The Rich Roll Podcast - Dispatches From The Death Zone: Adrian Ballinger On Risk, Reward, & Guiding Earth’s Biggest Mountains

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Adrian Ballinger is an elite mountaineer, a 9-time Everest summiteer, and the founder of Alpenglow Expeditions. This conversation delves into Adrian’s Everest ascents, his “Rapid Ascent” method, views on commercial expeditions, climate change's impact on mountaineering, and fatherhood’s influence on his risk approach. We also discuss the recent controversy surrounding celebrated climber Nims Purja and its implications for the mountaineering community. He shares insights on decision-making, resilience, and his surprising role in an upcoming indie horror film. Adrian’s story inspires through extraordinary feats and the embodiment of the adventure spirit. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors:  Eight Sleep: Use code RICHROLL to get $350 OFF Pod 4 Ultra👉eightsleep.com/richroll  AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll. On: Swiss engineering at it’s finest, On crafts high-performance shoes and apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll Whoop: The 24/7 health & fitness coach that tracks your sleep, strain, recovery, stress, & MORE 👉join.whoop.com/roll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

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by elite athletes and backed by science. Head to 8sleep.com slash richroll and use code richroll at checkout to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra. That's 8sleep, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com, slash richroll. Currently ships to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Everest is one of the ultimate human laboratories where we get to experiment and explore like humans on the edge. There is nothing easy about Mount Everest. And there's a lot of content out there suggesting that it's easy

and it's not real climbing and the mountain's been tamed. It has not. My guest today is a former theology student en route to medical school, but somebody for whom the mountains beckoned. And the rest is history. One of the world's most accomplished and respected high alpine mountaineers, he has summited Earth's highest and most treacherous peaks. He summited Everest an astonishing nine times, once without supplemental oxygen, which is something he repeated on K2. He's broken records for his rapid succession

of high mountain ascents, as well as for his many equally harrowing ski descents. I am a fan of risk. My summit push on Everest was 43 hours without sleeping. That extra few hundred feet, I think, is really at the limits of human physiology. That's the best I can understand it. And so everyone who's there is like at this edge.

He survived three avalanches. He stared down death and also pioneered a new level of high-risk expedition athleticism. And along the way, he learned more than a few invaluable life lessons about ego, about risk, humility, ethics, and so much more. His name is Adrian Ballinger, and this is his story. We still get the shit kicked out of us all the time on that mountain. We're meant to be fighting

up there. It's one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. And I love that. All right, well, you may be the most accomplished climber to ever sit in that chair across from me. And I'm very excited to talk to you, but the great honor that you have, the great distinction is that you are the first person to fly your own plane to come and be here today

on the podcast. You are a pilot. And I was thinking about that for a second. And I thought, man, even when this guy's home, he's got to get himself up to like a high altitude, you know, like adventure at all times. I mean, it is a lot of fun to get to fly myself here. I feel very lucky for that.

It was an easy flight. I was wearing oxygen, which was kind of funny. I was only flying at 16,000 feet, but I was wearing oxygen. It was like, you know, we go so much higher without it in the other side of our world. Well, you just sleep in your tent the night before, right? The altitude tent, right? Exactly. That's right.

No, but it's, you know, I am such a conservative pilot. I fully recognize how new I am to the activity in many ways. I've been flying for six years, but there's a lifetime of learning there as well. That's been one of the really fun things about it. It's like feeling like a newbie again. And yeah, I feel so much adventure in it. So as well as the utility of being able to do more things in the American West, flying also means like, I love getting there again. Yeah, and there's so much more to learn, you know, like you can progress in a way that with climbing, it's like you've done so much, right?

I'm sure there's always things that you learn and ways to grow with every ascent that you make, but the curve of that growth is, I'm sure, plateaued by comparison. Absolutely, and especially as you consider the physical side of climbing, you know, I still feel like I'm at a level I'm really proud and excited to be in the mountains with,

but I can certainly recognize that there is only one way that physical component of climbing can go, and it's downhill. And so with flying, it is interesting. I think there's still years and years that I can improve, gain new skills and become better, which it's exciting. So you just returned from Everest, your ninth summit, that's correct. Yeah, that's right. And you have spent, is it 14 seasons now? 13 seasons on the mountain. That's an unbelievable amount of experience with

the world's highest peak. You know, walk me through this latest ascent from the north side and what made it special. Yeah, it is funny to actually, you know, every now and then I'll count up the number of weeks I've kind of slept in a yellow tent on the side of somewhere like Mount Everest. And it's like, wow, that's like, it's getting up there to be about three years of my actual life living in a tent on Everest, which does feel like a chunk of time. Luckily, I really enjoy it and do still just like cherish that time so much. And this season was incredibly special, like personally for my guide company, Alpenglow Expeditions, and I think for everyone involved. And there were a few reasons for that. The biggest one personally was I haven't

been on the mountain since 2019. So in 2019, I was on the North or Tibetan side. And then of course, COVID changed everything for all of us. One of the things it did was shut down the North side of the mountain, the Chinese side of the mountain for four years from 20 through 23. And so 2024 was my first time back after essentially five years away. And so I don't think I was jaded before, but it was certainly like I went every single year. It was a job and it still is a job. But four years away allowed me to re-appreciate like what I love about that place and why I do keep going back. And all of that made it very powerful for me. Then the second big part of the season that

was unique. So as you're probably familiar, there's two common commercially guided sides of the mountain or roots on the mountain. One goes from the Nepal side. That's where a lot of probably your listeners have seen the chaos, the kind of like the dark side of Everest, if we want to call it that. The crowds, the inexperience, the trash, the poop, all that stuff. And I made a decision back in 2014 not to guide on that side of the mountain anymore. And I went to the North Chinese Tibetan side. Much more difficult to get into, way more bureaucracy, arguably a harder and colder and more challenging route. But it allowed me to get away from a lot of that chaos. It's a much quieter route because

of those difficulties, especially dealing or getting permits from the Chinese government. Yeah, the permit thing sounded like it was just insane and kind of came down to the wire there. They made you jump through a lot of hoops. Was it just the person who was assigned to you for approvals? Or what is it specifically that makes it so hard? I think one of the challenges with working with China for something like climbing in Tibet is we don't actually know. It's a little bit of a black box. We have relatively little communication from the government. It seems like it's just not a priority for them to build an international tourism sector in Tibet currently. And so we send in our applications and then we potentially hear nothing for weeks or months. And then finally we get, you know, a short email or a

WeChat message and then nothing for weeks or months. So it makes it very difficult to do business there. In this case, yeah, what it meant is we had heard at the end of 2023 that the mountain would be open this year, that they would invite foreign teams. My company and a few other companies were invited to send in applications. And a normal Everest season opens at the beginning of April. And so that's what we planned on. And all of a sudden, at the beginning of April, we had no information, no entry date, no port of entry where we could book our plane tickets to, really no information.

And that's when things started to push back and push back. The downside of that is it's stressful and hard to run a trip successfully in that environment. The good thing for this year specifically was almost all of the other teams canceled. They decided the uncertainty or the late entry wasn't going to work for them. And Alpenglow's system works a little differently. We actually pre-acclimatized people at home using hypoxic tents that a lot of endurance athletes

use. So we felt like we could work within a shorter window. So we held on. And eventually, the border did open on May 7th. Traditionally, it opens the beginning of April. So about a month late. But our team was still excited to go. We were able to get into the country. And what it meant is we ended up being the, there were three other teams on the mountain, but they quickly left.

We were the only team on the mountain for the second half of May. It was, when you ask about what made this season special, like that is the second thing. So one, my personal excitement to be back there. And two, the fact that the mountain, you know, we just don't get the most popular mountains on the planet to ourselves anymore, whether it's the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc or Denali. And that's certainly been true with Everest. And it felt like I imagine it probably was in the 70s and 80s, when in Tibet, they would only accept one national team each year. And it made the mountain more difficult, but it made it so much more powerful. We were essentially 23 people alone there working together to get to the top of this mountain.

And how many of those were clients of Alpenglow and how many of those were Sherpas that were accompanying you? Yeah, so we work in really small teams, even though 23 probably sounds big, that's actually quite a small team. That was only six clients supported by five foreign mountain guides and 12 Sherpa. And so that ratio is what we've found works to bring non-professional recreational climbers to the mountain. This is still a somewhat controversial thing. It's something I truly believe in. These are people who,

at least on my team, have worked very hard to be there, have earned their place, have spent years building skills. But our goal, we always say our mission is to develop competent team members. They're not professional climbers. They're just not. And so their risk tolerances are different and they should be different. And their kind of experience backgrounds are different and their strengths will certainly be different. We expect everyone to come in really fantastic physical and mental shape, but it's still going to look different than a professional guide or a high-altitude worker, a Sherpa from Nepal. But the idea is that your clients don't become liabilities or baggage in the event of an obstacle or a crisis, but can actually contribute

to the solution. That is exactly kind of the foundation of my company. And deciding to do this work has been from the beginning that we don't train our people or we don't accept climbers onto a team for the perfect day. Anyone with a general good sense of fitness can climb Mount Everest on a good day. But the problem is there are still a lot of bad days. And even this season, I could tell you a little bit about it, but we ended up having a really challenging situation on our summit day. And we need to train people for the bad days, for when the shit hits the fan. That's what makes a team of competent mountain climbers.

And that's what gets us home without frostbite, alive, able to do these adventures again. And so when things go wrong, to be an asset to the team and not an anchor or liability to the team. That's my goal. And in order to become a member of one of these teams and join one of your expeditions, all of your clients have to have climbed a certain number of peaks, et cetera, go through rigorous training. But in addition to that, they participate in this thing called

rapid ascent, right? Which is how you're able to arrive on these mountains and kind of execute on a summit push without having to spend, I mean, how long, you know, a base camp. People, it's like a 64-day thing, right? It's not, you don't just show up and climb the mountain. Yeah, no, when I started going- You have a whole different approach to how this can be done. And it's one I think is, you know, it's easy to say it's controversial, but your perspective is that it's actually safer. Yeah, absolutely. So when I started guiding on Everest, we spent two and a half months each year. We would go in the middle

of March and we would finish at the beginning of June. And that was just how you climbed Mount Everest. And it was, it was a good and successful system that had been developed through the 90s and into the early 2000s by the commercial guide companies. And it worked. When I started, I loved that, right? I didn't have a family. I barely had a functioning business. I, you know, was willing to sacrifice community and miss weddings of people I loved and things like this for this, like, sport that I just felt so passionately about. But really where Rapid Ascent started, it was selfish. I realized that with Alpenglow and my own personal climbing, I was spending up to eight months a year in a yellow tent on the side of a mountain, not just Everest, but all around the world doing these other training climbs.

And I started to realize how much I was missing in the rest of my life. I had no balance, zero. And I started to hear about these high altitude tents that were being used, especially by Leadville 100 runners and cyclists in the early 2000s, the 2000 aughts. And I was like, huh, I wonder if that would work for climbers. But no one had really tried it. And then it was actually a British climber named Kenton Cool that had to do a Samsung advertisement,

like media campaign on the mountain. And he was the first person I heard had pre-acclimatized in order to do whatever it was he had to do in the UK and then come straight to the mountain with this phone and make a live call from the summit. And he did the entire trip, I think in like 35 or 38 days,

and he had used the pre-acclimatization tents. And so then there was like this anecdotal thing, like it works. And so I started experimenting in 2011 and 2012 on myself, and then persuaded a group of clients to be guinea pigs and go to a mountain. And we all took helicopters to 19,000 feet to a high base camp on a mountain called Makalu. Again, a bit controversial using helicopters in that way, but it was an experiment to take people from sea level and just drop them at this higher altitude and start the trip. And it worked. No one went home.

No one got altitude sickness. And so we started building from there. Yeah. On the safety tip, it seems like there's two things that are at play here. One is if you're spending less time on the mountain, then there's less risk exposure to avalanches and earthquakes and all of these deadly events. But second to that, if you pre-acclimatize, then your body doesn't have to go into that hyperdrive state to do that acclimation. Your body doesn't have to go into that hyperdrive state to do that acclimation because when it's doing that, then there's less energy reserves for your immune system in the event that you get sick. And so when people are getting sick, it's because their bodies are trying to do those two things in tandem, right?

Absolutely. Like both of those things are really important reasons why we found the rapid ascent system to be effective. Our success rates are not only as good as they used to be, they're actually better now. And I think a third reason is on those old trips where we spent the first six weeks just basically festering in base camp and low on the mountain, we were losing muscle mass and a lot of the training that we had put in. And so the rapid ascent system basically allows us to have race day, which I consider kind of the summit push or summit day, closer to our peak. So our bodies have deteriorated less while just waiting to build red blood cells. If we've already built red blood cells and made some of these physiological changes, we can then have that

rest day sooner, spend less time there. And for people that don't fully understand, I mean, on the south face, basically you make the trek to base camp and you're there for a while. How long are you there? You're there for a long time, right? I mean, you kind of like do these day trips, right? Up to the next camp, you come back down. And so you're slowly getting used to the altitude and then you kind of make these incremental

increases as you go up. That's right. So you're, and we're still doing a bit of that, just a bit less. But yeah, the traditional thing used to be a two-week trek in and then 10 days sitting at base camp, just kind of resting and recovering. And then these progressive circles on the mountain where you go up high, suffer, which creates a physiological response you need to make these changes. And then you go back down to a low enough altitude where the body can actually have the extra need to make these changes. And then you go back down to a low enough altitude

where the body can actually have the extra energy to make those changes. Then you do it again, a bit higher, again and again. And through that process, we're essentially blood doping, right? We're building our red blood cell hemoglobin counts to more effectively move oxygen around our bodies. All rapid ascent does, all pre-acclimatization does is basically front load a whole lot of that at home where you can still be with your family. You can still train, you can

still work, do these different things and go for a more compressed trip. So it started from the selfish point of view. And then it just turned out that clients are also struggling to find more time. And this is a way to have more time for all those other important things for life. And because no other teams were doing that, this played to your advantage in terms of this North Face Ascent because everybody else had to bail out and go to the South. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's so interesting. When you're on that ascent from the North and there's nobody else there, there's certainly, you know, like a majesty with that, right? But also, like, if something goes wrong, like, there's no one else exactly the reason you described. The north side has always had a disadvantage that we have no helicopter access. China does not allow any helicopter use for tourism in Tibet. There's only military helicopters and thus far they will not do

rescues. So that adds quite a bit of time to any rescue to get to a hospital because we are essentially carrying off a mountain and then taking a yak until we can get to a roadhead where we can finally drive. Yak rides are apparently not very comfortable. I've never done one. But so not having that, we rely on human power in the event of an accident, whether it's a broken leg or a medical issue. If someone needs carried, it takes a lot of human power. And being the only team that meant we were solely responsible for that. So it certainly changed. That's a risk. That's a, yeah, that's a risk. Well, there are also all these sort of pros and cons when you look at the South versus the North, right? Like explain the pros and cons of both of those

approaches. Yeah. And this is where I ended up climbing up on my soapbox because I have a very strong opinion that not everyone agrees with. Financially, I think it's been easy for a lot of teams to remain on the South where the system is just in place and there's basically an unlimited number of people who want to go. It's quite a bit cheaper. And so fighting against that has become sort of like one of my things. Essentially, the South Side, the good things about it are an incredibly well-established tourism industry in Nepal. So permits are easy. There's loads of local guide companies and it's quite inexpensive.

The route itself is beautiful. The trek to Base Camp is one of the most magical experiences on the planet. I really recommend it for people, even if they don't want to climb Mount Everest, to trek through the Sherpa villages from Lukla to base camp to 18,000 feet is magical. And then the route tends to be a little bit easier climbing and a bit warmer and wetter, which is easier on people's bodies. The problem is twofold. One, that Nepal tourism industry does not yet have regulation. And so anyone can start a company and run trips there at any level of safety, money, with or without resources, and bring people who essentially

have no experience. And that's kind of how the market has grown really fast is bringing people with very little experience there. So you have loads, too many people and inexperienced people, which cause problems for everyone on the mountain. The second issue and the main one that I decided was not worth experiencing or operating in anymore is the Khumbu Icefall. So everyone who climbs on the south side of the mountain has to go through something called the Khumbu Icefall. And essentially imagine it's ice, but it acts like a waterfall or a flowing river through a really tight constriction. The glacier is moving at about three feet per day through this canyon. And what that means is huge house-sized blocks are constantly tumbling, moving. And if you're in the wrong place

at the wrong time, regardless of your skill, you just get killed. And so over the years, there's been dozens of fatalities just going from base camp to camp one through this icefall. And I went through the icefall 38 times during my career on that side. I had close calls twice. I helped dig bodies out from multiple different teams through those few years. And mountains are meant to have risk. I think anyone can choose to take these risks as an individual.

But once you enter into a commercial relationship where you're hiring workers, I think there's an accountability and a responsibility there. And as an expedition operator, I kind of did the math that if I'm going to run 20 or 25 years of trips on the mountain and I'm going to hire 20 staff each year between mountain guides and Sherpa, like there is no way I can't have fatalities for my company in that area. There is no way. Has that become more treacherous or a greater risk as a result of glacial regression and climate change? Is it now, is it even more treacherous? I absolutely believe so. Like what I've noticed over my time there and then talking to the old timers

who were there a lot longer than me since the 80s and 90s, there used to be a lot more snow kind of gluing things together. And without that snow, we're coming back year after year and it's drier and drier. That makes the route more difficult.

You know, some years are using over 50 ladders to cross crevasses or splits in the ice and those slow people down. So then you're spending more hours in that area. And then we're also seeing more blocks falling anecdotally. And so I absolutely felt even over my time that it was getting more dangerous. And then the overcrowding is probably

a much bigger part of that. In 2023, I wrote it down. I can't find it, but I seem to recall there were, was it 23 deaths? Yeah, I was going to say 19. Was it 19? Yeah. Right around 20. And this year? This year there were nine, I think, all on the south side. But it generally is around that like 10 range, right?

Yeah, 10 is average, I'd say of the modern era. So this sort of commercial guiding area of the last 20 years, 10 is average, but the bad years are more than 20. And my last year on the mountain was probably at least the easiest to see worst year is 2014. It was when we had an icefall avalanche that killed 16 Chopa in one accident. So 16 workers. And that was my last season on the mountain where I was like, this risk, I had been feeling this risk was growing too great for a while. What changed in 2014 was I was finally able to sell the north side. So I always struggled. Clients didn't really understand why we wanted to go to the north side, why it was safer, things like that. Once that accident happened, it was just so clear. There was so much footage of it. So then it became more easy to sell

the north side. My understanding is that in the early 2000s, the north side was the preferred side. It's true. And what happened that that then shifted? Was it just China's kind of reticence or all the difficulties around the permitting that made that shift? Essentially, yes. So yeah, the north side was more popular and the success ratios and safety ratios were much better on the north side than the south side in the early 2000s. But then in 2008, China wanted to bring the Olympic torch to the summit of Mount Everest as part of their lead up to Beijing. And they shut down the entire north side of the mountain eight days before expeditions left and everyone lost everything. So millions of dollars gone, clients couldn't switch that late in the season to the other side for most companies. And so essentially it rightfully led to sort of

companies distrust of the north side as being like a reasonable place to run expeditions to. So everything moved to the South side. And then at the same time, that was sort of the buildup of social media and Facebook and then Instagram. So the early 2010s, when everyone, the world finally started to see Everest in almost real time, all of that content came from the South side. And so I think the snowball just kept building and it's taken this long to kind of encourage people back. And by 2017, 18, 19,

we were back to the North side really being like better understood and appreciated, at least by people who had put their time in in the mountains, which were the clients we were trying to find anyway. And then COVID sort of done the

same thing, whereas Nepal only stayed closed for one year due to COVID, China stayed closed for four years due to COVID. The other safety consideration between the two is that from the south, you're basically traversing valleys, right? Whereas on the north, you're sort of on ridge lines for a lot of it. So if there's an avalanche or some kind of event, right, if you're on the south, it's all coming down on top of you as opposed to falling down beneath you. Yeah, I've spent a bunch of time talking about kind of like the challenges of the south and, you know, the pro of the north side other than relatively uncrowded.

And China, despite the challenges, being quite dedicated to kind of like managing and regulating the mountains. So they don't allow true budget companies to be there that are cutting corners. They do care about things like trash and human waste and, you know, not allowing generators inside the national park and different things like this. But the other big thing is, yeah, the route is truly different from a mountain guide's brain perspective of how we manage risk. In the south side, there is so much random chance you're taking because of, like you said, climbing in valleys and things above you, whether it's rockfall or icefall or avalanches falling on top of you. The north side route almost continuously follows ridges. There's basically 1,000 foot slope to get

to what's called the North Corolla, 7,000 meters, where we're climbing an open slope with things above us. The rest of the time we're on ridges. And so when I think about, yeah, just ways I can manage and mitigate the things that I can't control, that's one way to do it is to find high points. All the camps are on high points. A camp on the North side will never be wiped out. But if you do the rapid ascent and you go to the north, you're missing the party base camp on the south, right? Like there's a lot going on there. Like there's baristas and dinner party. There's like, you know, the more I look into this, the more I'm like, wow, this isn't actually what I thought it was. Yeah. And in some ways, I've loved that. Like my mentor into the 8,000

meter world was a climber and guide named Russell Bryce. He owned a company called Himalayan Experience. It was a Kiwi living in Chamonix. And he was the original. And in the early 2000s, we don't have to suffer as hard as everyone is suffering. We can bring these creature comforts and make it more fun. He was the first one to bring a big dome, the first one to bring heaters, the first one to bring a chef to cook sushi or make sushi at base camp. And there's like private bedrooms

with like real beds and like private bathrooms and things like that. Yeah. And so maybe this is me going from like a young one trying to disrupt to like being the old crusty one. Like we all have this line where it's gone too far, right? And like, it's gone too far on arguably for me on the south side. You know, I think like on the north side, you can drive to base camp at 17 and a half thousand

feet. So in my opinion, bring whatever you want there. You know, we actually had a great espresso machine. We have beautiful hot showers, all these different things because we can drive everything there. But on the south side, once you're using underpaid human labor to bring these things up, and then not only in base camp, but people started bringing these things through the icefall to show like at camp two, they have heated tents and carpeting and beautiful dining tables and big ovens to cook fancy meals. Well, all of that is being brought through the icefall, which means more loads in the icefall, which means more Sherpa hours in the icefall,

which means more accidents. And so like, everyone's got a line. I found mine. I'm like, be super comfortable at base camp, have a party, you know, drink your whiskey, whatever it is. But then once you're on the mountain, be a climber, cook for yourself, set up your own tents. The Sherpa are going to assist, of course, and they're going to do more work than the clients because they are more capable of that work than our average client. But like, be fully an additive part to the system and do all you can. Like my goal is that each person on the mountain, client, mountain guide, Sherpa are all at the edge of too

much. Like they're working and struggling and the outcome is unknown for each person on the mountain. That's what I still think is like essential to the experience that's different from so many of the other things we do in life. And so for me, being comfortable at base camp doesn't take away from that. Maybe people recover better and their brains slow down and shut and they get less anxious. Great. But then on the mountain, like we're meant to be fighting up there. It's one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. And I love that.

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enhancement is next level. It is truly Swiss innovation at its best. Visit on.com slash richroll. That's on.com slash richroll. Talk to me a little bit about the Sherpa community. I want to understand, you know, who these people are a little bit better. Obviously, you know, Base Camp on the South and all the Sherpa that are, you know, assisting these expeditions and these climbers, like this is a major driver. It's an engine of their economy. And the commercialization of Everest obviously benefits that community on one level, but there's also, I can't help but think there's something exploitative about it as well. So you being somebody who knows these people well and has spent many years with these people, like who, you know, who are these people and what is it that we don't understand about that community?

Yeah, you know, of course, in these big issues like this, there are multiple sides. And there are Sherpa having incredible opportunities through working with climbers and climbing groups. And there are Sherpa being truly exploited and underpaid and have no safety considerations being taken into their work. And so both are true at the same time. What I've seen, you know, I started going to Nepal in 1997 and immediately felt welcomed there. And many of the Sherpa I work with today are either the same Sherpa that I worked with in the late 90s, early 2000s, or family members. And so I sort of, I was a young, passionate climber. And when I went there, there were lots of Sherpa at lots of different levels. But I connected with one, his name is Dorje Sonam Sherpa, who is my same age. She already had two kids. It was my same age.

But we just wanted to go climbing together. Like you asked something that's missed or maybe not known. It's that there is a passion for climbing amongst many of the Sherpa. Are they doing it for money? Of course they are. Are they doing it for better lives for their family? Of course they are. So is there a financial side?

And that kind of like work, employee-employer relationship, of course. But the ones that I've gravitated to are the ones that also have a passion, because I've always felt like there is quite a bit of risk in what we do, despite making good conservative decisions. And so it feels to me that there should be more than just money involved. So I think I've gravitated to Sherpa who have also enjoyed climbing, who when they have the opportunity to stay in base camp and rest or drink coffee with the clients or go climbing, they want to go climbing.

They want to put the ropes up. They want to break the trail, things like that. And these guys are going up and down all the time anonymously. You know, the headlines are, you know, whatever Westerner did this, that or the other. And in truth, you know, these are gigantic team efforts that are fueled by the Sherpa who are, you know, just anonymously going up and down. And we don't even like sort of acknowledge or recognize that. I mean, I think that's changing. Yes.

And I think, you know, you choose who you follow or watch or hear stories from. And, you know, there are people acknowledging the support they've had, but there are also many people kind of just obscuring it. And I think, you know, all the way to the highest level of professional athletes, it's easy to say like I soloed or whatever because I didn't hire a ship or no one carried my backpack or tent or things like that. But if you're on a regular route on Mount Everest or any of the 14 8,000 meter peaks, there is no soloing.

Someone is breaking that trail and someone else, Sherpa, are putting in those fixed ropes. And even if you don't touch the fixed ropes, if you break your leg, you're gonna use those fixed ropes. So that safety net surrounding you is being put in and you are benefiting from it. We can do harder things in the mountains as professional athletes because of this safety net around us. The good news is that like anonymous piece of Sherpa culture is changing, right? Sherpa are beginning to get sponsorships, support for getting full Mountain Guides IFMGA certification instead of just high

altitude worker certification. And social media is changing things and Sherpa learning to and choosing to use cameras and document their ascents. Because yeah, the truth is Sherpa are people and we shouldn't ever pretend they like superhuman or can do anything. But their strength in the mountains, both genetic advantages and willingness to suffer and work hard in general, their ability to handle a workload is incredible. And their work ethic is incredible. So to your point, yeah, like they will climb up and down between camps and things like that, you know, two to three times as many times as the average like

Western client on a team. It's, it's incredible. And the ones who like it, it's magnificent, right? And the challenges, the ones who are being almost forced into it or carrying bigger loads than they should. Like we limit our climbers going up to carrying 40 pound loads and 40 pounds is a lot, but it's not 60 or 70, which means if there is an avalanche, if there is something else, there's a better chance of being able to like manage it, move, make good decisions, have a lot of extra like energy for the mountaineering. And with the increased commercialization of this whole, you know, ecosystem, there are these expedition organizations that are offering trips at a pretty low price, right? So I suspect that the people that are signing up for those are going to be the less experienced. They're also going to have the heavier loads. And this is where, you know, kind of the unfair treatment of the Sherpa might

creep in. That's right. And it's a complicated issue though, right? Because in some ways, like the broadening of who can go to Everest has a real positive, right? That it's not purely the playground of the ultra wealthy anymore. It is possible to save money and go to the mountain for, let's say $30,000 instead of $100,000. Having different ways to go to the mountain for, let's say, $30,000 instead of $100,000. Having different ways to go to the mountain is something I appreciate. Seeing more diversity in the mountains is something I appreciate. At the same time, this complete lack of regulation is allowing some operators to cut corners and take incredible advantage of their Sherpa staff, of the mountain, of other teams. Our team has been doing rescues for budget teams for two decades, right? Because we have an

expedition doctor and one of the most powerful Sherpa teams on the mountain and these fantastic IFMGA certified mountain guides. So when something happens on the mountain and the team has no communications, no extra oxygen and no medicine, well, ethically, if you're there, you're going to help. But these are the complicated decisions because also there is a point where your clients get to the point where they're like, I've paid all this money for all this incredible staff

and three days a week, they're off doing rescues for other teams. It's not easy. So does that create tensions at base camp between these various expedition outfits, especially when there's so much time to pass when everyone's kind of hanging out, right? Yeah, it does. It's easy to glorify the old days, but it did feel like in the early 2000s when I entered this business that we all competed really rigorously kind of like for clients. But once we got to the mountain, we all truly worked together and shared resources and things like that. And today,

there is such a separation between budget companies, some of which are Nepali, some are Russian. There's even an American ultra budget company. It's not like local companies versus international companies, but there's become this huge separation between the true budget companies and then the well-resourced companies and the unfairness of it. These are challenges that still need figured out. The solutions have not been created yet. I think there is a place for budget companies if their clients understand what they're signing up for and hopefully have that much more experience. If a professional climber wanted to go to the mountain, they wouldn't need all the resources that my teams deserve. And so

there should be a place for that. I think what's missing, and we've seen it missing in other places, even Denali in the US, but especially mountains, popular mountains in South America, even Denali in the US, but especially mountains, popular mountains in South America, you know, there was a lack of regulation. You know, I think capitalism kind of did its thing and ran rampant and there were a lot of positives, but there were also these pretty strong negatives. And then if governments want these places to be pristine for tourism, pristine doesn't just mean clean. It also means like, you know, ethically comfortable that when you leave that place, you feel good about your experience there, not dirty about your experience there. I have no doubt Nepal will get there and regulations will come in into play that actually

create a floor of services that we can offer and then build from there. I see. So if you were in charge of creating those regulations, it would create a floor. What else would you like to see happen? I mean, a big one is there is no question to me that no one should be on Mount Everest until they've climbed a number of peaks first. Let's say three to five, 6,000 meter peaks, 20,000 foot peaks, and at least one 23,000 foot peak or 7,000 meter peak to build the base level of technical skills you need and decision-making experience and hopefully where you've experienced a failure before. So then if failure becomes a reality on Mount Everest, you're prepared to accept that. So I think we absolutely need regulations of experience for clients on the mountain. Then I also think we need similar

regulations for Sherpa high-altitude workers and for mountain guides. Mountain guides should be certified by the IFMGA. It's just a base-level certification, like a medical bar or a law school bar or anything like that. And high-altitude workers, so not necessarily mountain guide decision makers, but doing the hard work of breaking trail, fixing ropes, setting camps, things like that, should go through something like the Khumbu Climbing Center certification courses that have been designed for that. So everyone needs an experience level, a base experience level. And then things like removing human waste, removing trash should just be basic. If you

don't do it, your company's gone. It's just gone. And right now it's gotten to the point because even the inexpensive Sherpa wages are still expensive. Now that you can get tents from China for $50, it's cheaper to leave the tent behind and buy a new one the next season than it is to remove it. So we're just building thousands of pounds of trash on the mountain because it's easier to leave things than to pay for the human power to bring it down. And it just has to be like a non-question, right? They were going to leave this mountain better

than we found it. But it's a very North American sentiment traditionally over time. And perhaps European, but even European mountains tend not to be as clean as American mountains. All leave no trace ethic is really strong. and it takes time to change that in places. We've all seen the images of the traffic jam and we have seen the kind of littered tents and debris

around Everest. And it's easy to kind of just form a mental construct of what that is and why it is the way that it is and, you know, say, well, this shouldn't be this way. But as somebody who's, you know, been there 13 times, like, what are we missing? You know, what do we not really appreciate or understand about the reality of being there and making that summit push and what the community, you know, there's a lot of heartwarming stories, you know, around like being in base camp and all the community, you know, there's a lot of heartwarming stories, you know, around like being in base camp and all the people that you meet and the community and all of that as well. Yeah, we have spent lots of time

talking about the challenges of the mountain, but you know very well how much I love this place and how much I believe in these experiences. And so, you know, two things I thought about as you were asking that question. So the first thing people might not know is actually how hard it still is. So even I just kind of talked trash about the trash being left up there and how there's a financial reason for that. That is true. There is also a struggle

reason. Many people underestimate the mountain, including expedition operators and mountain guides, even good ones. And sitting at home, what people probably don't realize is we still get the shit kicked out of us all the time on that mountain. And what I mean by that is we're coming down and we're fighting for our lives because something has happened. Oxygen resources have run out or disappeared or a storm has come or high winds or all these different things. And so all of a sudden you are actually fighting and thinking about things like frostbite and fatalities. And then it becomes a lot easier to justify leaving things behind on the mountain. And a good company will leave things behind because life is still more important. But then

we'll sit in base camp for five days, seven days, 10 days until the weather is good enough. We'll leave things behind because life is still more important. But then we'll sit in base camp for five days, seven days, 10 days until the weather is good enough. And then we'll pay a team to go back up the mountain. We'll pay bonuses and clean what was left behind. Not every team does that. So there's also that side where there is still a struggle going on. There is nothing easy about Mount Everest. And there's a lot of content out there suggesting that it's easy and it's not real climbing and the mountain's been tamed. It has not.

Like this season, I kind of alluded to it before, we had this perfect summit day. We spent 45 minutes on the summit. Everyone got to take all the selfies they wanted to. And everyone on the team, 23 people, summited. Magical day. We had great weather forecast from our Swiss meteorologist. We're coming down the mountain. We get off the mountain. It's all perfect. We get to Camp 3, which is at about 27,000 feet. So our highest camp still way in what's called the death zone above 26,000 feet.

Human life is not meant to be there. And all of a sudden, this convective buildup is happening below us and we start getting just huge wind. So we're talking about 60 to 90 mile per hour wind gusts. And all of a sudden, none of our communications work because you can't use walkie-talkies when it's blowing that hard because no one can hear anything but the wind. And tents start getting ripped and shredded. And we had planned to descend 2,000 feet in the mountain and then crawl into a tent and have some food and cook up some water and, you know, get new oxygen bottles and continue down. And now all of a sudden we have completely exhausted climbers. Sherpa are trying to take down these tents so we don't lose them and leave trash.

And none of the kind of backup resources in place that we expected. And we're fighting. And we're one of the best resource teams on the mountain with, I would argue, excellent expedition leadership and really expensive Swiss weather forecasting. And we were still in it for, you know, seven or eight hours. All the team backup safety net kind of went away. And it was like, there's a mountain guide and two or three Sherpa and a member, and we're doing what it takes to get down. It's real. What is the allure that keeps you coming back? I mean, you've done this nine times, you know, like, cause you see those images of the traffic jam and you can't help but think, well, how hard is this?

Look at all these people, like there's backed up, you know, they're just cruising right up to the top and back. Obviously that's not the reality. It's incredibly dangerous and risky. And it's something that you've, I don't wanna use the word conquer. I don't think anybody conquers a mountain, but it's something that you've been successful in summiting so many times. So like, what is it inside you that keeps you so magnetized by this experience?

Yeah. For me specifically on Mount Everest, it's absolutely the mountain guiding side. It's the going back with a different group of people every year and hopefully helping them to achieve or at least attempt this dream. I think Everest is one of the ultimate human laboratories where we get to experiment and explore humans on the edge. At least on my teams, my goal is, like I said before, that every person is truly on the edge of struggle and the outcome is truly unknown, right? And so much of what we do in life is kind of like structured. And there are so many great adventures we can have that might feel similar, especially like physical ones, whether it's an ultra race or a marathon or whatever someone's athletic pursuit might be where you have to train hard and put all this effort in. And then you have kind of an unknown outcome.

But a lot of those things I think are... There's not life or death risk though. They're physical, they're mental and emotional, but they don't have that extra edge of risk. And I am a fan of risk. While most of my life has been trying to manage and mitigate risk, I still think the risk is essential to these experiences. And I think so many things we do in our life now, we've been able to kind of sanitize some of that risk, at least some of us with as much privilege as I have had in my life and the way I was brought up. And, you know, I think there is still a need for that for us to really explore these different parts of us to be pushed

physically, mentally, and emotionally, and to have to put everything in and yet still be willing to fail and pull back and trying to figure out where that line is. It's just very rare for me to see a person on the mountain, whether it's a shipper or a mountain guide or a client that isn't affected and changed by that experience. And I love it. Where does this relationship with risk come from? Is this something hardwired into you? Is it a reaction to your upbringing? Like maybe we should go back to the beginning a little bit and learn about the origin story. absolutely am not like the adrenaline junkie that some people think I am. Like I don't terribly like things like bungee jumping or skydiving or these traditionally high adrenaline activities. I really like things that utilize problem solving and decision making to manage risk. But yeah, where it all started, my family's from England originally. We moved to

Massachusetts when I was six years old. So I grew up in the Northeast. But you held on to a little bit of twang, just a little bit of that accent that comes out. Yeah. Maybe a little British, maybe it's more central mass, you know, but it's something. There's some British in there for sure. And my family was not outdoorsy at all, but they, when they moved to New England, I think they just thought that we were meant to do things like hiking and things like that. So I was exposed to these very basic things with my family, like hiking and camping, but very young fell into a group in Massachusetts that was rock climbing and skiing. And they became my total

passions, especially skiing. But I wasn't very good at them. As it turned out, throughout my childhood, I was an incredibly passionate, I guess, athlete or wannabe athlete. But I was never good enough to take that next level. At the same time, I was pretty good in school and school never really caught me in the same way that athletics did. So, you know, I tried lots of different things as a kid, loved them and like just kept always pushing and pushing and pushing, whether it's tennis or basketball or soccer or eventually skiing and climbing, but ended up going to school, was meant to go to medical school. My parents had a very clear path for me and I'm sure it would have been a lot of fun and it would have been a great path. But luckily my freshman year at college, we had an outdoor education program that was overseen by a well-known East Coast

climber named Chris Warner. And I fell in with him right away through this like pre-freshman orientation trip. And he saw that I already had lead climbing, rock climbing skills. I had already done loads of mountains in the US and I was a good skier. And he started inviting me to intern on trips with him. So essentially I was making coffee, doing whatever I had to do unpaid on every school break. And that's where I got to climb my first 20,000 foot peaks. And I was actually terrible at the beginning. I had to be essentially rescued off my first 20,000 foot peaks. It was a cotopoxy. Yeah, like you failed as a young, you know, sort of like, I got this, right? I know what I'm doing. And got your ass kicked.

Totally. I was rowing crew at Georgetown at D1 school. I was a great athlete. I got invited on this trip. And there were a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds. I was a great athlete. I got invited on this trip and there were a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds. I was like, I am going to crush these guys. And I essentially didn't listen to any of the recommendations for going to Alstead. And I'd never been above 14,000. That's what youth is for. That's what youth is for. And I did, I summited, but I was completely hallucinating on the summit. I remember, or I've been told this story so many times by my guide that I got to the top. I was with a local Ecuadorian guide

and I asked him why someone had built condominiums on the summit of Cotopaxi. And obviously there's nothing there. And that's when he started to get a little concerned, I think. And I ended up needing to be like partially slid down the mountain. And I finished and I was like, I never want to do that again. And luckily I had this mentor, Chris, who was like, no problem. Come to this little market town, experience a little bit of the culture. You can fly home before we go to the second mountain. And it was over that three or four days of rest that it went from being like, that was the worst thing I've ever done to being like, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. I've ever done to being like,

that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And that difference was like, well, can I do it better? Can I find a way to not suffer as hard as I did? And I stayed, did the next two peaks and it totally clicked. But that feels like a real line in the sand moment, right? Like either you're gonna be like, you know what? Not for me, med school, but something else clicked. Yeah.

And that kind of decision tree parted. Because you're a guy, like you're a smart guy. Like I'm intuiting that you grew up in a very education first household. Yes. Really important to your parents that you do well and be on this kind of traditional track of upward mobility.

You end up at Georgetown. That's right. You're pre-med, the idea is you're gonna go to med school. And there's this pull, like, first of all, it's like a right place, right time, almost divine intervention. This like climbing guy just gets put right in your path and you gravitate towards this guy, you learn from him.

And you're in this push-pull situation, right? Like, do I do this thing that I always thought I was gonna do that my parents want me to do, but I have this other thing that I love, but it feels like, you know, I don't know where that will lead, right? And as a young person, like trying to make sense of that, most people end up, you know,

kind of tipping the other direction towards the traditional path. Sure, you know, kind of tipping the other direction towards the traditional path. Sure. You know, I think there are a couple of things and that's a really good description. I mean, I continued on both paths for a number of years, right? Like I got myself into medical school. I persuaded my parents I was going to defer medical school for one year and get it climbing and skiing out of my system. But that wasn't the real motivation.

That was to keep them at arm's length, right? You knew on some level. As it turns out. Did you think maybe I will go or were you trying to see like, let me see how far I can take this? I think because of this kind of like education focused background that my family had, I think I even thought what I was being told, which was like, you'll climb for a year and you'll get bored. Like there's not that much there. You go and become a raft guide or a ski instructor for a year and then you kind of burn out of it. And so that I think was actually in my head. And when I finished that one year and I was like, wow, I'm not bored. Like I'm being challenged on every level, not just physically, because that's what in my family, sport was physical and school was mental,

right? And it turned out that I was completely challenged mentally, problem solving, like decision making, as well as this physical challenge that I was learning to become an athlete, a real athlete. And so I asked to defer for one more year, you know, and Georgetown Medical School was like, well, we find that students' academic ability really reduces after more than 12 months out of the academic environment. So they said no. And they gave me seven days to make a decision. And, you know, that was really the moment when I had to make a decision. And I was living on the East Coast at the time, still, moment when I had to make a decision. And I was living on the East Coast at the time, still in DC. And I went to the mountains of West Virginia alone and went on a three-day backpacking

trip. And it was there that I kind of was like, I'm not sure what the path is here. I'm not sure I see how it's going to work, but I know I want and need to put more energy into this. And the part where I think I was just so lucky with my upbringing was like, I had the confidence that if it all went bad, you could figure out how to get back in. I could get back in. Taking MCATs again might suck. Like it might be painful. I might have to do some like bridge program, but I could find a way. I think that confidence was built through my parents, despite them hating this path that I took for many years. They did encourage us to try different things.

I've read interviews and heard you talk about this. You're always very gracious and politic about it, but I would imagine that was not easy and probably didn't go down too well. I know my dad's gonna listen to this. So yeah, politic is important. No, I mean, when I made the decision, I was like, I'm burning this piece of paper and doing this. So yeah, politic is important. No, I mean, when I made the decision, I was like, I'm burning this piece of paper and doing this. No, there were a few years that were really tough,

especially with my dad. My mom had always kind of behind the scenes supported this activity. She bought me my first climbing rack, because she heard that it would be safer if I had these things called cams instead of nuts. And so she started building this rack for me when I was 13 years old. But my dad was very clear that like, there is a path and this is not it. And I think it came mostly from like, you know, they had struggled so hard to get to where they were and it was still hard. Like we're a middle class family and they're like, you need to be stable and like have no doubt about where your next paycheck is coming.

And there's no sense of how this could lead to anything stable. No, I mean, this is the 90s. There were no like well-paid professional climbers yet. Like the sponsorship side of climbing grew so much in the 2000s, but that didn't really exist. Guide services weren't really exist.

Guide services weren't really professional. We were all dirtbags. I certainly fit that mold. There wasn't a financial plan. And so, yeah, no, there were a hard few years where they were just very certain that I was running away from responsibility versus- And they're just waiting. He'll come around.

Exactly. They still say, you know, you can still go to medical school, Adrian. It's true. I'll show up at a Christmas dinner and it's, you know, well into my 40s now. And they're like, wow, have you thought about this year? Yeah, I still get that too.

I'm like, my hair's all gray now, you know? Exactly. But with that said, I do think there was a transition point. So I started running these international expeditions as well as guiding locally in the United States and building skills. And in my mid-20s, I had an opportunity and my parents said yes for them to come along on an expedition to Ecuador where I was running a lot of my trips. Now, they are not climbers. They were not going to go anywhere near the mountain,

but they agreed to come to the cities and come to the huts at the bases, which are 15,000 feet and kind of tag along on the trip. And they saw these people who had some success in their lives and were generally much older than me coming on these experiences.

Stable lives. Stable lives. Very stable. Yeah, yeah. And they were seeing these people like touched by these experiences that Stable lives. Stable lives. Very stable, yeah, yeah. And they were seeing these people like touched by these experiences that we were shepherding them through. And that was kind of that transition point

to where they were like, they were still really worried that I was gonna eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the rest of my life and live out of like the two-door truck that I had. But they saw that there was something here. Yeah. So in 2004, you start your own expedition company. So it's been 20 years that you've had this business. But I know that basically you didn't take any money from it for a long time.

And even when you could, you kept your salary super low. And it's a very successful enterprise now, but it wasn't like an overnight thing. Yeah, it's been a wild road. The 20 year thing, we suddenly have all this merchandise that says like since 2004, we're kind of celebrating our 20 years this year. We're shutting down and having a big party. And like, this is not a path I ever imagined. Like maybe I should have studied business in undergrad or gone to business school. Like there wasn't a path I ever imagined. Like maybe I should have studied business in undergrad

or gone to business school. Like there wasn't a path. I was just doing what I loved. And like 2004 to 2000, I don't know, 11 or 12, I ran every single trip we offered, right? Like, so essentially it was a sole proprietorship for a long, long, long time. And then, you know, luckily I had another,

a client who became a mentor and then a best friend and eventually an owner in Alpenglow helped me to, you know, look around me and see a lot of the mountain guides in their 60s who are old, jaded, broken and broke. And, you know, give him a lot of credit for helping me to start looking at those bigger picture questions, to look further ahead to what I want, but also like, I wanted to touch more people with these experiences. I am such a believer of these mountain experiences and getting our butts kicked and handed to us with teammates. Like, this is a good thing for community and for individuals. And so I wanted to give it to more people.

And if I was just the one doing it with a satellite phone while spending eight months in the field every year, it just could never touch more people. So he helped me to start. Create a real business and a business model that would work and be sustainable that you could scale on some level. Yep. So how many people do you have now? Well, so now we have nine full-tim in the office kind of running the back end.

We'll take over 6,000 people climbing and skiing both in the US and here in California and Lake Tahoe and around the world. We'll run over 45 international expeditions. Locally, we have a couple of dozen guides doing regular work for us. And internationally, there's probably about 10 of us that really are the core team. So it's cool. We touch more people now. And, you know, of those 6,000, only a few hundred are going on international expeditions. So another big thing that I'm really proud of is we realize that many people are never going to be able to take that much time or have the financial resources to do that. And so in Lake Tahoe, we offer things as simple as a two-hour Via Ferrata climb,

if you're familiar with Via Ferrata. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I know the one in Telluride. Looks terrifying. I've never done it. And that's the beauty of them. I was there. Somebody died the last time I was in Telluride. You're just ruining my whole picture, Via whole picture, because what I was going to say is they look so terrifying and yet they're so safe. Of course, all this is guided and custom built.

It's very different than the Telluride kind of like scene that was illegally built on public lands, but has now become this really popular tourist attraction. But a via ferrata is essentially, you know, you have a steel cable from bottom to top

that you're clipped into. And so a non-climber with very rudimentary skills, not having to learn about rock climbing rope systems, can ascend a cliff and feel what we feel in the vertical world. And they are so much fun. And that barrier to entry of both skills and cost was just dramatically reduced from what I used to offer at Alpenglow. And so many more people are experiencing it. Right, just don't unclip.

I think what happened with this person was there was a moment where they were unclipped and yeah, that's where it goes sideways. That was a poor decision. We do still have to make decisions, which is part of it. Yeah, well, decision-making is the difference between life and death. This is something you talk a lot about.

You can't mitigate risk and make the responsible choice when you're compromised or you're under the kind of intoxication of adrenaline, right? Like adrenaline, which generally, like in the midst of a sporting event, you would welcome actually can be not a good thing when you're in these perilous conditions. Absolutely. I've always kind of felt and said,

like, if I feel adrenaline while in the big mountains, it's because I've made a series of mistakes that have now put me in a really bad place. That's like a warning sign, right? Like, I never want to be in that place of panic and like fight or flight. My goal is to stay way on the other side of that line, but it doesn't always work. And that's, that's also part of it. The fact that that other side, that adrenaline panic place does exist. And I've been there, you know, too many times. And, and like every time I get there, I can maybe in the moment or maybe later look back and see the steps that got me there. Like that's the reality of these things that I think is so important. is whether you're using supplemental oxygen or going without.

And one of the distinguishing things about your career is that you're one of the very few people who have summited both Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen, which of course is affecting your brain and thus your decision-making. So talk a little bit about the experience of doing this without supplemental oxygen, the challenges and kind of what you've learned

through those experiences. Yeah, I'm so proud of all of my summits of the big mountains and the vast majority have been done with supplemental oxygen, either while guiding or while trying to ski big lines on these peaks. I've always worn supplemental oxygen while skiing.

But by like 2014, 2015, at that point, I think I had summited Everest maybe six times. And we had some really good years in there as well. The 2010s were really good years on the mountain for my company and for many people. And so it did start to feel like we kind of had like a system and it was working and I knew what to expect up there. And the whole thing I've always said to people is like, the outcome is meant to be unknown. And I got to the point where I felt very confident that I could summit that mountain. And so that's kind of where it came sort of full circle for me for where I wanted to have my own experience on Mount Everest. Every single time I

had been to Mount Everest up until 2016, I had been there guiding. So I was in a professional role and responsible for other people all the way back to the first year, right? It's not like I went and climbed it for myself first. I didn't have that kind of money. So my very first years were guiding. And so I got to the point where I was like, I really do want to experience what I think my clients are experiencing of this true unknown out there. And for me, whether it's because of some of my genetic advantages, why I fell into this sport, genetic advantages at altitude, I acclimatize really well, or because of experience and therefore having a lot of these like systems and building blocks in place, it felt like trying without supplemental

oxygen was the way that I could perhaps have that peak experience. And I was lucky by 2016 to have really great sponsors willing to support me. And thanks to this mentor, Aaron, I had been able to step away from Alpenglow, the guide company, a bit where they didn't need me in every role anymore, both leading the company and leading the expedition, the clients. And so I had the opportunity or I chose to attempt without supplemental oxygen. I climbed with Corey Richards, another professional climber from the North Face team. I'm going to get him in here. He's got this great book that's about to come out. The Color of Everything. Yeah. I'm really excited for it. Corey and I decided to attempt without supplemental oxygen. And I went into it just with like,

all the confidence of everything I've done before and knowing that I'm generally the fastest or one of the fastest people on the mountain. That's always kind of, I climb with the Sherpa as much as I can. I carry loads, I fix ropes. That had just been my young career in the 8,000 meter peaks. And so I went into 2016 Everest a bit like that. And the season went exactly like I expected it to. I was working with my guide team, even though I wasn't meant to be. And I was carrying loads with the Sherpa and I was so much faster than Corey and everything was perfect. And then I was climbing to the highest camp on the mountain, which is at 27,000 feet and about 25 and a half thousand feet or 26,000 feet.

All of a sudden, I'm not keeping up with Corey. And Corey at altitude, as it turns out, like he hits 26,000 feet and he's like Clark Kent, right? He goes into the phone booth, rips off his suit and he's Superman. And he gets stronger and stronger as we get higher. He's probably not actually getting stronger, but he gets weaker at a slower rate than everyone else. So he was doing great. I like my mental state, my immaturity, at least in this world or in this moment, like I just had to keep up with him. I did everything I could to get to high camp to 27,000 feet on his heels at the same pace as him. And essentially what I had done is like put my summit effort, my race day effort

into the day before the summit. I crushed myself keeping up with Corey that day. Couldn't stay warm that night. Couldn't hydrate. We don't actually sleep at 27,000 feet, not on oxygen, but we spend eight or nine hours like resting and drinking water and things like that. And by the time it was time to go for the summit at 10 p.m., like I was just crushed. I made it another 1,500 feet. I think I made it to

28,500 feet. So 500 feet from the summit, like so close, maybe even close from that. But I was going to get myself killed up there I my pace had slowed to the point that there was no way I could summit and make it down and in any sort of reasonable amount of time it was really hard to turn around like this is this is not one of these like decision-making moments that I'm like oh I nailed it like I was up there getting myself killed sure that I could keep going. And I had my expedition doctor at base camp on the radio telling me I was going to get myself killed. And I was all alone. Corey was up ahead of me along with one Sherpa. And essentially,

I think the thing that finally got through is Corey was going to turn around to bring me down. He was not going to summit because he knew the only way I was going to get down was with assistance. And it was when I heard on the radio, like, Corey's going to turn around. And I was like, like, he's having the perfect day, the most magical day. And I turned around and I got myself down. Ego and humility. I mean, it was a lesson in from all the mistakes leading up to it, like me, despite having read every mountaineering story that led in death on these big mountains, like I was right there. All of it goes out the window. You can see it. It's right there. And this was my moment. And you're built for it cost a hundred thousand dollars to go we were the first

people ever to snapchat our experience right million actually millions of people following like all these things that everyone says shouldn't matter like they do matter and like it's all just mixed up in there along with the confidence that like I've fought through a lot of moments before and it's worked out and was that like a brand partnership with Snapchat? Snapchat ended up coming on. Oh, they did. Yeah, because it's also like insanely expensive to create an internet connection, right?

But it can be done. I mean, one day if the Starlink or something like it over there, it's going to transform this world. But right now, even today in China, there's still no Starlink option. So we're using these satellite options that cost tens of dollars per megabyte. So I think, you know, once this started taking off, we started, you know, having to build funding. I think, you know, we spent

something like $140,000 or $160,000 on satellite internet to Snapchat our entire expedition, which is completely ridiculous. so you're you're part of the reason why you know there's a traffic jam yeah i mean of course of course i'm constantly reminded of that you know living in lake tahoe when you know a bunch of pro skiers are sitting around complaining about like how many people are at the ski resort and in the back country it's like we did that we've built our entire careers on telling people how awesome these experiences are and that they should come and have them.

We can't close the gate now. We need to figure out how to make it work, right? Now, I'm a believer in more people in these places. But like we've talked about extensively, there need to be guardrails or there needs to be a floor. But more people in the mountains pushing their bodies to do hard things. I just, I can't believe that's a bad thing.

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Do it by going to join.whoop.com slash roll and get started today. I'm super proud to announce my next venture, Voicing Change Media, this beautiful consortium of thinkers, storytellers, artists, and visionaries, all committed to fostering meaningful exchanges and sharing thought-provoking content. Voicing Change Media will feature shows like Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson, Mentor Buffet with Alexi Pappas, Feel Better Live More with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and The Proof with Simon Hill. You can explore this network and all its offerings at voicingchange.media. So this Snapchat push was 2016, right?

I was 16. So you got unfinished business. Well, exactly. In this industry, like I failed so many times in so many ways. But like that one, honestly, as I was walking off that mountain, it did feel different. It was like I failed on the biggest stage, my biggest opportunity. Am I ever going to get another chance? All these people watching you in real time. Yeah. Am I going to lose my sponsors? All these silly things. As it turned out, you know, luckily, storytelling through failure, like has a power. And I think a lot of brands do recognize that. And I think it's important, like, you know, just showing the summits and the Instagram photos of beautiful

sunrises, like, that's not real. We all know that. But like, also, who cares, right? You know, luckily, I came home and the reaction to my turning around was almost like people were trying to persuade me I didn't fail. Like, you know, no, you made the right decision. Like you succeeded. Everyone came home safe. And like, I don't agree with that either. I think we should like own our failures. Like I failed up there. And had I not like owned it, I'm not sure I would have figured out what to do different the next year. Because it wasn't simple. The simple thing was just to blame like it was too cold because it was a cold day and I'm a skinny dude. Like it would have been easy to just be like,

I was too cold. I could have done it otherwise. Actually, what I needed to do was like change a bunch of pieces of my life. Physically, I needed to be stronger. I hired a coach for the first of my life. I've always counted on the fact that like the person who suffers the hardest

wins in the big mountains. I never wanted to put science behind it or be told what to do. I just wanted to go out climbing and skiing and say that was good enough. So prior to that, there wasn't a kind of concerted philosophy around how you would physically prepare your body for these things. Absolutely not. It was just do more of it. Like I thought just volume was the only piece. And I don't think I was alone in that, like professional coaching and kind of like bringing

like the science of athletics into the high mountains. Like that's really new. It's part of why I'm so excited to see what the next generation does in the next decade or two, because there are so many athletes with professional level coaching

and coming from things like true running backgrounds, like collegiate running backgrounds, coming into climbing. Like if they can combine the experience that it takes to stay alive in the mountains with true athleticism and talent and coaching. Well, it's inevitable. I mean, it's sort of shocking

that it's taken this long for that kind of epiphany, but it's an epiphany that you have. You hire these coaches, uphill athlete. You begin to approach your training with kind of a strategy behind it, a program, but you also change your diet, right? You go from this person

who's just eating tons of carbohydrates to realizing that you do a lot better on a high-fat diet in these environments. And one of the things I read that I thought was so interesting was that when they tested you, they realized that you became glycolytic when your heart rate went above 115, which is like very low, right? That's like your aerobic threshold. That's when you go from zone two into zone three. That's right. So you have like, for doing these things that are,

you know, by definition, endurance events, you had very little actual endurance. That's right. Because that threshold should be way higher. Exactly right. Before, so you should be able to, your heart rate should be much higher before you tip into that glycolytic zone.

That's right. And so all of this science that, you know, I went to this UC Davis sports performance lab and did a bunch of testing. I worked with uphill athlete. I ended up with a nutritionist as well. And yeah, so I think it's important, like each athlete is going to be different, right? Like I've had so many people write me and be like, so keto diet is the key to high altitude performance. And it's like, so keto diet is the key to high altitude performance. And it's like, no, of course not. Like I had a specific issue that I needed to train away essentially or to work with. And it was this shifting to carbohydrate, to fast fuel at a very low heart rate. And since up high, all of our

digestive systems shut down when we're not on oxygen. So you essentially vomit up pretty much anything you put in your mouth. You have to be able to run on your fat stores. And my body just wasn't efficient in that place. So for me, I needed to do loads of fasting workouts. For me, one of the fastest ways to transition away from this carbohydrate dependence was essentially a ketogenic diet for a period of time and then adding carbs back in. So there were things that worked for me,

but they might not work for everyone. So I think the learning is like the power of coaching and bringing professionals in if possible, or at the very least doing some testing in a lab if you have big mountain goals. Right, so when you reflect back on that 2016 attempt, you're lacking the kind of endurance aerobic base that might've benefited you,

but you're also just eating simple sugars for the most part, right? So you're getting- Non-stop. Yeah, you're getting lightheaded and you're starting to bonk basically, right? Essentially bonking, yep. And I you're starting to bonk basically. Essentially bonking. Yep. And I essentially had a massive bonk on the mountain getting to 27,000 feet.

And there was no way I could recover back out of that. So even as I was leaving for my summer push at 10pm, I'm like shivery and cold and like just not right. Decision making isn't happening at the level it should have been and things like that. And so that was kind of the physical side. And then for 2017, like I actually needed to truly let go of Alpenglow and not just say I was going to like I needed to ask for a lot of help from people around me in the six months leading up to the trip and then on the trip itself to have no extra mental obligation so I could actually focus on this. I was lucky enough to have Corey Richards agree to come back and try without oxygen a second time, but essentially just be there as my friend and

supporter. And at the end of the day, he turned around on summit day without oxygen, just didn't have it in him to suffer that hard a second time, I think. Because who cares if you've climbed Everest without oxygen twice versus once. But the beauty was he was heading back down, found a bottle of oxygen with one of the Alpenglow team members, put it on, came back out

and went to the summit with me. And that like friendship and the power of that, like on that last six or seven hours of struggle was like just a complete game changer for me. I'm so lucky I had that. You mentioned Clark Kent with respect to Corey, but I heard him say like when he decided to then put on oxygen and join you, that was his moment of going from Clark Kent to Superman. Like the difference is like gigantic.

Yeah. Like in my memory, he was like dancing a jig and running circles around us. And actually even on oxygen, there's no one running on Mount Everest. But yeah, it is transformative. You can eat relatively normally when you're on oxygen at these high camps. You're so much warmer and that just reduces anxiety in many ways of like frostbite or hypothermia and the fears of that. Your decision making is completely clear. It's transformatively different. But that's not to say it's easy. I think sometimes that's taken to be like, see all those people who are

climbing it with oxygen. It's easy. It is a fight. Like I fought three weeks ago when I summited the mountain. Like I fought and I'm in good shape and I trained really hard for six months leading up to the trip and I wore oxygen and I fought really hard. It's just that next level. I mean, my summit push on Everest was 43 hours without sleeping. One of my favorite stories from that, just because I think it demonstrates the feeling Killian Jernay, the runner who's a friend, summited that day as well. He did it in a sick style,

going all the way from base camp to summit in a single pusher advanced base camp summit. Didn't he go up and down a couple of times? Yeah, so his goal was to break a record. And the first time he did it, he tried to go from base camp to summit, ended up getting really sick. He summited, but on the way down, had to crawl into a tent and like really struggled to survive. And so he didn't complete it. He went back down to advanced base camp and then came

to our camp where our expedition doctor was and got some help and things like that. The amazing thing is he then went down to base camp, recovered for only like five or six days and attempted again to break the record. And again, he didn't break the record, but he went from advanced base camp to summit and back to advanced base camp in really good style. And for sure is the first and only person to climb two times without oxygen in a week.

And superhuman. That's the thing, that level, like I can understand his speed. I can understand going from base camp to summit. These are things that like numerous athletes can do. What year was that? The recovery between 2017, my second year. Right. So this is, you pass him when you're going down, right? And then you forget that you actually like hugged him or had this encounter. Well, exactly. So he's on his way down from his second summit. I'm on the way up. Apparently we stopped, we talked for a few minutes,

we hugged, do the whole thing because we're both going to summit that day without supplemental oxygen. And a few days later, one of my film crew brought up, what a cool moment that you and Killian got to share that. I'm like, that would be amazing if that had happened, but it didn't. And so they scrolled through at hour 27 of the footage and there's me hugging Killian and I'm completely blacked out and like just working on, I think, I don't know whether it's instinct or experience to continue moving. I also had a crew around me, which was a compromise to purity or style, but like that was a decision I made at that point in my life. And, you know, I really wanted to come home as well as really

wanted to summit Everest. And so, you know, I chose to have support around me. But yeah, that's the level, at least at those altitudes you're at. There are people out there who have climbed all 13 other 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen and have tried Everest over and over and over again and been unsuccessful. It's that extra few hundred feet, I think is really at the limits of human physiology.

That's the best I can understand it. And so everyone who's there is like at this edge. Do you think that there are people who are doping to be able to summit like using EPO and things like that? Of course there are. There must be, right? I mean, first of all, like I think it's important, like just to be clear, like oxygen is obviously doping.

It is the ultimate performance enhancing substance for high altitude climbing. And so like we should acknowledge that. Now, if you're not a professional athlete and you're there as a recreational climber and this isn't your life, I think with oxygen is the right way to do it. I believe in it.

I still think it's a powerful experience. But if you're a professional athlete gaining sponsorships or making money off this, we shouldn't be doping. So first of all, we shouldn't be using oxygen if we're a professional athlete gaining sponsorships or making money off this, we shouldn't be doping. So first of all, we shouldn't be using oxygen if we're professional climbers. That's my line.

Yeah. But then, yeah, there are lots of other things people are using and there are prescription medications that are certainly banned in Olympics like dexamethasone. What is that?

Is that like a stimulant? It's a corticosteroid that essentially temporarily reduces the swelling on the brain. But it has a euphoric side effect. It is absolutely a banned substance that's very commonly used up there, but not really talked about. Well, there's no testing. And there's no governing body. Or anything like that.

And that's what we should probably remember is like, all of this is just for us. And every single person up there who does this, like, talked a bunch with big wall climbers like Arnold and Emily Harrington, my wife and people like that, because it's very similar in the LCAP world. I think every climb of an 8000 meter peak without oxygen, you know, we all have asterisks, like, and that's how I like to put them because they're not necessarily right or wrong. But if we're not being honest about them, like every single person doing these things and making a living off it, we should be writing our names, the summit we did, and then have an asterisk and say, but I had Sherpa support, or but I use the fixed ropes, or but I use dexamethasone, or but

I flew a helicopter to base camp. Because I think it's okay to do that. If you feel good about your ascent and you come home and you're proud, that's it. You're good. But we also need to like be very clear about what we did or didn't do. Cause that's what leaves better style for the next generation. Yeah. But there's also a canon of, you know, unwritten rules around what's acceptable and what isn't. And I'm sure there's some crusty old guys who bristle at the fact that you're sleeping in an altitude tent at home, right? Like this is a sliding scale of acceptability.

And the only way to do it right is the way they did it in the 50s with the traditional base camp situation, no oxygen. And that's the only thing that actually counts as being legitimate. Yeah. And this is where like, I struggle as an individual in this sport

where it's like, yeah, like doing it how it was done in the fifties being the only way. I think that's ridiculous. But I also think like there are things happening today, you know, for instance, a no oxygen ascent of the mountain, but they use oxygen on the way down, but they're calling it a no oxygen ascent of the mountain, but they use oxygen on the way

down, but they're calling it a no oxygen ascent. Oh, right. That's some fuckery. It's bullshit. Yeah. And so, like, is that me becoming the jaded old guy or like, like we do need to, I don't know whether we need to draw lines. The point is, it's all fine. Just be honest about what you're doing. And we need to be able to discuss and debate. And bottom line, just be honest. Like at the end of the day, none of this matters. So what gets people really upset too

is when a claim is made to having been the first to do X, Y, or Z, right? Like that stuff gets taken really seriously. Yeah, and it also takes away at first from someone, potentially someone else, the next generation. So like they had better be real. Yeah. You made the choice to speak out

in light of the recent controversy around NIMS Persia and the kind of revelations or allegations of sexual misconduct that were written up in the New York Times. I have some friends in the climbing community. Some of them have just made a decision to kind of hang back and remain quiet on this. Maybe because they had no experience with him or don't know him or whatnot, everybody has different reasons, but you made this choice to say something publicly about this. So I just wanted

to give you an opportunity to kind of explain your perspective and maybe we should sort of describe for people that don't know, you know, what we're talking about. Yeah, sure. So, you know, probably the best known climber in our world, Nims Perger, who many people call Nims Dye, is a Nepali-British climber who had a Netflix film named 14 Peaks that really broke through into the mainstream. And it was a really incredible accomplishment on lots of different levels, even though the purists might say oxygen was used or helicopters were used or different things like that. Essentially, he climbed all 14 8,000 meter peaks in a period of something like nine months, I think, and documented it. And it was really unique on loads of different levels. And he went on to found a

guiding business and really grow a huge personality and scene in the Himalayan climbing world that had positives and negatives. But what happened a few weeks ago, all of these accusations that were reported, investigated by the New York Times, by two journalists, one of who I'm friends with. And the story came out and it was definitely explosive of, as you said, sexual misconduct, allegations of. I think it was met by shock, of course, by the wider world and an uncertainty of what to do.

And there were, you know, my decision to make a post about it, I think is ultimately because like, I don't think we all need to weigh in on every drama, even when there's a clear right side or wrong side. I felt two things. One, this is 100% my world. And so, you know, the experiences I've had in this world and the stories I've heard and the people I've talked to, I also believe the allegations need to be listened to. So there was that. And then more importantly, there was my feeling that this world, the climbing world, the high altitude climbing world is so incredibly difficult for women to break into and to feel comfortable in and to have opportunities within. My personal experience with that is especially with women mountain guides. There are so few certified women mountain guides out there.

And the hurdles they have to cross to be successful in this industry, I think are incredibly difficult. Alpenglow has one fully certified IFMGA guide working on Everest, Carla Perez. And every time she is on these mountains, the experience for the whole group changes for the better. And I want more women in this sport. And I think this is one way that we can show that we support women and want there to be an even playing field. And there is no place for predatory sexual behavior in this sport. And I want more women to be able to share their stories in this world and feel supported. And I felt like, you know, prominent mountain guides, prominent guide companies, prominent athletes supporting the women who have come out with very real stories is, it's important. Yeah, of course. I mean, I think it's so disheartening and disappointing.

14 Peaks, that movie, I mean, it just did so much for mainstream awareness around what these expeditions entail. And because he has a certain charisma to him, it got a lot of people who had no relationship with mountaineering or kind of alpine sports, got them excited about that. And it certainly translated into, you know, commerce, right? Like it's brought more

people to the mountains, et cetera. You know, I'm sure to the Sherpa communities, all of that. But in addition to the sexual piece, there's also just his aggressive disposition, right? Like he was like, in terms of his risk calculus, especially when he's leading an expedition, my understanding is that there was a certain level of unacceptable aggressiveness in terms of like pushing people to kind of maybe, you know, go out on a limb a little bit more than they should. Yeah, and I think all of that might become a little harder to speak to now. Like I think for quite a while, Alpenglow and I have been kind of like

trying to create a different or an alternative narrative to how we approach the mountains than the like failure is not an option. Some of these like taglines that NIMS has had, you know, failure is not an option and, you know, giving up is NIMS has had, you know, failure is not an option and, you know, giving up is not in the blood. And I'm like, we're all about failure over here

at Alphenglow, like that's what we do. Yeah, that's not a great mantra to have when you're in a perilous situation and lives are on the line. You know, from that perspective, I've kind of disagreed with a number of ways NIMS has approached the mountains and guiding. Of course, as an individual, you can climb the mountains however you want, in my opinion.

But like, once you're a mountain guide, you know, in a guiding company, I think a different mentality is really important. And so that's been sort of like a struggle I've had personally with NIMS and NIMS' method for quite some time. This is really different. And I think it's important we separate those two things. And you also have to separate him from the Sherpa community, not that it's a monolith. Like he's Nepalese, but he's not a Sherpa. He doesn't come from that tradition. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So I guess more will be revealed on

this. Yeah. You know, just bigger picture. Like I think I've had a number of people ask me, like, is this rife within the climbing community? Are we going to see loads more of this as the outdoor industry perhaps has our Me Too moment? And I think the answer is yes, but like, yes, I think we are going to hear more stories. And I think it's important we go through this now.

And I hope this does allow for that and that we believe these women as they come forward with their stories. At the same time, I don't think climbing is unique. where there's just really exceptional power dynamics between, you know, the leaders of the sport and the celebrities of the sport and the people trying to break into this incredibly difficult to break into thing. And then you add all the other things, right? You know, months being out there in a summer camp environment, like you talked about, alcohol, you know, egos and charisma. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of these kind of small worlds. So I don't think climbing is unique in that way, but this is our moment. And like, I want this playing field flattened. Yeah. Well, speaking of women, you're married to

a powerful one. I am. An incredible adventure athlete and like world champion rock climber, Emily Harrington. This is a, you know, dynamic duo of just, you know, unbridled adventure at all times. Like you live a very unconventional life and now you have a baby, right? We do. So you're flying planes and you're constantly traveling from, you know, one extreme adventure to the next.

How do you make all of this work? Yeah. So, yeah, Emily Harrington is my wife, professional rock climber. And Arrow Storm is our son. That is a bold name. I know. That kid. Poor kid.

There might be a little pressure on this kid. Arrow Storm. Arrow Storm. Yep. Yeah. And he's fantastic. He's 19 months old. He is so much fun. Just starting to, you know, he's fantastic. He's 19 months old. He is so much fun. He's walking,

he's starting to run, he's throwing a ball. He's got a few words, dada, not mama, which is awesome. And I've known I wanted to have a family for a long time and waited for a long time. First, because I knew how selfish I was in my pursuits and my passion for climbing and wanting to work on Alpenglow. I would not have been a good father, and I hope I can be one now. And then obviously marrying Emily Harrington, who was a bit younger than me and in the peak of her climbing career from the very first day we got together is like, you know, family is something that's important, but it is way down the road.

And we finally got to this point in our lives where both of us felt like some of the accomplishments we had had in our sports, like it was the right time or almost the right time. And then like Honnold persuaded us to just stop using birth control. It would take years.

And it turns out that's not how it works. So it happened about, you know. Did he say that to you after he had a baby? He did. Yeah, he just wanted, he wanted like somebody who he could talk to. Company and suffering, exactly. Yeah, at our wedding, he was like,

just trust me, it'll be great. Your wedding, which by the way, was involved like climbing Cotopaxi. Yeah, 42 of the guests climbed a 20,000 foot peak, glaciated peak before going to the beach to have the wedding. And the vast majority had never done anything like that before.

And it was incredible actually to have that like week of bonding and suffering and unknowns, all these things we've been talking about today, like with a group of people I love the most. And then to go and unknowns, all these things we've been talking about today, like we're the group of people I love the most. And then to go and celebrate, it was really, really special. I feel lucky to have had that moment in time. But like how we make it work

is probably like any couple. I don't actually think we're unique. We just adventure as our vehicle. You know, how we make it work is through like unbelievable attempts at communication and being willing to disagree and compromise and balance and all these words that relationship counselors probably use to make it work. And a lot of times it doesn't. What is the conflict that recurs? Like what is the, if there's a core kind of thing where you guys butt heads? First and foremost time, like, and that's why I don't think we're actually unique. We're, we're trying to

balance like the huge amounts of training it takes to be professional athletes with the obligations of our careers and still wanting to be at the peak of our careers, you know, and careers as professional climbers and skiers now look different than they did 20 years ago, right? Like there are a lot of obligations and then family time and time with our son and then all our other side passions, like flying for me.

And so like time is our conflict of how to balance that. And so like there are no easy answers, but I think we try to be conscientious to each other's feelings and desires. And yet also knowing that we chose this thing to have a kid. And so that like now has a priority that it didn't used to have. And that part's been more or less easy. Like once we had him, we knew we wanted him and like it's felt right. So it's always been easy to prioritize him. But then we end up with the time that's left struggling some. And so, you know, the best example I had is like, I knew I was going to go back to Everest this year. And that's, you know, it's only a month long trip, but it's months of training leading up to it. And then there's all

the wrap up after it of weeks of interviews and media stuff and, you know, just what happens after an Everest trip. And so, you know, there's a very clear, like, even though I was guiding then, it wasn't a personal climbing objective. Now it's Emily's turn, and I don't get a personal climbing objective this year. That will be my one major expedition. So she wants to go to El Cap, to Yosemite for the autumn. And so now this is her training block leading up to that.

And I'm much more front and center with Arrow. And then she'll go and spend, you know, six weeks in Yosemite and I'll come and go, but she'll be climbing with other partners and, you know, I'll get to play that support role more. Does having a child, a son, change your relationship with risk? Like when you were on Everest recently, did you think differently or was it qualitatively distinct because now you have a child? Yeah, that's such a great question. Emily and I speak about risk so much. And that's been, I think, fundamental to our relationship for the past 13 years is not that each of us shouldn't take risk. And I think a, I think, fundamental to our relationship for the past 13 years is not that

each of us shouldn't take risk. And I think a lot of people don't realize, but in high-end rock climbing, big wall rock climbing, there's actually quite a bit of risk, even when you're using a rope. Shocking. No, I didn't realize that. That never occurred to me. So we're both on that page and we have to think about it. And neither of us have ever been in the place of like to the other, you can't take risk. And that's still true today. I think where we challenge each other is like, why is this one worth it? So what is the goal? And what are we doing it for?

And why do you need it? Now, guiding on Everest for me is a little bit different. Of course, there's risk, but my risk profile while guiding has always been pretty far on the conservative end of the spectrum because I'm not making risk decisions for myself. I'm making them for my clients

who can't make them for themselves and are non-professional climbers. But there's two kinds of risk. There's the risk that you can manage and mitigate. And then there's risks that are outside of your control. You're there. And if there's an avalanche, you know, it doesn't matter how conservative your approach is. You're absolutely right. And that is important too. I think there's a danger in our sport for experts to tell ourselves or to tell our loved ones like,

no, no, no, the way I do it isn't risky. And that's not what I'm saying. But that random risk, I think, has a huge time component, almost like it's the Russian roulette side of climbing. And I don't shy away from that or hide from that. But I recognize it and therefore try to minimize my time. So while I might have used to have spent, we're not talking about rapid ascent here, but while I might have used to have done five or six risky expeditions a year, now maybe I'll do one. That doesn't remove the risk, but it is the single way to reduce it while still staying true to like who I am and what I love. The harder risk calculations come from the personal projects, right? And so this year was easy because since I was guiding Everest, I don't have a personal project. And so like that higher level of risk is very clear.

It's kind of like not on the table this year, but like I'm planning a big expedition for next fall, fall of 2025. I really want to attempt the third tallest mountain in the world. So I've done the tallest Everest and I've done the second tallest K2. The third one, no one even knows the name, right? I'm trying to think of what it is. I don't know what it is. Who climbs the third tallest?

It's called Kinchinjunga and it's on the border of Nepal and India. So east, far eastern side of the Himalaya. And it's so remote and only a few hundred people have ever climbed it. It was the last unskied 8,000 meter peak on the planet, but it actually got skied two weeks ago. So my goal was...

You wanted to be that guy to ski it. And for a number of years, I've wanted to try to ski an 8,000 meter peak without supplemental oxygen. Because I kind of think that's the next level in skiing, where you take what we've learned in climbing and now take away this crutch or this performance enhancer that we've talked about of oxygen. All the big skis had been done with supplemental oxygen. And now there's a new generation.

The first one only got skied without oxygen three years ago. K2 got skied by a Polish skier named Andrzej. He did a Honnold, right? Like he just set a completely new bar of the sport that everyone had said didn't work. And he changed it. He proved that one of the tallest 8,000 meter peaks in the world can be skied. It was a first ascent on the second tallest mountain in the world, K2, the most technical one without oxygen. And his brother filmed the whole thing with a drone. It just, it blew my little fish. Yeah, that's like a whole different level. I mean, my understanding is that K2 is the, I mean that is the you know difference between the boys and the men like

that's the one that breaks everyone and it's just so brutal and i've heard you say like i'm not going back yeah technical steep super exposed so from a ski perspective probably 11 or 12 000 vertical feet of skiing where at any point a slip probably wouldn't have been survivable. So thousands of perfect turns with no mistakes. So that's like free solo level. Yep. What that guy did. Yep. What's his name? His name is Andrzej Barkal. He's a Red Bull athlete from Poland. Wow. So worth a follow. There is a Red Bull film of his ski of K2. He was a complete unknown when he went there. Yeah. So despite it having been skied, like that dream is still out there, but I recognize it's a much higher level of risk.

And so like, I don't think Arrow was like a line, a black and white line where it's like, I was on this side and I took these risks. Now I'm on this side and I don't take these risks. Like I've been moving along a spectrum with risk for years having lost, it's so cliche-ish, but so many friends. Yeah, I mean, you can't be in it for as long as you've been in it without suffering the loss of people who you were close with, all of whom, you know, had their own relationship with risk and, you know, would probably say exactly what you just said and were at the wrong place at the wrong moment or something happened and they're no longer here. So how do you emotionally deal with that?

Yeah, I mean, the way I emotionally deal with the risk of losing the people I've lost is believing they were there for the right reasons and knew that the experience they were having was worth the outcome that ultimately happened and they died. And so that's the question I try to investigate within myself, like with the people I love is like,

do I need this badly enough for myself to potentially lose what I have, which is this life of raising arrow that I am so excited about and so passionate for and like feel like I learn every day. And I'm not sure what the answer is to that yet, honestly, like whether it's worth it or not. Because what I do know right now is I've been on two mountain expeditions since I've had Arrow. I went to a peak in Kyrgyzstan called Peak Lenin, a 23,000 foot peak. And then I went to Everest and like Iyrgyzstan called Peak Lenin, a 23,000-foot peak, and then I went to Everest.

And I enjoyed those experiences, and they were important, and I was working and guiding and doing all these things, and I loved being out there, and I was with great people. But I didn't necessarily come home feeling like I had learned so much new. And I just feel like every day, week, month with Arrow, like I am challenged physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I am learning and I am learning fast or I am failing. This is its own Everest. And so I'm not sure. Like I think the biggest reasons, like you've joked a couple of times

about I've been to Everest 13 times or I've summited nine times. What is this still? It's always been that like unknowns happen and I still feel like I'm learning. I still feel like I'm growing in this human laboratory as well with these people that I go with. And like, I don't think it'll ever stop,

but I do think that's why I keep going back along with the opportunities I get to give other people. And so maybe there's more learning to be had with my family at home. Yeah, I mean, the other sacrifice is your biggest thing, which is time, right? So every time you go on one of these expeditions, it's time away from your son

and those developmental stages happen so quickly. So that has to go into the calculus as well. And you can do your own risk analysis for yourself. Like, oh, my life is so good. Like, why would I put myself in a position? Because I have these great things that I love. But that's a kind of an internal risk analysis because the real risk is the damage that's caused,

like the legacy of you passing away and what that does to your family and the people that care about you. Absolutely. I mean, you're right. And this is who you are. It's who I am. And you're not gonna be happy

unless you're doing these things. Like it's not, yeah, I'm not. Listen, I'm not here to tell you you shouldn't be doing any of these things. I'm just trying to understand, kind of the whole interior landscape of like how you're making these decisions and the push and the pull of like,

I wanna be with my wife and my son, but I also need to be on these mountains. Absolutely. And it's easy to say like, oh, but I have to do these things, but like, because this is who I am. Just like you said, but like, I think it's important to explore that and make sure that continues to be true. Yeah. This is a story that you're telling yourself. Is this a story? Yeah. telling yourself. It's a story. Yeah. Like, let's deconstruct the story. But also, like, I don't want Arrow growing up to believe that, like, risk and even potentially, like, the risk of losing a life, like, is never worth it. I don't believe that. And I do believe there are lots of examples in our, even in our community,

in my small community of incredible children who have lost a family member to the mountains, who have grown up to be just stellar humans. And we all are shaped by experiences we didn't choose, right? We choose a lot, but we don't choose a lot. And pain is part of that. And that's not something I ever wish on arrow anyone's child. But I don't believe a world without risk is what I want to encourage you. Yeah, it's so interesting how your relationship with risk on some level must have been formed as a reaction to your parents' relationship with security, right? So you go the other direction on some level as a reaction and it's who you are.

It's not like, you know, you're doing it because of that. Sure. But then you also, we all do this. I know I do this. Like we parent our child to give the child the emotional needs that weren't met for ourselves, but we often go too far. You know what I mean?

And so then they'll react and they'll bring that pendulum will swing back the other direction. That's why we're pretty sure Arrow's gonna be- Arrow's gonna be an investment banker or something, right? Yeah. It's gonna be like an e-sports athlete. Yeah, yeah. We'll see, right?

And then the universe kind of delivers you like, oh, you thought like you're gonna be taking him out and all this mountain and then he's got a whole other idea of like who he wants to be. Right. And now suddenly you're your parents, you know, in the same conundrum.

Absolutely. Maybe not, who knows. We'll see. Before we close, the other thing you do is you do a lot of public speaking and you get up in front of all these audiences and different groups of people

and you tell your story and you deliver a message. And within that message is lessons that you've learned from these peak experiences that are instructive in terms of like how we think of our own lives. So what is it about the things that you've done that you can share with the audience that can maybe help them reframe their own lives, their own relationship with risk or adventure that could be helpful. Yeah. I love the public speaking I get to do because I think it's, you know, so few people will ultimately get to go on expeditions with me or on expeditions in general to the big mountains.

And I do think there's so many powerful experiences that can happen there. And so my whole career has been trying to find ways to get more people to get a taste of what these experiences bring or why we do them or what the lessons may be that come from them. And so that was why I dove into social media so early. It's why public speaking, it's why I've launched my own tiny little podcast called The Duffel Shuffle. That's right. All these different things, trying to share these stories with- And you have a YouTube channel too.

With Emily called Danger Stick, which are our nicknames. Her nickname from the beginning of our relationship was Danger Mouse and mine was Stick Bug because I'm kind of built like a stick bug. And so we came up with a YouTube channel called Danger Stick. I think it's fun. Yeah. with a YouTube channel called Danger Stick. I think it's fun. But so all of those things are that. And speaking, I think in person has been one of my favorite ways to do it. And I hope most impactful ways to do it, whether it's small question and answer groups

or big just speaking engagements. The lessons in the stories are so relevant. Of course, visual imagery and risk and things like that just make it exciting. But I think the key is that the experiences that I have on these big mountains, they are just really human. They're simple, mostly. They're about how does a team work together? They're about like every mountain expedition has a fundamental almost conflict in them of like an individual's personal goal.

Like you've worked for years to climb Mount Everest and you're in super shape and you've put your whole life on hold. You as an individual are going to summit Mount Everest. But then there's this team goal of everyone getting off the mountain like alive and with all their fingers and toes. And those things are almost always at some point in conflict and like how individuals work together

in that and how the leadership of a team creates a group that's willing to work together through that. Like I think is like a fundamental lesson or series of lessons that can be brought to anything we do in our lives. And then this relationship with success and failure and the fact that we do fail so much in the mountains and so many times we fail in the mountains because of things that are slightly out of our control. There are lessons in how to accept that failure and how to learn from it and how to build yourself back up again to attempt something again after big failure or small failure that I think we can carry back so clearly into our lives. And then the last one is what we've spent a lot of time today talking about kind of like, you know, around risk and decision making and creating ways to recognize risk, manage and mitigate risk, and then be at that decision tree moment of this risk is acceptable and

here's why we're going to continue. Or we've reached a point where the risk is not acceptable and we're going to turn around and we're going to like own it and be okay with it. Like we do that every single day in everything we do. So I think these lessons are truly applicable. And what about the relationship between ego and humility? You talked about, I'm gonna make my summit. I'm gonna, you know, it's like, you don't go to Everest

with the idea of summiting it unless you have some relationship with your ego that's telling you that this is possible for you, right? And on some level you need that. It's like an agitating force of belief, of self-belief that is important in accomplishing hard things. But the mountain will quickly humble you, right? Like even when you summit and you're on top of that mountain

and you're looking down on planet earth, like it's indelibly humbling, I would imagine, right? It's almost a spiritual experience. Absolutely. So that relationship or that tension between those two things, like how does that work and what can we understand about that that would be helpful for us? It's a dance between ego and humility that is done every day in the big mountains, right? And every day, I don't think we get the balance exactly right because your point is 100% true. And I think it becomes like the ego side.

Every mountain guide has an ego and probably needs one because they're being asked to make decisions with insufficient information. Like we live in the gray areas in the mountains. With giant consequences. With giant consequences. With giant consequences. And the only reason you're being hired is to make those decisions

for people who don't have the experience to make them. And so like, if that doesn't take some ego or confidence or willingness to put yourself out there and be judged, like this is not the job for you. So ego is important. But too much, we're very, very clear, it gets people killed. And I've come very close to that line myself.

And so then there's this other side, this exactly as you described it, like humility, willingness to fail, willingness to back off, even when many other people on the same day might not back off and might be successful. Like that's one of the dangers of our sport is like, we talk a lot about this in avalanche education, where most of the time when you keep going when you shouldn't have, you're going to get away with it and you're going to have a beautiful ski day. And that other person who turned around might then feel like they made the wrong decision. And so the humility to be okay with failure, even in the same circumstances when someone else is successful, that takes a letting go, a willingness to beat yourself up some and

get beaten up some, whether it's by your clients or by the larger world or whatever it might be. And to recognize that the mountains, I don't wanna give human tendencies to the mountains, but they have the power in this situation. And that's why the experiences are so powerful. That's why I go. But yeah, we need to attempt to be

humble in that place. Are you able to hold on to the power of those experiences? They're so heightened, they're so extreme, but then a couple of weeks later, you're at the grocery store at home, right? Is there a half-life where it wears off Or are you able to kind of keep it present and allow those lessons to really, you know, be helpful when you're having to make everyday decisions? Yeah, I think both. Like I talk about my fire and like I've been on a cadence for years of doing a huge personal project in the big mountains every two-ish years, two to three years. And like, there is no doubt in my mind, that's because like the fire of what I just did is burning bright. And then it fades and my passion for another experience begins to build and build and build.

And like, a lot of times in my conversations with Emily of why it's worth it, it's when that fire is hot enough where it's like, I need this and I know why I need it and it's worth it. It's when that fire is hot enough where it's like, I need this and I know why I need it and it's worth it. And so yes, there is a fading of that experience when I come home. But for me, I can't tell you how much I appreciate standing in line at the grocery store. I really do. The suffering and uncertainty and risk that I go through in the big mountains make home so bright as well as mundane. It's mundane. I'm not saying it's not mundane, but it's okay. And I love those things as well. And the stasis of it and the ability to breathe and take time and have those little silly moments with people I care about

that on the mountain, everything's so heightened and so intense. So I don't generally find just because those experiences are fading, I don't find like home life boring or anything like that. It's just... That's good. That's good. I'm imagining the war correspondent or the veteran who returns from an overseas conflict zone

and then has trouble acclimating to normal life and can only feel something when they're in that kind of heightened environment. And that's obviously an unhealthy relationship with extreme experience. I think if we had had this interview in my 20s and 30s, it would sound really different. So maybe it's just some space from that, that I do feel differently now. Yeah. The final thing I've got to ask you about this, I'm dying to know. So you appeared in this independent film, this horror flick called

The Sound, right? Starring William Fichtner, you and Arnold? Yes. And Brad Harrington. Oh, really? Wow. So when is this movie coming out? I need to know everything about this movie. This is amazing. This was such a unique, random opportunity and it came at a really good time. So yeah, the film is called The Sound. It was produced and directed by Brendan Devane. The short answer is I think soon because I just got sent my screener password that's also going out, I think, to like people who buy films and things like that. Have you seen it yet?

I haven't seen anything. Is there a distributor? I don't think so. I think that's what's happening right now, but I'm not sure. So don't hold me to that. But I know it should be releasing soon. It is finished.

It was just this wild experience. This is a Hollywood horror film set on a big wall. And I got a call two years ago asking me if I could consult on this film because the producer director essentially didn't want climbers to make fun of it. So it's like a, I don't know what you call it. It's like a relatively low to mid budget horror film.

So you can make fun of the horror stuff as much as you want. But the climbing, he's enough of a climber and has a passion for climbing that he didn't want climbers to make fun of it. And so I consulted with a few script reads and then I was asked if I could be on set for a few weeks and help coach the actors to look like real climbers because they were real Hollywood

actors. And it was at a great time. Emily had just given birth. I wasn't doing any big expedition. I was like, this is fantastic. I'll go be on set for a month and get paid well and kind of have an adventure, but I can still go home at night every night and things like that because it was filming in Vegas where we have a little place.

So I said yes. And then Brendan, the director, started reaching out to other climbers like Alex and Brett and asking them to do cameos as themselves.

And they said yes, like Alex loves horror films. So he said, yes, he had some time. He was filming in Vegas in his home, things like that. So it just worked out. But I was only ever meant to be on the kind of backside of the camera. And then midway through shooting, they said, we need someone to be the climber in the opening scene.

They're the first person in the film and the first one to die. Will you do it? Oh, you get to die in your Hollywood debut? I will not be in the sound part two if that is in the future. That's great. If the movie opens with you, we already like... Spoiler! Spoiler, I die.

I had so much fun. It was a great crew on set. We had multiple professional climbers as riggers. And there was basically a fake climbing wall built on a soundstage where a lot of like the dialogue and things were shot with the real actors. And then there were stunt doubles, real climbers, that did loads of filming out on the rainbow wall in Red Rocks. And I can't wait to see how it all comes together.

But I have not seen it yet. So look forward to this summer. I love it. But I have not seen it yet. That's so great. Look for it this summer. I love it. And I love that the climbing will be legit. I can't help but think about that classic video that Alex did, I think for GQ, where he's analyzing climbing in all these movies.

That is like the most entertaining video ever. Because he actually loves it when the climbing is like outrageous. Totally. He gets all excited about it. Like Tom Cruise, you know, hanging off of cliffs and all that stuff. I think this will be real and outrageous all at the same time. Well, you're an inspiration. You know, I really appreciate you sharing with me today, like in addition to just the extraordinary, you know,

feats of your adventure prowess. On top of that is just kind of how you comport yourself and show up in the world as an ambassador of this sport that you love. And that was really fun, man. So thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Cheers, man. So you're going to get in your plane and fly home now? I'm going to fly home this evening. I'm going to fly safely. If people want to check you out, what is your Instagram? What's the best place to- Yeah, Instagram, Adrian Ballinger, my company, Alpenglow Expeditions are always great places to follow along our adventures.

And then Danger Stick TV on YouTube, see me and Em in the Duffel Shuffle podcast to hear the guide's perspective of the outdoor industry. So the Duffel Shuffle is a reference to the fact that most of mountaineering is kind of schlepping gear around, right? It's like this, you know, kind of drudgery. That is it.

We all think it's the sunrises and the hugs on the summit. Mostly we're just like baggage hand needed to move from three different countries to China, import it, get it to Basecamp, carry it on Yaks to progressively build this infrastructure. It's like a small business with a supply chain. Exactly. And I don't think I'm very good at supply chains, but I love it. Nice, man. Well, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate it. It's an absolute pleasure. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks. Peace. This episode was brought to you by AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 and five free AG1 travel packs

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