Ep. 888: The Snowman Race in Bhutan - Nate Bender

Adventure Sports Podcast

Curt Linville

Science, Health & Fitness, Sports, Nature, Fitness, Wilderness

4.6 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trail running and FKT challenges: Nate's climate activism in Montana, first solo unsupported linkup of Glacier National Park's tallest peaks (150 miles, 60,000 feet ascent over six days), creative route creation, and participation in the elite Snowman Race (126 miles, 17,946-foot passes) to raise climate change awareness as a Protect Our Winters athlete and Footprints Running marketing director.

Nate is a trail runner and climate activist based in Missoula, Montana. His personal and professional focus is to use both his voice as a mountain athlete and skills in marketing & data science to catalyze a climate-friendly world.

He races occasionally, but primarily specializes in fastest known time (FKT) challenges and loves the creative process of dreaming up new linkups. His most recent FKT was the first-known continuous linkup of the tallest peaks in Glacier National Park, Montana; a solo, unsupported six-day effort covering 150 miles and nearly 60k feet of ascent.

Nate holds a master’s degree in Resource Conservation — which focuses on the social science of climate action — and is currently in an additional master’s degree in Business Analytics. He is a member of the Protect Our Winters Athlete Alliance and also works as the Marketing Director for Footprints Running, a nonprofit climate action incubator.

These backgrounds and passions made Nate a perfect candidate for the The Snowman Race, which follows the trail of the famous Snowman Trek, which has been completed by fewer people than Everest. Covering 126 miles (203 kilometers) through the wild and challenging terrains with mountain passes as high as 17,946 feet (5470M) the Snowman Race is an ultra-marathon, challenging the world’s fittest and most elite runners to help raise awareness of the impacts of climate change.

Nate’s info:

Instagram: @natebender10

Personal website: 10peaksbeforelunch.com

Footprints climate action incubator website: runfootprints.org

The Snowman Race: snowmanrace.org

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey folks, welcome to the adventure sports podcast. I'm your host, Mason. Today we're talking to someone I recently met, a new friend of mine, Nate Bender.
0:22.3	Nate is from Montana, has done some epic stuff in the mountains there. But what we're going to be
0:27.6	talking about today is the snowman race. It's a race put on by the king and the queen of Bhutan,
0:34.3	the government of Bhutan to help bring awareness to the rapid climate change that
0:39.3	they're experiencing there in the Himalayas. And they do that in a really unique way through
0:44.9	a run, a race, a trail race, a stage race, where they invite people from around the world
0:51.6	to join. Well, it's invite only. And part of the purpose is to do an
0:56.1	epic event in a beautiful place, but also to see firsthand what has changed in a really short
1:02.7	amount of time and to help spread that message and spread that awareness around the world.
1:06.7	So Nate was invited to do this. And it was really cool, very special, very prestigious to be invited to this. It's
1:15.2	amazing. It's quite an honor. And you're going to hear why, because he's done some amazing things in
1:20.1	Montana and the American West, just some really cool fastest known times, some peak linkups, and is born and raised right there in Montana. And I love
1:30.1	what he does because he already is thinking this way because he has a dual master's degree in
1:34.6	resource conservation and business analytics. So he loves the outdoors, but understands that,
1:41.8	like a lot of us, we can't just love the outdoors and expect it to just
1:46.4	always be there. We have to be advocates for it. These places from national parks to state parks to
1:51.8	city parks don't just happen. It takes people advocating for them. It takes people having a lot of
1:58.5	foresight and saying, hey, places need to be saved and need to be
2:02.4	set aside for the enjoyment, not only the enjoyment of humans and for recreation, but also for
2:10.4	climate issues, you know, that we need trees to grow, we need animals to thrive, we need these
2:15.1	places for water recharge and whatnot. There's a million
2:18.2	reasons why we should protect the land that we use to recreate on. And so Nate is really
	...

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