The 29029 Podcast

It was Stratton 2025, and Stratton was doing what Stratton does best. A little rain. A little wind. And putting up one heck of a fight for those who came to find their Everest.

The mountain brought the usual suspects. Beloved alumni returning for another climb and a whole new group of first-timers ready to discover what 29029 was all about.

One of those first-timers was Casey Miller.

Casey isn't necessarily the kind of guy who stands out in a crowd, but he doesn't exactly blend in either.

I first noticed him because he was wearing something I'd never seen before. A bib with the words "CROP TOP."

Clearly, there was a story there.

Casey had arrived with a group of men known as the Mountain Pirates. Some of these guys I knew very well. But Casey? He was a new recruit.

Over the next 36 hours, I watched Crop Top climb. Lap after lap. There was this wide-eyed wonder about him. Not necessarily excitement. Not an overwhelming display of happiness. Just a guy who was completely, undeniably THERE.

Present. Determined. And making it happen.

By the time Casey had a red bib on his back and a red hat on his head, I knew there was something more to this man than a funny nickname and a group of mountain-loving pirates.

There was a story I wanted to hear.

It took another year and another mountain, but I finally got my chance.

And this time, I wasn't interested in what was written on Casey's bib.

I wanted to discover what was written on his heart and in his soul.

This is the story of Casey Miller.

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At 29029, we have a mantra: KEEP CLIMBING.

The goal may be to accumulate 29,029 feet—the vertical equivalent of Mount Everest—but the mountain asks something more of you.

Can you keep moving when you’re tired?

Can you adapt when the plan falls apart?

Can you take one more step, one more ascent, check one more box?

Can you KEEP CLIMBING for 36 hours?

Along the way, we mark progress by traveling symbolically around the world—through the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents.

Kosciuszko in Australia.

Vinson in Antarctica.

Denali in North America.

Kilimanjaro, the Roof of Africa.

Elbrus in Europe.

Aconcagua in South America.

And finally, Everest in Asia.

For most of us at 29029, those mountains are names on the back of a bib. They are benchmarks—boxes we hope to check as we climb toward our own Everest.

But there are a few people in our community for whom those boxes represent something very different.

They represent passports and plane tickets. Months of preparation. Heavy packs. Crampons and ice axes. Bitter cold, brutal winds and impossibly thin air.

They represent the actual mountains.

In June of 2026, Louise McEvoy stood on the summit of Denali, 20,310 feet above Alaska.

But this wasn't simply another summit.

It was the seventh.

With those final steps to the top of Denali, Louise completed a journey years in the making: standing atop the highest mountain on every continent on Earth.

Seven continents.Seven summits.Seven boxes checked—not on the back of a bib, but across the globe.

And behind every one of those summits is a story about what it really means to KEEP CLIMBING.

Every year, thousands of people stand on stages and tell others how to overcome adversity.

Jake Thompson is one of them.

As a keynote speaker, author, and the voice behind Compete Every Day, Jake has spent years teaching people to embrace discomfort, honor their commitments, and become the kind of person who keeps showing up when things get hard.

But there's a big difference between teaching those principles... and living them.

Just seven and a half weeks after knee surgery, with business thriving and life going well, Jake chose to do something that made absolutely no sense to most people. He left to participate in 29029 Snowbasin.

Thirteen climbs. Almost 30 miles all uphill. Twenty-nine thousand and twenty-nine feet of vertical gain—the height of Mount Everest.

And somewhere on those climbs, the speaker became the student.

Every ascent came with a perfectly reasonable excuse to quit. Every lap forced him to confront the same lessons he has spent years teaching audiences around the world. Discipline over motivation. Commitment over comfort. Action over excuses.

After the event, Jake wrote something in a LinkedIn post that sums up his journey.

"My worth was never going to be decided by a red hat or a missed cutoff. Only by what I left in the arena."

What happens when life hands you a microphone... and then hands you a mountain?

When your message is no longer something you speak, but something you have to prove.

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https://www.instagram.com/jakethompsonspeaks/

At 29029, we often say that the mountain and trails don’t change you—they reveal you. They strip away distractions, exposing your habits, your fears, your stories, and ultimately give you the opportunity to become a stronger version of yourself.

That’s why 29029 exists: to challenge people so intensely that they have the opportunity to evolve into someone they couldn’t have become any other way.

But what actually causes lasting change?

Is it the challenge itself?

The decision to keep going?

Or is there something deeper happening beneath the surface?

Buckle up because you're about to find out how change really works.

Read more about Kristy and her book "How Change Really Works" HERE.

Want to know more about 29029? Click HERE.

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Snowbasin 2023: Steve & Crystal Caruthers were the newbies on the mountain. In Steve’s words “unprepared both mentally & physically”.

12 months later…..

Snowbasin 2024: Steve & Crystal, were no longer the new kids on the mountain, they were trained, prepared, but the mountain is never easy. Crystal earned a red hat. Steve didn’t. Steve kept climbing.

Another year passed…..

Sun Valley 2025: Steve alone would take on this new mountain. More prepared holding a toolbox filled with lessons from the mountains he already climbed. He’d earn a red bib. Then a red hat. Easier but never easy and it wasn’t the red carpet moment that lingers in his memory.

Coach Caruther’s, as we lovingly call Steve, has a lot to teach you about this thing we call 29029. He’s allowed the mountain to change him. He’s evolved into more than just a guy who was inspired by our co-founder Jesse Itzler and thought “it’s JUST hiking”.

The mountain didn’t change over three years. But Steve sure did.

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At 29029 there are a subset of participants who take on the challenge of a mountain or a TRAIL event as a group:

Some are families: spouses, kids with their parents.

Some are friends: building their relationships.

Some are co-workers, colleagues and leaders betting on the fact that doing hard things together creates exceptional opportunities for connection and growth.

Wei-Li Shao started out as an individual tackling a mountain after the mountains in his personal life got big and scary and he needed a new definition of what was possible for himself.

That first mountain at Snowbasin in 2023 changed Wei-Li. It challenged him so intensely that he needed to go back. There was unfinished business and untapped potential for growth.

But he wouldn’t return alone. He would invite his team. At Snowbasin 2024 the Omada Health Team would celebrate Summit Saturday in red…..every single one of them!

The team's success translated into individual lives at work and at home. Omada as a company would make BIG moves in late 2024 and 2025 in lock step with their commitment and training to another challenge: TRAIL Park City.

If you are looking for the cheat code to building and leading strong teams, keep listening Wei-Li Shao, Arvind Stokes and Lauren Fix have something to share.

https://29029everesting.com/

We hope you don’t mind if we pull back the curtain for this episode intro. This story is going to be powerful. This message is powerful. Listening might be hard , but we promise it will change your life and perspective.

Meet Amanda Melby.

We didn’t know the best place to start her story but it seemed right to let Amanda's own words speak for themself. So let's go back 98 weeks to an Instagram post on Amanda's profile.

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I wish you could sit in a room with Julie Youngblood. To feel her energy and joy is something special!

Julie is no stranger to the mountain. What started in 2023 in Snowbasin has continued year after year, to different locations and expanded far beyond just the Everests she’s achieved on the mountain.

It started as a small group of colleagues and spouses, but the power of the experience had to be shared. Enter the “No Days Off” community where Julie is a leader, a connector and an example of setting and reaching big goals to her colleagues in real estate.

At 29029, we ask you to step out of your comfort zone and allow the challenge to shape you into a better version of yourself. The goal isn’t that you get good at climbing mountains, but that you get good at life. "Finding Your Everest" and "Keep Climbing" should become a thread through every part of who you are.

This conversation is going to leave you with questions - Questions about how you show up on the mountain but also the deeper question of how you show up for the other Everests in your life.

Lace up your hiking shoes and let’s go for a walk with Julie starting back in Snowbasin 2023.

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On an April evening in 2017, a small single-engine plane disappeared into the mountains of Washington State.

Somewhere near 5,000 feet on the snow-covered face of Mount Jupiter in Olympic National Park, metal met rock.

A distress call cracked across the emergency frequency — faint, urgent, alive.

High above the Pacific Northwest, a Delta flight en route from Seattle to Shanghai heard it. The pilots relayed the call. A Navy search-and-rescue crew lifted off from Whidbey Island in an MH-60 helicopter.

By 6 p.m., rescuerson that ]steep, frozen, unforgiving.

Two men were pulled from the wreckage. One of them was Mike Mequio.

Mike was in serious condition. There was substantial damage to the plane. But that was just the beginning of this story.

Sometimes the mountains that almost take your life become the very place that can give it back.

Mike is a survivor.

A man who faced a mountainside once in chaos and fear but chose to return to the mountains on purpose.

Not in a cockpit.

Not in an emergency.

But step by step.

Finding his Everest.

This story is about survival, healing and rediscovering who you are when you choose to KEEP CLIMBING.

https://29029everesting.com/

At Whistler 2024 there was a different kind of green that covered the slopes of Blackcomb Mountain. Among the old-growth forest of towering trees every once in a while you’d spot a a green flash……flourescent green to be exact on top of the heads of the crew from Google.

Those hats belonged to Team Green Lightning. Some may argue there is nothing “lightening” when you are climbing 4 mile 3900 foot ascents up a mountain for 36 hours, but a team they were. Colleagues by day, turned cheerleaders and confidants on the mountain.

Brian Goldstein was part of Team Green Lightening.

He had dabbled in endurance sport and always had a curiosity in his personality toward the extreme….but like us all it’s not too long before you find out that 29029 isn’t an ordinary endurance challenge, its a catalyst and an invitation to step into a new version of ourselves.

https://29029everesting.com/

At Whistler this year, we had a guest. His name was Tom. Tom walked around the world.

No! Really!…..He walked around the world on his own two feet with his dog Savannah. Who better to prepare you to take on a 36 hour hiking challenge than him?

Tom’s World Walk came after life threw him one of those curveballs; the ones you really don’t see coming, and the ones that change you from that moment forward.

Tom was 17 years old and lost his best friend to a tragic accident. Faced with his own mortality, he resolved to extract as much as possible from a brief life.

Knowing he wanted a life of adventure and understanding, he decided to go on a walk….but not just any walk… a walk around the world.

He spent the next eight years saving and planning, and at age 26 he started walking.

Seven years, six continents, and 28,000 miles later, he is one of only a handful of people who have traveled around the world on foot and his dog, Savannah, is the first dog to do so.

His world walk was a deep dive into the kindness of humanity and an amazing example of how far perseverance can take you.

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Read Tom's book, The World Walk today.

If you’ve been to 29029 or are training to take on your Everest, you know Coach Brent Pease (and if you don’t…..maybe you should stop what you are doing and open your emails with the training plan.)

Brent’s story of coaching hundreds of athletes each year along their journey at 29029 is awesome in and of itself…..but there is a larger part of Brent’s story that has created the foundation of the coach we know today.

That other part of the story is Brent's brother Kyle.

If you’ve been lucky enough to be on the mountain in the past few years to hear Brent and Kyle speak, you know what I’m talking about.

This brother team has defied the odds in endurance sport to toe the line at some of the most prestigious events in the world. They aren’t just brothers, but athletes and the inspiration behind The Kyle Pease Foundation who spread inclusion for those with disabilities in the world of endurance sport and beyond.

Spending a few minutes with Brent & Kyle will remind you that anything is possible.

https://29029everesting.com/

Pam and Lauren have known each other for years, decades really. They were sorority sisters and college friends. They lived in New York City during 9/11. They shared a lot of life together.

After college they went their separate ways, Pam to law school and Lauren to business school. They got married, had children. It wasn’t that they didn’t stay in touch, but they didn’t connect often…..of course when they did, it was that kind of relationship that just seemed to pick up where they left off.

That’s probably why Pam figured she could ask Lauren an Everest-sized question in 2022. Pam pressed send on an a now infamous email.

Lauren didn’t make it through the entire email or click through all of the links Pam had sent about 29029 before she knew without a doubt SHE WAS IN!

Pam & Lauren are regular women who needed something more. They had lost something that they didn’t even know they were searching for but they found it on the side of a mountain in Whistler.

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At 29029 legends aren’t born—they’re forged.

The red carpet on a final summit does not make you a legend, your journey becomes legendary when you continually show up, time and time again, facing struggle, fatigue, and doubt—You become a legend when you KEEP CLIMBING.

In this episode, we celebrate three individuals who have become legends in their own right.

Each of them has faced what some would call failure. Each of them has had to look at them selves and ask “why….why am I still here….why I am still doing this”.

They didn’t earn a red hat after one event, not even two events…….each committed to their Everest multiple times before reaching the ultimate goal. What sets them apart has nothing to do with talent or luck—it’s grit, determination, and an unwavering drive when faced with the seemingly impossible.

We call them LEGENDS because they embody the heart of 29029. Their stories are proof that greatness isn’t given—it’s earned.

So get ready to be inspired, challenged, and reminded that the climb, no matter how steep, is always worth the struggle.

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NEW EPISODES ARE BACK!

The finish line isn't always what you dream it will be. It can be life-changing or it can be a lonely road.

Are you good enough?

Are you fast enough?

What are you trying to prove out there?

Does a finish line really define you or your life?

Eric Recker experienced too many of those fickle finish lines in his life. He wanted more. He needed more.

A reel showed up in Eric's social media feed - 29029 Everesting Do you have what it takes? - and a journey of self-discovery and purpose ensued.

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Learn more about 29029 Events and our community HERE.

CANCER

Those six letters….that single syllable….that one word…..

Cancer might be the scariest sound our ears can register, especially when you’ve heard it before and hoped to never hear it again.

But this story isn’t just about cancer.

This story is about a man named David Johnson. A husband. A father. A fighter…..A 29029 alumni who knows what it means to KEEP CLIMBING.

There are deep lessons taught through suffering; both the suffering we choose and the suffering we’d never in our right minds sign up for.

David’s story is going to unfold over the course of seven 29029 seasons. What begins in 2018 with David will lead us to a story about Joshua, David’s son at Jackson Hole just minutes before 6:00pm on a Saturday in 2024.

It’s going to be hard to leave this episode without feeling more grateful, more focused and more committed. Grab a tissue and let’s go.

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Learn more about 29029 Events and our community HERE

In 2022, from the outside looking in you might think Vija Williams had it all. A successful real estate career that wasn’t just growing but thriving. A beautiful family. Dreams that were coming true. But what wasn’t true is that narrative.

Vija’s weight had skyrocketed to over 235 pounds. Her health wasn’t what it use to be. It was like she didn’t notice what was happening and maintained a skewed view of who she was and what she could accomplish. She signed up for not one, but two marathons that fall. When she brushed off her training, her coach told her she had an “Upper Limit problem”.

This concept of an “Upper Limit Problem” comes from a book, Big Leap by Gae Hendrick. It’s the idea that people set internal limits on how much success, happiness, and love they deserve. When you experience something great, like a promotion or a financial windfall, (or a blossoming real estate career) you subconsciously invite negative thoughts to bring yourself back down to a more comfortable level of happiness.

At Vija’s first marathon in Patagonia she made it just over half way before being pulled off the course. A few months later in New York City and only 100 yards from where her daughter stood cheering for her mom from the sidelines, Vija hid herself and walked off the course. Something had to change. Vija had to change.

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Ken Rideout grew up in the inner city of Boston surrounded by drug addicts and criminals.

Today he is a husband, dad of 4, former Wall St. trader and a former opioid addict. Through perseverance and mindset Ken has transformed himself into, the best marathon runner in the world over the age of 50.

Since getting sober in 2010, Ken has won races all over the world, from 5Ks to ultra-marathons. In 2023 he won the Age Group (50-54) at the Marathon World Championships in Chicago, finishing in a blistering 2:29:08.

Also in 2023, Ken competed and won his first ultra-marathon, The Gobi March, a 155-mile, self-supported, 6-day stage race across the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. In 2024 Ken climbed 29029 Whistler.

We couldn’t get enough of his refreshing no-holds-bar mindset and invited him to speak at the inaugural TRAIL Tahoe.

To learn more about Ken Rideout follow him HERE

https://stories.29029everesting.com/

What is 29029 TRAIL? Is it like a 29029 mountain event or totally different?

If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to pause right here and go back to Part 1 of this episode with Abe Abich. It’s important that you know how we got to TRAIL with these two brothers and their close friend Jay.

Since an invitation was made by the legendary Thomas Zebley back in 2022 the effect that first mountain experience had on Abe rippled through this crew and now they found themselves at the Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe at NorthStar ready to take on 3 mountain marathons in 3 days.

That’s 80 plus miles not just up, but up and down and around this iconic resort.

Oh….and Jay invited his wife Sarah this time.

They were all in for a life-changing experience, once again, led by the infamous Thomas Zebley.

Watch out because you might just fall in love with a different kind of challenge and magic the 29029 community created in October 2024.

https://29029everesting.com/

You’ve probably thrown a small stone into a still pond before. The small rock breaks the glassy water into ripples that reach out from the rocks entry point seemingly forever if uninterrupted. This ripple effect in nature is the perfect example of what happens within the community at 29029.

Thomas Zebley is a 29029 original, a legend on the mountain. He has climbed and finished 12 mountains since 2018. But you don’t reach legendary status in this world showing your own strength and endurance. The legend of Zebley is less about his red hat collection and more about the impact those red hats have had within his circle of influence. It would be hard to put a number to how many 29029 participant’s journeys began because of an invite from Thomas Zebley. He’s kind of like Kevin Bacon that way. If he didn’t talk you into climbing, someone he talked into climbing, talked you into climbing.

The ripple effect. It’s real!

This episode isn’t about Thomas Zebley….but it did start with him. This is about Abe Abich. Abe said YES to Thomas Zebley’s invitation to climb Snowbasin 22. That climb was the stone thrown into another pond and the ripples started again.

In 2023 Abe would be joined by his brother Josh and close friend Jay at Whistler. In 2024 they have plans to complete 3 trail marathons in 3 days, 29029-style. Let’s go back to the original ripple, Snowbasin 22 and let Abe, Josh and Jay tell you their stories.

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