For professional athlete Adam Campbell, the mountains have been source of great joy and intense grief. Despite two tragic accidents that have changed his life, he still looks to nature for peace and healing.
Adam Campbell is an accomplished mountain runner with some of the fastest known times on many Canadian mountains and trails. But being an athlete comes with risks. In 2016, Adam endured a life-threatening fall down a 200 foot ravine while running Roger’s Pass in British Columbia. But Adam came back, started running again and got married. In January 2020, Adam’s wife Laura passed away after being buried in an avalanche while the two were out skiing. Despite all the hardships Adam has endured in the mountains, he has also found that spending time outside is helping him heal mentally and physically.
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Adam Campbell:
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Adam Campbell:
Living wildly often comes with risks. Sometimes life-threatening danger is part of the deal that adventurers have to accept when they push themselves to extremes. For professional athlete, Adam Campbell, mountain running and skiing have been the source of both joy and deep grief. In 2016, Adam had an accident in the mountains and he nearly died. Then in January of 2020, he lost his wife in an avalanche while out skiing. Despite the trauma he suffered, Adam still retreats to the mountains for refuge and for healing. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. Adam Campbell has always spent most of his time outdoors and on the move. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, but he also spent a lot of time with his family in Spain, that's where he fell in love with the mountains. After moving to Canada in high school, Adam became a triathlete and mountain runner, and he quickly entered the world of racing. He's since competed in and placed at some of the world's most challenging mountain running races and trail ultramarathons. Adam's also a member of Canada's ski mountaineering team and he is the fastest known time on many Canadian mountains and trails. Five years ago, Adam was running Roger's Pass in British Columbia when he fell 200 feet down a ravine and broke his back and his hip. That fall changed his life.
Adam Campbell:
So you're 40, you've lived a wild life, you've done so many sports that people would only dream and competed at the highest level, which is really cool. I think it's great that you just push yourself, but I have also read, you've been through a lot, starting with a really gnarly accident that nearly took your life. That was in 2016. I don't know if you can talk about that, but I read about that and I don't know that looked really gnarly, Adam.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, no for sure. I mean the obvious risk with doing the type of travel that I like to do in the mountains is you've limited your safety margins. In one regards, moving fast in the mountains can provide some level of safety because you can escape sort of bad weather or get yourself out of situations quickly, but you can also get yourself into situations quite quickly. So speed can be dangerous for sure, especially if you're not really paying attention or if you've cut the margins too close. You end up having to bail a lot on your objectives when you're going lightning fast, because you've narrowed your margins so much that you have to be willing to pull the pin much sooner. Unfortunately, I was doing this big traverse in an area called Rogers Pass British Columbia, which it's a very famous back country, ski area, maybe one of the most famous back-country ski areas in North America and it's also a really beautiful summer mountaineering area. And I was trying to do a link up of 14 peaks in Roger's Pass with a couple of friends of mine. And normally it's a three and a half day, four day mountaineering objective. And we were trying to do it in a day, sort of taking our lightning fast ethos to the mountains. And I was following my two friends up this one ridgeline. We'd already gone across a few peaks and even though my friends had moved up through this area... So Nick and Dakota were their names and they're both incredible, incredible mountain runners themselves. I was following the route they were taking and all of a sudden, I put my hand on this block to pull myself up because it's proper climbing. Like it's not a trail, like this is... There's glaciers, there's like really big 5th class terrain, there's one of the famous 50 classic routes of North America on it, it's called Mount Sir Donald, I guess a 3,000 foot ridgeline. And as we were going out this rock buttress, all of a sudden, I feel this block pull out on me and this like bar fridge size rock pulled out and next thing I knew I was falling backwards down the mountain. Luckily I was wearing a helmet and I was carrying the rope that we had with us in my backpack. We were soloing this section, but there's other sections where we were going to use the rope on. And I ended up falling 200 feet down the side of this cliff. It wasn't a straight fall down. It was quite ledgy and so I was falling from ledge to ledge. Somehow I got lucky and ended up surviving. Yeah, it's pretty horrific. I was conscious through all of it. Like I can still see the vista of the mountains behind me. So there's like a really, really beautiful skyline of peaks. And I still remember seeing it flipped upside down and thinking how strange that was, that that was the last thing I was ever going to see. Like I actually remember having that thought like really, really clearly.
Adam Campbell:
I also remember at one point I was falling down this mountain and I started to slow down and was like, "Oh my god, I'm going to live," and I started falling again, I was like, "I'm done. I'm dead." But all of a sudden I realized I wasn't falling anymore. And I just looked down and there's a big pool of blood underneath me. And I remember not liking that and so I pushed myself up and rolled myself onto my back. And the second I did that, it like brought me back to full consciousness, I was like, "Whoa bad idea. Don't move. You might be paralyzed," or "You might have a spinal injury. Don't move, just lie here." And luckily, my really dumb joke is if you're going to have a mountain accident, have two of the fastest mountain runners in the world with you, because they were able to run down to me quite quickly. They down climbed. But they actually thought they were coming to a body recovery. They heard me scream and they saw me fall, but they didn't know I was alive. But as they were sort of walking closer to me, expecting to see me dead. I started screaming and they realized that I was still conscious. And we had a little inReach with us, which is, it's like a little communication locator beacon because there's no cell signal where we were but we noticed that there were cell signal back at the previous peak. And so Nick quickly ran up to that, the previous mountain that we were on and Dakota stayed with me and kept me warm and tried to keep me calm. As even though we were traveling quite light, we had just enough gear to sort of survive an incident like this. When you're doing an objective like this, you pay really close attention to the weather. So we made sure that the weather was going to be really good for at least 48 hours. So the local search and rescue crew were able to come to me like quite quickly because the weather was good. And so I was able to get evacuated within two hours of having my accident, which saved my life. I owe my life to Nick and Dakota, and then also the local search and rescue crew who were incredible.
Adam Campbell:
I watched some videos about this accident and read like four or five stories and interviews with you after the accident. I think one of the things that stuck out with me is your recovery. Like most people don't recover as fast as you did after an accident like that. And 10 months later, you ran the Hardrock 100, which is a 100 mile race in Silverton, Colorado. And you'd gotten third, I think the year before and you still finished it like only eight hours slower than the year prior. I'm curious to know, I mean, you've been through a lot, but you seem to have resilience. I'm just curious, like first from that accident, like, what are some of the things you turn to that allowed you to recover? And one of the things I read about in one of your interviews was gratitude. I thought that was really interesting, that word.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, no. So, I mean, I think there are a few things happen through that, that allowed me to recover. You know a lot of times with athletes, if you have sort of a small niggling injury, it can really eat away at you because you're not entirely sure how you got it. It's kind of annoying.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, I have that right now.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, exactly and it kind of like, you can really dwell on it. And what ended up happening with this accident is it was so severe and I was just so incredibly fortunate to have survived that I just decided to, I was like, "I just have to be thankful for anything I can do because I'm alive. And I just have to have like this incredible gratitude for whatever I am able to do. I'm not going to dwell on what I might have lost because in my opinion, all I've done is gained because I'm alive. And anything I can do is a bonus. I'm not paralyzed, I'm alive." And the other thing too is I was just incredibly like humbled through that whole process. I mean, I've been a professional athlete since I was 17. I do, running 100 miles in the mountains. Like you develop this sort of sense of... Well, there's an ego that comes with that. There definitely is, 100% there's a large ego. I mean, the fact that I thought I could go and do a four-day mountaineering trip in a day. That's ego. And What's happened after this... And there's not too many things physically that I didn't think I could do and all of a sudden... It was also my emotional outlet, my body, moving is my emotional outlet is how I cope with all my problems. So here in what was probably the scariest most difficult moment of my life, I lost my emotional outlet and then I also, I was just humbled. Like I couldn't do the most simple physical task. Like I literally couldn't wipe my own ass. I couldn't control my bowels so I would just, I would shit myself. I'd lie there for an hour or two just in my own shit because I was so embarrassed to call these strangers and I didn't want to disturb them to come and like change my diaper, which like that humbles you really quickly. And so these absolute strangers were doing the most simple task for me and I relied entirely on them. And then you also develop this sense as an endurance athlete that I don't know, you're kind of at it alone. I can run in the mountains like you're out there alone, and I really enjoy doing things alone. But the one thing that happened when I had this accident is all these people that cared deeply about me from my family to my friends, to the messages I was getting from strangers, I just felt this incredible like support network come along and this just outpouring of love, which really, really just filled my soul. In Canada, we have a public health system and I'm not bragging about that but-
Adam Campbell:
Talking to the Americans trying to get vaccines and COVID tests right now, you guys have it so good. I'm just kidding. It's good.
Adam Campbell:
We're really fortunate to have that but because I was in this orthopedic ward, I was in an orthopedic room with two other people. And one guy had been in a helicopter crash, pretty gnarly. The other person was hit by a semi-truck, pretty gnarly, but these hospitals are catchments for really big areas so there's certain main treatment centers. So people get brought in from long distances to these areas to receive this sort of higher level of treatment. Like I was flown over 200 miles in a helicopter to get taken to this hospital where I got treated. But these other two people that I shared the room with who had also gone through like incredibly traumatic, horrible experiences for whatever reason, they didn't have visitors come see them.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:14:04]
Adam Campbell:
And I was just thinking how lonely and afraid I would be if I was going through what I was going through physically without these people around me. Whether it was their family members couldn't take time off work to come see them, or maybe they were new to Canada and just didn't have a support network around them, I don't know. They weren't really able to communicate. So I just thought how terrifying that would be. Whereas I had all these people around me, just this love. And I was like, I'm just so grateful for them. And I'm not this solitary endurance athlete. I actually have this community around me and this love. It's cheesy, but it does help heal. It does. It definitely gave me a lot of strength. And then I was also fortunate. Basically, if you're going to break your back and your hip, which is what I ended up breaking, I was lucky with what I broke. It allowed me to be physical quite quickly. I also think my years of being an athlete and taking a systematic approach to recovery allowed me to get back moving quicker. Because one of the things that they talk about now, whereas before, they would try to get people to be sedentary, now they're trying to get people to move as quickly as possible. And so I was up and walking and moving. I would try to push it a little bit to try to move forward, but I also, once again, I would just accept where I was at physically. And then also emotionally. I suffered a lot. I was in a lot of pain, a lot of physical pain. And I was really fortunate to have this amazing psychologist come by the hospital. And I started doing pain meditation with her, and just talking to my body and accepting what was going on with it. And that really, really helped me.
Adam Campbell:
What does that look like? I'm curious.
Adam Campbell:
I was dealing with chronic pain and I kept doing this for a while after. I still suffer from a certain amount of chronic pain from those injuries. But so what you would do is you sit down, you close your eyes, and you do a big body scan. And I'm like, okay, this part of my body's hurting. And you just end up... You actually just talk to those parts of your body and be like, "Look, I know why you're hurting, I know why you're sore, and that's okay. But are you willing to release a little bit?" And so you talk to those sore spots because your body does hold a lot of your emotional trauma and everything that gets held in your muscles in your body. You think about when you're stressed, you tense your shoulders, tense your jaw. So if get those areas to relax... Hopefully some people just thought about bringing their shoulders down and took a deep breath. But if you're able to recognize that and you can declench those parts of your body, you can actually notice your stress levels go down. It's the same thing if you're really stressed and all of a sudden you start forcing yourself to smile a little bit, you can actually bring on a euphoric feeling. It was the same thing after this trauma. My body just was really clenched. And so it was learning how to get my body to relax again, and also allow some of that trauma to unwind itself.
Adam Campbell:
You just said so much just now that was so interesting. One, love. Love is so powerful. Two, you said it's not linear. Healing is not linear. Life is not linear. Grief is not linear. You touched on loneliness, which I think so many people are experiencing right now, and you're fortunate to have a community. But I think that it's acceptance, right? In Buddhism, they say suffering is when you fight what's happening to you. And it sounds like you were telling your body, "Hey, this is happening and this is why." I don't know. It's incredible, Adam. The fact that you went out 10 months later and then ran this race and finished it is insane.
Adam Campbell:
So that's funny. That was maybe a little bit excessive. I probably didn't need to do a 100 hard mountain run. I probably would've been okay with a 5k run.
Adam Campbell:
So Laura was my girlfriend at the time of the accident, and she went on to become my wife. And to be honest, it was patchy. We were off and on. It wasn't actually going great. And I think one of the reasons I went out and did that big day out was to say that that's how I would deal with a lot of my issues. I actually think part of it was because things were going a little bit patchy and I just needed to do something big to clear my mind. But when I had the accident, Laura was doing her medical residency at the time in Calgary. And Calgary, I think it's 400 miles or 300 miles away from where I was in the hospital. And she ended up dropping everything the second she heard an accident, got on a flight, flew to Kamloops, where I was. And she actually grew up in Kamloops, coincidentally, and she'd actually worked at the hospital that I was at during med school. So she knew a lot of the doctors there and a lot of the staff. And no, she was just an absolute rock. Just an incredible, incredible human through all that. And it just knocked some sense into me as well. And I also think it helped her also open up to the relationship. We were like, no, we both actually really, really care about each other. There's really, really strong feelings that are like, why are we fighting this? Why aren't we just embracing this? And I think me being vulnerable through all that and allowing myself to be vulnerable through it really allowed that love between us to blossom. Because I had come off a divorce prior to knowing Laura, and I definitely had an emotional guard up for sure, and I was a little bit hesitant. It was quite a traumatic divorce. She'd left me in not great circumstances, and I just never really processed it. I was still quite young when it all happened. And I think I carried that into the start of my relationship with Laura. And all of a sudden, when I made myself vulnerable and let that guard down, it allowed her in, which in turn, allowed her to open up as well. Because when I had my guard up, it would force your partner to put their guard up as well. I think you react to each other that way.
Adam Campbell:
You're also both these type A bad-ass athletes, she's a doctor, you're a lawyer. I'm sure it was hard to be vulnerable. You're both alpha, it sounds like.
Adam Campbell:
To a certain degree, yeah. No, no, that's not incorrect. Yeah, we definitely both have strong worldviews, and self worth views, and a bit of ego there as well, for sure.
Adam Campbell:
I was reading Laura, and she just seems like she was so cool. So she had this quote that I love, which is, "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so be kind." And kindness is such a game changer. Being kind to other people, being kind to yourself. And I read that Laura did service projects and worked as a doctor in Soweto in South Africa. You had lived also in Africa. It sounds like you guys had really just this awesome background. She was involved in winter sports like ice hockey. How did you two find each other? It was not match.com, but the algorithm would have pointed you together.
Adam Campbell:
Well, actually, it was through friends who were like, "You guys have a lot in common here. You guys should consider... You guys might want to meet each other." But to be honest, somebody suggested that and I actually saw a photo of her and I was like, "Oh yeah, I really want to meet her. She's pretty hot." And I actually, I think I sent her a Facebook message. And in it, I gave a little bit about my background. I was like, "We have these friends in common." And this is a line you should never use on anybody, because when you tell somebody about you are a lawyer and a professional athlete and you grew up in Africa, it sounds a little bit ridiculous. So I was like, "If all that sounds a bit crazy, you can just Google me." But never say Google me.
Adam Campbell:
You should have said, "And I went to Harvard," or something like that, or some pretentious boarding school. That's awesome.
Adam Campbell:
It came across as way more arrogant than I had intended. And she was not somebody to let you live a comment like that down, so she let me have it pretty hard for saying Google me, which I completely deserved.
Adam Campbell:
That's awesome.
Adam Campbell:
But for whatever reason, she did agree to go and meet me for a beer, and we met up for a beer. And she had actually just come off a 24 hour shift and she was exhausted. And she said she was going to cancel the date, but for whatever reason, decided to go ahead with it, and I'm really glad she did. We ended up having... One beer turned into two beers and we just had this amazing conversation about life. We just instantly just connected on a really cool level. And I think our next date was actually, I took her back country skiing, which was awesome. She just loved being out in the mountains. So we went for a back country ski and we ended up just spending a lot of time in the mountains together and doing really cool projects.
Adam Campbell:
From that second date, Adam and Laura spent a lot of time together in the mountains, hiking and back country skiing. Sadly, though, Laura lost her life in an accident on one of their ski adventures. When we return, Adam tells us what happened that day and how he's been recovering.
Adam Campbell:
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Adam Campbell:
Adam and his wife, Laura, were both skilled outdoors people. They both had operation level avalanche certification and training, and both logged over 80 days of back country skiing in the three years prior to the avalanche. Kevin, the friend they were skiing with when Laura died, is a respected ski guide with accreditation with the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides and the Canadian Avalanche Association. But even with their extensive knowledge and experience, the conditions of this avalanche were tough. I want to warn you that Adam's descriptions of the events leading up to Laura's death are heavy.
Adam Campbell:
I want to talk to you about Laura's passing and the avalanche, if that's okay with you. She passed away a little over a year ago, on January 11th of 2020. And I read the accident report that you wrote, and it sounds like it was just heartbreaking. Can you tell us a little about what happened?
Adam Campbell:
We were skiing in Banff National Park. We were back country skiing and we were out skiing with a friend of ours who's a guide. We were out on a higher avalanche risk day for sure. So we went to terrain that we thought was going to be more manageable. It was a new area to us. We wanted to go check out a new area because that's part of the pleasure of these activities, is going to new zones for sure, and we're all quite adventurous. And so we'd skied a few lines and things were starting to get a little bit touchy. The winds were really picking up and it was starting to get really, really cold, so we decided to call it. But the skiing had been phenomenal. We were skiing really, really great boot deep to need deep powder, just a bit of a dream day. So we get up to the top of this ridge. There's a series of gullies coming off this ridge, and we'd skied the gully just to the left of it right before and skied fine.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:28:04]
Adam Campbell:
We'd had a great run. Went back up to the top when we were skiing, this final run out. And when you're skiing these things, you sort of identify potential hazards and places to wait to regroup in case anything goes wrong. And sort of one of the ethics with back country skiing is first tracks. Giving some of your first tracks, it's kind of, you got to paint your line on the canvas. It's pretty special. So we gave Laura first tracks down this slope, she skied the line well, and then sort of went down to the area we'd identified as our regrouping spot. And then Kevin went to ski next and Kevin's a beautiful skier. So I moved forward to watch Kevin ski this line because I wanted to watch him ski. It's a thing of beauty. And as I move forward, the slope that I was standing on, everything cracked under at my feet and ripped. So this 80 meter, which is about 200 and 200 to 250 foot long bowl, that I was standing on, collapsed at my feet. And about a two meter, six foot crown appears to that sort of how much snow slid. And I started going down with the, with the snow and I had my ski poles out and I brace myself. So I self arrested on my ski poles. And I start yelling avalanche loud as I can. But this run is, it's 400 meters, so the 1200 to 1300 foot long run of snow. And so Kevin and Laura were down there. So they couldn't hear me yelling avalanche. But Kevin said he saw Laura sort of look behind her and start scurrying, which got him to look over his shoulder. And so he saw this avalanche coming down and he skied up onto a ridge line to his right. And so he was able to get out of the avalanche path. And I watched this thing slide down and pick up speed. And then there's a huge powder cloud at the end. So just like when a wave breaks, you get a big thing of spray. The same thing can happen with an avalanche. And this all happened quite quickly, in a matter of less than a minute. And I quickly, we regrouped and skied off of the avalanche path that I was on because I didn't want to trigger a secondary avalanche. So I skied over as far as I could and then cut in towards them on a different angle. And when I got there, Kevin said, "I saw Laura go into the trees, just start yelling her name, I think we'll get to her." So I get down there, we start yelling and all of a sudden we don't hear anything in. So, when you're back country skiing, you have these avalanche beacons on you. They're just constantly sending a signal. And so what you do is if you think somebody is caught in an avalanche or somebody's been buried, you can turn your avalanche beacon to search mode. And so it starts looking for other beacons. So Kevin and I quickly go on to search mode and we start scanning this slope and the numbers on the beacon, as you're moving closer towards the avalanche victim start reading down and you're yelling them out to each other. It's all in meters. So he's yelling, "15, 12, 10." And then all of a sudden he gets to four meters, which is 12 to 13 feet. And that's the lowest reading we're getting, which is really, really serious. So that means that Laura was 12 feet, four meters below us in the snowpack on quite a steep slope. So, what we think happened is Laura got pushed. The powder cloud actually caught her off guard and pushed her into a gully and then the snow piled on top of her in this gully. So the second this happened, I deployed my inReach that I had again, on me. And you just start digging, but when you're digging, you can't just dig straight down, you actually have to come at it at an angle, because otherwise the snow will just keep falling on top of the hole, filling it in. So you actually have to like tunnel your way into it. And when you're back into skiing, you always have an avalanche shovel with you. And you also have a probe, which is a long stick, like a telescoping stick. That because of how deep she was, your probe isn't that long. So we actually had to clear away a bunch of snow before we could start probing to actually to get to where she was. And it took us over an hour to get to her. And basically the statistics are, if somebody's buried for more than 15 minutes, their odds of survival is almost nothing. But strangely enough, from that time on the survival rate, doesn't actually decrease quickly for the next hour and a half, because what has happened to some people is if you become hypothermic, your blood stops circulating quite as much, and it can actually preserve the person. So people have actually been brought back from these situations. So, it took us over an hour to get to Laura. And when we finally got to Laura, we were able to get to her face. So her feet were above her up-slope and her head was down and her airways weren't obstructed. So there was nothing blocking them, but we couldn't feel a pulse and she was obviously unresponsive as well. And that was really traumatic because I remember seeing - the one thing I remember really clearly is her gloves had been ripped off and I remember seeing her wedding ring right beside her face. And that was pretty horrible. Because her body was still up slope, we had to keep digging for another hour to be able to get her out fully. And by this point, we'd contacted search and rescue and they hadn't come yet. So when we were finally able to get Laura out of the hole, the only way we could do it was I literally would have to like drag her across my body, go up slope, drag her across my body to get her out of it. We performed three rounds of CPR on her and we couldn't get a response. So we took all the clothes that we had in the emergency blankets and everything. And just tried to keep her warm and tried to keep her body warm until search and rescue came. So, through the whole recovery, Kevin was doing an amazing job at keeping me calm and keeping me on task because I was on the verge of losing my shit the entire time. You know intuitively that you need to stay calm and you need to get your tasks done, but the love of your life is dying and buried in front of you. So I was really, really fighting hard to try to keep my shit together. So, the crew come in and they fly Laura out and then they come back and re retrieve Kevin and I. And as we're getting flown out under the helicopter, I just completely collapsed. I just absolutely crumbled, just sort of screaming and shouting. And when we landed on the road, I was just kicking and screaming and shouting. I thought she was dead. I was convinced that she was dead based on what we'd seen and how long the accident happened. Our local police came and picked us up and took us to this waiting area so that we could debrief a little bit about what had happened. And when we were there, we found out that Laura had actually been medivaced from there to one of the hospitals in Calgary, which it's a ways away. But the fact that she'd been flown out meant that she was still alive, or that they had reason to believe that she might still be alive. And so we quickly arranged a ride, it's a two and a half hour drive from where we were to where the hospital was. And so I arranged for some friends to come and pick us up and drive us there.
Adam Campbell:
And when we got to the hospital, they told us that they were able to get a faint pulse, but she was still unresponsive and they didn't know what her, what her actual state was, but they had a pulse and they slowly warm people up in these situations. You have to warm people up really, really gradually, or else your body will go into full shock. And so throughout the night, we were there not knowing what was happening. And then the next morning, the doctors came around and said that they, despite the fact that there was a pulse, her bowels had died, which means that she can't be saved. Their actual words were "it's incompatible with life." And so they were going to basically unplug the machines. And they were going to let her just sort of slowly die. And so, when I was driving from Lake Louise, where we were, to Calgary, I'd actually call Laura's brother who's in Vancouver, which is 600 miles away to tell him what had happened. And so he got on a flight quickly, and Laura's mom who shares Laura's adventurous spirit, she was on a flight to Columbia during this time. And so we found out the hotel that she was in, we booked her a plane ticket back to Calgary, and I speak Spanish. And so I was able to call and speak to the hotel and say, "You need to get her to contact us right away." Which never happened. So we ended up calling later and I got them to wake her up at two o'clock in the morning saying, "You have a plane in four hours. Laura's had this serious accident. We don't know what's going to happen. You need to come home now." So she got on that flight. And so for the rest of the next day, people from Laura's broader community came to the hospital room where Laura was and we all sat around her, holding her hand and talking to her and just telling her how much we love her and just saying how much she meant to us. So he would stay with her for the day. And slowly throughout the day, you can see her pulse was slowly decreasing. And Laura's mom's flight was delayed by a few hours. And Laura, they thought she would probably pass away in that morning. And by five o'clock at night, her heart was still ticking, but she was slowly starting to fade away. And we were tracking Laura's mom's flight. And we could tell that she was coming in over at Calgary, and I just started yelling, "Call Becky. Call Becky." And so, she answered the phone as she was coming into land. And apparently one of the stewardesses said, you can't do that. And she said, "I damn well am." And grabbed the phone and ran into the bathroom with it. And was able to talk to Laura and just tell her how much he lovesd her. And literally as she hung up, Laura's heart stopped beating.
Adam Campbell:
It was difficult. Yeah. So, yeah. So for the last year, I've sort of been dealing with the trauma of that day, the grief of losing your partner, and then with COVID on top of it all, it's been a pretty hellish year. But for whatever reason, and luckily one area ... Laura and I had like a lot of really, really profound experiences together in the mountains and found quite a lot of healing by getting back out into the mountains. And not necessarily everybody would understand that urge to get back out there and need to get back out there. But I definitely feel a strong connection and closeness with her when I'm out there. A large part of my healing has been by getting back out into the places that have caused me quite a lot of trauma and pain and grief, but they've also brought a lot of beauty and joy and pleasure. Yeah. While also doing a lot of counseling.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]
Adam Campbell:
That's good. That's healthy.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, no, it's not just running away to the mountains. I am also also getting professional help as well, which I'm a very, very big advocate for, for sure.
Adam Campbell:
You and Laura lived life wildly and fully and you took a lot of risks. Some risks come with rewards and some with consequences. I wonder how you feel about those risks you've taken.
Adam Campbell:
It's interesting about the risk thing, because the reason why my grief and pain has been so hard is because I love Laura so deeply. And so, I've thought at times if you could go back and do it all over again, would you? And I absolutely would, for sure. It is a risk to say yes to love and to open yourself up to somebody. It was a risk. It's all vulnerable, but the reward that came from that was phenomenal. We weren't together a long time. We were together for five years, but we crammed so much into those five years. We lived very, very full lives. And we tried to stay honest to what our ultimate values were. And that was being curious about the world being curious about adventure and going out and exploring that, and we tried developing the skills along the way to do it. But then it was also just turning down a corner every now and just to go explore in a city. Like what's up this alley? And end up at and sit down at a little restaurant and having an amazing experience there or hearing a street musician is sitting down listening to them play for a while. And there's just the beauty in all those moments is really, really powerful. And once again, that is ultimately where I feel connected with Laura, is when you have those little awe moments and they are like spiritual religious moments.
Shelby Stanger:
Grief is hard. The only way I knew how to describe it, experiencing it very young, is it came in waves. It comes and goes. One minute, you're angry. One minute, you're sad. One minute, you're fine. And then it just comes out of nowhere. I don't know if you still experience, and it doesn't go away after a year.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, no, it does, it does come in waves. And I think, once again, that just sort of accepting that and that you can't really control has helped quite a lot with it. And just accepting that some days are just hard and some days you're just drained, and it's okay. On those days, that's just where you are on that day at that time. And you sort of adjust what you do. As I say, not every day out is an epic day. Sometimes it's... I've become a really big fan of walking. I go for a lot of walks, whether it's going for walks with skis on my feet, or just going for a walk, I find it really meditative. And once again, for somebody who sort of spent their life running around the mountains, slowing down has really helped me a lot this year, for sure. And once again, also, as much as possible this year, surround myself with really good people and having their love and support has been, I wouldn't have gotten through without them. And I literally wouldn't have gotten through without them because I remember a week after the avalanche, walking by the local river here, and it's the middle of winter, so it's frozen, and looking down at it and thinking how much easier for you to just jump and to not deal with any of this. And the only reason I didn't was because I thought about what it would cause the people around me. And also when I thought that Laura would be pretty pissed if I did that. But it's true. It was largely for other people that I chose to go on, which is a crazy thought for me because I've always really enjoyed life. I love living and that's why I enjoy doing all these things, because I feel so much life when I'm doing them, and just seeing the world and meeting interesting people. There's just so much life in that. But I also understand how if I didn't have the support network that I did, how that it was a viable choice for me to do that. And it wasn't an unreasonable one at the time. It was a very legitimate, strong urge. So I have a lot of empathy for people who don't feel like they don't have that same level of support pulling them back from making those choices.
Shelby Stanger:
I know Laura wasn't a big fan of social media, but you're sharing about her on Instagram, and I'm so happy because it seems like she was a total badass.
Adam Campbell:
Well, actually, more than being a badass, she was a healer. She was the type of person that people would go to for advice. She was a doctor, she's a healer. And so, yeah, she would be so embarrassed with some of the stuff I've shared on social media about her, but one of the reasons I chose to do it, one, to help me heal, to keep her memory alive. It's helped me quite a lot, but I thought that it could continue to help other people heal. So, yeah, she's a mega badass and that's really, really inspiring. And I think it can get people to sort of examine their life the way that she lived hers. It was a life of passion and curiosity and adventure. Those were her driving forces more than anything else, and I think that we should all strive to live like that, also with a lot of like compassion and empathy. I think that curiosity drives compassion and empathy, and I think she did as well. And I think by sharing her stories, it keeps that spirit alive, so in a way it keeps her alive as well.
Shelby Stanger:
What would Laura be proud of you for right now?
Adam Campbell:
I think Laura would be proud of me for continuing to try to live and to try to follow my passions and to keep trying to follow my heart. She really, really tried to pay close attention to what her core needs were. And that's something I've been trying to do over the last year, is really listening to my needs and speaking to them. And one thing that I've never been very good at, being a type A person, is saying no to situations and opportunities and just saying no to people in general. And there's this sort of weird notion that saying no to something is kind of quitting. And ultimately, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not capable of saying no to certain situations. And in a weird way, by saying yes to everything, you actually limit yourself to real opportunity. So learning to say no to certain things, to enable you to say yes to other opportunities and to say yes to yourself, is probably one of the more important lessons I learned from her.
Shelby Stanger:
Even though Laura's life ended in a horrific accident in the mountains, I think it's really moving that Adam has been so open and sharing about her, and also that he's found so much healing in the outdoors. When he's out there, he's keeping her memory and his connection with her alive. The amount of healing Adam has done in the past year is incredible and I think his journey with grief has a lot to teach anyone who might be dealing with their own loss. While grieving does involve a lot of reflection and sadness, there's some room for joy as well.
Shelby Stanger:
I have this thing called the wild round, but it sounds like it's a little awkward to ask you these question.
Adam Campbell:
No, no, it's fine. Let's go for it. Let's go for it.
Shelby Stanger:
Are you down? Okay.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Shelby Stanger:
This is the fun part.
Adam Campbell:
So actually, that's an interesting sort of segue about fun and laughing, is I remember the first time laughing after Laura died and you have this dissonance and like, is it okay to be happy? Is it okay to laugh? Is it okay to feel joy? And ultimately it was like, yeah, and it's what Laura would have wanted as well. It is okay. And in fact, that's what you should be searching. You should be seeking those moments. You need it.
Shelby Stanger:
And I know when my dad died, and people handle grief in funny ways in our Western culture. And they would say weird stuff or funny stuff or awkward stuff. And I'm like, "Okay, he just died. You don't have to be like..." Did you get that?
Adam Campbell:
Oh yeah, all the time. And people would be afraid of telling you about the good things that were happening. And it was like, "No, I need this. Tell me." And I'm really sorry that you went through that. The irony with all of this is death is the one constant in life. It is the only thing that it's guaranteed happened to all of us. It's the one constant. We don't talk about it. We don't deal with it well. We hide away from it, and it's part of the full life experience to deal with death. It is. So you actually, in a much broader sense, have a much bigger worldview because you've dealt with the ultimate human constant.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, thank you.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So the fun questions are, one, what's your puppy's name?
Adam Campbell:
Peat. P-E-A-T like Peat Moss.
Shelby Stanger:
Have you perfected the handstand yet?
Adam Campbell:
No, not quite. I'm getting better, getting better. So when I broke my back, the thoracic spine, it still isn't super strong. So that was one of the reasons for wanting to try to do the handstand, was to try and strengthen that part of my back. So getting there, not quite there yet though.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, I'm proud of you for trying. So you have a garden. What is your favorite plant in your garden right now?
Adam Campbell:
Well, the garden this time of year in Canada is under three feet of snow.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's right, you're in snow.
Adam Campbell:
I am looking at a sunflower that's in my window that I actually need to go water, so thank you for the reminder.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the snack that you love having in your pack while you're out backcountry skiing and cross country skiing?
Adam Campbell:
Oh. So I love cheese. I love having little bits of cheese with me. Cheese and dark chocolate.
Shelby Stanger:
Perfect.
Adam Campbell:
I really like candied ginger as well.
Shelby Stanger:
Candied ginger. That's pretty good for your stomach too.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah. For Ultra Races, I take a lot of candied ginger to help settle my stomach.
Shelby Stanger:
That's a good tip. Favorite meal to come home to?
Adam Campbell:
Pizza. I love pizza and a beer. That's my favorite thing.
Shelby Stanger:
If you weren't living in a mountain town in Canada, where would you live?
Adam Campbell:
If I weren't living in... Actually, I would love to live up in the Yukon, but I also love the desert. I love Santa Fe. I'm also, I really like Bend, really neat places. If I could live in Southern Spain, but closer to the Pyrenees, actually. That'd be pretty cool as well. I love that part of the world.
Shelby Stanger:
What mountain are you most excited to ski next?
Adam Campbell:
I don't know. They're all pretty cool. I'd love to go up Mount Robson. It's one of the highest mountains in the Canadian Rockies. It's a really, really beautiful mountain. I'd love to go up Robson. So Laura's dad was a climber, and Laura and I had a list of the roofs that he climbed and we were trying to repeat them. And he never actually made it up Mount Robson, but it was on his list of climbs. So I think it'd be pretty cool to get up Mount Robson.
Shelby Stanger:
Adam keeps finding what he needs in nature. Though there's been hardship and heartbreak in the mountains, he finds community and connection out there. The great outdoors can provide so much more than exhilaration and adventures. It can also give us the space we need to heal and to find our own inner peace. Thank you so much to Adam for coming on the show and sharing your and Laura's story with such honesty and vulnerability. I wished I could have given you just a big hug so many times during our conversation. You can follow along on Adam's journey and see some beautiful pictures of Laura on his Instagram. He's @adamo1979. That's A-D-A-M-O 1979, or check out his website, alpinebureau.com. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted and created by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby, and our presenting sponsor is Ford. As always, we appreciate when you subscribe, rate and review the show wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:55:53]