Racing meant a lot to my identity as a high schooler. I was on the track and cross-country teams at my rural high school, and I was never more nervous than the day of a meet. During that teenage time of figuring out who I was, being a runner was an identifier I held onto when other things in my social world shifted. Which was why I took it especially hard the season I sustained a fascia injury in my left calf muscle that left me limping. Nothing seemed worse than being unable to run.  

I think of that injury nearly 20 years later for a few reasons. My cross-country coach asked me to compete in the districts race at the end of the season, hoping I’d score some points for the team, even though I could barely walk. I lined up at the start because I was a high school girl used to doing what I was told. I finished almost dead last, was in a lot of pain when I did, and never told off my coach for treating me like an asset instead of a person.  

By the following season, I had healed and I had a new coach, one who ran marathons as a hobby. “Listen to your body,” she said to our team, which I heard as “you’re the authority on what you can and should do on the course.” It was the first time I’d considered it. The fact that I can still see her on the front lawn of the high school saying this to a circle of runners doing pre-practice stretches is proof of how perspective-shifting it was for me.  

“Listen to your body” reframed my idea of working with my body rather than against it while running, of entering into a partnership with it rather than seeing it as something to tamp into submission. I never ran a race when it didn’t feel right again. 

Since high school, I’ve continued running and racing for pleasure. I enjoy a challenge and I’m competitive. I’m able to run sustainably by respecting my knees when they say I haven’t done enough base training, not hitting the trail if I haven’t adequately fueled and hydrated, and saying no to races that don’t feel right, even if I’ve already paid for them.  

Establishing a good relationship with racing has allowed me to connect with all the other beautiful things that the sport can provide. I love the running community in Spokane, the gear shops and run clubs, and I still love picking up a few races each year. I’ve run through loneliness, frustration, anxiety, sadness and joy. I’ve run alone and with a stroller, on roads and on trails, near rivers and up mountains. Running has been a companion that has helped me through life, more partnership than punishment, and one good coach helped me see it that way long ago. 

In this issue of Out There Venture, we’ve rounded up our Race, Ride and Event Guide, a collection of the races in our region from March through October for runners, cyclists, walkers, triathletes, swimmers and paddlers. It’s an exciting list. I hope it sparks some inspiration to explore our region and the community that comes with racing and outdoor activities. And I hope you race for you. 

• Lisa Laughlin, managing editor  

The post Learning to Race for Good  appeared first on Out There Venture.

Stories connect us. That’s nothing new. But I’ve been thinking about the way stories connect us to place, specifically outdoor places, and the use of telling stories that are anchored in the natural world.  

When I’m outside, it usually starts with movement. Stories unravel as I walk with a friend on the trail, muscles at work. But stories also come to me at times of sitting: particularly around a fire (the oldest of storytelling places), or under a pine tree covered with snow, breaking for cold sandwiches after snowmobiling in the backcountry, feeling alive and alert just for existing in that remote, snow-bright place. 

Perhaps we’re at our most story-ready when we’re outside because we’re away from television and traffic, already looking to connect with something transcendent. Maybe we crave stories when we’re outside because the world feels bigger there, where the snow-muffled silence is both beautiful and hard to sit with, where we feel small on the face of a mountain. Maybe we go to these places to find stories, to sharpen the ones we know or are still discovering. To go into the wilds and come back with fresh-foraged tales.  

I have certain places that are story-anchored: an alpine lake and set of trails in the Cascades always bring up stories of past backpacking trips. If you’ve connected deeply enough with a place, I’ll bet you’ve cached the threadworks of stories there, too. I believe places can hold stories in a near-physical way, like how a familiar creek crossing or a wave of fireweed in bloom might trigger your story recall with their place-based cues. We could call these “story cairns.” Why follow them?  

The stories of the outdoors that we tell are bigger-than-us stories. They’re of-the-earth and environment stories. They’re stories that show we’re paying attention. And those stories are worth megaphoning these days. Grounding those tales on a set of skis, sleds or snowshoes makes them ring specific to our outdoors community.  

Each time we put together this magazine, we’re rounding up those stories that feel megaphone-worthy. Stories of celebration, mishaps and near-misses—all the things that amaze and surprise us when we go out into this complicated world.  

In this issue of Out There, we look back at the making of “Ski Flakes,” the regional ski videos that started at Schweitzer in the ‘90s, to consider how storytelling can both shape and preserve a culture. We share the adventure of an 89-year-old who bagged the last trail on his 100-hikes list, a story of perseverance. And, for the first time, we’ve included a handful of poems, a storytelling form that might be considered a journey in its reading.  

In each of them? A celebration of the ways you can get out there this winter in pursuit of the connections that make us human. 

• Lisa Laughlin, managing editor 

The post The Stories of Outdoor Spaces   appeared first on Out There Venture.

I’ve had a good run of fortune in my outdoor adventures, but I got the call this summer that no spouse wants to get when their partner is in an endurance race. It was the sheriff, an hour into the Ironman 70.3 Boise, telling me that my husband had crashed on the bike course. He was down hard. 

I stepped into the terrible floating space of not knowing how bad the damage was for a few moments. We were fortunate; he had an obliterated collarbone, five broken ribs, and a partially collapsed lung. His Smith MIPS helmet had saved him from head or spine trauma. When I met him at the ER, two young kids in tow, he was smiling above a neck brace.  

The experience brought up a lot of thoughts for me about the risks and rewards that define the outdoor pursuits we love. Even when we’re trained, and competent, and are having a great day, accidents happen. It’s a risk we accept in varying degrees of awareness whenever we set out on the trail. 

Whether or not that risk is worth it is up to every athlete to decide (and a good conversation to have with one’s family). But what shone through for my family during this incident was the incredible humanity at the edges of the accident. When my husband crashed, an athlete behind him stopped her race to call 911. She held his hand until the paramedics came. Two spectators stepped onto the course to flag oncoming cyclists, who were bombing down Lucky Peak around the crash site. One of them put his jacket over my husband, who was shivering with shock. I wish I could reach across time and space to say thank you to those people who stepped in without hesitation to help.  

That community — call it the cycling community, the Ironman community, or our greater humanity — is what was left glimmering as we waded through the days of post-accident surgery, the long drive back to Spokane, and the rearranging of our life as my husband started healing. We were filled with gratitude. 

Are endurance sports and their unique communities worth the risks we take? In part, that’s the wrong question. The risks and rewards are tightly braided. Together, they make a complex strand that’s something we hold onto. A reason for living. Hard to parse.  

My husband is already shopping for another helmet, another triathlon suit, and eyeing his next Ironman race. And I’m surprised at how okay I am with that. While I’ll still spend a lot of time analyzing that risk-reward strand, I can see how the community is a lifeline.  

This issue of Out There Venture covers all sorts of fall adventures and ways to get out in our region doing the things you love. But at the core of all that content is how to connect with this outdoors community. With people who adventure to live, who share stories and gear recommendations, who work together to protect our public lands and waterways. My hope is that you find a way to lean in, find a shared love, and do some good with it. I think that’s part of what all this adventuring is about.  

Lisa Laughlin, managing editor   

The post A Crash Lesson in Community  appeared first on Out There Venture.

Recently, I was on a training run on the Centennial Trail with my two kids tucked into a double stroller. It was a Sunday, the trail buzzing with runners, walkers, dogs and cyclists, and I’d had an overwhelming week. The river tumbled like fraying ribbon below, ospreys floated in tight circles above, and my breath came hard as I pushed my bike-trailer-made-stroller and its extra 70 pounds along the concrete.  

Shortly after passing a high-perched osprey nest, I realized the mileage I needed would include running down Doomsday hill, an inclined section of the Centennial that has gained notoriety from the Bloomsday course. I didn’t know this when I headed west from Kendall Yards, because specifics like trail topography are at the back of my mental load when packing two kids for a stroller run. Whatever. I pushed the stroller around the corner that would dip down Pettet Drive and pounded down the hill, weight on my heels.  

On my way back up Doomsday, I crossed paths with a runner on her way down, which I was happy about so that someone might bear witness to the stupidly stubborn feat I was pulling. She shouted “Impressive!” and I was glad about that too, lifting my hand from the stroller bar long enough to give her a wave of gratitude.  

The truth was that running with a double stroller up Doomsday had been the easiest part of my week. A family member had had an unexpected medical emergency, my husband had been sent to Chicago for work, and I was operating on sleep interrupted by long hours of cradling my daughter while her fever raged during an ear infection. The truth was that running up that hill was not as hard as motherhood. Hauling ass with a heavy stroller was something I could control.  

Everyone has a week like that. Or a month. Or a year. But people don’t say “Impressive!” just for making it through the day.  

In that five-second exchange, what that other runner had really said to me was “I see you,” which was not something we say often enough to our fellow humans these days. 

Calves burning with catharsis, I made the top of Doomsday hill. I pushed the stroller back past the ospreys, still circling. I arrived in Kendall Yards sweaty and red-faced, walked the stroller back to the car, and fell into the familiar pattern of buckle, carry, break down, buckle.  

Later, I thought about how other people on the trail that day might have been there to escape life’s stressors. How we turned to the outdoors for neutral space, a place to process, a place to refresh. How a small acknowledgement in that space could resonate as a large kindness. 

What I’d like to say leading into summer, a time when our trails are most packed, is to remember the impact of a five-second wave, a head nod, shakas, a thumbs-up, or whatever gesture you might convey when you’re sweating like hell and breathing worse. It can matter a whole lot to someone when you say I see you. I’m here too. We’re on this trail together, and that’s as good a metaphor as any. 

• Lisa Laughlin, managing editor 

The post The Five-Second Trail Wave  appeared first on Out There Venture.

Most days when I wake up, I spend a few quiet minutes with my coffee gazing out on our cramped urban backyard. Out of habit, I scan the small patch of grass our dog and her archnemeses, our resident pack of taunting squirrels, seem hell-bent on destroying. My eyes drift to the garden and flower beds and along the bright, tropical scene painted on the concrete wall that holds back our neighbor’s ancient arborvitaes. Lastly, I inspect the sagging, faded back fence boards still draped with last summer’s hops, the flimsy border between this serene scene and the often sketchy alley on the other side.  

This morning ritual is all auto-pilot, a subconscious searching for change. Maybe the squirrels have gone on a hole-excavating rampage, or the frost that glazed the rose bushes the morning before now glistens with dew. What is different that requires attention? Is the fence closer to collapse, giving the neighborhood’s roaming pit bulls and alley wanderers access to our cultivated space? Change, whether it’s just outside my door or elsewhere in life, is sometimes imperceptible and slow in the moment, but always inevitable and largely out of our control.  

Like our favorite places throughout the Inland Northwest as winter transitions to spring—including my own backyard, where young flower shoots now grow where snow piles lay just weeks before—a lot has shifted for Shallan and me as publishers since last year’s first spring flowers bloomed. We started another business, and we continued to invest time and resources into Out There’s digital presence and our Great Outdoors Expo event. Together, over time, every new thing and every little change slowly beget the realization that all good things come with a catch: more time at computers cranking out work meant less time outside doing the things that inspired us down this path in the first place. 

This magazine you’re holding in your hands has gone through a lot of changes in the last 20 years. For the first half of its life, it was known as “Out There Monthly” because a new issue came out, as the name implied, every month. Over the years, we shifted the publishing schedule to adapt to the times, the pandemic, and our changing lives. In the midst of an ultra-workathon in recent months, views of our backyard were often my most intimate connection with the outdoors on a given week, and that’s something that needs to change. 

This issue is another benchmark in the evolution of Out There: it is the first iteration of the magazine as a seasonal, quarterly print publication. We are excited to condense the creative efforts of all who make each issue possible into four larger magazines, with each one themed to the season. Outdoor adventure here in the Inland NW is defined by the seasons, and shifting Out There to a seasonal print schedule is also a better fit with that reality. The bonus for us, we hope, will mean less time processing pixels and pounding keyboards and more time out there in the sun and snow.  

Enjoy this three-month Spring Issue of Out There, our largest spring issue ever. We’ve included plenty of spring skiing events at our local resorts for those still making the most out of every snowflake, a collection of spring travel and hiking adventures around the region, and pretty much everything in-between that makes our outdoor-adventuring hearts beat this time of year, from snowshoeing to conservation efforts to biking everywhere we can.  

As we move forward as a quarterly print publication, we also hope you’ll engage with Out There in other ways. Sign up for our weekly emails full of trip ideas and event reminders at Outthereoutdoors.com/adventure-email and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, and other platforms. And if you love this free magazine, support the amazing advertisers that have made it possible for the last two decades. Finally, consider signing up as an Out There Member on our website as a way to support the magazine and score some pretty sweet deals from our advertisers. You’ll get an invite to our annual fall party too. Spring is in the air, and whatever adventures you head out on, take a copy of Out There with you to share the love of the outdoors with someone new.  

—Derrick Knowles, Editor  

The post A Season of Change   appeared first on Out There Venture.

I’m just going to say it: winter sucks if you’re not into snowsports. I can only wax poetical for a short time on the watercolor-like afternoons that follow fresh snow before I’m pining for spring trails and garden boxes. I’ve spent whole winters trying to be patient; this winter I’m trying skiing.  

Finding a hack for joy during winter is essential in our region. Last winter, for me, it was bread. And I know I’m late to that party. To get through last January, I asked two of my friends to put me through sourdough bootcamp. We spent a foggy morning discussing water and flour ratios, the magic of proofing, and how to shape a loaf of bread. It sent me down a rabbit hole (what else was a trail runner to do who didn’t ski?) and I studied the fundamentals of bread, baking two loaves a week just to nail the basics. My brain was on fire. It felt so good to learn something new in the dead of winter that it seemed like cheating the hardest season I knew.  

So. The skiing. My winter hack with bread felt so good that I threw myself into ski lessons this past December. This felt equivalent to what I’ve seen of my toddler learning to walk. But, with great instruction from 49 Degrees North, I made progress. After each lesson, I buzzed from the input, trying to memorize the way my legs and feet moved in skis to make a parallel turn as I drove away from the mountain. I don’t know if the love of the sport has taken hold yet, but it’s brought that same thrill of learning that helped me survive last winter.  

Learning new things goes hand in hand with capacity. And there will be an ebb and flow to that capacity. Some winter days, I still hibernate indoors, trying to ignore that it’s dark before dinner. It seems so much easier to pursue new things in summer, with its long light and abundant vitamins and vegetables. Though it may require headlamps, puffy layers, and grit, going after something new in winter can bring the same feel-good hit.  

January is Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month, and, with a fresh year ahead of us, it’s a great time to get out there and do something different to pass your winter days. (See our Out There Snow section for inspiration). If you’re a skier, try a snowboarding or telemark ski lesson. A snowboarder, try skis. I know that may border on blasphemy for some, but putting your feet in new bindings might just turn your mind in a refreshing way, the most invigorating thing I can think of during the dark, wet days of the season.  

There are many ideas for new pursuits in this issue: find a sauna, take an aerial class, or glide behind a team of sled dogs around Priest Lake. Set camp at a winter campground and enjoy the sights and sounds of the less-common camping season. Make a twist on s’mores at your next outdoor bonfire, read up on lost apple cultivars, or trick out your bike for winter riding and go quest for local coffee. Or give yourself time and space to learn about the trickiest of subjects, yourself, and consider your relationship to the wilderness around you.  

This list isn’t to promote busyness (our culture does a great job of that on its own), but rather the many small ways that learning and newness can be worked into your current life and hobbies. No matter how late to the party you may be, it’s better than not showing up. Happy year of new.  

The post A Season for New Things   appeared first on Out There Venture.

When my friend climbed into the fridge and shut the door, my instincts told me not to follow him. But we were at MEOW WOLF in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a larger-than-life immersive art exhibit known as “The House of Eternal Return,” and I was just learning how to bypass my brain’s presets. 

If you have never heard of MEOW WOLF, it’s worth a google. In this riot of walk-through art that spans over 70 rooms, guests interact with a (mostly) normal-looking house in surprising ways: the fireplace is a tunnel, secret passages await in the closet, and the washing machine is a swirling, galactic slide into a glowing forest that connects manifestations from a glitch in the multiverse. 

I’ll admit that I felt lost at first. There was no set path at MEOW WOLF. I had to shift my mentality to freely explore, and it felt as physical as any other muscle movement; we so rarely have permission to move about undirected in life. Soon, though, I became high on the thrill of discovering what was behind that door, and the next door, and the one after that. And inside the fridge.  

It wasn’t until later I realized I had experienced that high of exploration somewhere else: the backcountry wilderness of the mountains. I can’t think of two more disparate places to compare, but something kept nagging at me that there was a similarity, and my experience in both places was dopamine-producing in a way I wanted to understand.  

Two weeks before MEOW WOLF, I had been poking around the edge of an alpine lake in the Cascades (at 7,000-foot elevation, just like Santa Fe). When the trail had ended at the lake, I again had to make the mental switch from following to freely exploring. Then I scrambled up large boulders around the lake, picking my path freely and in a reactionary way. Each step brought a new perspective into view. And it was invigorating. I imagined the thrill of staying there weeks, of discovering what was over the next ridge, and the next, and the one after that.  

In both the mountains and MEOW WOLF, I reached a mental state of flow paired with movement. “Flow” is when your action and consciousness melt together, when you’re fully immersed, absorbed, and enjoying the heck out of yourself. Flow is when we lose track of our sense of time. 

My experience at MEOW WOLF made me realize that we have an incredible opportunity to find that headspace when we set foot in nature. Maybe it’s carving your own path down a ski run. Maybe it’s finding a Dark Sky preserve and losing sense of your body under all those stars. Maybe it’s ditching your Garmin or other wrist tech and focusing on each footfall, the terrain, your beating heart.  

Flow is individualized. Give yourself permission to explore off the beaten path (safely and respectfully), and its likely you’ll feel your focus shift to the present movement. Part of the mission of this magazine is to break down access barriers by giving you the how-tos and where-to-gos, so you can get out there and create your own adventure.  

The activities I mention (minus MEOW WOLF) appear in this issue, where we celebrate the late fall recreation opportunities in our region and look forward to the coming season of snow. Whether you’re picking your way through a basalt canyon, telemark skiing, or fat biking across Spokane’s South Hill through a snowy wonderland, I hope you’re able to switch your brain into true “exploration” mode. It’s a state of mind worth cultivating. 

—Lisa Laughlin, Managing Editor 

The post Find Your Flow   appeared first on Out There Venture.

The first time I saw a grouse in the backcountry, I thought it was a chicken.  

It’s just one of many backpacking stories that have solidified in our family’s repertoire of stories from the mountains. Though I’d tried to maintain a cool composure as my father threw out new words on my first-ever backpacking hike—“witch’s beard” moss, tamarack, Indian Paintbrush—the truth was that my head was swirling with the newness of it all, the alpine country leaving me awe-struck in addition to aching from my first time carrying a pack.  

Spotting something as familiar as a chicken at that altitude in the Cascades seemed like a gem. Dad, look, it’s a chicken! I’d exclaimed, happy to know something for certain after I’d been spinning from all I didn’t know in that place. That’s a grouse, my dad corrected, amused, when he caught a glimpse of the fat, brown bird disappearing into the brush. And it tastes great with butter.  

I was 18 at the time, embarrassed by my misidentification. I’ve been on many backpacking treks since then, picking up new words each time that belong to the ecosystem of those hills. Scree. Quartz. Cutthroat Trout. What rings true to me now about the grouse story my dad likes to tell is that you can’t really get to know a place until you have the language for it.  

This month, I learned some of the language surrounding the Spokane River.  When I first moved to Spokane, I became enamored with the river. I stumbled more than once while trail running for staring at its color and flow. But I knew this was a surface-level love; I did not yet have the language of this new place I was starting to call home.  

To start collecting those words, I took my first whitewater rafting trip on the Spokane. I interviewed folks from the Spokane Riverkeeper, local tribes, and conservation groups. I intentionally added to my lexicon: Redband Trout, Strainers, Treaty rights. PCBs, Discharge Permits, River Flow.  

The theme for this issue of Out There is both backcountry and lakes, or the many waterways we have in the Inland Northwest that you might enjoy when the heat of July and August strikes. Read on about wing foiling, horseback riding, and our favorite swimming holes. Peruse my feature on the Spokane River. It’s all in service of this: this summer, try new things. Talk to goshawks. Learn to fly fish. While you do, think about how each experience is adding to your language and appreciation of this place.  

—Lisa Laughlin, Managing Editor  

The post Learning the Lexicon of the Places We Love  appeared first on Out There Venture.

As we wended our way through recent burn-out, crested to the lake, and set camp alongside the July mosquitos and mayflies, the relief that night would bring was on my mind. We shared a two-person tent, zipped in early to do crosswords, and set the alarms on our phones for midnight.

On past backpacking trips, our exhaustion from hiking had outweighed leaving the tent; the alarm would go off and we’d each agree that stars were stars, and that we should stay in our sleeping bags. But on this hike—damn our midnight selves—we were going to get out of the tent to look at the sky.

It felt more important, perhaps to me, because I saw my brother less often now that we were adults. Because it was the only backpacking trip we would make that summer. Because I expected the wilderness to provide a more transcendental experience than the suburbs.

When our stargazing alarm went off, we donned beanies and coats and stumbled out into the mild July night. We were at 8,000 feet, the sky was clear, and the stars were . . . underwhelming. I thought I could see the Milky Way, if I squinted.

Determined to make an experience of it, I went muddling around camp to find a prop for my phone to take photos of the night sky. I reached for what I believed to be a chunky piece of wood, possibly a good length of pine bark, picked the item up, and then dropped it, immediately, in horror. It took my midnight brain a moment to process: I had just picked up a human turd.

In dream-like disbelief, I returned to where my brother stood and tried to laugh it off as he laughed long and heartily like any brother would at such cosmic, comic misfortune. I tried to forget about the turd. I tried to forget that I did not bring hand sanitizer into the mountains. I took a photo of the Big Dipper, the way it tipped precariously between the summer larches, and compared star photos with my brother. I crawled back into my sleeping bag and tried to go to sleep. But damn if that turd didn’t haunt me and become the most memorable part of my hike. It was seared into the brain-space that I had expected to fill with stars.

I never intended to tell another living soul that I picked up human feces in a beautiful place in the Cascades. In truth, the experience stayed with me and provoked a different sort of wonder: at the impact we humans leave on these wild, distant places, not to mention the close places, and how we might reckon with travel when we expect to find something pure or enlightening and are met with something ugly or unexpected instead.

I still consider stargazing a worthwhile pursuit, which is to say, it will always be worthy to seek a sense of wonder. Chart the constellations; put the next meteor shower in your calendar. Look up, look outward, and look outside of yourself. And maybe prepare for a let-down, since these places we seek are not immune to the everyday pitfalls and waste that life creates. (Though I hope your let-down will look different than mine.)

In this issue, we’ve included a feature on summer stargazing and the many ways you might learn about the stars in our region: from visiting the planetarium at SFCC to using apps that can tell you which stars you’re looking at. We’ve compiled a list of local night hikes and camping spots that are great for one-night stays to catch the stars. Learn what to bring, where to go, and how to judge your light pollution.

I’ll still set my alarm to look at the stars the next time I’m in the backcountry. I feel the experience can only go up from here, after all.

• Lisa Laughlin, Managing Editor

The post An Enlightening Backcountry Encounter appeared first on Out There Venture.