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Cody Townsend, Professional Free Skier and Ski Mountaineer
2.9k Plays4 years ago
In this episode coach Sam Naney talks with his athlete, professional free skier and ski mountaineer, Cody Townsend. Cody has had a long and illustrious career in free skiing and has been featured in many ski films. Cody’s most recent project is “Chasing The Fifty Classics” — the classic ski descents of North America. The two discuss this project, and in particular, Cody’s training as he chases these lines.
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Transcript
Introduction to Uphill Athlete Resources
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. These programs are just one of several free services we provide to disseminate information about training for mountain sports. If you like what you hear and want more, please check out our website, uphillathlete.com, where you'll find many articles and our extensive video library on all aspects of training for and accomplishing a variety of mountain goals. You'll also find our forum where you can ask questions of our experts and the community at large.
00:00:30
Speaker
Our email is coach at uphillathlete.com and we'd love to hear from you.
Cody Townsend's Skiing Journey
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome everybody to another episode of the uphill athlete podcast. I'm Sam Naney, a coach with uphill athlete and today I have the pleasure of talking with professional free skier and ski mountaineer Cody Townsend who
00:00:51
Speaker
has a long illustrious career in skiing, free skiing, performing, doing a lot of ski films, and then most recently diving into a pretty awesome project called Chasing the 50 Classics, the classic ski descents of North America. So we're going to get into a lot of stuff on the projects and skiing and in particular Cody's training as he chases these lines.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, here we are, man. It's been kind of a funky start to the winter for you. I can imagine, given the way conditions have been lining up or not lining up. Yeah, no. It has been a weird year specifically for trying to climb and ski big lines. It has been kind of off the table, I would say, so far. Anyone that follows winter sports right now knows one of the number one stories is just
00:01:45
Speaker
horrendous avalanche here. We have an unprecedented amount of fatalities and accidents, which is incredibly sad. And I think there's a multitude of factors to it. But for myself, what it's meant is being patient and not necessarily chasing lines and chasing this project called the 50 that intel things stabilize. So still home in Tahoe, just to keep her in mellow. Yeah, yeah.
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, maybe to get a couple of things I want to do to get us started, I want to dive into the 50, but maybe
00:02:18
Speaker
since we're merging audiences here. So we have a whole bunch of folks in the uphill athlete podcast first in mountaineering and trail running and all the rest. And then, and obviously now we've got, you know, we've got a big crew of skiers and backcountry skiers, but maybe give a brief background on yourself, kind of how you got into skiing. First as a, I know you were a competitor for a long time and then as a free skier and yeah, moving into what you're doing now with more of human power and ski mountaineering.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, we can kind of talk the way you and I talked when we first started getting the background history before we started training together. So yeah, I grew up in Santa Cruz, California. I actually grew up near the beach and was your typical weekend warrior driving up to
00:03:04
Speaker
to the mountains on the weekend my parents had a little cabin and like a true it was like a forest service cabin and I fell in love with skiing from just like the youngest of age. I think I pretty much remember the time when I decided I'm going to be a skier when most kids are dreaming of being like astronauts or firefighters. I was like six years old watching ski films just going I'm going to be a skier.
00:03:26
Speaker
And somehow that it worked out. I started off being a competitive alpine ski racer, so kind of had the Olympic dreams. My vision and dream of being a skier didn't necessarily have one specific form. I just wanted to ski. At that time, ski racing was definitely like the biggest form that you could make it as a professional skier.
00:03:47
Speaker
And I did pretty well at it. I ski raced around the country internationally until I was about 20 years old. I was ranked number one in the world at one point for my age. I did pretty well when I was in my teens. But at the same time, I started to get pretty burnt out by it.
00:04:05
Speaker
And just wasn't essentially in love with it as much. I was just the act of skiing. And for me, it actually really all synthesized. I remember a day when I actually won a race, had one of like my best runs ever in a, in a event. I didn't really actually perform very well in typically. And, uh, I won and I remember getting down and I was like, that night I was just sitting there and I'm like, Oh, not anymore happy.
00:04:29
Speaker
I'm not really a better person because I won. So why are you doing this? If this is the point of ski racing is to win. You don't even enjoy winning right now. So that kind of spelled my downfall from ski racing. And I started dreaming about pre-skiing.
00:04:45
Speaker
Meanwhile, like the free ski revolution was happening in my backyard, which was Swah Valley, California, my home mountain. And there was just all the legends of the sport were in squat at that time. So I was fortunate enough from a pretty young age, start chasing those guys around guys like Shane McConkie, Ken Cratler, JT Holmes, the Japanese and just like skiing, free skiing with the best in the world and kind of got a little bit of mentorship and started going down that path.
00:05:13
Speaker
That path of free skiing and doing that kind of skiing, which is what you see in all the ski movies, jumping off big cliffs, big spine lines in Alaska, a lot of helicopters, snowmobiles, and just high performance skiing kind of lasted up until about five years ago.
00:05:31
Speaker
Ended up for about 10 to 12 years and chased that dream as far as I wanted to chase it. And at the end of that run, I kind of, I almost started to get less inspired by it. I felt like I achieved everything I wanted in that sport and that kind of avenue of it. I didn't have any dreams further than what I had already done.
00:05:55
Speaker
And I also knew that there was this quotient of like where I was pushing it was getting to an extremely, extremely dangerous part. And I'd lost a lot of friends in the sport at that point. So I kind of started looking outwards and trying to figure out what's next in skiing. And that's what I think is the beauty of skiing is that, you know,
The 50 Project: Inspiration and Goals
00:06:15
Speaker
been a professional skier for I've been a sponsored skier for over 20 years and I feel like in the last five years I've like learned a whole new aspect of the sport with human-powered adventure with expedition style skiing and just with ski mountaineering. I feel like I've been kind of learning the mountains in a whole new way and learning my own body learning
00:06:38
Speaker
a connection to the natural world, learning the aspects of going into the mountains just on your own in a whole new way. And I'm really, really enjoying it. And that's led to the 50, which is my dream to try and climb and ski all 50 of the 50 classic ski descents in North America. Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
So the 50 project came, you kind of spawned not only out of what you're saying, like this sort of evolution of yourself as a skier and wanting to kind of put this skill set more comprehensively to use in the mountains, but then also like the direct inspiration was the book, right? So a book with the 50 classic ski lines and the idea like, can you tag all of these lines in however long it takes, right?
00:07:27
Speaker
Some of them you can bang off in one season, go boom, boom, boom, but then there are a handful at least in there, probably more that are very conditions dependent and unique that have only been skied once, three, five times.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was funny because I would say it was about it was 2014. And that was a year I skied the crack, which was like the most insane line ever. The line that went super viral was on like SportsCenter and stuff and put me on the news. And just like, that was actually the year I was like, in 2015. I'm like, all right, what's next?
00:08:02
Speaker
And then that's when I started going on kind of more human powered adventures, more expedition style of skiing. And I was actually searching just for what was next in skiing. And I kind of would kind of, I was exploring different avenues of the sport and just quietly, like still doing my job as a professional skier, but trying to like dabble in little aspects, dabble in different mountain ranges, go to Europe, I did the, I wrote the, however you say it.
00:08:30
Speaker
And, um, I went to the Himalaya, um, and then it really all started narrowing down. It was, I was like, I really enjoyed, uh, human powered skiing. I really enjoyed North American mountains. And, um, it was that book that actually came out in 2010 and I got a copy of it. Funny enough, I have pictures in it of, of a line, but when it came out, it didn't speak to me. I just like picked it up, looked at it. I was like, that's cool. And put it down. And it wasn't.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, it was just sitting there. And then it wasn't until I started kind of doing, dabbling in these other aspects of the sport that I really, really realized that I was like, wait, no, this book is all of a sudden speaking to me. And I would like, see the line like a grand detail. I'm like, one day I got to do the grand, like it has to happen. And then a couple lines on there, like University Peak, which is on the cover was just like, one day, man, I've got to ski that line.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then it started to just materialize until it was like, well, you got so many on here, why don't you just try and ski them all? And then I was like, did some research. I'm like, has anyone ever done this? And is anyone trying? And I was just like going through it all. And I spent like two years kind of in my own head.
00:09:39
Speaker
planning it out, mapping it out, seeing if it was doable, not speaking to anybody about it because I didn't want to speak it to life and speak it to a commitment. I just talked to my wife and that's it about it. And it was in 2018, like midway through the season.
00:09:55
Speaker
And I was just like, that's what I'm doing. Next year, I'm starting this project, I'm dropping everything else that I've done in this sport, all the film skiing, every aspect of the sport I was used to, and I'm committing to that. And so now we're here two plus years later, and that's been my life for the last two years.
00:10:18
Speaker
In the life that you had, if we call it that previous iteration of you as a skier, as a free skier, during that time, how much of the skill set that you came to leverage for the 50 or have been leveraging for the 50 were you building?
00:10:36
Speaker
extremely talented, incompetent skier, skiing, as you said, insane lines, huge cliffs, the technicality of it. But what about all those other pieces that are now really being employed in the 50s? So stability evaluation and logistics of trips and gear and planning, all of that stuff. So had a lot of that stuff been fomenting and building through the course of your free skiing career or was that
00:11:03
Speaker
When you started thinking about the 50 and considering that as the next avenue, did you start lining up those different skill sets and be like, I need to start honing the edge here as well? Yeah. What I brought into the project before,
00:11:19
Speaker
I had a wealth of knowledge when it came to snow packs, snowback evaluations, mountains. I've been lucky enough to travel all across the world and understand snow. I was always the guy when I was on pelly trips that I was hanging out with the guys. I was hanging out with guide meetings. I was talking to them about their evaluations. I was always curious about that side.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I really pride myself on trying to make my own decisions without a guide there. And so I was able to bring what I thought was just like a level of experience and knowledge in the backcountry to this project.
00:11:57
Speaker
And it's something I say with ski mountaineering specifically is like we tend to focus on the ice axes and the ropes and the knots you're tying as like that's all of a sudden when it becomes ski mountaineering. Well those skills you can kind of learn and you can learn a lot of them really quickly. You can learn half of them in a day and the rest of them in a couple of days and
00:12:17
Speaker
And that's not what ultimately is like the decider of success or failure. It's like, it's your decision-making skills, your experience or snowpack, your mental evaluation, like the, the, the ability to read snow, the ability to read mountains is truly what goes into ski mounting. I think is the most important part. And I felt like I had a lot of that already.
00:12:37
Speaker
But I also knew I had a lot to learn. What I didn't have coming into it was, one, the knowledge of how hard physically this was going to be. I wanted to try and do this fast. I was trying to check off as many within a year as I could. I wasn't just going to make this a 20-year project. I actually originally said I was going to try and do it in three years.
00:13:01
Speaker
That was only just for me to be like, can you do this? Shelf everything else in life and focus solely on this. I knew the likelihood of actually doing in three years was nearly nil, but I thought it could be done. So I was like, well, if it could be, I should at least try.
00:13:19
Speaker
With COVID last year, it's definitely thrown out the window. And I would say even before that, it was pretty much out the window. I was like, I could maybe get to 45 in three years. But there's a few, like you mentioned, that are seriously barely alive that have only been skied once or twice in history.
00:13:33
Speaker
those lines are going to take some time. But what I also didn't know was like, was I going to love this throughout it? Was I going to love going this hard, putting myself in these situations, traveling around the country and doing hard work, a lot of type two fun to get up and down these lines. And so that was kind of what I was curious about when I committed to it was like,
00:13:56
Speaker
How hard can I go? How much can I navigate a lot of dangerous lines throughout a season safely? Knowing to turn around and not be impacted mentally by the drive to want to get this done, but put safety and turning around as the most important priority, not trying to complete this project.
00:14:18
Speaker
It's things that I still have to think about today. A lot of the skills, like when it came to ropes and ice axes and stuff, I honestly still feel like I'm learning that. I think it's all actually pretty simple, but I feel like I'm still learning my way through this whole entire process.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and one of the cool things, and I should mention, so the 50 projects start in, when you started it, you were able to coordinate with a lot of your sponsors and create it as a video project, right? So each line is documented in a video that you've posted. So it's become this really fantastic way to follow along with the ski mountaineering journey that you're on. And for folks who haven't skied any of these lines, or maybe only some to be
00:15:04
Speaker
to be able to watch along with you through GoPro and film that you and your co-skier and cinematographer, Bjarne, have been providing. So it's not like it's happening out there somewhere and then people hear snippets about it. You get to follow on in real time.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that that really struck me, I think it was your first season, was the pace at which you were tagging some of them. I think there was one period where you were in Colorado and you hit like the Landry line and Holy Cross and one or two others in like a two week period. No, it was that run was
00:15:45
Speaker
That run was why I called you and I'll tell athletes because they're training because we had this run where I think in, is it four weeks? In four weeks we did maybe just over four weeks. I got to actually like look at it, but we didn't nine lines and those nine lines were not small lines. So yeah, we did Pyramid, North Maroon, Holy Cross, Wilson Peak, Maktuk and Akovitz.
00:16:11
Speaker
Mount Williamson, the Grand Teton, Middle Teton, Meteorite, and Pontoon. So no, it was 10 lines. It was 10 lines in five weeks. That's what it was. And it was the most I've ever been exhausted in my life. I mean, that's not even just like doing two a week. It's then traveling to there. It's setting up film shoots. It's doing all the processing and the work behind us, trying to recover.
00:16:35
Speaker
by driving 12 hours, getting out of your car after sleeping for four hours and going again. And that went, I went through pretty much the hardest like physical crash I've ever gone through. I came home after our little Alaska run and I like, I literally couldn't get out of bed for like three days. And I was on the couch. Like to the point I was like, I check into like a doctor because like I am,
00:17:00
Speaker
I can't move. I have nothing in the tank. And I missed this really good window up in the Pacific Northwest that was happening at that time. I knew it was happening, but I'm like, I can't move. I can't do anything right now. So that's when I realized I was like, yeah, I need to train a little bit harder because that was a huge push, but I feel like I could have gotten through it with more physical fitness.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah.
Balancing Skiing with The 50 Project Series
00:17:28
Speaker
So going into it in, in prior to that season, like what was your, what sort of training did you do? So in thinking about, you know, you know, what you were looking toward and not knowing exactly how many lines you'd be able to tick off in that first season, but knowing that it was going to require this.
00:17:45
Speaker
additional or different type of effort than you were maybe used to doing when you were doing more ski films and heli and snowmobile access stuff. What sort of training did you do that first year to get you poised for what may come? Nothing. That was a bit of a rhetorical question since I knew.
00:18:09
Speaker
It was a blend of like, so I'll say like the video portion of it is that that's my job portion of a professional skier. And I knew like, it dawned on me at one point, I was like, you know, this episodic series on YouTube will probably be something that people will be fascinated by. And I spent six straight months trying to convince sponsors to help me out to offset the cost of this.
00:18:33
Speaker
And it was a lot of work convincing someone on something that's never been done like this in skiing. I would pitch it out being like 80% of the episodes are going to be not skiing. It's not ski focused. It's everything else focused. There's going to be like a minute and a half of skiing in a 20 minute episode. So I was very much like trying to pitch it out. And I spent a lot of time that summer working
00:18:56
Speaker
And that fall working, trying to get it all done. I was flying internationally to have meetings with brands to be like, can you do this for me? Push this through. And that's what it took. I was doing my normal training, which was always in my free skiing season, which was mainly go biking, go to the gym quite a lot, do strength training. And then I figured, honestly, that I would get into the season and tour my way into shape. And I also looked at it, I was like,
00:19:24
Speaker
Well, the bigger lines are later in the season. Some of the smaller lines were early, so I'll just start touring and going from there. And it semi-worked. And it worked to a point where then I got to be able to complete all the lines, but I wasn't recovering because I was gassing myself so much from some of these big days that I wasn't recovering properly. And I think that's what really led to the absolute crash. My baseline was low.
00:19:48
Speaker
It was high enough to get to the top of everything and get to the next one and go again. I also think I have strong will like that, but it wasn't necessarily like the best course of action. And that's when I started looking to training in a more kind of direct way that would benefit this.
Training for Ski Mountaineering
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and it's true, like thinking about it in terms of, you know, you progress into the year and you start with, you know, you do some
00:20:16
Speaker
some early touring before you really start diving into into the objectives and then and then you build and and as you say like that can that can work pretty well and you know some of the bigger lines maybe would be theoretically in the spring but but then when you have as you say like this
00:20:33
Speaker
maybe unexpected window where suddenly three or four lines come into form in a short period and you just have to bang them off. Yeah, the recovery angle starts to rear its head. I remember when we had our first conversation.
00:20:48
Speaker
And we were talking about, you know, what you were kind of describing what you just did and like what you had going into it and what you felt like you were really missing at the end of that at the end of that season and what you wanted to build on and kind of compiling notes on that and I was like, well, how do you feel about, you know, your strength on on the descending and you're like, oh, I can, yeah, one, one thing that really
00:21:08
Speaker
resonated with me and made a lot of sense is you acknowledging even when you would be totally gassed getting to the top of a line, you could ski whatever was in front of you on the downhill. I think that we've had a couple of podcasts and written a lot of things about the idea of strength and specificity. You've spent your life as a professional skier, skiing incredible lines, many of which are
00:21:34
Speaker
technically more difficult than what you're skiing in a 50. It speaks really well to that idea of training specifically for what you want to do because that's the advantage is then you get to the top of a line after having skinned from five or 6,000 feet of vert at altitude and you're looking down the pipe at something that looks gnarly and wind blowing like, well, yeah, my legs can do that.
00:21:59
Speaker
And that's the way I felt. One, I had the muscle memory and two, it was in my initial conversations with you when I was realizing that like, wait, I spent my whole life training for one thing and that was specificity on the down. I learned how to train from ski racing and from football. My dad was a football coach and I grew up around weight rooms.
00:22:24
Speaker
As I started to learn through both this like us heating program and through football I was able to kind of be like, okay This is what I know I need for free skiing performance and it's a lot of power and a lot of like quick power So I would train really heavy on Olympic lifts I would do a lot of Olympic lifting and I would do obviously their basics on squats and like all your kind of but full body strength and
00:22:50
Speaker
and power to go through it. And so that worked for a really long time. I remained fairly healthy throughout my career. I definitely had injuries that are of name of the game in our sport, but I never had career altering injuries. I was able to bounce back pretty well because I felt like I was quite strong when it came to just power.
00:23:13
Speaker
But when that applies to going up, I realize well I that's this quick tit quick twitch power that doesn't work for hiking 610 12 that vertical thousand feet and like immediate power or something like that and keeping this like
00:23:30
Speaker
long endurance going and that's when I realized too is like yeah this training that I need to do I need to like transform the way my body works because this baseline has been built up for strength on the down for 15 years now I just need to add this into my quiver.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So you started, I remember when we spoke, you had kind of built a training program for yourself and I think it must have been after the first year of the 50. And so it would have been summer of 2019 maybe? Yeah, yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah. And so you read one of the books training for the uphill athlete maybe and put together a basic aerobic plan. Yeah. I mean, how did that end up? That seemed to work well and kind of open your eyes to the possibility that in focusing on that, you could see these gains that really translated well.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, it did. And that was I did, I bought the book and started reading and I started understanding and kind of trying to think about the concepts. And, you know, I've seen some of the way my friends trained. And my first thing was like, Okay, well, focus a little bit more on aerobics. And the main thing I did that summer was throw 50 to 60 pound pack on my back and hike up squaw and hike up slowly and try and do it. I wasn't measuring my heart rate, though, but I would just be
00:24:49
Speaker
Like, can I be talking right now? I think I'm in that, that realm, but I wasn't like to the precision of what's your zone two, what's your zone three or anything like that. And so I was hiking that fall quite a lot doing that. I was keeping with, you know, just typical like mountain biking and going to go into the gym and whatnot. But just adding that of hiking slow with a heavy pack up into like, into my quiver, all of a sudden that year I came in so much stronger.
00:25:18
Speaker
and it opened my eyes to like okay there's there's something even more to this because obviously um
00:25:25
Speaker
just that muscle movement and that that lower heart rate did something for me and that was coming into this season why I was like okay I'm I have the time or COVID lockdown not traveling but I actually hired an agent and producer to help me with the business side of it and I can focus more on the athletics of it because I also know
00:25:49
Speaker
these bigger, more dangerous lines that where speed and endurance on the way up actually equate to safety, I really want to start focusing on that. Moving away from some of these easy 3,000-foot ski descents, I've argued that you can lap two or three times to big guys like University Peak, which is a
00:26:10
Speaker
7,000 to 8,000 foot boot pack. Mount Robson, which is a legendary alpine climb, let alone just a ski descent. I've thought of Robson as like, well, it's an early ski descent, and then you read about its lore of an actual climb.
00:26:27
Speaker
That's a really hard climb. Just getting into the top of Robson is something that's rare and then skiing back down the north face is something that's big. So I really started to be focused and I was like pull away some of my other responsibilities in life to focus on strictly endurance and performance for this because it's not only going to be performance-based but at this point it's going to equate to safety in the mountains.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's a really astute point to think about. And we talk about it a lot, but I think it's something that can maybe sometimes be misconstrued when people think about, well, there's the fast and safety aspect. It's not necessarily moving fast to see how quickly you can take something off car to car, but it's about being nimble, being adaptive to circumstances.
00:27:21
Speaker
something bad happens, you have the ability and you have the reserve to be able to adapt to that as opposed to being part way up and it's really all you can do to just keep going. A lot of decisions too that are influenced by fatigue
00:27:37
Speaker
Create really dangerous situations and in avalanche conditions and in big mountain lines You know decision-making when you're under duress and fatigue can lead to bad outcomes quite often So that alone just having those energy reserves to be like feeling good and make a good decision there whether that's okay speed up because it is feeling like it's starting to warm and we got a
00:28:03
Speaker
another half hour to the top and I've got the engine to just start motoring to the top and get off that mountain or whether that's to be carefully evaluating because you're aware of everything. Your brain is like astute and you know kind of lucid as opposed to being fatigued and just using anything you've got to hold on physically. That's when you start to create better situations of safety for yourself and ultimately like I say with this project I've got three
00:28:33
Speaker
The first priority is don't die. Second priority is have fun. Third priority is ski all 50 and it's very specific in that order. So even though the goal is called, you know, the 50, it's like mainly is to try to do all the 50 and come home at the end of the day is my main takeaway from it. So I feel like this physical fitness is part of that package that leads to a better day and safer day.
00:29:00
Speaker
yeah yeah and as i say having fun it's more enjoyable i think you know it is to be you know to feel like you're not. Just barely barely scraping your way up but you know you're in these magnificent places you often for the first time so having the having the wherewithal to be able to look around and enjoy it and.
00:29:20
Speaker
I think one of the things that's been really fun watching the videos and following your progress is, each one, you're usually going, in addition to you and Bjarne Esalen, your cinematographer, you've got these other characters that you're skiing with, locals or professionals in their own right from different realms of the skiing or the alpinism world.
00:29:45
Speaker
there's an advantage there as well to have this basic fitness so that you can be adapting to what their level is and enjoying that instead of just hanging on for dear life. Totally. Now, and that's been one of the dirty secrets of this project is one of my goals with it was on the video component, I was like, well, it'd be really good to bring in locals, legends, pros, just a variety of people because that makes it more fun and it's cool to
00:30:14
Speaker
to get to ski with people I don't always get a chance to. And one of the things I've learned through that and what wasn't necessarily an intention is one, get a lot of good local beta and two, learning a lot from a lot of people. So lessons from like Jimmy Chin, you know, like a legend of alpinism, like an amazing climber and skier. And you're like, cool, I get to do the grand with one of the greatest ever and learn all these lessons that were passed down from, you know, Conrad anchor and mug stumps through him.
00:30:44
Speaker
how lucky is that? Same with like Jeremy Jones and just like taking away the lessons from everyone has been a really cool part of the project. I'd say probably for me it's the coolest because I've forgotten to learn so much from these these fellow people that I'm going up with.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it, you know, harkening back to your earlier point about like the skills that you brought into it and some of the things that you kind of learn, some of it you learn on the go, or at least you would, you improve on the go, you know, technical work and ropes and gear and all of that. Like so much of that is, uh, can be transferred really well through those sorts of mentorship, uh, relationships that you have where, you know,
00:31:23
Speaker
going, whether it's with Jimmy Chin or another athlete that you're on a climb with, they have a particular way of doing it that's just intuitive, that just clicks with you. And that's something that really can't be manufactured. It has to happen organically in those circumstances or because the particular incident arises that requires it. Yeah, no, that's super cool.
00:31:48
Speaker
So, yeah, thinking about training.
Physical and Mental Challenges of Adventure
00:31:51
Speaker
So you, I remember we first spoke last summer sometime and you had done what became the film that was released this December, The Mountain Why, which was a huge bikepacking trip combined with skiing three big cascade mountains. And I remember that you'd kind of given me
00:32:15
Speaker
the story that you've just said, but then he said, like, that was kind of like the coup de grace. Like, this thing was massive. And, you know, I, you know, that I need to, you wanted to round out this base of training. So, yeah, talk, talk a little bit about that, because then since the films come out, it's been, I mean, it was an unbelievable undertaking.
00:32:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah a thousand mile bike ride with a hundred pound bikes and climbing three big peaks is definitely not easy and it went, it pushed me to my absolute physical end. Like what I talked about with the first season of it was like this was on a different level.
00:32:56
Speaker
And the reason it got so hard is the last seven days, we didn't take a single rest day. So we biked up to 5,000, 25 miles, 5,000 feet up to Rainier and then went, did a two-day ascent and descent to Rainier, got on our bikes on that third day and started riding again, and then rode for four days straight and then climbed El Dorado Peak, which was a 7,000 vertical foot mountain.
00:33:23
Speaker
And in that time, we had another weather, we had a weather window and we had to hit it. Otherwise we're going into a two week shutdown, which we had just sat through before. So we had no time to actually rest from any of this. So, you know, climb right near and get on your bike and ride 400 miles to then go climb another peak. Um, with a lot of up and down along the way, it was like, yeah, I, I've
00:33:49
Speaker
I think I told you this in the beginning of our conversation, and I wanted to see if this was validated, but I felt like it was an out-of-body experience on that last day. I felt like it was hallucinating practically. I didn't know what a concept was. I didn't know. I'm not me right now. I'm just moving through mountains. I don't know what's going on. Luckily, the situation outside of it was still
00:34:16
Speaker
observative enough to know that it's all safe and we had good partners and stuff, but if still it was absolutely nuts.
00:34:23
Speaker
It was funny too because Michelle and I, the partner on the trip, we both were like, oh, we're going to be so strong for mountain biking at home. It took a solid three weeks to maybe a month to actually recover from that. I remember going for a bike ride two weeks later and I was like, all right, time to crush. And I was like, strong at it. And I'm like, what's the opposite of a PR? And
00:34:48
Speaker
I was like, Oh my God, this normal bike ride I do with my backyard is so hard. And I was like, I'm still have no energy. And Michelle and I were checking in and I'm like, did you do anything lately? She's like, I can't get off the couch. I'm like, okay, get me too. It was, yeah, it was unbelievable of how hard that ended up being. And that's again, was another catalyst. I'm like, all right, like,
00:35:11
Speaker
More more training more to get my baseline even even stronger Because you know, maybe I'm not gonna be do another thousand mile ride But I just know that I'm not gonna suffer as much if I'm more fit. Yeah. Yeah No, I I wouldn't even want to look at a bike seat Good considering it
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, the only thing I would say when we started a bike program and there's biking in it, it was really nice to get on my bike with nothing strapped on it. So that was the only saving grace. I'm like, Oh my God, this thing weighs like 18 pounds. This is amazing.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, so we connected in, I think, August. So you'd had maybe a couple months of recovering from that trip and somewhat past the best of our knowledge, kind of past that point of the deep fatigue that comes in. It's true. The longer the effort, and certainly when it's something that's lasting several weeks, that fatigue takes a long time to truly manifest.
00:36:18
Speaker
We see that with a lot of our mountaineering clients and people who are doing these multi-week expeditions.
00:36:27
Speaker
Oftentimes, you get back from something like that and it might not feel that bad, particularly if you're coming from, for a mountaineering objective, you're coming from high elevation and you come back down to home and it's sea level or something. You have this sense of feeling pretty good and then you just start sliding down. The fatigue continues to accumulate and accumulate.
00:36:48
Speaker
So we, yeah, we connected and you'd been back from that from a couple months. And, um, I remember getting started and the, and the thing that I think will be interesting to talk about because it's, uh, I know it was a change for you was in thinking about how we were going to approach your training. Um,
00:37:07
Speaker
My thought on it and what we talked about was trying to think about not only building and improving your aerobic capacity, but thinking about it in terms of building it with speed. So improving your economy, being able to move faster uphill before we gave you the 50-pound pack and said, okay, now move with this big thing. And I remember asking you, well, do you run it all?
00:37:33
Speaker
And I think he said something along the lines of like, you'd run occasionally from one place to the next growing up, but it really wasn't a part of your game. Yeah. I had tried to get into running and I just remember telling you, I was like, yeah, it's not for me. I don't like it. It was pretty absolute. It was pretty absolute. So I was like, so if we can do like any sort of training besides running, I'm good. And it's about being about 70% of the training I did was running. Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
you did something that I never thought any person in humanity could do, which was you've turned me into a runner. And it was actually a really cool process. And I thought you did a really, really good job of like easing your way into it. And I had a big revelation with it, too. It was like, when it comes to running,
00:38:23
Speaker
You feel like we all know what it feels like to run, to run from one place to another. But then I would go behind my house before I started working, you know, go for a trail run. And I'm like zone four, zone five-ing of mountains and just like ankles are hurting, knees are hurting, lungs are hurting, just like so gassed.
00:38:42
Speaker
And then like coming back down just like this sucks. This is so stupid. I don't like this. I'm in pain and it would take me like a week to recover and I tried again and I was just like, okay, I'm not into this. And then when you started me off and it was like literally like the cool down style, which was run for 30 seconds and then walk for 30 seconds, run for 30 seconds and do that for 20 minutes.
00:39:05
Speaker
or 30 minutes and it was like this all of a sudden kind of like on our cool down days I was really enjoying that 30 seconds of running and then kind of getting your pace back and then 30 seconds of running and get it back and I realized I was just
00:39:18
Speaker
in a certain way you look at like running videos and guys running through mountains and it looks really cool you want to go do that just like you watch a ski movie and you see someone skiing down alaska spines and you're like that looks really cool i want to do that the thing is it's more recognizable i feel like in skiing to be like well i'm not skilled enough to go do that when it comes to running
00:39:38
Speaker
We're watching killing and journey do that through the mountains and you're like cool I'm gonna try that and we can't even remotely run at that speed and generally involves walking for most ninety nine percent of humans so just the way we started with pacing and the way you tell me to strike.
00:39:54
Speaker
I can land on my feet and just kind of like keep it in a mellow
Cody's Journey to Embracing Running
00:39:58
Speaker
state. All of a sudden I was enjoying those one hour runs, two hour runs and to the point where, you know, by the end we were doing three hour mountain runs and it involves, it's not running the whole time. You're walking up and it gets steep and running when you're, you know, when you can. And I was just like absolutely loving those days. And it realized that
00:40:17
Speaker
the two months that we worked on getting to that point was just like training your body to understand like the impact to feel that impact training your body to kind of like adapt to this new way of moving through mountains and all of a sudden became enjoyable and it kind of speaks I think to just like even backcountry skiing and ski touring is like so often we can go out there and we try and go out there so hard as beginners if you just slow it down you're going to enjoy it way more
00:40:44
Speaker
The big cracks of it is quite often we feel like, oh, it's hard, so I got to make it hard. Or there's that ego of like, I had to keep up with these people or people are on my tail and want to pass me. And you're just like, yeah, let them pass because you're going to end up enjoying the day that much more. So it was, it was a really interesting process to go through, like, no, no running to now I go on runs for fun.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it was great because to your credit, you went along with it. You were very straightforward about the fact that you did not do it and you weren't that inclined to do it. And I think I was like, all right, cool. But I remember at the end of that first conversation, like, I'll try it. And I was like, well, yeah, we'll just do it as recovery. And there's
00:41:30
Speaker
There are other ways we can train. You can go hike uphill every single day, and in some ways, that's more specific. I remember it was a couple weeks in, and it was prescribed that you do the 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, or maybe a minute on, 30 seconds off. I think you commented on one of those workouts that you just ended up running the whole time. You're like, yeah, it felt pretty good, so I just kept going. I'm like, oh.
00:41:55
Speaker
All right. And I think that, again, it's that what you comment on with backcountry skiers or any kind of skill set. And it's obviously more of a challenge nowadays than it's ever been before because we have this huge aspirational culture. We see the best of the best doing these things. As you say, you see Killian running along ridge spines, or you see someone like yourself skiing these incredible faces in the alpine.
00:42:25
Speaker
And you think, OK, well, that's what I need to go do. And I'm just going to go start doing that thing. And it's important to put that in context and realize the breadth of work that those people or anybody who's posting or writing about doing that sort of thing, the breadth of work that they've put in to get there, which is the crux for most of us, is to have the patience to do that.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it was great for you and to the point of, you know, learning a different way to move through the mountains because it does open up, you know, running in particular, just like backcountry skiing versus going to a resort opens up these avenues to move through terrain in a completely different way and broadens that skill set that, you know, hopefully then translates to these other places as well.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, it definitely definitely does. Like I just feel like just with this summer of training is like cool, like one of my favorite things of backcountry skiing is like it's moving through mountains and you're enjoying the up and the discovery process and dropping over ridge lines as much as the skiing.
00:43:39
Speaker
And now having this ability to move through mountains in a new way a little bit faster, running, but knowing that, oh, I could keep this pace up for the next eight hours if I do this. And seeing the sunrise on top of mountains after a three-hour run, it's just like, it's incredible. And so it feels like it just adds this quiver to my enjoyment of where I live. Finding myself, it's like, yeah, I love mountain biking because I love the down, but I'm also thinking, man,
00:44:07
Speaker
next summer, I can't wait to try this trail to go for a run or, you know, I'm already, I've already semi-committed to doing the 56K sky running race. Not to try and like get a place or anything, just want to finish. And just like, if I can finish under the time, that's my goal. And it'd be really cool to do that. So yeah, it's been, it's been a cool process of
00:44:34
Speaker
I don't know, just adding what it's like to live in the mountains and adding, uh, kind of almost fundamental human skill to your quiver. Yeah. Yeah. And Nordic skiing now. Yes. Yeah. Nordic skiing was straight after your heart. You're taking all the Lycra, man. I am. I am. Well, I will say that was a little influenced by the fact that there's been absolutely no smell here.
00:44:59
Speaker
Um, I also have the cross country skiing center in my backyard, which is awesome. And yeah, it was always kind of like, you know, I've seen more friends starting to do it and I'm like, yeah, it's actually really fun and a great like hour workout or whatever. So, um, luckily I'm sponsored by Solomon who happens to make some very good, uh, Nordic skiing equipment and, uh,
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah, so I got a full quiver and actually even my wife who's not much of an endurance athlete, she doesn't like that kind of stuff. She's been enjoying it too. So I've been texting you for pointers trying to get my skate skiing technique a little bit better, but I've been really enjoying it. It's kind of a, you know, it's in a certain way when the snow is terrible and then the cross-country ski track is really good. So if I want to like
00:45:45
Speaker
be able to get my work done through the day and go get an hour workout. It's right there in my backyard and I can go have fun with it. Yeah, exactly. A friend of mine and I were talking about that a couple of weeks ago because we went through a
00:45:59
Speaker
a funky period here with the back country and it had, you know, reigned up to a certain point. And then above that, there was, you know, massive winds in the alpine. So there was basically, skiing was not good. And we're like, well, Nordic skiing is going to be great, you know, and spent a week and a half in fantastic Nordic skiing where the snow is transformed and groomed and fast and ripper.
00:46:18
Speaker
And I think he made the comments and he's like, this is kind of a bummer if the only thing that you did was backcountry skiing because then you're just sitting twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next thing. So having that versatility, just like being able to run. And I think remember talking about that.
00:46:37
Speaker
If you can, if you can find a way to, you know, if we can, if we can build up that ability to, to run or, or to do something like Nordic skiing, then it just, it gives you more breadth in both, not only skills, but also just for enjoyment and kind of enriching yourself.
00:46:55
Speaker
For sure. And one of the things I really learned, and I think this is when you're young, you know, you like to identify yourself in a certain faction of a sport or something like I'm a free skier or, and as you kind of grow up and you start to see like, wait a minute, like maybe these divisions aren't necessarily as hard as I once thought it to be.
00:47:17
Speaker
20 years ago, I would laugh at an Arctic skiing and be like, that's stupid. I ski squat and I jump off cliffs. That's what I do. But what I'm realizing is like,
00:47:26
Speaker
I'm just a skier and I don't like labeling myself a backcountry skier because there's days when it's dangerous in the backcountry when the ski resort is magical. It's controlled, there's chair lifts, you can go have a blast at the ski resort.
Adapting Skiing Styles and Safety Learning
00:47:41
Speaker
Then there's days where the ski resorts are crowded, boom, go backcountry skiing and discover new places, get an amazing workout in and ski perfect powder. But then when that all goes away too, then you're like, well, then there's cross-country skiing.
00:47:56
Speaker
I realized like all these little divisions of cross-country skiing, backcountry skiing, park skiers and race skiers and all these kind of things like to me I identify just as a skier because I like all aspects of the sport like I like hauling ass and carving turns but I like going in the backcountry but now I'm in finding enjoyment with cross-country skiing you're like it's all the same thing there's two sticks that you're sliding on snow on
00:48:22
Speaker
but you're just doing it in like slightly different ways that best adapts to the conditions that mother nature has given you and that's what I really find fascinating about skiing is like adapting to what the mountains give you, the mountains let you do and it's one of my philosophies for even backcountry skiing is like you don't ski objectives because you want to ski objectives like you have that objective in mind but it's really the mountain is the boss at it.
00:48:47
Speaker
and you gotta listen to her to figure out if she's saying turn around or continue. So to me like adding these extra quivers, these extra things in my quiver of skiing, whether it's Nordic skiing, backcountry skiing, resort skiing, it's just like a way to adapt to our environment and have fun. So that's kind of a philosophy I've started to kind of synthesize.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think it's all the more important now, as I said, thinking about the aspirational culture, which in so many ways is great with the mountains and people wanting to get into them and experiencing these new sports, but retaining or really reinforcing that idea that it is about building your comprehensive self and experiencing it in all these different ways.
00:49:39
Speaker
One of the things I was interested in asking you sort of as a
00:49:43
Speaker
a way to wind things up a little bit. I know you're really involved in addition to the many other things that you do in avalanche safety and avalanche training with people doing clinics around the country and just being an ambassador of the sport and certainly seeing the explosion of growth that we've seen in the back country and in new users.
00:50:08
Speaker
Are you seeing in conjunction with that an interest and a willingness on the part of many of the new users that you're interacting with to develop those skill sets incrementally and find their way into these new sports through a process? Do you have a concern about that necessarily that people are going to dive in just headfirst and get themselves into trouble, or do you feel like it's happening in a progressive way?
00:50:38
Speaker
I mean, I definitely fear people just jumping in, being too aspirational, watching one of my videos and be like, cool, I want to go see that line without that necessary experience. But that's why I talk about safety so often. But I don't also feel like it's a responsibility to talk about safety. Like, I don't feel like it should be something that everyone goes in the mountains you need to, like,
00:51:01
Speaker
Add a little asterisk mark to like the end of your picture on instagram saying this was done on moderate average danger on a thirty eight degree slope you know like you don't necessarily have a responsibility for but for me.
00:51:15
Speaker
What I found really cool about the sport was all the mentorship that I had got from a lot of the legends of the sport. And I realized I had all these amazing lessons from people that I found fascinating to try to synthesize to make my own way through mountains more safe and more enjoyable. And through the project, it was like, well, that's what I find fascinating. So I want to be able to share those secrets, that knowledge with more people.
00:51:42
Speaker
And I think with it is I'm just trying to show people that like in just the project itself, like one, we're not just professional skiers going out there and sending. We're just like, not like, all right, it's good to go. Like I wanted to show them the behind the scenes, dirtiness of it, show them like professional skiers that people look up to and, you know, look up to as like super humans. And I'm like, I'm not a superhuman. I'm scared out of my mind right now.
00:52:07
Speaker
and I want to like tell them that because that's real and it allows other people to be scared and not think that they watch the film of me and going like I'm so scared and be like but you know Cody could sound like this so let's just keep going like I want to let people know like no it's scary and there's times to turn around and show them that like
00:52:25
Speaker
some of the biggest risk takers which more maybe they're presumed to be the best biggest risk takers are very calculated in their decision making and quite often turn around to in the interest of safety so to me it's something like i've taken passionately because and want to talk about cuz i find it interesting.
00:52:44
Speaker
And I'm hoping that it wasn't like a goal of the project to like share this, but it was like a goal because I found it interesting and I wanted to like kind of just put it out there. I kind of like to consider myself an open book. Like I'm not scared to tell people I'm scared. I'm not scared to, you know, say when I'm tired and need to turn around because I'm tired. Like these are the kind of things I just think it's real and they're all human emotions we all go through and it's more relatable and
00:53:11
Speaker
that sort of way and I think it's been kind of one of the successes and like I said it wasn't something I set out to do but it's been I think I've heard a lot of feedback that people are taking it like that which I'm hopeful that people are seeing this isn't a progression you just rush through you know I've been a professional skier for a long long time and I'm showing people that like I still feel new with this I still feel scared with this I
00:53:36
Speaker
I'm questioning myself, doubting this, trying to make decisions, being observational throughout the entire process, and only sending when the conditions warrant. So to me, it's been cool to get that feedback that I get notes from people saying, I just got into backcountry this year, and I just took my AVI-1 course, and I'm going to do this next course, and I'm really inspired by the way you're talking about it.
00:54:02
Speaker
that's awesome that people are like looking at and being like okay what do I need to do first well get an avalanche course and then go from there you know so instead of just like buy a setup and go back and
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, I think that's, you know, what the what the project is you've been presenting it and the videos have shown is that it has that process oriented even with, you know, and it kind of it's it's it's regardless of, you know, for someone who's maybe, you know, knowledgeable or experienced as a skier, and they look at some of the lines like, Oh, I could, yeah, I could ski that, but it's still like, there's never a point at which
00:54:36
Speaker
If there's it's it's casually in the way that in the way that you're approaching it in the way that you're displaying which i think is really important is that there's intention every time and if you sort of.
00:54:48
Speaker
If you develop your heuristics to be more casual, then that's how you're going to approach things that maybe demand a higher degree of intention and caution. And so just having that methodology throughout is going to serve you the best. And I think it's really valuable, especially, again, now, as we enunciate, how many more people are excited about doing this stuff, which is great. But it's all the more important that
00:55:17
Speaker
that it's thought of as a pursuit, as opposed to just something to tick off.
00:55:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lifelong learning process. And Michael, that's one of the things we try and say and like the avalanche courses we teach is like, we're, we're educators and we're teaching avalanche classes. And I'm also taking avalanche classes. This isn't like, cool, I'm an expert. I'm done. This is something that is a lifelong process. And you're always learning, you're always observing, you're always constantly trading and updating your information because like, backcountry skiing, it's dangerous. It's really, really dangerous. Like I think about it in terms of like,
00:55:53
Speaker
if someone told you like hey like here's Disneyland have a good time but just just to let you know like someone might pop out around the corner and shoot you in the head would you go and you're like well what's the percentage chance you're like that depends certain days it could be higher certain days it could be lower
00:56:12
Speaker
And we don't think of certain days you're just like riding rides for free and having a great time. But there's always that threat of someone could pop around the corner and shoot you in the head. And that's kind of what backcountry skiing is to me. And it's seen, it's glorified. It's something that is incredibly special and incredibly fun, but it ultimately is really dangerous. We don't see
00:56:34
Speaker
you know mountain biking as something where like you can go mountain biking and the whole mountains aren't gonna collapse on you. Backcountry skiing is like that and to me that's one of the things that I think reiterating especially I guess by the pros about how seriously we take safety just helps iterate to the audience that like look like this is a beautiful sport but it's ultimately really dangerous and you have to be very very cautious because again the same analogy it just
00:57:04
Speaker
all things could be good and then just boom, you have shot in the head and you're done. And it's game over. And it happens that quickly, you know, just reading an incident report from Utah where there's those four fatalities, that tragic avalanche. And it was just, there's exactly that. There's a third lap in the same zone. And then everything hit the fan and four lives are ended right then. And that's the kind of seriousness that we have to
00:57:29
Speaker
do we have to have while in the backcountry. So it's something that for myself, I want to talk about. And I try to talk about it humbly because I don't consider myself an avalanche expert. I consider myself a risk expert. I'm very good at mitigating risk and dealing with risk and fear. But when it comes to avalanche potential, I still think of myself as like,
00:57:57
Speaker
In freshman year still trying to learn and I hope that even if I'm in my 60s I'll still feel like I'm in freshman year trying to learn Yeah swimming with sharks. I mean, that's it. That's the friend of mine's described it as yeah, sometimes the sharks are farther away, but But they're always they're always lurking somewhere Yeah
00:58:14
Speaker
Well, okay, so you're about to take off and start chasing some objectives. Again, things are lining up and so we'll cap it off here with feeling prepared, feeling ready.
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah, I feel really, really prepared. Definitely the most physically prepared I have. It's definitely still a waving process where, you know, I'm heading off on a first kind of like warm up trip that's not necessarily related to the 50, but starting to really narrow in on a couple potential lines right now. But the avalanche conditions across pretty much North America are quite weird this year. So we're going to be approaching cautiously and with a lot of patience. But
00:58:55
Speaker
regardless of that, of what's going on in the mountains. I've been ski touring around my backyard, been cross country skiing, and I feel as good as I've ever felt coming into a season. I've been making a point of being the trail breaker pretty much 100% of the time for everybody. And the joke lately has just been straight up like, all right, we need more uphill athlete trainers out here, because we need more people breaking trail.
00:59:23
Speaker
I was wondering, yeah, I think you'd mentioned a couple of times somewhere when you were in the midst of the running and all of that, you're like, I'm testing the boundaries with some of my friends becoming a runner. You getting some converts over? Yeah, well, I think maybe they're just happy I'm training because I'm going to trail for them. Exactly. As long as there's one of you, you can throw you out there.
00:59:50
Speaker
Well, cool, man. Cody, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me and give us some previews for what's coming up. But I'm really psyched to see how things go this year. And as you start tagging some of these, particularly some of the more impressive ones, I think everybody is really excited to see.
01:00:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm really excited to get to that point. I'm excited to hit the road. And thank you for the training this summer. And I'm definitely going to be back with it because I think it's really set me up well to have success this year. So I appreciate it all. You guys are class active uphill athletes. So I thank you. Yeah, man. No, it's been great to work with you. So we'll look forward to touching base. And in the meantime, safe travels. And yeah, be safe in the mountains, man. Sounds good. Later, Sam. All right. See you, Cody.
01:00:36
Speaker
Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website uphillathlete.com.
01:01:17
Speaker
Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website uphillathlete.com.