In her 20s, Ali Marie Koch struggled with anxiety, an eating disorder, depression and panic attacks.
“I tried a lot of different things to make myself feel better,” Ali recalls. But nothing helped. She even succumbed to her suicidal thoughts with a failed attempt. “When I found myself in a place of hopelessness, I knew I had to create a path back to wellness.”
That path led her to the Mazamas. Well, actually her mother, Susan Koch, a 2008 Basic Climbing Education Program (BCEP) graduate, hike leader and Guardian Peaks award recipient, shepherded her to the organization.
“I didn’t think there were other people like me who were happy on a hiking trail and not walking at the mall,” Susan says. “But I just fell in love with climbing and hiking, and the Mazamas were so kind and made me feel so welcome.”
Susan, a physician with Kaiser, wanted to at least try and expose Ali to the outdoor experiences that positively transformed her life decades before. They began hiking together. Susan waited until Ali’s strength and endurance increased and the wildflowers were peaking. Then she brought Ali up Old Snowy.
“When I stood on top of that mountain, I felt a sense of strength and inner peace I’ve never felt before,” Ali says. “I was connected to something bigger than myself…I thought there was a secret sauce here, which can lead to mental and physical wellness.”
Now 11 years into her recovery, Ali is an active Mazama who enjoys snowboarding, climbing and split boarding. She also aims to offer up some of that “secret sauce” to next year’s BCEP students via the Alano Club of Portland, the largest and oldest recovery center in the United States. Peak Recovery, a project of Alano, supports people in mental health and substance use recovery with free outdoor movement-based programming rooted in a true love of nature.
With Ali as program manager, Peak Recovery is excited to partner with the Mazamas and fund nine BCEP students in 2023 who identify as being in mental health and/or substance use recovery. Peak Recovery will cover the cost of the class and provide transportation in a 9-passenger Sprinter van. After the class, participants in the Peak Recovery cohort will be gifted a membership to the Mazamas to continue on their mountaineering journey.
“The ethos of Alano and Peak Recovery is in line with the Mazamas,” says Joe Preston, BCEP committee chair. “It’s the kind of partnership that will help us be more inclusive and welcoming, and we all want to see efforts like this expand every year.”
In 2022, BCEP put together several affinity teams, including an all-Latino team, an LGBTQ team and a sober team. The Peak Recovery partnership is an 18-month pilot program that Ali and Brent Canode, co-founder and Alano’s executive director, hope will become an ongoing partnership with the Mazamas.
“There’s a popular saying, and one of my favorite truisms in the behavioral health field, which goes like this: ‘The opposite of addiction is connection.’ At Alano Club of Portland we’ve taken that idea a bit further, recognizing that the point of connection must be meaningful and authentic for true community to grow and flourish,” Canode says. “Like most things in life, recovery is not a
One-size fits all journey, and those points of connection must speak in a way that compels a person to reach out and then remain on that path. That’s why we are thrilled to bring Peak Recovery to our community in partnership with the Mazamas, another legacy non-profit with a deep history of service and impact in Oregon.”
Susan and Ali credit the Mazamas in part for the happy, healthy lives they lead today, exposing them to a community of people passionate about movement and time in nature, tightening their family bond with trips that included the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and highlighting how resilient they are as women in the healthcare field.
“It’s been such a privilege to spend time in nature with other Mazamas, some of whom we now feel are like family,” Ali says. “It’s now a privilege to light this fire, to share the transformative, healing powers of mountains with others.”
- Learn more and register for the course at Peak Recovery under the Mountaineering section for the “Mazama + Peak Recovery” BCEP team.
- Learn more about BCEP and join the BCEP Info Night webinar at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 11.
- Applications will go live January 18th, and applications close February 9th
- Anyone applying for these 9 spots on the “Mazama + Peak Recovery” BCEP team will all be in the same cohort (which will be led by James Jula from the Mazamas BCEP leader team)