Wild West
A window into the movers and shakers of the natural places where we love to play. Hosted by San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor Greg Thomas, the show features in-depth interviews with world-class professional athletes pushing the bounds of human achievement, as well as the influencers and advocates shaping our ideas about the outdoors.
Episodes
February 17, 2020 • 37 mins
Lake Tahoe skier Hazel Birnbaum has traveled the globe on the freeskiing circuit for most of a decade, but this winter she decided to officially retire from the sport. What does that look like for a 33-year-old?
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January 9, 2020 • 44 mins
Pete Whittaker stops by to talk about his unique approach to rock climbing, why he loves suffering and his new book, Crack Climbing, out in January.
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December 27, 2019 • 26 mins
White Wolf would be Northern California's first private ski area -- like a gated community for skiing in Lake Tahoe. Owner Troy Caldwell sits down to run through how the whole thing would work and how his project represents the future of skiing in Lake Tahoe.
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December 13, 2019 • 32 mins
San Francisco surfer Grant Washburn comes on to talk surfing culture in the city. We cover the uncertainty around the future of the famous Mavericks surfing contest, the closing of SF's 50-year-old surfing shop Wise, and the emergence of the City Surf Project.
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November 25, 2019 • 37 mins
BASE jumper Daniel Ristow is on a mission to pioneer legal BASE jumping spots in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. (Click here for our feature story on his mission.) We discuss the state's secretive BASE community, Daniel's first jump and much more.
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November 12, 2019 • 47 mins
Adventure photographer Corey Rich stopped by to talk about shooting rock climbers on El Capitan, South Lake Tahoe's exciting future, and his new book, "Stories Behind the Images."
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October 19, 2019 • 38 mins
Randall Reeves has been at sea for 12 months and counting and is days away from completing a solo circumnavigation of Antarctica and the Americas. He traveled the Northwest Passage, the fierce Southern Ocean and contended with gales and icebergs. We talk challenges of the trip and Randall’s next challenge of reintegrating into society.
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October 8, 2019 • 40 mins
Ocean swimmer Ben Lecomte recently swam from Hawaii to San Francisco, making sure to pass through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. What he found is pretty depressing: plastic trash everywhere. We talk about what he saw, what he learned, and how he psyched himself up each morning to hop back into an ocean of trash.
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September 24, 2019 • 34 mins
Economist Jason Scorse runs the Center for the Blue Economy, a think tank dedicated to finding a healthy, sustainable equilibrium between society and the ocean. We cover the outlook for living on the coast, commercial fishing and other fun, thorny subjects.
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September 10, 2019 • 41 mins
As the first person to ski off the highest peaks on all 7 continents, Kit DesLauriers has explored some of Earth's wildest places. We talk about finding freedom in the mountains, exploration in the 21st century, and her efforts to preserve a wildlife refuge in Alaska.
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August 27, 2019 • 40 mins
Patri Friedman is the founder of the Seasteading Institute in San Francisco and the festival called Ephemerisle in the Sacramento River Delta, which is kind of like Burning Man on water. He consults with countries around the world that want to create new experimental governments at sea. We cover his work, his vision, and whether we'll all be living on corporate islands at sea in the future.
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August 13, 2019 • 33 mins
A new report says the valley beneath Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite would be worth $100 billion if we were to drain the reservoir and let the valley return to its natural state. Chronicle reporter Kurtis Alexander and I chop up the pros, cons and feasibility of the idea, which has been percolating for more than a century.
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July 30, 2019 • 38 mins
San Francisco surfing legend Doc Renneker doesn't mince words when giving his opinions on surfing culture. Surf memoirs? Cliche. Surfing in the Olympics? "Oh, God no!" We talk surfing literature and movies, the Mavericks big-wave contest, and how surfing is like jazz music.
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July 16, 2019 • 37 mins
Chris Burkard got his start as a surfing photographer and has parlayed that into a full-blown media brand. He’s published a best-selling surf photography book and a bestselling children’s book; his documentary on cold-water surfing in Iceland (called Under An Arctic Sky) is on Netflix; he’s given a TED Talk; he has three and a half million followers in Instagram. We talk about his love of Iceland, his fraught relationship with Inst...
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July 2, 2019 • 54 mins
Pro climber and mountain guide Steve House and Olympic ski coach Scott Johnston just co-authored their second book, “Training for the Uphill Athlete.” In our conversation, they cut through the B.S. of all the fitness fads out there and talk about the bad and good of our cultural obsession with exercise.
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June 18, 2019 • 47 mins
Vogel is the nutrition and performance research director at Gu Energy Labs and recently completed a rapid ascent of Mount Everest. We cover the how she prepared to take on the world's highest mountain, what lucky charms she brought with her, and why Everest gets a bad rap.
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June 4, 2019 • 35 mins
Alfero is the founder of Wolf Connection, a wolf sanctuary in the mountains above L.A. where he offers "wolf therapy" to troubled teens, Hollywood big wigs, and anyone else looking to open their minds to the ancient bond between humans and wolves. His theory: wolves unlock a primal perspective within us that helps us socialize with the people around us and gain clarity about ourselves.
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May 21, 2019 • 43 mins
Dierdre Wolownick's new memoir, "The Sharp End of Life," chronicles her life as the mother of world-class rock climber Alex Honnold as well as her journey to overcome fear and push her personal limits by learning to climb herself. At age 66, she became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan, the 3,000-foot wall in Yosemite Valley.
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May 7, 2019 • 41 mins
When he's not filming the world's top adventure athletes in action, Pablo Durana is shooting documentaries around the world, from Greenland to Chile. We discuss shooting in extreme environments, his award-winning films, and his latest passion project.
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April 25, 2019 • 34 mins
With climate change threatening to make our winters shorter and warmer, writer Porter Fox looks to ski areas around California to understand how higher temperatures are already changing how resorts operate. What he learns may change the way you think about winter forever.
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