The High Route Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

As we open up year two at The High Route, emerging from our late summer slumber, it's time to cue up the podcast. Episode 14 is all about reflecting on year one and diving into the print scene.

We open the second year of The High Route with a freshly recorded podcast episode. Episode 1 of Season 2 of The High Route podcast is primarily a State of the Union-type episode. 

Pete Vordenberg, Salt Lake denizen, and road-kill burrito gourmand facilitates a discussion with Jason Albert where they unpack the year that was at The High Route and the group's new print initiative.

A few themes are unearthed as the discourse evolves. First, it's a fine time to celebrate successes and be open about perceived challenges. Second, like with any proper adventure, where vulnerabilities are exposed, and there's an unknown outcome, it makes sense to embrace a sense of fearlessness and be open about outcomes that aren't the ones you have been visualizing or expecting.

You'll have to listen to the episode to learn more about those successes, failures, and attempts at fearlessness.

If you are new to The High Route, we are a reader and listener-supported enterprise focusing on human-powered turn making. Our mission is simple, but it takes real deal calorie burning to piece it all together.

We are also excited to announce Issue 1.0 of The High Route magazine is in the works. Fancy paper. Good reads. High-octane photos. And some fine mountain ranges. And turns. You can learn more about our subscription options here.

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

Thanks for listening,

The High Route Team      

The show must go on. It will go on when we bust into September. But it's a wrap for season one of The High Route Podcast. Lucky number episode 13, we'll call it good right there.

In this episode, Adam Fabrikant and Billy Haas bring some closure to their fall trip to the Chilean Andes. Just before Fabrikant's and Haas' departure in October, we ran The "No Excess" Ski Expedition Packing Mantra episode, which mainly focused on their gear choices. If you haven't had a chance, now might be a good time to take that episode in.

Consider this 13th episode their Chile debrief. We learn how a seasoned team pivots objectives and envisions what Fabrikant calls the 5x5: ascents and ski descents of five different 5,000m peaks. As South America builds into what we hope is a robust winter, let Fabrikant and Haas plant an adventure seed. 

In the meantime, we also will assert that Fabrikant claiming the "cat is in the bag" during this episode is an appropriate twist on the colloquialism "the cat is out of the bag." We are not going full-blown quantum physics and Schrödinger's cat, but it remains true: a cat must have once been in the bag to be out of a bag.   

And thanks for listening to our first season of The High Route Podcast—we appreciate the support.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening. 

You can find the Escape Collective @escapecollective.com

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

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

Here are a few notes to get this podcast rolling. We hope you are reading this. 

1) There is some foul language in this podcast. F-bombs abound, in particular, after ~the 45:00 minute mark.
 

2) The episode is broken into two parts: set 1 and set 2. The first "set" was recorded in late March after a fine day of Sunday skiing in the Wasatch. We recorded the second "set" roughly a month later. The main reason for "set" 2 is to discuss our interaction with another group the following Monday. We set the scene in the pod, but here is the gist: a low-traffic day in a zone with plenty of fresh snow and low-hazard terrain. The one party we encountered up high was less than excited to see us. Pete Vordenberg and I break down the brief interaction.

3) Trigger warning: We discuss the merits of some roadkill burritos. 

4) Pete Vordenberg is the guest. Pete, or Peter, is a frequent contributor to The High Route. We love having him on board. Our most widely read piece on the site is a story he penned titled "Skiing: A Review." If you haven't read it, please read it. It's a highlight.

Vordenberg has a unique perspective on the backcountry scene. For years, he chased the Olympic dream with what we consider success. He made the Olympics as a cross-country skier. He became the head coach of the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. Yet, for those who know him, Vordenberg seems most at home and peace, far away from the Lycra, deep in the Wasatch, seeking fine turns—which he has been doing for many decades.
 

Thanks for reading and listening. And again, the F-bombs spill forth in the later part of the episode. We'll work on cleaning up the potty language next season.

***

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

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

Dr. Patrick Fink joins us on Episode 11 of The High Route Podcast. Fink is an ER physician in Bend, Oregon, involved with the local and broader Wilderness Medicine community. He hosts Wilderness Medicine Updates—"a podcast for those interested in wilderness medicine, search and rescue, disaster and austere medicine, and ski patrol medicine." Fink also has a site titled Mountain Lessons, where he shares valuable information about his travels and best practices. 

All this is to say that Fink comes to the podcasts with some expertise. One aspect of backcountry travel he has thought a lot about is avalanche airbags. Fink presented some research at the 2023 ISSW, which got us talking about airbags, airbag adoption, and efficacy. 

A solid podcast on Avalanche Airbags comes from the Utah Avalanche Center. You can find the podcast here. 

As noted in the podcast intro, I first engaged with Fink when I moderated a comment at my last place of employment. Cutting to the chase, Fink and I spoke on the phone (it's always better to have a conversation to get the complete picture), and now we are friends. BTW—his moderated comment had nothing to do with airbags. 

On to the show.

Thanks for listening.    

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

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

We're dropping this episode a bit before March—a dreamtime month for many THR readers and podcast listeners. March is on the cusp here in the Northern Hemisphere of longer days. All that translates into more time to move through the mountains—often with warmer temps and more stable avalanche conditions.

This episode is handy if you need a little push to get the wheels turning, dream, be inspired, or push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Let's get to it.

On the Emergence Episode, we chat with Sam Hennessey, Michael Gardner, and Adam Fabrikant. We'll provide links below if you are unfamiliar with any of these three folks. If you follow the podcast, Adam has been on before. And yes, he still shines. For Sam and Mike, this is a first.

Emergence. The podcast's title, which we vacillated on, is spot on. According to the Wiki, "emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole."

In this instance, the wider whole can be the group construct: three experienced individuals bringing their strengths and weaknesses to an endeavor and exceeding, in a unique way, the attributes of any individual. The wider whole also includes a vast physical landscape full of possibilities, including technical and endurance challenges, pitfalls that include high-gravity situations, and the potential for interpersonal conflict.

We mostly focus on an excellent 2021 adventure by Hennessey, Gardner, and Fabrikant. Here are the basics of their mega-push: a climb of Denali's Cassin Ridge, a first ski descent of the mountain's Northwest Buttress, and an exit on foot across the tundra to Wonder Lake. Beyond the slog across Denali National Park's lowlands, this episode also features some fine ski alpinism done in good style.

​​The good style we speak of also translates to the group at large. What makes these three individuals compelling is not simply their questing in the mountains but the real sense that Hennessey, Gardner, and Fabrikant care deeply about one another. That, folks, is a huge ingredient for any successful endeavor, which also gifts smiles and laughter.

Let's set the ski alpinism scene.

In 2019, Hennessey and Gardner climbed the Infinite Spur on Sultana (Mount Foraker) in ski boots with skis secured to their packs on a 48-hour trip. Yes, they descended on skis. The first ascent, a storied one at that, was completed by Michael Kennedy and George Lowe back in 1977 over 11 days.

Then, in 2021, Hennessey and Gardner climbed a new route on the Isis Face of Denali's South Buttress in their impeccable ski alpinism style. Climb in ski boots with skis along for the ride and ski as much of the descent as possible, ultimately bringing them to the Kahiltna Glacier, the main jumping-off point for the main Denali ascent route. The two took a few rest days, then climbed a highly technical route on the North Buttress of Begguya (Mount Hunter) to the summit—this time sans skis and ski boots.

As rest and recovery, Hennessey and Gardner guided the West Buttress route on Denali, as did Fabrikant. From there, the plan to climb the Cassin as a trio and make a first ski descent down the mountain's Northwest Buttress was hatched.

After their respective guiding obligations, Hennessey, Gardner, and Fabrikant climbed the Cassin, skied the Northwest Buttress down to tundra, and walked out to Wonder Lake, where they snagged a bus ride back to Talkeetna.

Resources

—Mike Gardner wrote an excellent summary of their season, which listeners/readers can find here.

—Hennesey's piece in the American Alpine Journal titled "Ski Seasons: Modern Ski Alpinism in the Alaska Range" is here.

—To learn more about Hennessey and Gardner's fast and light ethos in technical ground, here is a collection of stories/podcasts on their speedy ascent, along with Rob Smith, up Denali's Slovak Direct.

• Slovak Direct Podcast
• Fast times on Slovak Direct
• Single Push on Denali's Slovak Direct—this podcast features Matt Cornell, Steve House, and Rob Smith (not Hennessey or Gardner). It is an excellent discussion of the history of the route and the evolving strategies used to ascend the line.

Thanks for listening.   

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

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

This past Fall, Blizzard-Tecnica released a ski and a book to raise money to support the Hilaree Nelson Fund. The fund promotes women-specific scholarships to support women in pursuing professional development relating to mountain pursuits. Formally, the scholarship is called the W2W Hilaree Nelson Education Scholarship. 

W2W (Women2Women) is the nomenclature for Blizzard-Tecnica’s program to support initiatives and product development for women. Leslie Baker-Brown, our guest on the podcast, leads the program at Blizzard-Technica that pushed for the ski and book honoring Nelson and furthering her legacy of female empowerment in the ski industry and adventure world. 

As most readers and listeners know, Nelson was a force of nature. She pushed boundaries in the ski mountaineering world by forging new technical standards and showing other women what was possible. These personal attributes are also embodied in the illustrated storybook Leader of the Pack: The Hilaree Nelson Story. 

The book is an artful and mindful collaboration between writer Kimberly Beekman and artists Malia Reeves and Soleil Patterson—both of whom are Blizzard-Tecnica athletes.

Baker-Brown provides insight into the book’s development process and the W2W program. Further, Baker-Brown has been a part of the brand for over three decades. We are afforded a long-term perspective from inside the ski industry that we don’t hear from often—a working mom who got into the hard goods side of the business a generation ago.

You can also learn more about Baker-Brown here.

Thanks for listening.   

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

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