The Totally Deep podcast brings what it does to the table: open minds, snow stoke, and sharing stories. But, it’s a bit of a crapshoot when interviewing folks cold. Most often, it all works out. But not always, and there’s the inherent risk of a lackluster interview. Episode 99, we assure you, is not that.
The “shakedown” trip in the Alaska Range: Alex Lee, Roman Dial, and Russel Wong.
As Totally Deep notches towards 100 episodes, we bring together two observers of the natural world and ski touring partners in Roman Dial and Alex Lee. Both are professors at Alaska Pacific University; Lee teaches philosophy while Dial has zeroed in on math and biology.
Lee has been featured on the podcast before. This is Dial’s first go.
If you’ve done some basic research into Alaskan wilderness adventures, you’re likely to encounter Dial’s exploits. Dial remains a proto early-adopter considering how one pieces together moving from A to B to C when it entails the encyclopedia of groveling through Alaska’s tangle of botany and mountains and hydrology. From packrafting to cycling, skiing, and skating (on ice skates) Dial imagined and realized moving across landscapes, sometimes elegantly, often bedraggled, and just in the knick of time.
Big country in the Alaska Range.
I learned on fastestknowntime.com that he stamps his performance metrics as OKTs (only known time) and LKTs (loneliest known time). The link above also includes Dial’s adventure CV and does not include his voluminous academic work.
Dial is also a National Geographic Explorer and the author of The Adventurer’s Son.
On episode 99 of Totally Deep, Dial and Lee discuss researching the natural world on skis, gear revelations, and finding a shared passion for sliding on snow.
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While most of the WildSnow backcountry skiing blog posts are best attributed to a single author, some work well as done by the group.