh my god. My wife is a very beautiful skier.

Hannah: Seeing your partner in their element, in their joy, doing something that they're talented at that they're graceful and strong at is, it's attractive

Paddy: I'm gonna go skiing all over the world with my wife. My heart feels warm like fresh baked apple pie.

Hannah: And You bring that back home and it's important for long term relationships too, just in keeping that sense of romance alive. It's very profound. And then to apply that to other parts of your life as well, to continue cheering for them in all different avenues.

Paddy: When she leads wilderness retreats, Hannah has a few go-to situations she likes to place couples into. In her view, these excursions bolster foundational relationship skills. Take for instance, kayaking.

Hannah: They're in a tandem kayak. Inevitably, at some point, most couples start to bicker, like, you're, you're paddling the wrong way. We're turning too far left. Let me paddle. Let me take over.

And I see it every time. And then we have to manage it and reel it back in. But there are these built in moments to practice what we're learning. So the conflict management piece. How to, bring up frustrations with your partner in a gentle, kind, loving, respectful way.

Paddy: Do we learn something during these adventures that we otherwise would not learn?

Hannah: Absolutely. When couples are out in intense conditions, whether it's snowing or raining, or it's really hot and you're in the desert, there can be a tendency for some couples to maybe bicker or get stressed out. But those are actually really beautiful opportunities to come together and to work as a team, to be resilient, to be smart about how you're navigating potentially dangerous or extreme conditions.

And I think, you know, coming back from say like a weekend trip where you've been winter backpacking, and it was sub-zero temperatures. And you managed it successfully. I think you come back feeling even more resilient and capable and confident as a couple.

Paddy: In conversation when you're at home. I know that I can let my emotion take over very quickly. I can go from, uh, zero to 60.

Hannah: Mm hmm.

Paddy: In a moment. If I feel like, right, my version of safety is being threatened or if I'm just like super fearful about something.

However, when you're on a backcountry ski adventure, you can't be an asshole out there. I mean, you but it's not going to be great for the group dynamic. You need to listen to everybody, express things like in a calmly assertive way, and allow other people to do the exact same thing.

And it's like, man, what would happen if I was doing that? When like, we were like, on the couch. Why don't I do that?

Hannah: That's a great question. Why don't you, Paddy?

Paddy: Oh, Jesus, sounds great.

Hannah: Putting you on the spot.

When you're in those more extreme conditions in the wilderness, it does force you to kind of calm yourself, be grounded, and be confident in your risk management and decisions. If you start to notice like, ooh, the storm of our relationship is starting to move in here from your couch, instead of just diving right into the storm, how can we pause for a moment? How can we take a breath? How can we ground ourselves and then try our best to calmly or lovingly or respectfully, discuss what's coming up to apply some of those similar principles of risk management to our conversations, say, hey, can we, can we try that again in a more loving, respectful manner? It can be huge. And so trying to apply some of those similar principles back on the couch, back at home, I think are an excellent idea.

Paddy: "Trying" is the key word there. For me, and many others I assume, deploying the communication skills we develop with our partners in the wilderness to our day-to-day lives is a steep hill to boot pack. But I know one couple that seems to have figured it out.

Chris Davenport: I'm a skier and this is like who I am and my wife too. It's what we do. It's what our family does.

Paddy: This is professional big mountain skier, guide, author, and all around good dude, Chris Davenport, aka Dav. He and his family live just up valley from Carly and I, near a little place called Assssspen, where he and his wife, Jesse, ski... all the damn time.

Dav: When I see the smile on her face, skiing powder on Aspen Mountain and, or we're all going up Highland Bowl and the kids are ripping and this is like, this is what life's all about. We've done it. Like pat ourselves on the back a little bit. What makes me happy is seeing her happy.

Paddy: Since their first date in the winter of 1995, Dav and Jesse have kept their passion for the outdoors, most notably skiing, at the very center of their relationship. He says that their choice to place their shared love of the mountains above everything else has reduced conflict in their relationship.

Dav: By prioritizing this thing that we both love so much, it's made our relationship work really, really well.

Paddy: How so?

Dav:We just get along great and are stoked all the time. And rarely are we in conflict over much. So we share that mutual passion for this thing, this sport, this lifestyle.

And I think that's like the glue really that keeps us together. Of course we love each other and we love spending time together and doing all these things. But we love skiing.

I do believe deeply that if there's a shared passion between two people that in a way it doesn't, it kind of sounds weird, but in a way that comes first, then the relationship part behind it is even more robust and it can be even stronger.

And when we both come back into the house at, you know, 5 PM after a day in the mountains we're psyched. We're like, this is awesome. We're, we're living our, our best life.

Paddy: Their best life is also a busy life. Dav's ski career has had him spending many, many days away from the family. When I chatted with him, he'd been home for just six days after a guiding a trip in Antarctica, and in less than 24 hours he was heading to Norway. This is what every winter is like for him. But even while skiing pulls him away from Jesse and their kids, he insists it is still the thing that holds them all together.

Dav: Those early years when we were first married and had kids , and I was leaving these little babies and she was holding down the fort at home, but also ski patrolling, but also getting these little kids to daycare or to  school. It's incredible how much work she put in, and how much sacrifice she made for me to have this career that I've had.

Paddy: Well, so like, how did she not get resentful especially when the kids were young, like a couple of times just be like, “Hey, like Chris, like. Listen, I love you so much, but like if you go on one more trip I'm gonna hit you in the ear with a wiffle bat.”

Dav: There were definitely some trips where she was like, really? Like our, our middle son. When he was born in February, I left 10 days later to go to the Himalaya.

Paddy: Oh my god.

Dav: He was 10 days old. So I can't live that one down. That was a mistake. I probably shouldn't have gone on that trip. No, she, well, probably, but she didn't, she didn't say you out of your mind. You can't go on this trip. She didn't say that. She was like, okay, this is what you're doing. But we, you know, we sort of laugh about it now, but it was, it was, that was irresponsible of me. And I, I was probably blinded by my ambition and career

Dav: But I will say, I, I do feel like I was very present when I was home. I was a very good dad. And when I was home, I tried to give her all of the freedom that I could so that she, you know, she, and I would do whatever I needed to do to be there as a dad for the kids, pick them up, take them places, take it, whatever it was. And it just, it just worked out.

And I really think it worked out because of her commitment to me and my skiing and my career and, and her love of the sport as well. You know, it wasn't like I was taking off to go do something that she didn't believe in. She believed in it. And, and we got to do a lot of great traveling together.

Paddy: He's not exaggerating. Over the course of their relationship, the Davenports have adventured all over the world together. And as it happens, they both fell in love with one very special spot that they have been returning to again and again for nearly 20 years: Ski Portillo.

For Jesse especially, Portillo is her true happy place... and Dav enjoys nothing more than seeing her and their kids enjoy it.

Dav: I have never seen my wife so happy and my kids so happy is when we're down at that place all together as a family it's important for us as, husbands and, partners to, you know, seek out those opportunities for our spouses to excel and to be really happy and just be like, “that was amazing.”

Of course, you know, I love it and I love when I feel good. But I love it even more when I see the look on her face and I'm like, wow I'm so happy that she's like in you know in heaven right now.

Paddy: For the Davenports, Portillo offers the kind of experiences that Hannah said lead to a high functioning marriage and family. Observing your partner in their element, being in situations where clear communication is key, and, you know, just having fun.

Dav: There's no question that, that these adventures, and especially when things get a little spicy. You know, skiing, uh, kind of a gnarly line. That's like, that brings the family together. And I love watching my boys look out for their mom, like, mom, you totally got this line. It's only like a two foot entrance and then a left left hand turn and then dump your speed. And she's like, what, what are you guys talking about? Don't get your mom into trouble.

There's the old saying, you know something like the family that plays together stays together. I totally believe in it. You know when you are so psyched to go do this one thing with your wife and with your kids and do it as much as possible, that there's a lot of value in that.

Paddy: That idea, do the thing that you love with the person you love as much as possible, brings us back to Carly and my anniversary trip to Portillo.

I think that this trip has like set the bar for romantic time and adventure time, you know. And like how they can be one in the same. And I don't mean it's at the bar as in like,

Carly: We'll never match it again.

Paddy: Yeah, like I don't think it's like an unachievable thing. I think it's like oh my god, like it can be like this. I want to do more of this.

Carly: Maybe not set the bar, but it's defined the criteria, helped to define the criteria.

Paddy: Oh that’s really good.

Carly: Like we're not like setting a bar and having to raise it. We have in this trip helped to set up like what are the criteria for a good adventure, for us? Time to relax.

Paddy: Yeah.

Carly: Time outside. Time spent together. Time to check out of that routine and into adventure.

Paddy: And like, a lot of good food all the time. And dessert with every meal.

Carly: I could have gone without the dessert with every meal.

What I do think, like, we've done with this trip is set aside time for like self fullness.

Paddy:Yeah.

Carly: Like set aside time for us to be together, which, you know, after this first year there's been so much of a focus on spending time with others, whether it's with your family or with my family or hosting so many different friends in our new home, it has all been so wonderful, and, fulfilling to have that bigger community or bigger family around us. This feels different though because it has been such a focus on you and I and our time together.

Paddy: The way I think about it now, the time Carly and I spend together in the outdoors serves as training for our lives together. She is my best friend and favorite person. She's my most trusted and cherished adventure partner. And traveling together into the unknown is what's going to keep it that way.

Carly: I think that, the daily outdoor time, you know, running or skiing, I think that's just at the foundation.

But those moments where it's like, you know, we throw the stuff in the car, go to a trailhead or, leave the house with what we think we need for a few hours, and then everything that we thought we were doing sort of turns upside down or it goes in a different direction. You have a rough idea of what's ahead, but you really have no control. I think that that's the part of the adventure that I love.

Paddy: I feel like we're going back home with like a rom-com-y adventure, fire in the heart.

Happy anniversary, babe.

Carly: Happy one year.

Peter: Paddy O’Connell is a regular contributor to the podcast. For more on him and Carly, check out the episode “How to Date an Athlete” from August 2021, one of my personal favorites.

This episode was written and produced by Paddy O, with editing by Mike Roberts. Music and sound design by Robbie Carver.

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