You really have to go into adventure sports with a mindset that you are there, you're going to make your own decisions, and you're going to live and die by your own decisions.

And people that can give you input, whether they have more experience or not, all it is is input.

In the end, you are going to live and die by your own decisions.

Episode 125, a holiday flashback episode with Tom Benson and Element Parks.

This is the Adventure Sports Podcast.

Brought to you by 180Tack.

Get out there and have some fun. This is a flashback to episode 17 where I spoke with Tom Benson about element parks.

Element parks are a great place to take your family so you can all experience adventure together.

Enjoy the show.

Welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. Tom Benson is the CEO of Wildplay, where they operate element parks in six Canadian locations. Tom made his living as a mountain guide for 15 years before his passion and

skills sparked the idea to start an adventure-based company. Tom, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Travis. I'm happy to be here. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and give our listeners some of your climbing history?

Yeah, well, I started almost foolishly climbing when I was quite young.

Mostly those early adventures involved my brother and I getting into cliffs in the Gatineau hills

in Quebec and Canada and climbing ourselves into positions where we were probably hugely

at risk being terribly frightened and managing to climb our way out of that.

We did a whole bunch of that, probably in our early teens.

And then when we moved to Western Canada, I decided to get a lot more serious about it.

And did a bunch of reading, took some courses. and then by the time I was in high school,

I was teaching climbing.

And back at that time, you know, people were still making their own nuts to place some cracks.

You know, things were still pretty rustic and archaic in terms of the equipment that you had to work with.

...