Cody Townsend is one of America's most well-known and beloved professional skiers. In his 20s, Cody made a name for himself as a competitive alpine ski racer before starring in dozens of blockbuster ski movies. His fame skyrocketed in 2014 when he skied The Crack, a steep and narrow gully in Alaska. Following this feat, Cody embarked on an ambitious journey to ski the 50 classic lines in North America— a project that isn't quite finished and maybe never will be.
Cody Townsend is one of America's most well-known and beloved professional skiers. In his 20s, Cody made a name for himself as a competitive alpine ski racer before starring in dozens of blockbuster ski movies. His fame skyrocketed in 2014 when he skied The Crack, a steep and narrow gully in Alaska. Following this feat, Cody embarked on an ambitious journey to ski the 50 classic lines in North America— a project that isn't quite finished and maybe never will be.
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Cody Townsend:
If you're obsessed enough, you'll find a way because there's no one path, there's no linear path. And I look back in my own career and it was just pure obsession and passion that got me to this place. And the other part of it is in the cliche you always hear from the greatest sports stars in the world is you have to be more comfortable with failure than just about anyone else.
Shelby Stanger:
Cody Townsend is one of the most well-known and beloved professional skiers in America. In his 20s, Cody was a competitive alpine ski racer and later appeared in dozens of blockbuster ski movies. In 2014, Cody became famous for skiing a very steep and narrow goalie in Alaska called The Crack. At the time, it was referred to as the most insane ski line in history.
His performance on The Crack went viral and he won several awards for the descent. From there, Cody came up with another wild idea. Instead of trying to outdo himself on a crazier, more dangerous line, he started exploring the world of ski mountaineering. In 2019, Cody ventured into the wild to ski 50 classic lines in North America. The project isn't quite finished and maybe never will be. But the process of going after the 50 has taught Cody to redefine failure, respect his limits, and center joy.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-Op Studios production brought to you by Capital One. Cody Townsend, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have lived a very wild life, so I'm excited to chat with you.
Cody Townsend:
I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
All right. So, you're in Tahoe right now?
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. It's where I call home these days.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm really curious how you grew up in Santa Cruz, which is like the land of the salty surfers, and you became a professional skier. When did you start skiing and how did you get into it?
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. Well, I started skiing when I was two years old. My parents loved it and we had a little cabin, like an actual forest service cabin that you had to hike to up in the woods just outside of Olympic Valley. And we would go up on the weekends and I fell in love with it from the youngest of ages.
Stories of my parents would tell me being like three, four years old and they're bribing me to get off the chair lifts because it's raining and I'm the only person left skiing. The first ski movie I ever saw was Warren Miller's Ski Country. And when I saw that movie, I was like, "I'm going to be a skier." And it stuck in my head and somehow 41 years old doing the math, 30 some years later, that's what I'm still doing.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you make it your career though? When did you get paid? Because it's not exactly a sport where there's a traditional track. You could have been a ski racer. You could have tried to go to the Olympics in those disciplines. But you chose a little bit of a different path.
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. Well, it's actually, I tried the ski racing thing to start. So, when I was young, you don't know about jobs or careers at any point. But for me it was just like I just want to ski and, I don't know, figure that out later. And I was lucky enough to do pretty well at ski racing from a young age. I joined the ski team. I started competing locally and I was winning a lot of those races and that was only skiing on the weekends.
And then in high school, I actually would transfer high schools from Santa Cruz up to Tahoe. I lived on a cot in my best friend's room and just lived with his parents for the winter and was training to ski race. And I kept doing pretty well at that and nearly made it to the US ski team. Never quite. But it was internationally and nationally ranked, had a lot of good success with it.
My best friend at the time, the friend I grew up with skiing and then lived at his house was a buddy named George Hjelte. And we would be go skiing all the time and chasing the local pros. And I just remember, I think we both skied under the chairlift, went and jumped the fingers, which is this iconic line, and we both jump at 30, 40-foot airs. And I think we're like 15 years old. And you get back to line and people are starting to say, "Wow. That was awesome. Whoa. Who are you kids?" And it was like that kind of moments where you're realizing like, "Maybe we could do this. We're skiing well enough where people that we look up to are recognizing us."
And I'll never forget the chair ride up where George and I were talking, we're like, "How do we become pro skiers?" And George just said, he's like, "We'll just keep skiing and people will notice one day." And it was like, "Cool. Let's just keep doing that." And we were just so passionate about it that we were going to be jumping cliffs and doing backflips and trying to ski all the most challenging lines. And as time went on, people did start to notice.
So, when I was about 20, the Freeski Revolution was happening and I was still ski racing at that time, but being drawn more and more towards freeskiing just because it was more fun. And I told my ski racing sponsors, which was Solomon, was my primary ski sponsor. I was like, "Hey. Can I switch over to freeskiing?" And they were so enthusiastic about it that they actually gave me a contract for $6,000, which I was like, "I'm rich."
It felt like the biggest thing ever. And people are paying me to go ski. This is the coolest thing ever. And so, when I was 20, I quit ski racing, moved into freeskiing and, yeah, now 21 years later, still doing it.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So, this sounds idyllic and a little bit of a fairy tale, and I'm guessing it wasn't all peaches and ice cream.
Cody Townsend:
No.
Shelby Stanger:
Your journey to becoming this insane, amazing backcountry skier that gets paid to basically do what you love. I'm really curious. What were some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. I think the biggest challenge that I ever faced in this career path was pretty early on in my career. I think that first year I was with Solomon, I got an opportunity to film with Matchstick Productions. And Matchstick Productions at that time were making the best ski movies, in my opinion, with all my heroes, Shane McConkey, Seth Morrison. And it was my dream to just be in a Matchstick movie. That was the ultimate goal.
And I had the opportunity to film with them, and I got to go film with Shane, who was my complete hero, Scott Gaffney, JT Holmes. And we filmed that whole year pretty locally to Tahoe. So, filming in the backcountry, filming on the resort. And I quickly realized I wasn't performing super well. I was crashing on a lot of cliffs. I didn't necessarily have the mentality that you need to have when you are filming a segment and film that whole year.
And they have what is usually a very huge premiere here in Tahoe, 500, 600 people. And it's rowdy. It's just such a unbelievably fun and jovial time. And I showed up to the ski movie that I was supposed to be in, and I was completely cut from the ski movie. My footage was so bad that essentially it hit the cutting room floor and I didn't even show up into the movie.
And it was pretty devastating, because here's your dream and here's what you were working towards your entire life. And then all of a sudden, to feel like maybe I don't have the athletic talents to do this, maybe I'm just never going to be good enough. And all that stuff started racing through my brain as I'm watching the movie and the credits come up and I wasn't in it.
And I remember, actually, sitting in the back and in the dark and just crying. Because it was like, "Wow. Your dream's over. You just had the most golden opportunity you could ever have and you're cut." And then even that leading into the next winter was like, "Can I get another opportunity again?" And Matchstick was like, "No. You didn't perform well enough." And that was looking back on it, you're like, "Of course. Why would you want to spend money to have a filmer to come out and film someone who's not that good at skiing?"
And it was a pretty devastating time and I was completely lost. I was like, "Well, what do I do? I'm only 21 years old and my dream of being a pro skier is done." And that was a very pivotal moment in my life and my career.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. I imagine. That would've been embarrassing, too, because you probably told all your friends like, "Come out to the movie." And at that point, you hadn't seen the movie. That's rough. So, how did you come back from that?
Cody Townsend:
There was two things. It was my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, I just remember was very matter of fact about it. And she's like, "No. You'll come back." And she just had this almost cold calculated rationality to it of just like, "No. You'll be fine. Just keep working hard at it." Then this other realization, I was like, "Yeah. Well, what else am I going to do? This is what you love more than anything. You are so obsessed with skiing that to give up on entirely."
And go, I don't know, get a job at Google or something like that, because I had graduated college and there was that opportunity. I had had job offers from tech companies and I was like, "I do not want to go move to Silicon Valley and go get an office job." So, it was kind of like, "Well, I might as well just be a ski bum and just keep skiing." And I know my opportunity with Matchstick is done and it might never come back. But again, what else are you going to do?
And so, that very next year I just went into the season was like, "All right. I'm going to take every opportunity I can and I'm going to do everything in my power to just to get better, to learn, to improve my skiing. And that next year I decided to enter my first free skiing contest, went down to Mammoth area. It was the very first year, the Free Ride World Tour, which is now the most successful tour in skiing.
And they had a qualifier event. There was 115 people there and ended up winning the Free Ride World Tour qualifier. And so, that gave me another just boost of confidence was like, "Okay. No. You do have the skills. You're just going to have to maybe work a bit harder at this and learn from your mistakes in that ski movie from the year before and improve."
But I'm very grateful for that because I started filming with any film company I could. So, the local upstarts, the little small-time film companies, I would hit them up, be like, "Hey, you got any film trips this year? Can I come?" And go work on my craft with them. And I went to the World Tour and there's no better place to learn how to ski in challenging conditions against the best skiers in the world than that tour and took five years before I got another opportunity to film with Matchstick.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. I really appreciate you sharing this because I think a lot of athletes will just ... and a lot of people, they get rejected and they're done. And I think a lot of people don't ask. I think there's this myth that when you're a really good athlete, people just invite you to go do these things. And even if you are really good, you still have to knock on doors and invite yourself sometimes and make a seat at the table and then you have to say yes when the invitation is extended.
Cody Townsend:
Totally. To me, going through that failure and then just burying your ego and being like, "All right. Well, it's time to get better and to work harder at this is such a key part of trying to become a successful athlete.
Shelby Stanger:
Even though that moment with Matchstick was humiliating, Cody persevered and was able to build an extremely successful career as a professional skier. About 10 years later in 2014, Cody was in Alaska working on a ski film when he saw a line that would change the course of his career. Up in a helicopter, he spotted a long narrow couloir.
A couloir is a gully in mountainous terrain. Think of a smooth snow-covered gutter between two rocky ridges. Cody asked to be dropped off so he could explore the line. When he reached the top, Cody found himself staring down a 2000-foot vertical drop. In some places, the line was only 3 feet wide. At the bottom, the route went into a tunnel and had a sharp 45-degree turn right before the exit. Were you ever scared? Anything running? What do you say to yourself?
Cody Townsend:
No. I actually wasn't scared, which was a really good thing, because it was a very intimidating line. But I think so much of my ski career had led up to that point from being a downhill ski racer. And so, being comfortable with speed, it was my 10th trip to Alaska, so I was very comfortable with a terrain and being able to scout things before dropping into them for the very first time.
I had scouted it for two weeks prior and just dreamed about it and probably skied it 1,000 plus times in my head. And when I was on top of that, I will never forget this feeling of just having the most calm confidence. I was in the most zen-like state you can imagine. And my friend, Scott Gaffney, who happens to be a cinematographer for Matchstick Productions, he was on top of the line with me, shooting me from the top-down.
And we have a pretty joking relationship, and he's always messing with me and making fun of me, and we just play games with each other the whole time. It was the very first time my entire ski career of skiing with him, he was nervous and he was trying to pump me up. He's like, "All right. Cody, you got this. You got this." And I could tell he was nervous. And I was like, "Dude, why are you nervous? You're making me nervous. I'm fine, man. I got this. This is straightforward." And I'm really thankful for being so calm and confident. Because if I wasn't, then that's what creates errors.
Shelby Stanger:
Cody zeroed in on the moment, quieted his mind and took off down the couloir.
Cody Townsend:
I originally wanted to straight line it. But as I got into it, I was like, "Oh, my God. I'm going so fast." And this is narrower and gnarlier than I actually anticipated. So, I was doing a little bit of feathery speed checking just to keep my speed under control. Because as I came out of the bottom, I would estimate I was going 65, 70 miles an hour. But yeah, it was this just massive couloir, super narrow, not many availability for turns.
Once I got up to speed, there was no stopping. And it was just full throttle, get through this thing, stay on your feet, make that 45 degree turn and come out of the bottom screaming. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.
Shelby Stanger:
The video of Cody skiing The Crack went viral. And at the time, many called it the most insane line in history. It was the pinnacle of Cody's career. The film won multiple awards in the industry, and he appeared on network news across the country.
Cody Townsend:
I got to this point where I was like, "Whoa. This is the top of your career." And you both have the question internally, but you're also getting it outside of it, is that everyone's going, "What's next?" And in that world of freeride skiing, you continually have to one-up yourself. The ski movies are based on progression, athletic progression, and after I skied The Crack, which went viral, after I won all those awards, I was like, "I got nothing left. There's nothing that I can do to top what I just did."
Shelby Stanger:
Cody didn't know what he would do next. But he started thinking more about backcountry adventuring and how he might be able to push himself out in the wilderness. In the end, he landed on a project that's been five years in the making.
Cody Townsend has been a professional skier for more than 20 years. He's carved out an unconventional path for himself, driven by curiosity and passion for his sport. After going viral and winning awards for skiing The Crack, Cody started to think about what he would do next. He was curious about extended ski adventures in the backcountry and finding terrain that was off the beaten path.
A year after The Crack, Cody went on his first expedition, camping in the backcountry, opened his eyes to a new way of skiing, one that was less about one-upping himself and more about connecting with nature. As he became more interested in ski mountaineering, Cody remembered a coffee table book that he had seen years earlier. It was called 50 Classic Ski Descents of North America by Chris Davenport.
Cody Townsend:
I remember opening up the book, the 50 Classic Ski Descents, and for the first time kind of like, "Huh. This is suddenly speaking to me," looking at the ski lines off the Grand Teton and going like, "Man, I would really love to ski off the Grand Teton." And then there was these other lines I'd never heard about that I was like, "Wow. It'd be really cool to go there."
And it was this slow materialization over the next three years of going on more expeditions, doing more human-powered skiing, and realizing that it would be really cool to try to ski all 50 of these lines. And I knew I would have to give up my entire freeride career. It would be only focused on this. And it got to a point in my life where I realized I was like, "I will regret it for the rest of my life if I don't try to do this."
And then at that point, it was a year of research, a year of figuring out, I was like, "Well, how do I maintain a career as a pro skier while trying to do this?" And then also the biggest thing was truly becoming comfortable with the fact that the most likely thing was not completing the project. Because I knew it's going to be incredibly dangerous. It's going to be incredibly hard. The risks in order to complete it are through the roof.
And I knew that. I was like, "You might get to a point where it's just too risky, it's too gnarly, or your desire wanes." And are you going to be comfortable for the rest of your life with people asking you like, "Why didn't you finish The FIFTY?" And when I got to that point, I was like, "No. The desire to try outweighs that fear of failure." That was when I realized it was like, "You have to do this." So, in 2019, I launched the project called The FIFTY.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. So, this wild idea had been brewing for five years before?
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. It really took a long time because it was so new to me, the ski mountaineering realm. It was such a shift in my career. I knew that there was going to be a lot of sacrifices I had to make. I knew it would have to be in complete change of lifestyle. I knew I was going into a world that I was not strong at. As a freeride skier, you were like, "Yeah. I'm one of the best in the world." And I'm going into a ski mountaineering world where I'm like, "Yeah. I'm okay. But I'm not one of the best. And you're going to try and make a career out of that."
But to me, it was just like I saw the beauty of learning. I saw the beauty of challenging myself to this totally new style of skiing was just like, that's what's going to be so fun about it, and that's what you got to do.
Shelby Stanger:
Had anybody ever done all 50? Did Chris Davenport or those guys do it?
Cody Townsend:
No. No one actually has ever done all 50. All the lines have been skied at least once, but a couple of them had skied once or twice in history. When I announced the project, up to my knowledge, it was even trying to ski all 50, which actually presented a big red flag to me when I was early on. I'm like, "Why are you trying to do this if no one else is. There's a lot better ski mountaineers out there. Why are they not trying to do this?" And so, I'm like, "It seems pretty obvious. It'd be pretty cool to do all 50 of them."
And from a logistics standpoint, I spent years researching it. I have a spreadsheet, an Excel spreadsheet with every line in it, every little detail, every little resource of information, color categorization for what I think its difficulty was what I think the time period was going to be. And yeah, I spent years researching every one of the lines before committing to it.
I was like, "Well, what if I made this video documentary series that's going to follow me along the way?" When I came up with that idea, then that was the hurdle of being like, "Well, you're announcing to the world this is your intentions, not keeping it secret. And so, if you don't finish, then it's going to be that much more impactful to everyone and questioning why you didn't finish." And that was again, the big mental hurdle to get over. And again, once I got to a place, I was like, "Yeah. Whatever. I just want to try."
Shelby Stanger:
At first, it was pretty tough to secure sponsors for a wild idea like this. When they asked Cody about timelines for releasing the videos on YouTube, he couldn't quite give them a straight answer. The project was so weather-dependent and Cody insisted he wouldn't attempt a line if the conditions weren't safe. In the end, Cody pitched several brands and even invested some of his own funds to get his idea off the ground. He decided to call the project The FIFTY. He skied his first line in 2019. How many lines did you ski that first year?
Cody Townsend:
We skied 20 lines the very first year. I think we made about 25 episodes. But yeah, we actually successfully skied 20 of them.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. Okay. And take me back to 1 of 50. What was that like?
Cody Townsend:
So, yeah. The first episode comes out and I'm raring to hit the road. Because I'm like, "All right. Episode 2, we got to get it out there." And my first idea with this was very much, I want these episodes to be coming out nearly live. We're going to make them short, quick. But with social media being it's such a big component of things. You're sharing stories. You're sharing photos. And then the episode comes out two weeks later. I really want to not to be the case.
So, it was like, "All right. We're going for the very first line." And we drove out to Utah, because I saw what looked like some good stability and a good window. And sure enough, we get to Utah and go for my first warmup ski tour, and it's just super sketchy avalanche stability. And we filmed that whole process, day one of ski touring and dig an avalanche pit, get really bad results. And I was like, "Well, we're not doing it."
And so, I was camping out in the back of my truck at my team manager's house, and we ended up sleeping on the floor a little bit, because he got kicked out of the cars and couldn't sleep in their parking lot, and there's just crashing on his house. A few days later, we had this magical storm. Stability was good and went and skied Mount Superior in just about the best conditions you could ever imagine.
And all of a sudden had this really good story of showing up to Utah, showing us going through the process of digging a pit, not going for the line because of stability, waiting, and then going for the line and having an incredible day. And it was just from a perspective I didn't realize it was like that was the magic sauce of what we were going to do. And that very first episode came out a couple of weeks later, and it just went super successful. People were super into it, and it was game on from then on out. And that first year was the single busiest year of my life.
Shelby Stanger:
To say that the first year was busy would be an understatement. Cody would frequently stay up late working on videos, then he'd sleep for two hours, and head back out to ski another line. There came a point when Cody realized this pace wasn't sustainable. He was skiing in dangerous territory, and he needed to be more rested to stay sharp. In his videos, Cody was transparent with his audience about the mental, physical and logistical challenges of skiing these lines.
Cody Townsend:
Really, we had an idea, my general ethos for it was I want people to feel like they're on my shoulder going along for the ride with me. So, that was like, "Okay. The style of cinematography we're doing and the style of storytelling we're doing. And then from there it was like, "Well, how do you figure that out? What conversations do you shoot? How do you introduce things?" And it was learning to become a filmmaker on the fly. And I actually count that as one of the coolest parts about this whole project is just producing episodes and becoming a filmmaker just out of being forced to be one.
Shelby Stanger:
What did viewers think of the whole thing?
Cody Townsend:
I was surprising how appreciative people were. When we'd put out episodes where we wouldn't take off the line, where we would turn around 300 feet from the top of a line and because of what snow issue, safety issue, whatever it was, and we'd not complete it and ski down, get off the mountain safely and put that episode out that the response to that was nothing I could have anticipated, because I think we were showing people the reality of ski mountaineering. The fact is you're not always successful. If you are 100% successful in the mountains as a ski mountaineer, you're doing something drastically wrong.
Shelby Stanger:
Or you are successful, because you didn't die.
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. No. And that's the redefining what success is, was a real big part of this. And success to me, as I've said in these episodes, I have three rules and they're in order and they're very much exactly what I follow. And that is rule number one, don't die. Rule number two, have fun. Rule number three, ski The FIFTY. And if I'm looking like I'm going to break rule one or even two, then you don't ski The FIFTY and you turn around.
And so, showing those processes of making critical decisions, turning around, I think was ... It's been shown in ski movies. But I think because of our storytelling, because of the project, because there was such a in-depth dive to a lot of these conversations, people were really like ... They were really appreciative of it.
Shelby Stanger:
About how many times did you have to turn around, not complete a line?
Cody Townsend:
God, I can't even say. I mean, there's so many episodes where we'd turn around and then come back a few days later and get it done. I think we have five or six episodes that end with us not completing a line. But then there's so many other times we turn around. I mean, split couloir and split mountain in the Eastern Sierra. I started trying that line in 2019. I didn't complete it until 2023. And I went up and scouted that line every single year in the in-between. So, it was a four-year project to ski one line.
And the episode that came out about it is something I'm really proud of because it's a very dangerous line. I've unfortunately, lost two friends to that line, which gave it definitely me much more pause and caution going into it, knowing that a mentor of mine who is incredibly skilled at what he did, unfortunately suffered an accident and passed away while trying to ski that line.
To me, that episode really showed the patience, the caution, how you plan for doing a line like that. And for us, it took four years, and it was really rewarding once we got it done, when we did it in a way that it was the safest possible day you could do it.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. Yeah. I mean, you're in a sport where people do die.
Cody Townsend:
A lot.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you deal with it while still continuing to do what you love? I'm always really curious about how mountain athletes handle that. There's so much more death in your sport than other sports.
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. No. There's massive amount of death. It's a sad reality. But I stopped counting how many friends I've lost at 20, because it's just, yeah, I must feel guilty if you forget someone when you're trying to count through how many friends you've lost. And the reality is, yeah, it's probably upwards of 30 friends that I've lost to the mountains. And to answer that question, I still don't know, and I'm still processing through that. And how to balance that is really hard.
And I had some big realizations this year. We went on two big expeditions, one of which was very, very scary expedition. We all had some very close calls. We all were in a pretty dark place after it. And I had realized in many ways that a lot of what we see that happens in the mountains can build up in your own mind in a way that you can't even anticipate. There's unforeseen costs that you don't know are going to come, but eventually the bill comes due and it can show itself in the form of whether it's trauma, whether it's PTSD, or whether it's just your relationship with the sport in the mountains itself.
So, to me, I don't know exactly how to balance that. I know for myself, my priority is to be home and with my family and to be a father and a husband. So, how do I balance that with still having adventures in the mountains still challenging yourself that, I'm still trying to figure that out?
Shelby Stanger:
How do you deal with moments of darkness? Because your career has a lot of highs, and then there's just, you're in a natural career where there's going to be lows?
Cody Townsend:
For probably the last 20 years, it's just a lot of self-reflection, a lot of self-awareness, a lot of diving deep into the accidents and trying to learn from what has happened out there. But I've also realized that in the last year, that's not enough. I started going to therapy for my first time this last year. I always thought I was mentally strong enough and very happy and content person, but there's stuff that builds up that you don't know. And some of that stuff came into fruition this last year for me. And so, yeah, that's the way I've been processing it, and this has been a new evolution, and I think it's a good evolution.
Shelby Stanger:
Cody has learned a lot about himself and his relationship with skiing over the course of this project. After doing a lot of logistical work and self-reflection, he's at peace with the fact that he might not finish all of the lines. For now, Cody has put the project on pause, but he still sees it as a success. So, when did you decide I'm going to put the project on hold?
Cody Townsend:
There's some nuance to that. But I put the YouTube series on hold because the last four lines that are left, three of them are very, very difficult lines that have been skied once or twice in history and in 30 plus years, and tons of people trying. And so, I knew, I was like, "If I'm going to keep producing episodes, I don't want that pressure of like, I got to get an episode out this year and we got to produce something."
So, I was like, "Okay. The episodes are on hold. We are going to continue to film what we can. And as long as I have the internal motivation to keep trying a couple of these lines, then we're going to keep trying them." And this last year, we did. We kept trying two of the last four, and we have some desire to keep trying these other four. But it could be one more year. It could be five more years before I decide to be like, "You know what? That's good." Or in those five years, we do end up skiing all of them. So, it's just on hold, but it's still happening on the backend.
Shelby Stanger:
I like that you took that internal pressure off.
Cody Townsend:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
I think that's really nice.
Cody Townsend:
Yeah. Well, if you have pressure to do these lines that is outside of yourself, then you're doing it 100% for the wrong reasons, and you're probably going to get yourself into some bad situations. So, whether that's ego, whether that's sponsors, whether that's audience, whether that's videos, all that stuff, that external pressure I needed to completely remove from myself.
If I'm going to finish these last four lines, it has to be a deep internal desire and knowledge that I can do it. And sacrificing going skiing in some other dream locations and/or my own backyard and being with my family to go continue to try these is something that I can already see is wearing a little thin, but at the same time, I still have it. But if that continues to wane, then yeah, then I'll be done.
I think the biggest thing for me, the biggest thing I wanted to prove to myself as I got into this was that I wanted to see if I could do all 50. I think I've already proven to myself that I can. Will I actually do it? I don't know. But that doesn't matter, because I know that I could. And when I started the project, I didn't know that. I was generally thinking I'm not going to be able to, because I'm like, "Yeah. Some of these lines are incredibly difficult. You're going to have to learn a lot. You're going to have to change your entire way your body functions going from a power performance-driven athlete to an endurance athlete."
And I'm 6'2", 200 pounds. I'm not necessarily built like a waify ski mountaineer. But I've gotten to a point where I'm like, "Oh, no. No. You have the technical ability, you have the mental ability, you have the awareness, and the skills to be able to do this." Now, are you going to be able to have the patience to wait for the right conditions to come in, to keep trying over time? That's where it's going to make the ultimate decision. And that to me is ... That's fine. If the mountains let me ski the last four lines, then amazing. If they don't, then amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
What advice can you give to people who want to chase a wild idea?
Cody Townsend:
Go for it. I think if you can't get that idea out of your head. If you just all night, it keeps you up, and it's not just one night, it's for the weeks and months and years, then I think at that point you've figured out that you'll have the drive and passion and motivation to make it happen. If you're going to quasi commit to it's not going to work. If you're going to be willing to sacrifice nearly everything for it, then it will work. If you're going to everything that it takes to make it happen, then it's going to work.
But what I see is people that fail at their dreams, generally, just quasi commit to it. You got to go for it. And if you don't achieve it, then at least you tried. And that's a big part of my career, too, is like failure is a great, great lesson and it's nothing to be ashamed about. It's something that will just continue to motivate you and continue to learn.
So, this FIFTY project is probably going to be the greatest failure of my career. If I don't finish all 50, it could be considered a failure, yet at the same time, it's probably the single most successful thing I've ever done in my career, and it has brought me so much joy, so much community, so much amazing experiences and memories, and I'm thankful that it's going to be potentially the greatest failure I've ever do.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to learn more about Cody's FIFTY project, I highly recommend that you check out his YouTube channel at Cody Townsend. There, you can also learn about his new series called FIFTY+. To connect with Cody directly and see what he's up to, go to his Instagram, @codytownsend, that's C-O-D-Y, T-O-W-N-S-E-N-D. If you like this episode, you might also enjoy our interview with snowboarder, Travis Rice, or skier, Connor Ryan. We'll link to both of those episodes in the show notes.
Wild Ideas Worth Living as part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby.
As always, we love it when you follow the show. Take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.