Preventing Knee Injuries: Checking Your Risk for ACL Injury

Overcome ACL Risks and Boost Outdoor Resilience

As outdoor enthusiasts, injury is one of the hardest things we deal with. Being sidelined and missing out on a season of your favorite activity is heartbreaking! We would know: as a teenager, I tore both ACLs within a couple of months of each other! Those injuries were devastating at the time, and took a lot of work to come back from. 

Among skiers, ACL tears are the most common knee injury. And they are especially common among women.  

The good news is we have tools we can use to understand how likely we are to injure our knees. Armed with that knowledge, we can make smart decisions about how to train to reduce our risk. Of course, there's no way to guarantee remaining injury-free. Life happens! But we can stack the deck in our favor, and that’s powerful.

What follows is an assessment of your personal ACL injury risk. Knowing what your weak points are can be scary, but with that information, we’ll be able...

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Embracing Diversity in the Mountains Through Art

Discovering Mountain Sports

This is a guest blog by Mind & Mountain friend Mayhsa Deol. Mayhsa is a second-generation Indian immigrant who is passionate about outdoor sports and inclusitivioty in the outdoors. 

Read on for more of her story:

Coming from a non-outdoorsy, Indian family, getting involved in mountain sports has been a steep uphill learning curve. I got involved in mountain sports my senior year of high school. I had played soccer competitively for much of my life, but chose to not play in college, and was eager to find a new sport to devote my attention to. Through friends I tagged along with, I began dabbling in a myriad of outdoor sports ranging from climbing to trail running to mountain biking. I still remember my first experience mountain biking fondly. A friend from my soccer team offered to take me on a ride on our local mountain’s beginner xc mountain bike trails, and I eagerly agreed. Despite how hard it was, I knew I had found...

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Journey Above the Clouds: A Kilimanjaro Adventure

Embracing Adventure & Scaling New Heights

This is a guest blog by Mind & Mountain friend & team member Vanessa Chavarriaga. Vanessa is a Colombian, mountain athlete, environmental sociologist & outdoor advocate.

Read on for more of her story:

As a child, I'd gaze out of airplane windows and dream of slipping among the clouds, imagining them as perfect mattresses or trampolines. The wonder of those shifting clouds gradually faded as I grew older, but it wasn’t until I began going on outdoor adventures and backpacking trips in my 20s that I allowed myself to dream again.

This past summer, I spent on an extraordinary eight-day expedition living above a sea of clouds. Together with Phil Henderson, an industry leader with nearly three decades of outdoor experience, we organized a challenging climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, choosing the Lemosho Route. In May 2022, Henderson made history by guiding the first all-Black team to the summit of Mount Everest.

My connection...

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Bikepacking and Personal Growth: Building Strength One Ride at a Time

Embracing Strength through Bikepacking

This is a guest blog by Mind & Mountain friend Oliviah Franke. Oliviah (they/she) is a biracial Cáhita person who is living on Dena'ina lands and works in Community Education for Native Movement. They are a cyclist, cat mom, gardener, and are very passionate about racial equity and community building. 

Read on for more of their story:Strength is a concept that is not entirely foreign to me, but physical strength specifically is something I never assumed to have. I have known that I have emotional fortitude; a stubbornness to persevere and thrive despite all odds. As a child in the foster care system for the first 6 years of my life, my mental and emotional strength was tested and strengthened time and time again, and even as I grew older and found security and love through adoption; life still demanded a certain strength of me. But it definitely wasn’t physical strength that I focused on building. Because of...

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Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Be: The Art of Goal Setting

Redefining Goal Setting in Outdoor Recreation

This is a guest blog by Mind & Mountain friend & team member Vanessa Chavarriaga. Vanessa is a Colombian, mountain athlete, environmental sociologist & outdoor advocate. 

Read on for more of her story:

I am a relatively new mountain athlete -- my childhood consisted of indoor activities and being teased for being the slowest one to run the mile in gym class. Read more about my childhood in the Vamos Afuera: Everyone Belongs on the Trails blog. The learning curve for skiing, ultra running, and climbing has been steeper than the trails themselves. The only remedy I have found for this is finding the support of a community of mentors who genuinely want to uplift my potential and help me grow.

I was fortunate enough to find mentorship, inspiration, and sisterhood in my dear friend, Dani Reyes-Acosta. Through our many climbs and runs I have learned that no one is capable of existing in this space alone, and we have...

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Do You Need to Do Scarier, Riskier Things Outside?

Navigating Personal Growth & Social Validation in Outdoor Recreation

Venturing into the world of outdoor recreation is an absolute thrill! There's something incredibly exciting about the process of learning and growing along the way. As we dive deeper into our favorite outdoor sports and become more connected with the outdoor-rec community, it's pretty common to feel the weight of social expectations creeping in.

Sometimes, we can't help but feel the urge to fit in and be embraced by our outdoorsy friends. We might feel the need to up our climbing game, tackle those intimidating double black ski runs, or plan bigger, badder, riskier adventures to earn our place. And it’s totally normal to feel that pressure! We’re social creatures, and fitting in with the group has real safety implications, especially for folks with marginalized identities. 

It's really helpful to be mindful of how all these pressures can affect us when we're having fun outside. We want to enjoy...

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Beyond the Visible: Adapting to Life & the Outdoors with Chronic Illness

Reclaiming an Active & Outdoor Lifestyle with Chronic Illness

This is a guest blog by Mind & Mountain friend & member Rachel Collins. Rachel is a skier, park ranger, & mom, and in the last few years has been learning how to navigate the challenges of chronic illness alongside her active life. Rachel leads our Spoonie & Invisible Illness Affinity Group inside of Ski Babes!

Read on for more of her story: 

December 2022. I woke up with big plans today- big breakfast with the kiddo, Ski Babes workout, deep cleaning the house for guests, but as I crack my eyes open I realize none of those are going to happen today. I feel lethargic, nauseous, and despite my best intentions, my brain feels like molasses. I know this feeling now, my blood pressure is too low and my nervous system is on the fritz again. Is it the storm rolling in? Did I hit my salt targets yesterday? Did I eat something new? Maybe I overheated in my sleep again?

This is life with a chronic...

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Packrafting Strength: 5 Moves for Better Adventures

Get Packrafting-Ready with These Functional Moves for a Strong Summer

Are you ready for an exciting season of packrafting? Whether you’re just getting into the sport or a seasoned veteran, building strength before your first trip is a great way to make the most of packrafting season. Practicing functional movements at home can build muscle memory in the pre-season, jump-starting your packrafting season for strong technique all summer long.

I’ve been packrafting Alaska rivers for years, and I’m also a fitness trainer. I’m excited to share these exercises that I know from personal experience will help you when you’re out on the water this summer.

Strength-Building Moves for Packrafting

First, a story: in the summer of 2018, my husband Luc & I were in the habit of doing a set of pushups every day. Then we left for a 10-day packrafting trip that started with 60 miles (97km) on the Yukon River. We knew that the Yukon moves at about six miles per hour...

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Sore Hips from Backpacking?

 

The Source of Your Sore Hips During Backpacking

Hip soreness during and after a long day backpacking can be a real bummer! But it’s actually very common for backpackers to get sore hips. When we’re carrying our camping gear & food weight around for mile after mile in our backpacks, it puts a ton of stress on our hips.

With a heavy pack, the weight's got to go somewhere. In the process of trying to save our shoulders, we might be passing on the problem to our hips. Our hips, more than our shoulders, are designed to carry weight. But sometimes after long days, even our hips get tired, achy, and sore.

I've been personally having problems with sore hips after long backpacking days, so I mentioned the issue to my friend & Physical Therapist Shasta Hood. He suggested thinking about it as an IT band issue. When we tighten our backpack's hip belt, we're also pressing at the area that the IT band moves through. This can effectively shorten the IT band, which causes that...

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Float & Hike: 10 Day Trip on the Tatsenshini, Alsek, and Yakutat Coast

A Fast and Fantastic Trip on the Tatshenshini & Alsek Rivers

The Tatshenshini–or “Tat” for short–is an epic journey starting in Canada’s Yukon. From there, you float and paddle downstream on the Tat through the Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park, merging into the Alsek River, and ultimately ending up in Alaska’s Glacier Bay area.

Along the way, the river carves through pristine wilderness. Getting permits for this long, international trip is one of the most competitive permits to land, and it’s not hard to see why! In fact, this is the only float trip in Alaska popular enough to even require permits. Between the towering mountain ranges on either side of the river, the many glaciers alongside, and the icebergs floating through the river, the scenery is unforgettable.

We were lucky that some very motivated friends of ours navigated the permitting process and the itinerary logistics, meaning we could just tag along. Taking turns with the...

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