Atlas Snow-Shoe Company Sponsors Athlete in 'Climb Against the Odds'

Atlas announced recently that it is sponsoring Leigh Henman, an enduance athlete that trains for a living, running and mountain biking the hills of Marin County, California. In September of 2003, the mother of five teenagers was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to begin chemotherapy immediately. A fitness buff with boundless energy, Leigh says that during her painful radiation treatments, she was itching to get back to the mountains, “because that’s where I’d go in my head.” She says that the cancer drugs made her nauseous and her body temperature explode. “My body felt like it was getting burned.” Leigh suffered severe dehydration during treatment and her body stopped sweating; it had lost its ability to self-cool. Between radiation sessions, Leigh would make the three-hour drive up to Lake Tahoe, and upon reaching the mountains and fresh, cool air, she’d feel better.

“Part of it was getting away,” she says. “Part of it was being in the mountains, and part was getting on my feet again.” Leigh would step into snowshoes and head out for a walk in the snow, then eventually, longer hikes, which she says was both mental and physical therapy. The Sierras received record snowstorms that winter, and Leigh loved it. “If you’re out in a white snowstorm — even a total whiteout — and there’s no noise, the air is fresh, the snow fluffy … I don’t think I could have picked anything else to make me feel so good. It was amazing.”

Leigh maintains that anybody can get out and snowshoe, and at a time when she couldn’t run seven feet, much less seven miles, she could put on her snowshoes and walk in the woods. “At first it was 10 minutes, then an hour… pretty soon I was out there all day.” While the fitness benefits of snowshoeing sometimes double that of walking (snowshoeing burns 680 calories/hour while hiking burns only 340) it is a remarkably easy sport to do. Stepping into snowshoes allows access to the serenity of the backcountry, a walk in the woods, time with friends and family, time for yourself.

Today, Leigh is healthy and was chosen by the Breast Cancer Fund to join a team called “Climb Against the Odds,” which is slated to summit Mount Rainier to raise money for research and prevention. She spent the spring gaining altitude exposure and training steadily, and healthily, on her Atlas Elektra snowshoes. Leigh says that snowshoeing, and tackling mountains of all sort, “has been the saving grace to my cancer recovery.”