Outside Is Their Comfort Zone

Club Guides Lead Members to New Realms of Self-Confidence

By Jake Ten Pas

The MAC Outdoor team continues to expand its capacity, creating a range of offerings as wide open as the vistas to which they lead adventurous members. Roughly a year ago, the department added two full-time guides to the roster, reducing reliance on external contractors for replicating the premium in-club experience beyond MAC’s walls.

Sarah Lydecker and Xenon Zeigler bring a chasm-spanning range of professional and personal background to their outings, ensuring every participant walks, hikes, or climbs away with a robust backpack full of memories and enhanced belief in themselves.

The Sky is Limitless

Sarah Lydecker is a true believer in the transcendent power of climbing. With teachings of proper preparation and bold execution, she champions the inclusive benefits of the sport and its community.

Sarah Lydecker ice climbing in the gorge.

“Often we’ll have this image of what a climber looks like, and we might imagine someone who’s fit, young, and has a certain body type and gender identity. But climbers can look like anyone, and people can have so many different relationships with climbing,” Lydecker asserts, explaining that before coming to work at MAC, she was a program coordinator and lead climbing instructor for a program that taught adventure sports to people in recovery from addiction and mental health challenges.

“Climbing can be transformative. It can be very accessible. It can be like a little container in which we develop trust in ourselves and in others. With skill and preparation, you can take yourself really far.”

Lydecker recently returned from the Flash Foxy Climbing Festival in Bishop, California. There she took skills clinics that she hopes will help prepare her to someday ascend “The Nose,” a famously difficult route up Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock formation. She’s already climbed all 2,800 feet of Mt. Stuart’s north ridge in Washington, an effort that involved hiking seven hours to reach the base and two nights spent on the mountain.

“When I started to climb, I was afraid of heights, and I really enjoy when I can coach people on how they can manage that fear,” Lydecker says of just how much she’s progressed. “A lot of times when we experience fear while climbing, it might not be the climbing that scares us. It could be a belief about ourselves, and we can change those beliefs and how we think about ourselves. Climbing can be a really profound tool for that.”

Lydecker’s work with MAC’s Women Who Rock group has shown her the power of a supportive community, and says their soldout climbing trip last September was one of the highlights of her time at the club so far.

“I got into guiding because I want to change how climbing instruction is delivered. The sport has just grown tremendously over the last couple of decades.” she says. “When I got into climbing, there was really this cowboy mentality that if you were scrappy and gritty, you’d survive. There are a lot of ways that we can teach these skills that empower people to generate self-confidence and to manage risk more thoughtfully, and to just have fun and feel good about themselves.

Getting Back to the Land

It seems only natural that the guide leading many of MAC’s hiking outings is nothing if not nimble. “Everything you do is happening live in that moment. I guess I’m very good on my feet and able to adapt to whatever the situation requires,” Xenon Zeigler says.

Xenon Zeigler enjoys exploring and is studying foraging to add to his outdoor skills.

This goes for all aspects of his life. The Chicago native considers himself both a lifelong learner and jack of all trades, and his career trajectory demonstrates an ever-deepening fascination with the great outdoors. Initially driven by a tireless dog named Mango, he steadily moved outward from his comfort zone, discovering new things to love about life beyond the city.

“A lot of stuff is new to me because I grew up in a very urban environment, but I’m learning a lot,” he explains. “I found myself going on trips farther and farther away to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan and downstate Illinois, and eventually Machu Picchu in Peru and Table Mountain Summit in South Africa.”

After Zeigler traveled with his fiancée to to visit Oregon, they fell in love with the state and decided to relocate in pursuit of better work-life balance and new outdoors to explore. He says coming to work at MAC has made all the difference.

“This club’s been super helpful with allowing me to explore different passions as they come up and giving me certifications, trainings, other opportunities to learn,” he says, adding that he’s been narrowing down his focus to studying foraging and the work of naturalists in hopes of continuing to grow MAC Outdoor’s offerings.

The personal growth he’s seen among the members he’s led on trips ranging from hiking to kayaking and whitewater rafting also has been a supremely motivating factor. He describes a particularly memorable trip to Punch Bowl Falls, during which he saw firsthand the power of personal transformation in the face of nature.

“Some of the kids were pretty scared. As we climbed over this fallen driftwood, balancing on logs, one of them started tearing up. We got him over, and it was just so amazing. Once he saw the secret falls, he started running in the water, and then he almost teared up again because he was so happy. Another girl yelled, ‘I love nature!’ and we were the only ones there. It was both rewarding and really cool.”

The knowledge that he and his teammates are creating what might become core memories for members — of overcoming fears, rising to new challenges, and seeing unexpected sites — continues to reinforce what’s possible.

Whether leading camps or working with adults in the Walking & Hiking program, Zeigler sees both the strength of the community and its endless possibilities.

“I love being engaged and learning new things. I feel like I’m best when I’m in a new environment, and that’s true for the members we guide, too.”