Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 261 - Mark Smiley

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Mark Smiley is a professional photographer, filmmaker, speaker, & IFMGA Certified Mountain Guide. He leads private expeditions to Alaska, Lower 48, Europe and South America. His interest in outdoor recreation continually evolves. At the age of twelve, he enjoyed rappelling out of maple trees in the front yard, to now putting up first ascents on technical 20,000'+ glaciated peaks. He has learned that the best way to keep the memories of a great day in the mountains is to haul around a five-pound DSLR camera, which he does almost every day. He enjoys taking his clients to their physical limits in the mountains and then returning them safely. He also enjoys working with companies to create captivating digital media. Mark is also the founder of Mountain Sense, an online comprehensive guide to avalanche education. 

Well, hello, everybody. We're back for another Monday episode. Today's episode, it should be no surprise. It's brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. And from now until probably getting really close to Christmas, I'm just going to say the same thing. If you're looking for a gift to give someone that is hard to shop for, which I find at some point in life everybody is hard to shop for, and they happen to like coffee, then go to Black Rifle Coffee.com and go to town. You're going to find everything you need from stuff that's going to fill their stocking up. You can roll up a t-shirt or beanie.

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It's got their Black Friday sale on, but I think that'll be gone by the time this episode comes out. But worry not. I'm sure that there will be another sale towards Christmas. And that's it on the business side of the house. My guest today is Mark Smiley. He is an IFMGA certified mountain guide. And I am not going to try to explain what that is because he does. But in a nutshell, he has guided people all over the damn world. Private expeditions to Alaska, the lower 48, Europe and South America. He's a photographer, filmmaker, skier, climber, alpinist. Pretty awesome. And, He also is very big into education and awareness, specifically in the backcountry, outdoors, and avalanche arena. Fascinating individual. These are my favorite episodes sitting down, talking with people who are just passionate about life and going out and exploring and live in life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. So I'm going to shut up and let you enjoy episode 261 with Mark Smiley. I'm looking at danger close now. I was just surfing through your Instagram, Mark.

Okay. It doesn't appear like you were hanging out in the near vicinity for the last time period. It was a little child swinging through the... Yeah. Appeared to be somewhere in Europe. That's right. I was in Greece. Columnos is the island near Turkey.

I don't know if you've been there or not, but... I have passed through Turkey. I spent a day there. Okay. I was in the throes of being incredibly sick from a smallpox vaccination. I received. Oh. It annihilated me.

It was actually the sickest I've ever been. I felt like my lymph nodes were the size of a golf ball. I was, my ex-wife was pregnant at the time. So they would not give me the little taps on the arm while we were state side. They wanted to wait until we deployed. I'm not, spoiler alert, the doctor. But I believe like there's some transmission issues that are potential. So they waited for those of us who had.

And, second Nathan, others that were pregnant, we got it literally as we were getting ready to get on the bus to go to the airplane. Okay. And I forget where we stopped in between, but when we landed in Turkey, I remember just a little. Yeah. And then downhill from there. Oh, my. I was just, I was a new guy. So it was my job to go sit on the airplane and watch all this stuff.

I laid flat on my back and just felt like I was absolutely dying. And that lasted for like five days. Did they tell you that that would be a possible side effect? Like, hey, some people react pretty bad. They said that you can have a pretty severe reaction to it. They didn't really list out, but they said you can kind of expect to get level a little bit. And that's exactly what happened to me. And it was horrendous.

Wow. Well, I had a better experience in Turkey or near Turkey. Yeah, I was going to say. It looked like your daughter was playing superwoman or Superman, however you want to describe it. She was definitely super. So it's a sport climbing destination for rock climbing. and the island of Columnos is, I think it was discovered by sport climbers in the early 2000s, and since then there's, I mean, the guidebook is 500 pages long, or, you know, it's huge,

and there's thousands and thousands of routes. Before that, was it just the local gem that nobody would talk about, or you'd get your ass beat if somebody told you about it? I have no idea, maybe, but it has totally changed the whole island, and now there's tourism, and there's, you know, so it's this, You know, it's a yin-yang of like, hey, we can live here now. And I used to be a goat herder, and now I run an Airbnb, and I'm crushing it. Yeah.

And so, you know, there's still goat herders. And I'm sure that, you know, there's a mixed bag of interest in how tourism has changed the island. But I think climbers are generally pretty good tourists, you know, like environmental, sensitive, you know, I don't know. But we had a... It's been my experience. Yeah, we had a blast. Yeah. You know, it's not the...

I don't know. Coming in and like revving the engines and, you know, trampling over everything and being like, this is my place. You know, brer. The problem is, and I saw this in the base jumping world, where the vast majority of them were so incredibly sensitive to the areas where the jumping was taking place. One, especially in Europe, because it was so permissive.

Like you go to Lauderdin Valley or almost everywhere. They're like, yeah, of course, you can take this. cable car up and probably hitchhike or take a tram over, not a problem. And so because that is the exact opposite of the U.S. where you're going to get chased, unless you're at the Parine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, or probably Bridge Day in Virginia or West Virginia, you're going to get chased. And there's an aspect of breaking and entering, you know, perhaps to achieve the altitude you might need on certain structures. So most of the people when they get over there, and my theory on it is you could flirt with the legality in the U.S.

Get caught and pay a fine, but probably more importantly, have your gear seized and then have to pay. Like, apparently, you know, somebody has an amazing gear shop of shit that they've taken from jumpers. Right. That they're never going to get back. Or you could spend a third the cost of your gear and fly to Europe and go jump and get a cappuccino where you're packing until the assholes show up, though. So like 99.9% are amazing. and they pick up after themselves, then there's that one asshole who screws it up for everybody.

Right. And at least in the climbing world, the ethics are the better ruler than rules. Yeah. You know, where if you see somebody, you know, I don't know, leaving, you know, junk around or whatever, that's internally, you know, cold very quickly. Yeah.

And it's like, hey, don't ruin it for everybody. Yeah. Well, that's the problem. It does ruin it for everybody. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, like, as I age, I think my aptitude to, like, pick up something that isn't mine has increased. Because I know that there's been, you know, times where I open my pack or something that flies away and I don't see the garbage that I've made or the, you know, or the chalk, even the chalk that I've put on the holds.

Like, that has an impact, you know, and, and you can see, especially in Europe where, you know, there's so many climbers and there's so much, you know, use. Whereas in the states, there's still a lot of climbers, but the use has spread out a lot more because there's just fewer and there's more rocks to touch. But you can see like in, say, Moab, where the boulders, you know, they're right close to the road and it's like it's covered in chalk. It's like it has an impact. And it's like, well, maybe I'm just, you know, maybe I'm just like getting old where it's like that, that's like, that's not that cool, you know. I mean it's. What do you guys do, brush it off? Yeah, you're supposed to.

Like toothbrush? Yep. Yep, and there's all kinds of soft bristle, soft bristle brushes where you're not damaging the rock, but you're getting rid of. And then it also makes gripping onto it easier because if it's all gooey, you know, that's, but there's a lot of traffic there. And so Colomino's awesome. And it's the perfect spot for October, November, because I don't know about you, but to find the best activity in November is very challenging. Like what activity is the prime time November activity? It's going to depend on where you live.

No, if you could travel, you know, let's say you're not restricted. I mean, I think to be honest, we were just talking about this on the walk up here. So we just got back from Hawaii. It was a short trip. Yeah. The weather turned rapidly on us, I would say. Yeah. Actually, what was it like, Michael, when we were gone?

Was it this temperature or right at this the whole time that we were gone? That was a little warmer, but pretty cold. So for most people, I've only lived in Montana for like five years, and they love to, you know, sip the tea about the weather, chew the fat about the weather. Oh, it's going to be a later summer. People are like, oh, yeah, this is just going to burn right off. I don't think so. I think Mother Nature is like, right here you go. We're going to get winter.

So we bailed. When we left, I remember my wife and my son and I parked at the airport. It was a horrendous stretch of a few days. I'd gone to Atlanta. I did a speech. I flew back and landed and got to my truck at 1 a.m. I think on a Thursday. Okay. Our flight departed at 7 a.m. on Thursday.

I left the airport and parked in the same spot that I left. I got like three hours of sleep. Yeah. I poured the family into the car. But as I was parking, I'm like, God, this is cold, totally layered up. And then we went to Maui for a week with some very close friends. and like I said, my wife and my son, my middle son, with the goal of them getting scuba certified. And it was awesome.

I didn't know how much they were going to like it. I was worried about my middle son, you know, and perhaps not paying attention to what was being said and be like, oh, there's something shiny over there. I don't just swim off underwater. Right. He nailed it. My wife loved it.

The other couple we were with, Dan and Katie, it was awesome. And we were only going to do their open water certification. And by that, I had nothing to do with it. My business partner's fiance is a very highly accomplished diver. She took care of all that. So when I say we, I actually mean Erica. Right.

I mean, I had nothing. That's a she wee. Shewee, yeah. Meaning I was just physically there and probably made things harder because I wasn't paying attention. But it was freaking spectacular. And we got to get out of the weather for about a week. Yeah. We showed up.

My son was still wearing his Hawaii attire, that first stuff off the plane. He was just, he started, we all started coughing because it was. It was cold. It was cold. It was about four degrees when we got home. He's in shorts and two very thin sweatshers. That's like freeze your boogers cold. It is.

Oh, yeah, that's, no, that's my cold. But that might be the November trip. Okay. But is it the best? Because, I mean, are the whales there at that time? We saw no whales. Okay. So, I mean, Hawaii, you know, in any tropical, it's pretty, you know, pretty plainer.

Yeah. In terms of your experience, 80 degrees and sunny. but it I mean it's always good but is it the best I don't know maybe diving in DG is better I don't know we have to explore the space yeah now that they have seven dives they're basically experts so absolutely as the scary sophomore right yeah yeah we actually ended with a night dive because they were cranking away on their advanced certification and I've seen it hit or miss some people enjoy being in the water at nighttime and others are really not savvy with the claustrophobic kind of unknown and I can only see through the beam of my light.

Yeah. They loved it. It was my son's favorite dive. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, how far can you see? I guess it depends on the clarity of the water. Clarity of the water and probably the power of the torch that you're using.

I mean, probably 20, 30 feet is what we can see. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah, it was, but it was a cool trip and we were actually already talking about just kind of making it a yearly thing. Cool. I don't know if it'll always be to Hawaii. Erica had some roots there teaching in Hawaii.

She was a boat captain as well. So she kind of knew a lot of the people, made it a lot easier to rent the gear. Yeah. But I don't know. What else would be good in November? I mean, Columnos is for rock climbing. That's my new answer, you know. Base jumping in Europe is not shitty during that time period either.

You know, France, Italy, Switzerland, not shitty. Yeah. What else? Here, it's a shoulder season here. Like, it's kind of winter, but it's kind of not. The snow level is non-existent. Yeah. Even though there probably are some psychos who are doing uphill.

travel on four inches of snow in every turn are just carving out pieces of their board or skis. The super keener's. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, it's a super cool venue. And I just like going new places and seeing new things. My theory is that if I'm going to a new place, it's automatically 50% more fun than the second time I go to that same place just because of adventure. and like what's around that corner? I don't know.

Let's go find out. And so I love that. And then it's also this melting pot of all these European climbers. And a common thing was, hey, you know, where are you from? Where are you from the States? Why? You really traveled far to get here. Like, what's the deal?

Well, we've climbed a lot of different places and we wanted to see something new. And what do you recommend? And so we have this now laundry list of like, you know, going to Spain, going to Croatia going to there was a third one that was just like, whoa, I would have never thought of that and this person was like, yeah, definitely check this out.

So my wife wrote down the, you know, so we have this hit list now. Yeah, it's a dangerous question to ask people. What do you recommend? Because if you ask too many people, you're going to have a list that's longer than you have time available. I'm okay with that.

Yeah. I mean, I'm totally okay with that. Better than the latter? Absolutely. Or the alternate to that being you have all the time in the world and nothing to do with it. Right, just being bored.

You know, it's like, I don't want to go there. The world is, you know, it's a big place, and there's definitely more to do than there is time to do it. And then, yeah, and then on any adventure that I've been on, it's like, ooh, what's that line? You know, ooh, what's that line? And that, I think is, that's a big part of the fun and big part of the allure is to say, what's around the next bend? I don't know. Let's go find out. How long have you been climbing for?

You know, so I grew up in the Midwest in Indianapolis, and so I got into it in middle school. I didn't really start climbing now, you know, looking back until after college. When you say into it, is there a lot of natural stuff out there to climb? Are we talking in a gym? Yeah, I started in a gym. And then we would, once we got a driver's license, we went to Kentucky, Red River Gorge. And we would go there, I don't know, maybe three times a year. but we were like into it and you get the magazines and you the same the same magazine right you would

just pour over that like a hundred times and uh because i mean that was pre-internet right so uh so i i was i i feel like in my mind i identified with this like adventure like da-da-da um and i was at boy scouts and you know so we could go we could do repelling and you know adventure things um but it's not until I don't think you can call yourself a climber really or I couldn't I didn't really think of myself as like a climber climber until I don't know you climb say like 30 days a year or something you know or more let's say you know before that you're dabbling yeah and and so once I once I got out of college and I could relocate to an area where you know you're just you don't have to take a vacation to do it.

then, you know, and then you surround yourself with people that are also into it, then it's like, okay, you know, now I'm a climber. So, so a long time. What did you pick after college? Where? Yeah. I was in, let's see, I went straight to Mount Rainier. Okay. Yeah.

I did the guide tryouts in, on Mount Rainier for Renier Mountaineering, Incorporated. And because I, you know, senior year. of college, they have the job fairs and all the Fortune 500 companies come and they're like, and all the seniors are standing there with their, you know, with their resume printed out on those special paper and they have a rented suit. I'm so glad I missed all of this. You didn't miss much. But I literally like, you know, like everyone was talking about this job fair.

Everyone's going to be there. And I walked. I didn't own a suit, but my brother did. And so I needed to get the suit from him. And I walked past the door and I looked in there and I just saw all these seniors handing their resume to the last year's seniors. You know, because what a job, right? Okay, go to Purdue, you know, go to wherever, cruise around the Midwest and pick up resumes from applicants. It's like the lowest tier job that you could have.

And they're trying to, you know, make a good impression or whatever. And I looked in there and I was like, I just came. can't do it. You know, and so anyway, I applied and they were like, yeah, you can come and try out to be a guide here. And I was like, great, I'm coming. Did you even know what that meant at the time? No, I had no idea. But I knew I wasn't guaranteed a job, right? And so super ambitious, I bought a ticket to go out there, May, whatever, and my return ticket I bought for October 1st, which was the end of the season. Nice.

Right. And it's like, hey, burn the ships, baby, here we go. And I had an old buddy pick me up from the airport, dropped me off. And it was like I had my dad's army duffel bag, you know, because I didn't even have a real duff, you know, like a proper climber's duffer duffel bag. And my backpack. And here we go, you know. And so it was, it was, and I, I think I probably understood like 5% of what I was, actually the balls that I was, you know, having to put on the table to, you know, do what I was doing.

But I think that also helped where it was like, no, I'm committed. Let's do this thing. I'm going for it. And, you know, I showed up with enough fitness and enough, like, put me in coach. Yeah. They were like, okay, let's use this guy. And they used, you know, they use this hard. I mean, if you think about it, you're a blank slate.

Absolutely. You're coming there, hopefully totally teachable with an empty bucket as opposed to somebody who, in my experience, at least, It's so much harder to try to change bad behaviors and bad habits than just work with somebody who has none of the experience but is completely open to just learning. They're just a sponge and just sucking things up left and right. And I would imagine they're not going to just put you out on point your very first day anyway. I'm assuming that there's a mentorship process. Or maybe they fucking do. I don't know.

But maybe they don't have enough headcount. They're like, you're in, Mark. Right. No, there was a mentorship process. but the very first climb that I did with clients, I was with, you know, the most experienced guide, but they quickly went ahead, and I'm on this technical section,

and I only have one tool in my toolbox, and it's encouragement. You can do it. All right, you're doing great. Come on, you could. And, you know, this poor woman that her headlamp was dying, and had I had two days of experience, I would have been like, let's stop and fix the batteries.

But we had to keep forging on. She couldn't see. And I just kept using the one tool I had of like, come on, you got it. You got it. And this guy's George Dunn. He's a legend. He's climbed Reneer, I don't know, 500 times literally, maybe 600. And it was the one complaint letter that he's gotten in his career from my client.

because when I got up to the resting point, you know, like the point of recollection at 12,000 feet, he was like, what's going on with, you know, what you are not fast enough, you're done. And, you know, I don't remember all the things exactly. And I was just like, I hope he framed it. Oh, yeah, I'm sure he did. Yeah, I was going to say, that goes on the wall.

If you get one of those, that thing goes right on the wall. Well, being at the national park, it's a big deal, you know, because it's like it goes up through the ranks of, you know, the superintendent and da-da-da-da-da, because it's a concessionaire. It's a federal thing. But yeah, it should go on the wall. Is Rainier, is that actual, like, technical climbing or is it scrambling, a combination of the two?

Are you guys on a trail? Yeah, I mean, it's... You probably go as hardcore as you want it to, but for stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, it was technical in the sense that you could fall in a crevasse. It was technical that, you know, people do die doing it. But 95% of the time it is on a trail that's, you know... Yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah.

And so it's like... It's like light, light duty extreme mountaineering. Yeah. Where you're never, you could just, you know, people run up it. And like the speed record is like under four hours round trip. So really? Yeah. Yep.

There's some, there's some. What an asshole. I know. No, he's a nice guy. I like him a lot. He's just, he just has like three lungs, I think, you know? Like his legs are just made of lungs. Oh, it's like Alex Honnold, like, oh, what's the record?

on this four hours i'll do this in 27 minutes right yeah fuck you dude yeah it's it's it's it's amazing i mean it's uh you can you got you got to just like cut the cut the ends off of that bell curve and not factor that into your you know equation as far as how cool you think you are um because yeah curve wreckers for sure oh anomalies for sure have you ever run into old mr honald uh twice actually yeah i mean i know he would remember it because, no. Yeah, twice. I'm fascinated by his ability to do what he does.

I don't know if the, I mean, obviously, I'm sure many people think the same thing, whether or not he can continue on that trajectory and his life will continue along in that trajectory as well. But it's, I'm trying to think of the name. What was the documentary he did with Jimmy Chin where he free solo? Oh my God. Yeah. I knew he was alive. I knew he had successfully done it.

Spoiler, right? Yeah. And I could barely watch that. Yeah. And I can't like the camera guy on the ground who was just like, I'm never doing this again. I'm never doing this again. It's just like you poor bastards. Yeah.

But his headspace, I mean, I respect it. But man, I don't know. I don't know if I'd encourage people to emulate it. Absolutely. I mean, it's, you know, so he's an inspiration for sure. but he's also that annoying that annoying, the reason for the annoying question

of like non-climers when they're, you know, they're like, oh, you know, like you're carrying it, you're hiking on a trail and you have a rope exposed on the back, you know, like, oh, you climb it? What do you get that for? Yeah, oh, it's like,

it's like question number one, how do you get the rope up there? No, no, no, no. Question number two, have you seen that the guy that free climbs? And it's like, yes, yes. Wow, what do you?

do that? No. You know, yeah. The, you know, I'm sure, like, in your world, it's probably like, you know, the scene of the dude that, you know, they come out of the water and they shoot the guy and they. Oh, in whatever that movie is. Act of Valor. That is one of the most irritating fucking scenes ever.

Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, because almost, if not all of that, is so ridiculously implausible. But cool to watch, you know, as someone that knows nothing. Sure. Right. Cool to watch. Like, oh, I bet they do it. like that. It's like, hey people, let's do a thought experiment here. Okay, so you put guy on a

breath hold underneath somebody that you're going to shoot and the whole goal is to be sneaky and then you fire off a round that is going to break the speed of sound as it travels through the air. So you're going through all of this effort to catch somebody and not make any noise, but meanwhile, in that entire jungle, all you're going to hear is crack. Right. It sounds like a bullet flying through the air. And what's to keep the guy from catching to just have the gun, right? What's to say the guy's going to fall in the direction of the dude who has his hands out? Oh, good point. Yeah. Because you'd probably I just.

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? So unless you're going to have four people out there on a breath hold, or maybe you're going to need eight in case they go off at a 45. Right, right. Then maybe you need 16 as backup. How many people were taken on this mission?

I see, I kind of chalk it up, though, to those questions are basically just people trying to relate, right? It's just being courteous. So say, so I have two young kids, right? and unquestionably like every time when someone comes up to my three and a half year old the question is you know a stranger adult whatever and it's the question is how old are you you know does that adult care how old my daughter zero percent but it's just being it's just being you know whatever like they're involving them in the conversation right or someone says oh i'm i'm in college right now the question is what are you studying right i don't care what you're studying that's just you know the social thing to say.

And I think the same thing applies with the climbing. I have no point of reference for this except this one thing and I'll just continue the conversation as opposed to sitting here silently and be like Alex Arnold, you know. That's my one point of reference.

And it's like, okay, yeah. There was another movie. So I watched that one with my wife. I don't think she was a huge fan of it. And then I found another one. Okay. This one had a different ending. Spoiler alert.

And of course, I can't remember the name of it. But he was a Canadian climber, mostly on ice. And he ended up getting killed. Spoiler, sorry. Alpinist. Yeah, the alpinist. Yeah, I got nuked in, I'm assuming an avalanche in the Alaskan range. I believe, yeah, because everybody flew up there.

They were looking for him. Yeah. And that it was eerie picture at the end where his rope was spanning, but it was covered in snow on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we were both archterical. athletes. Really?

Yeah. That's Mark Andre Leclair. Yes. And that one was actually, that was a harder one to watch. And it fucked, my wife didn't like bother her, but she was like, son of a bitch. I thought this was like free solo where he lived. Yeah. No, it's the exact opposite.

Yeah. I mean, you know, like there's different ways to compartmentalize that, I think. And I think for me, it's just, it's sad. You know, it's a sad, it's a sad story. And then after, you know, that is addressed, I think I can kind of put it in the box of like he lived three people's lives in one. And, you know, I mean, it's cliche, but better to, you know, live a big life than to live a boring life. And he lived big. But he also like, the fear in that, I think, is to have the teenager, you know, that wants to emulate that.

that doesn't have the skill set of your Alex Arnold, of your Mark Andre LeClair, that wants to charge hard for an Instagram reel and get a bunch of likes and ends up dying. Yeah, I think when you... Or getting maimed. When you, I think it happens often. I think it happens on Instagram, actually, of all things,

where people like to portray an anomalous result as the norm. Yeah. And I don't know shit about the liver king. All right. There's plenty of debate of whether he's natural or not. What I can tell you is if you eat like the liver king does and you work out like the liver king does, if you look back at his genetics, he is the anomaly in genetics clean or not. So you're probably not going to end up looking like him because what you're taking is this anomalous result

and presenting it as the normal result. And that just doesn't work. And I think that is the danger of stuff like that. But if people only see the highlight and they think that like, okay, I'm going to be the next guy. Right. Man. Right. Use with caution. Yeah, totally. Or like, I mean.

Because those are bell curve killers like you were talking about. Absolutely. Those guys are so far beyond the fucking pale of everybody else on that bell curve. Yeah. If you look at that and be like, oh, okay, this is the norm. No, no, no. Yeah. And, you know, the other interesting just thought with Mark Andre was, you know,

You know, because, I mean, I'm close, like, that's a friend, right? Yeah. And he was such a good climber and, like, so, you know, bell curve breaker that I think that the mistake that he made, and this is pure speculation, no one actually knows. I was going to actually ask you that if they have any idea what happened. No, they don't. I mean, I think the people there probably have a better understand than anyone else. I haven't talked to those people, so I don't want to speculate. But my thought is that he, so he partnered up with a guy that I don't think he had climbed with before,

a local who had kept tabs on conditions, and it was like, we're green light, let's go. And Mark would just, he climbed, you know, everything everywhere, and he's just like, you know, like, go. And so he partnered up with this guy. And again, I don't know the guy. So, you know, it's a lot of speculation here. But, you know, let's just say Mark had seven gears, right? And this guy was probably a really good climber, but only had four gears. And Mark would get in these situations where, oh, we need to drop it into fifth and get out of this, you know, or sixth.

Or sixth. Or seven. And he probably only used seventh a handful of times, but it saved him, right? And it kept him from, like in the movie, he was. You know, he's descending in Patagonia in the wintertime. I guarantee you 99 out of 100, 9,000, 99 out of 10,000 people are dead in that situation, but not him because he had that seventh gear. And so now he partners up with someone who's only four gears, but he only maybe, and this is the mistake, he didn't realize that he doesn't have seven gears. And then when it gets real and it starts hitting the fan, he's like, whoa, he's being, you know, potentially drag.

down by the guy that can't keep up. I don't know. Yeah. But like in guiding, I've made that mistake where I have a really experienced client that won't, you know, it's, they hit their red line and I'm not at my red line. And it's like, okay, we need to pick the objective where it's, we're still, you know, but, you know, because you don't have this like, oh, the lightning just struck. We need to bust it.

You've been busting it, you know, this whole time. Excuse me, sir. I've actually been doing maximum effort. I've been at maximum effort for one hour. What the fuck do you mean I need to find another gear? Right. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, that I think, you know, if you are that person and you are that phenom, you know, pick your partners wisely. Yeah. And I think that, you know, that's why maybe why Alex or, you know, other people, you know, similar to him, find themselves doing the solo a bunch because they want to climb 40 pitches when the typical. climber wants to climb five in a day. And you're just hungry. That is an interesting way to free yourself from that,

the burden of worry or concern for somebody else for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any way, I mean, again, and not to have a spoiler alert, but I already mentioned it once. In the movie, they basically, they identify probably where the avalanche was because there's the rope that was over a small gap. Is there any way to recover the bodies, or will they just rest there for the remainder

of time. I think they typically respect the wishes of the climbers if they make those known. And it's a general rule I'd say that a climber pushing that doesn't want to put other people at risk. And then finances come into effect. I mean, they're in the middle of nowhere and a helicopter is, you know, $1,900 bucks an hour or whatever. So

and they probably maybe want to be buried in the mountains anyways. And so, yeah, I think it's case by case for sure. But, you know, I, from the, again, the glimpse that I saw, they either slipped and fell and then their rope, they ended up in the crevasse, right? Because that's the catch, you know, the catchers met of things that fall down. And, or they got avalanched. It could be either, you know, it's unknown. Crazy, you know, similar storylines, but wow, man, they diverged and ended up in different spots, for sure. For sure. Yeah.

Very wild. Yeah. What is the crazy acronym that goes along with your IG, the IGYM, FLPS, whatever? That's it. You got it. No, I did not. It's IFMGA. Yeah.

It's basically exactly what I said. That is. Yeah. International Federation. of mountain guide associations. So each country has a mountain guide association. And in World War II, the Alps countries, Germany, Italy, France, not Spain, not, anyway, those, either five of them. During World War II, the mountain guides wanted to be able to come, you know, start in Italy and end in France and not have it be a problem.

So they created this federation of the organizations in order to provide reciprocity. prosody. Since then, many other countries have joined this federation and you have to pass certain standards. Each country is a little different, a little flare, but they do have to meet the minimum requirements. And then once you pass all those courses and exams, now you're in Europe, it's a license, and in states it's a certification because you can be a mountain guide without it. Here, over there, you cannot. In Australia and New Zealand and Canada, it's the same where it's, you know, it's more of a license than a certification. And it was, it's a big deal. You know, there's two, I think there's 150 Americans that have completed. No shit. Yeah.

How long does it take to get that certification? If Daddy Warbucks is funding it, it's a lot shorter. If you're shoveling roofs in Crestabute, Colorado to fund your AMGA, which is the American Mountain Guide Association, education, then it took me eight years. Holy cow. So you were part and parceling it, I'm assuming. Yeah, for sure. And it's nine, there's nine courses that I had to complete. And each one is like, you know, on average of like nine days.

Okay. So it's like 81 days of training, call it, you know. And it's in rock climbing. It's in mountain climbing and it's in ski mountaineering or backcountry skiing. and so you have to be pretty darn good at all three of them to, you know, once you graduate the third one, whatever it is, you can do it in different order, then you're an IFMGA guide. And so some people just stick to rock climbing because that's what they want to do. And so they're an AMGA certified rock guide. And some people want to do just alpine climbing or some people just want to do skiing.

And so, yeah, it was definitely a big commitment. and but it made me a better climber, a better skier, and a better guide for sure. I bet. Which one of the courses did you enjoy the most? Enjoy? Probably the ski. Yeah, it was the last one that I did.

And I could see that, you know, the end of the tunnel, you know? Because, I mean, who, you know, who wants to sign up for something where they're like, you suck? You need to do this better and this better and this better. And, you know. It's kind of like jujitsu, huh, Michael?

What our coach says to us every day. Yeah. You guys suck. Yeah. Why don't you do it like this? Like, fuck, I don't know. You never told me to. Is that a thing?

Yeah. Okay. Okay, I'll do like that now. I'll try it. Take it easy. Yeah. But it comes with the, you know, hey, you fail, try again next year maybe, or maybe two years, you know, because it's not like you can just retest. That's rough.

Mm-hmm. So it really can hamper your career if that's the route you want to go. But it opens the door. basically you can't guide in Europe unless you're an IFMG a guide and and then it just it frees you up to kind of go wherever you want to. And so that's the carrot that's dangled in front. And then you can, you know, for clients or advertising you, you know, they're like, well, what's your certification? It's like the highest. Yeah.

And they're like, okay, I don't need to know the IFMGWS do. You know, all those certifications people get? I have them all. Yeah. It's the highest. And they're like, okay, we're good. What is funny, though, is that a lot of guides that are going through it, they'll get their pin.

That's, you know, you get your pin. I noticed you don't have yours on you. Well, you didn't see my tattoo. Oh, got you. Perfect. Why carry a pin? Four tattoos. Just for all aspects of me, you can.

And then they'll quit. You know, they'll be like, I'm done. You know, this is, you know, I'm over it. Just because life, I don't know, life and guiding doesn't really mesh super great, you know, because if you want to do the family thing, if you want to do the house thing, you know, it's not very high pain compared to a lot of other careers and it's high risk. And your aptitude for, you know, putting yourself in the, you know, in the firing range goes down as you age. And so how'd you end up managing that yourself?

Because you have the family. You have the kids. Yeah. I'm slowly, I'm slowly phasing out. Really? Yeah. You know, COVID really did a number on... Just about everybody.

Yeah. I mean, it was like, it was five emails and all my work the rest of the year was just gone. I had two years worth of speaking engagements, unwind in 72 hours. Yeah. That's a rough one. I was like, fucking send it. Here we go. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, I mean, and it was just like, okay, gig work, sweet. Yeah. You know, we're screwed. And so the, you know, it was between that, having kids, and then, like, I've gone to Peru nine times. And, you know, it's cool. I love it. You know, the climbs that we do there are amazing.

But, like, I wouldn't say the thrill is gone, but it definitely doesn't, is, the honeymoon is over. Yeah. And then I've also been tasting more of this, like, sponsored athlete. travel where I'm just traveling with athletes and we're doing really cool things, you know, and I'm being, you know, like I'm the one breathing heavy. And that's fun. You know, that's really fun. And so the, you know, it's a balance for sure.

I want to still guide. But I'm working more one-on-one with people and doing, you know, doing harder objectives as opposed to the day and day out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems like you're educating as well, too. That was the first, when you first reached out to me, it was actually, shit, was it last year? I don't. It was a, it was a piece ago for sure.

Yeah, it was a couple months for sure. It was more than that. Was, okay. I'd have to check. I'm not going to check right now, but I'll check at some point. Okay. But we had originally, it was an avalanche awareness. You were working on your online course.

Yep. And like I was saying at the time, kind of a germane topic, specifically where we're sitting right now. So last year, I don't track the stats by any stretch, but I have a friend who works in search and rescue, and he also enjoys a good amount of backcountry. He just, he said it was absolutely horrendous last year. Stuff just breaking loose and just nuking people. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, so along the lines of COVID, you know, the ski resorts shut down and everyone wants to buy, you know, backcountry setup. have lunch courses go through the roof as far as, you know, servicing that demand.

And it was, in my mind, it was a necessary thing to do, you know, level up. But then anytime you're leveling up and experiencing like crazy amount of growth, the quality, you know, decreases. Yeah. And there's, there's stats out there of how many people have done their level one versus their level two. and it's like, I don't know, like 10x, you know, 15X, the amount of people that stop at level one? What is level one versus level two? I've done L0. I go with my buddy Nelson at the resort on a very, what we'll call slack country.

Yeah. So you're dropping through a gate. We drop underneath the rope, which is clearly labored that has like a beacon test that you can. Yep. There has been somebody who actually died there. The first time that he took me back there, they were searching for somebody who had been, and they ended up finding him,

I guess the gloves were on top of the pole, so they think that he had stopped and something very small, essentially just knocked him over and he got covered up. Wow. And died. And died. Oh, that's sad.

So, I mean, risk is never zero. Right. He didn't tell me this until after we had gone under. And I'm like, what are these people? Why are they coming back up this way? He's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Jason, though, hypothetically.

It's a hypothetical person. Gotcha. So the level one is it's typically two days. And they'll do like some type of Zoom call before and make sure you come with all the gear. And then you do some PowerPoint slides and then you do a little tour. And it's, I think it's 24 hours of training in total. And in my mind, it's basically designed to scare you. I was going to say what I have heard is that it is designed to scare the living shit out of you.

Yeah, it's driver's ed. You know, here's how people die when they text when they drive, you know, don't do, you know, be a stat. And then people are like, they're like, okay, I'm good. I know what an avalanche is. I know what avalanche terrain is, and I know how to check the avalanche forecast. So there's forecasts every day that, you know, are generated by professionals that say, here's the hazard. here's how high it is and here's what we recommend, you know, to avoid that. And sometimes, and each avalanche center is a little bit different,

but they're paid professionals to say, here's what, you know, like a surf forecast. The waves are going to be this high, okay? The avalanche forecast is like, it's snowed this amount and the winds blew this far, so look out for, you know, westerly slopes at above 9,000 feet, for example. And so level one does that. Level 2 is more application and more like snow science and, you know, like how to dig a pit and how to make good decisions when you're in a group setting. Okay.

And then somewhere along that line, you're supposed to take a rescue day where you learn how to use your beacon and dig people out and probe and all that. And these are three disjointed things that what the 15x people do their rec one and then stop. and they're like, I'm good, right? No, you're not. You're not good? Like at all. Yeah. Yeah.

And so with my online courses, I basically identified that as a problem and said, okay, well, with the power of technology, we can take all of the classroom part of it and make it videos, make them fun to watch, make it a reference that you can watch again and again and again. and I'll get a bunch of professionals to teach the stuff. And then when you come, you know, seek out a guide or seek out in-person day or your friend, you'll actually have some bearing, you know, you'll hit the ground running. Yeah. And it works.

You know, like it's really, really cool. Like I've had a lot of feedback from people who were like, I watched the videos. I felt like empowered to, you know, actually ask some questions. because before I didn't even know what to ask. I knew nothing or, you know, whatever. And so, and then there's another camp of people that were like, yeah, I'd done a lot of YouTubeing, but it's, you know,

there's all this like, take an avalanche course and then no actual teaching, where I'm actually teaching, you know, in the course. And so it's, yeah, I'm just trying to leverage the technology to make it sink in deeper. And then when you have field days or you have the friend, out there and you're, you know, you're doing the thing, then it's just a lot more fruitful. Yeah. Because I'm teaching a recreational sport, right? And recreational sports, people want to do them.

It's not a requirement. You know, it's not a, I have to do this because work made me. Yeah. It's like, I'm doing this because I like doing this and I want to do it longer and I don't want to die because, you know, every year X amount of people die in avalanches, I don't want to be one of them. It's amazing to me how fast people will seek out, like, like the first kernel of knowledge or a certification.

And then at the end of that, rapidly find themselves right over the front of their skis. You know, going back to the trip I literally just got off of, I was gifted by my parents, my open water scuba certification in 93. Okay. It's like 14 years old.

It was some pool dives and then we went diving in the Monterey Bay, which has the visibility of roughly from me to you, which for people listening is like four feet. Yeah. Like, holy shit, I guess. some in the water. Yeah. And there was some kelp. There were some places that you could see a little bit more. It was a really long time ago. Then obviously the military path that I chose, we did open circuit diving, so it's got bubbles, closed circuit diving. We were on the water a shit ton.

Yeah. So I had a bunch of time in the water. I have forgotten how little the open water was, though. And I don't say that to diminish anybody who is an open water scuba diver or an advance or rescue diver or any of those things. But in the five days that we dove, my wife and my son went from having never dove to being two dives away from their advanced certification. Wow. Because you can, you know, the skills that are required and it was, it was awesome to watch. And I was a safety diver. I wasn't paying attention most of the time.

I was taking pictures with like gopros and shit. Yeah. But you could easily take that certification, go to a dive shop, and fuck yourself up real fast. Right. Or skydiving. When I learned how to skydive, I learned on the civilian, at a civilian school, I went on a Friday and did ground school and was jumping on my own by Sunday. Really? Yes.

There is not a large staircase that you have to climb. It was eight jumps. I think I repeated one. So maybe it was nine. Okay. That's not a lot. Yeah. You don't know shit.

Yeah. You're barely able to orient your body correctly while gravity does what gravity is always going to do. Right. So I look back and I'm sure I found I was that person at some point in time where I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm a pretty big deal. Right. I just graduated the basic course. Go ahead and hold my beer while I attempt something that I shouldn't for years. Yeah.

So now I try to caution people at every opportunity. Treat it like what it is. It's an introduction. And then put yourself on a really low trajectory towards a distant horizon. Yeah. That should be the goal. Not open water certified diver. Now I'm going to go down to 150 feet with my GoPro and, you know, yeah, fuck myself up.

Well, and I think what's nice is that most of the time luck is actually on our side with these things. And I found that to be the case. Yeah, I mean, the term is a harsh learning environment where you're not getting that instant negative feedback and you can get away with things. So, like, in skiing, you know, you have a persistent, you know, slab type problem and it's not, you know, it's not releasing avalanches. And you ski a big line and it does an avalanche and you're like, well, made a good call today, you know. You know, and it's like, and. But did you? Yeah, and so part of the debriefing process with this high risk, high danger thing that is backcountry skiing is in, you know, when you're driving home, you know, you just pose the question, did we make good decisions or did we get lucky?

And the answer is both and, you know, how much of each and where, if we were going to groundhog day this, how would we minimize the part where we made a bad decision potentially? And it's all guesswork. You know, you don't know. Sometimes you know. Sometimes you know. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a smoking gun and you're like, wow, we really screwed up here. I've had those, yeah, in a variety of activities where you're sitting there before you begin, you're like, listen, this is not the safest call. Yeah.

But I don't fucking feel like walking for five hours. Right. So maybe give me a little bit more space. And if something happens, feel free to not follow. Right. Which I'm not advocating people do. But I'm just being honest. Does experience help in those situations?

Yes. Do you have to have luck, though, too? You do. Sure. And to disregard that last portion, I think, is what puts people in coffins. And the other thing that's, you know, the really scary one is when the person doesn't acknowledge that they're taking, they're exposing themselves to this real risk. And they're doing it, you know, just like blindly.

That's when it's, that's when it's, that's when as the more experienced person, out there all like say something you know but if if somebody you know if there's you know let's say there's a drop in point and it's like well I'm staying off this I know I'm personally staying off this you know north aspect today and there's a couple guys that are you know about to drop in there if the conversation is what you just said like hey we're going balls of the wall here you know like let's you know let's space it out and maybe I'll you know maybe I'll pre pull my avalanche air Oh, fuck. You know, and there's an acknowledgement of the risks that they're about to, you know, accept, then that's, that's on them.

And great, you know, live big, you know, go down and blow flames. If it's two dudes up there like, well, what do you think, man? This is pretty good to me. Right, right. Or it's just like, you know, shut up and follow me. I'm going to be like, hey, you know, like, this is a bad, this is a bad partner. I saw it one time in climbing in the bugaboos. You guys are pretty close to the bugaboos.

Have you heard of that? No. It's a provincial park. You should take the family up there. Here? No, it's in Alberta. Okay. Well, for the last two years, that might as well have been in the Himalayas.

That's true. That is absolutely true. Now it's open. We're good. I know. I'm actually really looking for, I would love to, I've heard this great skiing and boarding in Fernie. Yep. Which is 40 miles past the border.

So it's 60 to the border. It's super close. Yeah. I mean, it's a day trip for sure. You don't even have to fill up the tank. Yeah. I drove through Banff one time to go moose hunting in. in Prince of Wales Island.

I don't know. Yeah. Fucking unbelievably beautiful. We'd love to return. Plan on returning. Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm really stoked that they released the requirements on the border.

I think that was a great move. Finally. Yeah. Right. So Bugaboo's is just this beautiful alpine climbing destination where you're rock climbing, a splitter granite. You know, the cracks are just amazing.

And rock quality is perfect. you know, Yosemite type of rock climbing, but you cross a glacier to get to these mountains. And so then when you're climbing the mountains, it's just stunning. And there's one route, or there's two routes in there that are on the 50 classic climbs of North America. And my wife and I, for seven years, tried to climb all of them. And so we were going to all these different venues and climbing the classic routes, which are, you know, subsequently also the most popular. ones, right? Of course there.

And there's these two dudes and one, you know, there's the leader and he is just a junk show. He shows up, you know, there's a cue at the climbing. Do you climb at all? I used to climb. I have some pretty bad nerve damage in my left leg and my ankle will roll on me. Oh, okay. So I can't, I cannot, well, I actually haven't tried it since I got hurt, but just in how many times I've rolled my angle.

There's no way that I can apply my full body weight to the. inside like toe anymore. It'll just go. Gotcha. Two foot climbing in Columnos. That's what you could do. Just hanging upside down. Fuck that.

I used to love climbing. I was a lead climber for years. I mean, I've climbed, the first climbing trip I ever went on with, was in J-Tree with Scott Cosgrove for like a week. Cool. Me and a good buddy of mine and it's like, looking back, like I didn't realize, A, the person that we were with like aid climbing and doing all sorts of shit. Yeah.

It was, yeah. And then I've climbed, I think I've told this story before, but freak me out. I was climbing the Bastille crack. Yeah. I was leading it, and I was with Gerbidine. And I am not that far above my last piece of pro, but far enough that it's nerding me the fuck out. Yeah. And I hear something, and he's there next to me in basically new balance shoes.

He's pretty so low. With a cigarette. And he goes, he just put it right here. And he's like tapping the rock with his cigarette. No way. Get the fuck away from me. No way. Wow.

I mean, but like he didn't give a shit. He just was like, he just climbed off. Completely just nerded me out. I could. Wow. So I used to climb and I enjoyed it very much. But it's one of those things that's like it's going to be in the rear view mirror for me. Yeah, fair enough.

So there's these two dudes and they come up to the. the base of the wall. And we're all queued up. There's a, you know, a party, three guys from Texas that they started at like 2 a.m. And they're like two pitches up. It's like, whoa. We got epic written all over this one. And they're clogging up the whole route.

And people are trying to be courteous, but you got to pass them. And there's only a few passing spots. And these guys are like, well, you know, we can't wait for all these other people. So, you know, there's this 512 bypass. We can just do that. And so they just start. Sure, you can. Yeah.

Start up, you know, they do not make it up the 512 thing. And now they're just like chomping at our heels the whole time. And I, you know, I had to like yell at them at some point. And we, my wife and I finally get away from them and past them. And then just the way the ridge is on this bugaboo spire, you can, you go up over and then you can see the ridge that you just climbed. It's pretty, it's kind of like this alcove ridge. line and and I hear him and the more experienced guys like you're on belay but don't fall because the anchor sucks some things you don't share you just don't share some things and so we get

yeah it was bad and it's like I don't want to see these people die I don't want to see these people die I don't want to see you know and so you know it's just this junk show that we're trying to escape And they make it back to camp and, you know, pulled the younger guy aside who was super stoker. No idea that, you know, this was way. What he was involved with? Yeah. And just way out of line with what is normal because sample size of one, this is his normal, right? Yeah.

And it's like, hey, man, I don't want to be that, you know, I'm not your dad, but, you know, this isn't how it's supposed to go down. Yeah. And maybe find a different group. Yeah. Like, this guy is bad news. And, but at the same time, that guy doesn't have ears to hear that. You know, he's just so stoked that he climbed the Bug Boos Pire, you know, and they made it. Meanwhile, the Texans had an overnight on route.

No, they did. Oh, yeah, they did. And they came back to next week. How many pitches are we talking here? 18. Yeah, it's, and then, and then you have to traverse the summit ridge, which is what gets people. Were they prepared for their overnight? They had really big backpacks, you know, way bigger than what I had.

So, but no, no one's prepared for that because you can't sleep, you know, you're hanging in your harness. Which feels awesome one for your feet. It would never fall asleep. It's cold. It's, yeah. Like, no, afternoon thunderstorms roll through. Yes. And I would get in that fucking backpack.

They do, man. I know. Yeah. And they came down and they were super stoker as well. They were like, all part of the bugaboo experience. Is it though? No, no, not if you know what you're doing, that's for sure. But no, the guidebook on this particular, it's the East Ridge of Bugaboo Spire.

And the guidebook says, first line, more people have epiced on this route than all other routes in the bugaboo's combined. So, yeah, that whole idea of like, I know something and now I'm going to apply it to the next thing. like I'm hungry, put me in, coach, and now you get smashed. Conceptual knowledge versus practical knowledge. There is a aggressive learning curve to applying one to the other. Yeah. And it's great when you see somebody do it and they're getting totally beat down in something that won't kill them. Yeah.

But it's just a proper spanking, you know? But with these more extreme sports, that proper spanking can lead to a funeral. And that's when it's like, whoa. okay, you know, like let's just tap the brakes here a little bit. Yeah. I think the other one that's used often is the, it's like the Dunham-Krooger effect, where you're like, you know a little bit, and then you think you know a whole bunch, and then you're put to the test and you're getting shut down, and then it's like,

oh, I don't know anything. And then as more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah, I've definitely heard. That's another one that goes right back to Jiu-Jitsu. So we literally just did Jiu-Jitsu today. we go a block away. Michael just had his blue belt for a while. He may not say this, but I mean, I've heard him.

I've heard him talk about it. He thinks he knows everything about jiu-jitsu. I say that quite often, especially when I roll with Andy. Yeah. But, I mean, have you seen it, though, too, Michael? Where, right when people first start, they're like, okay, I'm drowning. But like, six months to a year, and they're like, I don't know if you guys realize this, but I basically am getting ready to do my first online tutorial.

If you guys wanted to buy the pre-sale to it, it's fun. and they go out and just get fucking spanked. Yeah. And then people that I know who know the most about you just say, they're like, you know, I actually can't even give you, I'll give you a conceptual answer to this question because I've seen it done so many different ways and I've seen people successful this way and that way and I'm not going to use the term right or wrong. It's completely different than somebody early on. They're like, this is the only way you do it. And I'm like, oh, okay. This is my hammer.

This is a nail. Here's the nails. Yeah. I just hit it like this and it works. Yeah, no, that's... But what about when you're the nail? And they're like, Oh.

I've never thought about it like that. I didn't think that. Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, the, what was that, the Dunning Kruger effect? Dunning Krueger effect. The best is white belts teaching each other. Oh, this is what you're supposed to be doing. First of all, I have no ability to talk shit about Jiu-Suben for just over four years.

But it is, it is amazing, and I have seen it happen where somebody I know had been doing J-Jitsu for maybe a few months, and I heard this come out of their mouth. to another person who had been doing jih Tjitsu slightly less than them. Like, hey, man, come over here. I just saw this awesome move on Instagram and I want to try it on you. Amazing. And it's just like, I don't know what I was doing at the time, but I stopped doing it to sit there and watch that shit show play itself.

Absolutely. And continue. Action. Yeah. And it leads to a broken knee. Yeah. Right. It leads to probably the person having it done to them.

the little like hey buddy come here they're the other one who probably fucking hobbles off the mat yeah that's what bugs me about the like the super stokers like you're talking about like they're so fired up in my experience it's not the more experienced person that gets hurt or killed it's the person that didn't know any better and that is

fucking completely on the person who should have known better it's just it seems like the luck runs out for the least experienced people first in my experience not always yeah but unfortunately seems to be that way yeah and I think that if you're the dead guy, the stats just don't matter. Totally.

You know, like, nine out of ten people. Yeah. Like, I just don't want to die, you know, in the mountains or really anywhere. So people say, the odds of being eaten by a great white shark are the same as being struck by lightning twice in a day. That's awesome until you find yourself in the jaws of a great white shark. Be like, but the lightning is just like chewing you in half. This is a one and a hundred chance. Yeah. Stats are awesome until you're on the wrong side of them.

Right. Fucked. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, the premise is to, of, you know, the instruction, whether it's guiding, whether it's these, you know, this video series that I'm making is that as a recreational thing, you're going to be doing this. I get that. And I want you to do it better, you know, or do at least more intelligently. I think a lot of instructors come at it from the analogy I like is sex ed. And some people teach abstinence.

And that works 100% of the time. Totally effective. Boring. And then it's like, okay, maybe teaching how to put an condom on is more fun, you know, and more realistic because guess what, you know. And there are these risks that are associated with it. So let's try to do this risky thing as safe as we can. And that's where the camp that I come in from with the, whether it be avalanche or, you know, ice climbing or rock climbing or whatever, where it's like, you know, A, you're not going to know all the answers.

But B, you better know all the answers that you can know because that's on you, right? Yeah. Because we're doing these, we're doing these dangerous things. The objective risks, you know, and then versus the subject. risk, right? You need to be able to control what you can control and then at least acknowledge what you can't. And as you get more experienced, you can acknowledge, there's more that you can acknowledge because this one time you saw this and that was crazy. And then this other time you saw this and that was crazy. And all these crazy things kind of, you know, it, it tempers our

Superman logo, right? It gets a little dirtier and it's a little less bright when you're, you've been around the block and you've seen the thing. That ends up as a tramp stamp. You too? Yeah, what you think something is going to be in the objective reality of it. Fuck, man, they come colliding together in the worst of ways sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. So I know you're transitioning, you know, away from the full-time guiding, but how long did you do it full-time?

15 years, 16 years? What's the coolest place you ever went guiding somebody? Cool. place area uh i went to china um the flew in at changdu and we did a first ascent on an unclim peak that was cool it was really cool did you have to like beat your way through the jungle or was it more not at all it was uh it was casual actually really yeah they had uh they had uh miners had put in a road a new road up this random valley i don't know any anything about China, but they were just, the government had said, this is our new big city.

And so they were building it all up at the same time, you know, and then they'd fill it people, I don't know how it works, but they had identified, you know, some deposit of something, and they put in this beefed out road. And so our local liaison, you know, we're driving up the road after we've been in the car for 15 hours or something. And he's like, that's unclimed? that's unclimed, that's unclimbed, that's unclimed, which one do you want to do? All of them?

Yeah, and we literally, you know, it was like, and thankfully it wasn't a cloudy day, and it was like, that one looks cool, you know, and you had to pull a permit for the altitude that you were climbing, and the higher is more desirable, more expensive permits, and so. Interesting. Yeah, and so, like, it was just lower hanging fruit. It was a 5,000 meter peak, and there's, you know, the hundreds, if not thousands of 5,000 meter peaks in China. You guys just cruised up to that thing and onside of it?

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, we actually, it wasn't quite a cruise because I had made the poor decision to try the street meat soup with chicken feet. Spicy and spicy out. Oh, yeah. And let's just say, I don't, we don't need to get into poop stories.

Here's the deal. If you haven't shit your pants for everybody listening, at least one. in your life, ask yourself this question, are you really living? Yeah, you're not. That's the answer. Agreed. Okay. So I'm not saying aim for that, but aim for experiences that might be like a portion of the experience.

Right. There's a, there's a slim to possible chance where, yeah, but at, you know, 16,000 feet outside of the tent after I had messed one pair of underwear, I'm scooching around like a dog with hemorrhoids. on the snowy rocks trying to clean myself. Good, God. It's an adventure, sir. Yeah, it was a, there was a toilet paper tampon that went into the mix to alleviate. Yeah, it was bad.

And we named the route commando for obvious reasons. Of course. But no, we climbed up and, you know, it was like right or left. I don't know. We picked left. And then we did, you know, did some. technical, whatever, to get to the top of the left side, and then we look over and we're like, I think right is higher.

So we had to repel back down, climb up to the right side, and, you know, and I left all kinds of petons and anchor stuff, you know, to kind of, you know, seal that this had been stepped on. I like it. Yeah. So there was no American flag or anything, but it was, there was plenty of petons up on that. on that peak. That's so cool to be able to do that. Yeah, but no, it's, I mean, I've been to, you know, five continents guiding and,

and, you know, a lot. What's the gnarliest adventure you've been on? Narlest adventure in terms of, like, scary or? Surprise me. Okay. It's your story. So, top of mind one would be Mount Waddington. It's in the coast range of BC.

and you take a helicopter flying there and it hasn't been climbed very often my wife was actually the first female assent I'm assuming you guys met climbing we kind of did yeah I was trying I was being a ski bum in Colorado and she was finishing up her degree

and yeah it was like who are you oh let's go let's go and then eight months later we got married so when you find your person you find your person yeah there's just there wasn't a choice there I was like, yeah, we were doing this. It seems like you probably had parallel passions.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, that helps. It definitely helps. Yeah. I did mistakenly say, I found the girl version of me, which isn't totally true. It was true at the time. You said that to her?

I said that to a lot of people. That's a bad look. I was 24. All right, that's acceptable. I mean, I can forgive you for that. Yeah. I know that that's not true now. But we had a lot of shared passions.

Which is good. And that's, you know, she's, you know, we've climbed a lot of things and done a lot of fun things together. So that's been, so anyway, we're Mount Waddington. And this, this route is steep enough where there's no spot to bivy, you know, to set up the tent, you know, brew up, have dinner. Which is a straight portal edge if you're going to do it? It's too technical to carry a portal edge. Really? Yeah.

So if you're, you know, if you're on El Cap, it's steep enough and you're hauling and that there's no friction because it's hanging in the. space, right? And so hauling to a port ledge and, you know, the kitchen sink is totally fine, but when you're on a mountain, it's less steep. Like dragging it on you mean? Yeah, you can't do that. Right. And so it's like, hey, fucking new guy. Guess what your job is? Right. Tent duty. Right.

That'd be sweet. That'd be your job, Michael. You'd be the tent guy of the climbing world. Okay. He's in. He's not in. I don't like heights. I was going to say, you know, that he's being agreeable. That incident you had in China, he would do that, like, as he clipped up on the first pitch.

for other reasons what's that smell damn it michael i did have to hand snowballs to a 65 year old woman on an ice climb as she was having g-i distress that was she's like that was the most embarrassing thing i was like that was the most disgusting thing i've ever

okay can we agree to just never talk about this i was like i'll agree until uh 2022 and then i'll say it on a podcast but she probably won't listen to it no no she's fine So, yeah, Mount Wynton is like, it's gnarly. And it's, I call it extreme 5-8 climbing because everything you touch would break off. I mean, it was, you couldn't put gear in.

You just had to, you know, it was the expression is pulled down, not out. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so if you pull out, that hold is coming with you. And if you pull down, maybe the stack of choss will stick together. And then, so we get, you know, we climb, you know, all day. And, you know, this is northern latitude, summertime, so the days are forever long. Yeah.

And we get to the top at, I don't know, 10, 30, 11 o'clock, as the sun is, or the sun is set. It's getting dark. And it's like, okay, now we've got to get down 6,000 feet. And we opted to go down, a cooler that we did not go up. because it's just the catch-all for all this debris coming down. And thankfully, it was a cold night, and we had to, you know, make all these anchors. And have you ever made a, have you ever ice climb before?

No. So there's the easiest anchor that you can make when you're ice climbing is called a V-thread, and you bore in an ice screw, and then you pull it out, and there leaves a hole, and then you, 45 degrees, bore another and then that makes a tunnel and the column of ice and you just thread the rope through exactly interesting yeah and so that's called a v-thread or a olive holola clava or i don't know when there's a last name of a guy that invented it v-thread and um and so the only ice that we get to was at the bottom of this gutter that is the catch-all and so for 15 hours we're just in the blast zone oh fuck and it gets to the point

It was like... Just rain and shrapnel down on you? Not tons because it was cold. Yeah. And that helped. But yeah, there was definitely some, you know, some shrapnel. You know, and so we did the Captain America with your backpack as the other person. You know, it takes the baseball size ones and knocks them down.

But then, you know, we got off, you know, got off of that. And it was a 36-hour push that we did, you know. and and that was that was gnarly you know and that was like one of those where we we fly out and it was like well don't have to do that again yeah mount robson is another one um in it's the tallest of the canadian rockies it's 12,000 feet but in the states like 14ers are all the rage yeah and their 11,000ers are way more burly than in the Canadian Rockies than in the in the in the state's. U.S. Rockies. And so, yeah, Robson is, I think it's 12,000-something.

And we had to climb up these gargoyles of, like, Rime Ice, where, well, actually, back to that alpinus movie where he's climbing in Patagonia. And it's like the... It's insane. It is, yeah. It's no pro. It's fucking insane. You just have to, like, not fall.

Yeah. And he, like, well, I mean, obviously, he's got the crampons on. And how would you even describe a crampon for somebody who doesn't know what it is? It's freaking spikes sticking out of your shoes. Yeah, it's Wolverine for your feet. For your feet. And he's on axes, but like that... Than nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. And then just, you know, let's just rotate out and put my foot here. I'm just sitting like, oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and below him was 4,000 feet of nothing. Of nothing.

Right. Right. Yeah, it was... What we were doing is actually harder than what he would... Of course. No. Yeah. These rhyme, you know, gargoyles, you basically...

You basically, like, paw with your ice tool until you can get something. And then you can't get something if you just don't pull hard enough, then you can get something. And then you're, like, trying to keep all your weight distributed on, you know, all your limbs. This is why I don't ice climb. Well, that's, yeah. Now, that's fair. Ice climbing is kind of dumb. It's cold.

It's slow. It is a cool skill to have. If you're a fucking ice climber. I have yet to need the skill of course in 45 years. That's fair. No, that's fair. But if you want to climb a really cool mountain, then you want to have ice climbing skills. Or like go in the summer.

No, the Waddington experience was dead of summer and we were ice climbing. And I needed to have like true ice climbing skills because, you know, the ice was so thin you couldn't put an ice crew in. You know, it was just a smear on a rock. And so you had to like, you know, up it. And it was like, wow, if I hadn't, if I didn't have that skill set, I wasn't getting to the top of this mountain. Yeah. So it's, I don't know. Just look at your Instagram.

You know, I'll just look at things that you post there. I don't need to go do those things. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I've settled on, don't let anyone talk you into climbing a mountain. That needs to come from within. I like the idea of climbing a mountain.

I don't want to have to take crampons or axes. Okay. And by a mountain, I mean like a little hill, just west of town. Okay. Well, Mount San Calispell is a tough climb. It's like 300 feet. The best climb that you could do if you wanted to put crampons on and like dip your toe into that realm would be like Mount Hood. Okay.

Or Mount Shasta. Do you ski or snowboard? Snowboard. Okay. Go climb Mount Shasta and snowboard down it. Is there like a helicopter service? Absolutely not. Is there a snowmobile or nearby?

The corn skiing, you know, spring corn skiing in California is absolutely amazing. Like it doesn't get better. Can't say I've experienced it. Yeah. So with backcountry skiing, it's definitely safer in the springtime. Yes. Where you have the dye urinal. It's freezing at night.

It's melting during the day. And when that process happens enough, the snowpack becomes very stable. and and then the timing of when it's good is more predictable and so generally speaking around 9 a.m. 10 a.m., you're good to go on certain, you know, like on an east aspect where the sun hits it first. And so you can go to Shasta and talk to the locals and be like, wins corn 30, you know. And if you say it nice, you know, they'll be like. With a sixer? Yeah, yeah. They'll be like, okay, so yesterday, 945, it was on.

And so then you just plan your whole... Corn 30. Yeah, you just plan your whole day to get to where you need to be at, you know, 945 or whatever. Is there a tram or trolley service there? Absolutely not. Does Uber go to the top? You could probably drone.

If you had one drone in each hand, I think you could drone up there. God. Those are my favorite. And Michael, have you seen the videos of these fucking idiots standing on the top of these huge drones? Oh, yeah. And then over water. Yeah, well, there's another one who's, I was shooting hoops, and the ball came up and hit one of the propellers. And then it was like, want, want, want, bam.

20 grand just gone. I just watched it like a hundred times. It's so good. So good. I appreciate the innovation, but also I just kind of like the wreck, too. Yeah. No, and that's part of the journey, right? Like you got to break some eggs

Make them omits or whatever Alright so corn Corne boarding Corn 30 Yep On Mount Shasta Great great spot to put crampons on Okay

I've worn crampons before And what I did was really Put a lot of fucking holes in my pants Yeah you gotta have tight pants Yeah The steazy pants and crampons doesn't work Especially because Most of the time

Your first time you're wearing crampons They're as sharp as they'll ever be Yeah So you take them out to the road and you just scrape them. Yep. And doll them up because you don't need them to be, you know, factory sharp because they're just going to tear your legs apart.

Yeah, we were in Alaska. My first time up there, cold weather training, Codiac, and I don't know why. My buddy and I were like, we're alpinus now. We're going to go climb this and we forget where the fuck we hiked to. It was near the Coast Guard base. But yeah, I came back. Like my pants were completely shredded by the time I came back down. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, some people are into that, actually. That's like, you see what I did. I was not into it at all. It's actually very dangerous because it makes you trip. Yeah. And I don't even know if we needed them on. I think we were wearing them because we had been issued them.

Right. And we're looking for a reason. Right. There was a lot of guys, there's a lot of military guys on Mount Rainier. It's a pretty common one. I know a lot of guys who have climbed that as well. A lot of times they'll do it in either as they'll take like a small reconnaissance element and they'll do that or they'll do it in remembrance of somebody as well. Oh, okay.

They'll take stuff up there. Yeah. Yeah, because there's that, is it Fort Bragg? Is that? No. No, no Braggs. Lewis? Lewis is in Washington, yeah.

Yeah. So all the Fort Lewis guys would come up to Reneer and, you know. Show you how it's still in the military way. Exactly. You carry a 20-pound ruck, ours is 270 pounds person. We're not going to make it to the summit, but we're going to be prepared to. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah, I have a bowling ball in here just in case you want to play, golf bag over here. Yeah, it gets a little white. We got to work with some of the teams guys in Wyoming. They'd come out part of their circuit and do winter survival training, which meant go skiing and then drinking. That's actually the technical definition of in the SEAL teams winter survival training. Okay. It usually involves resort pass, rental, chalet, and unlimited bottomless booze. Yeah.

Where no actual training occurs, but you just ski the entire time. Right. And it was like. Allegedly. Not that I was ever part of that. No. You know, they're like pulling the stickers off their ski boots and that's like, you know, it's like, really? First time you put your foot in this and you're going to go touring and they'll, you know, and they're tough as nails.

But man, that's a way to break a man is to, you know, put them in brand new ski boots and walk. Well, that's how you prep for a trip. Okay. Is you get to where you're going and then buy the gear you need and then just put it on. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it was, it was, it was pretty interesting. The, you know, they came kidded out with Arcteric's head to toe. And it was like, probably their, what do they call that system?

The leaf system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, wow, you know, you guys like looking, you're looking the part here. This is. Until they start moving. Right.

And I'm like, you, you know, that's the budget you have for, you know, your kid is pretty sweet. And the guy, you know, it's like, if you had any idea. And then he tells me how, you know, this, is it C-135? C-130? C-130. Yeah. That they flew out on, you know, burns X amount of fuel. Yeah, you know, so like.

It's like 10 grand a blade hour. So, you know, to buy the $200 gloves instead of the $50 gloves, that's not moving the needle. Yeah. You know, it's just like, wow, cool, man. The amount of times I was issued shit like that and it would look like, you looked better. in the bar you looked more like you knew what you were doing than you actually did in the activity. Yeah.

Because people are like, why the fuck are these idiots wearing this the most expensive piece of equipment ever? They obviously don't know what the fuck they're doing. You're better off just going just to the bar, just wear it to the bar. Right. You talk about how good you are. Right. No, we had fun though.

It was always, I really enjoyed working with those guys. That was one of the coolest aspects of that job is we would seek out subject matter experts, whether it was, you know, the best flat-range pistol rifle shooters in the world. Like I said, my intro to climbing was through Cosgrove, Gerbadeen. I did some training with Mark Twight on the, you know, just the physical training side of the house. I didn't even realize how fucking badass of an alpinist he was until later. Right. Read up on him.

I'm like, oh, so you're completely crazy. I definitely appreciate that. Yeah. But, I mean, the best boat drivers in the world, they would go find them. People who were developed, you know, we just would search around for stuff and just try to bring the heightened level of exposure, take what worked, and, you know, shit can, what doesn't, because there's no, one thing I do know for sure, there's no 100% solution for 100% of the problems.

Yeah. There's a lot of borrowing, and this works a little bit and then take from over here. Right. So you don't know that, though, do you check a bunch of shit out. Right. And then the other side of it was the, you know, they'd be really cued in and like, okay, so what do you use? You know, what's your, what's in your backpack? Oh, yeah.

And I'm like, wait, no, what's in your backpack? Don't you have some like 007 things that you do? No, we just went to this magazine and bought everything that was on there because it said. Yeah. This got five-star Yelp review, so we went for it. Also, Mark, what is this and how do you use it? Right. Those crampons are upside down, sir.

Yeah. That's not going to stop anybody. I'll just pull you aside and tell you that. Yeah. No, it was, you know, so like the hyperlight everything. Like, I'm a total gram nerd when it comes to. Oh, yeah. And it's like.

ounces become pounds real fast. Yeah. And it's like, okay, so this is how I cut this weight. And this is, you know, the combination of this and this, you know, is going to equal this lesser amount. And in my world, then I cut all this weight and cut off zipper pulls and whatnot. And then I put camera gear in, you know, which just tips the scale. Oh, yeah.

And I'm sure in the military world it's like, here's your munitions, you know. Yeah. Those are metal and it's going to be very heavy. They're heavy as fuck. Yeah. Yeah. So, but no, it's been, you know, that was, that was always a hoot. I mean, it was a, it was a good time to, you know, because there, it would, I don't know if this is universal or just a general trend, but it was like the, they're sharp.

They're, you know, paying attention. And if there was a question, there was, there was a hand up. And the amount of the, the speed at which they could pick up something was, was markedly different than your general. Public. For most of those trips, like the smaller trips I went on, it was a trip that they would announce like, hey, this is something that this group is looking to do. And if you want to go, go with them. So the people that were there were interested from, you know, an internal perspective as opposed to being externally. I see. Motivated to do so. You would have recognized it quickly for the people who were voluntold to go there. Because you'd be like talking about something life sustaining. And they'd just be like, what, huh? Yeah, whatever. Let's just go. Right. Yeah. So most of the time getting to go on those trips is it's not an exclusive thing, but you're there because you want to be. For me, I was, like I said, I was a lead climber. So I set up that trip. Okay.

To, you know, I set up multiple trips to J.A.3 a couple times, uh, Colorado a couple times. And so I was able to, I mean, the people that went were the people who were interested in just specifically doing that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. That's super cool. And then other people, you're like, fuck that. They wanted to go do long range precision rifle shootings.

Like, see you later. See you in two months when we come back together in the trip. train as a group. Right. I think the, you know, like where I've gone with the guiding and just, you know, picking up on different aspects of, you know, like when you say climbing, you can say, you know, you can go down a bunch of different pipes with it. And the, you know, being able to identify what I'm passionate about and being able to share

that is really captivating, I think, you know. And so, like, I've worked with people that maybe we're there for, you know, maybe their spouse was, you know, dragging them along or whatever. And then if I was able to share how passionate I was about the topic, then they would get more, you know, turned on to it and be like, oh, okay, you know, like I had no idea, but now I'm kind of psyched. And so I think that's been, that's been my more recent pursuit is to be like, what am I really psyched on? And how can I have more of that in my life and share that, you know, share that with. others. And I think that that's, it seems like a pretty good question to ask, you know, how to be like. At least you'll be happy doing what you're doing. Yeah. You may not,

maybe that's a smaller audience that would align with what you're passionate about, but when you get the opportunity to work with those people, you're going to have a blast. Right. Right. Which I think is better than doing 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x of that with something that you're just completely fried on. Yeah. Just bored. Just bored out of your mind because the people pick up on that. too. Right. I mean, what, have you ever been to the Everest range? No. I was going to, or I ask about it, because, you know, there's a lot of, there's obviously a lot of guided trips that go up there as well. And not all of them end up well. I'm curious, your experience in the type of guiding that you did or even being around those types of guiding, how often would it end in issues or catastrophe?

Yeah. The, um, it, it is kind of kind of. classic like you could have a you know a thousand people have no problem and then one person has a problem and that's what the headline is you know so it's a disproportionate amount of like if it bleeds it leads yeah and that's not you know that's not only in climbing or whatever that seems to be universal yeah and so you know as far as as as far as catastrophe um you know there i i have had you know a couple um and it's you know worst days of my life for sure sure. And so it, and it's a, it's a constant reminder that we're not in control. And, you know, even if we, if we control for all the things we can, bad things still happen. And, you know, but then as if you go to high

altitude, then they just happen at a more, at a higher frequency. Yeah. Because your brain just isn't working and your, you know, things are just not operating as, as normal. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, And then you could have like the heart attack guy, you know, where it's like, wow, that could have happened in the mall. Yeah. And that happened here on the mountain. And that sucks. Exponentially more complicated to deal with in the mountain. Absolutely.

Yeah. And also like, you know, at least in the guiding world, you're often doing it with family, right? And so when something bad happens, whether, you know, whether it's an injury or fatality or whatever, you know, and your loved one is right there. the hysterics are, you know, it's just a more charged environment. And so, thankfully, there haven't been too many because we're doing, you know, we're doing a relatively dangerous thing as safely as possible. And people are paying the guide to say, we're done, right, basically. And say, okay, I see this problem coming down the pipe. You don't see it because you don't have the experience that I do and now we're we're gonna turn around and and so when you know when lightning strikes

you know you also need to be ready you know ready for those type of things as well and I mean like when literally lightning strikes like on the Grand Teton for example I lived I worked there for I don't know six or seven years or something and afternoon thunderstorms were a regular occurrence And so we would just have the institutional kind of standard of, like, you know, you look at the forecast and you just don't go, right, if it's something like that. And I think that the other one that I really like is the rule of don't break two rules at the same time. I think that's a really sound advice to live by where it's like, you know, okay, the forecast is this. and we're a little off the back, you know, like we haven't been hitting our, you know, time up there. But we could probably push it, okay, now we're getting a little dehydrated or, oh, I didn't, you know, I forgot my gloves, you know.

Now you're six rules deep that you're broken. Yeah, exactly. And that's when it really, really hits the fan. And so, you know, but yeah, I haven't, I haven't ever really, you know, put myself in like a search and rescue, you know, as a search and rescue person. or I haven't pursued the grim stuff. I think it would really affect me. Well, how much screening are you able to do of the clients? Instagram is really good for that. I mean, really.

Seriously? Absolutely. It's, no, it's amazing. Think about, think about, like, what do you know about, what did you know about somebody, a stranger in 2004? Nothing. Exactly. And now if you have their, if they're present, you know, to some degree on social media.

It's all curated, though. I hate it. Okay. It's all peaks. Where's the valleys? But you at least see the peaks. Are they real peaks, though? I think they're, fuck boy peaks.

Okay, the best one. I don't even know what that means. Okay, take skiing, for example. Yep. So, work in. in the Teton's, I'd get a text from the boss, hey, Jim wants to go skiing with you in the backcountry tomorrow. Here's his number.

I text Jim, hey, let's get on a call. Okay, Jim, so what's your experience level? Oh, well, I've done, love you, like expert. Yeah, I'm going to, no, the actual, the answer is I'm pretty good. Yeah. Right? Not shitty, but not great. I'm pretty good.

And pretty good meant I got a silver at the Olympics? Or it means I know what backcountry skis are. But has never worn them. This is the span, you know, and they fall somewhere in the middle. And so if I have their Instagram handle or if they can send me a clip of them skiing, I have the eyes to see in three turns where they're at. And I don't care where they're at, but I'm going to pick an objective that is appropriate with those three turns that I see.

Because there's terrain for all, you know, if they're pizza, you know, the whole time. French fire pizza. Friends fire pizza and, you know, falling over themselves on a 12 degree slope, then guess what? There's a, there's a 12 degree slope that I can take him to. But if they're ripping it and they're in the last TGR movie, you know, then I can be like, oh, it's on. You know, let's. I would send you a video of like Sean White. Yeah.

Like, this is me. This is the level I'm at. I hope you can meet or exceed it. Right. So I had that guy who is. He was an investment guy, you know, and he was 26. And just he wanted all the trophies, right? Yeah.

And so he, and he had worked with a couple other guides and had skied the Grand Teton with one of the best guides who he could have skied the Grand Teton with anybody because he was just like at that level. And just could, you know, anyone drafting him would be able to succeed. And so he made a monster out of this dude. we'll call him Bob And so Bob emails me This is now his third year coming out to the Teton's and he's like You know hey Mark I You know the other guy I was working with isn't going to be available when I'm out there

And I'm gonna I'm kind of interested in these and he listed seven of the The hardest ski lines In the Teton's Like ones that you know a couple of of them, it had only been skied like two times, you know, in all of time. And I'm just like, oh, this guy is legit. I got, and I like, I like trained more, you know, because Bob's coming out. And he's got, you know, nine days where we're going to like go rip and ride. And I hope I'm a good enough skier. I was stressed, you know. And it, but it was like, I also, I also enjoy that because it was like,

it was out of the status quo. Like, you know, like, all right, let's see what I'm made of here. And so day one, it was, it was a storm day. And it was like, okay, we got to do something lighter. And it was by far the hardest thing I'd already guided, you know, had ever guided to that point. And it was the light thing on the to-do list. And so I just take out of the park, you know, take out from the parking lot. And I hammer.

And I'm like, oh, we'll see about this, you know. Strap in, Bob. Yeah. Bob, you're ready to rock and roll. And he hung on, you know, and, you know, I'm just going. And, and he, you know, he was right there. And then, like, two hours in, I'm still hammering and talking. And I'm also asking him, like, not yes or no questions.

You know, tell me about your life. Yeah. In detail, you know. And then I see he's just, like, pouring sweat. And I'm like, yes. Just fucking breaking it off. but he didn't complain and we went and we sent hard for like eight days in a row and we did lines that I hadn't done before or since with this dude and we skied a line on on buck mountain in the titans that had never been guided and only been skied I don't know like less than 10 times and it was awesome like it was really awesome and but then after that when I

had time to like, you know, debrief a little bit. It was like, I don't need to do that again. That was intense, you know. That's what you asked for, buddy. Yeah. And so then he came back the next year. But unfortunately, every year he came back, he was a little bit fatter, you know. And so his appetite was continually, you know, on the up trajectory and his fitness was on the down trajectory.

That doesn't meet very well in the middle. No, it doesn't. And so then, you know, like the. the satisfaction that he was getting from, you know, the days out, it was like you couldn't, you couldn't satisfy the dude. Excuse me. You couldn't satisfy the dude. And it was like, yeah, we're done, you know.

And I've had a couple other, I mean, the tragedy I had guiding was this guy that was very strong, very capable. We climbed a lot, skied a lot together. And he fell skiing and perished. And Like fell off Verde? It was in Orzaba In Mexico

Okay And it was The slope was just really icy And And it was really windy There was a lot of things going on And And it was just

You know He I thought we were going to do one thing He thought we were going to do another He kept going And it was like wait No no No

You know Slipped and fell And And and so that experience, you know, definitely made me more cautious to that individual. I mean, he was very intelligent, very fit, very, you know, experienced.

He had, you know, he'd climbed Everest. He had, you know, and, and so then when subsequently these, you know, these guys that are like high achievers, zero body fat, you know, super keener, come along, like there's another guy that, you know, came along. you know, came along a couple of years after that. And he started, you know, he fit that profile. And we were doing a traverse in California.

It's called the Palisade Traverse. And so have you, the eastern Sierra is amazing. Like it's, it's kind of the best, best weather, best rock. You know, you can climb this traverse. You, you touch five, 14,000 foot. No kidding. Yeah. Wow.

In like a short order. But they don't get, like, California has 14, 14,000 foot peaks, 15 maybe. But they don't get, there's not enough prominence in between these high points to make it a mountain. And so it has to go down enough. But anyway, you hit 14,000 feet and you're climbing at 13,000 feet the whole time. It's amazing. It's a Palisade Traverse, Thunderbolt is still.

And we're doing this thing. I had never guided it before. So it's called on-site guiding where you're, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, seeing it the first time and you're making decisions. And it's like, it's a very high level of guiding. Yeah. And he was a, you know, high level client. And, but he started like kind of, I wouldn't say disobeying,

but he was kind of giving me some like pushback. And it was like, we're done. That's not what you pay the guide for. No. And maybe I responded a little harshly to that because of the previous tragedy. But I can't do that again, you know. It's just like it takes the thrill out of it. So yeah.

I mean, you know, bad things definitely happen, but, you know, and I think when those bad things do happen, people often will say, like we talked about at the start, where it's like, you know, the thing that you say in a certain, you know, social context. And it's, you know, people will say, well, it just wasn't worth it. You know, he's climbing this mountain, you know,

it wasn't worth it. And what I've landed on there is like if you get smoked in your car going to the garage or going to the grocery store, you know, the gallon of milk wasn't worth it. Yeah. Well, like nothing's worth it. You know, like dying just, it sucks. Well, what those people are saying is it's not worth it to them or they don't understand what it meant to that other person. Or they don't know what else to say. Yeah.

And you're just filling that space, you know. Yeah, I mean, we're all going to die. That's a realization that it seems difficult for. a lot of people to come to. I personally would rather die doing something that I love than get zied out walking across the street. Right. Right.

I mean, my ideal death would be like six keys of cocaine in my, you know, at 97 with, I don't know, base jumping off of, I don't know. I mean, you know. I'm liking it so far. I'm very straight-laced. I don't do any drugs actually, but when I'm old enough, I'm going to start and it's going to be amazing. What if you realize you should have started earlier? Nah, that's...

Missed opportunity, it happens. Yeah, yeah. I have very few regrets. If that's one of them, that's okay. Yeah. I've seen enough people ruin their lives that I don't want to follow up. Yeah. So the...

But, no, the thought that I think, you know, I'm trying to like conceptualize this idea of risk and risk. acceptance and articulate it in a way that rings true to the most amount of people. I feel like that's my job right now with these courses. Well, there's that, and what you're doing is a step in the middle, right? There's risk, risk acceptance, and then the mitigation and everything that you do in between. Okay. People used to or still do, they'll ask me about my old job.

And I am not a fan of traditional media portrayals of. my old job, whether it be TV shows or movies, because one, super time-compressed environment. You're never going to unpack everything that's involved in that. And a lot of what we do is sit there and plan. Because we have to analyze, assess, mitigate risk, and then look at the residual risk that's left over and make our decision based off of that.

That's really fucking boring in a movie. Yeah. Like, all right, slide, please. There's 75th slide. Here's the meteorological conditions for the next week. And it's like, son of it. Nobody wants to see that shit. But all of that stuff takes place. So we are making a decision. And then, you know, when you submit for approval, it says the risk level, the associated risk with the operation. And depending on the risk that's residual, that's the level of authority that you're going to have to go to. Interesting. And if it's a high risk operation, you know, something that would be, say, a hostage rescue, where you're going to go in with less people, but you're going to try to go in fast and you're going to accept the risk because you're trying to get on target. and actually save somebody's life.

Like the guy you work for, like the guy I work for, he's not making the go-no-go-call on that. That's going to get pushed up and up and up until it hits the appropriate level of authority. Interesting. And then once you're in that situation, I think you're relying on training.

Training and all the planning that you did leading up to it. Most of the planning that we did was contingency planning. If this happens, what are we going to do? And what I advise people to do is make situations that are critical or have a lot of meeting make those decisions before they actually become critical. It's the best way to make a decision in a crisis is to already have it decided. Yeah. A good example of like, what's our threshold? We have 20 guys we're taken on target.

How many people can we have get wounded before we pull chocks and back out of here? Right. Making that decision in an environment like this that's air conditioned, we can have a coffee and literally talk about, okay, one or two, as opposed to being on target and things are going on and as a battle space, somebody who's in charge in a battle space trying to make those decisions real time while still having all this other information coming at you as opposed to just executing a flow chart. Right. Two very different experiences from the person on the ground.

And that's so that we do rely on tactics, but I mean, fuck, make as many decisions as you can before you actually go out. Yeah. And then when you're out, you have some type of system to help with that or like a decision tree? We'll fall back on tactics a lot of the time. Okay. Yeah. You come up to a building and like, hey, we were going to reach the south gate.

There's no gate on the south side. Right. Well, do we go left or right? We always go left. As an example, you can set that as an SOP, a standard operating procedure. Or the way that we would clear structures, how far you can go into structures if you have a hallway, way, how many rooms deep you can go, the directions that you can go. You're setting all that for safety.

So we don't end up working our way back towards each other. Right. So you can always fall back on those things for, actually, those aren't even decisions. Those are just the procedures that we train to. But yeah, I mean, the easiest way to reduce stress on somebody in a critical environment making decisions is think through them before. Yeah. What's your medical plan?

Yeah. What's your plan if your radio stop working? Right. That's a good one to think about before they stop working. Right. But like, hmm, fuck, never thought about this way. Yeah. Does anybody have any flares?

That shit doesn't work. Right, right. Yeah. So my kind of take on it is, again, back, you know, I don't want to make military analogies here so that I don't know anything about it. Fire away. I don't either. I just make shit up. So in the backcountry skiing world, competence is derived by confidence.

Or I'm sorry, competence is derived from confidence. As you have more of one, you have more of the other. Yep. And so, you know, if I know that I can do the turn on this steep terrain and I have the competence, then I can also have the confidence to do that turn. If I don't have competence, but I have confidence, I call it running out of talent. You know, you're going to be done. Running out of talent.

Yeah, you're going to run right out of talent. That's Michael's jiu-jitsu strategy right there in a nutshell. every role he tries to run right out of talent yeah but you don't know i mean the you know the you know the scary part is you don't realize you're going to run out until you've already run out and you hear it on the go pro oh shit oh no um so as you have more competence you have more confidence and as you have more confidence you can get on bigger and and you actually are reducing that risk exposure because of your skills and that goes back to the mark andrea leclair thing where he had seven gears to rub.

Yeah, and it was like, I am, my competence is equal with my confidence, and it is way above everybody else's. And so with training and looking at risk, I think that that, you know, that's the controllable thing, that we can get better at actually physically, you know, movement or, you know, the military that, like, I can point my gun at something and actually hit the target. I'm not going to miss because I've, you know, put how many rounds through this chamber.

And would you put it through the chamber or would you put it through the barrel? Technically both. Okay. So that was... Yeah. The round will sit in the chamber and then it's fired. The projectile will go through the barrel. Okay.

Yeah. And the brass is ejected from the chambers. So the more material you put through that chamber, no? Munitions. You finish the analogy and I'll let you know how it goes. The more that you can count on hitting the target. And that is kind of... That's on how accurate of a shooter you are.

That's what I'm saying. And you do it more, you're going to become more accurate. It's like any other skill. Exactly. Yeah. And so do it more. Do it more. Do it more.

And then you get better at it. And now that is off the equation. And I think that, like, in my backcountry skiing, I was way more at risk of hurting myself or worse when I was doing something that, you know, because my talent was low and my ambition was high, it was like, you know, that risk lives in that delta. Oh, yeah. Okay.

And so, you know, when we can control the controllables, then, you know, that's where, you know, our practice is what time well spent. And then identifying what we can't control and saying, okay, am I still going to accept this risk or not? I think, you know, so it's competence and confidence is one thing that I like to teach. and then the phrase, what can kill me right now and how do I minimize my exposure to that? And in the backcountry, it's like most of the time,

the answer is nothing, you know, but when, you know, that radar needs to be pinging and we need to say, you know, and so again, with training, you can say, okay, this is going to ping the radar, you know, sooner than when I was a rookie and I didn't, I was just walking blindly through. it. Yeah. And so I, you know, with with those two, like that's that's kind of the pursuit now. It's like,

raise that up and so that you can, you can do this dangerous thing as safely as possible. But in no, no way, shape, or form are we going to be able to do it definitively safe? You know, I think, I think COVID was a huge disservice to people's risk assessment ability. You know, it's like, you know, like all these signs of stay home, stay safe. Yeah. And you're like, really? Is that safe? Suicide's real.

And then the data would start shifting. Exactly. So, yeah, at this point, I've spent far too much time thinking about it, but whatever, COVID-23 or whatever they would label it. I almost, like, obviously, very, it was incredibly fortunate that the first numbers that were touted as the lethality were not the reality, which I'm, of course. course incredibly thankful for right we didn't have no grandparents if that was a we would have everybody would have had a catastrophic encounter with it in some way shape or form um and the math is what it is and people can look at it but i wonder if something new came down the pipe and they described it in the same way what the fuck would people do yeah i think i think there would be more pushback i think so too

even if it was legitimate. And that's the messaging to me was one of the worst parts about it, the back and forth and the inability of people to say, I don't know. Like this is what we know today and stand by, this might change tomorrow. But this is the best guess we have right now. And so it was like, this is the only way. Right. And if you don't agree with this, then fuck you and we're going to come after you.

It's like, whoa. Yeah. Well, but I think the world is changing in that. that, you know, things like this exist. Yeah. Right? And so your sources of information can actually be a wide variety. You know, if you have an internet connection.

The problem is you can find what you're looking for. That's true. Because there are flat earth societies, Mark. And I am not a fucking scientist. Did I not show you my card carry member? But the earth, I'm pretty sure, is not flat. Okay. All right. Well, we'll agree to discree on that one.

That's fine. Because if it was flat, somebody would be monetizing that shit, and I can't figure out who would do that or why. Oh, yeah, I haven't thought about that. Postcards from the edge would be a thing. There would be a picture of the edge. Base jumping off the edge. You've got to find it first. Apparently, it just naturally pushes you away. If you never leave your hometown, though, you would never find it. This is true. This is true. There's been, yeah, there's some wild ones out there. What was the other one I was hearing the other day?

Somebody was saying that they didn't believe in satellites because they didn't have cell coverage when they were in a canyon. And then they had to be explained that cell phones don't work on satellites. That was an interesting conversation. It was a high-level jihitsu practitioner. Michael will share his name after the podcast in case he chases me down. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, though, but Montana has a disproportionately high number of conspiracy theorists. Is this accurate or not accurate? I would say yes.

Several people at work are legitimate flat earthers. No, they're not. Yes, they are. No, they're not. If you want to go and talk to them, we can arrange it. Yeah, that would actually be a great conversation. Can they come talk here? Ooh, I could ask.

They actually believe that they're legit, like, I'm not joking. Michael works for UPS, which apparently has employees flat earthers, and you were telling me pedophiles the other day, or did I make that part up? No, that is also true. So instead of loading the trucks in the morning, these guys are talking about Flat Earth? You know, they talk about a lot of things.

I usually just tune it out. Yeah. I need you to tune it in a little bit and bring me these. Mark and I are uneducated on this. Give me like a data point that they fall back on. A data, oh, that's a tough one. A big one is all images of the globe are doctored. obviously.

When you go up in an airplane and look up the window, the window is fish-eyed. So it makes it look like everything is round. Yeah, everything is a curve. So when I jumped out at 36,500 feet and didn't have a window and saw the curvature. It was still curved, eh? Yes. Well, I'm guessing. Have you ever been high enough on a mountain mark where you can see the slight curvature?

No. I don't think so. Of course not because it's flat. Good answer. The government. implanted contact lenses into your eyes to make it seem as if the earth was curved. That's my guess. Yeah, I actually don't care what people believe.

Like, that's like a low-hanging fruit to, I guess, make fun of. And I don't know what that says about me, because I'm not going to stop. But I worry more about why. Why do they latch on to that? Oh, that's a good, that's actually a great question. Yeah, like believe whatever you want to fucking believe. Unless you believe it's okay for an adult to be sexually attracted. to a child because then fuck you.

Right. And UPS should fire them because Michael said that that's a problem there. Or UPS should just like maybe give them, lock them up and put them counseling. Because I think that that's a problem that's like cyclical. I don't know, but I don't think UPS has the authority to lock them up. They should probably turn them over to the authority. Oh, right, right, right, right. So believe whatever you want, but I'm more fascinated, like to sit down and have that conversation,

it would more, my questions would be more, well, why do you believe that? that. When were you first exposed to that? And what is it about that idea that you were holding onto so tightly? Right. Because I think all ideas should, whatever belief you have, it should be able to be challenged from almost any direction. Sure. And maybe it'll change your thought process on a little bit. Or maybe it'll strengthen it, depending on where the question comes from. But it's fascinating to me the people who latch onto those. Well, actually, to be challenged from any direction possible is, I would say, it's putting it in a scientific type of, you know, testing, you know, litmus testing apparatus, whereas a lot of beliefs are untestable and you just believe it

because, you know, it's true. That's the, or you believe it's true. Exactly. Or you'd say that because it is true. That's, you know, that's the, it's my truth, Mark. I hate that phrase so much. It's like, okay, are there chairs in this room? Because my truth is that there are, well, there's five with Michael's chair.

And if you say, well, my truth is that there's no chairs, I don't know if we can talk very much. No, I think that's the end of the conversation. That's a piece. Yeah. But then I would want to talk because I would want to say to you, what do you mean there's no chairs in here? But where are you going with that? I mean, are you trying, so you're trying to understand the psychology behind. How they land on that belief that they believe so deeply that nothing will change their mind to include objective evidence to the contrary of their belief.

Right. Maybe it's just to get a reaction. Maybe. And again. That could be a reason. That could be a reason. Yeah. Or people will say to you because they want to shut the argument down.

It's my truth. And I'm just like, okay. Yeah. That does work. It does. Yeah. I mean, it shuts down the argument. It doesn't really elevate the concept.

conversation much or allow you to perhaps explore what you believe. Right. So, the fuck do I know. No, I think it, I think, you know,

like it is, like, that's, that's what I think is, is lacking a lot is like, you know, just, you know,

in, let's just say in society in general is to be like, maybe I am wrong. And how is that, how is that, you know, that's a really good exercise to go through. Like,

what am I screwing up here? You know, like how am I, what are the holes in my, my logic. And I think that that's, you know, that's just, that's a good exercise. That's a good part of your brain to, you know, to exercise. And if you are going down the pipe of the conspiracy theory or the whatever rabbit

hole you're going down where you can find the answers that fill in the blanks of the questions that you're, you know, that you want answers to or that you, you know, preconceived have the answer already. You can find a confirmation online. Oh, yeah. Right. But at the same time, you know, like, that's, it's, it's a negative in that sense, but it's a, it's a positive in the sense of like,

you know, if, if that next COVID thing happened, right? And we're, we're getting, you know, from on high, from Washington, you know, they're saying this and that. We'd be like, well, actually, you know. People will go, well, last time, that's not what happened. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think the fastest way, first off, any system that is touched by human beings is going to be flawed. Sure, because we're flawed. Right. The fastest way to lose your integrity or people's trust is to say one thing and do another. Sure.

Like this disparity between your actions and your words. Hypocrisy. Hypocry. Hypocry. Or an unwillingness to accept that you're wrong and actually own your mistakes. Yeah. And so until somebody who is a lot higher, you know, is actually somebody that people would look at and says, hey, yes, we fucked up aspects of this.

Yeah. And what we want to make sure is that in the future, the mistakes that we made in the past, which were not intentional, and we were making the best decisions that we could at the time. And I hope that was the case, because there's, of course, entire conspiracy theories based around COVID in and of itself.

Sure. What hell would I have, I probably call it the planemic or the scan demic. I'm like, okay, I don't know if I'm really to get my feet in those buckets yet. Right. Did people benefit monetarily? I think it's hard to say that they didn't. And in some regard, you know, one of the things that irks me the most is that dish down the road is Walmart and Target and Home Depot and Lowe's.

Those are essential businesses, but all of the other businesses on Main Street that lost their businesses were considered non-essential. I'm like, okay, that's fucked. You know, and I saw real world examples of that. Literally right at where we're in front we met, there's still a massive amount of buildings that are open because they closed up. Yeah. But if you're not willing to accept accountability and responsibility for your mistakes, people are going to stop listening to you. Right. And then when you have something important to say, they're going to ignore you.

Yeah. And then if something does have a 10% fatality rate, who, man, we are proper fucked. Right. Right. It does make me think, like, did you see Don't Look Up the Netflix with Leonardo? With Decapro? Yes. Portions of it.

I love that so much. It was so perfect. I'm like, don't look up. And it was interesting as I've talked to, you know, several people because I love the movie. I was like, did you see that? And depending on who I'm talking to, they apply their social, you know, fill in the blank issue with, you know, the characters in the movie. You know, it was like, well, those people are the, you know, the Democrats or those people are the Republicans or those people are the, you know, whatever. And you're like, well, not necessarily, it could be the, you know, it's like, don't look up.

And then the guy looks up, he's like, they lied to us. It was so perfect. I mean, yeah. People can definitely believe what they want. And that's like, I think that that should be the case, right? Yeah. We shouldn't have to believe what other people want to believe. But there should probably also be some checks and balances with.

Yeah, I don't think you should be able to convince people to try. drink poison, Kool-Aid. You know, like that's probably a step too far. Right. And I have no idea how you would apply those checks and balances. I don't know.

Yeah, maybe electric, you know, nodes. You just get zapped. Elon's working on that, I believe. Right. Well,

anyone that's vaccinated has electric nodes. I've heard that one, too. I was told once hunting a year, two years ago now that I was a pit bull for the global cabal. Whoa. Because of my previous job and that anybody who had the vaccine had a 5G activated implant. This individual did not tell me what that implant was going to do, but it was very, very

steadfast on the fact that it was in there. Okay. I was like, sweet. Can I get this fucking coffee to go? Yeah. Wait, that was a person face-to-face saying that? Face to face. Oh, because that sounded like a YouTube comment or something.

Nope. I was sitting in a restaurant next to a woodburning fire, warming up, enjoying my morning, first cup of coffee for the day. He recognized. you. No. He just was like, so, what do you do for living? I said, I have a podcast. He's like, yeah, but what did you do before that? I said, I was in the military for a bit. He goes, so how did it feel to be a pit bull for the global cabal? I'm just like, uh, amazing. I'm not far enough in this fucking coffee to have this conversation. Yeah. And honestly at that point,

that was, I believe his, uh, that was the sign he was looking for me answering that question. and he just launched onto what he believed. Sure. And I just drain that coffee as fast as I could and went somewhere else. Right. Because I don't actually even know what to say about that. Yeah. So.

Now, I mean, if I could wave my magic wand, it would be like, okay, let's have interactions where, you know, I'm going to voice my opinion, and now I'm going to put my ego aside, and I'm going to listen to your opinion, and I'm going to agree with three things that you just said, and I'm going to disagree with, you know, however many I disagree with. Or disagree with it all.

It's still okay? No, no. I think you can always find something to agree with. Some people are really stupid. But here's the thing. That's okay. And you can have people that totally disagree and they can still be neighbors. Absolutely.

Totally fine. Yeah. If they disagree on politics, you know what? Maybe focus on the fact that they're your neighbor and treat them how you would want to be treated. And don't fucking bring up politics. There you go. And don't like rip down their signs and shit or put like, tax or batteries on the back of political like let them do whatever the fuck they want to do oh people

put tax on there was some awesome ones on youtube where people would hook batteries up to like the signs they would put in the yards and they would oh to anti so people wouldn't rip them correct and most of the time it was their neighbors it's coming and getting them okay the tax one it was spikes the one that i saw was spikes because people were driving over the signs wow so they put down basically a tire strip underneath it wow yeah you're welcome okay here's a good one i had a buddy and Crested Butte that lived on the corner, beautiful lawn, everybody's dog took a big fat crap in his lawn, right? So he started taking bacon grease and pouring it on the dog poop.

So they would eat it. And they ate it! Yeah, perfect. There's another move there is if it's your neighbor whose dog is shitting a yard, throw it back into their yard. Yeah. I don't know if that, does that escalate or de-escalate? Because at any time, this is,

what I learned in marriage. If you're having a dispute, you can escalate or you can de-escalate. And the choice is yours. You can't control what they do. It's true. But you can, and I would say throwing it back probably, I'm going to go with escalate on that, maybe. It's like a one out of a ten escalation. I'm not saying you like hold him down and make him eat it. That would be a ten. And by that, I mean the owner, not the dog. Bacon grease, baby. Because if there were, yeah. That's varsity. I mean, like, I haven't done that, but I absolutely would if I had a yard. For sure.

You know, like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's just on them at that point. What kind of asshole doesn't pick up after their dog? A lot of them. I know. I didn't see it.

It's like, it's such an easy thing, but it's so telling about your character, too. Is it worse, though, to not pick up or to put it in the bag right in the center of the running trail saying, I'll get this in the way back before I forget it. The shades of the same color. Yeah. Yeah. I think the bag is worse because it's not going to decompose at that point. For sure.

And you're basically saying somebody else can take care of this because I've got things I have to do. That's the negative side. The positive side is I am putting it in a very conspicuous spot so that I won't forget it. But they will. Absolutely. But they will. Yeah. Pick it back for your dog.

And if you have more, it gets worse with the higher, higher population density to a point where like we were just in, my wife and I were just in Harlem in Manhattan and there wasn't dog poop anywhere. Like it was, I mean, not that I saw. And there was dogs everywhere. Like COVID, everyone got a dog. Yeah. And they pick it. I mean, it is self-regulated or like, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's that middle ground, Vegas awful. that hiking trails around Vegas disgusting you know just dog poop everywhere and then Montana it's probably like one dog per

300 square miles or something there's a lot of dogs out here but there's a lot of land true I mean it's like that is true you know it's not as it's not as dense the moral of this story though is pick up after your fucking dog or just don't have a dog are you a dog guy

do you have dogs I lost my dogs in the divorce oh I have friends that have dogs though. Okay. See, my theory is we travel a lot, so dogs and our lifestyle just wouldn't work. And I do, I like dogs. But there's so many dogs

to pet. Yeah. I can get that like 15 seconds of like pure tail wagging, you know, you know, fill with so many other people's dogs. And then somebody else has to pick up the shit. There you go. Yeah. It's like being a grandparent, but I bet it's amazing to feed

kids a bowl of gummy bears. Absolutely. hand them right back to your parents. Yeah. We went on a boat and I'm not a boat guy, but we had so much fun wake surfing. Well, that's the move is you know somebody who has a boat. Absolutely. And it was just like, wow, that looks like so much work. Yeah.

And I just picked the cherry, you know, and I'm out. What's your favorite breed of dog? I don't know if I have one. The big dogs, I will see. stop and like do the full rubber neck on a on a big big dog you know like your eight dane or the you know pyrenees or whatever they're called um i do like i do i think i might my my de facto is like big dumb dogs you know lots of not as long as they don't drool a bunch drooling is disgust i grew up around uh labs my dad has had a bunch of labs but now i've uh switched to smaller dogs

okay how small the coolest dog i've ever had is a mini dotson i think dotsh how is how you're supposed to say it. Dodge hound. His name is Chachi. And he fucks. He's awesome. What, like literally? Oh, he'll fuck anything held down.

I mean, he doesn't have any balls. He's just got a little pancake holster back there. But he has got the coolest personality of any dog. And I remember, like, I used to be able to hold him in my hands. He's just, like, one of the coolest dogs. And then my business partner, they have two Frenchies. Okay. Pretty cool.

Yeah. Is that the one with it, like, straight and then it? it like flares out is that with the long the frenchie or the frenchie uh frenchies are pretty flat face with a they're they're smaller for sure french bulldogs oh french bulldogs godcha bulldogs scare me i'm not gonna lie these wouldn't scare you i mean at best they're gonna get your achilles sending but what scares me more is cats grease there's so many cats everywhere and they're all just feral but the you know the owners like feed them or whatever like squirrels yeah there's cats everywhere

Everywhere and cats freak me out because at any given time they could be at my jugular This is true. If you stopped feeding them. Or just if they're just having an off day, they could just in one bounce and they're biting your biting your neck. That's fair. So this podcast will come out in two weeks. Okay.

Because I got next Monday. It's already lined up. But it's still perfect timing. The resort is going to open early December. And so this is the like the time period where people are like, where the fuck is my snowboard? Yeah, yeah. Where are my, where is my splitboarding? You have a little quick session in the backcountry.

And I can't find my beacon, so fuck it. Right. What advice do you have for people as they're looking at getting back into those wintertime activities? Like I said, last year was pretty gnarly. Yeah. As far as avalanches. Avalanches and fake all.

Yeah. Well, it was just like above freezing, below freezing, above freezing, below freezing, bunch of snow on an eye. It just was cracking free left, right and sound. Yeah. So, I mean, if I'm talking to a never-ever, that's going to be a different message. Just somebody who is more like me. I've been at it for about five years.

Okay. I am absolutely terrified of avalanches. Yeah. So I treat them with the utmost respect. Yep. Like I said, where Nelson's taking me is like slack country for sure. Right. It's possible to could slide.

Actually, that was the biggest shock to me was what appeared to be an incredibly low angle. is the most likely slide angle. Really? Well, I mean, I just assumed that it was always something incredibly steep. The prime time is 30 to 45 degrees. What doesn't actually look that steep? Yeah, it's black diamond terrain. 38 degrees is sure.

Yeah, that's what I mean, I'm just thinking like, oh, yeah, it's going to be like 60, 70 degrees. Of course that's going to break free. Right. Because it's steeper than that, and it just sloughs off. It doesn't have the, you know, it can't sit there. Yeah. Right. And so I would say, you know,

You need to, the knowables that you can know, you should know. And that list will grow as you get more into it. And the baseline is that there is an avalanche forecast, you know, and you should read it. There's a great one up here in the Flathead Valley. Totally. And they're professionals that are designed to, you know, give it. And sometimes they'll cater to the dumbest person in the room, which is a disservice to everybody else. but it's also keeping that person, you know, the dumbest person alive maybe.

And then there's there's forecasts that are talking to a more educated, you know, public that want to, you know, say, okay, I know this and this and this. You know, now let's move forward with, you know, the knowable nose. And so, yeah, reading and understanding your ad launch forecast is huge. Having a gear that you know how to use. So like just buying a probe is the first step, but knowing how to assemble the probe. quickly and then knowing that you need to you know put it in the the snow perpendicular and not pointy in first perhaps yeah pointing in first but you know like there's stories of like people probing you know like not perpendicular and they're

going all around the guy and you know he's dead and and then you know I think but if I were if I could just like matrix you know information into someone's brain it would be the ability like Terminator to say this is avalanche terrain and this is non-avalanche train because in the backcountry there is non-avalanche terrain and this is a concept that not everybody like fully understands like you can you can go backcountry skiing and ski it on powder that will never ever ever avalanche or get avalanched on you know if you're if you're at the base of a steep slope that you know you can get hit by the debris. And so if you're even on a flat slope, you could be an avalanche train if you're, if you have steep slopes above you. So there's, there's a lot of terrain that is non-Avalence

terrain. And you can wire in all of your, you know, backcountry accoutrement of, you know, like, how do I do a kick turn and how do I, you know, layer properly and all these other things that you don't want to think about when you're in real terrain. And have a blast, you know, doing that. And if, if you're, you know, getting into it, you need to be able to identify, You know, like, this is avalanche train, this is non-Avalent train, I'm going to go over here. And now, you know, in theory, you won't even need a beacon, a shovel, a probe, a backpack, you know, like none of that stuff. You can just have fun in the backcountry. And that's where, like, you know, the kids should go to build their kickers is non-avolent strain, right?

Yeah. And so if you can identify that and stick to non-Avalent strain, you're ahead of the curve. And then once you get more education, then you can be getting more into, you know, okay, now here's the game at my feet. These are the avalanche problems and this is what I do about them. And that's what the course is designed to take you to that level, where it's like, okay, I want to actually ski a 38 degree slope. How do I do that safely?

And the short answer is it's not ever totally safe, but you can stack the odds in your favor. And so, you know, having a beacon that you know, having a shovel that you can assemble and dig, having friends that you know how to, this is kind of the next phase, I guess, is whoever you go out with, you know, your friend, like, what are the questions that you're going to ask?

What are the conversations that you're going to have to spawn a conversation that's going to help lead to a better decision? Because it is dangerous, right? You're not going out, you know, biking with a buddy. Like, no one dies mountain biking. Oh, yes, they do. I mean, okay. There was a dude who rode around a corner

up here into a grizzly bear. Oh. That's awful. Statistically anomalous, but it happens. Okay. Okay, life's not safe. If we can control for life's not safe. Oh.

Yeah. And they got eaten. I don't think it ate him. But it killed him. Yeah, it did kill him, yeah. He died from him. That's awful. It is.

Most places you go mountain bike riding, I don't think that's a danger. Do people mountain bike with bear spray strapped to the top tube or whatever? That's a good question. I have no idea. How many days a year do you have bear spray on your person? Zero. Okay. Do you count a gun as bear spray?

Because I do. No. Zero. Okay. I have lead spray. Okay, follow up. Yeah. Do you have, have you chambered rounds in the order?

of like bare deterrent. No. It's all the same. It's all the same. Clip is full of whatever it is. The business we call it a magazine. Okay. It's not a clip.

A clip is what it comes in from the factory. Common misconception, especially among rappers. Is that like somebody's saying, you know, just connect that clipy thing. It's a carabiner. Actually, it's not a clippy thing. It makes a clip sound. Yeah. Yeah, just hook that snap clip up to the rope thing in a dig.

Yeah. I've heard of people having like the loud rounds, you know, boom, boom. And then they have one. So first off, grizzly bears can run over 30 miles an hour. Yeah. If you think you're going to go boom, boom to scare it off as it's coming to eat you asshole first. Probably not. No.

Boom, boom should be directly at its face. Okay. Okay. Yeah. In Jackson, there's a bear spray practice. Oh, is it the thing that runs it? Yeah, you put, you know, you hit go and you're supposed to de-holster and like, that bear is on you. 10 out of 10 times.

100% that is on you. And I'm not saying bear spray doesn't work. I think people should absolutely have it. I'm sure every year at Glacier at the airport here in Calispell, they have a wonderful time taking it out of people's bags, even though there's science everywhere. Right. It says no bear spray and it also says no huckleberry jam. I don't understand the second one. That's not fair.

Swear to God. It says no huckleberry jam. taking a picture of it many times. I have yet to get an answer as to why you can't take Huckleberry jam through, but people should have all the tools. I just personally don't carry bear spray in the liquid form. Well, as a practitioner, a firearm in your hands is a lot more apt to repel bears. Anybody, though, could learn how to shoot a pistol.

I've shot a couple pistols. I'm going with bear spray You should Yeah Until you've shot pistols Until you're more competent With the pistol than you are the bear spray Then maybe you could switch

Right Or don't Right To each their own Right What about both Fuck I mean This spray spray

It's not the Wild West Mark It's not the movies I'm not out there In a fucking Bandolero With fucking double six shooters That's a product idea I think we should

Shark Tank this A pepper spray that you're strapping to your what caliber gun are you? Most people recommend a 10-mill. They make bear-specific rounds. They do. Yeah.

Okay. That probably has some kick. It's manageable. Okay. It's manageable. But, yeah, double-barrele handgun, one pepper spray. Double-barrow handgun. Yeah.

I think that's a thing. I think we should shark tank that. I will support you from afar on this. I'll get you the ticket to wherever they film Shark Tank and stand by as well. one of your most vocal supporters. Okay, okay. Just stand downwind.

Wait, upwind. I don't know where you'd need to stand. It would matter if one of them is a pistol round. That's true. Yeah. Okay. And if you knew how to use it. Indeed.

Right. Revelstoke. So you guys are, you're stopping here in Calispell. You're moot. Where is Revelstoke? Is that a burger? It's in BC. Okay.

So you're going to bang a little bit of the left then. Right. So, you know, yeah, it's, uh, Rogers Pass divides Revelstoke from Golden. and then the next town to the east is BAMF, which more people are familiar with BAMF. What are you going to be doing up there? Skiing. I ski a lot. I like skiing a lot.

And then, you know, I'm teaching a lot of Avalanche courses, but remotely, you know. So it's like, it's actually, it's really pretty cool because, like, we just did three cohorts of people going through the courses, the mountains since courses. and, you know, it's like, I'm calling in from Tahoe. I'm from Seattle. I'm from Minneapolis. There was some good aspects to the restructuring, how people communicated because of COVID. There was definitely some pros to it. Yeah.

That's one of them, I think, is they built that remote learning, or not that you couldn't do it before, but I think they... It was just more mainstream now. It's more accepted. And they kind of just tightened up everything involved in that. I think the delivery is a lot better. Yeah, like the share... to share your screen button. Everyone knows that one now, you know,

and how to unmute. Some people can unmute better than others. That's true. That is true. But no, I mean, like, you know, like to have, you know, all these people coming in and the premise is like, let's go through this before the snow flies,

because once the snow flies, it's like, I'm going to go skiing, you know. So I'm doing that. And then I like to tinker a lot as well, you know, with, I try to spend 50% of my time slamming on the keyboard, creating content and whatnot and then 50% I like to use my hands to to make things so I've been making carbon fiber things really like what uh an avalanche shovel and a picket I don't know if you

know what a picket is isn't that the thing that goes on top of the ski pole no that a top of the no the picket is for glacier travel if you fall in a crevasse you drive in a picket normally aluminum and then you anchor your rope to that picket and then pull the person out of a crevasse. 100% not what I was thinking about. Okay. And they're made out of aluminum and they're heavy. And I've carried these around all over the place. And it's a safety device so you don't use it really much.

Until you need it. Until you need it. And then you want it. And so making a carbon fiber option is way more, well, it's 60. present lighter. Yeah. And it's and so I have this whole series of I call it Bruce Wayne, you know, gear because the only thing that Bruce Wayne innovated of is just he could spend more money. Yeah. Right. And so if I'm doing it myself and it takes me 17 hours to make one, that's not viable from a market standpoint, but I can do that, you know, because it's,

you know, it's a DIY project. And so, I, I, My goal is to make this whole ski mountaineering kit that all fits together. So, you know, there's every day I carry seven things every day. And why I have to go to seven different different companies to get that, and then they all don't fit together is that's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. Let's fix that. And so the probe will fit in the shovel, which will fit in the pack just right, which will fit in.

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. And you can make, you know, you can do really cool stuff with really expensive of materials like dinema I don't know if you're familiar with dynema for sure

I've never really used a ton of it but I know what it is I mean it's a pain to work with but if you can get it right you know because I mean it's very very cool stuff yeah you know light steel strong steel blah blah blah so how long are you're going to live in revel stuff undecided we we are

visitors we're fully American there's no connection to Canada and but because we can work remote we don't need a you know or online working and yeah then it's it's a bit of a loophole really and so we can be up there and without cutting full ties to America it's not a loophole is it not I don't think so it feels like it is I don't I just think that the traditional model of like suit and what you were talking about the job fair yeah

I have no idea what my life is going to look like. I turned 45 last month. Be lucky to get another 45. Right. But I can tell you the one thing I don't want to do during that time period is a suit and tie nine to five. I would be fucking miserable regardless of the amount of money that I made. I thought you were going to say passing kidney stones.

I would rather pass kidney stones. Yes. Yeah, 100%. I would rather pass a kidney stone than work a nine to five in a suit and tie. Not that I don't like suit and ties. I think they look cool and they have their place. But like the cubicle office setting environment, I can't think of something that I would enjoy less.

Yeah. And I don't think it's a loophole to find something that you enjoy doing and figuring out a way to turn it into an occupation. Yeah. It seems like a loophole to the people, I believe, that are stuck probably doing something that they don't want to do or they look at what you're doing and they wish they could do that instead.

Right. Yeah. So I look at those people. And I'm a big fan of like there's a positive and negative to every single thing. And if you're a half as glass, glass is half empty person,

you're going to, you know, look at the negative. And okay. And I look at the person's suit and tie and I say that, you know, the negative of that is you have no, you know, freedom. You are changed. to that desk and you know that then you look forward to when you're going to retire and that's

in that guess what it's not going to be that fulfilling big spoiler here but then the positive of that is they can go home most of the time and not think about work at all I don't think that's the case you don't I think a lot of those people especially in a world where we all have these yeah I think they might go home but I don't think they stop working no I don't think they do oh you just Pop my bubble. Well, and there's another way to look at the glass analogy, right? Okay. People say it's either, you know, are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person?

Well, how about I'm a glass as a refillable person? Ooh. Sexy. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it is, but I appreciate the compliment. Somebody puts a glass in front of you and says, hey, is it, is it half full or half empty? You're like, well, what does it really matter? Because I can change the amount in the glass to suit what I want.

I can drink some and then fill it back up. Okay. I hate these binary choices. Okay. So you have found a way to add more to your glass. Okay. And so it doesn't matter if it's full or empty. You have found a way to continuously put in there what it is you want to drink out of it.

Whereas I think a lot of people are stuck as just that binary choice. Like it's either A or B. And for full disclosure, like when I was in the military, all I thought about was being in the military. It's the only thing I had ever wanted to do since I was 11 years old. I'm like, this is what I'm going to do. And then at some point you're like, oh, fuck, I have to get out of the military. Right. I didn't know what I was going to do.

Not a single second of college, barely graduated high school. Some bizarre experiences that have almost no application anywhere other than probably law enforcement if you want to do contracting. Yeah. And I had to figure it out on my own. And the only anchor I had in the ground is I knew what I didn't want to do. And I've reinvented myself multiple times. And not all of them have been great. There's been a lot of things that I went down that path.

I'm like, that's not going to work or things that I wish I would have done differently. But the only way I would have limited myself in any of those decisions was to look at it from a binary perspective. It has to be this or this. It's like, fuck that. Like, give me your empty glass because I have a pitcher over here and just now guess what? It's overflowing. All right. So do you feel like the, have you been running away from what you don't want or running towards?

Because I, you know, towards what you do one. I would say it's more pursuing what I, one, identifying, which was the hard part for me. What do I want to do? Yeah. What actually interests me. And, you know, what we're doing right now, the podcast is by far the most rewarding thing that I do. Okay. Because it allows me to meet people like yourself and sit down and have a multiple hour conversation that can go in all different directions.

Right. You know, your background, the things that you love, I can. learn about what you do. Take some of the stuff that we've already talked about. Fuck with Nelson about it when we're slack, you know, slack countrying at the resort. But I learn about other people. I have learned an absolute crazy amount of information. I've been exposed to things that I never would have been exposed to. And people challenge me on my ideas. Well, why do you think that way? Right. And it's like, fuck, I don't know why I think that way. So it's been a very cathartic slash learning experience for me.

Yeah. But I only found it because I took a path that had, I was, you know, it actually started with fundraising. I was skydiving at the time, had been out of the military. I was like, okay, I'm going to try to raise some money for the SEAL Foundation. Yeah. I had never even listened to a podcast. I had never been on a podcast.

I had not listened to a podcast before I went on Rogan's podcast the first time. I had no idea the ecosystem. And I was introduced to him through friends that I met through the fundraising. So that decision to go that direction, with no plan of my own, led me to meet Joe, who has been a great friend for the past five years. And one day he goes, hey, man, you need to start a podcast. Okay. Which he's told fucking thousands of people. Sure.

Trust me. He spawned like a million of the podcasts that are out there today. Right. But I didn't know what it was going to be about. I didn't know what I was going to call it. I didn't know how to do it. But I enjoyed my experience of being on the show with him. I was like, fuck it.

I'll give it a try. Yeah. And now it's like the most rewarding thing that I do. Yeah. So again, the fastest way to limit myself would have been like, well, I got to do this job or that job. It's like, well, what if I don't do either of those jobs and I just find something else? Or what if I do five jobs to make enough money to provide for my family and will allow me to figure out what I want to do and just keep filling the glass back up over and over again? Right.

Yeah. I mean, I would say that I kind of. of view it as a big experiment. You know, it's like, what's working now? Probably not going to work later. What do I like, what am I kind of good at, you know? And what's, and there's no shortage of like self-help for business, you know, online and what. Of course.

But again, that goes back to they will try to sell you on an anomalous outcome. Right. That is portrayed as the norm. Seven figures in one month. Yeah. And I don't doubt that that works for some people, but for the 10,000 people that think that they're going to be that one or two persons that has that happen, that's what rubs me about that stuff. It's selling the anomalous as the norm. Right.

Right. You know. And you can be unique just like everyone else. Everybody is unique. Just be yourself. Totally. Some people just suck, you know. Embrace it.

Where can people? Was that part of your vows by chance? No. You know, sometimes I just suck. Embrace it. Oh, yeah. Lee already knew that. She's known me long enough.

She probably realized that about me within the first 30 seconds meeting me. It's like, oh, wow, you're a fucking unique snowflake in your own way. Michael probably the same thing. He's just like, oh, fuck. Yeah, we've been out for like over two and a half hours. I'll get you back to your family. Where can people find your courses? So it's Mountain Sense, MtNSense.com.

And, yeah, they're all right there. And, I mean, it's great because you can just. sign up, start immediately, and you don't have to go anywhere, you know? And then what's, what I really like about it is the every video has questions that, or, you know, a spot to put in a comment. And so you watch a video that's, you know, about five minutes long on a specific topic. And then if something's up, you just, you know, put a, you know, put a, you know, put a comment in there. And I get an email and I write you back. Oh, sweet. Yeah. So it's not, it's not, it's not this like, it's not like YouTube where it's just like you don't know who made it or whatever.

It's just this, you know, standalone thing. You reply to all the questions? Because I might have some. 1,500. Mark, what is the meaning of life? Yeah. Well, you know, there is a 1,900 number that I often refer to. Like, I know this video is on how to use a probe or properly, but what is the meaning of seagulls?

What are they for? Why are they here? Do they work for the CIA? Now, the real question that I get that is akin to that is like, on this day for this thing, you know, in this situation that will never happen again and hasn't happened since, what would you have done? And it's like, well, and then just use it as a case study. And that's the other cool thing. It's like, it is like I pride myself on it. It is a safe learning environment, right, where you can bring those questions.

And I'm not going to say you're an idiot. I'm going to say, oh, that's a good question. because guess what, you're engaging. And if you're putting down the money and you're taking the time, you're ahead of well ahead of most people doing these recreational things, right? Because at the end of the day, this is recreating, and we're just trying to do it better. And it's safer. Safer.

Yeah. Because we all need to come home, you know, every day. Where in Revelstoke, Revelstoke are you going to be skiing? Rogers Pass. I say this in case people want to come track you down. Yeah, yeah. Bang it in turns with you. Right. Rogers Pass is great. And then Revelstoke Mountain Resort has side country as well. And it's, I mean, it's world class. I mean, it sucks. Don't come. It's awful. The snow's ski Colorado.

I heard it's close to the ocean, so it's really dense. It's not fun. Not very good. It's like mashed potato-y. Yeah. No, Rogers Pass is amazing. It's a world-class destination. But it also self-selects because your typical climb is a 4,000. 5,000 foot climb minimum. And that just eliminates a whole host of people right there. Do they have a helicopter service available? There is more heli skiing in Revelstoke than anywhere else. See, that sounds way better. It is, well, I mean, if the credit card works, you're absolutely right.

For anybody listening out there is a billionaire that will not take Mark and I, heli skiing. Even multimillion works. We don't need a limit to be. We can do M as well. We'll bring Michael Hilster cocktails for us in the evening time. He'll get his butler outfit. Yep. Which he wasn't wearing today.

I don't even know why it's Friday. He should be in his butler outfit. Fucking Ascot Fridays. Do you mean my gear? No, that was earlier. There's no... You weren't wearing an ascot in your ghee. No, it's awesome.

You know, like, it's super cool. I'm going to try to get across the border this year to board for a bit. You should come up? I'll see my... We're only six hours away. That's a totally doable drive. Absolutely. As well.

Yeah, my wife was a snowboard instructor for years. Okay. So she rips on a board. She does not appreciate the speed that I ride my board. Okay. And I just stop when I explode. Like, it's like it'll stop when it's fucking wants to stop, which is when I get a little bit too far on the edge and then just don't be downhill of me.

Yeah. This week I'm going to shoot more, shoot more content for splitboarding. Okay. And because the course, another course I have is, you know, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. and it's all ski, you know, specific. And I have a couple of friends in Revelstoke that are amazing splitboard guides. And we're going to shoot some specific, you know, splitboard things.

And I'm going to put on a board. And I haven't snowboarded in 15, 16 years. Well, I think you're going to be impressed with the improvements in equipment. I think it'll be, you know, it'll be fun. You know, there's this like, there's this like skier versus snowboarder thing, you know, where it's like. So, yes, again, that's a glass half full, glass half empty. In the backcountry, it definitely, it can be a thing. Well, yeah, because skiers like to go to a fucking flat terrain.

Exactly, exactly. And the snowboarders really know how to find fall line. You know, like, it's actually a skill. Well, you have to. And then, but then when it gets rowdy is when you are in that inevitable rolling terrain and you have to go to split skiing. If you're bad at that, it's, it's bad. It's ugly. I have found, in my super limited experience, you're better off going all boarders or all skiers.

That's true. It's a little tough. Yeah. Because I have, even at resorts, I'm like, you fucking assholes. This flat area. Now I've got to unstrap one of my feet. Why did you stop here? Fuck.

Well, it's fine. You just, I'm like, I don't, I can't do that. That's when you. Well, okay, so if you are in a mixed group, you have a radio. You know, you'd be like, I stopped, you know, where it got steep again. where we're going to regroup here, you know. Yeah. And then you're just not wondering where they are.

I think that's, uh, but no, I think it'll be, it'll be great because, you know, these courses are a constantly evolving thing and I'm always adding to them. Um, and that's what, that's really what keeps me engaged is like, you know, I mean, it's so beautiful like 20 years ago, if you wrote a book, you'd have to wait until those all sold out to like publish the next, you know, next version. And it's this big thing. Whereas Petzel comes out with a new nanotraction, I'm immediately buying that and putting pros and cons on a video,

and boom, it's uploaded 48 hours later. Like, the speed is amazing. I can't remember the last thing I bought without going over to YouTube. Obviously, like, I'm not going to YouTube a pair of shorts, you know, or something trivial, but like a piece of gear, I'm always bouncing over to YouTube, and I'll just try to find a couple different reviews. Yeah. You know, things I like about this, things I hate about this.

It's cool to see people using it and you can see it in three-dimensional space where you're getting their feedback on it. It's an amazing tool for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, man. So yeah. What do you want to close it out with? Like I said, I'll get you back to your family. Oh, I'm just psyched that you're doing what you're doing.

And I appreciate you having me on. And I know that this is, you know, I'm definitely a different, you know, guest than a military or law officer. People are boring. So are cops. So boring. Well, hopefully I haven't been boring. Not at all. No, it's fascinating. Yeah.

No, and I really do appreciate, you know, the mix of people and, you know, just when worlds collide, you know, like going to Greece and seeing like, oh, there's a bunch of cats here. And that person doesn't even think there's a lot of cats here because that's the cultural norm. And now I'm going into this sport climbing realm and it's like, wow, this is neat. I just, I really love that, you know, exercising that part of. my brain and whether it's cultural or making decisions and you know challenging terrain or or listening to people you know that I would have never interacted with on a long form podcast that's really cool so keep up the good work I guess I'll do my best as long as Michael doesn't fuck it up you know awesome man thank you all right you're welcome