Mind the Track

In the world of big wall climbing and wingsuit BASE jumping, @chris_mcnamara was a leader and innovator, claiming the first wingsuit BASE jump of the Grand Canyon (where he almost died twice in the same jump) and one of the youngest people to ever climb the West Face of El Capitan. As the founder of Supertopo, which evolved into GearLab, McNamara’s interests also evolved beyond climbing and the da...

In Episode 39, the boys sit down with @fresh_hamm , the founder of @truckeebikenight and Tahoe’s favorite underground mountain bike adventure rides, Giro di Stammina. Since he was tall enough to ride, Fred’s life has revolved around bicycles, taking his Dad’s fancy road bikes for long rides as a teenager with nothing more than some paper maps, a few quarters (for the pay phone) and a desire to get...

“Where have all the goofy people gone?” – asked @trail_whisperer to Episode 38 guest, Taylor Carlton. As a lifelong snowboarder who emigrated to Truckee from Michigan in 2005 after almost moving to Colorado, Carlton has witnessed the changes in Truckee firsthand working as a real estate agent through the wild times of COVID when “everyone bought everything”. Most of Truckee’s new residents bring a...

In Episode 37, the boys catch up after a very special Cinco de Mayo, blessed with a late season snowstorm that dumped some of the best winter pow of the year. Pow Bot shares his manifesto of the backcountry, The 10 Shredmandments – 10 rules of etiquette that every traveler in the backcountry should abide to minimize impact and be a responsible pow-shredding human. Banter and ASS (Angry Singlespeed...

Boasting some of the biggest vertical relief in North America and some of the best skiing anywhere in the world, California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada hits its zenith in spring with warm weather for camping at the foot of massive snow-covered peaks. For the last 25 years, Nate Greenberg has been documenting all the best lines to ski, and his book, Backcountry Skiing California’s Eastern Sierra (along...

“Snow is blissful, it’s pure, it’s white, it’s serene, it’s a siren call. But it’s also very dark, it’s death. The darkest white is the perfect analogy for an avalanche,” said New York Times bestselling author Eric Blehm on Episode 35 about his latest book, The Darkest White, chronicling the life and untimely passing of legendary snowboarder Craig Kelly. Widely regarded as the Michael Jordan of sn...

“Everybody in Tahoe is the kid who doesn’t want to come in from recess”, said PowBot in Episode 34 with our guest Kacy Roeder. The concept of play is not just for kids, playing is an essential part of being an adult. Nobody knows this better than Kacy, a licensed landscape architect who designs playgrounds and sends it on her mountain bike and her splitboard. We learn about Kacy’s unique career, g...

In the wake of The Crippler – one of the biggest snowstorms to hit Tahoe in the last 5 years – the boys sit down with Reno-native core lord @aurelbaker, a Pediatric ER nurse who crushes it skiing as an ambassador athlete for @atomicski @rab.equipment and @lebent_ . Always the adventurer, Aurel covers a variety of topics including her “puke and rally” sailboat to ski adventure in British Columbia,...

Recorded just as the biggest snowstorm of the winter wallops Lake Tahoe with up to 10 feet of snow, the boys chat with Nick Bliss of Bliss Wilderness and avalanche forecaster at the Bridgeport Avalanche Center. At just under 2 hours, this is the longest Mind the Track episode to date, but the discussion covers a lot of topics from snow safety, snowpack and avalanches to the dangers of following so...

After a three week adventure overseas, JaPowBot makes his return from Japan just as winter turns back on in Lake Tahoe. The boys discuss Tom’s trip as well as a potpourri of shenanigans that happened in Tahoe while he was gone, including shootings at Palisades Tahoe and Homewood, grant theft and assault at Boreal and a woman getting stranded overnight in the Heavenly gondola. Trail Whisperer rants...

Fresh off a return from a two-night ski adventure at the Frog Lake Huts, right before PowBot’s departure for Japan, the boys do a catch up, recapping the of the most dangerous periods of avalanche conditions ever in the Sierra Nevada. The boys discuss the unfortunate inbounds fatality on KT-22 opening day at Palisades Tahoe and PowBot recounts the only time he’s ever been fully buried in an avalan...

Welcoming in 2024 with a bang, as soon as the New Year hit, winter finally arrived in Lake Tahoe with multiple cold storms dropping a couple feet of blower pow. PowBot and Trail Whisperer go into Season 2 of Mind the Track talking on a variety of topics including riding the South Yuba River Trail, the history of Malakoff Diggins and what tree blazes are, skiing pow on Mount Shasta for New Years, a...

We first interviewed @notjakemann in Episode 11 right before he embarked on a two-month bikepacking journey from Truckee to Bellingham, Washington. In Episode 28, the boys catch up with Jake and hear all the good times, scary times, wet times and confusing times he had, including harrowing encounters with skunks and toothless rednecks, abundant cats, and friendly folks happy to accommodate a stink...

After a radical Thanksgiving on two wheels, the boys escape to Downieville to sample some late fall hero dirt on the ebikes and catch up on a variety of topics including the struggles of trying to survive in rural California amidst draconian laws and policies designed for big cities, the outlawing of gas-powered everything in California and the problems with electric battery powered replacements,...

If you’ve ever watched Josh Daiek’s POV ski footage, you’ve probably been more gripped staring at your phone than he is straight-lining a couloir at Mach Chicken. So when Josh and his filmmaking adventure partner Hazen Woolson set out to make a new ski film for their sponsor Salomon, they wanted to do something different and unexpected to blow peoples’ minds. Mountain State and Mountain State 2.0...

When it comes to skiing, there may be no other person in the Lake Tahoe region with more influence than Bryan Allegretto, known to many powder hounds as “BA”. With one word – Snowpocalypse – BA can send the entire region into a frenzy. As the lead Tahoe region snow forecaster and co-founder of OpenSnow.com, BA consistently outperforms the most advanced and complex snowfall computer weather modelin...

On the heels of Halloween, the boys catch up on a cornucopia of topics including the Hunter’s Moon, a recap of Trail Whisperer and Swan John’s annular eclipse wedding in the Ruby Mountains that Pow Bot officiated, taking the “Florida Man Challenge”, feeling out of place when traveling to a flat part of the country, Pow Bot’s sailboat racing adventure with John Morrison, Trail Whisperer’s weekend o...

At age 54, Alenka Vrecek decided it was never too late for an adventure by bike, rolling out her front door in Tahoe City, aiming 2,500 miles south to her other door at the tip of Baja Mexico. For nearly two months Alenka rode alone, giving her ample time to think about life, struggle, love, loss, family and the meaning of home through the eyes of a Slovenian immigrant. A cancer survivor dealing w...

If you’ve ever piloted your mountain bike on the trails of Jackass Ridge (now called Donkey Town) and Yogi Bear, and finished with an ear to ear grin, you can thank the @truckeedirtunion . Formed in April of 2020, the TDU is the only trail organization in Truckee specifically focused on enhancing and expanding rad trail experiences for mountain bikers. In its short 3 years of existence, TDU has al...

In line with Episode 21 and its Fall theme, @pow_bot and @trail_whisperer chat (rant?) about a cornucopia of topics ranging from the possible arrival of a Super El Nino in Tahoe, looking back on summer’s favorite rides and new trails, the etiquette of riding illegal trails, Strava and social media, the season pass conundrum, Palisades Tahoe announcing parking pass reservations and overcrowding due...

In 2020, Harrison Biehl bought his first mountain bike and immediately put his mind in the track, progressively doing bigger and bigger rides. In summer 2022, he successfully completed his first “Everesting” mission - repeating the same climb until reaching 29,032 feet of elevation gain. As a fundraiser for TAMBA, Harrison tackled Stanford Rock trail on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe and completed t...

In Summer 1983, Max Jones jumped on a strange new contraption called a #mountainbike and went looking for trails to ride around #laketahoe. There wasn’t really any singletrack until he discovered an abandoned flume line running high above the east shore of the lake. After a few failed attempts, Max finally uncovered the overgrown track, taking five hours to “ride” only four miles, fighting through...

After the best winter and spring ever, the best summer in Tahoe ever continues its run with a return of rain and mind-blowing hero dirt. @pow_bot and @trail_whisperer go mano a mano and catch up on a variety of topics including crazy weather and its relation to the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption, nature’s signs of a big upcoming winter and the chances of an El Niño season, the “Amish bike” versus t...

Generations of Reno kids learned to ski at the local ski hill, Sky Tavern, including our guest Yale Spina, a legendary ski aerialist and stunt man who is now the Board Chair of Sky Tavern. First formed in the 1940s through the efforts of Marce Herz gathering up children in her station wagon and driving them up the shoulder of Mount Rose, Sky Tavern has become an institution for local youth ski dev...

As one of America’s top-ranking Enduro World Cup racers, Marco Osborne has always put his focus on adventure and having a good time, as evidenced by his #senditrandy moniker. But when Marco was sidelined off the bike for 18 months with nerve issues after a serious bike wreck, his desire to be in the woods led him to discover the challenge and thrill of archery and rifle hunting. In Episode 16 Tom...