BLISTER Podcast

Dotsie Bausch is a 7-time USA Cycling National Champion, an Olympic medalist, a featured athlete in the film, The Game Changers, and the executive director of Switch4Good. We talked to Dotsie about her very unusual path to an Olympic podium; her work at Swith4Good; and what we ought to understand about dairy products and the dairy industry.

You are probably familiar with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but what do you know about the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)? NEPA is a critical piece of legislation, and each of us needs to understand what it does and why it matters so much — especially since some major changes to NEPA are being proposed that could have extremely serious environmental and human rights consequences. So to help us understand the high stakes of the changes being proposed, we spoke to Hilary Eisen, the policy director for the Winter Wildlands Alliance.

As a number of locations are beginning to relax travel restrictions and are able to welcome visitors back, we wanted to discuss some important reminders and best practices for recreating responsibly in this time of COVID. We’ve also included some important links in the show notes to this episode that you should check out to ensure that you are up-to-date on state and local ordinances. So give this a listen, and let’s all do our best to do things the right way.

In the latest installment of our Blister Book Club, we talk with the artist, Geoff McFetridge, about Jack Turner’s book, The Abstract Wild. We discuss why Geoff selected this book; why it isn’t designed to be a comfortable read; why we need to get clear on the distinction between “the wild” and “wilderness”; and why we think that every reader of BLISTER ought to read this book.

Henry Munter is a lead heli guide and the general manager of Chugach Powder Guides in Girdwood, AK, and we talk with him about making the call to shut down operations right as the heli season was in full swing; the evolution of heli skiing; decision making, memory, and some of the tools and practices Henry uses in forecasting, guiding clients, and handling all types of different aspects of the business; and we discuss environmentalism and heli skiing, and how Henry and others at CPG are thinking about those two things.

The creativity and talent on display in X Games Real Ski is always so bonkers that it can be easy to overlook all that goes into making these 90-second edits. So we talked with Real Ski 2020 winner, Jake Mageau, about what really goes into filming a successful 90-second edit; scouting and settling on locations; the insane “Mind Flip” he puts down in this edit, and more.

The ski industry has undergone rapid changes in the past several years, and we are currently in another unprecedented moment with the COVID-19 pandemic. So to help us better understand the past, present, and future of the ski industry, we talked to industry veteran and author of SKI INC, and SKI INC. 2020, Chris Diamond, about the rise of the EPIC and IKON passes; this recent era of rampant ski resort acquisitions; the state (and fate) of independent ski areas; whether COVID-19 will likely have lasting impacts on the ski industry; and more.