Ninety-Pound Rucksack
Ninety-Pound Rucksack is a podcast about the US Army's legendary 10th Mountain Division, the gritty unit of World War II climbers and skiers who trained for more than two years in the Colorado Rockies (often wearing ninety-pound “rucksacks,” or backpacks) to fight the Axis powers in extreme cold and mountainous terrain. Not only did the Division's insertion into the war help end Germany’s occupation of Italy; post-war, its veterans founded and developed ski areas across America, started companies like NOLS and Nike and launched the fields of avalanche science and wilderness rescue. Ninety-Pound Rucksack examines the stories that made the unit famous as well as those history has forgotten. Equal parts real-time research, intimate conversation and revelatory journalism, Ninety-Pound Rucksack explores not only the conventional wisdom about the 10th, but the transformative power of the mountains to forge a collective identity among the mountain troops—and to ignite a passion for the outdoors that reshaped American society in the process.