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Yeah, and you know in the early years too, just like convincing people that this was even a thing that had a place in their life.

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Like up until like 2015, 2016 really, it was our competition was not other apps. Our competition was paper.

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And it was really convincing, convincing people that were already out in the back country using maps that like, here's an alternative.

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And that this is a thing that believe it or not, this really actually works.

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Like, you know, one of the main criticisms we would get from people was, yeah, but there's not cell phone service everywhere.

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So this is garbage.

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They were like, no, no, you can download the maps for offline and your phone is a GPS chip in it.

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And it works in the middle of the wilderness.

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And those early years, that was kind of one of the big challenges was convincing people that this was a thing that would be useful in their life.

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All aspects is brought to you by AspectAvi. AspectAvi is a new safety tool that helps you make safer decisions in the back country.

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Did you know that we currently as an industry spend a billion dollars per year on reactive avalanche gear?

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So that's your beacon, shovel probe, airbag, all those things only help you after you've been avalanche.

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AspectAvi is the first preventative avalanche safety tool that is designed to keep you out of avalanches altogether.

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Our algorithm processes a huge amount of data and scrapes the avalanche forecast in every forecast zone across the country.

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Then it shows you on the map where it's high and low risk for today's avalanche stage.

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Clear means low risk. Red is high risk. Red equals death. Don't go in there.

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This is called adaptive slope shading or ass.

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The reason why this is so revolutionary is because it changes and updates as the conditions change.

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Nobody else has ass because we invented it.

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AspectAvi also has a ton of awesome tools built into it like a tri-axis slope angle meter, trailhead and drop-in checklist, and my personal favorite, the forecast update tool.

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The best part is AspectAvi is giving away this lifesaving tool 100% free.

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AspectAvi is committed to making the back country safer and more fun for everyone in our community.

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You can download AspectAvi on iOS right now for the App Store.

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Android, it's coming soon.

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Remember, there are dozens of apps that get you into the back country, but only AspectAvi is designed to bring you home safely.

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Thanks to our business daddy, AspectAvi, for making the All Aspects podcast possible.

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Now let's get to the show.

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Hey, welcome back to the All Aspects podcast. We're really excited to welcome Jesse Crocker today.

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He's one of the co-founders of Gaia GPS, one of your favorite mapping apps.

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But before that, he was also a pro ski patroller at Kirkwood and Big Sky.

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He's also done some wild adventures like Kiteski across Greenland, which kind of melts my brain.

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So as we always do each week, we talk about how to do inherently dangerous things,

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whether it's starting doing a startup company or traveling across Greenland, the safest way possible.

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Jesse, welcome to the pod.

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Thanks for having me.

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Oh yeah, man. Excited to talk to you. Let's just jump right into this, man.

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So when I was looking up your backstory a little bit, you're a Bay Area kid, right?

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Yep.

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Okay. So were you always kind of interested in like computers and that kind of thing?

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Yeah, I grew up kind of around the tech industry.

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One of my dad's good friends was a computer programmer who kind of introduced me at a very young age to like that.

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That was a career path.

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And my dad painted houses and computer programming seemed a lot more appealing than painting houses.

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That's fair. That's fair.

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And then when I was looking kind of your backstory up, it said your first like gig doing computer,

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I guess, would you say computer science stuff?

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Like you were tracking bison?

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Yeah. So I worked for a nonprofit in West Yellowstone, Montana that is trying to get more habitat for bison outside of Yellowstone National Park.

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So they have volunteers out in the field all winter long on skis and snowshoes going and seeing where the bison are and what they're doing and documenting sort of the different government management actions around the bison.

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And I spent a bunch of time actually in the field out with the bison in like minus 45 degree weather in West Yellowstone in the winter.

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But then also a lot of time working on the computer side of things, working on building a computer system for all these volunteers who are out in the field to log all their observations.

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People come back at the end of the day and record, we saw this many bison doing this, we saw seven elk, we saw porcupine and creating a whole system for that.

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And that that now has 20 years of observations from tens of thousands of volunteer days in the field.

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And that was kind of my introduction to working on the mapping side of computers.

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Okay, does that still exist? Does that system still are they still using it?

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It actually it got replaced last year, finally after being in use for 15, 18 years, something like that.

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But the data is all in use. There's actually someone's doing a PhD thesis with that with all that data right now.

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That's awesome.

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Hell yeah.

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Was that how so was like freezing your ass off chasing bison around how you kind of got into the backcountry scene?

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Yeah, that was before that I had spent, you know, growing up I snowboarded and I moved to West Yellowstone.

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And the first time I threw snow shoes on and a snowboard on my backpack.

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I saw the potential for having a lot of fun and honestly I couldn't afford lift tickets.

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But snowshoeing was not the thing I like after a month of that went out and bought the cheapest touring skis I could buy and didn't step on a snowboard again for a long time.

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That makes sense.

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So then we're just kind of skating through the backstory here you then went from that to joining ski patrol at Big Sky first or Kirkwood.

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Yeah, I spent a year as a volunteer at Big Sky kind of doing the ski bump thing, working on the volunteer patrol and skiing as many days as I possibly could.

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While you were doing that stuff, you were still playing around like playing around the background with building kind of mapping apps or like what were you doing in your free time at this time in your life?

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Yeah, so after Big Sky I went to Kirkwood, California and was on pro patrol there for four years and kind of three years into it realized my knees were not going to take 30 years patrolling.

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Looking at guys I worked with and realized that I had to come up with another line of work and it was right as iPhone was coming on the scene.

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So I decided I better get back into computer programming because that would let me still go out and play and have fun and not just be wrecked on my days off work.

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So I started, I built a couple apps during my last year of ski patrol, built an app for looking at snow tail data and then I built an app called Avalanche Lab that was for recording snow pit data and recording avalanche occurrences.

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Really kind of aimed at the pro side of things like looking at data logging or doing at work and like how can we make this easier? How can I not have to carry a field book for all of the compliance that needs to get done in a professional operating, avalanche operating environment?

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Wait, so this is, so you said you got back into this when the iPhone was coming out. So what was that like 2003? Like when was that?

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What, no, no, it was, what would that have been like 2009?

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Okay, I think it was 2010, something like that, yeah.

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Yeah, 2010, 2009 was kind of the first year we could build apps on the iPhone. It was like iOS 3 came out and then we could build real apps for it.

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And I got immediately got on it, like seemed seemed like there was huge potential there.

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Yeah, smart.

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So yeah, then I was still doing ski patrol and doing that. And then actually that year I went to National Avalanche School and the field session of National Avalanche School, I got to have Bruce Trempner as my instructor for the field session.

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And Bruce was like the first day was like, okay, like this new thing came out and we're doing maps on phones now. And this is going to be the future and everyone needs to get this app for mapping on their phone.

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And that app was guy GPS.

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And it was like months after just a few months after the first version of guy GPS came out and it, it was maps and track recording. It didn't, didn't do anywhere near the amount that any of the mapping apps these days do.

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And that year, I finished out my season of ski patrolling and then concluded that I had to be done patrolling at the end of that year that like iPhone iPhone development was definitely where it was happening.

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I was getting lots of great feedback about my avalanche avalanche lab but like not making any money off it. And realized that I should think about working on something else and then saw a job ad online for guy GPS and responded to that and the couple that originally

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founded guy GPS Andrew and Anna looked me up online or I think Anna searched her email for my name and found it in two places. One was from the Pacific crash trail mailing list.

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Talking about a winter trip I had done on the john mirror trail. And then one was on an email list about the mapping soft mapping library that I used an avalanche lab and that guy GPS used.

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And like the intersection of those two things was like okay great you're hired.

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So I started working at guy GPS like kind of immediately and then at actually an ISSW that year I saw my patrol director and was like okay I'm done.

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And then about a year into guy GPS. I guess Andrew and Anna saw the potential in me that I don't know that I saw in myself at the time but like they saw how much knowledge I had about the mapping side of things and gave me the title of being a co founder of guy

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GPS and gave me an equal share of the company that they each had. Wow. And I ran the kind of the whole mapping side of things that guy GPS so led led her intro into making our own maps instead of just using maps license from other people built the Android app led the web team for some years led the iOS team for some years

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and eventually led kind of the whole software engineering side of things. Damn. That's awesome. What so really really quick can I ask one question. What did the avalanche lab app do.

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It was recording snow pit data log log and pit data logging weather observations and then mapping out slides. So the you know kind of the standard book that's used for in the US for recording all that stuff is this thing called swag that snow weather avalanche guidelines

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and tons of people avalanche professionals are out there every day taking very exact notes based on this very specific data that needs to be collected. And it was basically a way to automate doing that and being able to submit it submitted and documented easily.

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How are you how are you aggregating all that data back then. So you could input it into the phone and then generate a diagram of a snow pit just like you draw in a field book and generate you know generate a text format of your weather observations just like you

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can just send it in a field book and then be able to email that off or print it out. Print it out and put it in your field book. OK. And then about six months into guy GPS like I realized that one of the two things I was working on was going to make money

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and one of them wasn't and I sold sold off avalanche lab to someone. OK so what so when you sold avalanche like you sold it to a totally different group than guy.

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I sold it to sold it to a guy who lives in Colorado who unfortunately has never really done anything with it. It's kind of a shame. There was there was some good potential there.

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But I think he ran into this shortly saw the same thing I did that it was going to be a very hard market to actually make money in especially targeting the professional side of things like yet the number the number of avalanche

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professionals in the US is small and you're trying to convince them to replace a paper notebook that their job is probably paying for anyway with something they have to pay for themselves. So the price we could reasonably charge was low.

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And it was just never going to be enough to pay the bills. That's super super cool. Like really very forward thinking for the time. I mean it's hard to imagine now because mapping is such a thing. You know there's I don't know.

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You probably know there's probably 100 plus mapping apps in the app store. But back then when you're doing guy a huge. I mean maybe we could talk a little bit about sort of the technical challenges of getting guy going and also the sort of social challenges of getting buy in for like him.

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I mean back then like Garmin was a box that you said on your dashboard. Right.

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Oh yeah I mean the people especially in the snow and avalanche world were super nervous at that point like I think 2011 maybe like I went up to the CAA Canadian Avalanche Association annual group meeting and gave a talk.

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And I straight up had people telling me that I was going to get people killed by encouraging them to carry phones in the back.

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They're like no if people have a phone in their backpack their beacon isn't going to work and you're going to get people killed. And it was like you know like there are some issues there but anecdotally we've done a bunch of testing and this is pretty much this is not nearly as much of an issue.

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And they're like well the batteries are going to die and you're going to get people killed like you know. No we're actually making it a lot easier for folks with less experience to keep themselves safe here.

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Well yeah as a analog Jeff knows all about that. Yeah I've heard that a lot too where people say you know Jeff the real problem is that people don't know how to navigate with a map compass and altimeter and that's what we need to be focusing on is training the millions of people out

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of Avalanche train every year if they only knew how to do that we'd be alright. And I'm just like whoa like when I'm examining guides they can barely do it old school analog style let alone the general public it takes I mean hundreds of hours of practice and mentorship it's just it's so much

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better. And then that cognitive load it's all you can do to navigate in a whiteout using paper map and compass and altimeter and then you've got no more energy left over to manage your group through the terrain and deal with the Avalanche problem.

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Yeah. Yeah there is there was a lot of a lot of resistance like I would say up until like six or seven years ago to just the idea that it was okay for people to take smartphones in the back country.

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Which everyone is doing anyway like the normies. I think it's like if you asked like I was a geographer and did map making in college and cartography and GIS and I think it'd be like talking to a cartographer you know 1520 years ago and said hey you know people are going to follow a blue dot around when

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they're driving through Denver or San Francisco or ever and they would have been like that's crazy that's going to kill people that's gonna get it wrong and you're like it's so much harder with paper map to drive and navigate the cognitive load is so much higher and like certainly on a glacier when I pull out a paper

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map I'm like I forgot to laminate this one and now it's a full storm and it's falling apart one time I had my laminated map blow away because it was such a meanest storm and I like oh god now we're totally hosed.

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Wait Jesse I want to so well actually kind of piggybacking on that what was what were the. I mean you you I'm assuming you all had to develop a good amount of the tech that that kind of became the base layer for mapping apps as we know it right.

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I think in the first couple years of guy GPS a lot of it was really even trying to figure out like what what should these products actually do like we know what a Garmin handheld GPS does and we know what a paper map does and a smartphone has all these

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capabilities but like what features do you actually want in a GPS app just trying to figure that out was a big one in the early years. There was lots of interesting technical problems to like mostly related to just the amount of data people had as time went by you know people who are out every day recording GPS tracks and all of a sudden they have 10,000 miles of

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tracks and figuring out how to deal with those but I would say honestly the harder part was really just figuring out figuring out the features and what needed what the useful things were do you do you remember specifically any one kind of feature or capability that really surprised you that people really wanted that you maybe you guys didn't see

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So one of the features we worked on kind of in the early years was layered maps so the ability to combine multiple map layers and put them together and control the opacity and kind of build your own map and that really surprised us kind of how popular it was and also how many map

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layers people would use you know we would we'd get screenshots from people tech support emails they're like I was using 15 different map layers all stacked on top of each other and the map didn't work so well like I test with like two or three like what are you doing with 15

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Wow yeah I'm curious why isn't it working well I guess it's good to stress test it in that way you know yeah and you know so Jesse it sounds like one of the challenges was envisioning what the future user experience would be like of what people would need they hadn't quite imagined yet is that accurate

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Yeah and you know in the early years to just like convincing people that this was even a thing that had a place in their life like up until like 2015 2016 really it was our competition was not other apps our competition was paper

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Yeah and it was really convincing convincing people that were already out in the back country using maps that like here's an alternative and that this is a thing that believe it or not this really actually works like you know one of the main criticisms we would get from people was yeah but there's not cell phone service everywhere so this is garbage

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They were like no no you can download the maps for offline and your phone is a GPS chip in it and it works in the middle of the wilderness and those early years that was kind of one of the big challenges was convincing people that this was a thing that would be useful in their life

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And then at some point I think it moved just from the target market being those people to all of a sudden we were not just making things easier for existing back country travelers but enabling people who previously didn't feel comfortable going in the back country

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and not just on snow but hiking biking people who didn't feel that they could safely do that because they didn't know how to read a map and compass like I've had so many people tell me that like guy GPS changed my life because previously I couldn't go hiking by myself

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I could only go hiking with my friend that knew how to read a map or I could only go hiking with my husband and now I can go out by myself and like those are the stories I love hearing about like this thing enabled me to go out and comfortably go out in the back country by myself or with my other friends who also weren't comfortable with maps and compasses

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That's awesome. And in some ways hearing that is a little scary too because like I you know I still carry a paper map and compass sometimes though these days more often it's a phone and a hardware GPS but people need to still need to have back up like phones are fallible they don't always work

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Batteries die they get dropped in rivers.

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Yeah, I like telling my team like if we're going to go ski the out route or something like that. I'll send him send them I'll be like hey download this on Gaia get the app and here is my tracks from the last couple years.

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So we all have that and they're super psyched because then they get to preview the route and get all geeky about it and get excited and they get to kind of live pre live the experience beforehand and then we've got five phones with all the tracks loaded up and if one phone dies I'm like next phone pass it forward next

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phone dies pass it forward we're super redundant in that way.

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Yeah. So, like you said, like paper was your competition. What was there like a point where a bunch of other mapping apps started popping up and you guys had kind of real technical competition or what like what did that look like because obviously other mapping apps started.

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Yeah, so I don't even remember what year that was but yeah at some point they're starting to be more competition.

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A lot of our competition in the early years kind of doesn't is apps that don't exist anymore I think there was a lot of people who thought they were going to to build an app and ship it and then they were going to be done with it.

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And it was going to be a thing that was going to make the money, but they weren't going to have to continuously work on whereas like with guy GPS you know for a long time we were kind of steady at about five people working on it, but we had a team of five people working on that almost all the time constantly

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improving things.

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And that you know let us kind of stay ahead of the competition for a long time. And you know kind of different niches to though, like in the original idea with guy GPS was hiking and backpacking.

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But very quickly I think we realized that we couldn't just focus on those sports because there wasn't a big enough market just for that at that time.

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You know, the way the way I think about it now like at that time maybe 5% of the people who were interested in hiking and backpacking would be willing to use an app.

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And that was not not big enough so we had to we had to look at other sports and some of those kind of took us by surprise like, you know, six or eight years ago, overlanding started to get really big and we kind of got dragged kicking and screaming into

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overlanding like it was not something that we necessarily knew about but all of a sudden people were sending in questions about like, you know, I'm going to drive this 500 mile route through dirt roads of Utah BLM and your app needs this one feature to make it happen.

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And we were like, what is this? Who are these people? And we kind of they're the bunch of markets we got dragged into that way. But we really yeah, focus focused on a lot of markets in those early years.

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Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but guy was free for the first like, what six or eight years that existed.

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Oh, no. So the originally the app, I think we launched it like $1.99 a year. And then eventually got or not $1.99 a year $1.99 upfront. That was kind of before the year of subscriptions. And then eventually we got to $20 upfront plus $20 a year for a subscription.

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The subscription got you access to some additional map layers. But still the subscription was a small percentage of users like the majority of people, the just the base app worked for what they needed.

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And then eventually we kind of we relaunched the app. So we launched it as a new app internally we called it guy GPS next generation. And we launched a whole new app on the app store that was had a free tier that you could do some things.

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But to use it in the back country you really needed a subscription that was I think we started at $20 a year. And we're probably a couple years too late doing that we should have done a little sooner.

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The a lot a lot of apps that already started to move to subscriptions and that was what enabled us to really grow like for years we were able to have a staff of five or six people. And then after that it was like every year hire two or three more people and have them building cool stuff.

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And the company was able to support that.

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Well that I mean, I feel like a lot of people don't know the only reason I've really ever thought about this is because I'm now involved with aspect Abby but the cost money to run a mapping app.

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Like even if everyone on your team as a developer or whatever, like the data, like just to create the mapping layers and do all that stuff like cost money until like upkeep it.

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So did that when can you just tell me a little bit like how the cost of that changed and how like the kind of business of that changed in the time that guy was happening.

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Yeah, that you know that was a big part of relaunching guy GPS as a subscription app was that there were users that had paid $1.99 five years ago that the cost of those users at that point like how much we had spent serving them maps was like.

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Many times what they had paid.

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Yeah, the like maps are expensive satellite imagery like costs a whole lot of money to make and costs a lot of money to buy maps are big.

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Sinking photo like photos are big all of it all of this stuff costs money.

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And there it's it's really easy to lose money on a mapping application. I think definitely some of the some of our competitors in those years ended up going out of business because they didn't understand how much it was going to cost and their products were too cheap.

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And after a year they realized that they were losing money on every single customer and had to go out of business.

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Yeah, and at that point you're screwed because you're like well we can't just now go from charging like a dollar a year to charging $100 a year like that's going to kill us too.

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Yep.

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Hey everyone hope you're joined the pod so far I just wanted to take a quick break to tell you about one of the most unique features of aspect app which is the forecast update.

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We're touring this area it's a moderate day but all of a sudden we experienced signs of instability. We come up to the corner and we click this little button right here brings up the forecast update tool.

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Then we can go in and let's say we got whoops and we got shooting cracks.

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We click done your map is going to be updated to considerable abbey danger and will now have the updated high and low risk areas painted on the map in that forecast so this works even offline which is super badass.

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If you want to try out the forecast update tool for yourself head on over to the app store and download aspect abbey for free on iOS.

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Okay back to the show.

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Can I ask you a bit about risk in a startup.

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Are there some parallels with managing risk with leading a dev team, a development team whether it was the Android or iOS version or web app and stuff with Gaia and being like okay we're going to do something where the outcome is uncertain.

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No one's done this before and say being on a control route with explosives going hunting for avalanches when you're back at Kirkwood.

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Are there some similarities of how the team manages risk and how you manage your team into the unknown.

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That's interesting. Being inside working at a computer the risks are different. There's financial risk.

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There's reputational risk especially leading a team of software engineers.

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There's risk of your reputation with the outside world, your reputation with your team keeping the respect of your team.

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But I feel like in the ski patrol world that risk leads to team bonding.

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The feeling on ski patrol is like what I think it's here people describe the military as like a band of brothers.

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These guys are in your platoon or the closest people in your life, closer than your family.

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I think ski patrol the risk leads to that same sort of bonding and in the software world I don't think that happens.

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The software world we buy people t-shirts and hats and try and create team bonding.

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Yeah try and create team bonding that way you give people a sticker for their water bottle.

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It's the explosives. The explosives is what brings people together.

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Yeah but there certainly is a ton of risk on just the financial side of things.

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I have spent months and months working on things with no idea if they were going to work out.

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My current project I think depending on how you want to look at is maybe start up number five for me.

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Wow. So we sold Gaia GPS in 2021 and after that I started working on something totally different.

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My wife is a farmer and I started working on software for greenhouse automation.

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Wow.

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And I spent probably six months building out a software platform for automating climate controls in greenhouses

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and specifically targeting small farmers and got to the point I had a great prototype

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but then got to the point where I realized to actually take it to market I was going to have to hire people

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and like hire probably like three people who some mechanical engineers maybe another software engineer

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and I didn't have the appetite for the risk like that was purely financial risk like I was either

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going to have to put up a lot of money out of my pocket or give away most of my company to venture capital S

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and didn't have the couldn't convince myself that it was a risk that had a high enough potential of paying off.

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So I ended up just shutting that down like calling it a learning experience,

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learn some interesting software, had fun playing with hardware that I hadn't really interacted with before.

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But yeah, shut it down like didn't couldn't do it.

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And honestly, I think if I had if I'd had the appetite for the risk, I think there's a decent chance it would have worked out.

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Hmm.

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Hmm.

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Well, that's a way that's a great segue into your current project, which is goat maps, which is a new mapping app.

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I believe it just launched. Is that right?

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Yeah.

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So after guy GPS worked on the greenhouse thing and then worked on a company doing weather forecasting for a while.

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And then let's see two summers ago decided my son was kind of at the age where he could start really doing some backpacking.

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And we spent a month backpacking in the summer in the subway, better wilderness and decided for most of that summer to just use paper maps.

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And because I really the idea of doing something with mapping again was already kicking around in my head.

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And I thought it would be fun to teach my son how to navigate with paper maps, but also would be a great time to think about like, OK, what are,

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you know, all of these mapping apps that are on the market now kind of look the same.

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Like what what are the actual core features? What matters?

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So did a bunch of two different week long trips and then a bunch of three or four day trips, all with paper maps to really try to remember like what are the hard parts here?

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Hmm.

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Wait, what are the hard part with that going back? What did you learn? What did you what was something that stood out to you?

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I think my so my conclusion was that a lot of the hard parts were around when when things went south, like metaphorically, not physically.

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You know, we had one trip where we started out with an objective of a route that we were going to do.

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And the second day came to a trail that just didn't exist and came up with a new plan.

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And another day later, there's another trail that hadn't been maintained in 30 or 40 years and tons of just replanting routes on the fly.

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Lots of yeah, lots of needing to replan out in the field and like drastically different plans, you know, week long trip.

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We're coming up with a lot of miles. This isn't like we're going to go three miles this way instead of two miles that way.

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It's like we're going to hop over the continental divide and go in a totally different watershed for 40 miles.

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And hopefully this other path to get us back to the valley we live in actually goes.

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Dang.

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So then at the end, at the end of that summer, I was talking with Anna Johnson, who was one of the other co founders of guy in GPS.

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They just talking about what we were what we were thinking about what we were doing and realized we had both been thinking about maybe building a new navigation app.

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And not really sure what it was going to do at that point, but it sounded interesting.

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So February of this year kind of really started started working on that and spent a few months kind of build lots of kind of off the wall features that maybe weren't going to go anywhere.

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But over the course of the summer coalesced into what we actually wanted to build.

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Yeah, last month we launched last week we launched Goat Maps, which is a navigation app initially targeting hiking backpacking and backcountry skiing.

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Because I can't build anything that's not for backcountry skiing.

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That's more than half my year.

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Nice.

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Currently it runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

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And yeah.

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Nice.

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Congratulations.

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And what's what would you say is the differentiator with Goat Maps from Gaia?

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Yeah, so we really wanted to focus hard on reliability and ease of use.

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You know, lots of these all of the lots of these mapping apps that have been on the market for five years, 10 years have acquired all these weird features.

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I kind of like to use the analogy of barnacles on a boat.

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Like, you know, you build up these things and they slow down your progress of what you can do.

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And with software you get all these features and 1% of your users might use them.

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And you don't want to get rid of them because those 1% of users are helping pay the bills.

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So you end up with all these weird features that slow down your team, make the product more complicated.

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Even though most people don't really need them.

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So Goat Maps was a great chance to just start over really thinking about like what are the features that actually matter.

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Like on that backpack, those backpacking trips I was talking about, we were really thinking about like, what are the features we actually need to make this work?

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And it came down to offline maps that are totally solid that you don't have to worry about whether they're going to work or not.

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Track recording and really good route planning tools and really quickly being able to replan a route in the field and measure where you're going.

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So those are kind of the big areas we focused on for Goat Maps.

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Like it does a lot less than any of our competition.

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But I think it does everything that a lot of people are going to need.

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You know, we get a lot of people asking like, for my search and rescue missions, I need this one feature.

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And it's like, you know, maybe that feature may not end up being something we're going to build because it takes a lot of time.

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And it's going to make the app more complicated for recreational users.

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Like it could be that for your week long SAR mission, Caltopo is going to be the best option because they're really focused on that market.

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But I'd like to think that for your three day ski tour or your week long backpacking trip or your 30 mile wilderness trail running loop,

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the Goat Maps is going to be the best option because we're focused hard on that.

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Is there a, so I'm just reading your description here really quick.

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It says, introducing Goat Maps, the next generation of mapping for outdoor adventure built from the ground up for speed and reliability.

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Maps route planning navigation, no BS.

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So like, I love that mission.

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Like, like, and from that description, you're like, okay, that sounds like the most basic mapping app ever.

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But I, but then having you, you know, fill it in a little more is, it's kind of cool.

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It's like, hey, we're going back to the basics of like, dude, I went and used a map, literally a paper map all summer.

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And these were the things that I actually needed.

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And I think that's pretty cool.

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Yeah, and you know, we are doing some new innovative things too.

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Like what one of the features that we prototype very early on and is going to launch in our next version is the ability to do totally custom slope angle shading.

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I also two years ago, like decided to start over on my avalanche education path.

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So when two years ago and did an airy level one and last year didn't airy level two.

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And some of that was definitely market research.

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Like I'm wondering what what what are these classes teaching people to do?

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And how can I how can I build a product that's going to work for that?

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And a lot in that airy level one, they're talking about, you know, crossing off terrain at the beginning of the day as part of your trip plan, which is a lot what you guys are doing with aspect avi to.

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So my take on that was, you know, kind of all these apps have this standard slope angle shading that people don't know how to.

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Some people know how to read, but certainly people at the beginner level in those airy courses do not know what to make of it.

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Ten colors is overwhelming.

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Just looks very awesome.

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And you know, those maybe the very beginners are not what I was focused on, but I wanted to build a tool for myself going out and planning a trip to really quickly be able to say like, OK, north facing terrain over 30 degrees above 6000 feet is out of bounds for the day.

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Yeah.

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And so we built a feature in Goat Maps to, you know, in 30 seconds, I can color that terrain red and I can cover color, you know, let's say southwest to southeast facing slopes under 35 green and use that to plan to build my trip plan for the day.

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So we're doing innovative stuff in Goat Maps to, you know, it's not all it's not all things that people were doing 10 years ago.

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And I'd like to think we're doing a lot of innovating things with trip planning to one of our the other features I really wanted was the ability to plan out trips where I'm doing point to point sections and snap to trail and just freehand drawing lines altogether.

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Because especially planning ski tours like we're not on trails. So the whole snap to trail thing doesn't work. But we're also, you know, not just taking straight lines all the time.

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You might be planning, planning an uptrack on something where you know you know you're going to do five huge switchbacks. And I really wanted to be able to like measure out like, OK, what's the actual distance we're going to cover there on on those kind of routes?

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What's the actual grade we're going to do. So we did a lot of work on being able to combine, combine those in the route planner and get good info from the route planner.

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So will you be able, will you be able to do that offline?

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Yeah. So currently we don't have snap to trail while you're offline, but we're going to we're working on that and we're even working on some other things with that to like being able to snap to rivers also like, you know, one of my summer sports is pack rafting and for pack rafting I really want to be able to snap to rivers when planning out those multi sport routes.

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Really, really quickly, can you just for myself and for listeners, watchers, can you explain snap to.

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Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of what you're used to with Google Maps or Apple Maps you enter in a start and an end location and it puts you on a road.

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So that's kind of the simplest form of it is you give it two points and it gives you a road or a trail, whichever you've requested.

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But then also with Goat Maps we have a feature where instead of just tapping two points on the map or entering names of points, you can draw with your finger kind of near a trail and then tell it put me on the trail and it will snap your route exactly onto that trail, which is great for coming up with more accurate

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mileage estimations and more accurate elevation gain estimations. So you can very roughly draw a log a series of trails and then it will put you exactly on that trail.

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Wow, that's cool. Okay, Rad. Thanks. That's cool. I think.

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Yeah, I look forward to playing around with this more. That's awesome. Can I can I like ask you totally change topics and ask you one other question about your life.

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You kite-skied across Greenland, dude. What's that about?

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Yeah, so I started kite-skiing probably 15 years ago and had the dream of going to Greenland for a long time. It's kind of this this dream destination for kiting.

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And for a long time, like didn't didn't think it was going to happen.

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My kite skills weren't there. The I didn't have the time didn't have the money. And then we sold guy GPS and then all of a sudden two of those things were not as much of a problem.

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Had a little bit more time had a little bit more money.

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And I was kind of at the point to with kiting where I was kiting maybe five days a year. I I would say I had just enough skills to get myself hurt.

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And then all of a sudden had some more time and decided to invest in taking some lessons in kiting. So I went up to I went to Alaska and went to a week long snow kite camp and got the skills or started to get the skills that I needed to actually be able to make the kiting part of going to Greenland reasonable.

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And then after a week in Alaska was like, OK, like, actually want to make this happen and started to do some more research. And the logistics were like the single hardest part. And I had looked into guided trips because I couldn't even figure out like, how do you even do the logistics?

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And there was had been one person offering guided trips, but they were exorbitantly expensive. And then on my way home from Alaska, I was like in the Anchorage airport reading about Greenland again and found a new company out in Norway offering guided trips for like a quarter of the price I had seen before.

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Wow.

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And then some funny things were happening with the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Norwegian Kroner that like made the trip even more affordable. And then, yeah, 20, let's say I guess it was 2022, I went to Greenland and spent, we're up on the on the ice for 15 days and then a couple days of travel, either side of that getting onto and off the ice.

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So we did a north south north crossing of about the middle third of Greenland.

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The route was kind of dictated by where the logistics were cheap. The southern end and the northern end both start to involve helicopters. Where if you do that middle third, it's a pickup truck at the start and the dog sled at the end.

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No way.

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So we did about 1200 miles of travel with kites over 14 days.

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What?

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Whoa.

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Wait.

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Wait, how fast are you going?

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Cruising is about 12 to 15 miles an hour.

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Okay.

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Yeah, kiting is, kiting kind of opens up all these possibilities in backcountry travel. Like the speeds and distances you can cover just get kind of nuts. Like I had a day in Alaska last spring. I did 27,000 feet of vertical kiting.

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That was not even a long day. You know, I think I started kiting at 9am that day and was done at three or four.

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Holy shit.

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The kites really kind of open up another world for what's possible with non motorized travel.

321
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:31,000
And what's it like? I'm assuming you're carrying a sled to bring your food and sleeping bag and tent stove and stuff like that.

322
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:46,000
Yeah. So Greenland, we had two sleds each. Nothing fancy either. Just like kind of cheap plastic sleds. Two sleds each last side by side so they don't flip over and then on a spare sled.

323
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:54,000
And started out with probably around 150, 170 pounds of stuff each.

324
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:55,000
Oh, dude.

325
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:59,000
Food and fuel for four weeks.

326
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:00,000
Wow.

327
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,000
Spare ski, spare kites.

328
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:04,000
Yeah.

329
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:07,000
Wait, split between how many people?

330
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:09,000
Three people.

331
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:13,000
Okay, so roughly 55 pounds of gear each.

332
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,000
No, no. Like 150 pounds of gear each.

333
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:17,000
Dude.

334
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:20,000
Wait, how do you kite with that?

335
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,000
We started with 25 liters of white gas.

336
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:25,000
Oh my god.

337
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:26,000
Dude.

338
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:29,000
That's like half a sled of white gas.

339
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:33,000
Which basically gas equals life on an expedition.

340
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:34,000
Yeah.

341
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:43,000
Okay, so wait, are you like then you're kiting and you're like attached to the kite, but then how are you attached? How are the sleds attached to you?

342
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:51,000
So the kite, kites attached to a harness, sleds attached to the harness, and you're kind of just in the middle driving.

343
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:52,000
Okay.

344
00:50:52,000 --> 00:51:00,000
So the kiting part in Greenland is not, I thought it was going to be difficult and the kiting part was not the hard part.

345
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:07,000
Once we got up onto the ice sheet, it was, it was flat.

346
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:09,000
It was not smooth.

347
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,000
Tons of Sestrugi, big wind texture in the snow.

348
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:18,000
Like I'm definitely a year closer to needing new knees after that trip.

349
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:20,000
Did it shake your belly?

350
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:24,000
Yeah, I actually, I did crack a tooth on that trip.

351
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:25,000
Whoa.

352
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:30,000
But the, the actual like travel with the kites was pretty straightforward.

353
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:35,000
You know, you, the sleds behind you, the wind is super steady in Greenland.

354
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:38,000
It's kind of some of the steadiest wind in the world.

355
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:45,000
So you get the kite up in the air and you hold your hand in one place holding the bar.

356
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:53,000
And sometimes it's cruising for an hour, just listening to music on the headphones and kiting in a straight line.

357
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:57,000
Like we kind of straight north for 900 miles.

358
00:51:57,000 --> 00:51:59,000
Wow.

359
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:05,000
That's really surprising to hear that the wind is like that because we're in Iceland, Jeff and I were nice in the spring.

360
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:12,000
And I swear to God, the wind would be crazy every direction, every other hour.

361
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:13,000
Oh yeah.

362
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,000
It's nothing like the wind in Iceland.

363
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:21,000
It's the ice sheet is so big that it's a, it's catabatic winds coming down off the ice sheets.

364
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:28,000
So the high point of the ice sheet is a little over 10,000 feet and it's that big for a huge area.

365
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:36,000
And we were traveling at about 9,000 feet high enough to avoid fracture zones.

366
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:39,000
So there wasn't significant crevasse risk.

367
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:40,000
Wow.

368
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:47,000
But not as low as we could be because it just gets colder and colder and the wind is less reliable as you get higher.

369
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:50,000
But it's some of the steadiest wind in the world.

370
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:52,000
Like there were no gusts.

371
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,000
There were no direction changes.

372
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:55,000
Really?

373
00:52:55,000 --> 00:53:03,000
Some of the fastest changes in wind speed we saw were like maybe a mile or two, maybe two or three miles an hour building or dropping.

374
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:04,000
Wow.

375
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000
That sounds perfect.

376
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:07,000
Yeah.

377
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:08,000
What time of year was this?

378
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:09,000
April.

379
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:10,000
Okay.

380
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:11,000
Okay.

381
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:12,000
Yeah.

382
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:15,000
So the permitting to go up on the ice sheet is like pretty strict.

383
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:16,000
Yeah.

384
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,000
Like they won't let you on the ice sheet before April 15th.

385
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:32,000
So we were, I think we got on the ice on the 19th and like the, yeah, they, you know, they, they really want to know that you know what you're doing and you're required to have rescue insurance.

386
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:39,000
And there is only one company that is authorized to sell rescue insurance for the Greenland ice sheet.

387
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:43,000
And it was the single biggest expense for the trip with search and rescue insurance.

388
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:44,000
Totally makes sense.

389
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:53,000
Because there's, you know, we had on a map like the zones that were within a single helicopter flight from a, from a heli base.

390
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:58,000
And then a big zone in the middle that's like, if you screw up here.

391
00:53:58,000 --> 00:53:59,000
Yeah.

392
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:17,000
And then they fly out and drop fuel drums and then they fly back to base and then they refuel and then come back to the fuel drums and refuel and like all of a sudden those, the rescue logistics there are just astronomically expensive.

393
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:18,000
Yeah.

394
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:22,000
So that was the single biggest expense of the trip was just paying for that rescue insurance.

395
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:23,000
Damn.

396
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:25,000
That's Jeff quick.

397
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:26,000
Ask some more risk questions.

398
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:27,000
My mind is blown.

399
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:30,000
I don't even know what else to ask in this scenario.

400
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:40,000
I just, I just love hearing about stuff that I have no idea about and just couldn't even begin to imagine all the logistics and considerations involved.

401
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:48,000
And I would have thought navigating through crevasses with a huge sled would be incredibly dangerous.

402
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:50,000
And you're like, no, it's pretty smooth most of the way.

403
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,000
It's just a big ice cap.

404
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,000
And yeah, we never actually roped up.

405
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:56,000
Wow.

406
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:57,000
Yeah.

407
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:58,000
I mean, how would you rope up on kites?

408
00:54:58,000 --> 00:54:59,000
Oh my God.

409
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:11,000
Well, while kiting, there's no roping up, but we started, we started out with two days of walking up on up through a glacier to get onto the actual ice sheet proper.

410
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:12,000
Yeah.

411
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:15,000
But the, and it was the glacier was really interesting.

412
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:17,000
I've not seen a glacier form like that before.

413
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:19,000
It was almost like sand dunes.

414
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:20,000
Really?

415
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:25,000
It was two days of walking sand dunes, but bare blue ice.

416
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:29,000
It was two days of walking with crampons, pulling sleds.

417
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:31,000
Did you show your loads?

418
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:32,000
Yeah.

419
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,000
Occasionally we'd actually have to like go one sled at a time.

420
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:44,000
Most of the time it was pull the sleds a hundred yards, unhook, walk and find the route for the next hundred yards and repeat.

421
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,000
We covered 10 miles in two days.

422
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:47,000
Oh.

423
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:48,000
Oh.

424
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:49,000
Oh.

425
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:50,000
Oh.

426
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:54,000
Were them as prepared for what the first couple of days were going to be like?

427
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,000
I was pretty worried at the end of those first two days.

428
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:58,000
I was like, this is really hard.

429
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:00,000
I don't know that I can do this.

430
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:10,000
It was some of like some of the hardest physical stuff in the outdoors I've ever done like, you know, pulling because our weight loads were not optimized for that.

431
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:15,000
Like we went heavy optimized for the rest of the trip.

432
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:16,000
Yeah.

433
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:22,000
Knowing that like, yeah, we're going to suffer for, well, we had five days in the schedule for getting through that ice.

434
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:26,000
And we got, luckily we got through it in two, but it was brutal.

435
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:36,000
And it was so hot too, even though temperatures were well below freezing, just being on bare ice, the salt, the UV was so intense.

436
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:37,000
Yeah.

437
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:38,000
Yeah, I bet.

438
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:40,000
And you're pulling massive loads.

439
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:43,000
So you must have been burning six, seven thousand calories a day.

440
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:44,000
Oh, yeah.

441
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:47,000
Did you get super skinny on this trip?

442
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,000
I lost a little bit of weight, not too much though.

443
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:58,000
I, I, both of the other guys I was with probably had 40 or 50 pounds on me.

444
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:05,000
And I probably ate almost twice as much food as they did every day.

445
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:11,000
They were both Norwegians and they were just laughing a lot of the time at how much food I would eat.

446
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:12,000
Oh my gosh.

447
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:16,000
Were these guys guides or, or homies like?

448
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:20,000
One Norwegian guide and one clon, one other client on the trip.

449
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:22,000
Okay.

450
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:30,000
So when you were going, you said, when you're just talking about the hellies, what were, when you started, were you the closest to kind of civilization?

451
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:34,000
And then you got getting further and further away as you went or how did that work?

452
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:35,000
Yeah.

453
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:42,000
So we started starting out was like a 30 mile ride in a pickup truck to the edge of the ice and skiing up from there.

454
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:54,000
And then after a couple of days kind of out of that helicopter zone for five or 600 miles and then eventually towards the end, you get back towards another town.

455
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:55,000
Wow.

456
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:56,000
Damn.

457
00:57:56,000 --> 00:58:03,000
Is it your description of pulling sleds is giving me PTSD flashbacks of skiing Denali and towing sleds.

458
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:05,000
Oh my God.

459
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:07,000
I know technically we're moving.

460
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:09,000
It just doesn't feel like it.

461
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:16,000
So one of the interesting risk management things with the kiting up there is the travel speed is so fast.

462
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:17,000
Yeah.

463
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:21,000
That, you know, we're cruising at 15 miles an hour, sometimes faster than that.

464
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:22,000
Wow.

465
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:27,000
So if someone stops for five minutes, they're a long ways away.

466
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:28,000
Yeah.

467
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:30,000
And they're a long ways away upwind.

468
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:39,000
So getting back to them is going to take significantly longer than it took to cover that distance downwind.

469
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:40,000
Oh, shit.

470
00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:43,000
Wait, so do you guys have like radios in your ear or how are you talking to each other?

471
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:45,000
We did not have radios.

472
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:49,000
It was, you know, visibility is real big.

473
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:54,000
And then the kites also are kites are in Greenland or 50 meter lines.

474
00:58:54,000 --> 00:58:58,000
So you've got a balloon up in the air way above you.

475
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:02,000
You can see people from a long ways, unless it's foggy and then you can't.

476
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:06,000
But, you know, you can easily see people from a couple of miles away.

477
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:12,000
So lots of hand signals to check in and then everyone carrying an in reach.

478
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:25,000
So that's kind of the plan B if something happens and don't know where people are is like everyone stops and you get out the in reach and figure out what's going on and come up with a plan to regroup.

479
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:26,000
Wow.

480
00:59:26,000 --> 00:59:29,000
Wait, wait, you just talked about if it's foggy.

481
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:37,000
So, okay, I've only been on one massive glacier and it was very disorienting, disorientating.

482
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:38,000
I don't know.

483
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:47,000
But what so when you're going 15 miles an hour, are there days where it's flat light or you just like what's that like?

484
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:50,000
Yeah, so one of I think it was our second day of kiting.

485
00:59:50,000 --> 01:00:06,000
We got up and it was full on pea soup fog like flat ground, flat light, half a mile of visibility through the fog, fully disorienting conditions that I had actually thought we wouldn't kite in.

486
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:07,000
Right.

487
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:18,000
They're conditions that like in Montana or Alaska, I wouldn't even think of kiting in because I would like I've skied off a couple of cornices kiting.

488
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:19,000
Yeah.

489
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:23,000
I just crashed my kite into the side of a mountain that I couldn't see.

490
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:25,000
And I figured there was no way we could travel in it.

491
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:40,000
And that was one of the biggest things our guide did was like convince me that like, nope, we can travel in this terrain in this because the terrain is flat and smooth and there are no real objective hazards here.

492
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:41,000
Wow.

493
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:43,000
So it's sorry.

494
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:46,000
So it's really flat enough.

495
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:48,000
It's not even like little bumpy.

496
01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:52,000
It's flat enough that you could just cruise at that speed in flat light.

497
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:53,000
Yeah.

498
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:57,000
You know, it's a Struge so you're kind of always ready to hit bumps.

499
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:59,000
But yeah, really flat.

500
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:02,000
Like there is nothing to fall off of.

501
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:12,000
But whoa, super mentally taxing in the flat light days, constantly like working to keep ground orientation.

502
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:24,000
Like focusing focusing on my ski tips to know where the ground is and keep my head around what level is because the kite also adds.

503
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:35,000
It adds this additional element of force where you have force pulling you upwards that can get confusing, especially on the flat ground.

504
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:36,000
It doesn't.

505
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:41,000
But like so I got caught in in an avalanche kiting two years ago.

506
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:52,000
And small slide, but it was super confusing partially because of the force of the kite because I was going uphill kiting.

507
01:01:52,000 --> 01:02:01,000
And there was like this two seconds that it felt like a minute where I could not figure out what was going on.

508
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:06,000
It was like I should be going uphill.

509
01:02:06,000 --> 01:02:11,000
I feel like I'm almost not moving what is going on here.

510
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:14,000
Like the forces don't make sense.

511
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:16,000
And then I look at the snow and see cracks everywhere.

512
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:22,000
It was like, oh, okay, like now this makes now I understand why these forces don't make sense.

513
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:30,000
Like I'm actually staying in place on moving debris or maybe even moving downhill.

514
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:36,000
I'm not my speed over the snow from the kite.

515
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:38,000
Like, yeah, the forces get confusing.

516
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:40,000
Did you ever get like vertigo?

517
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:41,000
Yeah.

518
01:02:41,000 --> 01:02:46,000
Oh, yeah, it's like it's concentrating hard to avoid getting vertigo.

519
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:48,000
How do you do that?

520
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:49,000
What do you concentrate on?

521
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:54,000
It's a lot of, you know, sometimes taking turns being in front.

522
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,000
So you have someone ski tracks to look at.

523
01:02:56,000 --> 01:03:03,000
Because having those ski tracks that's a linear feature will really help to avoid that.

524
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:05,000
Like, you know, kiting in Montana.

525
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:14,000
Absolutely desperate to, oh, if you've got two people ahead of you, it feels like you're on vacation on the glacier all of a sudden.

526
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:15,000
Oh, yeah.

527
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:16,000
The kiting is interesting.

528
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:23,000
Sometimes in Greenland we had times where everyone is moving the same speed and the same direction.

529
01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:31,000
And you look at other people and it seems like you're not moving because there's no, there's no change in angle.

530
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:35,000
There's no visual change between yourself and the other people.

531
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:37,000
Well, that's how creepy.

532
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:40,000
But then you look at the snow and the snow is moving by at 15 miles an hour.

533
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:41,000
What?

534
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:42,000
All right.

535
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,000
Here's a question I've got.

536
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:46,000
I was listening to a really interesting podcast on Hidden Brain last night.

537
01:03:46,000 --> 01:03:55,000
And, or sorry, Radio Lab and they were talking about psychedelics and the ways it rewires your brain.

538
01:03:55,000 --> 01:04:03,000
And they said there's this window of learning post psychedelic experience and it varies with the compound.

539
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:07,000
And sometimes that window for rewiring your brain is a couple days.

540
01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:10,000
And for other compounds, it's a couple weeks.

541
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:20,000
This sounds like you, this was a totally foreign experience like being on another planet where like the laws of physics are being rewritten or how you perceive them.

542
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:24,000
So did you find that your brain was different afterwards?

543
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:33,000
Like when I have a really great trip in the mountains, there'll be like a vacation half life where I can go back to that feeling and sensation and perception.

544
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:38,000
Wait, which kind of trip you're talking about psychedelics and.

545
01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:49,000
Just, you know, being in the mountains, like a high gosh, I've been like that, where you think back to that beautiful place and the vacation washes over you and you can feel it and touch it and taste it.

546
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:56,000
So I'm wondering, did this change the way you perceive the world or interacted with the natural world?

547
01:04:56,000 --> 01:05:01,000
And, you know, in what ways, maybe this spilled over into your work or your relationships?

548
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:08,000
I'm super curious because this just sounds like such a like, like no one on the planet has had this experience or very, very.

549
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:14,000
Yeah, it was tons of time to think the middle of the trip.

550
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:29,000
The days kind of all just started to blend together because it was, I mean, almost just like a flow state for huge extended periods of time because the technical difficulty is not that hard.

551
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:33,000
Like technical difficulty was well within my scope.

552
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:45,000
But you do still have to, you know, you got to pay attention like it's like minus 20 minus 30, you know, the kind of the kind of conditions where you have to pay attention because you really could die.

553
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:57,000
Yeah, but tons of time to think and yeah, it was wild how much the days just sort of blended together and maybe more time to think that I've ever had.

554
01:05:57,000 --> 01:06:03,000
Wow. Did your family and friends perceive you as as different when you got back to civilization?

555
01:06:03,000 --> 01:06:10,000
No, no. It was funny too, because it was a trip that we had all been dreaming about for so long.

556
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:18,000
Like, you know, I think like working towards that trip for like a decade and say with the other client on the trip like Wow.

557
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:30,000
And even the guide to like he he had been working towards being able to do it for a long time too. So just this elation at the end of like, oh my God, like we did this thing.

558
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:44,000
Yeah, yeah, like this really worked and it worked. It really came together like we had 21 days or 24 days on our permit maybe and we got it done with over a week to spare.

559
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:50,000
And like over half our food was left at the end of the trip like things really really came together.

560
01:06:50,000 --> 01:07:01,000
Yeah, damn your buddies needed to eat more like well in April. Hold up Jeff. Just really quick in April. How long are the nights there even?

561
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:06,000
We saw our last sunset on night three of the trip. Wow.

562
01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:18,000
So we were moving straight north days getting longer and moving straight north. So beginning of the trip it didn't really get dark end of the trip.

563
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:21,000
The sun is moving in circles around the sky. Oh, wow.

564
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:30,000
The one of the day is merged together. Our last night of the trip we were camped on the sea ice and had to have someone on polar bear watch.

565
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:39,000
And I got off my polar bear watch at three in the morning. But it was totally light out and the wind was up.

566
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:46,000
So I got to go kite on the sea ice around frozen icebergs at three in the morning.

567
01:07:46,000 --> 01:07:52,000
Dude, that is awesome. Did you have a rifle with you?

568
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:55,000
We carried a 30 out six the entire trip. Yeah.

569
01:07:55,000 --> 01:08:04,000
Wow. So how has this changed the way you do your work having this experience?

570
01:08:04,000 --> 01:08:14,000
It gave me a lot of time to think about what I wanted to work on. And honestly, like a ton of the ideas for what to build for goat maps came out of that trip.

571
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:24,000
I also had a ton of ideas for like things to build for expedition travel that I would still love to build but there's just not a market for like there's just not enough people go.

572
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:31,000
Going on huge polar expeditions to ever make a living on make a make a living off those products.

573
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:40,000
Three people a year. It really opened my eyes to just like what we could do with these kites and the kind of travel that was possible.

574
01:08:40,000 --> 01:08:41,000
Dude, that is so cool.

575
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:50,000
Hey, shifting gears just a little bit. So you obviously spend a lot of time thinking about how to do risky things the safest way possible.

576
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:57,000
And you're not just on your first startup. You've done a bunch of startups.

577
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:05,000
How what intrigued you about aspect Davi and thank you very much for investing in aspect Davi and then thank you for doubling down on your investment.

578
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:08,000
What was it intrigued you about aspect Davi?

579
01:09:08,000 --> 01:09:19,000
I think my big takeaway from the every one in two courses I took last year the last couple of years is that decision making is still the hard part.

580
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:34,000
And decision making is not getting any easier. And all of the avalanche accidents that happen still seem to largely be about making decisions is hard.

581
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:42,000
And there's tons of like great new snow science research and even lots of research on the human factors too.

582
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:50,000
But like none of it really seems to be doing anything to make that decision making part of things easier.

583
01:09:50,000 --> 01:10:00,000
And I liked your pitch about building something to help make people make decisions, giving people better tools for that.

584
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:02,000
Oh, yeah.

585
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:21,000
Well, I'd like to extend invitation we've set our in house aspect Davi team avalanche course and it's two weeks self directed online curriculum and then two days here in Crested butte if you can swing it on December 16 and 17 in person.

586
01:10:21,000 --> 01:10:34,000
And then the two week self directed will have some zoom calls but it'll be a mixture of all the people who work on the app on the dev team as well as trailhead ambassadors and one of our newest ambassadors that we're excited to announce.

587
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:42,000
Molly Armonino she was number two on the world free ride tour last year she reached out to us to partner on this project.

588
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:52,000
And then yeah, a bunch of our investors and advisors so if you'd like to do the online part or make it to Crested butte for the field sessions it'll be totally different than anything you've seen before.

589
01:10:52,000 --> 01:11:01,000
I might be able to make that I'll have to see I'm actually in a week and a half or no I'm heading to Ecuador to go do some volcano seeing.

590
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:09,000
Say what dude we got to have you on again to just talk about all the sweet adventures you're going on.

591
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:13,000
Fantastic fantastic that's sick.

592
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:15,000
Jesse where can people find you man.

593
01:11:15,000 --> 01:11:22,000
Instagram threads skier Crocker.

594
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:34,000
Cool and then goat maps is goat maps.com and go maps on the Apple App Store and goat maps on any social media platform pretty much.

595
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:35,000
Awesome.

596
01:11:35,000 --> 01:11:38,000
We'll put those links in the description.

597
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:53,000
Well, if there's anyone out there that wants to try out goat maps it's a subscription app but we do it a discount right now use the use the offer code launch when you go to when you go to try it out.

598
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:57,000
And you can get a think a 30% discount.

599
01:11:57,000 --> 01:12:04,000
And we've got a great pro deal program to like if you are a working ski guide or working ski patroller.

600
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:10,000
Send me an email Jesse at goat maps.com and our our pro deal at least for the first year is free.

601
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:11,000
So hit me up.

602
01:12:11,000 --> 01:12:16,000
I got to say Jesse I really appreciate the double meaning for goat maps.

603
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:18,000
Yeah.

604
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:29,000
I like the idea of the mountain goat like I love ibacks or Steinbach or bouquet and in Europe you know the giant horns and just how adept they are at traveling through the mountains.

605
01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:37,000
But I love that you're like I've been working on this for I mean well over a decade in this space and you're like we're going to make the greatest of all time.

606
01:12:37,000 --> 01:12:38,000
That's pretty fun.

607
01:12:38,000 --> 01:12:39,000
Yeah.

608
01:12:39,000 --> 01:12:40,000
Nailed it.

609
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:42,000
Well, Jesse thanks so much for coming on.

610
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:44,000
It was awesome talking to you man.

611
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:50,000
You got some great stories and cool insights and I would definitely like to talk to you again sometime soon.

612
01:12:50,000 --> 01:12:53,000
So if you're available maybe you can come back.

613
01:12:53,000 --> 01:12:54,000
Cool.

614
01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:55,000
Thanks for having me.

615
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:56,000
Cool.

616
01:12:56,000 --> 01:12:57,000
All right.

617
01:12:57,000 --> 01:12:58,000
Cheers Jesse.

618
01:12:58,000 --> 01:12:59,000
That's it.

619
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:00,000
That's it.

620
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:01,000
That's the show.

621
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:02,000
Thanks so much for listening, watching.

622
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:03,000
However you're doing your pods these days.

623
01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:06,000
If you like what we're doing please consider subscribing.

624
01:13:06,000 --> 01:13:08,000
Leaving a review or rating.

625
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:09,000
Send it to your friends.

626
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:10,000
Really does help us out.

627
01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:15,000
One last thanks to our business daddy aspect Davy for making the all aspects podcast possible.

628
01:13:15,000 --> 01:13:20,000
If you want to try out aspecdav for yourself head on over to the app store and download it on iOS for free.

629
01:13:20,000 --> 01:13:23,000
Thanks so much for listening and watching and we'll see you in the next one.

630
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:30,000
Bye bye.