Mainstream media is awash with stories, slideshows and film clips celebrating “mountain mommas who rip” within days and weeks of giving birth. But many new mothers have discovered those success stories are not always the norm. Set up by the expectation of quick 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 and frustration.

Trans-Cascadia has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notorious events: a four-day, blind-format, backcountry enduro race on some of the region’s most challenging terrain. However, their mission extends beyond the event. The nonprofit has created a successful model for setting up a race and supporting sustainable trails, giving back to the local communities on which the event depends.

The time between peak seasons in a resort town brings to mind unfavorable weather and closed businesses. In Whistler, BC, however, the shoulder season is prime time for mountain biking. Warm autumns interspersed with more moisture create ideal trail conditions. Getting laps in before Canadian Thanksgiving, when the bike park closes, can be the perfect end to a phenomenal riding season, but many overlook a whole other network of trails.

In 1911, 18-year-old Maggie Symonds found herself deposited from a ship on the flat rocks five miles southeast of Pachena Point on Vancouver Island along what is now the world-renowned West Coast Trail. Years later, when she recounted her first impression of the uninviting and harsh coastal landscape that would be her home for the next three decades, she remembered thinking, ‘My God, what have I come to?’