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Jacob G. Myers

@vertboyval

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Appalachian Mountain Kid
Author “Blue Ridge | White Desert”
Expeditions in 🇳🇴, 🇨🇦, 🇦🇶

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With the US Skyrunning season over, and the World Championships now passed, things feel a bit conclusory when it comes to formal objectives this year. There are still more trails (and maybe one more race) left, but my single point of concentration is behind now and I leave this season with a few things to reflect on.

1. Esse Quam Videri - “To be, rather than to seem.” This is the motto of my sweet home in NC, and it means something to me now that I hadn’t quite felt before. In my earliest years of adventure I dreamed of sponsorship, of media, of peer recognition. I dreamed of the objectives as well, and worked vigilantly toward them, but they were encased in this bubble of getting noticed. Stepping up against a few of the best mountain runners in our country stripped so much of that importance away for me. This year I ran 220 miles in 3 1/2 days, nearly put up my first 4,000 foot hour of climbing, walked the line on a long training regiment amidst all of life’s happenings, and what it all led to? - I just want more opportunity. Mountains and landscapes are a part of who I am as a person, and they help inform my relationship with the world. I want to spend my time among them, and when I show up as a better athlete I feel welcomed in their presence — irrelevant of any kind of recognition.

2. We can only be so many things. The world is scary right now. During this training block the serenity of Appalachia was transposed against the violence we see in our country, in the continual rise of suicides and ODs in my home, in the shrinking ability to build a life off a dwindling currency, and in that space we (the luckiest of us) have the choice on where to put our energy. Volunteering in my community, seeing my nephews, and supporting my friends are all near-hearted values of mine, and sometimes I fail to act upon those values because of other obligations. There is room for me to make more out of each of my days, and I recognize the spaces I am getting in my own way as an athlete and a member in my home, but time and energy are limited. If I focus more singularly on endurance, which I selfishly crave to, I am sure I will be leaving other relationships and… by @vertboyval

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13 days ago

Sharing this book with the world has been a beautiful and vulnerable experience. I went to exhaustive efforts to ensure each story was genuine. Above any larger inspirations of how it may integrate into the larger story of my home region, what I really wanted here was to produce something authentic — and it seems that thread has continued to resonate with readers. Some of the settings here are foreign, but stringing questions around the responsibilities we have to one another, the places we can derive fulfillment from, and the necessity for sobering honesty toward the patterns and spaces that restrict us from realizing ourselves are a familiar and unifying thread for many of us here in Appalachia. Also, I imagine, in the lands beyond these ancient hills as well.

Every week since the book’s publication I have heard from other folks in the region, folks of all ages and backgrounds, that they can see themselves in some of these pages, and in those interactions I get to see them in turn.

More ahead. Much love to y’all.
📸: @silvercreekrealestate by @vertboyval

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2 months ago

Wow…I wish I had more words for what this experience was, but I really just don’t know how to encapsulate it all.

We wanted to explore an expedition where everything was loaded with question marks. The route had almost no beta, the surface conditions on the ice were constant and dramatically changing, and the landscape itself remained rugged and confronting throughout.

@kylesprenger_ and I picked our way just beneath the Bagley Ice Field in a reach for the stars opportunity to pioneer a new summer route across the world’s second largest extrapolar ice sheet. The work itself in the field has never been so hard as traversing mud-ridden ice core moraine fields, but for all the exhaustion we found ourselves tucked into spectacular corridors of this landscape that few, and in some cases maybe no one ever, has laid eyes on.

We portaged through torrents, navigated massive crevasses, and drank from glacial melt-rivers. In the quiet moments just as the late Alaskan summer sun was going down we also talked at length about the kind of people we want to be and the impact we hope to make in the guiding space. Kyle has an unwavering strength and sense of purpose that I’m sure will bring him a flourishing career as an expeditioner, and with any luck I’ll make it as well.

Inspired by @serjtankian ‘s autobiography which we listened to in the tent, I feel mixedly targeted both towards pursuits in the big and remote places of the world, but more than ever I feel called to serve my home communities in Appalachia. Those lands, those people, that sense of community that I had in my childhood and have always been looking for and never quite found, I know it can return.

For now that will look like trail volunteering in my local romps, but there is more to be done.

Grateful for health, and grateful for a safe return tonight. Especially grateful to those who believe in this vision and keep cheering us on. There is so very much more to come. taken in Wrangell St Elias National Park by @vertboyval

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a year ago

Now that the Fall is here, we can all focus on the important things in life. Things like hot drinks, sunrise walks, and a good book! Need a recommendation? Folks have really taken to my first book, “Blue Ridge | White Desert,” this year — here’s what they’ve said about it:

“Makes you step back and ask what is the meaning of life and what are we chasing.”
“This book may just inspire your own big adventure”
“What I appreciated most was the honesty […] It’s about humility, perseverance, thoughtful preparation…”
“I feel like it echoes a lot of my own experiences in growing up in Appalachia…”

Pick up a copy for the quiet season, and if you do please message me your experience with it! Available through direct message and on Amazon at the link in my bio.
Photo creds: @silvercreekrealestate by @vertboyval

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7 days ago

A fun Sunday rumble in the Ellicott Wilderness, and a new FKT!
The whole Chattooga corridor is so thick with Rhodo, roots, and wet, tilted rock. It’s more of an obstacle course than a run. I mistook the turnoff for the Foothills Trail as the riverside access, so I ran right by the turnoff at Burrell’s Ford and had to nearly go an extra two miles. Reeling back in the FKT on the last seven uphill miles to the finish was a big task, and I barely got the record by 60 seconds. taken in Ellicott Rock Wilderness by @vertboyval

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9 days ago

The US Skyrunning National Championships - Kismet Cliffs

The gun went off with a packed front group all jockeying for position on the first climb. I tapped 190bpm trying to hold position, and ultimately hung with the elite gals pack through the saddle where they all shot up the 2,000’ summit push like rockets. Course was rained on all day which gave me the chance to garner 2 positions on the technical descent, one of which caught me again on the forest traverse before the finish line.

My climbing definitely wasn’t up to par, but I feel like I really got a lot out of myself today, and moving through the White Mountains felt just like being back in Pisgah.

Thank you to the whole US Sky (@skyrunner__usa )and Merrell team (@merrellrunning )for making this series such a blast. Extra special thank you to @valeria.raymond for being such a big supporter of this season. taken in Echo Lake State Park by @vertboyval

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23 days ago

Great afternoon at the Mountain Valley Mile
#Runner #RunClub by @vertboyval

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a month ago

Thanks for coming home from Europe, dork by @vertboyval

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2 months ago

If you asked me at 21 what success would feel like, I don’t think I would’ve said it’s a 6-page spread in NC Living Magazine, but we’re here now and that’s definitely what it tastes like.

Thanks to everyone who made this social house such a success. by @vertboyval

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2 months ago

In the middle of September 2024 my phone screen was filled with newscasts of horrible destruction and rising death counts in my home region just before the entire 828 fell into a blackout. Without being able to contact any of my family, I threw food rations, field medical supplies, and a chainsaw into my van to drive the 32 hours homeward into the thick of the situation.

Like some of us who went looking, I found ways to be useful, and like many of us who found use, I ended my time back home wondering if I had done enough. There has not been a single week since that period where I haven’t heard about or shared in my own experiences during this incredible disaster.

People really did show up for each other. It was the kind of beautiful, human thing I never had the privilege of witnessing before on that scale. The new documentary “Scars on the Mountain” covers this moment for the folks in the next mountain range over so very well. Thank you for putting this into the world and for keeping the story of these communities alive. @scarsonthemountain taken in Appalachia by @vertboyval

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2 months ago

Been doing monthly trail pickups for a few years now, but this one felt worth sharing
#Nantahala #CliffDiving #TrashTag taken in Paradise Falls by @vertboyval

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2 months ago

Another year in this game of endurance. Giving each day the Vert Boi special has been like jumping on a roller coaster without the seat belt. Endurance has brought me to four continents and through no shortage of enlightening trials. Endurance gave me a capacity to be useful during natural disaster, and not just once but on multiple occasions. It gave me the confidence to fling myself deep, deep into the remote wilderness where I’ve found glimmers of my one great motivator - novel human experience.
I now know what it’s like to come face to face with a wild grizzly bear in Alaska, stand atop Northern Rocky summits on a day off that might have previously taken a full weekend, and rode the familiar high of frost growing atop my hair and skin as I persisted deep into cold and foreign terrain. It’s a gift always, even in the long periods where it’s little more than uphill intervals on the hill by my house.
In a year where exploration has been so little, I’m concertedly finding moments of satisfaction in the work itself, and with any luck (and a little creativity), I’ll be working my way up something exciting again this Fall.
“Take care of your skin, take care of your liver
I won’t let them in. I won’t let you wither” by @vertboyval

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3 months ago