“I woke up early to snowboarding and that really helped me to not party or get stuck in an unhealthy cycle.”
— Chelsie McCutcheon, Mountain Life
Freerider to Feminist
Sitting in her kitchen, one of the few rooms of her home that shows no evidence of DIY renovations, Carys Evans sips from a mug made in her basement studio.
Surprisingly, it’s one of few without a feminist theme. She’s reminiscing about her days as the first sponsored female freeride mountain biker. Laughing, she insists on using that title only in the loosest possible sense.
A Place for You
Norma Ibarra says, laughing as she points to her tattoo of a plaid-shirt-wearing, famously Canadian rodent. Designs weave a tapestry around her arms and legs. The images map her journey from the Sonoran Desert in Mexico to North Vancouver’s forests and now to concrete structures throughout the world.
Postpartum Expectations
Social and mainstream media is awash with stories, slideshows and film clips celebrating “mountain mommas who rip” within weeks, sometimes days, of giving birth. But many new mothers have discovered those back-in-the-saddle success stories are not always the norm. Set up by the expectation of quick and uncomplicated recoveries and hampered by a lack of information available, women looking forward to returning to the sports they love are instead often finding further injury, frustration and depression.
It Takes All Kinds: Horses and Bikes in the Washington Backcountry
Over the past five years, the Trans-Cascadia has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notorious events: a four-day, blind-format, backcountry enduro race, where riders barrel down a course they’ve never ridden, as fast as possible, on some of the region’s most challenging terrain.