PSA: Check Your Shit

Garret Van Swearingen is one of those people that is unforgettable. He’s got puppy golden retriever energy, always has a smile on his face, and up until very recently had the most perfect red hair. It’d flow behind him while he skied down the most perilous lines in the Alpental backcountry. It poked out from under his helmet and goggles while he pounded his way down the rocky singletrack of Snoqualmie Pass. He’s been given funny nicknames like the Red Tornado and ShREDasurus Rex. The dude is a machine in the mountains. He exudes strength, confidence, and speed when descending. He hits the line that intimidates everyone else. He’s loose but pretty lucky. At least, he was until about four years ago when he was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer at the absurdly young age of 32.

Why am I telling you about Garret? Because you’ve probably seen his work without knowing it, and I want you to pay attention to him and his story. It may save your life.

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Garret and I first met back in 2016 when I was looking for a filmer for a project for Diamondback Bikes. My budget was small. My idea was big. I needed someone willing to work long hours, drive far, and make the impossible happen. Enter Garret. The always-smiling, always-thoughtful friend of a friend who was looking to break into the bike industry. He was keen to test his mettle on this absurd seven-day marathon road trip I’d dreamed up for shooting a cyclocross video, and since I don’t know anything about cyclocross I figured we’d make it a mountain bike film on a ‘cross bike. (Sorry, Cooper.)

Garret and I worked alongside Jasper Wesselman and shot Kerry Werner—a legend in the ‘cross, XC, and gravel scene. Our road trip took us from Bellingham to Seattle, Kachess Ridge, Leavenworth, back to Bellingham, Seymour, Squamish, Sequim, Forks, and eventually back to Seattle. We shot from sunrise to dusk every day for 7 days. It was exhausting, punishing, and one of the best shoots of my life because Garret did not fuck around. The guy was a machine and despite cutting off the tip of my finger with his drone, and eventually catastrophically crashing that drone, we made one of my favorite projects to date.

This was the start of a killer friendship and working relationship. Garret and I bounced all over the northwest and BC together for Diamondback, Red Bull, and Kona. At our peak working relationship time, we won the Best Mountain Film Award at the Banff Mountain Film Festival for our piece on Micayala Gatto and her art. It felt like magic. We filmed a few pieces with Aggy and did some weird and wonderful work for Kona and Garret’s career as a filmer blossomed. He picked up big projects for Rad Power Bikes, Evil, and Loge Camps.

Garret’s first love is skiing and in 2020 he took a trip to the pow paradise of Japan. “I ate all the weird foods I could. I ate my heart out,” he recalls. Shortly after his return from Japan, he started having some weird gut issues. He was having more frequent bowel movements and there was blood in his stool. Garret decided to try to get into the doctor in March of 2020—coinciding with a little thing called Covid. Getting into the doctor proved to be an ordeal, but he finally was given word that it was likely just a GI issue like Colitis.

The blood in his stool didn’t stop and eventually, he asked the doctors if it could be cancer. They told him he was too young and too healthy for that to be a consideration, and because of the timing alongside Covid, it was a challenge to even schedule a colonoscopy. After several months of continued issues, Garret finally got in for his colonoscopy in June 2020. “I was watching the camera on the screen and saw a white mass as the doctor’s faces dropped,” he said. They found a 10cm tumor in his colon. Garret can’t shake the thought of what would have been different if he’d gotten the procedure in March when his symptoms were emerging.

What does one do when they find out they’re likely going to die from cancer? Garret’s trauma response shows his life in vivid color. “It’s like I was on drugs. The colors in the park the day of my diagnosis were insanely gorgeous” he remembers. “This world is so beautiful and I wanted to be a part of it so badly.” Garret kicked his positive thinking into high gear. That infectious, always-stoked, puppy energy fueled his fire through surgery after surgery, one chemo infusion after another. “I’d switched from being terrified to wanting to be the best freaking patient these doctors had ever seen.”

He was on a rollercoaster. A surgery would be a success and all of the cancer would be removed, but in follow-up scans, it returned. Through it all Garret continued to thrive in life. Death wasn’t an option. He’d bike with his chemo pack. He’d smash out massing ski touring objectives that would leave even the fittest mountaineers breathless. He never quit. He took to sharing his cancer journey on his Instagram account and gained a worldwide following. His story was brutal, but also wildly inspiring. “Eyes up. Stout heart. Always forward, never back. Onward,” became his mantra.

In the spring of 2021, Garret had another surgery to reconnect his colon so he could poop like a normal human. Think about that. What a simple thing to take for granted. He and his wife celebrated by taking a trip to the San Juan Islands. He was cleared to exercise and had taken to the ebike as a part of his recovery. They rode 30 miles and he felt like he was on top of the world. Two months of carefree living ensued, and during that time they formulated the idea to open their own grocery store in their hometown of Snoqualmie Pass.

Let’s think about that for a minute. At the time Garret had stage three colon cancer, had been through several major surgeries, and several major rounds of chemo, and thought, “Hey, let’s open a business!” This is Garret through and through. There is no impossible for him. Plans were set in motion. A space was found. Investors invested and the foundation of what would become a community haven—Laconia Market was born.  Garret and his wife, Kirsten spent the majority of their time building Laconia, and any spare minutes they had were spent skiing or biking.

Even though he may have been the busiest guy in the world, Garret and I continued to shoot fun little projects into the summer of 2021. When we wrapped up shooting one day I remember him telling me he needed to talk with me. We leaned against his dusty black F150 and he broke down into tears. He told me his latest CT scan revealed spots in his lungs and his liver and the cancer had progressed to stage four. It felt like the ground fell out from beneath us while he spoke. “How the fuck is this possible? Why me? I learned the lessons I was supposed to learn. I paid my karmic debt to the universe. People don’t survive stage four,” he said.

Once again Garret went into full fighter mode. He eventually had half of his liver removed and two lung surgeries to remove the diseased spots. The hospital sets a goal for patients like Garret to walk one mile around the hospital floor. It takes 18 laps around the hospital to hit a mile. Within a couple of days of his second lung surgery, Garret was walking mile after mile in that hospital, and in early 2022 Garret and Kirsten finally opened Laconia Market. It became a labor of love and they were working 90-hour weeks while Garret was continuing his scans and treatment.

The market was an instant success, but the time required to get it stable was wearing thin on Garret. His mind kept wandering back to his diagnosis. Time was his most precious gift and his was being stolen at a rate that no healthy human can comprehend. As help was brought on at the market Garret wasted no time getting back to living—refusing to accept the opposite as his fate. His friend Scott Rinkenberger eloquently said to him, “As fate has robbed you of your years, you’ve doubled down and made a lifetime out of a broken hourglass.” What does a guy who’s been given what amounts to a death sentence do? He literally learned to fly. In the summer of 2022, with a stage four cancer diagnosis, half a liver, God knows how many chemo rounds under his belt, and a flourishing new business Garret learned to paraglide. “When you’re flying all the noise goes away,” he recounts. “All the fear goes away. You’re a bird. I was dealing with this terrible diagnosis but I was doing what I loved."

Garret’s Instagram account is splashed with colorful videos of him soaring about Snoqualmie pass. Watching his videos it’s hard not to feel lighter, and freer—just like a bird. But as light and free as he feels when he’s flying, touring, or ebiking, his mind is growing more rooted to his reality. “The more bad news you get, the more you learn how to just deal with it. At this point, I almost feel numb to bad news.It just doesn’t feel real when I hear the doctors tell me timelines or how much disease I have,” he told me this week.

Garret’s disease has progressed in a big way since January. Until then he’d never lost his hair, but more aggressive treatment meant saying goodbye to his signature red flow. He’s paler. He’s lost a lot of weight. The tumors have spread to his face. They’re continuing to grow near vital organs. The doctors have been dark with their prognosis, and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next. Garret’s determination never faltered. Through all of the trials and tribulations, Garret and Kirsten welcomed a daughter, Felsen, last August.

When I see her, I’m amazed. She is nothing short of a miracle and she takes my breath away. Felsen has a perfect smile, she’s ambitious and she has soft little sprouts of red hair emerging from her head. Garret and I were watching her play with a group of friends recently. He just stared in awe as she crawled around the floor, engaging with his friends and her mom. “I’m so glad Kirs has Felsen,” he said, teary-eyed. I can’t know what he was thinking, but I can imagine it was big. When you fight for years to stay alive and you somehow manage to have a kid who looks like your mini-me, it’s got to feel profound.

When I told Garret I was writing this piece I asked him what he wanted people to know. His message is loud and clear. Check your stool for blood. Don’t ignore it. As much as he hates to admit it, Garret had blood in his stool for years in his 20s and he chalked it up to partying. He even told himself, “One day this may come back to bite me in the ass.”

Colon cancer diagnosis is through the roof. It’s now the leading cancer killer for men under 50 and the second-leading cancer killer for women under 50. Early-onset colorectal cancers have been increasing by 2% per year for 20 years. That number is massive, and a big part of the why is because so many people ignore symptoms. You, reading this right now, there’s a good chance you’re the target age for this disease to strike. Pay attention.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly why we’re seeing this monumental rise in colon cancer. There are a myriad of guesses including PFAs in drinking water, microplastics in our food, Teflon from the pans we all ate out of for so long, or chemicals in the air. There’s also an emerging theory that the overuse of antibiotics is killing the gut microbiome which helps prevent disease and irregularities. A simple way to ensure you have a healthy gut is to take probiotics. It used to be assumed that people who got colorectal cancer were living unhealthy lifestyles, but more and more cases like Garret’s are coming to the forefront. Cancer doesn’t give a fuck if you’re a clean-eating, Nagchampa-burning, yoga-practicing hippy. So, check your shit. Literally.

Last Thursday Garret received a stent in his liver. It means he has a fighting chance to be enrolled in one more trial which may buy him a little more time. To Garret, every minute is worth fighting for. Every sunrise, every sunset, every giggle from his daughter, every visit from a friend means he’s still here and able to fight. For most people, it’s fight or flight. For Garret, it’s both.

Garret has a request for everyone reading this. There’s a new trial called Revolution Medicines called Trial RMC-6236 and he’d be a great candidate for the science. He's asking for any help getting connected to anyone involved in this trial. I know it’s a long shot asking a bunch of mountain bikers, but we’ve made magic happen before. Whether it’s through several degrees of separation, if there’s any chance to connect him, please reach out via the comments.

Lastly, Garret’s GoFundMe is linked here. He’s had great success with this, and I can tell you that the funds he’s raised have paid for flights and accommodations to so many medical facilities, and have helped him be able to live closer to the hospital without having to live in the hospital, and allowed him more time to spend with family and friends, and that’s something we can all get behind.

My intention for sharing Garret’s story with you isn’t to cause sadness or guilt. It’s to give you hope that you can still live even while dying. Garret has been the poster child for hope and perseverance throughout his entire ordeal, and it has changed the way I look at stress and hardship, and I hope it does for you, too