Jenny Abegg is a 40-year-old mountain athlete, writer, and business co-founder who has built her life around spending extended time in the mountains. (@jabegg)
Jenny describes how she went from a religious upbringing that emphasized self-denial and sacrifice to a life fully dedicated to climbing. She recalls the moment she left the church, the deep personal transformation that followed, and how moving into her van and chasing vertical adventure became her form of self-discovery.
We discuss her evolution from mountaineering, to climbing, to her current obsession: long, technical mountain linkups in running shoes, where she combines her climbing background with ultra-distance endurance. Jenny reflects on why she’s more anxious in everyday life than when she’s committing to an alpine traverse, the feeling of absolute freedom that comes from moving fast in the mountains, and what it’s like to be the “crazy lady in running shoes” on a glacier.
We also get into the financial side of her dirtbag years—living in a van, earning just enough as a freelance writer and guide, and later using smart real estate moves to build long-term security. Jenny now co-runs BetterTrail, an outdoor gear review site that blends sustainability with practical advice.
Finally, Jenny opens up about turning 40, grappling with the question of long-term purpose, and wondering what life will look like when her body no longer lets her run across the mountains she loves.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/jenny
Recorded in December 2024.
Photo: Steven Gnam.
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!
Blake Boles 00:00
Jenny Abegg, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Jenny Abegg 00:03
Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon. Different time zones.
Blake Boles 00:10
Our mutual friend Hannah Hall calls you a mountain goat, and I wanted to ask you right off the bat, what is it about mountains that calls you and what keeps you coming back? And if you can share any maybe specific moments you’ve had in the mountains that really illustrate this, I’d love to hear them.
Jenny Abegg 00:32
Yeah, I think this question is a little hard for me because it’s kind of, this is going to sound so cheesy and cliche, but it’s kind of like asking someone, what is it about like the air that keeps you coming back, like the air that you breathe, like it is like, it’s my language. It’s my foundation.I think I grew up going to the mountains a lot. I grew up with parents who like to go to the mountains a lot and it continues to just be the way that I connect with, with like myself, with others, with the world, it’s where I go when I need a recalibration. And I can think of like, like most of my solid, like most important friendships on the planet are people who I have gone to the mountains with consistently. And so, yeah, I think it’s just my medium. Yeah, there, there have been times when I’ve gone alone. I did, I think you were, maybe you were there this year, that year, Blake, when I was in Chaltén, El Chaltén Patagonia. And I did a loop around like the Chaltén Massif and I did it alone. And it was like, I don’t always catch like the psych to do things, but when I do, I kind of know it and I just follow it. And that year I really felt like, like that was, I just was compelled to, to go on this like 60 mile excursion around the Chaltén Massif, 12 miles of which were running on Glacier and I really want to do, I wanted to do it alone. And that day stands out in my mind as like one of the most important days of my life because it just was a day of feeling very close to myself, very close to the earth.And like my life was in my hands in a way. And I think our lives are always in our hands, but there’s something about going into the mountains that makes that really stark and obvious and maybe I need it. I think there’s times when I like need like a set of more powerful emotions than what general life can give. And people find that in different ways through like music or drugs or yeah, the outdoors and I definitely find it through being in the mountains.
Blake Boles 03:05
Yeah. And that tour around the Chaltén Massif that you did, I believe that normally takes a week for people to walk.You did it in roughly half a day, maybe a little bit more. Yeah, I think that you’re being kind.
Jenny Abegg 03:20
It took me like 15 hours or something
Blake Boles 03:23
That’s only slightly more than half a day.
Jenny Abegg 03:25
Yeah, yeah, that’s true.
Blake Boles 03:26
And you were also traversing the Patagonia ice field by yourself, you know, this, that’s an extremely remote, did you even have cell phones, any, any form of like rescue service, maybe a satellite.
Jenny Abegg 03:41
I’m not that cavalier, I guess, but I did not have cell service. I had it in reach, and I had somebody in town that I was connected with that knew my rescue options really well.But there was one moment. I maybe just passed one group of people my whole day out there, and you’re right. It’s like a mountaineering route, and so there are groups of people who do it with heavy packs and will take like a week or like five days to do it. I was out there on the Southern Patagonia Icefield in shorts and a t-shirt and running shoes, and I was just jumping over crevasses. I passed this group of people with mountaineering boots, ashamed and exuberant. I was like, wow, somehow I’ve chosen to do this differently than those people, and I feel like my way is more fun, but I also feel like they probably think that I’m totally crazy, and I need to like veer over here so I don’t have to talk to them. It was absolute freedom for me to be out there alone.
Blake Boles 04:59
There’s a website for bicycle tourists called crazy guy on a bike.And I wonder how many moments you’ve had where someone has called you the crazy lady on the trail, the crazy lady on the, the knife edge ridge, uh, it
Jenny Abegg 05:14
the creepy lady in running shoes where she shouldn’t be wearing running shoes. That’s right.
Blake Boles 05:17
right. Maybe you can zoom out a little bit and tell people what exactly does you do in the mountains?You do many different things in the mountains. Maybe just walk us through the various stages of your relationship to the mountains and what you’d like to do.
Jenny Abegg 05:33
Yeah, it started as a kid, going to the mountains on backpacking trips with my family. We grew up on the northern side of the North Cascades, and then it morphed with my family into doing mountaineering trips together, so like climbing Mount Baker or doing the tarmac introverse in five days as a backpacking trip. And then in college and after college, I guided at a mountaineering camp. So there was just a lot of mountaineering, snow, typical Pacific Northwest stuff going on at that point.And then I got into rock climbing, and I think that took me by storm and changed my life. I did the whole quit my job, move into my van, mold my life around this sport, but also this lifestyle and this community. And just focused on pure rock climbing and alpine rock climbing, but yeah, the vertical goal for a long time, for a decade, close to a decade. And then throughout COVID, I got really into running and started to find these ways to bring the two sports together. So running long distances in the mountains, taking a route that might take other people a week and trying to do it in a day, and maybe it involves some what people typically view as they might need a rope or more technical terrain. And with my climbing skills, could just breeze through those sections, just me, myself, and my trail running shoes. And that to me, it’s become a new way of exploring over the course of the last four years. And it is pure freedom to be in the mountains in that way.So yeah, and I still rock climb a lot, still love it so much. It’s my roots for sure.
Blake Boles 07:25
You have this, this base of mountaineering and then extensive rock climbing experience, and then on top of that long distance running, which makes you kind of a Swiss army knife, I’m imagining you, you are just capable of doing things. Like for example, with the aforementioned mutual friend, Hannah Hall, um, you’ve done some pretty incredible traverses, uh, across, you know, long distances in the mountains where kind of like when you were down in Patagonia, you really had to commit to like going far and going, doing a lot of vertical, uh, with minimal gear and with some fairly serious consequences.If you are forced to, to, to bivy, if you have to spend a night up in the mountains, um, am I overselling you at this point, Jenny?
Jenny Abegg 08:14
To me you are. I’m just derping out there. I think that’s where it has just become the medium that is so normal to me and to some of my adventure buddies. It’s funny because I experience a lot of anxiety.I would describe myself as an anxious human, but when I’m in the mountains, I have so much less anxiety than the people around me. This could be a bad thing. We could read into this as this is risky, dangerous, but when I’m in those situations that you just described of there being a point of no return or could get caught out by darkness or cold, I don’t feel nervous. That’s wrong. I do feel nervous, but I feel so in the moment and so present that there’s no space for the mind to spin around like it does in normal life for me. I think it’s all about just executing and quote unquote surviving in a way, but in the best sense of that word. I think there’s a stripped down nature to life where I can’t ruminate. I can’t let my mind go to places that really don’t exist yet in terms of being anxious.
Blake Boles 09:47
So one of those people who like when there’s an emergency situation, your blood, excuse me, your, your heart rate actually like decreases, like you become calmer and more focused, whereas other people might become more agitated and frenetic.
Jenny Abegg 10:02
You know, I’m actually not. Yeah.So I think there’s something, I’m not like a first responder hero. I don’t think I’d make a good ER nurse or doctor, but it’s something about being in these non-emergent situations in the mountains that are still dangerous and risky, but I find them quite controlled actually and quite predictable.
Blake Boles 10:29
Can you give me an example, perhaps a moment where from the outside, someone would say, Ooh, this is a very heroin situation. And to you, you’re like, this is a manageable problem to be solved.
Jenny Abegg 10:41
I think that I noticed this a lot in the preparation for trips, where a partner might be really just facetious about packing or about making an Excel spreadsheet with timestamps of where we’re going to want to be when, and having all of the bailout routes in their mind. And for me, the approach, the natural approach, and I’m not saying either is right or wrong at all, but the way that I naturally do it is just to like pack a bag, hope that what I need is in the bag and then go.And if a situation arises where we can’t keep going, we’ll figure it out. I think there’s a lot of places in life where I don’t feel like the most confident human, but when it comes to being in the mountains and staying safe in the mountains, I think I have a lot of trust in my skillset and background. And so there’s less need, maybe mostly in the preparation stages to just freak out about things or get anxious about things. I just can’t wait to do that. I think that’s a very general thing to say because sometimes it is not okay. But I know that there are most situations I’ll be able to handle.
Blake Boles 12:11
Do you call yourself a mountain athlete?
Jenny Abegg 12:15
Yeah, that’s the term that I have started using more in the last few years. If you had asked me five years ago, I would have been like, Blake, I am a rock climber, but since I introduced running into things, I feel more like a mountain athlete.I’m obviously missing so many skill sets. Like I’m not a good ice climber. I’m not a good skier, but when it’s summer in the mountains, I feel pretty competent.
Blake Boles 12:42
All right, one more question about the mountains before we start talking about money and work and that kind of stuff, which mountain ranges in the world do you have the closest relationships to maybe even tell me if this is a stretch, an intimate relationship with.
Jenny Abegg 12:59
I think if I were to name one range in the world that I feel at home in most, it’s the North Cascades, and specifically North Cascades National Park, but also the whole of the Washington Mountain wilderness. I grew up exploring it.Three years ago, my friend Caitlin and I traversed a high route from the northern tip of the North Cascades to the southern tip. I think that was such a cool experience because I gained this mental map of this range that I’ve played in for so long, but never journeyed from north to south in like that. It is a lifelong experience and goal for me to know that range like the back of my hand, and I will never know it that well. I think it feels like a cool thing to aim for, to just get to know that one place. Then because I’ve spent a lot of time there, I gravitate towards ranges with glaciers. So the Chaltén area in Patagonia feels like home to me, and the Bugaboos in British Columbia or the Coast Range in British Columbia, they feel like home to me because they’re like North Cascadian in nature.
Blake Boles 14:22
North Cascadian in nature should turn that into an acronym. Let’s talk about how you’re able to create this life where you can spend such extended time in the mountains.And I want to start by asking you at what point in your life were you spending the most time playing outdoors and the least time working for money?
Jenny Abegg 14:45
There was a time in my late 20s, early 30s, when I didn’t work at all for a while, and then a piecemeal worked for a good three or four years. And I think there was, during that time, I posted up in a town, actually in the town that I currently live in right now, Leavenworth, for some months to work in the service industry to make money to then take more time off. So those were the golden years.I think back on them with so much just gratitude for the fact that I did that. I wish I had done it for longer, but yeah, and mostly…
Blake Boles 15:24
Living in old blue
Jenny Abegg 15:26
And a lot of that time I was living in my van, my 1995 GMC Safari van named Old Blue, which I still have, yeah, so like focused on Old Blue, but also like I had spent a winter in Spain and I rented a place in Leavenworth for six months and I didn’t carry much stuff around with me. It was always just me and Old Blue, but I’d post up in various places for some time.
Blake Boles 15:59
Now, how about the reverse of that question? At what point in your life have you spent the least time outdoors?So let’s talk about your adult life when you’re really in control and the least time in the outdoors and the most time working for money, whether that’s happily working for money or, or discontentedly.
Jenny Abegg 16:19
Okay. There’s bookends right here. There was, before I moved into Old Blue, I hadn’t yet discovered this life. And I was working Monday through Friday in a public school in Seattle. And I was just stirring. Every part of me was scheming and stirring to get out of that. And I had just discovered my love for climbing. I had started therapy. I had just started dating, which is I grew up in a very religious community and didn’t start dating till my late 20s. And so life was growing.The world was growing. And so that was then. And then I actually feel like now is, I will look back on now is the time when I put my nose to the grindstone and worked really hard. But I have an eye for balance that I am so grateful for. And and so I mean, I just got back from like a three week trip to Red Rocks and I’m going to Patagonia for a month in February. But when I am working, I am working.
Blake Boles 17:33
So “nose to the grindstone” still looks like three weeks in Red Rocks and a a month in Patagonia.
Jenny Abegg 17:41
Yeah, it’s a very work hard play hard lifestyle because now I’m home in Leavenworth right now and I’m like pulling long days of work and my life kind of revolves around the business that I’ve created with some friends. So it’s very feast and famine right now.
Blake Boles 17:59
Maybe walk me through what you’ve done for money over the years, and then definitely include what you’re doing right now, this new, hyper intense project.
Jenny Abegg 18:09
Okay, yeah. My first job was working at McDonald’s. When I was 16, I was on the Canadian Junior National Ultimate Frisbee team and my mom wanted me to earn my money for my plane ticket. So that was my first experience of work.And I earned my money for my plane ticket and promptly quit. In my 20s, I spent a lot of time working at camps and working is not the right word. It was more volunteering at camps. And then out of college, I worked for a wilderness therapy company based out of Oregon. And I felt like I was making more money there than I could imagine. I think my salary was like $25,000 a year. After that, I worked in the public schools in Seattle for less than two years.
Blake Boles 19:09
What were you doing for them?
Jenny Abegg 19:11
I actually got a master’s in teaching and then worked as a teacher’s assistant for two years, supporting one-on-one, a middle school girl that was health challenged. And yeah, I loved that job, but it wouldn’t fit into my life right now.And through that job, I think I was making, again, like 25 grand a year. I saved 10 grand in a year and quit my job, moved into my van, and just that was my money for the year. And then I got really drawn to that lifestyle and didn’t want to stop it. And so I started to pick up various writing gigs, writing freelance for like Climbing Magazine and Alpinist and REI.com, Gore-Tex, just whatever I could find. And then started guiding a little bit too. So that was my way of staying on the road while being able to pay the bills. And my living expenses were so low, so it didn’t take much. And I probably saved during that time too.
Blake Boles 20:20
Let me just ask really quickly, was it easy for you to become a freelance writer? Did you have a background in this? Uh, yeah, that’s a big question.
Jenny Abegg 20:30
I think there’s a lot of privilege there that helped me get to where I was. I was a female that was climbing at a certain level, and I had a photographer boyfriend at the time. And so those two things combined, I had a lot of contacts in the industry because of both of those things, and it snowballed. And it turns out that there’s a lot of people looking for good workers, good writers, good whatever, and a little bit of prompt emailing and prompt delivery can go a long way once you get your first in. But I think getting my first in was like total privilege for me, and I had the right people in my life at the right time.Okay, so after that period of freelance writing, one of the places that I was freelancing for was a publication called Switchback Travel, and I was doing gear reviews for them. I think the first thing I reviewed for them was a pair of 5.10 guide tennis approach shoes, and they asked me to come on full-time, and I was like, how about part-time? So I came on as their third employee and was working 20 hours a week consistently, and my life kind of changed at that point. It was the first time in my climbing life that I had consistent work, and I also was wanting a bit more stability. I moved to Bend, Oregon, and my goal was to become stronger at Smith Rock and focus on climbing in a more stable way. And I think that adult life kind of began at that point.I mean, it all snowballs, and a year later, I had bought a house, was living in the garage while the four tenants in the main house paid my mortgage. And then, yeah, I continued to work at Switchback up until last year, so seven years there, working 20 hours a week, and keeping my expenses low enough that that totally worked for me. And I could stack my hours and work 40 hours some week and play the other week or take vacation time and string together long periods of time off. And then that snowballed into what I’m currently doing right now. So the founder of Switchback, the editor-in-chief of Switchback, and myself all left Switchback, sold Switchback, and are starting a new online publication called BetterTrail. And what we’re trying to do is modernize the outdoor gear review space, but also infuse our reviews with sustainability information. So trying to help people who are shopping for gear have all the tools they need to shop responsibly. And it’s been a crazy year of being a business owner of a startup business, taking a 50% pay cut from what I was making before. But I’m so glad I did it.It’s been so rewarding. Whether or not it actually takes on and makes this money, I think it’s been such a cool experience and so cool that my life was set up in a way that I could handle taking a huge pay cut and not have it affect me too much. Yeah.
Blake Boles 24:10
During those seven years at Switchback, when you were working 20 hours a week on average, you said that the money worked for you. Were you also able to save over that time?
Jenny Abegg 24:22
I was. Yeah. So I’ve always been a massive saver, probably like to my detriment, like I don’t buy things very well. And I think honestly, if I’m going to be truly honest, part of this is that I didn’t drink alcohol or coffee until I was like in my early thirties. And so I just, and I didn’t eat out. I lived a pretty like, I don’t know, a cedar lifestyle. And so I just saved a lot of money, even though I wasn’t making much money at all, I was just a healthy saver.And so when I started this job at Switchback and had like a regular W-2 coming in, I was able to buy a house in Bend. And this was, this was six years ago. So houses were definitely like half the price that they are now. And I thought I was paying too much, but I bought a house for $400,000 and it had, and I was only willing to buy a house if it, if it could help, if it could pay for itself. And so like living, paying for living was always the thing that I was against. Like I’ve lived in closets, I’ve lived in little like cordoned off like parts of basements.
Blake Boles 25:33
Paying rent is what you’re against?
Jenny Abegg 25:36
Okay. What did I say? Paying for living.
Blake Boles 25:38
That’s just a big umbrella.
Jenny Abegg 25:41
Paying rent. Paying rent. And I’ve paid rent for the closet and for the basement and for the various things, but like very minimal rent. And so I was always able to save.And so I bought this house in Bend and it was a four bedroom house with a converted garage and I moved into the garage and kept the tenants in the main house and they paid my mortgage for me. And so now I have this house, but I was saving a lot of money because I didn’t have housing expenses because they were being paid by my renters. And it can kind of just snowball when you’re not, when you’re paying a mortgage and putting money into something that’s gaining you equity and especially something like the housing market in Bend, like that house has doubled in value. And I really part luck there, like buying it when I did. So it’s doubled in value. I haven’t spent much of a cent towards it. So I saved all that money and then you can kind of just like do it again. And then if you want to, you could do that again too. If you’re willing to like, so basically what I did was I did it again and I moved away from Bend during the pandemic. I rented out that garage unit. And so now I’m like cash flowing $1,500 on this house that I’m gaining equity on. It’s like doubled in value. So I’m able to take money out of it and buy a house in Leavenworth and the extra $1,500 that I’m making from my house in Bend, and then that down payment that I was able to take out of my house in Bend with that, I’m able to buy another house and kind of do it all again, because then I converted the back bedroom, which is a master suite into its own unit here in Leavenworth and I have a tenant here. So now I have two houses and I’m not paying the mortgages for them. So it kind of is like, it’s a cool game to play and it’s a little hard to play it now, I think, because of the way interest rates are and the housing market’s insane. But I think I got really lucky that I got into it at the right time and I’m not going to keep moving. I feel like I don’t want to leave Leavenworth, so I’m staying where I am, but I’m able to save still quite a bit of money because I made a game out of my housing situation.
Blake Boles 28:13
You climbed the property ladder.
Jenny Abegg 28:16
The property ladder. There’s a saying in, and I got kind of deep into this world for a while. There’s a saying that you live the way that most people don’t want to live so that you can live the way that most people can’t live. And so, I mean, for years I like slept in closets and my van and then lived in like a kind of shitty garage for a while, living the way that most people don’t want to live.So that now, I mean, I’m already there where I can live the way that most people can’t live, which is like totally like housing cost free.
Blake Boles 28:54
I imagine when you were in that garage or that closet, though, you didn’t feel deprived that I imagine it felt like a bit energizing a bit like an adventure or like, you know, the way that the climbing community uses the term dirtbag. It’s a badge of honor to be, to be a dirtbag. It signifies a certain level of creativity, a certain level of, of non neediness and, and dedication to the cause. So was that all true for you?That’s so well put.
Jenny Abegg 29:21
Yeah, it felt purposeful. I loved the resourcefulness of it. My mother, I come from good lineage with this. My mom is 75 and she still collects cans and brings them into the can redemption center and that’s her spending money.The resourcefulness is there and I love that feeling. Yeah, it starts to feel like a game, like an adventure. You’re taking boring life and making it spicy a little bit and you just feel like you’re skirting the system a little bit in a way that feels fun. I do remember one time when I was living in that closet when I had a friend in town and I didn’t have a car at this point either and I realized that I had nothing to offer my visiting friend. I didn’t have a place, like a bed to sleep on. I didn’t have a way of getting them around. I had no hospitality to give other than my time out. I remember feeling that as a hard feeling.
Blake Boles 30:28
Mm.
Jenny Abegg 30:28
Um, so there are trade-offs, but.
Blake Boles 30:32
I know in my own life, having slept in many strange places and being someone else’s guest, it feels very rewarding to occasionally splurge and have a place, a multi bedroom place for a little bit where I can host friends, I can host dinners and parties and yeah, very gratifying. So okay, we’re going to start edging into the question about purpose right now.I think we can get there. I want to come back to the business you’re building right now, Better Trail, and you said that it’s incredibly meaningful work or project or effort, the startup. You’re not sure if it’s going to pan out in the long run, but what makes it so satisfying, Jenny?
Jenny Abegg 31:19
I think the number one thing that makes it so satisfying is the team, this group of individuals, the three of us, that have worked together for years and identified each other as people that we wanted to keep in our lives. We’re like perfect workmates and we complement each other really well. Those relationships are ones that I’ll have for the rest of my life, they’re like my brothers.Then I think there’s a joy in building something that I didn’t really know existed. It started out as just like conversations and dreaming about something and now it’s like this breathing thing on the internet. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have that become like a breathing brick and mortar store, not that it will for us, but there’s so much satisfaction in this. I understand now the satisfaction that entrepreneurs must have in building things. It could honestly, at most points, it could be anything that we were building. It’s just fun to build and to be creative and to have something grow. Then I think the cherry on top is that what we are growing feels like it feels additive. I live in this outdoor space through my hobbies, my friendships, now my work. It feels nice to be hopefully providing it with a resource that’s doing good, that’s helping people shop responsibly. It finally feels additive.For so long, writing gear reviews almost felt shameful to me. It did feel shameful to me. There’s so many gear reviews on the internet. Sure, I could spin it to say that they are helping people, but it felt hard to be just another voice in the choir of talking about gear and helping people consume. What we’re working on now, it feels beside that. It feels like we’re adding something that can really help people do good. The more I get into this work, the more I just realize that my stand that I want to preach on is that you should just buy less. People should just have less stuff and it’s so hard to purchase responsibly, so just don’t purchase and just use what you have. That is my mother speaking straight through me, but I think it’s fun to have a platform now.
Blake Boles 34:00
Yeah, at, at some point you’ll, you’ll need to earn money from that, that statement or you’re trying to encourage people to make like one solid purchase that is ethical and that’s going to, this thing is going to last them a long time. And then, you know, for the next 10 years, don’t buy anything new.But I know it’s kind of like a, it’s a hard business model.
Jenny Abegg 34:23
Yeah. Have you heard of the Patagonia, don’t buy this shirt campaign that actually sells so many shirts? It’s paradoxical and it’s too bad that the only way that we make money is through people’s purchases because I truly stand behind this statement of people should just buy less.But yeah, I think exactly what you said is if people are going to buy, we can at least help them buy well and buy durable and buy well built and sustainably built, people are going to need a new ski jacket or a new down jacket. And then I do hope that just through the content on the site and the general ethos that we communicate that we can help people see that repairing is cool, that patching your jacket is hip and you should do it rather than buy a new one. But I think we have to rely on the fact that humans are humans and we’ll consume and we’ll continue to buy things and that will make us money. It’s a weird paradox to live in for sure.
Blake Boles 35:32
I’m curious to kind of like, I asked what the history of how you made money was. I’m curious what the history of, of your, your sense of purpose in your work has been, earlier you were involved in, in what we call education, like wilderness therapy, which can be deeply impactful and meaningful, working in the public school system, and then you were in this seven, maybe more years of, yeah, more gear review writing for the outdoor industry, but was that kind of a lull in your, in your, did it go from like high to low and now you’re, you’re creeping back up on the purpose scale now.
Jenny Abegg 36:11
It’s such a good observation. So I grew up in the church and my life was to be of service to God. And I spent my teen years, my college years, my twenties, like feeling so, so obligated, like I was going to say compelled, but it was actually like so obligated to, to sacrifice my life.I remember moving to East Vancouver. I grew up in British Columbia, moving to East Vancouver. One summer, all my other friends went to Juneau, Alaska to like work and play in the mountains and I felt like I needed to do exactly what I didn’t want to do so that I could be of service to God. So there were some like really bad thought, like, I don’t know, black and white thinking and, and like skewed thinking around like what service looked like at that time in my life. And honestly, like I, I didn’t have a self. I like woke up sometime in my late twenties and felt like I didn’t have a self, like I didn’t, I had never asked what I enjoy. I had never like felt like it was okay to do things for myself. And at this point I had like been working wilderness therapy. I tutored a lot. I mentored refugees. I was working in the public schools and I really thought that my life would be revolved around this like service, even to the extent of like thinking that I maybe should be homeless and live on the streets so that I could serve people in that way. I mean, it was very drastic thinking that I can now look back on and like correct in many ways, but I, the pendulum swung, like when I left the church and started therapy, it just, it, it swung to like a close to hedonism in the sense that I just wanted to be able to do, identify what I wanted, what I loved doing and do it.Like I felt like I had been deprived for so many years. And so climbing was that thing that I like swung the pendulum into and it became just important for me to like survive better, like to, to push put, put energy back into myself and like finally do things that I wanted to do. Um, and I, I do think that at this point in my life, that pendulum is swinging back a little bit more. I, I really, the goal is for it to swing back more as like even more. Um, which I, I think is hard when I travel so much and I want to be able to be involved in certain like volunteer efforts or communities at home. There’s still a lot of shoulds going on and I don’t have a great, I have more reflections than answers to this question, but, um,
Blake Boles 39:08
Let me see if I got this straight. Earlier in your life, your 20s purpose came more from church, religion, and then also some of the education work you were doing.And then late 20s, the big switch and church is out and rock climbing becomes your God and to financially sustain yourself, you’re doing freelance writing and gear reviews, which is not necessarily making the world any better, but you’re not really worried about that because you’re focused on finally doing something for yourself. And now the ship is writing itself, so to speak.
Jenny Abegg 39:50
Yeah, and I want the ship to ride itself even further. I think that I can be a fairly small picture person. I can get really absorbed in thinking big picture about my impact on the world and how to be a good human does not come. I think I maybe burn myself out of that kind of thinking.I can just remember years in my 20s of existential thought, and I have shirked that way of thinking. But yeah, and so I find a lot of joy and purpose in the minutia of day-to-day work that might not have huge impact on the planet or people, even though now we’re trying to have more of an impact with better trail.
Blake Boles 40:41
Do you have, do you have some, some hangups or some difficult feelings around the, the sort of self-centeredness of, of the outdoors world? And I’m just sort of detecting this in, in what you’re saying.So you really want to right the ship. Like you don’t want to just keep doing cool stuff. I’m putting words into your mouth at this point. You don’t just want to keep doing cool stuff in the mountains that that’s very satisfying and challenging, but you want to have another source of, of purpose or meaning or feeling like you’re contributing to something bigger than yourself and like your cool friends and all of your collective outdoor pursuits. Am I hitting the nail on the head here?
Jenny Abegg 41:19
Yeah, I think I go back and forth. I think some days I just feel like as humans, we’re all on this planet just truly trying to survive. And I’m one of those people who is truly just trying to survive. And the more I can take care of myself and survive, that’s just what I would want everyone to do. There’s so many flaws to that thinking, but I think some days that’s my feeling.And I’ve alluded to the fact that I live with a lot of anxiety, and I think some of that is anxiety driven. And then other times, and especially as I get older, I’ve started to feel like there’s so much space to give back and to do good in the little world that I’ve carved out. Like, okay, so I’ve spent my 20s and 30s finding this world and now working hard to carve it out. And now that I’m solid in this mountain world, this gear review, all the different facets of my life, now I’m not just surviving in this world, and it’s time to think about ways to give back. But I do think that it took me a while to get there because for a while, we’re all just trying to survive in a way. But I think there’s different ways of thinking about that. And I’m definitely influenced by a little bit of baggage around sacrifice that I grew up with.
Blake Boles 42:49
Yeah, can you just tell me a bit more about this religious upbringing and especially what tipped the scales in your later 20s? What drove you to leave?
Jenny Abegg 43:01
Yeah. Yeah. So I grew up, my family was very religious. My dad was a professor at a religious university. My mom grew up Baptist. I youth group was always like a big deal summer camp. And the, the general takeaways from all of that was that there is one right way to live. You have to walk this narrow path. And, and then this huge idea of like you are a vessel, you’re an empty vessel for God’s work. Don’t have self confidence, have God confidence. And so from a young age, I just deny, deny, deny the self. And my soul aim in life was to seek God’s will, not my own at all, and be a vessel through which he could do good on the earth.And it just ended up being a lot of, um, yeah, self denial sacrifice, not really knowing how to identify what I wanted. And then even if I did identify that, like choosing to do the exact opposite because of this feeling of like, like obligation to a higher calling. And it kind of just fell apart in my late twenties. I mean, I spent my entire twenties, like journaling reading books, like trying to figure out where I stood in all of this, like so much, so much existential angst. And in my late twenties, there was just a series of events. I like, I started climbing at a gym, I started dating for the first time and I started therapy and they all kind of like worked together to like break me out of the church. And, um, and then that’s where the pendulum clearly swung. Yeah. Try to reclaim myself.
Blake Boles 44:50
Can you tell me a little bit more about those last two bullet points, the dating and the therapy and, uh, yeah, actually, I just want to leave that wide open for you and go take it wherever you’d like.
Jenny Abegg 45:06
Yeah, I mean, at least in the church that I was in and the family that I came from, there was this expectation that you didn’t really date until you were ready to get married and then you married the first person that you dated. And I held that standard for my life, but I just don’t fit into it.And nor do most people, I have family members that very much kept that script going and married young to the first person that they dated. So I think some people, it works for them better, whether or not it really works. It works. And so I started, I met, so I started, I was climbing more. I went to the Bugaboos on my first real climbing trip and I met somebody there. And that was my first adult relationship. I was a virgin. And also, sexual purity is very, just so important in the church and the flavor of church that I was in. And it’s kind of like a year in or year out. And I thought long and hard about the decision to lose my sexual purity.And when I did, that was the switch that was flipped where I was like, guess I’m not a Christian anymore. And then it was like I was able to turn away from this way of thinking and this, I’m just picturing this person turning around and this whole world opening up to them full of color, whereas the previous world was black and white and full of nuance and all these new experiences that were now available and accessible to my 28 year old self. And I mean, yeah, it was a really powerful time of life. And therapy, and then I started therapy and started unpacking all sorts of stuff around growing up with religion, growing up in my family, denying myself, not having a self, never being able to make decisions for myself because I didn’t have an internal foundation. And so like little by little during this time, I just started to form more of a sense of who I was and what I wanted. And it felt like I was being born for the first time.And climbing was a huge part of that. I remember starting to lead climb, which is where you’re on the sharp end of the rope, you are putting the rope up on the wall and there’s potential for falling. And it’s scary. It’s really scary. You could fall quite a long ways and you’re putting protection in as you go. But I remember this sense of like freaking out on the wall, yelling to my belay partner down below and realizing that they couldn’t do anything for me and that the only person that could help me in that moment was myself. And I had never felt that before. There had always been God and like I never valued myself. And in those moments of like climbing more and going to therapy, just realizing that I was the only one that was going to live life for me. And so yeah, it was big, big era of my life, like of growth.
Blake Boles 48:33
Is it a stretch to say that you took all the faith that you previously held in Christianity and you put it into yourself as a person who does stuff in the outdoors, in the mountains, into Jenny the climber and mountain athlete?
Jenny Abegg 48:50
Yeah, that could. I’ve never really thought about it that way, but I, yeah, in some ways, yeah, like I, it became like the new, the new driver, the new like foundation.But I think it just took, it took a while at that point to like really to build a solid foundation. Because I mean, when you live for 28 years with your foundation in one place, it takes to gain, I think I’m still gaining faith in this, in myself, but yeah.
Blake Boles 49:27
How did your relationship with your parents or your family, more broadly speaking, evolve when you left the church?
Jenny Abegg 49:36
Um, my dad has always, he’s an intellectual and I think he was a person that I brought my questions to and, and his, his way of embracing faith, um, was a bit more open. And so it felt like I had an ally and my dad, my mom on the other hand was devastated and would just, she prayed for me to come back to the faith for years and years and years.Um, and I, at, at this point in time, I was living in a house in Seattle with five girlfriends that were all Christians and from a summer camp that we all worked at together. And I moved out, I just felt like I needed, uh, separation and space to do exactly what Jenny needed to do and not to be just like a sheep in this, in this way of living that I had known for so long. So I moved out, moved into a garage in Seattle and yeah, yeah, carved out more space for myself. And I still have some of those friendships gradually. Some of those people have also left the church and my parents left the church at like the age of 71 during COVID. They just couldn’t, they couldn’t make sense of it with all the other stuff that was going around around the religious right and their, their church was anti-vax and they, it finally fell apart for them too. So now we’re all on the same team, but it was, it was rocky there for a while.
Blake Boles 51:09
Yeah, that’s a really, that’s an age outside of the norm to leave. Totally. I’m so proud of them.Yeah. Um, I want you to indulge me in a, in a thought experiment, Jenny, which is, um, let’s say there’s a parallel universe where you’re born the same person, but you’re just not as physically capable. Um, and so you didn’t have this foundation as a young adult doing stuff in the mountains with your parents and you were not able to become a dirtbag climber. Um, so in this parallel universe where, um, yeah, your, your body does not cooperate with your, your desires. Um, where do you think you would, you would go? And, and, and I think, where do you think you would have gone? And another way to think about this question is if all of a sudden tomorrow, your body stopped cooperating with you. Um, where do you think you would find purpose? Where do you think you would, you would direct your energies?
Jenny Abegg 52:11
Wow, such a good question. The first thing that comes to mind is that I would need to find some other game, some other game to play and like some other way of departing from routine and doldrums and like the holes that we can dig ourselves in life and find perspective and connection.And man, like the mountains are just like so the end all be all for me for finding that, that it feels hard to envision finding it elsewhere. I can envision finding games elsewhere though, the games that I played with with my housing, the games that I play with credit cards, which we haven’t talked about, but air miles. And like, I think that I could see myself diving further into, into that, like buying houses and renovating them and renting them out and refinancing and doing it all over again. Or, um,
Blake Boles 53:16
Yeah, you become a financial advisor.
Jenny Abegg 53:19
I would not become a financial advisor, but I would try to find more games to play with finances for sure. I think that that’s always just like fascinated me.Um, but, but I’m just thinking like the, the, the place that mountains, the role they play in my life is so, it’s just like, it’s so important for me to just get away from, from standard living for periods of time and experience like life on life on blast in the way, in the way that you just have to be so present and so connected when you’re in the mountains and I don’t know what else offers that and, and I meet, maybe I would dive super deep into meditation. I did a meditation retreat last year, my first ever like silent meditation retreat. And there were people from all walks of life there, but the ones that I really stood out to me were like the older people, they’re like 70 year olds, maybe even 80 that were there and the experience that I was having internally when I was there, it was really profound and probably the most profound part of it was how present I was and how beautiful the present moment was, even though it was just at a meditation retreat.And I saw those older people and it, it was like a vision to me of what I could do post climbing, like the things in life that I could have, even when my body wasn’t working anymore, that I could still go so deep into something and experience pure presence. And I really, that is maybe the thing that I find most in climbing and it, and that meditation retreat helped me realize that it’s accessible through meditation too, it feels like an adventure of a different sort.
Blake Boles 55:15
Yeah. That’s exactly where I wanted to go with this.And I think one of my missions with this, this podcast, this line of research is really figuring out what people who have this dirtbag ethos, especially people who do it in the outdoors, but it can apply to many other fields in life also. Yeah. How it’s long-term sustainable for them. And I think for someone like you, who’s just like so into your, your body and being in these wild and remote places, this question of like, if and when that no longer becomes accessible to you, where do you focus your energies? Where do you derive this sense of meaning and this sense of calm, this presence, this, you know, almost spiritual level connection that you feel when you’re in the mountains. And, and I wonder, you know, how much you can even prepare for that ahead of time. And for myself, but I think I’ve had a bit more of a diversified portfolio and, and I think it’s a bit easier for me to, to quickly answer that, that question. I think I would focus more on, on books and writing, maybe contributing to this kind of world of education. And so for someone like you, who’s so like singularly focused on, on the mountains, that I’m really curious about how you, how you think about that and maybe how other people in your community who are similar to you seem to be thinking about it or not thinking about it, you know,
Jenny Abegg 56:43
Yeah. I think maybe avoiding is the more proper way of thinking about it.But yeah, I’m so grateful that I found meditation. And I think a lot of us climbers are kind of like in search of extreme emotion. Like I think of us as being not dissimilar from like, I don’t know, junkies in a way. Like we are constantly searching for the next release from reality and high. There’s no better way to put it than searching for the next high. And yeah, I think the places to find that in a healthy way, you have to be creative. Like I don’t want to become a junkie and I don’t want to become an alcoholic, but I think I want life to be on blast every now and then. And like, I need a feeling of like pure presence every now and then. And yeah, so I’m so grateful that I found meditation as like a way to do that without my body, like just sitting. Yeah.
Blake Boles 57:52
All right, last big question for you, Jenny, um, on the theme of long-term sustainability, um, in which, in which way do you feel like your life up to this point? And so maybe let’s talk about your life post leaving the church, um, has not yet felt sustainable or not working or something that’s kind of an unresolved worry or anxiety for the future.And you’re not fully confident that you’re going to be able to solve this. Is there anything like that in your life?
Jenny Abegg 58:20
Oh yeah. The first, I mean, the big thing that comes to mind is my, my relationship status. And I, since like, you know, leaving the church and dating, I’ve dated, I’ve had a lot of relationships and I’m currently single and I’m 40. And so this idea of building a life with someone and having a family is feeling like it’s like slowly drifting away.And I’ve spent a lot of time grieving that, like I’ve really felt it this last year in the buildup to 40 and, um, and I’m in a much better place with it now than I was a year ago. Um, but I, I would say that, that it’s, it’s still a place where I don’t know if it’s working. Like right now I feel very content to be single. And the freedom that that offers me is, is gold to me. Like it’s so special to me and, and that makes me feel alive, but I can’t help but think that like I’m missing out on something that a lot of humans get to experience, like the level of connection that you get when you are partnered. And yeah, I don’t think that it’s mutually exclusive. Like I, I don’t think my lifestyle is, is the reason why I’m not partnered at all. I think that there’s like there are many answers to that question, but some of them lie in, in my religious upbringing and like attachment stuff and also just loving, loving my independence. I’m not particularly like driven to find someone to be with. So, but I think that is, it is something I think about a lot. It is something that I went back to therapy for recently. And the coolest part of going back to therapy to figure out why Jenny Abeg is single is like three months in. I, I’m more an acceptance of the fact that I’m single than I was three months ago. I don’t feel like it’s a really firm set of answers as to why I’m single. Although there are, I feel like we’ve explored that and I’ve gotten some answers, but more than anything it’s just given me, it’s helped me realize that there are no shoulds like, and this idea that I am 40 and should, should be married and having kids. I can throw that out the window because what’s, what I’m doing right now is working for me and it feels good. And the, the part of it that doesn’t feel good is the comparisons and, and the, the feelings of should. And, and so acceptance is like a huge piece of what I’ve gotten from the process of therapy. But I’ll continue to wonder about it, I think.
Blake Boles 01:01:17
Yeah.
Jenny Abegg 01:01:18
Yeah.
Blake Boles 01:01:20
Jenny, if anyone wants to follow your adventures and exploits online, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Jenny Abegg 01:01:30
Oh man, I could be better at sharing my adventures and exploits, but I do have an Instagram, I post on it from time to time and it’s JBEG, J-A-B-E-G-G.And then go to BetterTrail, follow BetterTrail on Instagram, bookmark us as your like new way of researching outdoor gear, that’s like, there’s not much about me on that website, but it’s, there’s a lot of me infused in it, so.
Blake Boles 01:02:00
Yeah. Jenny, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Jenny Abegg 01:02:03
Thank you Blake.