Get Out! The Podcast

In August of 1967, a young climber fell and broke his leg while trying to ascend the North Face of the Grand Teton. It took 7 rangers from the Jenny lake district 3 days to haul him down. It was a risky, complicated rescue and they did without food. I talk to former ranger Ted Wilson about the rescue, about coming to terms with the victim's critical statements to the media, why people are still interested in the 1967 rescue and the advice he has for young climbers.The music on this episode comes from Brian Fawkes and was used under the creative commons license. us.creativecommons.org/.

On this episode I talk to someone who gives me in an inside look at how military vets can use the mountains to deal with the issues that service can bring up. Stacy Bare served in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star. He now writes for the Huffington Post and is director of the Sierra Club’s Mission Outdoors Program, which helps veterans and their families access the outdoors. In addition, he is also a North Face Ambassador and was named a 2013 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. The music on this episode comes from ExtraExtra and was used under the creative commons license. us.creativecommons.org/.

Today we talk about why people choose the gear they do, and why some people go for set-ups that make things harder and some cases may seem to make little sense to some people. The music on this episode comes from Brian Fawkes and was used under the creative commons license. us.creativecommons.org/.

On this episode I talk to Chris Lundberg, who besides being a prosecutor for Teton County is an ultra marathon runner. Many people run long distances here in Teton Valley, but most runners didn’t almost lose both of their feet only a few years a go. The music on this episode comes from Brian Fawkes and was used under the creative commons license. us.creativecommons.org/.

Nothing went wrong on Scott England’s trip to paddle a pack-raft down the Gros Ventre River. The problem was England was the only one who knew that.

So today on Get Out! the Podcast from the Teton Valley News, I talk to two people, a former mayor and former county commissioner candidate, to figure out why here in Teton Valley biking is political issue.

Andy Tyson is from Victor, and runs a solar and wind power company called creative energies, he also happens to be an experienced climber and mountain guide. So when NBC needed help powering its cameras to film a special on Mount Everest, Andy got the call. That TV special never happened. On this episode I talk to Andy Tyson about what it was like to just after the avalanche that claimed 13 lives, and what – if anything – the accident says about the state of climbing on Mount Everest. The music on this episode came from Nic Hodges and was used under the creative commons license. http://us.creativecommons.org/

On the second episode of Get Out! The Podcast, Exum backcountry ski guide Zahan Billimoria read an article he wrote for the Avalanche Review titled "On Graciousness." In it, he examined why people sometimes react to fatal slides by not only questioning people's judgment but by passing judgment on them, calling them reckless, irresponsible and worse. I caught up with him recently to ask whether his article had changed the way people react to fatal avalanches and to expand on some of the ideas he raised. The music on today's show came from the Exist Strategy and Strange days and was used under the creative commons license. http://creativecommons.org/

On this episode we talk about something that changes a lot of people in valley's relationship with the outdoors – kids. I talk to Jenny and Chris Jensen on how their lives changed because of their two kids, and specifically how their lives in the outdoors changed.

Today on Get Out! the Podcast we talk about fun. I think we all, on some level, know what fun is. So what do we mean by "fun" when the things we do for fun - hurt- cause us pain. To find out I talked the Queen of Pain. That's Rebecca Rusch's nickname. She is an endurance cyclist, adventure racer and climber based out of Sun Valley. We talk about her experience at Jay's Backyard Fat Pursuit this February.

On this Get Out! The Podcast from the Teton Valley News we talk with Wade Kaufman, president of Skyliners Motor Club, as well as Jackson Native and Teton Valley resident Michelle Nicholson. Wade obviously is a snowmobiler, while Michelle uses her snow machine to get to backcountry areas to ski. We talk about why there was a divide between skiers and snowmobilers, how that divide shrank and how in this one area of life, can be an example for other cultural divides in Teton Valley. The music on this episode comes from Brian Fawkes and was used under the creative commons license. us.creativecommons.org/

On this episode I talk to two people, who as part their jobs, leave their significant others to work in the outdoors. What it's like to leave the person closest to you as part of your job in the backcountry.

Many people move to Teton Valley for the biking, hiking and fishing. If you come from a large city, or other places that don't allow you to get outside, that change can be a major one. For Paul Wendland that city was Kabul, Afghanistan and it was more than just rush hour traffic that kept him from the outdoors. I talk to Paul on what living in Afghanistan was like and what its like to move from there to rural Idaho.

Molly Loomis is a writer and skier who lives in Victor. In 2012, she went to Kyrgyzstan to follow in the footsteps of 1930s -era Swiss adventurer Ella Maillart, to ski a peak called Sari Tor. While in the capital city Bishkek waiting to leave for the mountains, protests broke out. Loomis saw young protesters clash with police, who then responded with gunfire.

Before he moved to the valley fulltime, AJ Linnell worked for several winters as an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership chool starting in 2000. I think that's a fairly familiar story. A young outdoor professional comes here for a seasonal gig, falls in love with the place and someone he or she meets here and ends up staying. What's less common, I think, is for that NOLS instructor to run for office and win a seat on the city council, which he did in Victor last fall.

I'm not a mountaineer but I can confidently say that climbing a mountain is hard. I'd imagine it's harder when you're trying to film at the same time. That's what Fisher Creative owner Mark Fisher and cinematographer Eric Daft ran into while shooting "Myanmar: Bridges to Change" about a group of Teton Valley climbers making the first accent of Gamlang Razi in Myanmar, also know as Burma. The expedition leader was Victor resident Andy Tyson.

After breaking up with his girlfriend Brendan Leonard packed up what he could in his Subaru station wagon, and put the rest in a storage unit. He went on what started as a vacation searching for why they broke up, and what he wanted in life. That vacation turned into a road trip and eventually into his life.

One of the great parts about being a reporter in Teton Valley though, is that you get to meet plenty of people who know a lot more about the outdoors than you do. So I was presented with a pretty good opportunity to get my questions answered when I covered "the Intergalactic Championship of Telemark Freeskiing" up at Grand Targhee.

In episode 1 on risk Josh Parker mentioned how he has thought about what people would think if he dies while skiing in the backcountry versus if something happened while he was doing his other job, working as a sawyer on a hotshot crew. In this episode we dig deeper into what happens after something goes wrong.

Jay Petervary hates to be cold. That by itself is not an odd statement, plenty of people hate to be cold, I know I do. What's make it slightly strange for Petervary to say it, is that he is a giant in a sport where being cold is kind of a foregone conclusion, fat biking. If you want to be more specific about it, long distance self supported fat biking. To be clear, Petervary said he just knows how to stay warm. In 2013 he set a new record on the Iditarod Trail invitational, finishing in 2 days, 19 hours, smashing the old record by 10 hours.