E57 — Jody MacDonald - Mountain Life

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Ray Zahab does the kinds of adventures few other people would ever want to do: A 7500 km traverse of the Sahara Desert, a -40 degree winter stroll across Ellesmere Island, Death Valley, the Gobi Desert, the South Pole, Patagonia, Kamchatka, etc. etc. But Ray’s real passion is connecting youth to the sorts of amazing[…]
2025 Canadian Geographic Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Maxime Légaré-Vézina is based out of Quebec city and has been shooting photos of wildlife since about 2014, and full time since 2022. Sometimes he sits in the weather all day and waits for the perfect shot, sometimes a grizzly bear charges him. We dig into all[…]
Host Feet Banks kicks off season six of Live it Up with Mountain Life by speaking to his favourite snowboarded and medieval sword enthusiast, Jess Kimura. A celebrated badass street rider, Jess is a fearless force of positive change for her sport, founding both The Univited video series and The Univited Invitational all-women’s shred comp.[…]
Nicholas Thompson is an author and a journalist, a musician, and one of the smartest people we know. But before and beyond that, Nick is a runner. Marathons, ultramarathons, cross country, ripping around a park with a kid, running to work, rain, fog, sleet, hail. Nick is ready to hit the trail. And he has new[…]
Veronica Woodruff is an outdoor recreationalist and an environmental scientist. She’s spend more than half her life living in the mountains of BC, and her latest book, Blind Drunk: A Sober Look at Our Boozy Culture examines the unique role alcohol plays, not only in mountain culture and ski town, but in western society at large. A[…]
Taylor Godber is a professional big mountain snowboarder on the North Face team. She’s also a chef, an artist, a writer, a lover of dogs, surfer, adventurer, picnic-er, and a very kind soul. Taye was the founding editor of Mountain Life: Below Zero our annual winter publication that Covid shut down. Nowadays we see her[…]
A true adventurer, Matt is a climber, surfer, paddler, and mad-genius tinkerer/inventor/self-taught engineer who’s company Sea to Sky Cable Cam has helped him travel the world to help capture top adventure and nature stories. To mix it up, this month we also have climber/Mountain Lifer Trevor McDonald in the studio joining the conversation to chime[…]
Ben Poechman is a snowboarder and an artist and a true-grit farm kid who finds a way to make things happen with the resources he’s got. As summer winds down and we start looking at the pow days to come, Ben chimes in with his story, his ideas, and some good advice on what to[…]
Spencer Seabrooke is a an airtime master, a highliner, base jumper, a snowboarder, climber, mountaineer, jindle boarder and all-around adventure seeking kinda dude. And he knows a lot about airtime. In 2016 he was featured in the highlining documentary “Untethered” walking a then-world record highline in Squamish BC with no safety tether. He’s also known[…]
Sonnie Trotter is a climber and an author. Raised in Ontario, he started climbing as a teenager and never looked back. Over the past 25+ years Sonnie has pioneered some of the hardest routes in Canada and been on big walls all over the world with other icons of the sport. He’s climbed competitively, professionally,[…]
Stephan Kesting is on the show today. He’s an adventurer and an author (and a jui jitsu master and a firefighter) who recently paddled a canoe over 1600 km through some of the most bug infested terrain in Northern Canada…alone, on a single, transplanted kidney. And it took him 41 days, which is pretty wild[…]
Happy Holidays! We’re re-gifting this episode. Well, not really. It’s a brand new episode but, for the first time ever, we are having a guest back on the pod for round two. Frank Wolf is on the show today. It’s the Re-Wolf. Writing his own epitaph on a freezing trip in the Arctic, Frank says,[…]
Alenka Mali is a big mountain snowboarder, climber, BASE jumper, jindleboarder and general mountain sport badass. Last winter, she produced a film called “The Beginning”, which examines her unique mountain-based upbringing in Slovenia and Argentina and her quest to do the first known female snowboard BASE jump in the mountains near her home in Squamish,[…]
On September 8, 2022 everything went sideways for Charlie Adams. He had a little side hustle working as a tree surgeon. He was working on a tree in Tiny Township. It was the last tree of the day. He was 35 feet up when disaster struck. “The tree split and broke underneath me,” he recalls. “I[…]
Most anyone who’s paid attention to any ski or bike mags over the past two decades should know who Blake is. He has more than 300 covers to his credit, a photo of the year award from Powder Magazine and there’s a pretty good chance many of your favourite outdoor images were crafted by his[…]
As one of the main characters in Red Bull’s documentary The Engine Inside, Jay Bearhead has seen it all; residential schools, drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness. But it’s his rise from those lows that are inspirational. In part it was the bicycle that saved his life. And now he’s giving back; he’s teaching indigenous youth how to[…]
For the 50th episode of Live it Up with Mountain Life, host Feet Banks connects with Sandy Ward (Kelkeláokik)—snowboarder, mountain biker, filmmaker, guide to be, and a trailblazer at helping indigenous youth enjoy and reconnect to the land and their culture through sport. With a big movie about to premiere at Crankworx Whistler’s Dirt Diaries contest, Sandy[…]
The briefest history of Great Lakes surfing according to Grumpy Bob. The Wyldewood Surf Club was formed in 1965 out of Port Colbourne, Ontario and from its very beginnings was an international club with both Canadian and American members. Wyldewood Surf Club member Bob Sobering (AKA Grumpy Bob) began surfing in 1970, then picked it[…]
Mountain Gazette owner, publisher, and editor Mike Rogge is on the front lines of preserving print media and the value of an analogue experience. The Gazette is currently tallest poppy in what seems to be a fairly healthy ecostystem of magazines aimed at outdoor people who understand the power of a physical experience and who[…]
Imagine losing everything in the wilds of the Northwest Territories. That's what happened to Chris Larkin. After surviving two winters alone in the wilderness, his canoe capsized on the infamous Mountain River. Larkin lost everything except his knife, a couple matches and the clothes on his back. There were over 200 kilometres between him and[…]
They call Jazmine Lowther "the Gazelle." Not because she grazes on grasslands and can grow antlers out of her head, but because she's very fast and nimble. An all-round mountain athlete and member of the North Face team, Jazmine has recently been turning heads as an elite ultra runner, competing amongst the world's best on[…]
Feet connects with Stan Rey, a master of the goggle tan and one of the most personable professional freeskiers in the game. Always ready to joke around for videos and happy to share the stoke or his knowledge with anyone who needs it, Stan is a natural born backflipper who grew up mostly in Whistler[…]
Today's guest is legendary skier Greg Hill. Back in 2010 he was all over ski media; he climbed and skied two million vertical feet, climbing 71 mountains in both North America and South America over 266 days of ski-touring. He was the first North American to climb and ski 40,000 vertical feet in 24 hours[…]
Mercedes Nicoll has competed in 4 winter Olympics for women’s halfpipe, and seven world championships. She’s been the Canadian National Champ five times, has 8 world cup podiums, and is a shining example of what it means to love to competition and camaraderie of sport. These days she’s a coach, a writer, a public speaker,[…]
Today’s guest is an absolute legend of the freeride mountain bike world; Geoff Gulevich. This guy rode in Rampage years ago and continues to stretch out his pro riding career into something nearly every human on earth could envy; he rides bikes for a living. I definitely want to be Geoff Gulevich when I grow[…]
Katie Burrell is a comedian, writer, director, actress, and creator of numerous online videos and skits such as Influencer, Dream Job, Still Solo, Toxic Mountain Bike Girlfriend, and more. She's one of the most recognizable figures in the ski community and has broken new ground with using comedy to poke fun at, and invite people[…]
Mike Hopkins grew up in Rossland, BC where he learned to ride bikes and ski like we all wish we could. He absolutely rips. He started his career as a professional skier, then moved over to professional mountain biking. Working on the influential film Lifecycles was all the inspiration he needed to morph his career[…]
For much of his life, Michael Janyk was a professional alpine skier—a technical master banging gates on slalom and giant slalom courses around the world over a 14-year professional career that included three Olympic Games, one of them on his home turf in Whistler BC. And while saw some success (and knows what it’s like[…]
Professional adventurer, explorer and national best-selling author Adam Shoalts is an absolute beast of outdoor adventure. Making first descents down untamed rivers in the western Hudson Bay lowlands, crossing the arctic by canoe or traveling by human power from southern Ontario to the Arctic, he’s done it all. Beginning as a newspaper columnist, he’s mapped[…]
Feet Banks hosts a little bit of inside baseball on the show today because our guest is moto-adventurer, stand-up paddleboarder, author, and inventor Todd Lawson, who also happens to be one of the co-publishers of Mountain Life. Todd has visited over 80 countries, and most of the time he arrives by moto, usually with his[…]
For today’s guest we have a guy that’s spent a lifetime advocating for the environment. A legend in Canada’s paddling circles, Hap Wilson has created a life many of us would envy. Hap has been paddling Canadian Rivers for decades. He stopped counting mileage at 60,000 kilometres when he realized the numbers were pointless. He’s mapped[…]
Beat Steiner is a ski mountaineer pioneer with first descents on some of the South Coast Mountain's most iconic peaks (Tśzil & Nch'kay among them), but he's also a pioneer of early Canadian ski and snowboard filmmaking. He's the co-owner and CEO of Bella Coola Helisports, and even with all that pow to play with,[…]
The two-year anniversary episode of Live it Up features Derek Bird, the founding editor of Fly Fusion (Canada’s dopest fly fishing magazine). Derek is also a TV personality & producer, the mastermind behind the International Fly Fishing Film Festival. He joins host Feet Banks to talk fish, media, publishing, hot influencers, Artificial Intelligence, journalistic method[…]
As far as Canadian whitewater kayakers go, Benny Marr is one of its stars. According to Wikipedia he received the National Geographic Adventurer of the year in 2013. Although as you’ll hear in our chat, he’s not really aware of that. He’s completed a one day descent of the Stikine River in BC and has[…]
Snowboarder Bryce Barnes joins Feet Banks to talk about the value of sour patch kids on any mountain mission, growing up shredding in Maine, snowboarding in Morocco, and what it’s like to be on the path to become the first ever Black person to get certified with the American Mountain Guides Association. Check Bryce's instagram[…]
If you’ve seen mountain bike shots from Italy, ski shots from Switzerland or vice versa, you’ve probably seen Mattias’s work. In fact, if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s guaranteed you’ve seen some of his photos. He's probably got more cover shots than just about anyone on the planet. The guy lives, breathes and eats[…]
Whitewater guide, adventurer, and author Tamar Globerman writes with a bravery you don’t see enough of in a literary genre about people doing risky and brave things. Her latest book, Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life, is a vagabond adventure story that sees Tamar following her passion into most of North America's epic waterways, but the[…]
This week, Colin talks to SUP adventurer, photographer and filmmaker Scott Parent. Back before people were doing SUP crossings, Parent paddled across Georgian Bay; something no one had done before. It took 18 hours from stepping off land until he stepped back on land. No one has repeated that feat. He's continued to do incredible things.[…]
Award-winning filmmaker Lara Shea isn't afraid to tackle some of the rawest human emotions and situations imaginable in her work and shine a bit of light into the darker corners of the outdoor culture. Feet Banks catches up with Lara just days before her second short documentary "Star in the Sky" premieres in her hometown[…]
This week, Colin talks to Mario Rigby, a self-described explorer who simply comes up with an idea and goes for it. Whether he knows how to do it or not.Mario walked the length of Africa from south to north in 2015. He kayaked the entire length of Lake Ontario in 2020. He drove an electric[…]
A reformed couch potato, Adam Hart is the author of a book called The Power of Food—100 Essential recipes for Abundant Health and Happiness, but these days he puts most of his focus into helping people—mostly busy parents— find the flow, break bad habits, kick unhealthy behaviours, and overcome their sandbag-y mindsets in order to[…]
OG Mountain Lifer Colin Field hosts this episode of "Live it Up" and he connects with Kari Medig, a photographer and adventurer whose images of skiing, mountain biking and exploring have graced the pages of outdoor magazines around the globe; including Mountain Life. Known for capturing the ski culture in the least likely of places,[…]
Avis is an indigenous weaver, teacher, dancer, singer and a Land- Based Cultural Empowerment Facilitator who comes from a family of notable snowboarders. Her Kwakwaka'wakw name N’alaga translates to "woman of light", or "bringer of light”, and that is exactly what she does through her work, which includes introducing indigenous people to their traditional arts,[…]
There are few as significant in the freeskiing world as Glen Plake, and perhaps none as well suited to share the stoke of simply sliding around on a pair boards and having a blast. One of a handful of people who helped “save skiing” and make it cool again in the late 1980s when a[…]
Writer, adventurer Meghan J Ward takes the time to talk about her life both as an adventurer and a parent, and especially as an adventuring parent, in her new book Lights to Guide Me Home: A journey off the beaten track in life, love, adventure, and parenting. The book tracks young Meghan’s undeniable pull towards[…]
Jeremy Evans is a lifelong hunter, fisherman and outdoorsman from Alberta who ended up on the wrong end of a grizzly bear encounter back 2017. Attacked multiple times, Jeremy suffered massive injuries but managed to drag himself out of the bush—a crazy far distance— and, with the help of some incredible rescue and medical staff,[…]
Jeff Holden is one of the most iconic skiers in Whistler history. He found lines no one else would see, dropped cliffs no one else would consider. A true artist, seeker, and soul skier, Jeff took a few victories on the 1998-99 International Freeskiing circuit, won the overall championship and, with the help of one[…]
Don Schwartz is one of the most badass dudes I’ve ever met. A snowboard pioneer (overall North American Champ 1988), he's also risen to the top as a barefoot water skier and endurance racer in events like the Death Race or World's Toughest Mudder. He’s also a ski guide and a helicopter pilot, which is[…]
Sarah-Jane Dobner is an author, rock climber, part time van lifer, mom and all around lovely person to chat too. Her book, A Feeling For Rock, is a collection of stories, poems, essays, cartoons, and musings on the climbing life and on being a woman in the climbing culture. Sarah Jane rips the finger tape[…]
Siginaak Court Blackbird is the founder and Executive director of the Indigenous Life Sport Academy, an organization providing indigenous youth with access to unstructured sports like snowboarding, rock climbing, hiking and mountain biking create social change and development in indigenous communities across Canada. And also, to connect to their territories and have fun.*link to the[…]
Emma Segal is a disruptive designer by trade but she’s also an author, and artist, the master of the infographic, educator, a chef, and someone who is probably going to be hands-on involved when we figure out how to save the world. She has a new cookbook out and schools Feet on everything from aspargus-urine[…]
Jim McLennan is a fly fishing guide, instructor, television personality, and author. After a life on the water you might even call him a purist, which is awesome because he has taught thousands of people to throw flies over the years and passed along—first-hand—much of the old-school knowledge and philosophy that’s also found in his[…]
In 2005, with $20,00 earned the hard way (a car hit him whilst riding his bicycle), Robin Esrock embarked on a 23-country round the world tour with no real plan except to say yes to everything and let the wierdness lead the way. Along the way, he basically invented travel blogging (for better or for[…]
Frank Wolf is the kind of guy who just heads out there into the wild and cranks off incredible trips and adventures. Like a 171-day paddle across Canada or a ski tour across Baffin Island. He’s an author, a photographer, a filmmaker and on this episode he talks about bigfoots, lunching with a Prime Minister[…]
Tony Richardson is a big wall climber and an industrial designer who has created gear for top-of-the-game outdoor brands, as well as up and comers. He's a tinkerer and a perfectionist and sometimes he has to accept that they've already made ten thousand of the plastic clip he suddenly knows how to make better. He[…]
Lisa Lefroy has been described as the happiest person to ever ride a bike. A pioneer in the world of freeride mountain biking, Lisa's stoke for the shred and entrepreneurial spirit has brought her around the globe as an athlete, agent, and seat-of-her-pants event producer. These days she's back in the Squamish spreading the stoke[…]
Long-distance athlete Hilary Matheson says that whenever she’s out in nature shooting photos, her experience as a runner and an athlete helps her better anticipate where the raw and authentic moments are going to turn up.
Catching up with professional backcountry skier Tatum Monod to talk about hunting, fishing, baking pies, growing up in a ski shop, colour coordinated closets and her latest ski film project Passage, available now on Red Bull TV.
To celebrate the end of 2021 we're taking it back to the old school to talk ski films with legendary Canadian filmmaker Christian Begin and Heavy Hitting director Travis Tetreault. Both celebrated notable anniversaries of key films in their careers this year (25 and 20 years), and both have lots to say about the old[…]
As ski season begins, British Columbia is reeling in a state of weather-induced emergency and even the crustiest deniers are starting to talk about the real effects of the climate crisis. Ian McIntosh has long been an advocate for climate action, but he's also veteran skier with roots in racing and freeski comps, and a[…]
It's time to talk art with contemporary Indigenous artist Levi Nelson. Coming from the Lil'wat Nation in southwestern British Columbia, Levi is one of the most exciting artists in Canada right now and Feet caught up with him just before Levi took off to start his Masters degree at Columbia University in New York City.
Sarah Bulford (AKA @mountaindarlin) traded her lifetime of self-propelled adventure for an enduro dirtbike and never looked back. But with each new milestone of sucess, her social media platforms got more and more toxic. Feet Banks sits down with Mountain Life's Social Media Manager to talk braap babes, toxic masculinity, and the real value of[…]
Is there a danger in turning what you love into what you do for a living? Is the outdoor industry at risk of losing the fun in amongst all that seriousness? Not if you're Brett Tippie there isn't. Host Feet Banks sits down with the legend of two sports, who's been a professional athlete for[…]
Jon Turk earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1971 and was nominated by National Geographic as one of the Top Ten Adventurers of the Year in 2012. Between those bookends, he co-authored the first college-level environmental science textbook in North America, (plus 35 other texts) and five books about his many adventures —which include[…]
For our inaugural foray into living it up on the airwaves, Mountain Life: Coast Mountains editor Feet Banks sits down with legendary climber/alpinist Tim Emmett to talk about getting outside, getting gnarly, knowing when to pull back from a goal, and why having a kid changes the game. So sharpen those edges and grease your[…]

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