Whistler Chapter Pilot

At Mountain Muskox, our Chapters create spaces for community healing through monthly professionally facilitated peer support circles. Each Chapter offers a welcoming environment where individuals impacted by loss or trauma in mountain communities can connect, share, and grow together.

Through consistent gatherings, we foster resilience, belonging, hope, and contribution—building circles of care where no one has to navigate their journey alone.

We are offering a pilot series of four circles in Whistler, BC

What to expect

Mountain Muskox circles offer a supportive space to connect with others impacted by trauma and loss. Meetings run about three hours once a month and include a group check-in, a learning topic, and optional discussions.

There’s no pressure to share—participants engage at their own pace. Circles are not a substitute for therapy but provide a valuable layer of community support, fostering resilience, belonging, and connection over time.

Whistler Team

Thea brings a deep passion for building resilient, connected mountain communities. She is the Co-Founder of Mountain Mentors, a nonprofit that facilitates mentoring relationships for women in backcountry skiing, splitboarding, snowshoeing, rock climbing, and hiking. Through this work, Thea honed her skills in community program design, partnership building, and funding development - expertise she now brings to launching the Whistler circle pilot, and as an acting member of the Mountain Muskox Fundraising Committee.
In addition to her nonprofit leadership, Thea has spent seven seasons as a Ski Patroller at Whistler Blackcomb providing first aid and emergency rescue services. Her on-the-ground experience as a first responder gives her a strong understanding of the unique challenges faced by Whistler’s outdoor professionals, guides, and first responder networks - demographics that are heavily impacted by witnessing trauma and loss in the mountains.
Thea first came to Mountain Muskox as a participant in the Squamish circle after experiencing a significant personal loss in the mountains. The compassion, understanding, and sense of community she found in the circle were transformative - and still play a powerful part in her own healing journey. That experience inspired her to help make this kind of support available to as many people as possible in her broader Sea to Sky community.

Lexie (she/her) is a Registered Clinical Counsellor whose work emerged from years as a hospitality manager living and working at different backcountry lodges across British Columbia. It was through this, that she observed the intersection of mental health and personal challenges following life-altering injuries, loss of life, and unexpected events in the mountains. These often had a significant impact on her staff teams and the tight-knit communities where they lived.
The isolation following such events can be immense, and for this reason, Lexie feels passionately about Mountain Muskox’s vision to turn people towards one another in a space of healing and social-emotional connection.
When the mountains serve as both playground and workplace, navigating life after the unexpected can be difficult. Lexie works to provide a gentle landing space for those needing care during any part of this experience.
Lexie has a background working in suicide prevention, grief and bereavement services and critical incident stress management. She offers individual counselling and mental health consulting services for adventure tourism operators through her practice, Montira Mental Health.

Jody Radtke has spent her lifetime adventuring through the highs and lows of mountains, forests, rivers, oceans and deserts as well as the metaphorical peaks and valleys of the individual and collective psyche. She has focused her career at the dynamic crossroads of wilderness guiding and human nature, being compelled at an early age to get to the heart of what most inspires and tears us apart.
With a Bachelor’s degree in Outdoor Leadership and a Master’s degree in Transpersonal Counselling Psychology, Jody was exploring eco-psychology when the field was in its infancy. She now specializes in teaching and counselling through nature-based practices, supporting people experiencing ‘mountain trauma’, critical incident response, and delivering training to teams and leaders to increase collective resilience and trauma-informed practices.
Working through a strengths-based, somatically-focused lens, Jody supports individuals and groups along the journey into aligned relationship with self, others and land. She also provides training and supervision for those wishing to deepen their skills as a counsellor, facilitator, or leader through her private practice on Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w (Squamish territory) and virtually at In-Nature Counselling.

Olivia is a passionate advocate for mental health and community well-being, serving as the Onboarding Manager for the Whistler chapter pilot of Mountain Muskox.
Originally from Ontario, she first arrived in Whistler in 2021 for what she thought would be a single summer season. Captivated by the area’s breathtaking beauty, she returned each summer while pursuing her BA in Psychology at the University of Guelph. After graduating in 2023, she made Whistler her permanent home.
Since then, Olivia has taken on a variety of Mountain Operations roles on Whistler Mountain, most recently working in Mountain Safety. In this role she works with the Ski Patrol Resiliency Team which has deepened her commitment to mental health support in outdoor communities and inspired her to begin undergraduate Counselling Psychology courses online at UBC to further her knowledge.
In her free time, Olivia enjoys climbing, skiing, knitting, and travelling. Having witnessed how loss and trauma affect mountain communities like Whistler, she is committed to building resilient and strong support networks for those who live and work in the mountains. In the future, she plans to pursue graduate studies in Counselling Psychology.