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Winterstrong 8 Recap: Montana Vet Program Showed Up to Work
- Bryon Gustafson
- Mar 5
- 5 min read
A veteran nonprofit from Montana at Sorinex Outdoors’ Winterstrong 8 — Lexington, SC
Bert Sorin built Winterstrong around a philosophy he calls “Thin Air, Deep Water” — the idea that growth lives in hard environments, and that the people who seek out altitude, open water, and brutal cold aren’t wired differently than everyone else. They’ve just decided that discomfort is a tool, not a warning sign.
Montana Vet Program has been living that philosophy since 2016. We just didn’t have a name for it.
When Sorinex Outdoors invited us to be part of Winterstrong 8 in Lexington, SC, we didn’t show up to compete. We showed up to work. And by the time we drove four hours to Atlanta in a South Carolina snowstorm to catch a flight home, we understood exactly why this event exists — and why MVP belongs in the room.
Tuesday: Wheels Down in Columbia
The team flew into Columbia Tuesday night and got settled. Five people representing Montana Vet Program — our founder and Executive Director Luke Urick, co-founder and fitness coordinator Joe Miller, administrative specialist Kaitlyn Stevenson, team leader and medic Carson Davis, and deputy director Bryon Gustafson — ready to be useful.
Nobody was there for a vacation.
Wednesday: Waffle House, Wall Tent, and Getting to Work
Wednesday started the right way — Waffle House — and then we headed to the Sorinex farm property. First order of business: set up the wall tent. We were sleeping on-site, and that was the plan.
Winterstrong 8 debuted a brand new event center — a pole barn-style building that Austin Page had built out from the ground up. Austin was a rockstar on that project. We were glad to help him put the finishing touches on it: hanging TVs, mounting animal mounts and canvas doors, running hardware across the building, fixing a gas fireplace that wasn’t cooperating. We also hung partner posters across the property and got the 40-foot Winterstrong banner up across a row of conex boxes.
That’s how MVP operates. We find what needs doing and we do it.
Wednesday night, Bert Sorin opened his home. Our team sat around the table with his family and close friends — the kind of dinner you don’t get unless there’s real trust in the room.
The main course was big horn sheep taken from just north of Great Falls, Montana — practically our backyard — cooked flip-flop style by Andy Moeckel, the Flip Flop Guy. If you’re not familiar: the flip flop is a method of cooking whole, bone-in legs of wild game over open heat, searing and flipping until you get meat that’s charred on the outside and rare at the center. The technique traces back to Portuguese sheep ranchers in West Marin, passed down through generations and taken national by Andy. Watching him work a Montana big horn sheep leg over a fire in South Carolina was one of those moments you don’t forget.
That dinner set the tone for everything that followed. This wasn’t a transactional weekend. It was the beginning of something longer. We’re hoping we get invited back next year — and if Bert happens to read this, consider it a formal request.
We went back to the wall tent that night. Temps were dropping.
Thursday: The Property Fills Up
Thursday, attendees started rolling onto the Sorinex farm. The energy shifted — you could feel the weekend building. We kept moving, picking up slack wherever it showed up. That’s the job.
Friday: Clinics, Captains, and a Decision
Friday was a full day on the property — skill clinics, shooting sports, archery, and classes running wall to wall. Team captains went through their own selection process to draft their squads for Saturday’s competition.
We were scheduled to run a morning session — the same routine we use with veterans on our VLTATs: yoga, breathing, meditation. The kind of practice that sounds soft until you’ve done it in the cold before a hard day in the field. Weather cancelled it. That happens. Montana teaches you that early.
Winterstrong 8 was the first year in the event’s history that it snowed. We’re from Montana — cold is not the problem. But South Carolina barely owns a snowplow, and people who had never driven in snow were suddenly doing it. Roads were getting unpredictable. Flight boards were starting to move.
We made the call Friday night: take down the wall tent and move to an Airbnb near the airport. Not because we couldn’t handle the cold — we could — but because we needed options.
Saturday: The Competition — and the Exit
Saturday is the centerpiece of Winterstrong — an elite team competition drawing from workouts, archery, shooting sports, survival skills, and whatever else the event throws at you. Our team split across different groups. Two of our guys ended up on the same team and were near the top of the leaderboard when the alerts started hitting phones.
Not delays measured in hours. Days. Flights out of Columbia getting wiped off the board one by one.
Around 1pm we made the call to leave. Loaded up, drove four hours to Atlanta, caught a flight out that night. Airport hotel, wheels up the next morning. We weren’t going to spend three extra days stranded in the south waiting for South Carolina to figure out snow removal.
Our guys were in it when we left. Next year they finish it. But Their team did win overall.
The People Who Make It Run
None of this happens without the Sorinex Outdoors team behind the scenes. Tyler, Ricky, Brittany Achterhoff, Danny, Austin, and many others spend months building this event and spend the entire weekend making sure it runs. They were outstanding — the kind of crew that makes a complicated event look effortless because they’ve already solved every problem before it becomes one.
Beyond the Sorinex team, Winterstrong put us in the same room as people we’ve been building relationships with for years — partners, supporters, and people who have had MVP’s back. We got to stand next to them in a completely different context than a phone call or a trade show. At work, at dinner, in the dirt. That’s how you find out if a relationship is real.
We also walked away with new friendships and new partnerships that didn’t exist before that weekend. The kind that only happen when you show up in person and prove you’re worth knowing. We’ll be announcing some of those soon.
Winterstrong 8 Recap: Thin Air, Deep Water, and Why MVP Belongs Here
MVP takes struggling veterans into Montana’s backcountry — thin air country. We float them down the Smith River for days at a time. We put them in cold, wet, demanding environments and watch what happens.
What happens is this: when you’re carrying a 75-pound bag of 7,054 dog tags through terrain that doesn’t care about your diagnosis, your civilian job, or your bad knee, something shifts. The discomfort stops being the problem and starts being the point. That’s the same thing Bert is pointing at with Thin Air, Deep Water. It’s why Winterstrong and this veteran nonprofit from Montana belong in the same room.
We’re not in the business of comfortable. We’re in the business of useful hard.
Being around a room full of athletes, hunters, military, and builders who understand that — for a full weekend — reminded us that what MVP does in Montana isn’t niche. It’s part of a bigger community that believes suffering, done right, produces something worth having. This Winterstrong 8 recap only scratches the surface of what that weekend meant for MVP — but the proof is in what we brought home.
Want to support the veteran nonprofit that shows up like this?
Every monthly donor is part of what makes these trips — and these partnerships — possible. Join the mission at mtvetprogram.org/donate.
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