#13: Jan Reynolds: World Record Setting Climber, Skier, Olympic Athlete and Humanitarian

Join us on a thrilling and fascinating interview with longtime Stowe resident Jan Reynolds. Jan is a world record setting climber and skier, Olympic athlete, award winning author and photographer known for her ability to capture extraordinary imagery and stories while climbing and skiing in extremely high-risk environments and expeditions. She has spent over 30 years traveling to some of the most isolated parts of the globe, capturing the lives and landscapes of people often untouched by modern society. Reynolds is particularly known for her work in the Arctic, Himalayas, and other high-altitude regions, where she has often focused on environmental and cultural preservation.

In addition to her adventurous spirit, she is passionate about humanitarian issues, including education and empowerment for marginalized communities. Through her photography, writing, and speaking, Reynolds brings attention to the stories of the people she meets during her travels, highlighting their challenges and resilience.

Transcript

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Welcome listeners to the Octagon podcast, where we explore the stories, people, and places that make Stowe, Vermont so legendary. I'm your host, Ted Thorndike joined by my cohost, Mike Carey. We are delighted to introduce our guest today, Jan Reynolds. Jan is a world record setting climber and skier, Olympic athlete. Award winning author and photographer known for her ability to capture extraordinary imagery and stories while climbing and skiing in extremely high risk environments and expeditions. She has spent over 30 years traveling to some of the most isolated parts of the globe, capturing the lives and landscapes of people often untouched by modern society. Reynolds is particularly known for her work in the Arctic, Himalayas, and other high altitude regions where she is often focused on environmental and cultural preservation. In addition to her adventurous spirit, she is passionate about humanitarian issues, including education and empowerment for marginalized communities. Through her photography, writing, and speaking, Reynolds brings attention to the stories of the people she meets during her travels, highlighting their challenges and resilience. Welcome Jan. Welcome. Wow. How am I going to live up to that? Really, I'm a dirtbag that lived out of my car and raced and climbed in Yosemite and went to the far corners on a shoestring. Awesome. But it sounds good the way you say it. No, look forward to getting into all of that, but, I do understand you just skied Sterling. Is that correct? Before you joined us? Yeah, A couple of friends were with me, but I went on my own real early yesterday and up there today. Just scoot up, go to the ridge, find some powder. Come on down. That is a great view. Yeah, it is. Today when the sun was shining it was awesome. Magical. It really was because it was blue sky. You could have been in Colorado, in Vermont. Yeah, how was the snow? It was excellent. there's a lot for January. you're still around the tree wells. you could use a little more, but it was beautiful powder. it was really good. I feel like, below that ridge too, it sits in the shade a little bit. Yeah. Can hold the snow a little better. Yeah. And it doesn't get too windy. not on the sterling side. Yeah. Nice day for it. And then you had some wings, I understand. Oh, yeah. At Dock Ponds. I needed to get here and I was hungry and we were scooting out. Moon's coming up. It's almost a full moon. I think that's tomorrow. So I was hungry. Hungry, so I stopped at Doc Pond's bar, had some wings and came over. That's a perfect day. Bluebird, skiing, Doc Pond's wings. Doesn't get better than that. And I was watching a little, NFL football before, so that was a nice in between activity. that was on, that's why I went to the bar so I could see some football. Yeah, I did the Bruce Trail. That was my accomplishment today. So how is that? Is that all bumped? It's like a trail now. It's wind packed at the top. It's bumps in the middle. The best part is it's the fastest ski out it's ever been. Yeah. You just go in the whole time, never slowing down. Yeah. I can imagine that. And a lot of people are skiing it now because they want to get down to the parking lot where their car is. They don't want to take the shuttle. Yeah. I'm a Nordic skier as well. And so I see that all the time. If I've been working during the day and I just get out for a ski tour in the afternoon, I see everybody just bombing it down the Bruce trail. almost 50 years ago, when I first came to Stowe, I used to ski for the university of Vermont and I taught skiing under Ned Gillette, for my first winter out of school, because I had done my student teaching and so I'd used up the fall. I got my teaching degree. So I'd been teaching in a school and I thought, maybe I'll just teach skiing for the winter before I get a real job. I'm still waiting on the real job. Exactly. Good for you. That's great. But anyhow, that was where I was going with that with the Bruce trail is almost 50 years ago, there was nobody on it, but say, I don't know if he was my climbing partner, Ned Gillette. He ran. the Trapp family Nordic center for a few years and we'd be the only ones up there. No one skied the Bruce trail. Even when I was growing up though, it was not many people. You know what? It was in a Warren Miller movie. I don't know if you remember, there's a Warren Miller movie in the early nineties. They showed the Bruce and that sort of gave it a little resurgence. Whereas it was, one of the most beautiful trails because for a good telly turn, you gain a lot of speed, you'd go down and then it flat now. And then you go down and find out. And one of my friends, Michael Furnette, because we used to have, the cross country skis had a metal edge that we would tally on, but they were really long, and they had no side cut. So he'd say, yeah, let's do the Bruce, we'll go from out of control to out of control. each turn, you're just hanging on, and then it would flatten out, so you'd Catch yourself and then down, but it's a it's really skiers in the 30s and 40s when they first built it They're skiing on wood. Exactly. we were saying what we were skiing on was a lot more like the people that built the trail And we could feel the flow on that gear. to you it's not fast now with everything that you have and it's bumped out and it's a ski trail. Yeah. But for us, almost 50 years ago, it was really on those skis you thought you got the flow a little bit like what it was built for, with the kind of gear they, Used back then. Yeah. Beautiful. Totally makes sense. Yeah. Alright Jan, we're going to dig in to some questions and start in the early years. My understanding is you grew up on a dairy farm in Middlebury? Yes. One of six children. Seven. I'm number six. Oh, okay. Alright. Good to know. what was that experience like? how did that inform your work ethic and you as a person? I have a friend here in town who said, that's probably why I do expeditions because being number six of seven, trying to keep up. I when I was younger, I was so cross eyed. I looked at the end of my nose. I had what's called amblyopia, and so I can even remember, we didn't go many places, but we went to one of those, it was like a frontier town or some kind of town, and my whole family's laughing, I just walked right into a, totem pole, and, I think we overcompensate for our inadequacies. I was on the U. S. biathlon team, And one of my eyes is considered legally blind. The things we do, but, what it was like, you're nobody special. you gotta work hard to. Play with the big kids. And, even today, my oldest sister said something like, yeah, you would never cry. So we'd always try to make you cry, and I'm like, she was the sweet one. I wanted to play with them so bad, they put me in a tractor tire and they were going to roll it down the hill, but then it got away from them and there was a four way intersection at the bottom. So I'm just going like this in a tractor tire down the road and then it falls over and it's like this. going round and round. I had to tuck in or I'd break an arm. Then they all come running down and they go, Jan, what was it like, And then another time we were up in the Haymou and my sister freaked out about part of it. And I knew they would play with them some more if I would do it. And what we would do is we'd pull hay bales out and make these tunnels and you're blindfolded and you had to go find your way through these tunnels, which is only the size of a hay bale. You're going down. And what they did was they pulled out one of the hay bales so that when I was doing that, I crawled out and just went, fell and then they're laughing. I take my blind off and they're just laughing at me, right? Yeah. I could do it. I could do it. Chores like you're doing all the farm chores as well in addition to having fun, only small ones like, sweeping up the grain after, You'd given it to the cows. One of my jobs was getting the cows though. And actually Sam von Trapp caught me the other night. He was out on one of the trails, just going for a walk. And the. Cows were out at traps, farther down the hill where Sam and Christina's houses are. So at any rate, I started calling the cows. I always said, I wonder if the beef cows will come to my calls. Sure enough, they all started running. towards the fence. And Sam pops out and he goes, I wondered what the heck was going on. And then he said, the next time we have to move the cows I'm going to ring you up, Jan. We had a little trouble with him. I think you'll be able to make a move. that was one of my jobs as a kid. Cause you were asking, did I have chores? One of mine was to get the cows and you'd have to bring them all up to the gate and then just wait for the hired man or my dad to come and open the gate so the cows could cross the road, which we've seen here in Stowe with Percy Yeah. And. Is this where you learned or first got into skiing? Did your family ski? not with that many kids. No, we did not. and we moved to Lake Dunmore and my dad bought a marina. So I spent, my formative years on the farm until I was 12. And then I lived on the lake and did all the lake things. Raced, sailing, and, water skied and, worked on the lake. so I really didn't start skiing till much later. In high school, My sisters played sports, so I was going to be an actress and I tried out for a play. It was so bored I couldn't stand it. I think it's maybe the only thing I've ever quit in my life. I'm not a quitter. And so the only place for me on the field hockey team was the goal, because nobody wanted to be a goalie. So this is leading to skiing because I always wanted to learn how to ski and I wanted to be a downhill skier and it was the first year that, The state of Vermont required there to be Nordic skiers for the ski team to compete. It used to be only Alpine. So the Middlebury High School bought some cross country skis so that we could compete. And of course no one wanted to cross country ski and everyone said, Reynolds, you were the goalie and that was great. Why don't you ski? You'll get to go alpine if you'd be our cross country skier. So I did. And, and I loved it. Never really looked back. I did do some alpine racing, but my coach was afraid I would hurt myself. So he told me to stick to Nordic. And so you then ended up at UVM. Yeah, I was on the junior national team in high school. Okay, and then pretty quickly became adept at Nordic skiing Yeah, Yeah started training at 14. Yeah, and Then really loved it. So trained hard starting at 14. Yeah, and then year round at UVM You guys won a NCAA championship. And that was the first year that, the men and women's teams were combined. And I don't know if you remember, but the UVM ski coach for years was Chip LaCasse. Okay. And he was really worried. Cause UVM had won NCAAs often. They had, most of their imports for jumping and, Nordic skiing. We're from Norway. Yeah, Yeah, and so all of a sudden now the girls are going to be combined, which He's not the coach. He doesn't have any control over and it was really pretty fun. It's just one of those things that, unfolded this way. UVM, look like they were going to win. And the very last event was the women's relay. And I ended up being the sweep. The last skier. So it came right down to the last event. No pressure. Yeah. Yeah. And we won it. We won the relay and we won the event. And I remember our coach, his name is Perry Bland. He was so relieved he can walk on his hands. He was walking down the trap road on his hands. He was just so relieved it was over. And so this happened at traps. Oh yeah. It was that How cool is that? That's what I mean. How would you ever imagine that at all? would, come together like that. and, when I came across the finish line exhausted. when I caught my breath, I got up and I went right over to Ned Gillette and asked him for a job. I went, would you consider hiring me for teaching skiing? And he just laughed and he said, yeah, we could probably find a place, cause I just dragged myself across the finish line. That would have been amazing. If during that race, you Call the cows. I don't think it would be, but I don't think they had the cows back then. But that would be pretty cool to have them all come running in. Yeah. Instead of biathlon, you do cross country skiing and have to call the cows. see, that's making it seem much more European, right? Isn't that kind of cool? But that is a good segue. you mentioned Ned Gillette and, forming that. initial, contact, would you say he was a person that really sparked, an interest in mountaineering, adventure skiing, at that point in your life? No, I had already done a lot of that. I had already spent a year in Norway. I speak Norwegian. I done a lot of ice climbing and, brave on the ring. I was on the Norwegian rescue squad. It's like Neil Van Dyke, but specifically for winter, we would dig snow holes. we did have to go find people and bring them in. So I was trained in rescue. I was trained in ice climbing. I was one of the top marathon ski marathoners in our country. and what you need for an expedition to be able to just keep it going on. I knew everything Ned had done and I had been following all these things in the magazines. it used to be called Mariah before it was Outside Magazine. Anyhow, Backpacker had just come out. and that's because, they're more like Ned's age, but 10 years older than I am. I eventually went out to go live in Yosemite and climb there. And I was on the rescue squad there. And it's when I realized by talking with people that up until about, I don't know, the seventies, it was pretty much just car camping. We didn't have the gear to go way out in the wilderness for long periods of time. Yeah, But I was talking about Yosemite because I know Yvonne and I know the dirt bags and I did live in Yosemite like a dirt bag and was on the rescue squad so I could stay there and climb. But they really started American thought process of going farther out into the wilderness. I'm trying to think of his name. He, oh, he did the fun hog expedition with, Yvonne Chouinard, Dick Dorworth, Lito Tadeflores, and one other guy when they went down to Patagonia, which is why Patagonia is called Patagonia. If anybody doesn't know who Yvonne Chouinard is, he started Patagonia. And, Doug Tompkins was the other one. He had a store in California called The North Face. And it was basically a store with some outdoor goods. And then, Hap Klopp bought The North Face store and he turned it into a company. And it was in Berkeley. So Ned Gillette and I eventually became the first two athletes to The North Face ever hired and we were paid. before that, in Europe, there were mountaineers that were sponsored and were paid and were athletes, but that didn't happen in the United States. So where I'm going with all this is that it wasn't until The Fun Hog trip happened and it became popular. People started to think about getting out into the wilderness and Hap Klop bought the North Face store, turned it into a business. And Ned Gillette and I were the first people to help them design, backpacks with an internal frame. Until then it was only an outside frame. We helped them, develop the dome tent. Until then it was only a. A pup tent? And, actually Mark Erickson, the designer there at the North Face was an old hippie. And he lived under a parachute. And he loved, Buckminster Fuller, who's into domes. so that's how the idea for the, The dome tent came to be so on some of our expeditions, we would take these products and test them and, Gore Tex had never been used before. At that time, it was just a medical product. They had developed it to be like veins, something like veins used internally and have clop dis. learned about it and he said he was going to put it into clothing. So Ned Gillett and I worked with The North Face developing all these new products. So I was able to see the growth of the outdoor industry and people getting on trails and going farther out and doing more than just, Camping with the family in the car, I don't know if people have thought about it that much, but it all developed starting all the way back from this fun hog expedition when was that you have your phone right here one of you can Look it up, You'll find it just do fun hog and Google Yeah, there you go, and it was North Face and Patagonia no. Patagonia didn't even exist. The guy Yvon Chouinard was on that expedition and after that he decided to start the company Patagonia. But what he really did was working with metal, at first trying to make climbing gear. That's what Patagonia was. I think the first thing was those pair of shorts, this really rugged pair of shorts. Okay. We found it. It was in 1968. Yep. 1968. Yeah. The Fun Hog Expedition. Very cool. Yeah, you could look up Doug Tompkins, but that's a big thing that, he has done is start all those big parks down in Patagonia. He set, he's, he worked with the government and set it aside. This is an incredible group of people, the Fun Hog Expedition. It's important information. Yeah, it kicked off this whole thing and the outdoor industry came to be in the United States and how these companies came to be just such a time of a bunch of, yeah, a bunch of dirt bags that like to be out in the woods and developing all this stuff. Yeah. It was a pretty crazy time. They were pretty crazy companies. Pretty crazy stuff went down. That's cool. What's your most challenging, grueling expedition that you've been part of, that you look back and are really proud of? They all have, they all have that aspect to them, so it's difficult to select. Yeah. I didn't realize this at the time, but I set the women's high altitude skiing record. When we climbed this peak, it was almost 25, 000 feet high, and it was in far western China, called Mustegada. That was in National Geographic, and so a world record was set. But one of the more interesting things about that is there's a man named Galen Rowell, you can look him up, pretty important American climber, and He and Ned had just climbed and skied Denali in one day. No one had done that before. And these are the two guys that I am climbing Mistugata with while we're doing this National Geographic article. And I set the high altitude skiing record. And, Normally at high altitude, you don't go more than, maybe a thousand feet a day. It probably depends on how difficult the climbing is. And we went from, we did 5,000 feet, 10,000, we did 5,000 up and then had to ski back down in one day. And that's only because of Ned and Galen's ability, what they did. And I was there too. But those two will challenge each other. We're at 20,000 feet and we look up and they go. Ah, I bet we could do it in a day and, it's one of the times, I've never done this before that we, we didn't go with our turnaround time. you pick a time and if we haven't made something by now, you turn around and come back down. You just kept going. we kept thinking we were there. We kept thinking we were there because it was more difficult climbing, but, at the top, it was just very gradual. And actually Galen was the one that couldn't, he fell down and he couldn't get back up. And I'm the one who gave him all the food that I had left. And he was able to get up and make it. And, towards the summit, I ended up throwing up on his skis, so might as well have given him all my food. And he gave me the last bit of his water, so that's a great example of how we were there for each other, but I wasn't the weakest link of the three of us. Yeah. Yeah. And when you say climbing, are you skinning? We were skinning at that point, there was some climbing down below, but we were skinning up at the summit. Yeah. Yeah. And then, the other one, the trip that was very, Demanding was the Everest Grand Circle because I had everything in it. we did a new route on a peak called Pomori. It means daughter peak. It's right beside Everest. No one had been climbing in the winter in the Himalaya. The reason we did that was the only time we could get permission because no one else would go then. And so we set a bunch of records doing that. And the interesting thing now when people are climbing Everest and things like that, to me, it's almost not Like it's climbing because On pomori, there are no ropes there. We design the route we put in the ice screws we need our crampons and ice axes We climbed in a style that's called alpine style whereas the common Most common way of climbing is called expedition style where you have lots of camps Across the peak and you can retreat to a camp or go up to a camp in ultimately on pomori, there are only three of us. There's no camp below us. There's no camp above us It's only what we have on our backs And there's no when people are climbing everest. There are ropes that are fixed right and they have a An instrument called a jumar and you just clip on the rope and you You know hoist yourself up, but you've got the jumar You Clipped onto the rope so that we're designing the room. we're taking our rope with us We've got to pull it up and we're gonna our lead climber Does the next pitch and everything we need is on our backs. It's a lot of heavy weight yeah, how heavy would you say about 50 pounds? Yeah And when you were doing the Grand Circle, was that a combination of skiing too? yeah, it was supposed to be a lot of skiing, but we, it ended up being mostly climbing. We barely skied much at all. We did on the Tibet side. But yeah, and you, you obviously have talked a lot about, evolution and equipment. What do you feel are the most critical elements to a successful expedition? as far as personalities, leadership, safety measures, what allows for, just a successful, safe, if such a thing exists expedition? I think a couple of the most important things are skill level and a team that really trusts each other and communicates. You hear about all these problems on expeditions and, or I don't know if you've read many mountaineering books or whatever, but there's oftentimes problems. They didn't make the summit. Someone blames something for something. I've always been on teams that have been great. And we've worked as a team and we got along. the tough thing as a woman, I always have to prove myself again and that gets tiring. I've done the same thing as my male climbing partner, but he can do something once and he's considered the mountaineer. this is a long time ago. You have to realize that this is back in the early, I started in the late seventies, early eighties on some of these expeditions. And they just, they're really, I never climbed with another woman. There weren't many that were doing what we were doing at that level. And, they just, the men, if they didn't know me or just met me, I ended up, I didn't want to, or mean to, I thought I was going out for a run. I ended up soloing the grand Teton. And if anybody out there is a climber on the Pell Petzold route, that's five, nine. I did it with my Nike running shoes with nubbies, a jog bra and tiny nylon shorts. No ropes. Five, nine moves. And that's only because we were running This was a guide working out there for ExumGuides and he wanted to see if I was worthy of climbing with him, which I didn't know at the time. We went for a run. He even, part way up the peak, there was a And he wanted to just lay down for a little snooze. So I did some stretching and then we're running and I go, Kim, this is scrambling. And he goes, ah, it's all right. It'll get better. And then it got steeper at one point when I realized what was going on, it would have been much more dangerous to downclimb, I thought, than to carry on. Yeah. and the, I don't know if you've ever been out there at the Grand, but the, on the, Where the five nine move is it's this big open space you look down thousands of feet And I didn't have a chalk bag. I didn't have climbing shoes. Oh, I wasn't Clipped into any rope and I remember looking at that and I said Kim watch me here and he goes Nothing I can do and I just had to make the move like that because if I waited at all My hands would start to get sweaty And I had to make this big grab for a hold over this chasm, thousands of feet down and make it swing my leg over. And so it's when I always remember that it's one of those times where I just went, you better make that move now, or you're not going to ever make that move. Yeah. Don't dwell on it. If you got scared and you shook, you couldn't down climb. Which to a lot of climbers now isn't anything, but back then, I didn't have climbing shoes on. I had running gummy shoes on, but, back then five nine was supposed to be as hard as it could be. It was, because then it would be six, but then it turned into five 10 and five 12 and five, have you ever been in a situation where you thought yourself? Oh boy. This is a really bad idea. Oh All the time. Today in Sterling Valley. no, I'm actually a very, the reason I'm, knock on wood here, I'm still here. I'm a very cautious person. People think, oh, you must be a daredevil. I don't like to ski fast. when you think about it, So climbing is, some people compare it to chess or whatever, but it's, you're paying attention to your moves. You can think about it. you can calculate what's going on. I'm better at being organized and being strong and figuring things out and being enduring. And so I'm not really, I think what you would call a daredevil. I get in these precarious positions, calculated though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Calculated. I've had to take my risks for sure. Trips don't go as planned all the time. No. But we You've got a plan and then you're like, okay, this is what's happening. How do we deal with this? Exactly. That's probably the Yeah. The key part of that. Yeah. And not make stupid mistakes. on an expedition, you can't let the first thing go wrong. have you ever noticed when one thing goes wrong, it snowballs. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good saying. Good one. Yeah. And so we're very careful. We're very calculated. we think about it, we try to minimize risk. Yep. Yeah. just switching gears a little bit, you do a lot of photography and writing. How did you first get into, writing photography? I was doing that in high school. I had a short story that was published and I had some photos exhibited at the Boston Center for the Arts. So I, was trying to decide do I want to go to a place like UVM and ski or do I want to go to RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology? And they probably don't have a ski team. no. they didn't then. And I just could, I'm so physical. I just said, I'll take whatever photography classes and writing classes they have at UVM. I just couldn't give it up. Yeah. And it was actually a good choice because I, If anyone wants to look up Galen Rowell, he has many books out, he's passed away since, but great mountaineer, and National Geographic photographer. So what happened was by climbing and skiing, I learned so much in the field from people like Galen, and it was Galen, Ned, and I that Did the, ski on Moustegata. and he, you can see him. It was the first selfie. millimeter camera on the summit. He took his own picture. It became famous. It's 1981, February. If you want to look up the article. It's right when I was born. it's not fake news. You can look it up. And obviously, at a certain point, you intertwined that with your expeditions, too. so that's what happened, was I just kept doing my skiing. I studied what I could at UVM, but it wasn't, they didn't have much, so I got my teaching degree. And then I started doing these expeditions and I learned in the field from all the guys I was working with because they were National Geographic photographers. I ended up doing, an article for them on my own too, about Nongpala crossing, doing a solo crossing of the Himalaya, covering the ancient salt trade route. with, yak caravans and whatnot. that was a better education for me to learn in the field, I think. And then the other side of the coin is think about how many studio photographers there would have been. And then when I'm at, 25, 000 feet and above, I don't have a lot of competition or I didn't back then. Yeah. Yeah. So my photographs are going to be used somewhere. I didn't know it was going to unfold that way, but it did work out for me. People weren't there taking notes and taking photographs except for me. So my stuff sold and then I started working for Powder and Ski and Backcountry, doing articles for them and still training. And then. what happened was I knew the statistic was, back then anyway, one in eight people don't come back from a, high profile, high altitude expedition. And I started counting up the number I'd done, and I says, my odds aren't really good right now, maybe I should take a break for a while. And that was part of why I went to biathlon racing. Just take a break, and I wanted to do biathlon, not just straight racing, because When you are rock climbing and it's very hard and there's the crux move, you are, what I noticed was you were so focused on that and maybe you've done something that the whole rest of the world falls away. You don't even, you don't feel the wind. You don't think about another person. You're just, if you've ever been in a hairy position, yeah, you're like a flow state. Yeah. it is you're dialed in and I, appreciated that high intensity focus. And I wondered if I could do that without adrenaline, without that Adrenaline saying you got to make this move or you're dead kind of thing. Yeah, and You can anyone can so I was fascinated to train my mind for shooting for accuracy And the first time I realized I had clicked into it and y'all called it the flow or whatever. It's really true time slows down because I remember I came onto the range, I cleaned all five of my targets, and I remember as I'm, that's also part of, it's not biathlon, it's really a triathlon, how fast you can get up and sling your rifle back on your back and get out. I mean that, you lose a second there, you lost the race. I remember as I'm getting up, I yelled to my coach, I may have taken forever, but I got them all and I just heard her yell you that's amazing It's fastest you've ever shot. I did it in like under 30 seconds or something, it was that's pretty fast for five shots Hit them all. Yeah, I've always been intrigued by biathlon because to me you're racing And then it's calm, right? that's the focus. That's the focus. So here's what, but you can do it. Anyone can do it, but you really have to train. It takes, it can take a long time. It can take years. I even had the perfect target. So you train your brain to see the perfect target, which is a circle with the black dot in the middle. And I got to the point and I don't mind saying this cause Anybody out there can do this, but it takes training. You have to be devoted to it. So what happens is you pull your rifle down onto the target. And when you breathe out, there's a little pause before you breathe back in. So you have your rifle, you breathe out. And in that pause, you pull your, trigger. But what happens is when you have, focused on that perfect target that as your rifles coming down, you pull the trigger before Your brain even says, pull the trigger. You surprise yourself and what happens is your brain is so trained you think of no one and nothing else and your rifles coming down and all of a sudden, bam, you pull that trigger before you even know you're going to and you breathe out and you come back down again. and your brain is so trained that when it sees that perfect target, It tells you to unconsciously almost pull that trigger before you say, pull the trigger. And that is so cool. And when you click into that, it feels like you have forever. To do it, but you actually don't yeah, and it's rare, but when you can click into that it's such a cool feeling do you still do biathlon? no, The thing is I do something and I move on. Did you then jump back into mountaineering or what did the next phase of your life look like after the biathlon? Oh, after biathlon, here I am saying, I sounded like one in eight doesn't come back. And then I went and did the most dangerous expedition of them all. We flew hot air balloons over Mount Everest and crashed, right? That was an award winning film out at Telluride and up at Banff Mountain Film Festivals. So that was pretty cool. So tell, you crashed? We did. Where'd you crash? in close to Everest. we hit a cliff, we hung, then it ripped, and we fell, we rolled, I got out from under, put out the fire, and we were fine. We were fine. Then what do you do? Walk out of there? we had open gas tanks. We had open gas tanks. Yeah. And. No champagne in the hot air balloon? we. Had it at other times, but not right then. No, but yes, you're ballooning. I've seen the Snowflake Hot Air Balloon Festival. That's my experience. Speaking of cows, that's how Champagne came to be. The Montgolfier brothers were the balloonists, the first balloonists in France. Okay. You look them up too. And, they, when they would land their balloons, They'd fall and they would crush some of the farmer's crops. So they would always fly with champagne. So when they landed on the French, the farmer's crops, they would give them champagne. Yeah, that's pretty good. And that's how champagne came to be associated with ballooning. Yeah, when the Stouffle Hot Air Balloon Festival used to fly right over my house, and they'd land in my backyard. I would always go out there and look for champagne, but they never seemed to have it for me. So you crashed into Everest on hot air balloon. Yet what was next? was it a rescue mission or, there were two balloons because we had to film each other and they were able to land on the other side of the ridge and my job was to take care of the balloonists. That's why I was in the balloon that as soon as we landed, I'm in charge and I had all the survival gear and, climbing ropes and everything to take care of them. my, my balloonists hadn't ever even camped out in the snow before. Wow. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't really think this would happen, but it did. And, at one point when you're hanging there, it's in the film. So this is true again. You can hear them going like, how are we going to get out of there? We were hanging on a cliff and I said, oh, don't worry. I can get you out of here. Cause I had the rope and I knew I could set it up and they could wrap down and get to the ground. It's so funny he goes this woman's so crazy or something like that, but it wasn't that radical But to them it seemed like it and then it ripped and it fell and when we hit They had they were worried that I wouldn't shut off the gas tanks near me if we were ever Crashing and I shut off my gas tanks, but apparently they were probably busy with the ropes and they You know Ended up getting stuck under the basket and they didn't turn them off. So we caught on fire But, no, I was under there. I showed them my parka, the whole hood of my parka was melted right out and feathers everywhere. It's a close call. Yeah, it was. And I was really glad because you're just running on reaction that when I got out, my first reaction, my hands burned a little, was to put out the fire before we blew. Yeah. Wow. What, you've got all these amazing adventures around the world, Why Stowe for you? Why have you made Stowe your home? For a lot of reasons. I grew up in Middlebury and yes, there's Nordic and Alpine skiing there, but it's just, I think better here. So we don't have to compare, but there's more here. Yeah, I can say that and, all my siblings are in the Middlebury area and I have two boys. One's in New York City. One's in Boston. it's, I'm still number six of seven kids. This is, And I also think, just reflecting on it some when people ask me, I think I'm able to travel and go to far flung places because I'm so grounded. I'm a seventh or eighth generation Vermonter. the first settler in the Middlebury area was a she and that's, Ann Story. That's why my younger son's name is Story. And, so we've been here for, seven or eight generations. How long have you been in Stowe? I know you talked about, racing. I moved here right after UVM. So when I was at UVM, we would train at Traps. Yep. And I would ride in the van with the crazy Norwegians. The guys would take me. So I trained with the guys team a lot. and, we had a blast. Norwegians are big partiers. And, yeah, that's the connection there. Yep. Yep. Yep. Very cool. If someone's looking for a big adventure in Stowe, where would you send them? I think I would go for the variety because that's the cool thing. What you can do in stow. So maybe in the spring, there's still snow on the mountain. You might skin up and get some really great spring skiing. And then you would, go for a run at. traps, and then you would throw your kayak on the car and go to the canoe access Waterbury Reservoir and paddle out for the end of the day. and maybe if there's a full moon like this, then you could even just go. One of the coolest places is watching the moon rise when you're on the, Quiet path. There's some, there's a one particular spot where they've put some benches in a, picnic table and you can watch the So I think rather than pick one giant adventure, I would pick a smattering of all these different things. Yeah. Love that. Springtime in Vermont is pretty awesome. Yeah. Especially that time when there's still snow on the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. You can still go biking. and mud season, it's when the locals have the place to themselves. Absolutely. And you can paddle, you can run, you can ski, mountain bike, and it's quiet. The coffee shop is there for you. Yeah. I took a week off from work. I think it was like one of the last weeks in April and people are like, what are you doing? The mountain's closed. I'm like, no, that's exactly why that's what took the week off. And you can skin anytime and go gravel biking and yeah, do some other stuff. And it's quiet. It is. Isn't that nice? Yeah, I do like that. we can have all these facilities and everything in Stowe because tourists come, Bring it on. I get that, but it is nice when it's just our town. Sure is. Sure is. What would you say is your hope for Stowe in the next 10 years? Because it's changed a lot. Yeah, I've watched it change. I'm old enough that I've seen plenty of changes. My hope for Stowe is, To not emulate, the larger American political set up. We are such a small town. And when I've watched things go down and people decide they're Republican or they decide they're Democrat and there are, we're so small, all we really need is to. Sit down and try and figure out what do we want, where do we want to go, and then, get a panel of a variety of views, more conservative and more liberal, and have them hash it out a little bit, not just leave it for the select board, right? The select board has so much to deal with that when there are big issues in town, which we've had some recently, Select the people that are willing to give their time, that are a complete variety of views and have them work on some of the paperwork or the ordinance or whatever it's going to be. So what I would like to see for Stowe is having us make choices as a town with a variety of views, We don't need to be divisive. We're too small to be divisive. And there's no need to be divisive. and we are small enough to be able to talk to each other. I have seen people stop talking to each other in town. Over issues. And it just was like, blows my mind. Yeah. Do you think all the development is good, bad? Yeah. Do you want to see more development, bringing more young people here? Any thoughts on that, or? I am feeling more like, what can we do to keep a lot of. Regular people who've been here a long time, people who know the area, here and living and raising families and That's disappearing and it's because it's so expensive here. it's just gonna change. I'm not dreaming thinking if someone Sells a house a little family might buy it and stow it's going to be someone with lots of cash. Yeah and that's just the way it is, so I don't have A view for stow other than You The year round residents were small enough we should talk to each other and decide what we want. I don't, I'm not going to give you any big picture of Jan's view, but what I'm deciding where it wants to go right in there, there are differing views, but I think compromise can get us where we want to go. Nobody gets what you want. nobody gets what they want, but we get what we need. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to see us be able to do that. So we're just about ready to wrap up. And we always ask our guests this question, if Stowe did not exist, where else would you live in the world? You've been a lot of places, so this may be a tough question, but not it not so tough. if I had, I'd probably be into ski town in Vermont and I, so I'd probably be in Waitsfield. There you go. We said that one. We've heard that before. Yeah, we, yeah, we heard that one before. That's awesome. my kid, my kids are still in the east. Yeah, my family's here. I want great skiing. that's awesome. I don't get all the Nordic, but there's some over there, so it's like I probably. by default might have been in Waitsfield, I, I did spend my winters for quite a while, in Vail, I only in the winter time, but it was pretty great. Yeah. so yeah, I don't think I'd, out in Colorado, you just don't get the water like you get here. Yeah. The valley is nice. The valley is a nice spot. I'm a woodchuck. There it is. Awesome. thank you so much, Jan. Yeah. I'm going to share your story. Really enjoyed it. I can't believe you listened to all my wandering stories. Amazing stories. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jan. All right. Ski you later.