Live It Up with Mountain Life

Today’s guest, Geoff "Gully" Gulevich, is an absolute legend of the freeride mountain bike world. 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 up. Early in 2023, Geoff busted his femur in 17 places, but he’s back o...

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 using comedy to poke fun at, and invite people into, the sports we love. Katie’s first feature film, Weak Layers , ope...

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 pro mountain biking. Working on the influential film Lifecycles was all the inspiration he needed to morph his career slowly but surely to a behind-the-lens kind of guy.  Now he can do it all: Film, ride bikes,...

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 to stand on a world championship podium) Mike didn’t hit that childhood dream b...

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 rivers, led expeditions for the Royal C...

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 partner Christina and, more recently, their daughter.  He's just released...

For today’s guest we have a guy who'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 numerous rivers and wrote the essential guide to the Missi...

Beat Steiner is a ski mountaineer pioneer with first descents on some of the South Coast Mountains' 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, Beat still happily gets 20+ days a year of early morning groom...

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 and 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 and more. Our longest epis...

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 mounted expeditions to Papua New Guinea, the Congo, Chile, Zimbabwe and more. Films like Quality...

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 at @backcountrybryce

If you’ve seen mountain bike shots from Italy, ski shots from Switzerland or vice versa, you’ve probably seen Mattias’ 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 skiing, biking and simply getting outdoors. He regularly works with so...

Whitewater guide, adventurer and author Tamar Glouberman writes with a bravery you don’t see enough of in a 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 book is also about the places we travel inside ourselves—grief,...

This week, Colin Field talks to SUP adventurer, photographer and filmmaker Scott Parent.  Back before people were routinely 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. From his winter crossing of Georgian...

Award-winning filmmaker Lara Shea isn't afraid to tackle some of the rawest emotions and situations imaginable in her work and shine a bit of light into the darker corners of outdoor culture. Feet Banks catches up with Lara just days before her second short documentary Star in the Sky premieres in her hometown of Revelstoke, BC. larashea.com

This week, Colin Field talks to Mario Rigby, an 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 car across Canada in 2022. He’s not doing these things the fastest. He’s not the first to do them, nor does he pick t...

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 sandbaggy mindsets in order to enhance the quality of life for themselves and their loved ones. Ch...

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 ski culture in the least likely of places, his images of skiers in India, Israel and the UK have prod...

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, land and culture...

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 of 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 lot of the energy of the Hot Dog era was starting to fade, Glen talks about his life on skis, becoming a ski instruc...

Writer and 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.  The book tracks young Meghan’s undeniable pull towards the mountains and the wilderness and then goes into how she and her husband, renowned mountain landscape and photographer Paul Zizka, kept the good time...

Jeremy Evans is a lifelong hunter, fisherman and outdoorsman from Alberta who ended up on the wrong end of a grizzly bear encounter in 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, lived to fish and hunt another day. And to co-author a book about the ex...

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 of the best-remembered Powder covers of all time, was launched into ski superstardom...

Don Schwartz is one of the most badass dudes we've ever met. A snowboard pioneer (overall North American Champ 1988), he also rose to the top as a barefoot water skier and endurance racer in events like the Death Race and World's Toughest Mudder. He’s also a ski guide and a helicopter pilot, which is pretty crazy because at age twenty, Don survived a tragic helicopter crash that left him...

Sarah-Jane Dobner is an author, rock climber, part time van lifer, mom and all-around lovely person to chat to. Her book, A Feeling For Rock , is a collection of stories, poems, essays, cartoons and musings on the climbing life and being a woman in climbing culture. Sarah-Jane rips the finger tape off all the emotions that come with a life dedicated to putting one hand on the rock, then another. A...