National Park After Dark - Peak Danger ft. Cecilie Skog

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

In today's episode we had the incredible opportunity to speak with Cecilie Skog. Cecilie has cemented her place in the world of extreme adventure sports as being the first person in the world to have skied across both the North and the South Poles and to have climbed all of The Seven Summits. She completed the first unassisted and unsupported trek across the continent of Antarctica and has made several treks across Greenland. Cecilie was also among the 31 climbers who were on K2 on its deadliest day in August 2008. She survived one of the worst tragedies in Himalayan history, witnessed her husband lose his life on the mountain - and has persevered. Listen to Extreme: Peak Danger HEREFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off.Lume Deodorant: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with@lumedeodorant and get 15% off with promo code NPAD at LumeDeodorant.com! #lumepodQuince: Use our link to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Everyone, welcome back to National Park After Dark. We're so excited to have you all here this week. We're doing something a little bit different as we're doing an interview for our Monday episode. We are. We just wrapped up with an incredible woman named Cecilia. and you are going to hear everything from how she got into her passion of extreme sports and mountaineering to her climbs around the world. Yes, we're so excited to bring this interview to you all. Cecilia is an incredibly accomplished high altitude mountaineer who has climbed the tallest peaks on every continent and has skied across both the north and south poles.

Cecilia grew up in Norway surrounded by mountains, which from her words she became completely obsessed with, a teenager. As she became more comfortable recreating in the outdoors, her passion led her all over the world. She took climbing courses, trained as a guide, and became a nurse. However, nursing fell to the wayside as she discovered her deep love for the outdoors, and instead she furthered her outdoor career as a professional mountaineer. While her outdoor accomplishments are endless and ongoing, she has recently became a speaker on the podcast Extreme Peak Danger, where she details her experience on the second tallest mountain in the world, K2 in Pakistan. Cecilia was involved in the tragic mountaineering accident that occurred on K2 in 2008, which resulted

in the deaths of 11 climbers, one of whom was her husband, Rolf Bay. Today, she joins us to discuss her experiences as a mountaineer, the expedition on K2, along with the incredible achievement she has completed around the world. Cecilia Skog, welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello, Cecilia, and welcome to National Park After Dark. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. To say you are an incredibly accomplished person in the realm of outdoor recreation feels like a statement that kind of falls embarrassingly short, given your extensive resume. You have done so much in the world of professional adventuring, mountaineering, climbing, and guiding.

But we know that you weren't just born that way with all of that experience. So can you give us a little bit of insight into your life growing up and how you fell in love with extreme adventuring? Yeah, I grew up in a part of Norway, situated on the west coast of Norway, where there is beautiful surroundings. Really nice peaks, sharp peaks. So that was the scenery outside my window. But it was just the scenery for me until I was in my teenagers. The first time I visited one of these tall mountains, I was 40, yeah, in my teenage sometime, I can't exactly remember what age, but I visited together with some friends. And that first climb did so much to me.

It was like a big change just there. From these sceneries that I just had looked at from my window, it was just, I felt. so much home there in these mountains. I was scared because there was so much air around. I could absolutely feel that I had to be really careful. I watched like every step I took, but the feeling of achievement and the view and looking back to the city where I grew up, like the opposite view that I used to have and being there with my friends. It was absolutely life changer. How did you go from out hiking around in where you grew up to starting to climb and going out into these extreme heights and weather conditions? How did you make that change?

Well, after that first visit to one of these tall mountains where you have to, it's not climbing, but it's scrambling. I just wanted to visit again and again and again. So that next summer I visited. Every day when I was walking around in my little village, if the weather was good and I could look at the mountains, I could like hear them calling. Hello. Where are you? Come visit again. Yeah, I've felt a home there in these mountains.

But one day I wanted to go to that mountain and I looked at a really beautiful mountain. But somebody told me that, no, we can't go there because there is a big glacier. we have to cross and we don't know how to do that. So I decided that I want to learn how to cross the glacier. So I joined a course and after a while I became a glacier instructor. So that was my summer job guiding tourists on different glaciers on the West Coast. And being there with having new friends that had the same interests as me, the passion being in the mountains, we decided that we wanted to go

outside Norway where the mountains were higher. So that's how I joined some friends and we decided to first climb or walk. It's really a walk where Mubla in France. And I think I was 21 and on that little trip, it's only like a day and a half, but we're up at 4,800 meters. And I I could feel that my body adapted really fast to the altitude. And when we'd been climbing in Norway, I wasn't the strongest, or I didn't carry the heaviest backpack or anything. But suddenly there in the thin air, I felt really strong. I could compare myself to the rest of the group. So that's a good feeling, suddenly being strong and have capacity to help and to really enjoy.

we did. Well, it seems like you really, really enjoyed what you did because fast forward a few years and by 2006, you were dubbed the first woman to ever reach the seven highest peaks on all seven continents and ski the two poles. So first of all, congratulations. We are in the presence of greatness right now. That is unbelievably impressive. Can you explain what a huge feat that was and that feeling of accomplishment afterwards? Oh, well, I kind of look at it a little bit different. It was my life. I also became a nurse at that time,

but the seasons I worked inside the hospital became shorter and shorter. Because I wanted to be on the glacier. I wanted to be out there with my friends and to climb. And we were so curious how high can we go and how can we plan that? And to me, it was, when I wasn't on my own expeditions or my own journeys, I guided other people, which I also used to love a lot.

I still do, actually. So it was just like the mountains got just all the time a little bit higher and the ski trips a little bit longer. And I was so curious to see all the different things. parts, all the different horizons, all the different parts in the world. So one day I came home from, I came home from guiding Greenland, crossing across Greenland. And I told my mom that, mom, I really want to go to Antarctica. I really want to go to the South Pole. Because I just want that kind of, the trip to not end so fast. I just want to continue. And to try to have a heavier sled and to be

out the whole season. And then I also said, and then after that, I would really love to see the polar ocean. I want to go to the North Pole. And then she said, but it's the North Pole and the South Pole more or less the same. It's totally different. It's so different. And it is. So I just feel so and I also felt at that time so fortunate to be to have these to have this passion I felt that I was so drawn to it I was so curious and to sit there and look at maps and to plan the journeys with my friends my boyfriend was so meaningful it was a direction when I got out of bed I didn't get out of bed. I jumped out of bed. I was so ready for the next day and to be in this adventure. And I really, I felt I was living a dream. This episode is brought to you by Prime.

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Or what was her reaction when you said you wanted to go all of these places? No, she's very different. She became a mom when she was 16. I was born. I was only 1.6 kilos, 1,600 grams when I was born. She had so much struggle with me the first years because if I cried, I fainted from exhaustion of crying. So she really had to train me when I was little,

to be able to walk up a little hill because of my lungs were not developed, right? Wow. So I think she's always been kind of protective. She didn't say that I wasn't allowed to go anywhere, but she didn't chair for it either. I think she wanted me to stay home. But I listened to her one time when she came with me to one of my speeches. And a man came up to her and asked her. And she didn't even know that I was there because I was behind her back,

talking to someone else but I could hear it he was he asked her how did you let your daughter do all these things and then she said do you have kids yes I have kids he said do you want them to be happy of course I do that's all parents do yeah and so do I she said and I was like yeah so she I could feel that she was with me on my trips on my journeys But she wasn't like, she didn't give me any more attention than my siblings. We just did whatever we wanted, but I could feel that she was with me. But I always had, I felt bad putting her in a situation where she had to be scared of me not coming back. Right.

It sounds like she was pretty supportive and just, like you said, she just wanted you to be happy. And I think it's really interesting that a man asked how she could let you go out and do these things. But at the same time, there's so many women who do want to go out and do these things. And when you were going to all these different continents, going to the highest peaks in the world, did you know that you were the first woman to do all of them or did it just happen? Well, I knew because I knew that there hadn't been anyone that had tried. So that was kind of just a hook where we could like place that expedition for because we needed sponsors. Because it's quite, it's expensive to go to many of these remote places.

So we needed sponsors. We needed someone to come with us. like the partner. So it's kind of a hook to kind of a place this on. But when I'm out there and when I'm just doing my everyday life there on the polar ocean or on the high mountain, it's not important there. That's not my focus when I'm out. It's not even motivating, actually. It's all the other things. The scenery is the curiosity. It's the being the best. the partner and the nature. That itself couldn't motivate me that much.

Just being out there. And anyway, if you have a first ascent of something, it's, I don't see the big difference in life. If a lot of people have been there before and you're there for the first time, it's the first time for me anyway. So it doesn't change my present when I'm there. Right. if you understand.

Yeah, definitely. Can you tell me what it feels, what it feels like for you when you do ascend and you reach the summit of these peaks that you've been dreaming about? Yeah, it's different. If you reach a pole, like the North Pole, South Pole, or even the crossing,

then when you're at the end of your geographically target, it's not only the goal to, reach it. There is so many other goals being out there, but when you're there, then you kind of finished. Somebody will pick you up there. But when you're on the top of a mountain, when you're on the highest point, you're only halfway. So that's always in the back of my head. Now, it's the most dangerous and difficult part. It's getting back safely. Right. So focusing, we know that, you know, you've gone to all the highest peaks in the world. But we do know that after you summited Everest, you returned to the same area later to tackle K2.

Can you tell us a little bit about what differentiates and makes K2 different than Everest? Because a lot of our listeners are very familiar with Mount Everest, but not so much with K2. Yeah. I don't know how it is now because I think the last years it's been happening commercialization, is how you say it, of K2 as well, that people go there and they join like a group of people that pay to be a part of a team. Like it's been on Everest for a very long time. But in 2005, when we were there for the first time, we were there 96 days climbing up and down. We brought 3,500 meters of rope ourselves and fixed every centimeter of it. And in 2000, 2008, it's you there as climbers and you climb it together with the other teams. There were no, not normally and not originally a culture for bringing like Sherpas and climbers that would help you and fix the ropes for you.

Yeah, it was something you were doing yourself. You didn't pay someone to do it for you. Yeah, it's not like the culture of guiding. It wasn't, hadn't started into. 2008. And you said you were your first time that you were on K2, you were there for 96 days. Yeah. That's a long time. That was actually six days more than we were allowed to be there. So we had to have help from the Norwegian embassy to get back home. We had a limit of 90 days, but we stretched it. And that was only because we were waiting for the good weather. And we turned around so many times, like 11 times in camp two and three times in camp three and we got to know that mountain so well but we didn't get to see the top part of the mountain or from from camp three and above so when we went home in 2005

i think we knew that one day we were going to go back because you didn't that during that trip you didn't get to the summit yeah wow and for 96 days can you explain a little bit because I know that when you are climbing and altitudes that high, you can't just hike up. Your body has to acclimate. Can you explain a little bit of what that feeling is like when you're up at that high of an elevation, what it's like to hike and breathe and the toll it has on your body? Yeah. You have to give your body time to acclimate to build more red blood cells that can

carry oxygen around the body and that takes time. So you have to be really patient in the beginning otherwise you can develop high altitude sickness. So we walk really slow. We do that also to to not stress the body, to give the body more energy so it can start all these processes that it needs to develop to acclimate. So we walk slow also because it's harder to breathe. So it takes time, but after a while, you start, you feel comfortable around 5,000 meters where base camp is. And then you start pushing up on the mountain. You walk up a few hundred meters and then you go back down. Maybe you have a little something to carry up.

You leave that on a mountain. Go back down, sleep. Next time you go up, maybe you fix camp one and leave things there. Maybe you put up a tent. You can sleep there. And then you go. back down and then you go back up again and then you carry something to camp two and then you go back to camp one sleep there maybe and then so you climb the mountain like many times over and over again

and over again and then suddenly there's been an avalanche in the bad weather so all the tents are gone next time you come up so you have to start over again so that's how that life is but there will be periods with bad weather on the mountain when you're there. But that's okay. Then you crawl back to base camp and you visit other expedition teams or other teams there. You go and drink tea. Maybe you watch the movie and that's a little community there suddenly with everybody

there with the same interest and same passion. And it's really nice. I imagine you meet a lot of friends. Yeah, and because we went to high mountains many times during one year. Often we met a lot of people, the same people over and over again. So they become really good friends. And it's nice to catch up there. You have so much time to talk and just to wait until the weather will let you back up on the mountain again.

Yeah, so in 2008, when you returned to K2, as you just outlined, there are so many different factors that need to align to make a successful climb. The preparation, the weather, different conditions and things like that, all in perfect alignment. So how long were you on K2 the second time around before you actually vied for the summit? I think in 2008 we were there for maybe 60 days. Yeah, I think we started to trek in in June. And then we, uh, we, we tried or yeah, summited 1st of August. So about two months, I think. And when I was looking at K2, there is a short window of time where the weather allows you to do that. Right. There's only a couple months in summer where the weather is good enough to be up there. Yeah, that's right.

And it happens the same, more or less the same period every year, August, sometimes in August. And when you went up the second time, were you there with people who you had been with in 2005? We were the same. We were four in our team. It was me and my husband, Rolf. When we were there in 2005, we're only boyfriend and girlfriend. And it was Eustain. He was also there in 2005. But Lash was a new member of the team. Okay, so you mentioned on August 1st is the day that you finally summited K2. What was that feeling like? It had been a really different night. It'd been a night. By 2008, I had been on five other 8,000 meter peaks, and I'd never had that feeling anywhere before. It was a gut feeling

that I wasn't comfortable with. So reaching the summit, it was, it was amazing to see the shadow into China, the shadow of the mountain into China. And it was sunset, it was beautiful. And reaching the summit with Losh was fantastic, but I also had that gut feeling. And I wanted to turn around and climb back to Rolf that was waiting for us a few hundred meters below the summit. So I don't think we were up there many minutes. We're just looking. at the view and gave each other a hug, took two pictures and then we turned around. And you turned around and you went back. Rolf had waited that day. I had seen that he decided not to summit with you, but he was waiting. Was he really excited for you when you

got back to him that you made it to the summit? Yeah, he was excited. When he saw us continue and he said, I'll just wait for you here. He said, come on. You go, go, go. You can do it. It's cheering you on. Chearing us up. And when we go back to him, he was so glad. He's so happy. He was happy for us.

He was happy for the team. And then he said, but now let's get back down. Yeah. You mentioned that you had a gut feeling that day, that something wasn't quite right or something felt off. Do you know, were you the only one who felt that? Or do you know of others who had a similar feeling? Yeah, I assume, or I know that in my team, we all felt.

Because it wasn't just a gut feeling. It was all the different incident that had happened earlier that morning where there were supposed to be ropes in the bottleneck. There were no ropes in the bottleneck. The rope was put on the shoulder where it's flat. And so there were so many different incident that happened that it wasn't right. There were so many things that wasn't right. And it was so warm. I almost couldn't wear my down jacket.

And it was the queue. I'd never walked in a queue before on an 8,000 meter peak like that. And we had to wait and wait. And there was one like big step where you have to climb like maybe three meters of steep. the snow or ice. It's really easy, but we had to wait forever for people to get up that. And it's like, yeah, there was so many things that were, it didn't feel right, and it didn't look right. And it wasn't right. Yeah. And when you say that it was really warm that day, the first thing that I think of with warm weather and a lot of snow on a mountain, obviously you're, you must have all started worrying

about the changes in the snow that could be happening as you were walking up there. Going forward, we know, of course, that you were part of the podcast Peak Danger, which is going into the story of the tragedy that did happen that day on K2 and everything that unfolded. So we won't go into deep detail of what happens that day. People can listen there if they want to. But you were involved in the tragedy. that ended up being one of the deadliest days in mountaineering on K2.

How has that affected the way that you mountaineer now? I could see my husband's head torch disappear into the dark. He was standing 20 meters away from me. Suddenly it feels like a big earthquake and it's the eyes breaking. from above and falling down and it cuts a rope between us and he disappears. And a lot of people have asked me how I go back, how I don't climb that mountain without him. And I've told many people, I don't, I'm not sure. I don't remember that much.

There is so many times on the way down from 8,500 meter down to base camp where I have to go in and out of rope, hundreds maybe of times. I have to go in and out of the rope on a rappel, and I don't remember many of them. But I remember the phone call I had to make in Camp 3 when I had to call my parents-in-law and tell them that they've lost their only child. Of course, the worst phone call you can take. And my father-in-law, he was prepared. The whole world knew what had been going on on that mountain, that there were 11 people missing after that night. So he told me, you have to climb safe down.

You have to come back to us, because now we only have you. So that's what I did. I went home to my parents-in-law and I had to get out of bed because now they only had me. And I wanted to take care of them. And most days I did actually get out of bed, not all, but most days. But it wasn't me that took care of them. They took care of me. Together with Rolf, everything was possible.

That's the feeling that he sent to other people around him, that everything's possible. And we knew that we were very fortunate to be able to share our life and to share all the trips, all the nights in the tent, and all our dreams and our passion. We knew that we were lucky. So most days I did get out of bed, but it was difficult because he wasn't there anymore. But what I did find after the accident was that I still like to be outdoors. It's easier to breathe. I got out of bed.

I got into my car and I drove out to the beaches that were outside where we used to live. And the sky was sometimes high and blue and it was easier to breathe there than inside the house. I didn't have much energy, but I was just sitting there in the sand dunes and watching the waves hit that beach somewhere. And I didn't know anything about the future. If I thought about it, it just made me very sad that maybe I will not even sleep one more night in a tent. I don't know what's going to happen in the future. But I knew that that next wave was going to hit that beach somewhere. So the months went by and, yeah, Rolf disappeared 1st of August.

So normally my days would be darker and darker, but mine gradually became a little bit and a little bit lighter. But it wasn't until maybe February I decided to, or I felt that gave me a hope for the future. Because suddenly I sat there and I was like, I do want to stay in it. I want to be in a tent. I don't want to be in a tent alone, but I want to be in a tent with somebody that I appreciate. And I want to feel like I want to wake up in the morning and head somewhere in my head or in my dreams.

I want to wake up to something again and be a part of someone that's going somewhere. It doesn't have to be here or there. It just somewhere. It doesn't matter where. And that's when I asked two of my best friends if they wanted to come with me in the spring to cross Greenland. So Greenland was the first kind of big adventure that you had since being on K2. It feels like, based on your words, that it was more of an emotionally charged trip.

But did you feel back at home? Did you feel the sense of your passion? and purpose coming alive again while you were out there? Absolutely. And it felt so good to be a part of the team with two of my best friends to wake up because I got the place in the tent in the middle. So I had them next to me. And to be there and I knew that next day I'm going to go on a 10-hour ski trip

with two of my best friends. And in the evening we're going to put up this tent. again where everything has its place where we don't have more than just what we need and that's a feeling of freedom and and then we're going to cook an evening meal together and then we're going to sit in our down sleeping bags and eat some candy it's like I knew what was going to happen I knew we were going to be out there I knew that we had to work hard and like I said I I didn't come home and I didn't take care of my parents at all. They took care of me.

They wrapped me in cotton. And I couldn't even go to the store and buy milk because I was scared that somebody was going to look at me and see the new me, a 32-year-old widow. And if somebody came up to me, it was so difficult. So I just left everything in the basket. I went out from the store. Because at that time, my sorrow or my mourning was so public. But there in Greenland, standing in front of that heavy sled, there was nobody to wrap you in cotton.

You just have to be strong and be the best teammate and root for each other. And yeah, it's a good balance when you have so much. Because the morning or when you're in that state, It's like the body feels. It's like you have pain in the body. It's not only in the heart. It's the whole system. But there in front of that sled to pull hard, it gave me good balance.

And also a feeling of being on a way to somewhere with these two people that I appreciate. It sounds like Greenland was a huge part of healing and that you had this beautiful support system and friendships around you to do it with. Was there a reason that you decided on Greenland to be there with your friends? Greenland is 600 kilometers, more or less 550. It depends on which route. And so that's like more or less 20 to 25 days of skiing. And that's the kind of holiday. They could have my two friends. And it's not super long, but it's long enough to kind of be there with your whole body.

It's when you're there long enough to forget there is a mobile phone. It's long enough to get into that rhythm of waking up with the sun, going to sleep when the sun goes down, to come in the rhythm with the nature and your mind. And yeah, it's like we're one cell up there working together. I mean, and it sounds like after, so you go to Greenland and after that, it seems like you start traveling again. And one of your travels that you decided on was Antarctica,

which you traveled across, completely unassisted with a friend. Can you tell us a little bit about why you decided to go to Antarctica and what that was like? Yeah. When we came back from Greenland, I asked Sidelin if they want to go on a longer trip because maybe it's an escape geographically. It is for sure. But I wanted to get away from everything at home and everything that was difficult and just to be there. in front of that heavy sled and work hard and have the wind constantly and the thoughts and the horizon and the endless white. So I just wanted to go further and I felt that like I can remember the three last day in

days in Greenland. I was like, oh, I don't want to get there. Normally you're happy to be at the end of, to be on the line where the finish line of the expedition. But not that time. I just wanted to continue. So that's why I asked them, do you want to go further? Do you want to go to Antarctica with me?

It's 1800 kilometers, but it's really nice there. It's really nice. It's really nice. And there is, it's like endless. It's the horizon. It's the blue sky that just dives in the horizon and the horizon you will never get to. And you can just walk there forever. and it's like it looks like a frozen ocean, but they didn't have three months of work and from their families, so they couldn't go.

But one day, after the accident, I find a lot of comfort in talking to my friends that I met on these high mountains. And Ryan Waters was one of them. And we talked, because talking with my friends with the same passion, I didn't have to. explain anything. And that was the difficult thing for me after K2 was that I came back alone without Rolf and I had to like take the responsibility for that choice to climb one of the most dangerous mountains alone without him and with that outcome. It was too, it was very difficult. And I understood everyone around me that had thoughts that, but you must have been prepared, Must have been prepared that something like that could happen.

And prepared was something that we were. We were so prepared for all the, every centimeter of that climb. But I don't know how you can prepare losing someone that you love. It's very difficult, I think, to prepare for something like that. So I wasn't prepared for that. But still, I can understand that people must have thought that. But being, talking to my friends, I'll, around the world with the same passion. I didn't have to explain. And one day I talked to Ryan and he had

been on Everest and high on the mountain, he had frozen one of his toes. And he needed a, he wanted to have like a season off from Everest. Maybe at that time he'd been there like 10 times guiding. So I asked him, but would you rather go to Antarctica? Would you like to go on the most beautiful skilm? trip in the world. And there we can sit on the sled and you can eat everything you want as much as you like without getting fat. Very tempting. Very tempting. And the sun will just circle around at the same spot on the sky every day. It's sunlight in the morning. It's sunlight in the evening. We can decide ourselves how much the clock it's supposed to be because it doesn't matter. It's midnight sun and he thought he thought that sound good he liked that yes he would like to to be a

part of that team so i knew he was strong i knew that uh he was a person that i could spend 80 90 days uh together with a person that i could be just a little it feels like you're just a little got on a big map, vulnerable, together on this big ocean. And he was a person that I could absolutely see myself together with in that situation. I knew that he was like a mountain I could lean on. He was like a mountain range I could lean on. He was solid. It was just one thing.

He hadn't skied that much before. For the ski trip across Antarctica. But that's why I tell my kids every day. Yes, nobody knows how to do anything before they learned it. And to learn it, you have to try it. And then you have to practice and practice and then you will learn it. That's how, yeah, you're not born knowing how to ski. You'll have to learn it.

Yeah. So why not try and practice across all of Antarctica? Yeah. then you will have so much time practicing. You would be really good at it. And you do sound very convincing. Yeah. Yes.

And a lot of, I grew up thinking or having people to want me maybe to think that to be a polar explorer, you have to have, you have to be at least two meter high. You have to have beard and to spit blood. But that's not how it is. If you like to ski, if you like to be out there, if you like to be a part of a team, if you like horizons, if you like snow, and if you like to work hard towards something, and if you like to snuggle up in a sleeping bag and eat candy all day around, then it's for you. It's certainly you're selling me on it. And I love the sentiment of how you say, like, you're to be out in the outdoors or to go on expeditions, it's expected you're so tall or you're a man or and to be this woman who is out here doing these incredible feats. It's really inspiring, especially to other women who love the outdoors and who want to be out there to see someone doing that is so exciting.

and it's so inspiring to... I hope so. It is. It really, really is. And to hear your love and your passion, it just, I mean, it bleeds through all of your words when you talk about the horizon and sleeping outdoors and doing all these things. Your passion for it is contagious. Thank you.

Yeah. Like, I, you're talking about Antarctica and I'm like, too, I want to ski across Antarctica. Yeah. And if you think that, then... You've started. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.

Maybe that's what you're going to do. You said it took 90 days? No, we, I think we were out there for almost 80, yeah, 80 days something. But I don't count days. In Pakistan, when we're there for 96, we thought we'd counted right. So sometimes we'd. it's we should maybe we should count better but um and i and also a lot of people like do you bring him skiing he doesn't know how to ski but i don't go out there to set try to set a world record it's not

it's not what i and that's why i i i answered like is it important or how is it how does it feel to be the first it doesn't matter it's not what i do it's uh that was just fortunate for me so that we could get sponsored on it. But it's not important when it's not, yeah, it's not what I do. I don't go out that set world record. We can, we bring more food so we can stay out longer. Because I don't go on expeditions to hurry home when it's on expedition I like to be. Right, you're there because you love it.

Yeah. And I don't have to rush to the other place. I would never go on a trip to try to be the fastest or, Yeah, I like to take as long time as possibly could. It feels like that your passion just leads you from place to place to place. So where is your interests and passions leading you next? Yeah. I have two small kids and, oh, small, they're not small anymore.

They're 8 and 10. And they love to go outdoors. We have the outdoors right outside the house. And now it's not about going. I don't like to leave them for many days, maximum life. I can be a way to go climb a mountain in Norway for three days, but then I have to go back to my kids. I don't want to go on expeditions anymore.

I'm very fortunate to have become a mother, and that's where I like to be. like to be around them. So, but they love to be outdoors. Like this weekend, the oldest, she was like, mom, should we go out and sleep and we can look at the stars? Just take our sleeping bags out in the forest. It's like 50 meters to walk.

And then we have a fireplace. And then we lay in our sleeping bags and we just pull asleep with the stars above us. And that's enough. That's where I want to be right now. I love that. And I love that your kids are enjoying the outdoors and are inspired by your passions for being out there. And do you imagine that they will one day want to climb some of these taller peaks or have they spoken about it at all? I don't talk about these tall peaks in that way.

In like, yeah, I don't sell that. Yeah. I rather than not go to the highest peaks. But of course, if I got to do whatever, I decided my path, my story. So I want them to decide there. If they come one day and say, Mom, I want to climb an 8,000-meter peak, then I'll answer with, okay, then I'm coming with you. Like, I'll be right there. I'll be there.

And I was pregnant the last time I crossed Greenland, the oldest she was in my tummy. Wow. So she knows that she's cross-green. She's probably the youngest. I would say so. And she says, mom, when I'm a little bit older, I want to do it. I want to be outside your tummy then. Let's do it.

So then I love to go again if she wants. But when she's ready, if she wants, then I'll be there. What a beautiful way to go back to Greenland. Yeah. So, but I won't push that. I won't say that to her and she's not going to do it for me. She wants, she needs to do it for her. Of course. Yeah. Well, you have gone on to inspire both of us and a lot of others with your story, not only of resilience, but of pushing forward through difficult things and accomplishing things that may seem impossible. You know, I'm sure the initial conversation with your mother and saying, all of these different goals that you wanted to accomplish. So for those listening with dreams of their own, whether they be summiting the highest peaks or whatever seems difficult for them,

do you have any advice for accomplishing what the heart wants, even if it seems difficult on paper or maybe their support system isn't super understanding of what they would like to do with their life. Well, I think the most difficult part is because I meet so many, I mean, I meet people that say, but you've done that because that's easy for you because you have this and that. And those people will never go on an expedition because I mean, there's two things. You can like say, I want to go on a trip because I want to do this and that. Or you can say, I want to go on a trip, but I can't do because. And that's the most...

I mean, if you have decided, if you have a dream and you're like, hold on to that dream with both your hands, then you're a long way. Yeah, don't let that dream go. If it's important to you, you know it if it's important, if it comes back to your head,

like over and over again. Hold on to it. Because some of these dreams, I think it's important to pursue. because we only live once and we are here now and you make your own story. Thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for coming on and sharing parts of your story with us. We really appreciate it. You are an incredible person and thank you for being open to your story. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you everyone so much for tuning in to this week's podcast. If you're interested in learning more about the K2 accident that happened in 2008, you can check it out on Extreme Peak Danger wherever you listen to podcasts. And remember to enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions.

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