This past Fall, Blizzard-Tecnica released a ski and a book to raise money to support the Hilaree Nelson Fund. The fund promotes women-specific scholarships to support women in pursuing professional development relating to mountain pursuits. Formally, the scholarship is called the W2W Hilaree Nelson Education Scholarship.

W2W (Women2Women) is the nomenclature for Blizzard-Tecnica’s program to support initiatives and product development for women. Leslie Baker-Brown, our guest on the podcast, leads the program at Blizzard-Technica that pushed for the ski and book honoring Nelson and furthering her legacy of female empowerment in the ski industry and adventure world.

As most readers and listeners know, Nelson was a force of nature. She pushed boundaries in the ski mountaineering world by forging new technical standards and showing other women what was possible. These personal attributes are also embodied in the illustrated storybook Leader of the Pack: The Hilaree Nelson Story.

The book is an artful and mindful collaboration between writer Kimberly Beekman and artists Malia Reeves and Soleil Patterson—both of whom are Blizzard-Tecnica athletes.

Baker-Brown provides insight into the book’s development process and the W2W program. Further, Baker-Brown has been a part of the brand for over three decades. We are afforded a long-term perspective from inside the ski industry that we don’t hear from often—a working mom who got into the hard goods side of the business a generation ago.

You can also learn more about Baker-Brown here.

Thanks for listening.

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The theme music for The High Route Podcast comes from Storms in the Hill Country and the album The Self Transforming (Thank you, Jens Langsjoen). You can find a link to the album here—there are so many good songs on this album. And if you think you've spotted a UFO in the past or visited the 7th dimension, "Beautiful Alien" is a good tune to start with.