Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1115: The Amazing Adventures of Tommy Caldwell, Star of Netflix's The Dawn Wall

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin speak with Tommy Caldwell, star of Netflix's The Dawn Wall. Tommy has had an amazing life filled with adventure and danger from the time he was a small child. Held hostage by rebels in Kyrgyzstan, overcoming a potentially career-ending accident and scaling the Dawn Wall of El Capitan are just of few of the stories he tells in this fascinating interview. How rock climbers are their own filmmakers. (4:40) What has been the impact of Dawn Wall? (8:20) Finding strength in yourself: Tommy’s relationship with his father growing up and how he inherited his ‘joyful masochism’ mentality. (9:42) The harrowing hostage situation he experienced while in Kyrgyzstan. (14:15) The moral dilemma he experienced post escaping. (31:20) When we think we are at our breaking point, we are not even close. (33:20) What has the transition been like being in the public spotlight? (38:00) The liberating feeling of taking away all expectations. The potentially career-ending accident he overcame. (39:00) The differences between ‘big free wall’ climbing vs. regular rock climbing. (43:12) How climbing a ‘big wall’ is like learning a second language. (45:30) The adventure of a lifetime: His 7-year journey to ‘summit’ the Dawn Wall. (47:00) Being addicted to the stimulus. (51:14) The camaraderie amongst the climbing community. (52:29) Does he find normal life boring? (56:20) The different levels of ‘flow state’. (57:15) The dangers and performance level attributes associated with climbing. (59:05) The 3 climbing disciplines that will be in the 2020 Olympics. (1:03:35) How does a climber survive financially? (1:05:30) The bill and ‘becoming the messenger’ to protect the Arctic from drilling. (1:08:58) The meaning behind his new film, Reel Rock 14. (1:11:56) How did Netflix get ahold of The Dawn Wall? (1:14:12) Featured Guest/People Mentioned  Tommy Caldwell (@tommycaldwell)  Instagram Website Kevin Jorgeson (@kjorgeson)  Instagram Alex Honnold (@alexhonnold)  Instagram Adam Ondra (@adam.ondra) Instagram Jimmy Chin (@jimmychin)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned September Promotion: MAPS Starter ½ off!! **Code “STARTER50” at checkout** The Dawn Wall The Push: A Climber's Search for the Path - Book by Tommy Caldwell Reel Rock What are you up against? | Tommy Caldwell | TEDxKC Climbers Recount Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan Kidnapped In Kyrgyzstan: The Sequel The story had it all: terrorists, high-altitude suspense and a daring escape. So why is one climbing couple obsessed with proving it didn't happen that way? The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance - Book by Steven Kotler Sport Climbing – Tokyo 2020 Olympics H.R.309 - Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act of 2019 House committee advances bill to limit Arctic refuge drilling

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. I remember when I first watched Donwall, blew my mind. Tommy Caldwell probably has one of the craziest stories it's insane. In any sport, I mean, this guy's stories are insane from how he was raised with his dad to what happened to him in what country was that that it was in?

These best, eh? No, or Kurdistan. Oh, Kurdistan. Yeah. That was crazy. And then of course, how he almost ended his rock climbing career and then the that he became the first person ever to climb the smooth side of El Capitan.

Insane story. I mean, he's for sure one of the guys responsible for really putting rock climbing on the map for the average person. I don't know, I don't know anybody that was talking about rock climbing before, you know, valley uprising, solo. I think Maru's the other one and then Don Wall. All those documentaries came out like within a year or two of each other and he talked about this. Like, they didn't realize, no one realized the popularity of it.

They didn't think that it was going to be something, you know, like to his point too. It was so compelling though. Oh, it's unbelievably compelling. Well, and when you read Rise of Superman, Rise of Superman talks a lot about rock climbers and skydivers and guys that are into this because of flow state. It's like one of the most ultimate places to chase flow

because you're in this place. Super high stakes. Yeah, super high stakes. And so it was cool that we got to talk about that a little bit in this. It's just a life experience on top of it. Bro, you could, you said it to him best after the interview. When we were talking to him, versus, Sal was like, did you literally could have made like

three movies about your life? Oh, you'll hear this interview. In this interview, there's at least there's like three events that each one of them is compelling enough to be a movie. Do you know, we didn't even touch on what kicked off his career. So he was 14 years old. He won Snowbird, which in the rock climbing world is one of the most prestigious climbing events that you can. And he was a little 14 year old.

Yeah, and his dad's video tape and while he's doing it, that's what kicked all of it off. So this dude's life has been insane. He's a badass. It's funny too, because we were looking at his hands after the only big guy. And he's got like these just these callous fingertips and these feet. I mean, you could tell this guy climbs rocks for a living. Anyway, you're going to love this episode.

He's currently promoting a new film, I believe, called The Real Rock 14. And this is about him and his partner, Alex Honald, speed climbing the nose of Al Capitan. So the idea is to try to climb that in under two hours. I think that was like the record or whatever. So that's, I can't wait to watch that. He also wrote a book called The Push. I believe this book is about when he was held captive by terrorists, when he was 21 years old on a rock climbing expedition.

He tells that whole story in this podcast you're about to listen to. You can find him on Instagram at Tommy Caldwell, Caldwell the spelled, C-A-L-D-W-E-L-L, and then the bill that he's advocating for to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling, because now he's an environmentalist, as HR 1146.

So when you listen to this episode, if you find yourself moved to donate or contribute or just help support what he's talking about, that's the bill that he's talking about. Also before we get started with the episode, I want to remind everybody, this month it's Maps Starter that's on sale, 50% off. Maps Starter is a great program to get you started with fitness with weights. So if you haven't worked out with weights for a long time, or you never have, this is the perfect program

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dot com and use the code starter 50. S-T-A-R-T-E-R 5-0, no space for the discount. You actually already sound different. I can tell that you've done a ton of interviews now. Yeah, you sound way more... I remember the first time I watched Don Wall, I felt like it was probably a little nerve-wracking having all the cameras probably in your face where you seemed like you're way more comfortable already. Yeah, maybe. I mean, the weird thing about being interviewed for the Don Wall is I was being interviewed by my best friends though.

Oh really? I would have never guessed that. Yeah, I mean even movies like Free Solo those are just made by Your friends you think I mean that's what everybody thinks they think that these movies have some big Camera crew that comes in and you don't know them and it's this weird thing being filmed But as a professional climber That's you kind of make friends with because there's only a handful of people that can film on that level. That's good to say, I guess that makes sense. And their climber is themselves.

So, do you sell the content to like a production company at that point? No, they do it all. They do it all. They are the production company. That's the filmers, the production company, their climber is their all in one. So, how does something like that then get picked up

by Netflix? How did that all, did you you guys when you were doing it? Well, did you know it was going to go to Netflix? No, definitely not. I mean, usually it's like when we were young, we were climbing one of the climbers decided one day to pick up a camera. You know, then he just then they figured out that making videos was kind of cool. So they started making these grassroots videos.

And then they, you know they eventually grew into these big production companies that create very unique content because climbing footage is just hard to get. Like I said, there's not that many people they can film from the side of a wall. How many people can film and climb to be able to catch you? There's a skill. Yeah, there's like 10.

Yeah. And so when we're climbing, we do help them though. It's like we're working together. We fix ropes. They ascend the ropes. They don't actually have to climb the rock on those faces the same way. We do, they either hike to the top with a bunch of rope

or they, where we fix ropes for them and they attach jumars, but still you're living on the side of the wall. You've got this heavy camera equipment and sound stuff and it's just not a studio type environment at all. So making high quality footage is really, really hard to do up there. And yeah, there's only handful. Do you know how much?

Do you know how much footage they had to shoot in order to kill, like for example, the clip where your partner is trying to scale, what is it? The peak 15 was at 15 when he's trying to get across and it took him for all day. Oh, yeah, pitch 15. Or pitch 15. It took him forever to get across that. How much footage do they have to shoot before they finally caught him actually getting across?

I mean, so we worked on the Don Wall for seven years. Kevin Six, me seven, and I worked on it for like, almost a year before there was a film crew involved at all. But then I gave up on the climb all together and then what actually got me back on the project was my good buddy Josh Loll who owns Big Up Productions was like, if you're not going to do this climb we should make a little film clip about this and put it out there to the next generation because we feel like this climb is the future of this type of climbing. So I went back up

there with Josh and a few friends. We shot a video and having my friends up there kind of got me re-siked about it. And then that's how Kevin Jorgensen got involved because he saw that video and he called me up. He's like, hey man, you wanna go back there? Wow. Show me how to do this. And so from that point on, it was a documentary film project.

So Kevin and I would spend two to three months a year on the wall or in Yusemite climbing on the wall and usually the film I would spend two to three months a year on the wall or in Yusemite climbing on the wall and usually the film crew would come for about three key weeks each year and then on that final season they were there for the entire 19 days that it took us to climb the route. Wow. Incredible. What has the impact on your world, the rock climbing world? What has that video done for that? Has it just made it way more popular, way more people trying it? Has there been any impact?

Yeah, no, it's definitely been impact. I mean, 15 years ago when I started climbing on Al Capitan, doing the style of climbing that I like to do big, wall free climbing, there's like three people in the world that like to do it. And now it's like the thing. It's like everybody knows about Alex Hondo. A lot of people know about the Dawn wall. There's hundreds of people there every year trying to do these big wall free climbs.

So that world specifically has grown a lot, but there's just the world of climbing has exploded. For a lot of reasons, I mean, I think the fact that modern day media has made it visually really interesting. Like, people understand it now is part of it, but also it's just such a great fitness tool. Like, people love going to the climbing gym and there's climbing gyms in every major city now.

So it's become like a more fun way to work out for a lot of people and things like American Ninja Warrior, like climbers look, like jacked and badass, and so they're seeing as, you know, at least especially competition climbers, it's seen as a really good way to just like get strong. And then it's going to be in the Olympics in the next Olympics. So it's just a lot of, there's just a lot of things happening right now. Well, now I watched Don Wall with my kids and they were, my son is 14 now, my daughter's nine and they were completely mesmerized and my son wanted to know more information.

So I watched one of your TED talks and in both those, there's mention of your relationship with your dad and I think my son really connected with that quite a bit because him and I have a similar close type of relationship and a lot of your drive came from according to what you've said your father a lot of your ability to overcome adversity tell me a little bit more about that relationship that you had with them because I found that absolutely fascinating and I'd like to know more I mean my dad's a pretty magnetic personality in general. He's a school teacher.

He has this love of helping kids find strength in themselves. And I was like the perfect test subject because not only was I was his son, but I was pretty small and really shy. And so he's like, I could use the outdoors and the mountains to kind of breathe strength into this guy, give him confidence. Because he was like a bodybuilder.

Yeah, he was a bodybuilder. Literally. And 80s, he was a bodybuilder. But he was also a mountain guy. So bodybuilding I think lasted like five or six years for him. Climbing was always this thing, other than those five or six years. And so...

And you were like a small kid, you weren't... Yeah, I was a little. Oh, he was taking you on like crazy climbs when you were like a baby, right? Yeah, yeah, really, really. From the age of three, we were getting out and doing big rock climbs, so getting way off the ground. Yeah, I was doing, I did my first like legitimate big wall climb, which is like a, you know, face that's thousands of feet tall when I was like 12. But even before that, I was hiking around in the mountains and running from thunderstorms and doing things that at that time made most parents, most of his peers think that he was kind of insane.

Like, I almost, you know, he honestly almost killed me off on many occasions when I was pretty young. Like, he was very bold with me in a way that I admire, but I try to tone it down slightly with my own children. Do you have an example of a time when that happened? Um, yeah, I mean, so, I mean, for my seventh birthday, I spent like running from this crazy thunderstorm, like it was my first time up in the hot, up in the top, up high on a mountain

where lightning was striking close enough that you were getting ground shocks, like you could feel it in your spine. My dad got a little bit of arcing going on between his wool hat and his hair. So, we lived in the Colorado Rocky, so lightning is a very common occurrence there. But you know, as a seven-year-old,

that stuff's pretty intense. My dad was brought to life by that stuff. He's got this quality that I really admire in people called joyful massacism. Like, I call that when things get real, when things get legit, he lights up, you know? And I definitely inherited that from him. They get excited.

That's hilarious. Yeah. Now, when I said you were small, because I watched one of your TED talks, and you talked about being kind of small, skinny, awkward, then you have this big, bigger than life muscular, Superman type of dad. Did you ever feel insecure?

Did he make you feel empowered? Like, how was that? I mean, I always felt insecure at school or around peers. Like, I was super shy around other people, but my time with my dad was like another world for me. That was exciting. Like, there was no chance for me to ever get addicted to video games or something like that because our world outside together was so exciting and intense. He dragged

me all over the world. For my 12th, when I was 12, it took me to Bolivia and to Europe and we climbed some of the biggest mountains in the Alps and in Bolivia. And so we were just going, constantly going around doing super cool stuff from a really young age. Do you think that being raised that way is what led to you being able to save your life in the lives of your friends when you were held captive during that whole event? Yeah, I'm in certain. I think that I've done a lot. I've done quite a bit of thinking about that.

So in Kyrgyzstan, when me and our whole team got kidnapped, yeah, if you don't mind telling the audience, I might have to give a little context. Yeah, yeah, a little context. Because that is just an insane story. I would love if you shared it with our audience. Right, I can try and do a brief version of it. But, uh, yeah, when I was 21 years old, my first big international climbing expedition was to Southwest

Kyrgyzstan. And, uh, it was a North Face sponsored trip. And I was actually not a North Face athlete. I was just, I was just kind of like a Tag 1 boyfriend. My girlfriend at the time was at North Face sponsored athlete. And I, I was just kind of like a tag-on boyfriend. My girlfriend at the time was a North Face sponsor to athlete. And I was there to help the production crew make a film about the trip, actually. But we went into this place that has some of the coolest really good quality big walls in the world. And it's in a very remote region, probably about 50 miles from the nearest road we had to helicopter in. And in this year of 2000, it turns out that a group called the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan

was the political situations kind of complicated, but essentially they were trying to pave an opium trade trail through the mountains to get drugs from one country to the other. And when the high mountain passes melt out in August, they And when the high mountain passes, melt out in August, they came over the high mountain passes and the curgey's military came to combat,

and basically battle this group to not let them through in this many war broke out. We were kind of at the point of collision between these two forces. The rebels got to us first, the Islamic movement, Oizbekistan. We're taking hostage, we're actually a thousand feet up on a wall sleeping in our portal edges, and they came to the base, the Islamic movement, Ouyah Uzbekistan. We're taking hostage, we're actually a thousand feet up on a wall sleeping in our portal edges

and they came to the base of the wall, they shot up at us. That's how we knew we had to come down. Now you didn't know about this going there, did you? No, no, no. You find this out. Now this is a very, very unlucky situation. There has been things like this that have happened

subsequently in different places like in Pakistan and so forth, where these rebel groups come into these high mountain camps, but we were kind of the first to really encounter it. We didn't have much of a way of knowing that this could happen. So you guys are sleeping up on the wall because you're trying to climb something and you hear gunshots. Gunshots and bullets was... Yeah, gunshots. There was a there was like a ceiling like a roof of rock above us. And at first they were just shooting. And so we thought it was rock fall or something, but pretty, but after a few shots, these bullets started to hit this roof of

rock above us. And it was, that's how we woke up. It was like six o'clock in the morning. It was just twilight. And so once that happened, we realized we're being shot at. We had a big, long telephoto camera lens. We were able to look a thousand feet down on the ground and see these guys that were in army of fatigues with big guns. And see through your hands up and just like, how did you handle that? Like how did you, what did you guys do in React after that?

Well, we took our time actually. We sat there, we discussed what to do. It's pretty obvious that they're good shots. We had two portal edges, which are like our hanging cots, and they were about three feet apart, and they were managing to get bullets right between them. So they had so you're like, we're not going to be able to get away. Yeah, they had some pretty accurate like sniper style rifle. And did it seem like they were just trying to give you warning shots to get your ass down, and they weren't actually trying to kill you at that moment. Right. Okay. Right. Yeah. It didn't seem like we were trying to be killed. And at first we're like,

hopefully they're just gonna rob us or something. So the oldest member of our expedition went down first, John Dickie. We had, we had exactly a thousand feet of rope with us. And so we tied all our ropes together, went, you know, he went all the way to the ground. We had walkie talkies. He got to the ground and then encountered this pretty scary scene of these guys that were wearing a mixture of army fatigues and western mountaineering equipment that they have obviously stolen from another climbing expedition. Because there was a Jason Valley that had a bunch of other climbers in it that they basically encountered first. Oh, wow.

And then they came over to our side. And they took us hostage. And they had lots of guns and grenades and their heavily armed. This was a very visually obvious, like a rebel force to be contended with. And so once John got down, he was like, you guys got to come down here. There's no options. So we came down and they ushered us back to our base camp, which it turns out they had already been to.

They had slashed open our tents, rummaged through all our gear, and they had taken a local curgey's soldier and the way that those valleys work is there's these nomadic yak herders essentially that live in these valleys But usually there's one like military person that also he's basically just a Like a nomadic yak herder that the military hires

And they'd taken him hostage and He looked very serious. He had blood on his pants And so we're as we're at our camp to kind of surveying the scene They told us to start packing things up and hiding them in the bushes and as this happened a helicopter flew up the valley from below and they started a panic and they said grab all your stuff Hide it in the bushes and so this helicopter flew over and we were hiding in the bushes and all of our stuff was hidden But our tents had been there for a week so all the grass had died where were. And so I think to the helicopter, it was obvious that that's where we had been. And so that's when the curgis military started

to kind of invade the valley, and things got serious real quick. We started to run, we had to abandon everything, all of our food, warm clothes, everything, and start running under gumpoint down the valley. We got to the convergence of these two rivers and we went across this bridge and up this one hillside

as really the main force of the curries military came in on the other side and this major gun battle erupted around us. And you were in the middle of this? Yeah, we're on one side of the valley. They are on the other side, probably like, maybe 500 or 800 feet apart. And we were hiding behind this huge boulder.

And as soon as actually not like a car-sized boulder. And as soon as the gunfire, like the real battle started, they shot that curky soldier. His name was Tarat, they just shot him in the head. Right in front of you. Yeah. And we had to sort of lay on his body to avoid getting shot for the next three or four hours as this battle rate. As this is going on, yeah. Yeah, as this is going on, Tom,

your 21, obviously you've never seen someone get shot before, you've never been, what's going through your mind? Are you like trying to stay calm or you've just freaking out? It's a bit of both. I mean you actually It's I mean, it's it's surreal like I had never experienced the kind like I'd been used to dealing with fear and danger But this is a different kind sure and I think it like even now looking back at it It just seems absolutely surreal like it almost doesn't feel real looking back at it, it just seems absolutely surreal. Like it almost doesn't feel real. But I think that like the human instinct is to actually

react quite well. Like our team started to band together really look after each other. I remember Beth, my girlfriend, when we're behind the boulder. She wasn't sure that I had seen Tara at the time. So she kept trying to like keep my, had me try to like look in her face so that I had seen Tara at the time, so she kept trying to keep my, had me try to look in her face so that I wouldn't see him there.

But I did, I had seen him. And you're just reacting as best you can. Holy cow, so from there, the gunfire starts to die down and then you guys, well, it got dark, actually. That's what enabled us to flee the scene of the battle. As soon as it got dark, we, with our four captors at this point, sort of fled up over this ridge that was behind us away from, in other direction, from the Kirge soldiers. And then we spent the next six days in captivity hiding, essentially, being hunted by the curgism military. So during the night hours, we would kind of sneak from one location to the next.

We didn't really know where we're going. We ended up just kind of making this big loop over six days. And then during the day, we would hide underboulders or kind of like bury ourselves in thick brush and have to lay perfectly still for all the daylight hours. Wow. Are you able to drink or eat or anything at this point too or you guys nothing?

We had abandoned everything except I had actually grabbed a small bag with five or six power bars in it. And so each day we would split one power bar between, well, and it'd be in six of us because after that, we fled with four soldiers, but on that first night, two of them just disappeared. We never knew what happened to him. So for the majority of our six days of captivity, it was four climbers and two soldiers. And so we would split one power bar between all of us. And then I would say about once a day, we would come across some water source, some stream running down a mountain side that we could, that we could guzzle a bunch of water. And then at what point, because I know what

eventually happens, but at what point are you starting to think like, I got to do something or we got to do something, because this is because this is an Emily gonna end up us being killed or when does that start turning in your head, like this is not going the way we want it to go and I'm like, I gotta get us out of this. Yeah, so the head of our expedition, this guy Jason Singer is the one who put it together, he instantly started to strategize. And we all were kind of strategizing, but I feel like he was like one step ahead of us. And so on that first night after we fled, you know, we fled over that hillside when it

was dark, we got to this raging river and we didn't know if the Kyrgyz military was pursuing us at that point. And the two Kyrgyz soldiers were trying to figure out how to get across this river. It seemed pretty dangerous. It was this very fast-moving river. And then Jason grabbed this log. They started trying to awkwardly push this dead tree across the river, but it was too heavy.

They couldn't get it across. And the idea was to push it across, and then we would climb across that. And so Jason grabbed the tree and just jumped into this waste deep raging river and pulled this tree across the river in this very heroic moment. It seemed like he was kind of like fighting to not get swept away by the current. And so he managed to pull it across and then we were all able to climb across this tree. And when we got to the other side, the soldiers looked at Jason and they're like, sold-ahd, which means soldier.

And they were like, this guy's like a soldier. He's helping us. Like, we're in this together. And that was strategic on his part. He wanted them to think that we were super tough, that we were with them. We were on their side. We were trying to, we're in this together. And so they really, yeah, that created this sort of

era of trust. So for the next six days, they were still careful about how they treated us. Like they would split us up during the day when we would hide. We would be split into two groups just so that, you know, it'd be weaker that way. But they did let us talk to each other. And so we would talk, and we didn't speak the same language at all, they spoke no English at all. And so we were able to talk strategy of how to escape the whole time.

But we would just sort of like make it seem like we were talking about something else. Like we would give them code names and we would talk in sort of this Lausier fair attitude and you know, we would try and like laugh in the middle of the stuff. Like I'm gonna push them off this cliff. Yeah, like that. Wow, wow, was there, did you, what happens next? Because I don't want to jump ahead.

But it feels like there was this, you know, you guys knew your recaptives, but they started trusting you. Did you guys start developing a strange kind of relationship where you're like, okay, we're kind of cool, kind of not, depending on each other type of deal? I think in a lot of ways, we had the upper hand because we, they did believe that we were with them. We were always helping them, giving them food.

We had the only food, we would give them food. They got to the point where they would hand us their guns at times, trying to climb up over things, and then they would hand them back. But the whole time, we were like, we have to find a way to escape. And when they handed the gun, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, I had to be tempting. I'm going to, you know, blast these guys. Yeah, but, yeah, especially Jason, but none of us really knew how to use the guns.

Yeah, there was another guy with another gun right there. And so it seemed pretty sketchy. Like we would, we would sit there and we'd look at the guns and Jason and I were always, during the day, we were together and we would talk about, like there's the safety and this is how you use the thing. And so it was always in the back of our mind. What a scary thought though, because I agree with you.

You would think, okay, grab the gun and shoot him. But if you've never shot like an AK-47, like, what if there's no bullets in it? What if the safety's on? Yeah, and the guy who knows how to use it is standing right next to you. Yeah, your fault. That would be so scary.

Sure. Now, at some point, one of them breaks off from you guys, and you're left with just one captive. Yeah, so we spent six days basically wandering around and wasting away, getting progressively weaker. Jason and John, the two other male members of the expedition, the whole time they're like,

our chance for escape is to overtake these guys. Shoot them, hit them in the head with rocks, push them off a cliff, something like this. Beth and I were more like, we should just try and outlast them. Like they hiked over this big mountain pass to get to us, it seems too risky to try and overtake them. I think we can outlast them. So we spent six days and then on that six day,

what happened is the main guy of dual decided that we needed food. We certainly did need food. And so he was going to head back to our base camp and try and find some food. And he instructed us to climb up this really big, like 2,000 foot mountain side. And it was nighttime.

It was hard to tell at that moment how steep that mountain side actually was. And so he was going to go back to our camp and then kind of circle around. And then we were going to rendezvous on top. So So he left and all the sun were left with just one remaining captor. This guy, Sharapov, was his name. He's like an 18 year old, hired mercenary. We're climbing the steep mountain.

He's got a big gun. He's in military boots. We're all wearing these kind of like lightweight climbing sneakers. And you guys are climbers. And we're climbers. We're super comfortable in this terrain. He is terrified. And it's just like dead obvious

that this is our chance to escape. And then on top of that, there's like rain in the air. A storm was kind of brewing. And we had been really lucky that I hadn't stormed for the last six days because we're at 11,000 feet in elevation. We have no warm clothing.

Every, every, I mean, we're at 11,000 feet in elevation, we have no warm clothing, every, every, I mean, we're probably in and out of hypothert, states of hypothermia for a lot of these six days. We'd all lost like 20 pounds, I mean it was dire. And I was thinking to myself that maybe we're not going to be able to outlast these guys, like if it rains, we're just all going to perish here on the mountain, we're just going to freeze the death. So, as we're climbing up this mountain, we decide that Beth and I will stay ahead and sort of figure out the route that we need to take.

And they will assist Cheripov from below, like at point out handholds and folds and help him over the sections. So he's totally relying on you guys to climb this. Yeah. You guys are helping him at the moment. Yeah, it's fully trust us at that point. And so the plan is for them to get him into a spot where we're above, you know, a big, steep cliff and just shove him off the edge. And so that was the plan. I didn't want to have anything to do with that really because I mean, we had watched him

shoot this curgie soldier. We'd seen a lot of carnage and I was just like, no, I don't, you know, like I'd rather. Like who were we to take somebody else's life? Like, what a struggle. Yeah, yeah. And so that's why Beth and I were kind of ahead. We were just like not gonna deal with it. But it turns out that it's really hard to push somebody

off a cliff, like you can think about it for days, but actually making that happen, maybe if you're a trained soldier or something, maybe it's a bit easier, but, you know, Jason and John just like couldn't bring themselves to do it. So as we got close to the top of the mountain, Cherpav saw that we were gonna top out, and he was gonna be away from the exposure,

which he really didn't like the exposure. So we got kinda excited, he started to scramble ahead of us and I turned to Beth and I was like, you know, our chance is going to be over. Like, do you think I should do this? And she didn't say anything. And so I took that as that she'd be okay with it. So I scrambled up behind him and right before he was about to kind of top out the mountain, I grabbed his gun strap and I pulled him off and watched him fall about 20 or 30 feet,

hit a ledge and then bounce off into the blackness. And so I was convinced that I'd killed him. Wow. Now, when I watched you talk about this the first time, I want to hear you talk about it now. But when I watched you talk about this the first time, when I hear you talk about it now, you can hear the just reconciling that you may have killed a man or heard a man, how difficult was that moment for you?

Cause it's like you did it and then afterwards we like, man, what happened? I mean, I think there was a big moral, like, dilemma in my mind because I was like, I was shy. I was really like kindhearted. I never wanted to kill anybody. I was like the farthest thing from a macho man you could ever really imagine. So I wasn't proud in any way. And then plus this guy, Sharapov, like I said, he was a 18-year-old hired mercenary. He didn't know what he was

getting into by joining onto this rebel force. I thought to myself, if I was born in his situation, I might be right there with him. So killing somebody like that is just super unfortunate. You don't want to have to do that. Did you struggle with feeling like it might change who you are and who you identify as? Yeah, I did. I was worried. I was worried about judgments.

Once I got back, I didn't know if there's legal ramifications. I mean, there's just a mill. There's like too much going on to really sort through it. And I would say that continued, like the trauma from that experience continued for probably to this day, honestly. Like it's still, like the trauma from that experience continued for probably to this day, honestly. Like it's still, like there's a,

there's a, I mean, it was like this ripple effect that has changed who I am and all the four of us are in so many ways that I'm still trying to kind of come to grips with. Do you think that it was almost necessary for you to be able to accomplish the Don Wall? I think so. I mean, it did a bunch of things for me.

On one hand, I was really... I had a lot of despair about killing somebody, but on the other hand, there's kind of empowering because I was like, when everybody wonders if something real serious happens to them, are they going to have the skills? Are they going to be able to react and do it happen? Do what's necessary to get them out of that? And so at least I had that. And then it also, as a professional climber, it gave me some tools. Like those days were so physically painful and scary that it reset my bar for that kind of stuff. Whenever I would go out in the mountains afterwards and we'd be on some 30-hour push without sleep

or something that was scary, I'd think back to Kyrgyzstan. I'm like, this is not safe shit. This is nothing compared to that. It made me realize that when we think we're at our breaking points, like really, we're not even close. Well, we had tough for them within. Yeah, we're way tougher than we think. Like we had to push ourselves way beyond what I ever

thought we humanly could in those six days. And it wasn't just that last moment. It was like not eating for six days, being unbelievably stressed, and then having to climb this big mountainside. And then, you know, we think we're like on the verge of death and then I push the guy and all the sudden we're adrenaline, and we sprint for like eight miles down Valley. So I think it built this huge curiosity

about the limits of human capability. And as professional climbers, that's what we're always toying with. That's what we're trying to find. So if all of a sudden that barrier gets blown out of the water, it's, is useful. Do you think you guys would have been killed if you never did that?

I think there's a chance we would have just frozen to death and perished up on the mountain. Either that, or we would have, or it's Abdul, the leader, would have found us again. And we would have ended up in some, you know, prison or camp or something. Now he ended up, the guy you pushed off the ledge, did he die or did he end up not? So we thought he was dead, but about three months after we returned, a reporter actually figured out that he had survived

and he was in prison in Kyrgyzstan. So did you found that out three months after? Yeah, wow. Okay. How did you feel like, how did that change things for you? Well, it was such a weird time for a lot of reasons. Well, there was this weird thing that happened. We came back in this media explosion happened.

Like there was people knocking at our doors trying to track us down. The story was a big story. And then, seemingly out of the blue, there was a other Alpon climber who decided that we had made the whole thing up and he started trying to spread this story about us making the whole thing up.

And he was actually the one, or his wife was the one that found out that the guy was survived. So at first we're like, he's lying, he's got some, because it seemed unfathomable that the guy had actually lived, but he had gone to Kyrgyzstan and he found out that the guy lived

and it kind of fueled his story about us lying about the whole thing. And so, um, and so first we didn't believe it, but then we saw pictures and we're like, yep, that's him. This happened. And so then, um, Jason and John went to Kyrgyzstan with the guy named Greg Child that was writing a book about our whole situation.

And they interviewed him in jail. Oh shit. And then, and then date line also decided to make date line NBC decided to make an episode about this whole thing. And, and so all this, all this like media stuff is going on. And John Bershard was the guy's name who had found out that he was alive. So John was like fueling this one side of the story. And then dateeline actually solved it all because they just, they got the guy on video and Kyrgyzstan and they just straight up asked,

like the whole thing had come down to this point of like, did he get pushed, did he not get pushed? Because at first he's like, we made up the whole story, nothing happened, but then obviously a war happened, people got killed. And it's like, they just embellished the thing. And so it all came down to like, did he get pushed? Did they escape by pushing the in the eye. And, um, so that had to piss you off.

Oh, I'm tremendously. What that did to your life and how that impacted you like that, I would be fucking pissed that people were calling me a liar about something that I'm not proud of that I did, you know? Yeah, I'd be going to pay for gas in the gas station and I'd hear people like whisper about, did you hear about those Americans that, or did you hear about those kids in Kyrgyzstan that just made up this story? It really started to catch hold. But then day line, they just got them on camera and they're like, did you get pushed?

And he's like, yep, I got pushed. And so the story was basically cool. Now, how has that been for you? Cause I would think that somebody who's into rock climbing is kind of an introvert, private person, into your being out in nature. And now you've got fucking cameras and media. All eyes on you.

Yeah, what's that transition been like for your life? I mean, back then I didn't know how to deal with it. I just like, receded into a whole essentially. Like me, I ended up marrying Beth, who was the other girl. And we lived, I mean, we're a professional climber, so we had to be somewhat public in a way, but we tried to avoid that as much as possible and just do our own thing,

and that's how I lived for 10 years, because I just, I didn't know how to deal with it, like people, it exposed both the good and the bad of humanity in a lot of ways. Like, I kind of started to hate the press in a lot of ways, but then after some years of reflection, I was like, well, you just, you can't control what people think.

Actually, most people are really good. There's always gonna be a few lunatics out there and you can't worry about that. So I went through a whole evolution. Now, how long after that event, did you have your almost career ending hand injury? That was like a year later. So a year after that, you're,

and what were you doing exactly when this happened? I was just building a stand for, like Beth and I had bought this little 600 square foot rundown cabin, we were remodeling it. I had bought some books at the Home Depot on how to like build stuff. I didn't know what I was doing. Barrow to table saw, chopped off my finger.

Oh, and it wasn't just any finger. It's one of the more important, it's your index finger. Isn't that one of the more important ones for climbing? Yeah, yeah. I've heard of your explain. Now it's important, I suppose. Yeah, it's pretty important.

In particular, there's a grip that you guys use, right? With your thumb over your index finger in order to give you kind of a strong grip. And so you lost your index finger, and for all intents and purposes, it's everybody's probably like, well, you're done. You're done being a pro or whatever. Yeah, I mean, definitely everybody thought that.

And it was at a time where I really needed climbing. Like climbing was, it was always the bright thing in my life, it was the only thing I was really that good at, it's kind of what I focused on. And after Kyrgyzstan, I was like, I need something that brings me happiness. And so climbing was that. And I would, Beth and I had figured out a way

to do it full time. So it was, you know, we were still recovering from Kyrgyzstan, but in a lot of ways we lived a very, very amazing life. And all of a sudden, cutting off my finger, I was like, well, that's done now, too. But, I don't know, the way that it all played out was pretty interesting. I chopped off my finger, we went to the hospital.

I spent, my parents showed up at the hospital, they had talked to the doctors, they were like, climbing is what he does, you need to do everything you can. I ended up in hospital. I spent, my parents showed up at the hospital. They talked to the doctors, they were like, climbing is what he does. You need to do everything you can. I ended up in the intensive care unit, which doesn't normally happen for a finger. They went to all lengths to try and reattach this thing. So I went through three surgeries,

had a bunch of blood transfusions. They kind of did everything. They could try and reattach this thing and make it work, but it just didn't work. So after a couple of weeks, a doctor came into the room. He sat me down and he said, we've done everything we can. Your finger's dead. We're going to have to remove it once and for all. And then he said, I think you should think about what, start thinking about what else you want to do in life. And he just kind of verbalized

my biggest fear because he's like, you're not going to be able to be a professional climber. So, I just like sat there and listened to that, he got up and left, and then shortly thereafter Beth looked at me and he's like, fuck that guy. Yeah, did you let that like come in at all or were're just immediately like no way. I mean for a moment I did, but I think that I, you know, I really wanted to still climb and there's something liberating about taking away all expectation, like nobody expected me to come back from that injury.

Oh, here the underdog now. Yeah, and I didn't expect to come back from that in that injury. So any success that I had going forward was exceeding my own expectations. And everybody else's expectations, which is actually very liberating. So I came out of the hospital, I went to the climbing gym

and I was like, you know, it feels weird, but I can actually still climb. And that was sort of uplifting. And then I was like, maybe I should start training and see how far I can take this. And it just became like this incredible flywheel that just started spinning faster and faster and faster. And it ultimately fueled this incredible drive.

Like I became way more serious and way more dedicated than I ever had been about climbing. And ultimately, I made these goals of climbs that I had failed on with all my fingers. If I can do these two climbs, if I can do these two climbs, I'll prove to myself that I still have it. So within a year I had done both those climbs and then I just kept on going. That's when I got really, really involved in LCAP and I spent about 10 years thriving. I'm certain that I

would never be at the place that I am now without those two excuses. You have to explain for the audience the difficulty of LCAP at hand in comparison to most rock climbing. I mean rock climbing has got so many different facets. What I'm interested in is big wall free climbing, which are the biggest walls in the world. El Cap is center stage. El Capitan is center stage because it's sort of the best rock and it sits right in the heart of you so many national parks. So it's also the most accessible.

But yeah, what I try and do is climb these really, really long, big, hard roots on big walls. Right. And explain to the audience the dawn wall. This is the part of al-capitan that is nobody to ever climb because it was basically smooth. There's like very difficult, not much you can do on there to climb it. Yeah, generally, generally, when you go and climb a big wall, you show up at the base with binoculars

and you start looking for weaknesses, for crack systems, for holds to grab on to. And so all of the roots before the dawn wall on LCAP followed these pretty obvious weaknesses, these crack systems. I spent 12 years in my life climbing all those roots and I got to the point where I knew more about climbing on that wall than anybody because I had more experience and I realized that these very very blank, steep looking sections of the wall are actually possible to climb. If you train yourself, if you train properly and you learn how to grab onto these really, really small holds, and then if you stick at it long enough, you can kind of like rehearse these routines

to get through these blank sections of rock that seem absolutely impossible from afar. And I think that's one thing that I found really interesting, something that to me at one point had seemed absurd, like completely ludicrous, now seemed possible. And to everybody else, it seemed absolutely ludicrous too, but I knew so much about it that I was like, if I spend enough time on this climb, maybe I can figure it out. And then on top of that, I was still looking for,

I was still really curious about the limits of human capability. Like Kyrgyzstan had opened that up inside of me, but I had never truly tested it. So I was looking for something that would truly test that. And so, yeah, that's how the Dawn wall came to be as essentially. Are there specific pitches that are like still in grain

in your hand to where you could even think like left hand here, right hand, here, left foot here? Because you've had to rehearse it so many times. Yeah, it's probably like learning a language or something. Like, you, I mean, we had to learn, you know, hundreds of thousands of micro details. And the hardest climbing, you have to not only memorize the holds and the sequence that you grab them,

you have to memorize every minute body position. It's very much like having a, you know, very complicated gymnastics routine or something that lasts days and days and days and having to like memorize every tiny little foot movement in the angle of your feet and the angle of your hips and the distance that your elbow is from the wall and all this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, there's sections that I could still rehearse, but now it's been four years,

so some of that stuff's getting slightly fuzzy. There was a point, I'd say when we finished the climb, I probably could have sat in the studio and been like, okay, you walked to the base of the wall and you put your right hand on this little edge that places phases slightly left and you put your index finger on this sharp little point and you put your, you know, and I could have like explained in such detail that it would have taken me like two days to experience. Was there like literally no improvisation at all? It was all like in your head.

There was some improvisation for sure. Like the hardest sections you had to memorize with that amount of detail, but then the easier sections you would, we didn't spend nearly as much time on those and so we were able to sort of just get through them every time. And we could have endlessly worked on it and gotten better and better at climbing each section.

Now one thing too about the Don Wallet, I just, I loved this part that he came back for your partner. I thought that that was like one of the coolest, the coolest things in terms of like, you could have finished. You could have finished and your partner would have still been there, but you went back for him.

Yeah, you know, that's interesting. Like the movie probably helped me appreciate that a bit more than I did even in the moment. I mean, I grew up in this culture of climbers and of mountaineers. And, you know, like when you hear those stories of people leaving their dead partner up on the mountain on Everest, those are the kind of stories

that we despise. Like those are not climbers, you know? Those are not the heart of what we do. So the idea of going up with Kevin and not topping out with him, like that wasn't even a question. Oh wow. I mean, it was a bit of a question. I knew that it was a possibility,

but I had this physical adversion towards having that happen. Almost like it's not worth it. Yeah, right. It would have just been, it just would have been sad overall. And then that seven year journey on the Donwall was, it was like such a magical time in life that in my mind, if we didn't top out that year, we'd come back the next year and the journey would just continue.

Like at some point, it was no longer about finishing the climbing. It was just about that adventure that we were having and what we were learning and how we were growing through that experience. The top was finishing it in the end was much less of a big deal in my mind. Now explain the process of this seven-year journey. You're going there, you said earlier, you're spending two or three months kind of creating a path. So are you basically just living out there for that long, figuring out ways to go up

and then you gotta go home, and then the next year you come back and then you try and add to that and so on? I mean, I formatted my life for the majority of those years to try and become a better climber in that specific way that the Don Roll Wall required. So usually two to four months a year, we'd be in eustemity. And when we're in eustemity,

about half that time would be up on the wall, living out of our portal ledges. What's the longest time you spent up there? When we finally did it, 19 days was the longest time. But we'd go up there for like four or five days at a time and then come down and kind of go up and down. You know, we'd go up,

I mean, it's a pretty harsh environment to live in. You can imagine. And you're hanging up the side of the grid. Yeah, and the climbing is really hard. So usually when you're up there, you just progressively get weaker and weaker. So you have to come down and eat good food and recover and rest. So we go up, get beat down, come back down, rest, and kind of go up and down. And then we got so efficient at going up and down

that by the end we would sometimes just go up for the evening and work on the hard pitches in the middle of the wall and then come back down. Wow, and now I'm sure you get this question asked all the time, none of us are climbers. How does it work going to the bathroom? You're up on the wall, you're hanging. You gotta take a shit.

That's funny, that's such a nice, like, look out below. That is probably the most common question. Of course, like when people come to Semney and they see people up there, that's the first thing they can do. Don't get too close. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you have to bring a container, essentially. So you're next to your buddy and you're like, hey man, I'm gonna take a dump right now. Yeah, right, that's, yeah. You have to eat something. You're literally sitting right next to your buddy. I mean, you live on these little portal edges,

which are like seven feet long and three feet wide. I'm getting there right now hearing you talk. My hands are getting sweaty. I'm like feet feel tingling. Imagining hanging off of a wall, that high. And then sleeping, do you sleep good? You sleep really good. Yeah, because, I mean, when you're not in the portal edge,

there's nothing, right? You're hanging in your harness, you're hanging on the small holds. The wind is usually whipping by. The sun is really intense. It just feels very uncomfortable until you get in that portal edge. And now, at least you're in your sleeping bag. You have some or something underneath you like, you know, comfort is, is a matter of perspective. And so, You know, comfort is a matter of perspective. And so comparatively, the portalege feels like a wonderfully comfortable luxury hotel. Exactly.

Is it hard for you to, do you find it more challenging to live in what most people would consider regular life, like this kind of life here versus living that kind of a life where you're driving towards this insane, what most people consider a possible goal, living on the side of a mountain half time, and being away from most, quote unquote, normal regular people, is that more comfortable for you than this type of world? Oh, I mean, I'm addicted to the stimulus of it, I suppose,

and I definitely crave it constantly. I wouldn't say that it's more comfortable though. Like when you're up, when you're on a big climbing expedition and everything just is painful, you crave home. You want those creature comforts. But then when you're home, you crave that. So I just try and strike the balance as best I can.

Has anybody else climbed that wall? Not since you've done that? Yeah, so there's this phenomenal climber from the Czech Republic, name Adam Andra, who is absolute, you know, like he's dominated every aspect of rock climbing there is. And he came in about three years after we did it, he managed to repeat the climb.

Wow. Is there competitiveness amongst all you guys, or are you guys all close? No, there's competitiveness, but I'd say for the most part, it's real friendly competitiveness. Like there's a great culture of camaraderie. Like when Adam Andro came,

it was a big deal in climbing because he is the world's best by like miles. and um we gave him every bit of information that we could we came and we taught him how to do some the logistical things that's cool so there's the need to be done and so that's that's just what you do it's always it's always really good-hearted now how do you guys measure who the best in the world is like how's that how's that getting measured is it a time thing at this point, or like, you know, climate backwards? Like, how are they gonna top it? I mean, there's various metrics. So, generally, the easiest way, historically,

to measure the best in the world is two ways. There's climbing competitions, where they set these artificial roots, like snow bird, like your first big one. Okay. Yeah. And generally, the way those work is they make the roots harder and harder as you go up. And so the person who makes it the highest wins.

But also every climb is given a number grade by the first ascensionists. And then that can be adjusted by subsequent ascents. But the real experience climbers can just climb a route and be like, oh, that feels like 514. And so the people that climb the hardest number grades, I suppose, are considered the best. So explain that, because that was one of the things

I found interesting too, is how you guys grade pitches on the difficulty, you just said 514. Like what is the hardest and explain to how many L-capitan has in comparison to most other places? So yeah, so on the dawn wall, there are a couple pitches that are 514C or D. Currently, the hardest climb in the world is 515C. 5.1 is the kind of thing that most people could just do, even if they're non-climbers, and then 515C is the hardest in the world. So it's just like a scale, yeah, a scale in between them.

Are there rivalries between different types of climbers, like people who climb, like what you do versus like mountaineers, versus like... Bolder. Yeah, I watched a documentary on some of the first climbers in Yosemite and there was one guy who would just hammer it, you know, hammer in nails into the wall and climb like that. And he had a rivalry with another guy who's like, that's not climbing and go up and break his, he'd like to use a chisel and chisel out his, the guy's nails and say, those don't belong, are are there rivals re-s like that still? Yeah, less than there used to be.

Like the ethics of climbing are constantly being debated. I would say those like camp-fired debates where people that get real heated or they're like almost, like when that happens, you're like, oh, those are just like old guys, they're not. Now, people are much more respectful and accepting of all the various styles of climbing, but it used to be people would try and draw

this little circular ethically around exactly the style of climbing that they were the best at and tell everybody else that that didn't count. And that was good and bad. I mean, there was a lot of ego involved, but it also preserved the environment in some ways. In Europe, they just, they take power drills and they put in anchor bolts all over the place.

The ethics of you, somebody didn't allow that, which preserved the adventure. So now you have to do a style of climbing, called track climbing, where you bring your little, your little kid of tools, your cams, and your nuts, and you place them in cracks, and the climbing is more dangerous for sure. But that risk assessment in the game, your cams and your nuts and you play some in cracks and the climbing is more dangerous for sure,

but that risk assessment and figuring out how to make things that are dangerous safe is a very exciting part of it. And that doesn't exist as much in Europe because they've just bolted everything. Do you find normal life boring? I mean there are certain aspects like a Caribbean cruise is probably my worst nightmare which I had to do. I had to do one of those both things. I mean one really cool thing is you know I think I was ignorant at one point in my life I thought this world of adventure climbing was like like we had found this key to life to excitement to happiness, and only climbers had this. I lived in this community of incredibly vibrant, like life-loving, very athletic, just people that operated on this really high level. I thought climbing is what provided that.

Since the dawn while I've gone around, and I've done all these big speaking conferences, and I've met high-achieving people from all different disciplines, and, you know, climbing is just one avenue, you know, and it really exists everywhere. So, you know, what is normal life? It can be different for everyone. Well, that's a chasing flow. Have you, have you read Rise of Superman by chance? Yes, yeah. So when you say that's what that is, that's chasing flow, right?

Right. And there's other aspects of life that you could chase flow in. Absolutely. Do you recall moments of when you're climbing where you feel that flow state? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think about it constantly. And I think there are several levels,

the way I think about it, is there several levels of flow state, but that sort of like optimum flow state, which that book, Rising Rise of Superman, talks about where the body chemical start flowing, and you time slows down, and all of a sudden you feel super human almost in a way. I feel like I've only experienced that sort of flow,

maybe three or four times in my life. Oh really? And, but you remember those moments and you spend your life pursuing them in ways. Take us through, take us through those. Yeah, what were those moments? I mean, so they have to be, there has to be a lot of stake.

Right, a death defying on walls. Yeah, yeah, either death defying. So I've had a few where something went wrong. Like I'm on the side of some big climb and the, you know, the mountain starts to fall apart and I'm looking at some giant, like deathly fall and I just like react and manage to pull it off and not have that fall.

So that's happened to me a couple of times. But it actually did happen on the Don Wall too after seven years of working on this thing, the hardest section pitch, 14 for me was the hardest pitch. I experienced that flow state, like suddenly after seven years of struggling

and it feeling nearly impossible. So much was at stake that I got to this moment where I just floated through it suddenly. And I was like, wow, what just happened? It felt so magical and amazing. And I noted, yeah, I felt every listen. And I was aware of every tiny little thing and it just like made it happen.

And so, yeah. It's a dangerous sport, isn't there? There's a lot of deaths in climbing, especially solo if I'm not mistaken. There's not actually that many deaths from solo climbers. I mean, most serious soloists do eventually die by numbers. That's a crazy statistic.

I remember reading that. Yeah. But I would say the more dangerous, even more dangerous discipline is big, like super-alpinism, where you're climbing these big snowy mountains, because when you're on big snowy mountains, you're not attached to the mountain. Avalanche has happened.

You know, I wipes you off the side of the mountain. And I would say, in my lifetime, I've probably had 40 plus acquaintances or friends die. 40? Yeah, wow. So it is pretty safe, but you can make it incredibly, or it is pretty dangerous, but you can make it really safe

as well. So like going to the climbing gym is super safe. Sport climbing on those bolts, that's super safe. Like people almost never die doing that. So you can decide how much risk to take. The problem is the more risky disciplines, do you tend to be a bit of dicking? And I don't know, they're admired as well.

And I don't know. Sometimes I wonder why they're admired. It's almost like, to me, it seems almost like a drug addiction in a way. Do you feel like you meet some people that almost seem like they have a death wish? Is that common in your space like where you see a guy's it's like man. He's just pushing the limits constantly. Oh I don't ever think of it as a death wish is almost like they have a life wish like they want to live this higher level And so that's why they're doing it because they want to like thrive

and like see life with like the zest and this amazingness that are chasing that ultimate flow state. Yeah, they're chasing that ultimate flow state. So is drug and alcohol abuse common? And I would imagine, I would think it would be because you're always seeking this feeling. And if you don't get it from one thing,

then you'll find it somewhere else, or are they actually not because they find it somewhere else? Well, there was one period of climbing where it was pretty prevalent in the late 70s, on El Capitans specifically. When they were aid climbing, they were, you know, it's thought of, is a very adrenaline sport back then.

And so people were up there tripping on acid constantly. So all the roots, like actually the dawn wall, the root that it mostly follows is a root called mescalito. There's tangerine trip, like all the roots are named after drugs. Oh, sure. Exactly. They'll make it extra challenging. That's very interesting.

But nowadays, the highest performers to really like be competitive, I guess, or to perform at a really high level, you got to live a pretty clean life. So I think that drug use and addiction is much less prevalent than it used to be. And some of the performance enhancing aspect of it is probably there, but it's not really known about that much. And... Yeah, I would imagine that... Anabolic steroids because of the weight gain. Yeah. It could negatively affect you. Yeah, and the asteroid use isn't a thing.

You don't want to do that. For some big hemalain, hemalain alponus, where there's becoming the style of climbing, where people try and climb the biggest mountains in the world as fast as they can, there's probably... There is certainly drug use in the same way fast as they can. There's probably, there is certainly drug use in the same way that road cyclists. Yeah, EPO or whatever and stuff like that. But otherwise you'd wanna be,

because we had you squeeze the gripper, and you do have very strong hands, but the strength that you require, a lot of it has to do with the strength to weight ratio. Like you have to have strong hands and also be light for that type of strength to be able to climb. Antiball external aids would be terrible for that.

Right. I mean, I think that time is proving that the style of climbing that I'm most into, which is really technical, big wall climbing, the smaller the better. Like if you think about it, the spider is a way better climber than an elephant. So like really small people are gonna be better at that style of climbing, except for the other side is they can't get

they can't like carry their stuff up the mountain too small for that. There are other styles of climbing like like speed climbing and one of the disciplines in the Olympics where you just try and sprint up a 50 foot wall as fast as you can. Then you kind of need, steroid use probably would help in that. So there's that where it's just like raw power and you're on these big holes and you're just like throwing them, throwing them down to the ground as hard as you can. What are the other, you know, parts of,

in the Olympics, what are the other events that they're gonna have? So there's gonna be three disciplines. And it's pretty controversial this year because the three disciplines. Usually the type of climber that is good at each specific discipline is very different. So one is speed climbing where they have a standardized route. You can rebuild it anywhere in the world.

It's like 55 feet tall and the best climber's climate in like five to six seconds. And that's not something that was historically part of climbing, it's this weird thing where people are like, why is that part of the Olympics? I just made for the viewers, it seems very weird. Yeah, it seems like those videos where I've seen like fire fighters where they climb up really fast up this tower and it became like really popular, I don't know, maybe that's target or not.

Yeah, it's a little bit like that. So that's sort of the dark horse discipline of the Olympics. And then there's bouldering, which is trying to climb a wall that's usually 20 to 25 feet tall over big, like, gymnastic pads. And that's very, that's kind of change climbing too, because it's like American Ninja Warrior style, like obstacle courses have had a big influence. and so a lot of that is like jumping between these

more explosive. These are kind of like big holds and these, yeah, it's very explosive but it also takes a lot of flexibility and coordination and then there's sport climbing which is a wall that's like a hundred feet tall and so you have to have good forearm endurance to get to the top of that. So it's sport climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing. You have kids, Tommy? I do. Yeah, I got a three and a six year old.

Good deal. Now, are they in the climbing with you? They are in the climbing, because that's what we do as a family. It's a great way to see the world and all of our friends are climbers. So yeah, they climb, but I don't think they're going to be obsessed climbers the way that I

Tommy take us through how does a climber survive financially? Like is is there money in it? What what what point can you make good money on it? What's what's that like? So the history of climbing was one where The history of climbing was one where being a dirt bag, being a homeless person was actually very admired because that meant that you sacrificed everything for the pursuit because there was no way to make money back then really.

So the people that lived in caves in Yusemite, those were the purists. And so I grew up admiring that in a lot of ways. And I lived my period of time right out of high school on, you know, $50 a month or something like that. And if I figured out a way to make more money, it was almost like I was selling out. Oh my God.

And so I would dumpster dive and, you know, live on most of the money. And so, and honestly, it was a wonderful time in life. Right. I love, everything was so wonderful time in life. Right. I love everything was so simple. So simple and I could focus completely on climbing. So, having lived through that is pretty nice because now money is almost like a non-issue

because I know that if most of my money went away, it's a little different now with family, but I knew that I know that I would be happy kind of regardless. I know how to live really simply, and I know that if you're living in the mountains and you're in these communities of people, it can be absolutely wonderful. But now there is a lot of ways to make money, the industry is growing. So, professional climbers nowadays, it probably mirrors a lot of society. Gaining an audience is kind of how you end up sustaining a life as a professional climber through making movies,

social media, followings, that kind of stuff. now there is an audience that used to be like, nobody cared about climbing. Right, right. Now people do, so. Yeah, now I make a great living. Well, take us through your journey. I mean, you were dumpster diving, and then you have that place.

We have another film that's coming out soon. Like, what has that journey been like for you, and are you the type of person who just now takes all this extra money and just buries it under a rock because you've learned to live. No. I mean, so when I was 18 or 17 years old, I started to get a little corporate sponsorship. I went on that trip to Kyrgyzstan with the North Face.

My wife was a more successful climber than I was. My girlfriend at the time. And she got sponsored by the North Face, which she got a little bit of money, but basically that meant they would pay for her to go on trips. And so we would kinda do that. We'd live from trip to trip a little bit, funded by big, big climbing gear manufacturers.

And so I would say the most of my climbing life has been that. Like I get a paycheck from big climbing gear manufacturers. And then I write articles for climbing publications. So there's a little bit of writing involved. And then I've also gotten into a lot of gear testing and innovation. So it becomes a lot like freelance work.

And then nowadays my main employer is Patagonia. And that company is started by a climber, but now is all about environmental issues, so now I'm an environmental activist, so I've gotten into that as well. So yeah, you do a ton of things. Yeah, tell us a little bit about that. I know that yours is Alaska, right?

The refuge, isn't that what you're... Yeah, that's what I've been talking about recently. Yeah, share a little bit about that. Yeah, so in the last tax funding bill, they opened up a provision to drill in the Arctic, which has been a fight since the 70s. You know, everybody knows about anwar, the fight to preserve anwar, anwar, which it's public lands, right? It's a wildlife refuge that is preserved for the wildlife.

Largest in the world, isn't it? It might be the largest wildlife refuge in the world. I believe it is. Yeah. And. And find oil under it. And there is, there is an undetermined amount of oil in N.Y. We don't really know.

As the Arctic is melting, it's opening up a lot of areas to oil drilling that have really historically been inaccessible. And wire is set aside as public lands. And then in the way that politics works these days is when they wanna open something up into drilling, they just like sneak it into another package. And most people goes unnoticed. So all of a sudden in the last tax pass,

the last tax funding bill, they open to an wire to drilling. And most people didn't know about it. So the environmentalists figured that out, and they're like, oh God, suddenly this happened. We need to introduce a counter bill to once again protect the Arctic. So I've gotten involved in trying to spread the word

about preserving Anwar as a wildlife reference. the Arctic. So I've gotten involved in trying to spread the word about, yeah, preserving and why as a wildlife refuge. So I went up there, I did this wonderful climbing slash pack rafting trip where we traveled through the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and we encountered wolves and grizzly bears and these giant herds of like thousands of caribou and it's for sure the most wild place. I've ever been and then we went and we talked to the the original owners the the local tribes the Gwitchin. We went to a summit for the Gwitchin up there and we heard from them about what they wanted and then I come back and become a message or try to try to spread the word and figure out what the right thing to do

is. You can deal. You feel pretty driven behind it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, climbing, climbing, I think one of the things I love about climbing is that it's, I'm always involved in something that feels grand. It feels almost like greater than I can comprehend.

And so the mountains always have felt that way to me. El Cap has always felt that way to me. But there's not a ton of purpose beyond your own personal experience in that. I think activism creates that purpose in a way that is really important these days. I mean, Patagonia and myself included really thinks that it's all over the news these days,

but I think climate change is a big deal so public lands protecting public lands is a good way to kind of protect protect the resource and prohibit drilling in places like Annmar. Can you talk about the new film? Yeah yeah yeah tell me about it. So this is this is a small film so I've worked with the same filmmakers since you know since I was 17 years old. They generally would release small, originally like VHS tapes about these climbs that would just be sold online. They eventually started a film tour called the Real Rock Film Tour.

And that's how most of their content was absorbed. It's a festival tour that has like four or five hundred locations worldwide and every year they create these films and they release them on the festival tour and that's what they did for a bunch of years and then the Donwall happened where it was a story that they felt like could transcend their festival tour so they're able to get funding from Red Bull and kind of take that film to the next level. But they still really are endeared to their festival. And so this next year, in this October, the Real Rock Film Tour is going to be about 50% of it is going to be a film

about Alex Honold and myself, speed climbing, the nose of LCAP, which the Donwall was the hardest route on LCAP, the nose is the easiest, but we're trying to climb it as fast as we could. So it's sort of the polar opposite to what I did on the Donwall. Is there a record that you're trying to break? Yeah, so the Donwall took us 19 days. Ultimately, the nose took us under two hours. And that was, it's kind of like the race track of climbing. And it's sort of a historic race. In the 70s, it was, I think the first time it was done,

it took like eight months. And then by the late 70s, that a group of climbers did it in a day, and then it's progressively just done faster and faster at records then. And so now, sort of like the holy grail, the four minute mile of climbing was to do the nose and under two hours.

And so Alex, Honald and I managed to do that. Oh, a good deal. This last spring, and so this next year's real rock film tour is gonna feature a film about that. Awesome. That is, that is awesome. How do you know how I'm curious? We kind of glaze right over the Netflix

and getting it picked up. Like, is that very profitable? Did you make anything out of that or just a film crew? Like, how did that work? Like, how'd that go down? Like, once you guys shot it, like, how did you find out? that or just a film crew like how did that work like how did that go down like once you guys shot it like how did you find out It was at a big deal like holy shit Netflix picked it up. We're all gonna make money or um I mean I made some money off of it a little bit of money. I mean I think Well, so Jimmy Chen who made free solo which everybody knows what film, is he had previously made a movie called Maru, which was how to large,

major theatrical release. And so we had that model to follow somewhat, like that movie was relatively successful, and it transcended sort of the normal, the typical climber audience, brought it to a larger world. And so when the Don Wall happened, and it went big in the media,

and that climb went real big in the media, it was on the cover of the New York Times, like seven days in a row, by the time we topped out, there's like 10 news trucks, like people were just real interested. You know, they had been filming it for those seven years, but they didn't know how they were going to make their money back. And so when that happened, they're like,

whoa, there's interest. And so they were able to kind of like package it up and say we're gonna make this film that we're gonna release theatrically. And we need funding for that. So they got Red Bull Media House to sign on. They gave them, you know, like enough money to make the movie and that's how I got a little bit of money.

I've never, you never get paid directly from making films in the past as a talent, but I did in this's how I got a little bit of money. I've never, you never get paid directly from making films in the past as a talent, but I did in this case I got a little bit because I was really kind of part of the crew in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, for the first time we got a little bit of money and then so they did a theatrical tour and then it, yeah, and then Red Bull sold it to Netflix

and so that's how most people saw it. I think most people saw it on Netflix because they kind of blew the theatrical release. Climbing films hadn't gone that big in theaters at that point, so they didn't realize that there was that much interest. So they did these one day releases. So there's only two day, they did one one day release

and like every 600 theaters sold out in the US. They're like, wow, people really wanna see this. So they're like, I guess we'll do one more day. So they did one more day and like all the theater sold out in the US. Oh wow. They're like, wow, people really wanna see this. So they're like, I guess we'll do one more day. So they did one more day and like all the theaters sold out again, but they're already on that path and like, okay, sorry, I guess nobody else gets to watch this movie. Except Netflix wants to pick it up. So it turns out on the dumb,

all most people saw it on Netflix because they just missed those two. Yeah, I didn't know about it till Netflix. So who makes out the most out of it? Is it Red Bull? Because Red Bull initially picked it up and wrote the first check and then know about it until Netflix. So who makes out the most out of it? Is it Red Bull? Because Red Bull initially picked it up and wrote the first check, and then now

they sell it to Netflix. Like who makes out the most for going that big? I don't know, honestly. I'm not into the weeds that far. But I know that sender films got a pretty big paycheck to make the film like bigger than they ever had in the past. And then Red Bull had to figure out a way

to recoup their investment. And I'm guessing that they were relatively successful in doing that. Yeah, I would think so. Well, they're extremely compelling. I'd never seen a rock climbing documentary ever. That was the first one. And then I watched like five.

Right. Because that was so compelling and exciting. Yeah. And this struggle and the tension watched like five. Right. Because that was so like, this is so compelling and exciting. Yeah. And this struggle and the tension in the video. Yeah, I mean, climbing does make the really good stories. I think that's one thing. Yeah, there's so much heart and struggle and there's so many analogies that people can't ever see.

Do my kids were in the same way? They're so quiet. My kids had never watched documentaries and they're both just like, wow, this is so cool. So good job, good job man. Well, thanks for coming on the show Tommy. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com.

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