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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 830: Is the Adventure Worth It? | Devon O'Neil, The Way Out
00:57:21
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- [00:01]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
This episode is sponsored by Fora Travel. I've always been the person people come to for travel advice, whether it's planning a camping trip in Northern Michigan, figuring out how to travel well with kids across the country, or finding experiences that actually help families connect instead of just filling an itinerary. I genuinely have loved helping people create meaningful adventures. And I know a lot of you listening are probably that person, too. The friend who plans the trip, the one who researches the details. The one person people trust to find the hidden gems and make everything run smoothly. I FORA is built for people exactly like that. Fora is a modern travel agency that helps people build their own travel business, no matter what stage of life they're in. You don't need prior experience because Fora gives you the training, technology, and support to help you get started. And you're joining a community of people who are building businesses centered around experiences, relationships, and helping others travel well. A lot of advisors begin simply by helping people they already know and grow naturally from there. What I also appreciate is that there are no sales quotas or minimums. You can build this at a pace that works for your life and your family. Your next act starts here. Become a for adviser today at foratravel.com 1000hours. That's F O R A travel.com 1000hours. And make sure you tell them we sent you for travel.com 1000hours.
- [01:16]
Jenny Urt
Welcome to the 1000hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urt. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have just read a page turner of a book and also been exposed to a different kind of writing that I wasn't, I didn't really know existed, which is about adventure and sometimes when adventure goes wrong and in the heightened emotions and these incredible athletes and how they survive. And so it's just been a fantastic read. This book I read is called the Way Out A True Story of Survival in the Heart of the Rockies. It is up for an award, the Reading the West Award. This is a true story of survival in the heart of the Rockies. Author of this book and an incredible amount of articles, Devin o'. Neal. Welcome.
- [02:00]
Devin O'Neill
Thanks so much for having me, Jenny. It's a pleasure.
- [02:03]
Jenny Urt
Okay, so you're going to have to give us a story here on how you got interested in writing all of these types of articles. So the book is a survival story. A survival story about backcountry skiing, which I didn't know much about and I learned about in your book in Colorado, but like a town, like everyone's known of, heard of Vail, but this is in a town called Salita. And then you. Okay, I knew I was gonna say it wrong. So Salida. But then you have all sorts of articles that you've written over the years. Like I read one about a girl named, I think Danielle Danelle Balanji. Yeah, Danelle. So I read that one that was on your website. Devon O'neill.com. how did you get interested in writing about these types of situations?
- [02:46]
Devin O'Neill
You know, kind of by happenstance is always how it, how it occurs. But I had gone to college in Vermont and played a couple of sports in college and out here with my twin brother, we stopped in Breckenridge, Colorado for one night in 2002 and it's now been 24 years. I've never left. I just fell in love with it. We grew up on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands and our grandfather was in the 10th Mountain Division, which was the World War II ski troopers. And they trained in Colorado in the heart of the Rockies as it were. And you know, he died before we were born so we never got to, to meet him. But he helped to pioneer this life, this mountain life. And we just fell in love with it when we stopped here and got exposed to it. And so I live at 10,200ft and I started, I started writing for the local newspaper because I wanted to stay involved with sports somehow, but also use my brain in a way that was, you know, more than just playing those sports. And so I started writing for the local newspaper which was a daily for free at first and then they paid me $25 per story. And then I became the sports editor of that paper eventually as well as another paper and really just, just kind of like soaked it all in. How do you do it? How do you report? I mean, I distinctly remember the first story I ever wrote was about a JV girls basketball game and my knees were shaking. Here I am, this 22 year old college athlete fresh out of college and I'm shaking, Talking to a 15 year old girl about her jump shot. But it made me realize that I loved the intellectual draw of writing about this stuff and sports and it's broadened into now all kinds of stuff that's far beyond just sports writing. But that became the entry point. And I later became a staff writer for ESPN.com covering adventure sports and Olympic sports and X Games stuff and then kind of gravitated toward Outside magazine, was a long time correspondent for them as well. And you know, there are just these topics Here, I mean, it's, it's really cool. We get world class sports coming to the mountain towns around where I live, World cup ski racing, all that kind of stuff. And, and yet also there's just culture and it's like, why do people live this life? That's become a big part of what I do is trying to explain that. And I've fallen in love with this mountain life, but it's not easily understood. So there was a big component of that as well in the book that you just read.
- [05:28]
Jenny Urt
Right. Because if you're sort of an everyday person who. I've never skied, I've never downhill skied, and now I'm in my 40s and I know people who have gotten injured, not horribly, but like, then they have to have surgery. And so I'm like, oh yeah, I'm not even gonna try it. That's how risk averse I am. But we live in Michigan, so it is something that people do. You know, they do this in the winter and it's a, it's a fun thing. I've tried cross country once or twice, but that's it. And that's so different. So you read these, this book of yours or go through these different articles and it is something that you think about if you're a person that's not steeped in, in it. Well, what if, you know, that seems very risky. And so what I got from your book, and we're going to talk about the beginning of it, not the ending of it, people can read it and find out what happens. But you get the sense that there are these brushes with death, these brushes with tragedy, but they're not really all that common. Given the amount of time someone's doing a whitewater rafting trip down this stretch of river, or given the amount of times that they're back country skiing where there's no trails, you just go, you know, so can you talk about that sort of heart of the adventurer and you bring it up in this book where, you know, you say, okay, there's a couple of things you talk about. They contain. Every adventurer harbors a certain impulsiveness, a zest to leave comfortable confines for uncertain ones, where danger and ecstasy coexist. Without it, the reasons not to venture out can easily overwhelm the yearn to go. So I would, I would be like on the other end of it where I'm like, I don't want to have surgery on my shoulder, so I'm just going to skip out. But there is this whole cohort of People that are like, I'm here for the adventure and so I'm going to do it. Even though there's risks.
- [07:16]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah. And you know, it's, there's a whole part of this book late, late in it about is the adventure worth it? And this gets, at your point, it's like you can't, you don't know unless you go. That's kind of one of the sayings of like, is this no good? Is it going to be worth suffering up a mountain for four hours to ski it? And you don't know unless you go. And that's kind of like the bottom line for any of these. And as you point out, bad outcomes are, are really rare, but they happen. And when they happen, they devastate families, people, communities. They leave this trail, this kind of aftermath of pain in their wake. And when you've been through that, then certainly you question, I mean, this book has both a miracle and a tragedy involved in the outcome of the ski trip at the center of it. And, you know, how do you parse that? How do you like, make your decisions? And in general, I've written an essay called what It Takes and why It's Worth It. And I firmly believe that going is worth it because you get this like amazingly alive feeling and you get to know yourself better and you do have to go through some hard stuff sometimes and maybe kind of then make sense of a close call if you're lucky to get through kind of a dangerous moment. But it delivers so much, like a real huge degree of fulfillment just comes from, for me, for being, from being outside. And of course, I know that that's a big part of your angle on life as well, is spending time outside. And so without giving away too much, you know, I went through a really close call. We triggered a massive avalanche. We're very lucky to survive. That's in this book. But in the aftermath of that, I realized like, I didn't need the thrill, I wanted the thrill. And I still want the thrill. I mean, I'm looking outside my office right now at freshly fallen Snow and this 13,000 foot peak that I gape at, and it's just like tugging at me to go ski it right now. But the thrill comes with the risk. And what I needed, I realized, was to just be out there and have my kind of daily moment of Zen in a big landscape and then I can come back and feel balanced and fulfilled and, you know, I can tackle and be productive with the rest of my day as well. As, as a dad, I have seven and 11 year old sons and you know, they don't need me to be chasing thrills, they just need me here. And when you chase thrills, you then you do put yourself at risk. And the hut trip, as it were. This, this group of families had gone to this backcountry cabin to go skiing in 2017, which is at the center of this book. You know, they, this was a benign adventure. They were not skiing perilously steep slopes. They weren't trying to go do the biggest, hardest thing. It happened on a very daily outing for them. They intended to be gone for 30 minutes from this hut, this forest ranger and the 15 year old boy that he's with. And I'm sure we'll get into that. But you know, ultimately, yes, there is a sliding scale of danger and risk that you kind of undertake or have to like accept when you go do bigger and badder things. But you can also just be outside. I mean like to your point, in your whole mantra, like my boys, their happiest times are when they're out like digging a hole in our backyard and that's it. And we just let them dig holes and make a pile of dirt and then they create their own little society. That's all they need. They don't need structure. They don't need to be going and backcountry skiing something steep. We now, although take them to some of these backcountry cabins that we go to and like they get to see some of this life much more so than a lot of their peers. But they don't need it, you know, really, they just need to be outside, like doing the fun stuff in the dirt as boys.
- [11:21]
Jenny Urt
Yeah, but you know, so you talk about then as you get older, there are these thrilling things out there that you can start to do, you know, as the sort of hole digging maybe
- [11:31]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
loses its luster a little bit.
- [11:33]
Jenny Urt
And you have to decide, is the adventure worth it? And so you had a sentence in here where you talked about, everyone traded their near miss tales. And occasionally there was one, you know, you talked about someone who never made it to shore on a whitewater rafting trip. But then sometimes you would explain, look, that person probably shouldn't have been doing that because the water level was higher and that person didn't have enough experience. And so they're, they're making these sort of snap judgments. And occasionally you make the wrong one. And then occasionally. One of the articles I read about, about Danelle was where she just slipped on some black ice. I mean, it was just A random thing. And you know, her story of survival. So let's talk a little bit about Salida. That's how you say it.
- [12:18]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
Okay.
- [12:19]
Jenny Urt
And just let's talk about, before we get into the story of it, this world that's out there that you may not know. So we've been to Colorado once, one time, one for Michigan. And I was doing a little speaking thing and I brought my daughter and we were like, oh, well, we're there for one night and then one morning till noon, then we had to get back on the plane. So we were like, oh, there's a three mile hike at the Rocky Mountain national park, three miles out to this lake. We're like, oh, no big deal. You know, how long does 3 miles take? An hour, you know, tops. But. But then it turned out that it was way harder and it was all this elevation. We had to put things on our shoes. And I had brought so much stuff because I was like, what if there's an avalanche? I don't know anything about avalanches. So, like, my backpack was super heavy. I ended up. My daughter had to carry it because it was so much elevation. But while we were there, Devin, we saw these people that were hiking up the same mountain that. I mean, I was having a hard time just in my shoes, in skis. And I was like, what? What are they doing? Like, they're hiking up. So then I asked, I was like, what are you doing? Why are you hiking up this mountain in skis? They're like, we're going to go a thousand feet higher than where we had gone and they were just going to ski down it. And I was like, like, how do you know if there's like a cliff edge or. I mean, I was blown away. So can you talk about Salida? There's all sorts of things to do there. There's whitewater rafting and there is backcountry skiing, and there's all these huts that you can go stay at. You say in the winter you moonlight as a hut master. There's this network of cabins that you could go stay at and then just ski. Not like on a resort mountain where you just kind of go the. But you kind of can just go anywhere.
- [14:07]
Devin O'Neill
So it's a form of freedom, you know, all of. All of that that you just said. And we're surrounded by public land. And, you know, I didn't grasp. I thought the magic was in the towns. All of these cool little mountain funky towns in Colorado and other states around the west, and they're in the up and they're all over the place. Right. But truly what I came to realize once I became more immersed in this life is the bounty is what surrounds them of public land. And you can use that land. It belongs to all of us. So you can use that land any way you want. And it took me a little bit to kind of get the right mentors to show me how this works. But backcountry skiing is a form of freedom. You can put climbing skins on the bottom of your skis, and you can then ascend a huge mountain on your own.
- [14:59]
Jenny Urt
Can you explain what that is?
- [15:01]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah. A climbing skin is basically faux animal hair that it has a sticky side that sticks to the bottom of your skin, and then the side that interacts with the snow is like faux animal hair. So it's, it's like a blade of grass. It's really smooth going up, but then it, it has. There's a lot of friction that grips the snow so you don't slide backward on a steeper slope, you know, so you can just use it to walk up the mountain, basically. And it's, it's awesome. And then you strip them when you get to the top of your objective, whether you're trying to summit the peak or just go up to the top of a ski run that has good skiing and good snow and awesomeness, but you take the climbing skins off and then your skis are just normal skis. And you lock your bindings in because they're able to pivot to move uphill. And then you lock them in so you're actually skiing on like a fixed binding coming down. And that allows you to view every mountain as one that you can go ski. And so I'm like sitting again at the base of. I'm surrounded by a bunch of national forest land and, and some 13 and 14,000 foot mountains right above our house. And we can go just ski them. And we don't have to go to a resort because resorts can get crowded. And it just affords you this like, freedom to use the landscape in a new way. And with Salida. Salida is a very unique town. It is an amazingly tight knit community. A, it's an 1800s railroad town, mining, ranching. You know, it was not a recreational mecca until like the 70s and 80s when people started discovering the bounty of options that exist. I mean, the Arkansas river goes right through downtown Salida. And that is the most whitewater rafted river in America. It is surrounded by 13 and 13,000 and 14,000 foot mountains. It has a beautiful trail Network of single track trails that you can walk a hike, you can, you know, run, mountain bike, all kinds of ways you can use that stuff. And, and it's just a really cool community of people. It's like 57 Chevy. Cool. There's an irreverence to it. These people landed there not because it was, you know, famous Aspen Vale esque or even Breckenridge, which is more or less where I live, but because it was funky and off the beaten path and like, it was a little like gritty, you know, it had, I don't know, like old toilets in the yards and like, there wasn't a sheen to it. And it, it was attractive to people for that reason. And so this kind of community found it all a little randomly, word of mouth, but they settled there. And it's, it's about 5,000 people now and growing because it's kind of been discovered. But it, yeah, it's like, you'll see bumper stickers around town that say, like, keeps a light a ghetto and cool Tesla, bro. You know, just like raft guides matter, you know, these bumper stickers speak to the culture and it's a beautiful place, but the people there, it's laid out in a grid because it was, that was how it was plotted back in the 1800s. And so everybody lived right next door to each other when they were growing up as young adults and finding themselves and all the people in this book at least, and, and it led to a really cool community. So I tried to touch on that, tried not to force it down a reader's throat, but try to help maybe an uninitiated reader understand, like, why someone would settle there and make a life
- [18:31]
Jenny Urt
and why someone would risk their own life to go help someone who's lost and they've got their own small kids at home.
- [18:40]
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- [22:37]
Jenny Urt
So there was a, there was that focus on community. So their main character in this story, which is a true story, is named Brett, Brett Beasley. And so you're telling his story on this ski trip and then a young man named Cole and you know there's, they get lost, you know, out in the snow and there is this thing called an atmospheric river. There's like a bad storm that comes in and they, they didn't know that it was going to be coming in. And then when they go to try and find them, they, you know, it's like this person called that person and this person and they all know Brett. And so of course they're all going to drop what they're doing and you'll say like they had a three year old at home and a six month old, you know, they're going to head out into this storm to try and help. So you, you get the sense also of this tight knit community, how they've all adventured together and they all, they all know each other really well. So there was that part too. So this is Salida. You get a good sense of the town through reading the book. Can we talk about the, the part about being prepared. So this is another part that comes up in the book, like when I, you're going to think this is so ridiculous. So when we did this hike, this one hike, and I can't even remember what the river was called. It was like, not the most amazing destination. We thought it was going to be really cool. But like, I had packed like canned goods and blankets for this three mile hike and then I could like hardly walk. My daughter, she was like, I don't know, 14 or 15 years old, she was like, do you need me to. Do you need to switch backpacks? I got a canned soup in there and all this stuff. What I needed was like an oxygen thing because it's harder to breathe up there. So anyways, I was trying to catch my breath. But one of the things that's talked about in the book is preparedness. And in this case, case, Brett, who normally preached preparedness because he worked, he worked in the area and there's all sorts of things. I didn't even know that there were airbag backpacks to keep you on top of an avalanche. And then you talk in the book, like, have some. Have a bag of Fritos and a lighter, you know, can you talk about that part of it?
- [24:44]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah.
- [24:45]
Jenny Urt
He thought it was just going to be like a. It was an easy spot to ski. I've got so many notes here, it's actually messing me up.
- [24:54]
Devin O'Neill
Oh, no, you're fine. I appreciate you taking notes and knowing this much and remembering it all from the book. But ultimately, yeah, this was a family ski trip. It was designed as that. And so there were three dads, four teenage kids. They went up to this cabin at 11,300ft intending, you know, and the organizer, the guy who spurred the trip, who conceived of it, was a family physician who had just lost his wife to cancer. And so he wanted to get his two teenage kids back into the backcountry, which they had always done. He was a former Grand Canyon river guide, very outdoors oriented family. He invited his best buddy, who was a former monk, and at the time of this trip, the elementary school principal in town. And then that guy Chuck's daughter invited her friend Brooke. And Brooke's dad was Brett. And so Brett was a longtime worker for the U.S. forest Service, as you mentioned, worked in this broad swath of forests. I mean, he was the Snow Ranger for 440,000 acres of U.S. forest Service land. So. And he was very experienced as a recreationalist and as you noted, very safety conscious in his job. He had actually won awards for being so safety conscious from the usda. And they just intended to go up to this hut for two nights. And of course, in their packs, going up and into the hut, they had a ton of survival Gear and supplies and food and water, all the things, right. And then the next morning, the first morning that they were at the hut, Brett and then Cole, the 15 year old son of Joel, the doctor, just ended up randomly out on the deck before everybody else was ready. And they were chomping at the bit to go and they just kind of made this spur of the moment decision to go for a quick ski. They intended to be gone for 30 minutes. When that is your intention, you're less inclined to take all the stuff in your pack, right. Because the heavier your pack is, as you just pointed out, the harder it is to travel, the slower you go and the longer it takes. So they just wanted to go duck out, do this thing, come back, rejoin their group, then everybody would go out and have a great day together. Well, it doesn't always work like we plan, right. So sometimes you have to plan for things and bring supplies that you don't think you're going to need. And in that case they did. And they left their phones at the hut. They were not searchable, as search and rescue teams like to say. And they hadn't told anybody, they hadn't communicated their plan even that they were going. So people kind of got out on the deck and were like, where are Brett and Cole? Oh, they already left. You know, they took off. Well, of course, Brett and Cole intended to not be gone very long, but then they were, and this mystery unfolded, like, where did they go? What has happened to them? And then this massive search ensued. Not until the next day. They kind of searched around the hut that afternoon, but then they eventually called 911 and asked for help. And so this government search began to unfold with the local Lake county search and rescue team as well as, as you pointed out, all of Brett's buddies from Salida started being like, oh my gosh, he and a child are missing. We got a rally. This storm then moved in. And as you pointed out, it is called an atmospheric river for a reason. There is just this river of moisture that comes through. And in this case it was snow. They come through as rain in the summers and falls, but it dropped three feet of snow around that hut overnight. It was an enormous weather event. And not everybody knew to expect that intense of a storm. And so all of these factors compounded to create a really chaotic scene. There was a lot of tension between the different search parties, the civilian and government search parties. And then you had these teenagers who were still at the hut who were just freaked out. You know, Brooke's dad is missing. And Cole's missing and he's a boy and he just lost his mom. And you know, there was a lot going on psychosocially at the hut. And yeah, the intention was really innocent, but it just doesn't always go that way. So you kind of, in terms of your question about preparedness. Absolutely. There are people who even if they're going for 20 minutes, they will bring a 30 or 40 pound backpack. And then there are others who like to travel really light. And usually you don't get bit by that, but sometimes you do.
- [29:17]
Jenny Urt
That theme of leaving the cell phone came up a couple times because they, they had left their cell phone. So you wrote this after a bit of time, you know, they go out at 10am and then everyone's supposed to be meeting back at a certain time. You know, they're not there. So you say at some point they did an inventory of what Brett had left behind. So this is the, this is the older man. Brett is an older man. Cole is. You know, they don't even hardly know each other very well, but they're both like these athletic guys, you know, and they're, they're at each other's level. They can go ski together. So they say that you wrote, they did an inventory. It wasn't reassuring. They found Brett's hut backpack, a map, two headlamps, a warm pair of gloves. Gloves and the crushing blow. Two cell phones. Everything changed at that point and knocked out any hope from the assessment six hours earlier that they might be equipped to weather this storm. So when you talked about Danelle, it was the same thing. So this is an article that people can read. I can put the link in the show notes, but it's also at your website. Devon O'neill.com Danelle, she is an adventure racer. She tossed her phone in her car before she takes off and she had even parked in like a, you know, a kind of a more secret spot that locals would know of. So when they go to try and find her, it's only because the person who's looking is a local. And it's like, well, maybe she went
- [30:38]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
back over this way.
- [30:39]
Jenny Urt
So she didn't have her phone. You talked about your wife that she had an encounter with a moose. Is this correct?
- [30:46]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah, absolutely.
- [30:47]
Jenny Urt
And also had left her cell phone. So just kind of a thing. Right. And, and in this day and age, it's kind of nice. You know, you're like, I don't want to be beholden to this phone. I don't want to be attached to it at all times. So you could see how I'm going to go on this adventure. I'm not going to bring this phone with me. And yet then they can't. They can't find you. They can't ping. Now, in Danelle's case, there was the. A dog. The dog helped. She had a dog with her.
- [31:11]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah.
- [31:12]
Jenny Urt
So you wrote, a series of small mistakes can create a much bigger tragedy. The Swiss cheese. It's called the Swiss cheese model. Can you talk about the sar? Is this what it was called?
- [31:24]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah.
- [31:24]
Jenny Urt
Okay. The SAR questionnaire.
- [31:27]
Devin O'Neill
The search and rescue questionnaire. Yeah.
- [31:29]
Jenny Urt
Okay. I thought that was really interesting. I didn't know about that.
- [31:32]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah. So ultimately, the Swiss cheese model is, as they say, when all the holes line up, and that means, like, all these little things, these little decisions, these little mistakes, or the weather, like the
- [31:45]
Jenny Urt
atmospheric river thing is something that's really uncommon. They didn't know it was going to happen. And then when all this snow falls in, you can't find anybody's tracks.
- [31:52]
Devin O'Neill
You got it? Yep. So when all the holes line up, small problems become much bigger problems, and often they end in tragic outcomes. So they have this SAR questionnaire which ultimately determines the search urgency. Like, do we need to deploy right now in the middle of this nuclear blizzard because someone, you know, doesn't have their medication and they're going to die in an hour? There are all these questions that determine the urgency. And it's squishy right there. Like, you ultimately get this number from the. The aggregate total of question values, and that number will usually fall in like a measured response, which means, yeah, maybe you need to go right now, or maybe you can wait a little bit, see if it resolves itself. And in this case, the SAR team took their call as darkness was falling. So now it's dark. This blizzard is raging. They actually don't know where these guys might be because they can't talk to them. They have no way of, like, tracking them. So it's not clear, you know, but it is a tool that SAR teams have. In this case, the SAR team decided to wait until the next morning, and then they met at dawn at their base and then went to the trailhead. And, you know, there's two feet of snow at the trailhead. The snow's blowing sideways, vehicles are getting stuck. They're having to bring in a second front end loader to pull out the first front end loader because he went into a ditch and, like, all kinds of stuff was going wrong. And it all affected the search. Ultimately, you had as you, as you know from reading, but you had a world class snowmobiler, like they call this guy, Chris Brandt, the Michael Jordan of snowmobiling. He showed up because Brett had managed his guiding permit and he lived just down the road from this site. So he showed up with his top guide. And yet because SAR teams, search and rescue teams are not able to just say to any civilian, oh, thank you so much for showing up, go help. Go ahead, here's a radio. You know, they're one of their rules is they can't allow a searcher to become a second victim. And that suddenly changes everything, right? So they really have to manage this in a protocol driven way. And yet there's gray area, you know, so in this case, they, they asked Chris Barant, the X Games champion snowmobiler, who I had watched do a backflip on a 750 pound snowmobile over 100 foot gap when I was working for ESPN. You know, he was the best. You couldn't have asked for a more providential civilian to show up and help your search. But they asked him to stand down and hang out at the trailhead for about an hour and a half to two hours before he was allowed to go into the field. And time really mattered, as we learned later in this story. And so that was something, you know, I've done a bunch of book events since this book came out and you know, I had one audience member stand up, raise his hand and say, hey, can we just make a rule that if Chris Barant ever shows up to help with a search in the snow that he's just allowed to go, you know, and it's like, yeah, but you know, it doesn't always work like that, basically. But yes, in this case it would have certainly helped if he'd been allowed to go earlier. But even the way he then ultimately came upon Brett and Cole late in the search was random. It was like hearing voices, like, you know, but there were, it wasn't clear, you know, and if you start playing the what if game to like kind of figure out how the outcome might have been different, then you have to play it with all of the what ifs. And there were plenty of what ifs that could, that went right, that could have gotten wrong, could have gone wrong if something had been a little different or something. So it was just, it was a scenario that you couldn't make up. This wasn't something that like people can really train for as a team. But there was hypothermia involved and concerns about that and Just there was a lot going on in a really remote, hard to reach place with no communication. And it was a, it was a cluster.
- [36:12]
Jenny Urt
Yeah, there's so many what ifs, because actually Brett wasn't even originally supposed to go. Cole had invited his best friend from preschool, Jesse Burns, but they were going to Belize. So there, then there was room for Brooke to bring her dad and he wasn't originally supposed to go. And then there was like the, there was all the things about how Brett was like this, like adventurer of adventurers. He never said no. Even you had written in the book his mom, you know, back to his childhood, his mom was like, he doesn't turn down an invitation. So he was in a spot where his daughters were teenagers. And he's starting to feel like that pull away, you know, so it's like, oh, this is a good opportunity for me to go and spend time with this younger daughter. So there are, there's so many what ifs. You know, had he maybe been around more when they were younger, he might not have felt needed to be there. Yeah. So the what ifs. The what ifs really extend quite far.
- [37:03]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
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- [40:54]
Jenny Urt
this SIR questionnaire was really interesting to read about. Developed in the 1970s by the National Park Service ranger named Bill Wade. So you talked about how there's 11 categories. So you could. You get a score in these 11 categories. So a one. So your lowest score could be a one and your highest score could be a 41. I guess. I don't know. That doesn't really make sense to me. Maybe a 44. Maybe I wrote it down wrong. Is that, would that make sense? 11 to 44.
- [41:17]
Devin O'Neill
I forget the numbers. But not every question had the same range of number. Yeah. So I think that's okay.
- [41:23]
Jenny Urt
So it says 11 to 41. So that. Okay, then that makes sense. So you're like, okay, if it lands between a 16 and a 27, you can take a measured response. Well, then they said, though it was modified, you had written in here. Eventually it got modified to include a clause that could override the sum. If any of these specific categories, some certain specific categories were A1, then that would trigger an urgent response. And there were many potential ones in this predicament, but people didn't know. So one of the ones was inadequate suit or insufficient clothing. Well, Brett was not wearing thick, heavy clothing. Cole was, but Brett was not. But they didn't know or existing hazardous, hazardous, hazardous weather. But they didn't, you know, they weren't aware that this massive storm is going to be coming through or inadequate equipment and similar. That was a similar thing. Like when you talk about it helped me to understand it better when you explained the climbing skins because they were like they were coming off, you know.
- [42:26]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah, that glue that sticks to the bottom of a ski can freeze and then the glue is rendered kind of useless. So then if you have certain things, like in my backcountry pack, I have little ski straps like rubber ski straps that you can wrap around a climbing skin, around the ski. So at least you affix the climbing skin if the glue is rendered useless. So the climbing skin can stay on your ski and go up. But you need to kind of have a pack with these little. You could have bailing wires to serve that same function. But Your pack needs to have these, like, kind of quick fix tools in case something goes wrong. And again, the chances of something going wrong are very low. If you're going for a half hour, ski not far from the hut, on low angle terrain that you could theoretically just walk up if you couldn't see skin up it, you know, ski up it. So it's like disorientation played a huge factor in what happened. And they got disoriented soon after they left the hut in large part because they couldn't see any landmarks up above them. You know, usually you would see this peak over here and know that you're to the east of that peak, you know, and, and you, just. Because of the storm and the, the way it moved in, you just didn't have visibility and disorientation was in play. And then suddenly all bets are off. If you don't have a map and you're not familiar with the area, then you don't literally know whether every step you take is getting you closer to the hut or farther from the hut, closer to safety, closer to death. You know, like, you really just don't know. And it's, it's a mind, it's, it's a problem with, you know, then you're
- [44:05]
Jenny Urt
just like, ah, yeah, yeah. And you had talked about then they can't walk up.
- [44:11]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
It was so deep.
- [44:12]
Jenny Urt
The snow is so deep.
- [44:13]
Devin O'Neill
Very deep and sugary snow. It had no structure to it, so you couldn't just like compact it. Like wetter snow, you know.
- [44:19]
Jenny Urt
Yeah.
- [44:20]
Devin O'Neill
This is very dry snow. It was in January in the Rockies, and the snow is super duper dry.
- [44:26]
Jenny Urt
Yeah. And that's one of the things to talk about is like, well, that makes the skiing really fun, but also more dangerous. Colorado has the deadliest snowpack in the country. You wrote, because of how dry the snow is. Nearly twice as many people have died in avalanches in Colorado than in any other state. An average of 6. 6 per year, which is not that many. I mean, how many people are skiing? I, I would imagine exactly tens of thousands. I mean, people come.
- [44:52]
Devin O'Neill
You got it.
- [44:53]
Jenny Urt
But if the, you know, but six people, like, their stories matter. So. Okay, so that makes sense. Then about the climbing skins. And then they didn't have anything extra. The, the lack of preparedness here was a big factor in, you know, he didn't even have his lighter with him. Well, and that was because he normally smoked weed. I think it's what it said. But he didn't want to do it on the trip with his daughter. So he didn't bring the lighter. I mean, that's even a what if too, right? You know?
- [45:20]
Devin O'Neill
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, great intentions and then suddenly, you know, if you can't start a fire, fire is warmth, fire is survival.
- [45:28]
Jenny Urt
Yeah.
- [45:28]
Devin O'Neill
There's one of the biggest takeaways that readers have had from this book. And I've heard it at events and just from friends and people who email me out of the blue, but they're like, thank you so much for including that part. Because now I've gone out and bought fire starter kits for me and everyone I know, everyone I love, everyone I recreate with. If you have a Firestarter kit, when you recreate outside in winter, you can create warmth. And you know, there's even like this makeshift candle that tradesmen like made on job sites. And now backcountry recreationalists carry that like little candle. I have one in my truck now, but it's like an old Campbell soup can and you put cardboard in there and you melt wax on top of it and then you light that and that will burn for hours because of the way that wax interacts with the cardboard and the flame. So that creates like a long lasting, say you break a leg and you're stuck out there in some place, you know, or even as one guy put it like half heartedly in one way, but he's like, hey, you got a lighter? You can start a fire on a tree. And I guarantee you in Colorado, in the west, anywhere, you'll get resources showing up if there's smoke coming out of a forest, you know, and so like it's a way to trigger a response.
- [46:43]
Jenny Urt
People to find you.
- [46:45]
Devin O'Neill
Exactly.
- [46:46]
Jenny Urt
Yeah.
- [46:46]
Devin O'Neill
But Firestarter was a huge. I mean, the phone not being searchable was a big deal, but not having a Firestarter was something that has really resonated with people because I tried not to as you, as you saw, Jenny. Like, I tried not to gloss over the mistakes. Protecting those who have made them is one thing, but trying to ensure that someone can learn from others mistakes is a big goal in writing about these kinds of stories. You know, you don't want to have this happen again. So it was important to use facts to show that story stuff.
- [47:19]
Jenny Urt
Yeah. Because this is the thing. The plan was that it was supposed to be easy, but that can change. And so you need to be prepared no matter what. You had even talked about how there was some sort of radios or like a, almost like a pinging service. It seemed like, you know, for like avalanche or. But. But Brett had given his to someone else. And so this was supposed to be an easy thing you wrote. The plan was just to plumb the mellow, low hanging fruit around the cabin. It was just supposed to be a real easy going type situation. And it just, it changed. And you don't know if things might change like that. So you want to make sure that you are prepared with some of these basics like can people find you? And, and you would learn a lot from that. There was a quote in here that said if you learn from your. If nothing is learned from it, it's called a mistake. If something is learned, it's called a lesson. So I would imagine this is impacting a lot of people, you know, when they're going out to do some of these adventurous things that are incredibly fun and getting people outside and getting people together and building experiences, but doing it in a, in a safe way. I learned about hypothermia from the book and had no idea. Okay. Basically what it seemed like is you could be frozen and thawed. It doesn't always work. But there was like a lady who was like her heart had stopped for two hours and she gained almost a complete recovery.
- [48:46]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah, it's. So in general, the saying goes in the medical community, someone is not dead until they're warm and dead. And so if you are, that woman's case is very famous. She got trapped under ice in a frozen rushing creek while backcountry skiing in Norway. And yes, she was then finally freed and transported by helicopter to a very high level trauma center hospital. And what they do is they take your blood out, they rewarm it and then put it back into your body and that gives you life potentially. It doesn't always work, but it is a very specialized process. And yet you need to be able to transport somebody to a level one trauma center. And that's really tricky when sometimes these events occur in the backcountry and really remote places where transport is not possible. And in this case they were in the middle of a deep vead forest that was very inaccessible. There was no way to get a helicopter in there to help them once they were found. And yeah, so all these factors can complicate that, but that's a, it is a procedure. And, and yeah, hypothermia, like I went down an absolute rabbit hole to learn all the, all the nuances of hypothermia. And you know, I interviewed this guy known as Professor Popsicle up at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. And like, it's a really. If you write a Book, you go down all kinds of rabbit holes. I mean, there were the things that were left out of this that we cut 30% of the book to get it to where it published at lengthwise.
- [50:32]
Jenny Urt
Wow.
- [50:33]
Devin O'Neill
Which is, you know, it's a little agonizing. They call it murdering your darlings. When you take out something that you've worked so hard to. To get and then word in the perfect way, and then you're like, yeah, it's a little redundant. Gotta, you know, got to take it out. So there was a lot of that. But ultimately, I did want to inform a reader on some of this stuff without letting it kind of drag the narrative down.
- [50:58]
Jenny Urt
Yeah, there was a strong theme of fatherhood in the book. Very strong. You know, just talking about how do we relate to our kids, you know, even the dads conversing about that. And then you just. You do keep thinking about the ones who go in to help try and save this man and the. And then the teen. And you would. Each time, you would say, look, they've got kids at home, you know, and they're going out in these different conditions. So you wrestle with it. You wrestle with this day and age where everyone's stuck on screens and also this, you know, this vision for adventure and how incredible the world is. And, you know, how do you. How do you balance those? You talk about how Salida. It was something like, oh, the Triple Crown is when you ski, boat, ski, bike and boat in a single day. And you talked about one of your kids had a mountain biking accident. Like, things happen, you know, as a young kid, and. And things happen. But also, life is short. You had a quote here from Chris Tracy, who says, you only get so many minutes. You only get so many sunrises and sunsets. It's a shame to waste any of it. We're here for adventure. We're not here to just sit in our cubicles and go home, go live. You don't have to make a lot of money, you just have to make enough. So you get a sense of. Of trying to find that balance. And also the importance of safety. I would love to talk about these hut systems, because I didn't know about these. So you moonlight as a hut master. The particular hut that this families. These families went together on this trip,
- [52:21]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
which was supposed to be just a short trip.
- [52:23]
Jenny Urt
It's called Uncle Bud's Hut. And you have to go outside to go to the bathroom, and there's just bunk beds. So you're there with other people. They were there with strangers. Can you talk about this is a cool thing to know about. If you're not from the area, obviously if you're not from the area and you're not well versed in the snow, it's like a six mile trek in with all of your stuff, right. All of your food and all of your gear. Um, so you have to be adventurous to under well mapped, but still.
- [52:54]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah, no, it's, it's not, it's not a motel. It is, you know, you're going up to 11,300ft in this case in Uncle, Uncle Bud's six miles along roads, like snow packed roads, but in a lot of cases for to get to these huts you're on single track trails and they're marked with diamonds. But in storms it's hard to navigate. So you have to have some navigational skills. Skills, some know how and you know, going outside to go to the bathroom, you're not like pooping in the woods. There are outhouses. But yeah, absolutely. It's cold. So yeah, you know, for part of my job I go to our huts which is a different hut network than the, than the network that they were at. But you know, one of my big jobs, the worst part of it is stirring the composting toilet vault with a pitchfork. So we open up this door into this vat of poop and toilet paper and pee and I use the pitchfork to move it all around so that it continues to compost. And at the end of the season we empty the composter. But it's like there you got to be self sufficient to exist in these places. You bring all your own food in, you bring a sleeping bag. They have of course, dining silverware and plates and all that kind of good stuff. But you got to bring your supplies in for the rest. And that includes survival gear, that includes navigational tools. You really have to know what you're doing. It's harder if you're a novice, but it's empowering. You go to these remote places and you get to spend time with the ones you love around a crackling fire at a lot of them phones don't even work. At Uncle Bud's they were able to make some phone calls, which was crucial, but they didn't have great cell service. It was kind of spotty and they were lucky to get calls out and phones were dying. And you know, it's a magical thing. It's really important, an important part of my life. It is very much a side job, but it's one that I've been doing now for 15 years. And it's awesome. I take my kids sometimes on my shifts if I have time to spend the night with them in the hut master quarters, which is its own little unique part of the hut that we have to ourselves. But it's the real deal too. You are out in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and in a remote place and when stuff goes wrong, you need to be able to summon help if you're not able to solve the problem on your own. And so it's like I think about, I mean, we are so conscious with how much screen time our kids get, our 7 and 11 year old sons. But it's beautiful, right, that Cole had this habit of leaving his phone behind to go experience nature. That's awesome, right? And Brett too, like that. There wasn't anything wrong until there was with that. And you know, then. Yes. So you brought up my wife like, yeah, she was on a trail run. She got stomped by a moose who was protecting its newborn calf, who she didn't realize the calf was right next to the trail and the willows when she was running up the trail. But then the mama saw her and charged her and stomped her and really could have killed her. Moose do kill people. So she was like, well, this is my like Zen time of no phone. But now she carries her phone kind of against her want, you know, but she realized that it could be a survival tool. So yeah, there's yins and yangs all over the place in life, right? We're driving down the street, we can get hit by a drunk driver. Like, it's not like there was some judgment in the wake of this accident. You know, online readers would post comments below these stories in 2017 and just say, I can't believe you took kids backcountry skiing. And I can't believe, and these are teenagers, not four year olds, but I can't believe you went backcountry skiing in a storm. And it's. I tried very hard, Jenny, to explain in a non condescending way the mountain life, it is a different version. I've lived in cities, you know, and it's just different than that and different intentions, objectives, what you want out of life. But it does come with peril. And that's just, you cannot separate that. So sometimes we don't know how close we are to the edge of, of true disaster. And yet, you know, we don't know how close we were to getting smashed by a semi either on our morning commute. So it's like true.
- [57:21]
Jenny Urt
And in only some, in only very Small. I, I don't know if you would agree with this. I've never thought about this before, but it does seem like there are only a few situations where you really would have enough control to make a difference. So in this one particular situation, if there would have been fire starting materials, if the, you know, there would have been phones, if there would have been warmer clothes, those things might have made a difference. But if you get stuck in a Whitewater rapid, there may not be that same type of thing. Or if there's a moose on the trail, or if there's a patch of black ice. There's so many other things that are just kind of. Or like, you talk about who you're driving and that person is drunk, or you don't have control over that. So I, I think there's very few situations where you probably could have a lot of judgment and say, if only, if only, if only. Because there's so many factors that are out of your control.
- [58:17]
Devin O'Neill
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really important to recognize that, that at some point you just gotta go. Whatever you have in your pack, hopefully it's enough to solve certain problems. But you can't solve every problem.
- [58:30]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
Right.
- [58:30]
Devin O'Neill
And, you know, they do say, like, take a minute to plan instead of making a plan. A minute. So, like, hey, take a little extra time to really sit down and think, what might I need? What am I willing to carry? What am I willing to leave behind instead of, like, getting out there and doing everything impromptu.
- [58:49]
Jenny Urt
Yeah.
- [58:49]
Devin O'Neill
There is value in, in thinking ahead, you know?
- [58:52]
Jenny Urt
Yeah. And Joel, which is Cole's dad, he had wanted to have a safety briefing. He was, he was pretty safety conscious. Like, he was telling his son, Cole, stay within shouting distance. And then the morning that these two, Cole and Brett take off together, they were planning on having a safety time together where they were going to talk about. Joel proposed a short training session outside before everyone left to ski. Then they depart as a group and stayed together as much as possible. Brett handed Chuck his extra avalanche beacon to use in the drills. Safety was always paramount to Joel. That's Cole's dad, who'd had the ethic instilled in him during his time at Outward Bound.
- [59:31]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
He had.
- [59:31]
Jenny Urt
Joel had only flipped three times in the 65 Grand Canyon trips. And Cole, to your point about growing up differently, Cole had learned to ski before he was in kindergarten. So that's a different way of life. Like, I, I've never learned. Yeah, that's a different way of life. So they've got a different level of of competency within. He was an athlete. He was like a. A varsity athlete. So there's a lot to learn. It's a. It's a total page turner. You don't know what's going to happen till the very end. It's called the Way Out. A True Story of Survival in the Heart of the Rockies by Devin o'. Neill. Is this your first book?
- [60:07]
Devin O'Neill
I ghostwrote one for this crusty old ski bum who had skied every day for eight and a half years. But, yeah, this one's published by Harper, one Harper Collins imprint. And, yeah, it took six years to write this thing, and there are all kinds of reasons for that. But, yeah, it is my first big
- [60:25]
Jenny Urt
book and huge congrats. It came out at the end of last year. It is fantastic. A total page turner. And, you know, you're left with these questions of is the adventure worth it? And what are the things that I could do to be more prepared. And also about fatherhood and parenthood in general, like, what are we passing on to our kids, you know, what kind of a life? And then all the relationships that we build that can help be a protective measure for our families. I was fantastic. A fantastic book. The Way Out. Devin, what an honor to get a chance to talk with you. And then we didn't even talk about the fact that you. You brought it up very briefly, but that you spent two years living on a sailboat in the U.S. virgin Islands with your twin. So what a. What an interesting backstory story. And hopefully maybe we'll get a little bit more. This is my last question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [61:15]
Devin O'Neill
Oh, gosh, there were so many. I mean, ultimately we weren't allowed to wear shoes on our sailboat, so we had to remember our shoes to go to school. And sometimes we forgot them. So we would end up dingying in off the east end of St John, taking our open air CJ7 jeep to the other end of the island, catching a ferry boat to school, then catching a school bus to actual school and doing it all the way. Well, we would forget our shoes, so we would just have to go through the full day barefoot. And it was like, you know, I think it was very inconvenient. We actually one time couldn't go on the field trip to Grand Union that day because we didn't have shoes. But it was kind of empowering. And now, you know, when I. I forget things sometimes in my life. And yet you go back and it's like, ah, it's Cool. I used to go through full days without shoes on. I'm fine.
- [62:08]
Jenny Urt
What a childhood. What a life. I love the part that you said, too, like, you had just swung through. Through Colorado and then you ended up staying there. And Brett's story was kind of similar. Like, he'd grown up in Kansas.
- [62:20]
Devin O'Neill
Yes.
- [62:20]
Jenny Urt
You know, and so people, they. They come and then they're compelled to stay because it's. It's so incredible.
- [62:25]
Devin O'Neill
And a lot of the people in the book. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the people in the book never intended to make a life in the mountains. They grew up in flatlands and then got exposed to it and decided that's the life they wanted, you know, and then they've never left, too. And I wanted to get across. Like, it's not always planned, you know, how we live our lives, how we choose to spend this, like, very fleeting time that we have, you know, is. It's okay to follow whims. And it's. It's pretty awesome, too, sometimes, too.
- [62:51]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
Yeah.
- [62:51]
Jenny Urt
Yeah. I learned a ton. It was an eye opening book for me. I'm like, I learned about this new area. I learned about these huts. I learned about backcountry skiing. I learned about survival. I learned about hypothermia, you know, in this total page turner. So huge congrats. It's a phenomenal book.
- [63:03]
Podcast Sponsor/Host Voice
The way out.
- [63:04]
Jenny Urt
Devin, thanks for being here.
- [63:06]
Devin O'Neill
Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate you taking an interest in this, and I know it's kind of farther afield, but I love what you do. I love your whole message. It is absolutely. What I believe in, is in our children's best interests, and it is an honor to be on your show. So thank you so much for having me, Jenny. I appreciate it.