3 minute read
Mountain Trek
Mountain
By Hannah Timmons (Clayton, 2007)
Trek
Hannah Timmons is the co-owner of Mountain Trek, an award-winning fitness retreat and health spa set in the lush nature of Canada. It allows guests to retreat from busy urban lifestyles and truly reconnect with themselves and with nature whilst ‘resetting’ their health. She shares her very personal story about how she came to live and work in this beautiful place.
In my late teens, after leaving Tudor to attend school in Paris, I turned to food to numb my fears and anxieties. But while calorie restriction felt like a means of taking control over a life that felt overwhelming, the lack of nutrition landed me in a dangerous health situation. Doctors warned, “Your organs are shutting down,” and that drove me to seek treatment for my disordered eating habits.
Therapy gave me the tools I needed to manage stress without turning to food, and while years went by where I was seemingly living healthily, my body had taken a beating. In my twenties, I was told that I had the hormonal chemistry expected of someone nearing menopause.
Devastated by being told I was ‘infertile’, I realized I had to make some more major lifestyle changes. I quit my city-based job and headed to the mountains, where I know I feel most grounded. I became a ski patroller at Squaw Valley, California, because skiing and helping others is what brings me joy, and it was while I was patrolling that I met my husband, Alex.
Top left: Hannah with her family.
Left: The sauna at the Mountain Trek retreat.
Above: One of the nutrionally balanced meals on offer. Top: Sunset at the Lodge.
With Alex around, the thought of not being able to bear a child increasingly tormented me, and I turned to a retreat in British Columbia, Canada, called Mountain Trek to rebalance. During the program, I reflected on how little sleep I was getting, and how I was pushing my body too much in my new job on the marketing team at The North Face, which had its headquarters in San Francisco’s pressure cooker. Sure, I was healthy weight-wise, but I learned I actually wasn’t eating nutrient-richly.
I maintained much of what I learned at Mountain Trek about stress management, sleep, nutrition, detox and fitness, and within four months, I was pregnant. Shocked, thrilled, and pregnant. Mountain Trek changed my life beyond what doctors thought possible.
To add to the shock and thrill, the same day we learned I was pregnant, we were presented with the opportunity to become partial owners of the retreat. Alex, Eloise Scout (born August 2019) and I now live in Nelson, British Columbia, doing anything we can to help the program transform the lives of more people.
To learn more about Mountain Trek and the experience that forever changed my life, please feel free to get in touch. I would love to see fellow Tudorians reset, reboot and refuel with us. R
alex@mountaintrek.com www.mountaintrek.com
Top left: A yoga class at the retreat. Left: One of many mountain hikes. Below: The outdoor spa at the lodge.
