Welcome to the Blister podcast, a program dedicated to interesting people, the great outdoors, and a bunch of other stuff we like.

I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, the founder of Blister, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com.

To put it mildly, Mark Abma is having one hell of a ski career, from sharing an apartment

back in the day with the likes of J.P. O'Claire, Julian Renier, and Anthony Boranowski, to standing

on top of lines filming with Shane Mekonki, Hugo Harrison, and Ingrid Baxter, to now serving as a wisen veteran and guide

for a new generation of skiers like Sam Cooch and Logan Piotta, Mark is both a historian of,

and a central figure in modern Big Mountain skiing, and he is still going strong.

So I talked with Mark about how he got into skiing,

his trajectory to the top of the game,

the fitness and dietary regimen that has allowed Mark to continue to operate each year at a high level,

and his broader health and wellness practices that not only allow him to perform so well in big terrain,

but enable him to lead a happy and healthy life off the mountain too. So whether you're here for stories about the Canadian

Air Force or Shane or Hugo or Mark's first time heli skiing, or you'd like to hear about the

specific practices, exercises, and routines that keep Mark going year in

and year out? Well, actually, I think you're all going to really enjoy hearing about both. So let's

just go ahead and get right to it. Mark, how are you today? Life is good, man. Yeah, I'm on a pretty

fun routine right now where I'm getting up nice and early

and I kind of go through a rotation of either going to the gym in the morning or going for a hike

in the morning. And so for me, I just kind of kickstarts my day and gets the blood flowing through

my body, my brain, and it just puts me in a really good mood for the rest of the day. We're going to be talking a good bit about some health

and wellness stuff in this conversation, because I know this is an important element of your life,

but let's just go ahead and talk a little bit about your background and how you got into skiing and whether that was one

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