Jeff Evans & Bud Brutsman

00:00you can go right out your door be in the most awesome hiking spot ever mhm and we're live ladies and gentlemen thank you thank you for joining n PR uh please no I don't want to do that bud bretzman Jeff Evans Bud brutzman good friend of mine next door neighbor and uh Jeff Evans his buddy who uh apparently has lived a crazy life rescuing people off of Everest traveling up there and and Bud told me we were at this little Carnival with our kids he's like got to get this guy on got to talk to him so no pressure yeah your arm got put behind your your back no it didn't it sounded good I was interested bring this on your how did you get involved with first of all you when was the first time you summited Everest 2001 God damn man how many times you done it just once just good I kind of get a 1.5 cuz I had a blind dude with me yeah so you took a blind dude all the way to the top why

00:53didn't you take him like halfway yeah blow his face dude you made it you're one of the rare ones the funny part was we got to the top and we like man we can see the curvature of the Earth from here bro and he goes I don't give a like I don't want to get out of here I can't see anything I want to go um that's actually not true what he said is hey Eric take a look around take a look around what he said take a look around was it instinctual or were you just with him I mean I think it was a little bit of both I kind of instinctively with him right um we've been Bros for a long time I mean it's a very fraternal relationship that we have so I by Nature just sort of automatically with this guy and I enjoy it and he enjoys it back because he is super blind dude you know the whole world loves loves him some Eric and I'm probably one of the few people that just kick him in the nuts you know

01:45give him a little bit of a hard time yeah yeah if you're a blind dude that climbs Mount Everest people just give you a free pass a lot of stuff it's not only that he climbed what else did he climb well he's done a a bunch of stuff but he just kayaked the Grand Canyon two years ago in his own boat the whole thing 277 miles what do you have a guy behind them going left right left right back and they had you know these ear pieces and you know he asked me to go like that's I'll climb ever but I sure it's going to take you down the grand can there's something that people really love about someone risking their life and then pulling it off right something assuming you pull it off yeah assuming yeah if you don't then you make one of those Instagram greatest fails they were telling us before we went up there like you know blond dude's going to die and when he dies what do

02:31you think was going to happen they were telling that yeah we heard that who the Sherpas or who no no just the Everest experts you know this remember this is back in 01 this was when Everest was super dangerous a little bit little more raw than it is now how is that what what is happen because on the outside what I've seen is all the expose that show all the human waste that they leave behind and including actual right and then tents and people pay people to kind of do all the hard work and then you just kind of show up and still hard right but not as hard you got to put in you know you got to put in the steps you got to put in the work but it's so commercialized that it's been it's been diluted to a certain extent and you know I'm I am a sherpa Advocate to the core you know these guys do the work I mean they put it in every single day they're humping the loads they're cooking the

03:27food they're setting the lines they're they're taking the biggest risk and then allowing you know other folks to move through a little bit more effectively and faster and you know not have to expend as much energy and so over the we kind of we kind of got in there in ' 01 towards I think I think on the head ahead of the curve just a little bit as to when it started to sort of change the face of Evers changed a little bit so how did they make it easier like what did they do that made it more commercial yeah um not money number one gets in there and and pays a lot more sherpers to do a lot more work um so the lines are fixed the weather forecasting models are more effective and more efficient um when you say the lines are fixed the lines are fixed meaning the ropes the ropes on the mountain oh fixed in you clip in yeah you clip into ropes when you go up okay

04:19so the ropes are there before you get there all you have to do is just kind of like hoof it so it's not like before so you kind wow that's weird so it's almost like you're on like a theme park like an Everest thing it's you're still an Everest and you still could get up by an avalanche right there's no question it's very dangerous there's no way to mitigate all of that but you know it's a it it has been it has been eased up a little bit the edges have been taken off just a slight bit but it also adds other dangers because one of the if I was looking at it it's sometimes more dangerous now because there's lines there's sometimes 300 people 600 people in a line and you're waiting from some who didn't train and you're watching him try to climb up this little 20ft cliff and they don't know how to work a jumar they can't climb what's a jumar a hand a hand thing an ascending

05:06device it's like a oneway ascending device to go up a rope so you can slide it up and it catches on the way down you use a pull but there people go up there when we were up there they had people they literally without talking about trekking companies there were some companies like all right we're going to show you how to put your crampons um as you're going in the icefall they've never Jesus Christ yeah they they've learned like we're going to learn we're going to they've never had crampons before we we had to Jeff not me Jeff had to rescue risk his life in helicopters going to high high altitude to pick off people who shouldn't no business on the mountain so they didn't manage to get their body acclimated is that what the issue is not that they just they didn't put in the the the apprenticeship because you know nowadays the commercial component allows folks that have enough

05:53money to pay and then show up and get guided basically to the top so so back in the day it was you know if you didn't have your teeth cut you know you you uh you know it was on you and nowadays you can just show up and and you know generally someone will be taken care of you whether it's a God or whether it's a sherpa and so you know it's it's changed um but you know I don't I don't want to take anything from the folks who still go out there it's a dream for so many people you know it's still an aspiration and a and a and a life goal for you know a lot of folks and it's still very difficult yeah and so for instance last year we just saw I mean we saw a really nice cross-section of of skilled experienced climers trying it but then we saw a show you know we saw a lot of folks who should have been on other Peaks first and then they weren't they skipped to the top you know you you

06:47anything in life you know you you bypass the work and you get smoked yeah yeah we did uh we our Rescue Team um ARS Rescue Team our five Sherpas did the highest altitude rescue in history in 2018 ,500 off the balcony and a girl husband and wife I don't know if they did did she Summit I don't think she summited though um she was coming down the Summit summit's AT 2935 she's at 28500 and she decides to sit down her husband left her out husband left quit people quit yeah people quit so she sat down but she sat down and he left her yeah oh wait there's more of that story so he left her and then we go rescue her what he say did he say sit right here I'll be back in a couple days this is up for for questions it's like there there's two ways to look at we were talking about this last night was she may have just been a tap out and just said I quit and he tried to please come on come

07:39on come on and finally just left her that's one scenario the other scenario is um you know he just was like peace out good luck I'm out here's the problem I do it this way and I understand about diving so let's say you and I are diving we're 300 ft below the below the water right and my air goes out and I know we can buddy breathe but let's pretend nobody breathing and you're going to stick around and watch me die and you're going to end up dying or I'm going to grab a hold of you and grab your regulator and you're we're both going to die you can't help anybody at that level you can't you're you're tired your body is is eating itself you're basically dying in the death zone he can explain that basically and if your if your wife says I'm sitting down I'm going to get up in five minutes you go ahead and she's got a sherpa with her and then you go I go ahead and you get back to Camp

08:28four which is exactly what happened get down to Camp 4 and look around your wife's not there holy and then they call us and they wake Jeff and I up and we're like you're going to what so I was I was with her right at base camp when she when we delivered her to her husband and I was trying to gauge like is he going to be one of these guys it's like oh my God I'm so glad you're alive or holy she's alive oh you know like I don't and I think it was the former I think he was really ecstatic he was crying remember he was really he was really upset but then hold on well we got we got to go have to go back no no no no goes back cuz actually the first the first kicking the ball so without taking the whole thing to this so what had to happen is is is Jeff and I and our base C manager Anthony had to take four Sherpas from Camp two or Camp four took two Sherpas and then two more in the middle of the

09:22night so six o'clock 7 o'clock at night the most dangerous T winds are blowing 30 40 mil an hour it's 20 degrees below zero nobody nobody's ever done you don't do it and we sent them up there and we said can you go get her oh God so and you got to find this person on the line so they walked they kept walking and they kept walking and we have video remember mma's video how long does it take to get up the line like how normal normal human being you the three of us how long would it take the three of us to get from from the south call to where she was balcony probably 3 or 4 hours if you're in shape so take me out of that cuz I'm I'm not run though yeah but I'm not doing any high altitude hiking all right we give you five hours give me five hours okay so it's like very dangerous extremely dangerous especially at night hanging it out yeah at the worst time not even no one no one no one

10:13knows where she is but the terrain dictates that she has to be unless she's falling off the side she's on a spine basically and and you know if you go up the ridge you're either going to find her if she's alive or she's tossed off the side so she and also she's dealing with super low air no air exing extremely cold no air bring T did they bring tanks yeah but her air was gone so you're drinking you're you're you're she brought no air with her or the air that she brought with her was done she was abandoned basically so they left her so you know generally you would have somebody with an extra tank to be able to help her out but I I get the sense that she just said I'm done and she sat down and everybody tried to K and then no one you know no one could get her to get up they didn't want to walk back with her tried but you can't carry somebody 29,000 ft 28,000 ft so keep going so she

11:05would the oxygen up there is 33% less than what's here at sea level 33% I mean it's at 33% so it's 67% less a third yeah yeah wow normal oxygen she was no auction so she sat down so the boys we have GoPros on them we had special cameras and pockets and all kinds of weird to film on the mountain and the boys are walking I have footage of a mingma mingma is walking up there and he's going I swear to God I I'll say this for you he speaks decent English the whole time and I I'll send you the clip It's the funniest clip you ever seen he's I'm like godamn mother he's just cussing every step of the way he's piss it's a up scenario man you know it's middle of the night he's looking for some you know potentially dead person in the death zone yeah in the death zone not a cool situation why why is it the death zone because of the oxygen because of the lack of oxygen yeah body your body

11:55starts to conspire against you I mean you you you know you can't simulate any nutrition you know you're the fluid in your body starts to go to places it's not supposed to go so it goes up in your brain and you get cerebral edema and you make bad decisions and you get a headache and you lose your vision and then you get pulmonary edema your lungs fill up with fluid and you're drown in your own fluid you know it's it's a this is like stepping out of the Spade capsule at Mars and going wonder what this is going to do to my body and you step out and starts popping it's it's strange up there wow they've done MRI studies actually so that's where it is right there this is the line Jamie pulled up death zone lack of oxygen above 8,000 met can be fatal to climbers so see that 8,000 ft is high 8,000 M that is that's so see see that last dot before the summit that's 26,000

12:43ft which is right there yeah exactly Jamie that's and is that where she uh above that where up and that's the balcony right in there oh she was almost there 500t she was 500t from the top she may have who knows I don't know if she made it she was she was a 28,500 and we have a GPS coordinates on it she was at 28,5 500 ft from the top so she could almost say she's summited Everest she's like she could see like Everest was like where your cars parked yeah except there's a lot of crazy ass terrain between where she was and across that's where the Hillary Step is and that's where the ridge goes it's no louder than your laptop in sections and it's a 10,000 ft drop into Tibet to the right and a 6,000 ft drop in a theal to the left either way it would hurt pretty bad it's as wide as a laptop in it's pretty pretty narrow you know but then it it you know opens up and it and

13:35it shrinks down and but I mean it's no place to screw the pooch you know and and she did so oh my God is it right here well that's the Hillary Step right there which by the way G this is really interesting two years ago remember the earthquake two years ago in the fall so it knocked that whole Boulder off that Boulder that people are standing on right there the Hillary stuff imagine if you're on that you're like I made it yeah you going for the ride that's that's the peak of ever maybe you bro I'll hop off and grab a hold wing suit maybe you bro so that's uh look at that look at that clown show oh my god there so many people so if someone falls on to you you got a real problem too yeah so the year we were up there in 2000 the year before the fall before there was a British guy I can't remember his name but he got caught up in the ropes descending from the summit

14:26down the Hillary Step and got caught and there was nobody there with him and he got caught caught and he got stuck in perpetuity yeah so we thought that for sure the first people that were going up in 01 that were like a few weeks before us um had to cut him free cuz we were you know we were speculating like if we're the first group that gets up there we're going to have to scoot around uh this fell you know who so he's just stuck on this line but he wasn't there when we got up there he wasn't somebody now what do they do push them off the side well here's something for Jamie so there's 248 bodies on Everest right now still there and these climbers I didn't go up I was at base camp the climbers use them as Mark markers right you kind of go up here there is the original climber the guy the first guy to make it well they found one yeah but he's on the South Summit he's on the other side on

15:20the North side in Tibet mie that's yeah mallerie they found mallerie's body they didn't find body back right back still there Frozen weird yeah it's like Ivory skin Still Still flesh like still flesh there perfectly it's cryogenically frozen the crows pick at them and they eat them there's crows at that at that altitude yeah they pick at him this guy yeah that's mallerie Jesus look at that that's so weird but that dude's a bad dude man that is a very bad man right there because they went out with some hob nail boots and some marginal equipment and everybody was telling them that they were going to be dead for sure and they said we're going to charge ahead and they did I mean this was this was back way back man this was in the 20s right so well and there's the controversy that look at that boot the controversy that they they summited first but they can't prove it so that's

16:09a big controversy they thought Irvine and mallerie summited and then they they fell on their way down so Crow's pick at him oh yeah but what obviously he's still there um yeah I mean I don't think they get at him as much but there's you know there's things there's just there's a lot of stuff there you know I ain't going to lie to you there's a lot happening there look at that that's sitting on the mountain you have to walk past that yeah I mean I I didn't see that guy but you've never seen that guy I didn't see that guy how many of the 200 and plus bodies have you seen there well you know the the the conditions change so dramatically over the each season depending on snowfall so whoa look at that dude Jesus there's some creepy things up there zoom in on that dude's face I mean there's he looks happy ah I made it I don't think he and then you know that that's pretty fresh that's a nice

16:58looking down suit yeah that's what I'm saying like how many people die a year well I think the average is you know nowadays is usually I think somewhere under 10 but you know between six and 10 every season and how many people attempt it I think it it the the the grade is is increasing every year I think this year was the most summited the most attempted and most summited was this year and I think close to 300 people summited this year Jesus pull that picture up again that image of deaths sherpers and regular folks so a lot of the sherpers DI too huh yeah well I mean there they go they're higher in concentration they do the majority of the work and man well and and that's one of the reason why we went out there we saved more Sherpas um and we we pull a lot of Sherpas off cuz more more often than not they don't have helicopters and they don't have helicopter insurance and so

17:46we would go and I would pay for it they would go there's a sherpa who's really sick and he's going to die and then Jeff and I would just decide to pull him off the other thing they don't have is they don't have life insurance and and you can imagine so a lot of these Ames a lot of the Nepali and the High Altitude workers families they lose their only source of income when these guys get get killed so actually a friend of mine uh Melissa Arnot who was the first American woman to Summit Everest without oxygen just uh last year um uh she started a fund called the Juniper fund and it actually compensates the families when their loved ones are killed on the mountain and it's good it keeps them straight cuz they don't have a choice this is this high altitude you live in that area you're going to be a sherper or a porter the highest level you can be you're a sherpa you're a guide wow so

18:36what happened to this lady again oh oh yeah okay right so mingma goes up there they're walking up there and they need some help so they they and I have it all in video and he's going oh he it's so funniest thing in the world it's a comedy show so then they they hear music not kidding they hear music so she has a phone on her I don't know how the batteries lasted and she's sitting at the balcony but on the ice and just barely breathing and listening to music and then so they go to her like Rihanna or some no it was it was some kind of Indian music and C Curry rock or whatever the hell it was um and then was she Indian yeah she was Indian her name was uh chetna you don't want to say her name man well no she's you're a disparager no no she's alive she's good she's alive stoked she send me send me a Christmas card okay yeah know that's nice yeah very cool Christmas card with her kid so what

19:30happened so then they get to her and and they start calling her mama they're like Mama Mama you need to wake up you need to wake up we you to go and she's like no no it's all in video like leave me alone leave me alone I don't want to do it I don't want to do it I don't want to do it and then they put oxy down her crank up the bottle try to get some blood flowing get stuff going they sit up there at 8,000 ft 35 minutes 45 minutes TR oh Jesus trying to coax her yep trying to coax her to get her down and now is it because of her personality or is it because she's so like so diminished cognitively things go south too right so she was she probably had pretty profound cerebral edema so her decision- making was in the toilet so you become really apathetic it's impossible to carry someone down you can't carry some you can lower them down which is what happened you can tie

20:18a rope to their harness and short rope them down with you know with two or three dudes like working really really hard sort of lowering her down and that that's how they got her down you know she she quit and a lot of people quit I worked search and rescue in Alaska on Denali for years and and you'd be amazed at how many people are just like done you know they just lay down and they're done because they're not rational enough to know like if I sit down and I just take just a little bitty nap you ain't getting back up you're taking a snow nap and you're done you know and that's snow nap yeah old snow nap oo I don't like that sound that's a weird term but but with hypothermia the interesting thing that happens is you get you for right you go through this this stage of super cold super cold and then your core temperature drops low enough to where Euphoria comes in so often times those

21:07same people we would find are undressed so you get hot you get warm so their gloves come off the hats come off the pants and unzipped and you know everybody's everybody's buck naked on the side of the mountain right before they die right before they die so I mean not that I want to go out that way but you know I can think of worse ways like it's euphoric apparently wow wow cuz we've also pulled people back I've seen multiple times when we've pulled people back and they discuss that they described it um and then we start rewarming their frostbite and then shit's not right after that that hurts turns out that hurts when you frostbite is so horrible to look at too I just see the stuff we had to see and her fingers are still half half fingers are off she got messed up Prett yeah she sent me pictures she's missing fingers like missing tips tips yeah she's lucky the

21:58fanges are gone chopped off so they got her down they ended up hours and hours and hours and we're tracking and we're we're trying to talk to them they get her down to Camp four which is that track that you saw then the trickiest part as he'll tell you because I can't tell you camp four to Camp three yeah Camp four to Camp three and then camp three to Camp two which they didn't even do they couldn't get they couldn't get to Camp too which is straight on the ly face the ly face it's a it's about a 60 60° ice face oh which is slick so when you're roping somebody down you know there it actually does provide you know less friction you can actually slide somebody down but you can't get going too fast you know so now you're 20 you're 26 27,000 ft you're 130 lb 125 lb Sherpa and you got to lower this 200 lb lady down hard oxygen these guys are working their ass wait a minute she's 200 lb

22:55well she wasn't that big but you know with all her gear and all her on yeah I mean she it was 160 170 lbs worth of weight you know dead weight just getting lowered down so we got her down we got her down to where we could go in with the helicopter and we picked her up and took her back down to base camp and that was when the the meeting took place between her and her husband and the tearful rejoicing and no though so the the part you missed was the helicopter landed it it couldn't land a camp to we weren't supposed to go up to 23,500 which is the base of ly krampon Point Andrew got there and said I can only pick one of you and she looked at her husband and said you stay and so she made him stay and take the next helicopter out so we got her down and you she looked at her husband and said you stay he's like you quit well she was mad cuz she got left she was pissed off that she got she was

23:46pissed that she got left but he couldn't have carried her no that's you're switching it depends there's ways of looking at of both way somebody quit somebody gave up somebody said no I mean who knows but I'm sure they had to go through through some deep ass therapy when they got home okay so I'm I'm going to I'm going to fill in the gaps here so fast forward uh N9 or 10 months and dude husband has a has a heart attack and dies so he di I'm I'm sorry I'm I shouldn't be laughing at that but that's that's kind of up I mean and it's it is kind of up but man you to Everest and then you but what's the karma though they left her I mean maybe but he what is he going to do if he doesn't leave her what does he do he sits up there with her he went told people that she's up there and she's alive he panicked he was panicking on the phone he was there yeah I don't know

24:37I me we talked about it last night it's it's the romantic story you huddle up with your girl and you're going to die together whoa right and then or you get you go down there and try to get her saved and you get ridiculed for leaving her it's easy to Monday Morning Quarterback any of those situations because all bets off when you get above 26,000 ft I mean it's it's it is you're you're kind of hanging on a little bit and that's why you know you get these big Into Thin Air stories that happen and no one really can remember exactly the details and you know it's it's a little bit sketchy like I I my intentions were and I did and you did and I mean Summit nights on 26,000 me uh 26,000 foot Peaks there's always it there's always variables that come into play and it turns into theater I mean it's a stage people make choices people make mistakes we had that one one guy on on

25:29uh what's her F Grace's team he was a triathlete he went up broke a bunch of rules respectfully oh with regards to climatization and stuff climatization pushed himself too much summited got back down and died in his tent oh his fifth attempt up there you can look it up it's on the internet his fifth attempt up there pushed himself way too hard rule the rules are if you don't make it to a certain point by a certain time you should turn around and save your life and come back another day he said no he said no I'm pushing through got to the summit too late came back really exhausted 16 17 hour day died in a tent he was 35 years old what did he die from exposure cerebral edema he might have thrown a clot could I mean I don't know I don't know the autopsy but I mean he you know it was something fairly acute you know it wasn't just exhaustion you know it wasn't just

26:19hypothermia he made it back to the tent and then just expired in the tent so not sure I mean there's there's a lot of things that can go wrong and you have a small window to get it right what is good about it well about what summoning a big ass Mountain yeah um you know I think it's a tough question it's a pretty nebulous thing it's very subjective it's very selfish there's no you know there's no chance I used to climb pretty hard and then I had a kid and my sense of objective risk changed significantly at that point because climbing by nature is a very selfish Pursuit you're going out there to do something that is bring it brings me joy and it brings me fulfillment and it gives me a sense of connection to the people that I'm sharing a rope with because we're on a rope man I mean we're going to win together lose together I mean it's but Jeff doesn't do it

27:17selfishly and like you you give all these climbers like that's a very selfish thing to do for him but he did it because Eric did it Eric wanted to do it so he like oh you you're a selfish prick you summon it Everest goes no I I've helped my blind friend go to the ever it really wasn't his goal his goal was to help the first blind guy to summon and everybody on my team I I wasn't just me I had an amazing team it was there was um you know with all our Sherpas on Summit day we were 19 of us and at that point I think this record still stands we're still the highest number from one team in one day to stand on top together and I attribute that to the fact that just as you said Bud like that was just a bunch of Bros who weren't commercially guided we were just friends and we were there for something that was bigger than us we were there for Eric we wanted to get him as high up

28:05as we could and get him back down and if that meant the summit awesome if not you know we'll we'll come back and we'll still be Bros and maybe we'll go do some other cool you know I mean that so what happens when you don't go up there for me to plant my flag is we got this Summit I got to stand on top you know it it's pretty pretty cool um what is the feeling like when you get to that top and you realize that you have summited Mount Everest you're up there and you're looking around you're like holy top of the world ma well just like so many other times with him and the stuff that I've done with Eric um I was worried about him getting down that's all I was I was obsessing on it because there was a storm coming in and we heard all the Radio Chat how much time do you have for the storm I mean who is barreling I mean it is moving from the uh from Tibet across we could

29:02see it coming it was probably 9 10 in the morning and you know that's early and when it comes out early the monsoon the edge of the monsoon this is late May so the monsoon starts to pick up in late may you don't want to be anywhere near but Joe you talk about all the time the adrenaline dump so imagine adrenaline dump in a cage that you talk about all the time now you just summon to Mount Everest but you're only halfway done yeah 80% of all M mountaineering accidents happen on The Descent wow 8 why why is that because your decision making is compromised and yep you um and you you did what you went to do you're done and you know you're like oh you relax kind of take your adrenaline you're like I did it and all of a sudden I was like I got to get down that's way more techical to be honest with you that that's somewhat of a rookie move um and I you know experienced climbers always

29:51know to have a little bit more in the tank you know it's just like a fighter right you know you got to save some for the fifth round right and you got to you got to know that it's coming and it's going to hurt right um it's going to hurt bad I I remember my legs like I was they were jelly man I mean trying to come down from that Hillary Stu and I was just jacked I was like the Gumby man coming down and I actually fell I fell onto a fixed rope right right below the or right above the Hillary Step yeah and I got caught by a rope and it was one of the only times I clipped in that whole day oh Jesus Christ it was it was cooky did you clip in cuz you felt like your body was getting a little she once again I knew like I'm a little bit not right I shot I shot my wad coming up I dug some ropes out with my buddy Brad bull uh for the team um earlier that that morning that were buried we were

30:42the first people up I mean we were the first people up and all these ropes were buried and we were digging them out in the ice and they were buried under a foot to two foot of snow at 28,000 ft and I made Brad and I made that decision to to dig those ropes out because not to know which way to go up but to to make sure they were there for The Descent cuz that's when the weather comes in and that's when the blind lead the blind down you know so we dug the ropes up and I knew when I did that um that I was going to be out of gas and sure enough like coming down I knew it so that's when I was clipping in I was a little bit I was a little bit more fastidious on you know making sure if I fell that I'd be caught sure enough I fell wow on a rope and then got back up was like good night that woke me up and did you get a jolt yeah yeah shake it off or look around go God damn I wonder if

31:32anybody saw that and then like start heading back down so is it the appeal of like accomplishing something that very few people accomplish and joining like a very special Club is that what what motivates these people is it just a really difficult task and they want to see if they have it in them I mean obviously everybody's got a subjective answer to that and mine is I like to be with my people in the Hills that's my church that's where I feel the most comfortable it's where I I feel safe actually in the Hills right and I feel grounded know you're around other very rugged people well just people who make good decisions you know and then you know the the Cathedral of the big mountains makes me happy and sort of rejuvenates my soul and but there's there's something to be said for for seeing what my body and my mind can do um you know I I think that a lot of

32:25people would would agree that that's probably one of the the main reasons why we get out and do these things but I mean it's no joke it's dangerous man I mean you saw one of the most accomplished Mountaineers probably the best Mountaineer in the world just died you know under two months ago really UL St yeah he's how did he die he fell he was getting ready to go do he's training up in the in the valley in that Western from that camp two on Everest that you saw that image um he was going up the West shoulder of Everest with one other Sherpa who's a friend of his not just a paid shirt but it was his climbing partner and they were going to go up um a route that has yet to be successfully seconded so these Americans seconded like so it's been done once and people have died trying to do it again oh several parties and he was going to go do it these two Americans Willie

33:16unold and Tom hornbine did it um and it hadn't been repeated cuz it's it's straight up commitment man balls like but his Shero was sick his SHP was sick so ulle uh was out training one you know one morning and I think it was around 400 or 5 in the morning yeah so he was up in that sort of Circ and he was over on a mountain called nup which is beside Everest and and he fell who knows why may He Slipped or he got hit or something you have to see this guy this guy you can see the videos online Yuri St is this guy no ropes no nothing he's got two ice axes and he runs up the hill faster than you can run on pavement for sure call him the Swiss the Swiss machine unbelievable there a video of him doing this hundred of lot of how do you spell his name ulle so it's u l i now the incredible when you see it the incredible thing about it is you you're at the 6 degree pitch ice walls he's at

34:1126 27 you know 23,000 feet and he's just going bangang bang bangang bang bang bang yeah he's in like a video game he's a ridiculously committed he was um athlete I mean he's committed to his craft being as strong as he could be you know technically capable um but you know it's it's it's still roll of the dice and he how many people have died trying to do this Summit to do ever the seconded one oh um a good handful I don't know exact numbers but several from different nationalities so everybody is either failed or died M except one person who's the one person two two Americans that was Willie unsold and Tom hornbine and that's what they do once they Summit once once the climbers are and it's just you know humans in general these climbers do it then they want to find a more difficult route or they without oxygen so Julie was going to go up and do that look at this

35:00guy he's going to go do that and then come around Summit Everest and then go down check that out dude he's like a goat oh yeah look at this look at that that's incredible so his aerobic you know he's got that ability to kick out the lactic acid oh my God that is insane he's an absolute Beast it's a shame it was a big loss is it just because he's been doing it for so long I mean it's like the other CRA holy no ropes oh my God okay for people just listening um what is the name of this video Jamie so uh Uli e u e l i s c k new speed record Iger 2015 so this is the North Face of the Iger and so he's a Swiss dude and he grew up sort of cut his teeth in the Alps and just all this now now I want to be clear though this is the this isn't like the first time he did this right it's probably the 50th time he climbed that route he did it over and over and over got it dialed

35:58figured it out and then went out and did these speed records you know and and set these speed recers very similar to what just happened on El cppy tan uh last week did you hear about Alex honold and what Alex did yes oh yeah I did I watched the the pictures and video of that yeah he's been on the podcast before Alex has yeah he's a freak yeah so I mean what an odd dude he is what he did what he did in my mind great way was like landing on the moon dude I mean the the ability to pocket fear and just focus on the three square feet in front of you is unparalleled I can't I mean I've climbed El Cap and and I just I can't imagine being up on those slabs and how long did it take you when you CL cap three days so three days took him four hours free solo the point was like you you know people look at that and they're like just got super sweaty mine are mine are

36:55too by the way you know I think about so if you look at ul and you see this video and you're like wow he's crazy he's crazy no he's calculated and so is Alex Alex super calculated like he' climbed Free Rider the route that he did a few weeks ago he did it several dozen times and would fall on it and you know on with a rope and he just was in the right head space that day and went up and did it without a whole lot of pump and Circumstance just went out and nailed it look at this there's going to be a crazy ass video that Jimmy chin jimmyo and his yeah Jimmy was near the top with how what did he did he shoot it like next to him with ropes is question no so so Jimmy was very respectful of not getting in his way because this is a very obviously very intense thing oh yeah hey man how's it going going good hey dude look down there do that again yeah I missed a shot can you go back up hey

37:49man can you give me a thumbs up Selfie look over and smile but Jimmy's a a very accomplished climber and he's an amazing cin Jimmy chin National Geographic top he was at the top and him and his team I think lowered down and uh and yeah greatest greatest athletic human feat J I ain't going to lie I I have to agree because it's if you think about true athletic Feats it's not just obviously the you know the Corporal sort of you know event it's just the whole mixed bag of who you are as an athlete mentally emotionally behaviorally physically how you execute in the moment when is just on point like right in your face and he did it like to this level that I can't even it's unbelievable man dripping out of my hands I mean crazy I mean once you get 30 feet off the deck it's game on you you know and then now put you know a power of a 100 on that you know it's but

38:53there's very few Sports where one mess up you're dead that's right does he have any any like guys that are trying to be the next Alex hanold that are chasing him well I just read something today this morning about that there could be some emulators you know like who knows there's other super tough badass climbers that are out there that are also free soloing and doing without ropes but um he's at another level and everyone knows that you know there's how is he at this other level well first of all like what what separates him yeah well there's a lot of body chemistry that that is sort of a mystery like how does his pituitary how does his adrenal gland not just flame out right how does he control that in a way that I can't right I mean my yeah we're sitting here at the desk and my hands are sweaty just thinking about it right so there he is as calm and collected as he can be

39:50they've done studies on on Alex they brought him in and like you know buzzed his brain he like where are you you know chemically biochemically when we introd introduce assaulting sort of variables on you and he's just Flatline so he's the Perfect Blend of biochemistry and physical capacity but also devotion and commitment to his craft I mean he's an artist right that's the he he got down from that from that clim that day just a couple weeks ago and they're like what are you going to go do now you know it's night Disneyland he was going on his fingerboard and he was going to go train and do like you know fingerboard workout that afternoon cuz climbing all cap for 4 hours was not enough workout for the day it was like whatever he says put him in an MRI and showed him images and that's that's what was his response was yeah the brain his brain's fear levels

40:44after looking at gruesome and arousing images he commented it was like whatever that is that dude he's so mellow right but that's what how he described it when I said to him I said like what is it like are you freaking out are you trying to keep calm he's like you're really mellow he goes if if anything is like if you if there's anything wrong it's so wrong like when it goes wrong Cascades yeah like you're like so you're always his his way of putting it was mellow like you're really I think there's a video I believe and maybe Alex and maybe someone other climber I think there's a video of him probably they'll cap when he was free soloing before this one where he says give me a minute it was Northwest direct face of of half doome and I've climbed that route too and I tell you I've only ever seen him flap that was the uh that was the iconic image on Nat Geo on National Geographic

41:32magazine of him standing just in his plaid short shirt like on the ledge you know leaning back and it was he reflected on that they asked him about it later and they said you know what was going on he I just needed a minute and he got it and he calmed himself down whatever was happening in his head who knows and he recalibrated and went up you know no gear so it just who knows there's there's uh that's him right there that's when he needed a minute no no there's there's another one of Jamie it's it's it's he's in that green there he is over there on the right yeah that one the green or the right above it right there it's uh the one where you standing there sort of on the yeah that's the one that I think was the NAT giio and that's the one he says I just need a minute just need a minute that's um that's a th000 feet off the deck you know right there at that spot but you

42:22know I mean imagine if that's your kid we all you know and you're like what are you do today honey so he apparently he has a very very close relationship with his mama he grew up in Sacramento I guess and and uh I'm guess his M he just tells his mama what she needs to know yeah he doesn't tell her until after it's over M yeah Christ just like that is a that's a crazy thing to be awesome at you know all right hold on so we're talking a lot about climbing but the other reason why I want to bring Jeff here but hold on we're not changing subjects I don't know where the you think you're going this this guy like so you said that there are a few people that are trying to emulate what he's doing well I think there's just a few guys doing their own thing and it happens to be free soloing and you know he's he's the Pioneer and there were other guys before him there's a guy

43:12named Peter cof that was out there for many years sort of you know he did a he did a uh route called astroman in the valley that was at the time and I remember you know I was in my I think my early 20s when when Peter did that and I remember reading about it and thinking no like what how how does one want to do and I was just really getting into climbing a lot I just could it didn't compute but Peter Croft I think and guys like him and like Alex just have a wiring that's very very different than the rest of us and it seems Reckless to many many people but what I do seems Reckless to many people so it's so relative and there's a scale you know and and people that would look at Alex and be like you're crazy man that you're going to get like he's like whatever man I'm sure yeah there is a scale there's like yeah well you what what about physically like is there like

44:05an Optimum build you like for a basketball you really want to be tall and thin right yeah is there is there an Optimum build for what he does I mean I think you know seny and and the strength to weight ratio is is obviously you know the best climbers are usually thin pretty th and you know carry themselves well and you know it's it's uh he's got big hands like not necessarily big like basketball player but like his fingers are sausages he these fat fingers from constantly training them almost callous yeah well the just the amount of weight that he can carry on his hands has got to be pretty unusual yeah this so This finger thing that he does like what is the the thing that he did the campus board or a finger you know or one of those Peg boards like from wrestling that's kind of like a campus board is like a inverted sort of board that you climb up just for strength and it works

44:55your core and your arms and your chest and your delts and stuff but then then the fingerboard allows you to get you know mono Do Double Do you know two finger strength so he can then slot and then pull on one of those so it strengthens all your tendons in your in your hands in your fingers particularly um just little holes carved out of a sometimes it's a it's a uh oh that's it right there yeah so sometimes it's wood sometimes it's a composite it's like almost like a little cubby shelf and so you stick your hands in there yeah and then there's routines I use one there two finger pockets and three finger pocket oh wow you you use one too huh I do yeah I use one too and then I'll try and hang you know and then count to 30 hang and then go two finger and hang and he did this after he summited yeah so he went down and like got interviewed and he goes sorry man I got to go do a

45:46workout now how's he not tired yeah well that's what that's why he's the best right why he's where he is yeah yeah remarkable so did this exist 20 years ago was there a lot of people free soloing 20 years ago well no I like that's the Peter Croft of the you know those guys there was a few and U Back in the old camp for Yos days like in yosity Valley I mean it's this was the place this was the the birth of it and then there was some dudes that were not far from here um in Joshua Tree that were doing some pretty balls out soloing um in Joshua Tree yeah in J Tree um and I lived in Joshua Tree for a while just living in my van down by the river there and climbing all the time and eating ramen noodles growing my head a little bit if you know what I'm saying um in the in the tree man and and cuz you know there's a lot of climb in there that's that's uh that's pretty there high ball stuff I

46:39bet if you could look at like the amount of mushrooms that are done like in a specific location and then look at Joshua Tree like the high concentration I so I know so many people go to Joshua Tree just to shroom out yeah yeah I mean it's I'd like to look at that map there' be a big Target Hunter yeah seriously probably a big cluster right yeah I mean I've I've I've seen some good stuff there man I mean that was when I was sort of really really diving in you I was diving into climbing those those two things were conjoined was psychotropics and in a way and and climbing yeah they are with a lot of folks well it's that that extreme connection to Nature right and to to life and like you were talking about a little bit ago before we came on air was you know when you know when you're stoned you see the ball track better when you're playing pool oh yeah well you feel like the revolution of the

47:27ball like you feel like how well you could touch the ball and get it to move like your CQ for me at least yeah you know I feel I play like 10% better when I'm high yeah for whatever reason just feel more in touch with things yeah that's why I like the social sliver social sliver oh yeah sliver micro do oh so just the micro do of of mushrooms or acid mushrooms but I'm so the the new medium for us I don't know if if um if you've if you've heard of it is is goo do you know the Goo Goo no so it's super concentrated psilocybon so they take mushrooms and they um distill it down concentrate it up get this liquid turn it into a Tootsie Roll appearing uh consistency color give it out Halloween you get a stick yeah and you get a stick and it's literally the size of a Tootsie Roll and we just take like a little just a little nip and that's the social sliver and like oh and

48:27then it makes you just a little more tuned in I mean a lot more tuned in I have a buddy who's a high level kickboxer world champion kickboxer started micro doing few months back does it every day every day micro does and he competes on it people up always micro doing so with what with L or with mushrooms so the I think and you might knowu Locked In the Zone more than me but if you if you take it serious it starts you lose it gets diluted over time yeah but when he takes when he stops taking it he feels it he misses it he does yeah every day like a vitamin yep I think that's called addiction maybe I don't think so because it's not addicted it it's like you can get addicted to washing your hands if you're one crazy OCD guy got wash my hands all my time like if you really you can get a mental pathway that's very destructive you know and you can call it addictive

49:15but it doesn't demonize washing your hands you know I think his issue is uh um when he doesn't take it he says it just things aren't as fun doesn't feel as good but I've been around him when he's Tak taking it and he's 100% there like it's not it's not he's like wow man I could like see your eyes and I'm thinking your eyes are looking at me and what are your eyes seeing I assume they're seeing what I'm no he's there he's there like you're there you know but BR needs a little experience in his life you agree really quiet over here cuz I have no idea what the you guys are talking about him with a social sliver before just to see what happens it could go either way with him we should hot box him right now let's him up no no scared he's got to do p test interesting do p test he owns his own that's ped me tested himself Joe's been trying to get me high he likes to piss Joe's been trying to me

50:03high for about 18 years yeah I have he not exaggerating no so I'm the micro doing the goo man um it is it is just how do you get well let's talk later about I know well i' I've people there's there's conversations that need to have need to happen absolutely so um are a lot of these climbers doing that I don't I don't think so I think you know I think that uh you know there's there there probably a handful of us that like to mess around with those things Al together and not to say that I don't like to you know trip my balls off and go get on a rock of course right um matter of fact i' I've had a few sort of spooky times just being really stoned and being on a rock and not liking the situation I was in yeah yeah I've been that way just normal life like you get too stoned especially like Edibles chibu me up Oh They'll you up me up Oh They'll you I had a bit

50:55off my last special that's based on the truth I ate a gummy bear a pot gummy bear and uh this the guy told me to just eat the leg it really is a true thing I'm like why the are you making a whole bear then if you want someone to eat a leg it's this tiny little thing and I ate the whole bear and oh my God for the for for a while too it's a long time till it's metabolized right it takes hours hours for but you feel so good when it's over you feel like I needed that I needed all that pain and fear and just I got through it and it's like a near-death experience like something something about it like it's cleansing I'm not sure if eating a gummy bear should have that kind of a I shouldn't but it does and when it comes through on the other side like it's beneficial as long as you could keep it together you know as a person who's that's why it bums me out that you don't smoke pot or do anything

51:43cuz I know you could keep it together cuz you're a tough guy you keep life together like you would just it would just make you like more aware of here's my here's my 19 years ago we started this conv but here's my take on bud is uh on the death bed I'm going to get him hot he smoke bud likes to be in control no question and he's afraid that he might not be you ever look at Bud's closet I did does it shock you and everything's black it's a little confusing so I had a 10-minute conversation with this dude last night like dude that kind of me up looking at your closet stay the out of my like I don't like other colors everything's black 20 linear feet of of of one shade variation of the other black shirt of the other black shirt and no play makes Jack a Dull Boy work and no play makes Jack a dll boy oh yeah no no no that's it's just it's efficient decision making

52:32right I don't have to make that decision right I had too many other to go in life so I'm going to wear that I can feel that I can feel that I get it I understand it guys guys everybody develops a uniform in life right when you it doesn't matter if it's khaki shorts and a blue everybody your that's your uniform you develop it so you what's interesting though if it was orange it would be a big issue if you were walking around with orange sneakers and orange pants and orange shirt like this wacky but somehow or another because it's black you're like oh it's Bud friend of mine Tom Dupont is a head he owns a duPont Registry magazine green pants like shitty looking green pants all the time like what's with a shitty I'm rich I'll wear whatever the I want it's proba we invented chemicals off I got so much money I like wearing green his reality is probably so

53:24confusing he's like everybody remember my green pants yeah I was in laai recently and Larry Ellison owns the whole Island he owns the whole island he bought it and rebuilt it yeah well it was uh Dole pineapple owned it first of all Dole pineapple bought it off of I was there I read the the history of the Island's amazing a Mormon owned it some crazy but they don't even think it was really a Mormon they think it was just a con man who used being a Mormon to lock people up F com on that there's probably a lot of stories of this like that oh yeah oh yeah there's quite a few especially with Mormons very very interesting religion right when you know the guy who made the religion like there's two religions like that are pretty prominent elron hubard of course and then Joseph Smith the Mormons you know the guy he's kind of a com man yeah 100% ja he was 14 he found

54:16golden tablets that contain the Lost work of Jesus and only he could read them cuz he had a magic sear Stone he had a stone that he could look through to read these Christ he broke out of jail he jumped out of the window he murdered yeah he got murdered in jail yeah he got killed in jail I think what the the funny thing is I think it didn't if it was him or somebody else who invented the polygamy part they're like wait a minute I got another tablet I can all the I want hold on yep everybody I can have as many wives I want you know it's uh yeah good luck with all that that never works but the um why would you want more than one I know I can't handle one man I some people just like danger like Alex honold likes to solo climb yeah you know I mean it's just people like it like 19 chicks yelling at them I don't know whatever sounds like I'm not here to judge

55:01overload I I think it should be legal I think if those 19 women are into it and you're into it why why is it even legal to get married at all why is it like when you see 50% divorce and people get their their lives devastated when does a government step in and go hey you got to stop doing this this is just ruining all these people these kids it ruins more people than anything just stop getting married keeps the lawyers aoat though it does that's what they should stop the lawyers it's a big business and weddings and lawyers we can't stop that we won't make any money Jesus Christ yeah all that but um so this guy who this crazy Mormon guy sold it to the Dole company who used to run pineapples there they used to have a just massive pineapple plantation and that was what it was forever and then um some other dude Murdoch but not rert Murdoch another he owns he owns half of westle

55:52yeah almost all of it that dude bought it and then he sold it to Larry Ellison who just runs around gold underwear and has people carry him like he's an emperor making that up Colonel Curts on the yeah I don't even know where he he keeps a place out there I guess but he just wanted to own it it's a baller place to live though so there there's not how many people live there 3,000 that's it there's 15,000 axess deer though oh yeah so am I right in remembering that the the concentration of people it's not necessarily on the coastline the night it's in the middle yes right it's in the middle don't live on the coast yeah they're smart they're like um this Island's not that big and sometimes goes bad let's not be where the water is guys we can go to the water it's right there the Americans are like oh I want to live there anywhere you are you can take a hike to the water you know it'll take

56:42a few hours if you're in the middle but you can get there like you don't have to live there Jesus Christ so tell me about the axis deer I want to hear like insan they're everywhere I mean was not even sporting or oh it was definitely sporting cuz these animals they evolve to run from Tigers they are the fastest animals I have ever seen in my life like in terms of like their ability to react like there would be a deer 60 yards away you draw back on it launch the arrow and it would be nowhere near that Arrow by the time the arrow got you lost a few sharp sticks while you were there oh yeah well You' go five lighted knocks I could see them in the in the grass but I I lost two but the arrows are going 275 ft a second uhhuh and the deer's like sh no chance they're not indigenous to the island no there's no indigenous mammals on that island everything is invasive and everything

57:35has no Predators so they bring in these Rangers and seals these snipers they bring them in they set up on a bench and they just start they start taking them out they 50 cal yeah well no they don't have to use a 50 cal they probably use like I don't know 7 mm or something but why do that when you want the meat the meat is outstanding it is some of the most delicious meat in the world but these animals are so on point so for bow Hunters is like one of the best places for spot and stalk like if you could put the smackdown on an axis deer like you either got lucky which is me or you got some skill you know like I've got a little bit of skill but the guys that I went with that are really good like Remy Warren I think he shot three or four while I was there my friend John Dudley shot four world class bow Hunters like as good as it gets those guys killed quite a few but it is you got it's a

58:26great learning ground like for stalking cuz you you blow so many stalks you get smell you um I only hunted for three days because uh I had a problem with my bow that I had to fix once I got there and took a day to do that but once you get there and you see how many deer you realize like oh okay this is like this place is overpopulated so but in those three days I I saw thousands of you saw thousands I mean thousands and you took a few shots yes I took a shots yeah they're tough animals too so are you moving are you literally are you moving and stalking and pausing and holding yeah you're doing what you call still hunting you're walking and then you're looking for an animal that you're you're constantly using your wind Checker which is uh like a Visine bottle with talcum powder in do you bow hunt it all yeah well I've just recently started yeah so you puff that in the air and you find

59:18out which way the the wind is going my guy though he knew where the wind was going he just knew from his face and his neck and his skin like tell like where's the wind blowing and he's like like this and he just puffed that smoke in the and sure enough it was going exactly where it was shout out to R man uh but his uh his ability to sneak up on these animals is pretty impressive too you know you do a lot of crawling like a lot of the grass is like waist high so you're doing like crawling where you're moving like literally like at a snail's pace trying not to make too much noise cuz you know they're over there right you sided them already where you glassed them and you know they're there and you're on an island so they can't really go that far they're far there's plenty of room for them to go there's I mean this is not like you're hunting them in a 100 Acre confined high fence place

60:04it's all wild and free range and it's there's Mountain terrain and there's plenty of places for them to get away from but they're aware of one Predator humans you know so they they're not scared of anything other than people so when they see a person like this but are there a lot of bow Hunters that go over there there's plenty of bow Hunters that go over there yeah it is um it's it's a pretty amazing place man but Maui's another really great place for bow hunting too apparently and Maui also has pigs Maui has Axis deer they have a deer um um a ram called a muflon that apparently is unbelievably delicious but the locals think it tastes like some locals said it tastes like and some locals said it's the most delicious meat ever but the bow Hunters that I was there with there's a mlon the bow Hunters I was there with see if it's on on Remy Warren's page Remy Warren's

60:50Instagram I think has cuz he shot one he shot a beautiful one you like that ax is better than venison not better than elk um it is delicious I mean it is delicious I wouldn't say it's better than Elk elk is my favorite meat um but it's right there it's right there it's really good yeah yeah cuz you know like anal I know I'm not trying to relate those but analogy super sagey this is a one that he shot in laai so it's a really small animal right and um they are you know they're on this really rugged Mountain terrain laai is so fascinating it's such a fascinating place and the people that live there could not be nicer could not be cooler it's beautiful gorgeous Paradise yeah but um yeah it's weird because they've decided to introduce these animals I think they did it Way Way Back hundreds of years ago and they have to keep those populations in check and sometimes again

61:43they bring in snipers and they put a bench down and they just set up shop and get those long range skills going so I was I was on Maui um probably about I guess a month ago now and I went over to my buddy's house and he has a pretty sweet spread it's at the top of this Canyon and looking down up on the up on the hill goinging towards uh Haka and um he's like man you can come on my property anytime and shoot these deer wow cuz they come cuz he's like they're just they're a pain in the ass they're everywhere and like we need to get rid of them they come in and eat my oranges and this and that so but what's the tag situation like do you have to I mean is it priv hunting license you get a license there there's public land you get a we hunted public land and we hunted private land but you get a license and then you shoot as many as you want no limit No Limit they want

62:33they mean they have a yeah I mean it's not a problem it's not like they're not sick there's not there's plenty of food for these deer that's they not getting chronic wasting no no it's beautiful Lush and green but they're just everywhere they're everywhere but they're not easy you know if you had a rifle it's pretty easy but you have to pay and pack and get them back to the States as you go over there like you want to shoot 10 of them as long as you get them out of here fantastic meat pure organic couldn't be healthier they even serve it at the restaurant at the Four Seasons in Leni you know it's just God damn it's good so good lean and good oh so delicious just you feel the nutrition in it it's just so fantastic you know and when it comes to like sustainability and ethics it's like one of the best places like that's a place where you actually should be hunting these animals

63:20you know whenever I go to Hawaii I always just feel like I should show my passport like it's this not America it ain't America stole that that is straight up like it's a foreign country it in a beautiful way yeah in a beautiful way it's its own thing yeah I mean I I like the fact that you can go there without a passport but I agree but I'm one of those weirdos that think there shouldn't be passports should be able to go anywhere it's part of our problem that everybody's all locked into these land masses these forbidden areas yeah break those boundaries tear down that wall I was just in Iraq and you're talking about some boundaries and sort of lines in the sand and so forth boy you know I'm sure what were you doing over there so I went with uh so back up um two years ago the earthquake in Nepal um that killed nine almost 10,000 people um throughout the country 19 on the

64:12mountain on Everest right Y A lot of people got dead and 19 people died and that one was it a Avalanche that got him yeah well so the the earthquake triggered a lot of glaciers that are hanging up around in that Circ and it released in aot a lot of stuff just blew through basee camp and and killed folks but throughout Nepal throughout the countryside I mean we're talking Villages that have stone huts and no mortar and no rebar and you know just shakes just a little bit and falls down temples I mean the place was Des yeah so so lots of Devastation lots of people dead and lots of injuries so that day that happened I knew I wanted to go to Nepal to help I'm a PA I'm a physician assistant and I've specialized in emergency medicine so I knew I wanted to be there and more than anything like focused on sort of auster medicine you know like I want to go out there where

65:05shit's a little bit off and try and help the best I can so I went over there I located an an NGO called NYC Medics and I what's NGO and a non-governmental organization so not supplied or you know subsidized by the feds this is just like sponsorship basically donation money gets you over there and you do your work so you're not under the opes of the feds so when over there with these guys NYC Medics which is a group of former n you know New York City paramedics that realized they wanted to take their skills and go do some cool around the world so I I found these guys I went over with them um I was on the ground for a month way way back like in the way back um this place called Ding Bessie which is right at the base of of the Ganesha mall so this is a place that we landed in some helicopters and setup shop and there was a lot of these nepalis that they're Tong Nepali they

66:06that's their ethnic tribe not Sherba but Tong they see the helicopter come in and these white dudes get out of the helicopter like what the we need help are you here to help yes we're here to help so we had three helicopters worth of gear downloaded it set up our clinic and we're there for a month we saw I don't know 7 or 800 patients in the course of a month and what started as Trauma from the earthquake sort of then segwayed into Primary Care like infections and yeah I mean injuries well and also believe it or not like a lot of of of you know psychological pain like they were scared the Earth was shaking still I there was Tremor after Tremor after Tremor I mean every day the Earth would Shake I got home and for a month after I got back from there I still felt the ground shaking in Boulder Colorado cuz it was just my body was still sort of the equilibrium was weird so Tremors every

67:01single day so these people needed you know anxiety medicines you know to be able to take the edge off so I was over there for a month we saw a bunch of people and it was very worthwhile so got connected to this this this organization and and became good friends with with all the folks who run it they do amazing work and so I got a call uh in January from one of the heads of the organization that says we got this kind of kooky thing that we've been asked to do by the World Health Organization would you be interested Kookie Kookie that's the word he used Kookie Kookie Jesus who the uses Kookie so it well I mean when it comes to going to Iraq 12 years in medical school not not understanding what what sniper fire is it was a little bit cooky so he's he frames it up for me and he's like listen here's what's going on we've been asked by the World Health Organization to go

67:52in and be a trauma stabilization point in mosul which means um you will be as close to the front line as possible embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations forces and your job will be to lead a medical team of we had nine of us um um within 2,000 MERS of the front line that was the way it was framed up and that's what we all sort of signed up for and that was the agreement with the World Health Organization and so we would be the first point of contact as these Iraqi Special Operations guys were going in and putting the fight to Isis to liberate Western mosul so you know Eastern mosul been Li liberated you know months before and he volunteered for this by way so that's all Eastern moso on the east side of the Tigers and then on the west side you know Isis was still sort of dug in right there and they were they're ready to put the fight down they wanted to get after it and save you know

68:54that's where their calipat supposedly started or was was settled and so our job as the tsp this trauma stabilization point was to be as close to the front line as we could be and this is the this was the kicker you know within a margin of safety but still be close enough to where we could receive the casualties as quickly as possible stabilize them and then get them to a forward operating op operating Suite which was typically um run by Allied Forces so our guys so um I said yes before I asked my wife um which now in retrospect probably wasn't the best strategy um cuz she was not super stoked but she uh you know I pitched it to her and you I've got an 11-year-old kid and and she gave me I think the the least amount of push back as anybody around me in my close Network I mean a lot of my boys were like the dude what do you thinking man like what's what are you

69:56getting what's your point what are you doing this for what's your intention to go over there to a war zone to a combat zone volunteering you know and and and and helping a group of people that you have no affinity for it made sense going to Nepal cuz I love Nepal I love I love everything about Nepal I love the Nepali people so that good everybody got that but that's the weird thing about Jeff cuz he was on the phone with me at the same time saying hey are we going back to Everest to go rescue so he's going to no matter what sometime in Spring he's going to put his ass on the line to help save people he was calling me we going back and I'm like I don't know if we're going back the network May order another season we probably go back and I started lining stuff up and just in case the netw any this stuff aired yet yeah yeah Everest air the name of the show is

70:39Everest air air November of last year Everest air mhm and what what network did it air on travel channel six episodes on Travel Channel it's on iTunes and a couple other places too okay so people could get it right now so uh so you tell your wife yeah and she you know she knew what she signed up for when I you know when she married me so she knew she was kind of getting a little bit of a you know a little bit of a of a of a wild buck in her hands but um this was different you know I can go climbing I can set my sights on this and that and get out there in the mountains or do Adventure races and stuff and all that's cool but then you know mad respect to the men and women that serve in our military man and put it out there every day but I'd never been in a combat zone and that is crazy man I mean it is is it was real um and I have no uh you know predications

71:31that I had any experience close to what our men and women have experienced but from a medical perspective it was intense to say the least I mean it was a Mindbender at the first after after the first three days I remember texting my wife just saying like I don't know if this is sustainable like just this my emotional state cuz every day was immense volume of pro found penetrating trauma pen I mean never was there very very rarely was there a guy who had one gunshot wound typically you know seven or eight or nine they were leaking from their you know from lots of places you know these dudes were getting shot up and then the iids and um would blow these guys up and we would get them you know they'd be was just scream in and drop these guys off and and then 5 minutes later another ambulance would come in with two other dudes and it was just constant constant and we would do

72:26the best we could um to stabilize them or call it and um the ones we could save we'd package them up and stabilize them try and control the bleeding we'd innovate them if we needed to and put chest tubes in and and cke them in some cases and stabilize their extremities and Patch their holes and and then send them on he would do these weekly daily blogs right so people who know him are over there we're waiting watching CNN see if he's going to be on which he was and you do these daily blogs these long long diet tribe which is I think how he stays somewhat sane but they're getting shot at there's mottar come in in their compound where are these blogs on my blog um which is yeah it's on my website Jeff B Evans there's I like to write jeffb evans.com yep jeffb evans.com so I I like to write and Bud you WR and I like toite how you have the time well so this is what I would do at night like if

73:19I would lay down we were sleeping on the floor on these you know these iraqy blankets you know and we would just lay down on this we so we'd go into these abandoned homes and we'd set up these trauma bays and we'd sleep in a room off the trauma Bay and so I you know we we do our day I I I very rarely wasn't dressed and ready to get up and go because at any time the head logistician would be like patience you know and everybody would pop up and and get ready and go out and the ambulance would throw people on mostly during the day but fighting would generally subside at night and we'd get a little bit of rest and then I'd write and I'd write and it was important I think to sort of you know percolate that out a little bit and let it let it sit so we were we were in this one place for a couple weeks and then came the request from uh the head of isof Special Operations

74:14General abas and he's came to our head logistical gwn he's like listen you know as the front line is moving forward we would like for you guys if you are up for it to move forward as well the only problem is um it's not going to be within that 10 that two 2500 you know um meter cushion from the front line it's going to be more like 500 M from the front line 500 M yeah which you know that's really close that's really close especially since the front Line's pretty fluid anyway right and this isn't conventional Warfare right these guys are you know they're Isis is is was was reinforcing these these vehicles and you know steel plating them up and then taking civilians and handcuffing them to the you know to these steering wheels and telling them you best drive and they drive and then they'd be packed full of explosives and C4 and they blow them up you know and and you know these our guys

75:16would you know Iraqi dudes would be like trying to Pelt him to take the dude out and it couldn't get you know like was was really archaic but effective you know and so so they told us you know we'd like for you to move and then our head logistical gal Kathy she's came to the whole team and she said this is our this is our option you don't have to do it you know no one's obligated to do it y'all are volunteers and and and by the way we were close to begin with I mean it was it was constant every day just mortars and Small Arms fire and there was bunch of um of of uh of of artillery that was set up all around us outgoing so we got used to the sound of outgoing artillery um we didn't hear a lot of incoming um because they just had pushed them back so okay we all said let's do it you know if we can create positive impact and we can save more lives by being closer let's do it so we all

76:11gotten this big Oshkosh and humy um Convoy and uh and drove down past the airport and I think a lot of military folks that listen will know that airport um in West mosul very well probably we drove right through the old busted up you know you know it was just Rubble the whole airport is Rubble it's just completely it looks like you know Bedrock Flintstones you know it's just a mess drove all the way through there and then went to this house and we set up our clinic on a street corner um covered by a corrugated metal roof and put all our trauma we put six trauma beds and got our trauma sleeves up and everything was ready to go and then we we set up our residents across the street at uh some other abandoned house and we down in this sort of concrete bunker so to speak and we started seeing patients and you know day one ton of people and lots of lots of things

77:10happening I mean I'm talking dozens and dozens of you know multiple gunshot wound past there multiple careers that I experienced in that month of just the flow of volume of of penetrating chaa so then then uh it was day two or three all these displaced locals um basically got released so they've been holding them at a checkpoint fingerprinting the the fighting age males making sure they're not on a record and you know making sure everybody's not not strapped and letting them through so on day three or four they just let this flow of humanity started walking down the street about 60 70 yards from us from where we were set up and they'd see the Americans and they'd see the stethoscopes and they just start running towards us cuz these people had been captivated for uh in in you know held captive and hiding out in their basements eating grass you know trying to find any fluids at all to

78:15drink there's no rain water you know rain there and and uh just just eeking by and little kids I mean these are civilians these are little bitty kids and and they're hiding out in these in these homes and they would just run they would just take off running and get to these checkpoints so on day three or something they this flow of humanity comes by these guys are starting to sort of bum rush our spot and everybody starts to get a little bit panicked because we weren't quite sure what was what you know there a lot turns out a lot of bad things could happen you know in that situation so we sort of get our our security detail to keep everybody away and we we treat a ton of people day four rolls around and we wake up that morning and the first patient I have is a 5-year-old little girl that had been just absolutely like homicide like killed shot right in the head assassinated back

79:09of the head right back of the head yeah that was how our day started at like you know 7 in the morning that was it and the day got worse so um the first incoming landed about uh um I'd say about 75 yards from us an RPG it landed in the neighbor in the neighbor's yard next to us and it just blew a bunch of debris up and it landed on our corrugated uh roof there and and we were all like damn but we kept working then 10 minutes later maybe another one came in and it was 50 yards in just just getting closer this second it's called a grit it's a it's a little click 75 50 25 so we didn't know it at the time but yeah you're right that we did not know this at the time so uh that one obviously got everybody super tingly um but there was still a ton of people coming in we had patience I mean we were working and we had our Kevlar vest on and we were trying to you know say then

80:13then the third one hit and it landed um right outside the door and it blew ton of debris I mean we felt the blast and one of our Medics got a big piece of debris in the back of his leg it knocked him down so we went into this bunker basically this staging bunker and we sat down in there and you know no matter what we couldn't we weren't going to go out into that but then 30 seconds later um one of our uh security detail dudes carried in our head of security and he was lifeless and dropped him on the table this is a dude we'd been you know eating cookies with and drinking tea with like a half hour you know an hour before you know standing at the door uh in between you know ambulances this is our is our guy you know and he was dead and so we we all looked at each other and I was the team lead and I I tell you man I wasn't about to ask anybody to go out into that

81:12and no one even hesitated like we went out and started working on hasib and we we um we got on him quick and he was out and I listened to his lungs he didn't have any lung sounds on one side I saw some penetrating entry wound in his chest put a chest tube in his in his uh right uh in his right thorax and about a liter of blood poured out from his plural space just like that and as soon as that happened he could Inspire again and so he started breathing and resuscitated him so so he was dead and he came back to life he was he was he was unable to to inspire so you know his whole body had shut down from number one from the shock blast right and and being you hit that hard by by a piece of of shrapnel and just being that close to the impact but then also you know this penetrating uh piece of shrapnel went right through his chest and didn't hit any of his vital organs just caused this

82:10hemothorax this Blood to fill up in his plural space so you know I evacuated all that blood and he started to be able to breathe again so there he is he's back we get him out we go back inside the the uh the bunker there and couple hours later we got out so we find out the next day that a dude not of fighting age a local guy was a Sleeper Cell and that he had come back in the neighborhood and was three or four houses down and was communicating with his operatives and his Isis Bros you know two 300 meters away and was releasing pigeons to identify our position so the way they figured this out one of our security guys would see a pigeon go up and he didn't think much about it and then a mortar hit and then you know 10 minutes later he's like there's no pigeons around there right cuz I mean shit's crazy it's it's combat zone and birds don't dig combat zones so he kind of started to

83:11piece it together and then he realized on the third one he's like he saw a pigeon go up and he goes we're about to get hit sure enough so we got out of there saved hb's life he got out and they went and found this dude and got his phone and sure enough he was doing all this and he admitted it he's like yep that was me I was doing it I was releasing pigeons to identify your spot and I was told they took care of the situation that was what I to try to kill the Americans who were trying to help everybody well wow yeah so Isis wanted us I mean they wanted to get us because we were there we were helping the enemy right Jesus so that was that was a couple months ago so they documented on his on his website CNN was interviewing him and there's there's mortars dropping crazy yeah it was Heavy took me how long were you over there for about a month yeah how do you decide when you're

83:59leaving well it was they knew this this NYC Medics they knew this NGO knows like it was hard to sustain that you know I mean with the concentration um you can't help but affect you I mean that's why so many of our our military folks have such profound PTSD right it's just from getting your ass kicked like that these guys go through these deployments that are just months on end of that right and you you just can't imagine um how much you know how that hurts and then go back to Kansas try to go to the grocery store yeah it's it's it's hard to Fathom you know black tar Tootsie Rolls well right so so social it's not black tar it's I don't know what the it is I'm just that's the those kids with their dope these young kids wow man yeah so that was kind of it took me a little bit to to uh to roll out of that and thank God for my wife man she came back and we went on a run up in the

84:52hills like a few days later and we got up to the top of this hill and I just I just cried on her shoulder I just let it go and since then I'm I'm fine but it gives me such a deep appreciation for how hard it must be for you know for these men and women who come back from these deployments and they've been a part of these things and and been affected so profoundly it's it it's it's got to hurt you know um on a very deep emotional level God I can only imagine man what a crazy life you live helping people that are involved in traumatic situations over and over again various traumatic situations whether it's getting stuck on K2 or whether it's getting yeah but he seeks it out that's what he does I just wanted to bring him he SE like what am I going to do this spring that's going to change 50 people's lives what what where is K2 that's k2's in Pakistan Pakistan

85:44yeah that's a is that a more dangerous one than I think generally the consensus is it's more technical it's more dangerous and it's not as commercialized right so it's not I say more technical what do they mean by that well there's just longer bits of terrain that require more highlevel technical climbing skill so more exposed steeper you know more uh you know longer stretches of of hanging it out there kind of terrain you better have your dialed or you're going to get smoked and you and when they go on these like um crazy hikes like you you have to have very specific kind of gear too right like they must have like the clothing pretty dialed in yeah I mean look remember those pictures of mallerie right look where it's come like this dude was in Wool which by the way wool's pretty good pretty good yeah it's pretty good A lot better than cotton a lot better than cotton um but now you know

86:37it's it's a matter of of uh getting the right gear that works um and you can rely on it you know it's I mean I don't want to be 20 mil back and you know in the back country hunt milk and have my thermarest have a hole in it so I sleep in the dirt for five days which is what happened to me last fall I was by myself and you know was Way Way Back in the first night you know my therm rest had a hole I didn't have a p so I just laid in the dirt for five nights how dick off yeah you get cold from it too your pad put my I have to put my pack under you just you know whatever yeah fat fat some nights like that so yeah wait minute you were upset cuz you had a hole in your air mattress I it was it was flat man I had nothing I had nothing you bagged on the Japanese guy cuz he had a hole in his mattress well which guy the guy that came down yeah well he called a

87:25helicopter in I sucked it up he called a helicopter in because he had a hole in his mat this this this is funny story we had so we I got a call said there's a Japanese guy and he's dying at Camp too dying dying yeah he's telling everybody he's dying he's dying mhm so we're like holy all right we like I got to get the helicopter get a helicopter so they risk their lives they go up there they get him fly him down base camp base camp to Luca where our air station was get that helicopter and I'll let Jeff take over well yeah yeah then you know I started you know asking him he's as pleasant as he can be and what's going on do you hurt you have pain you know so oh very very tired very very tired um hole in mattress and I like you have a what he what and he said I have a hole in a mattress and he was at Camp 2 and was sleeping in the snow and had a hole in his mattress and didn't tell anybody

88:18just was basically he was done like we were talking about earlier like he just he was done and because he's got money he calls in the Cavalry and says bring me a helicopter Jeff was pissed I was pissed pissed there a lot of people risked their lives I saw a dude on Denali do that M base camp in 1996 or seven this dude shows up with a a Like a Boy Scout Old School Boy Scout like weeo looking thing you know like made of cotton I guess you know with like some weird synthetic and I he's he asked me for a knife to be able to cut the plastic off of it you know and and I'm like man that's not a good idea where are you going and I didn't want to you I should have questioned him two weeks later we get a call and have to go up to 177,000 feet for a guy who had broken his ankle so we land the helicopter down at 17 and he runs towards the helicopter which everybody knows is you don't run towards a

89:12helicopter Mak a little difficult he runs to the helicopter I'm like he's got a so it turns out he was just cold I'm telling you man like a lot of people just tap out and because they know there's an INF structure around that will pull them out instead of being accountable for themselves that's where I get pissed so we we pulled this guy off and we interviewed him and then Jeff goes the nicest thing he says have a nice life walks up and just starts cussing and piss he's P he didn't want to do an interview want yeah yeah didn't want to talk about him and anything I mean it's very dangerous to fly a helicopter at that altitude right selfish anything can go wrong I mean we are our helicopter Pilots were I mean absolutely the other than military Pilots got got to be the best helicopter pilots in the world I mean these guys are so skilled and understand what those

90:00conditions make you do as a pilot it's it was it was phenomenal but that being said machines break you I put him in a helicopter one time I put him a buch of helicopters one time and that helicopter and that pilot are dead now yeah from that well no like a few months later I was bird from flying you crashed into a cliff won't name won't name the company but yeah we that there was that one little flight we put them in there yeah that was a r that was a rickety old helicopter when you do all these really high stressful High danger sort of situations you're constantly around people that have this extremely high threshold for the extremely high tolerance to discomfort to uh you know pushing your endurance levels overcoming obstacles like be you you you're around people that are like really solid human beings like they're very un like we're talking about people that are willing to

91:00Summit Everest people that'll rescue people that summon Everest people that are willing to do these medical stations 500 yards or 500 M from the front line I mean you're talking about some really solid human beings very very unusually solid human beings when you come back from that mhm and deal with people like oh my cell phone such a piece of you know like oh my God there's traffic oh my God like that is that one of the hardest transitions like the modern first world problems gripes the that people whine and about yeah yeah that was part of the discomfort I had when I came back from Iraq specifically um was you know the delay in flights and just how pissed businessman Bob gets you know like come on dude I let like Louis CK you know bit about you know you're not walking you know like 13 of you dead when you get back you know no I'm just I've been on a gratitude tour since I

92:02got back like I'm just grateful for everything I'm so grateful that I was born by random Stroke of Luck you know in Ron Oak Virginia with good parents and a good family structure and was given all the opportunities that I was given and I wasn't born in mosul and hiding in a you know a seller from the most evil dudes on the planet yeah I mean it's just a it's it's CRA so I've come back and instead of getting mad at those people or frustrated with those people I just try and smile through it and just think you know to myself like man I wish you could taste what I tasted just not not long ago you know like it really recalibrated me um where just doesn't you know I just let it Teflon off you know to a certain extent and with regards to the people that I work with I tend to I think gravitate towards people who um like these chaotic sort of environments um and I got turned

93:06on to this uh this thing it was this this concept This Acronym that the American Military Academy kicked off a few decades ago think 30 years ago or something and they they started referring to working in these vuka environments right volatile uncertain chaotic ambiguous environments and how we operate in those environments and how true Champions and leaders like Alex can operate in these places in these atmospheres that are just absolutely house sideways and when things go crazy how do you handle how do you manifest it you know what are you what are you doing are you flipping the out are you withdrawing you know and and we all have different methods for dealing but I feel like I've kind of gravitated towards those kind of people yeah I just got done reading Sebastian younger's uh book tribe I just read it too when I got back amazing it's amazing it reminds you of

94:04of where we are and where we've been right and also why people do gravitate towards those environments and like what it what they get out of it and how this uh life in these intense environments sort of uh it it magnifies so much of what it means to be human mhm and and to be a part of something that's bigger than you that's the phenomenal thing and I read I read younger I read that book too right when I got back so just like last month I read it and it was a great tool for me my um my Seal Team buddy um uh told me to read it when I got back and he says all the team guys you know have read it because of that it reminds them of why yeah why and then why things are a little bit the threads come undone a little bit when you're not in that tribe right pretty yeah and how many people live in environments where they don't know their neighbors there there's

95:01no danger there's no excitement there's no nothing and they live this muted terrifying life in a lot of ways it's terrifying because there's nothing there it's empty it's there's a void and it's not how human beings are supposed to be we're supposed to be confronted by a certain amount of difficulty supposed to be challenged right and life's very insulated and uh and soft and as a result we insulate further I think from that and and then we medicate to deal with the hollow feeling that you get from being isolated and insulated but I answer the questions for earlier which is why people climb Everest why you climb K2 why you go push yourself I know but you push yourself why anybody does that why do the people push themselves Yeah well yeah well and why do we why do we hunt yeah why do we run yeah why do we do the things that we do because it it creates engagement for me

95:53and no I'm not running for my life but creat struggle I did run for my life just a few months ago you know and and I you know I look back now and that was that's the up thing that I think so many military folks really struggle with and that's what younger talked about in that book was how would you find the you know the environment you were in was so precarious and it was just so tenuous like it could be wiped out in any second and yet you want to go back there you know I got my I got an avalanche on that mountain almost dead turns out I want to go back why why like wh why what is that that that wiring that that makes you want to but you know why because they want to be with their boys and their gals and like you know in it in it connected feeling like you know our is tied together why do I want to go back in the mountains the same reason cuz I'm going to go with the same

96:49boys and get the same sort of you know intense experience and I think that we missed that I miss that I really do Jeff's got this thing he wants to teach his son and when we were up there in ever he kept on talking about teaching his son to serve others be be positive role model and serve others and I don't know where that comes from on him but he that's what he always talks about well I think it started with Eric right because that was the foundation of my relationship with this with my blind buddy I was a selfish dirt bag climber in J Tree you know in the in the mid90s and I met this blind dude who needed an ally he needed a friend he needed a guide he needed not just a guide but he needed his he needed a teammate and not somebody that would that he could trust but somebody that would eventually trust him and that's pretty that was pretty wild for him to ask at some point for a

97:42sighted person to trust a blind person on the side of a rock face or the side of a mountain cuz you know it's hard enough with everything and you take away your your vision and you know just gets amp and Eric's pretty famous I he's he's summited what what has he summited well he's on the Seven Summits so the highest point on each the seven continents I was on six of them with them and he went down to Antarctica while I was in medical school uh but then you know he's gone on to do a lot of stuff he's a he's a bad dude man he's speaker I mean he's a great dude yeah Eric ju so I mean but to be honest with you he'll tell you he'll be the first to tell you that kaying in a in a boat by himself down the Grand Canyon was way scarier than anything he's ever done what ever yeah how could you you don't know what's going the violence and talking about chaotic environment around you just you

98:30barely hear the dude in your ear and sometimes not at all all you can hear is just violence and somehow he just paddles through and then you know he'll get tossed and go under and have to roll back up and I it was he tells me that you know he had his own little version of PTSD from that from just get being freaked the out and having nightmares how long was that travel 200 and something miles how long that take it was a couple weeks yeah 12 days maybe something like that I think it was yeah pretty remarkable man pretty remarkable yeah I can imagine that's uh yeah it's a bad dude but but it does um it is a reoccurring theme this uh this thing where people are in these incredibly hostile dangerous scenarios and they want to go back they get over it and then they want to go back yep yep and I me the challenge whatever you get out of it is that him yeah that's him oh

99:21there's a video of him doing it oh yeah you bet is he born blind so he was born with a degenerative retina disease called retina look at that oh my God I mean that'll swallow you bro how do you spells last name Jamie we e i h n m a y e r so wine is what he does in the mountain sometimes or what you and then mayor of the city wow that's an old that's an old image he's got hair right there wow um but yeah that's him right there that's pulling up the top but he's a he's a bad man dude and you know everybody loves him some super blind dude you know and and I think that's why our relationship is so strong is because I'm not afraid to give him some and kind of keep him grounded but behind the scenes he's he blows me away I me I ain't going to lie to you he's a very special human being it's crazy that he can figure out how to balance that and figure out how to go left and go right

100:13well he's an amazing athlete first and foremost I mean if he was cited he could have been like a pro ball player you know he's just got that sort of body awareness and then so he's born with a degenerate retina disease so he goes under he was blind Legally Blond but then his retin is unraveled and at the age of 13 it was totally lights out and then his mama got killed in a car wreck two years later um and so he I mean it was it was step up fortunately for him his dad uh is was a marine fighter pilot Ed and Ed was not about to let his blind son sit back and let life go by so he grabbed him by the scuff of the neck and took him on all these deploy all these you know uh around the world as he got stationed in different places and and um and Eric just realized like Pony up ain't no time to feel ain't got time for sitting around son wow get up and he did

101:13and he found rock climbing and then rock climbing turned into mountaineering and that's when we met 20 23 years ago 23 4 years ago now I think this is all very hard for some people to process especially people that haven't experienced very difficult things or very scary things or dangerous things you know that this that people would long to do this to be a blind guy who's going through 270 plus miles of water in a kayak or to be someone who wants a summit Mount Everest or to be someone who wants to be a medic in a war zone or to be Sebastian younger who's out there you know uh embedded embedded for years right years I and I I think that maybe the general population might look at that and feel like maybe it's Reckless or some are super inspired and like man that's so great and then others are like yeah I mean I'm I'm I'm down dude I'm I'm psyched that you're out

102:07there charging because then that sets the template and what it does I think for a lot of people just says oh that blind guy can do it well then that means you I should stop feeling sorry for myself cuz I'm feeling low today there's there guarantee you there's a lot of times when I don't feel like training I don't really feel like going out and doing something hard and then I'll think I need to train harder to be strong enough that when goes sideways I'll have his back yeah when you do train for something like Everest how do you prepare for something like that climb just climb up and down up and down lots of weight like a place like you know you go to Boulder or somewhere in the mountains above it or something like that bigger mountains yeah like way up in the hills and like big long days like long days like 10 12h hour days train yeah 10 how many you do a week I don't

102:56you know I mean two or three probably like big long days I try to you know get broke the off at least you know a couple times a week right where I'm like okay like and are you carrying weight on your pack and doing those days of carrying big heavy weight I've kind of stopped doing that and I just go uh because I like to feel a little bit more free there was a time when I would put on a big pack um you know and just just to feel that weight on my traps and Joe's only asking he's experiencing 45 lbs he put He has a new vest he was he was testing out the other day yeah saw I'm asking cuz it's crazy how 45 lbs is just not much at all no but it's a lot when you start walking up hills it's a lot yeah but you know some of these guys are probably carrying way more than that right like 60 70 oh on Denali like a Denali Pack's close to 100 as a God that's insane 100 the clients would

103:49typically have oh 100 lb pack and a 20 or 30 lb sled that those were Denali days and that's a 12 13 14,000 ft that's not Bell Canyon that's yeah what are these guys built like well I mean the ones who are good are pretty pretty narrow how the are they carrying that much weight I carried that much weight for years and years I mean I was a buck 50 back then you know and and would carry 100 lb and it hurt you know but you just I mean remember mountaineering is slog I mean when you're really moving like on that kind of mountain it's a slog it's really slow and then you get on technical terrain and you best lighten your load that's you're not carrying 100 you know 100 lb then you're carrying you know a light light Pack Light is right you know ounces make pounds pounds make pain right and you got you got to feel like someone carrying 100 pounds you have to

104:39build up to that no yeah yeah for sure there's all these weird stabilizing muscles and your hip muscles and your lower back and oh man just I couldn't do it now I mean I couldn't do it I'm just I get sore thinking about it but I mean this was back in my 20s when I was doing you know backtack Denali trips and he didn't know any better I didn't know any better and it was like this is fun it was fun and it was cool I used to do a lot of expeditions cuz I was the quintessential dirt back just so I could go eat you know so I could get fed and I didn't even care I mean I'd have done it for free Expeditions just so you could get some food just to eat to know I was going to eat some dehydrated food yeah I mean I I mean I was I was the I was living in my van man how did you start out being this guy I grew up in I was born in North Carolina uh in the smokies and I grew up

105:26in Rono Virginia uh and my parents are not adventurous at all uh but you know my dad and mom were both just working you know middle class you know hard working middle class folks and I was just a Restless punk you know I was just super Restless getting in trouble all the time and um you know I got arrested several times before I was 18 and just bad just just restless and dumb like most of us I think and went to school at at Tennessee for a year and got a 1.2 my first semester and a 6 it's possible to get a 6 wow yep I got a D in rocket ball no y no true story you just weren't paying attention no I was I was drinking brown liquor and and chasing women and I was good at it I was good at both those things and so I failed out and then uh moved to Colorado in 1989 and uh moved to Boulder and was just a bunch of hippies and like I was into the Grateful Dead and I was you

106:35know tapping into some good fun things and grow in my head and I fell in with a group of climbers pretty pretty quick off who were a couple years older than me and they basically took me under their wing and sort of gave me this apprenticeship and taught me how to not get dead wow yeah is a real weird spot right there's like fly fishing there and kaying and hikers and everyone's riding mountain bikes and everyone's fit it's weird where's the fat people it's there's no fat people in B it's so weird no no you walk around everybody's got like Solomon on and like everybody's coming in from a workout yeah yeah Whole Foods just everybody's stinky and buying some granola they're all seny and ranchers there's a lot of people so I just I've I've lived in Boulder on and off for 28 years I went to medical school in in uh Philadelphia at Drexel Medical College Pennsylvania

107:27other than that I've been in and out of Boulder for 28 years and I I um we're moving to Evergreen uh we're moving to Evergreen Colorado which is a super sweet spot but the reason I'm leaving Boulder is because it's just it's pretty congested man a lot of people live there that's hilarious a lot of people live there and now I'm riding on the 405 here I'm like 200,000 people I don't know how I don't know how y'all do it man one of the people I was talking to L she was saying that she's going to bring her niece to California they never been outside of Maui they've been to Lai and Maui that's it that's it so they haven't even been to Hol Lulu and now she's going to fly them to Los Angeles they're going to go to Disneyland Universal like what in the she give him some mushrooms see what happens you don't need to that would just be overload I remember when I was a

108:13kid and uh we went from uh New York to or from Boston rather than New York for uh some um I think it was for a karate tournament or something like that that but we were driving up the West Side Highway and you see the city looming in the distance like the Death Star and I remember thinking what in the is this like how are there how are there so many buildings Boston's a city but it's not that kind of city it's not Manhattan it's yeah Manhattan is something very unique and special death store yeah and you pull up to it you're like what is this this is it was so intimidating well that could go either way for those kids right that could just be fascinated by the energy or bug the out can't wait to get back to L well the amount of stimuli that you get in an environment like that is just overwhelming yeah but you're like Boulder's too much it's too much too many people man there's almost

109:04a 100,000 yeah we can't do this any longer I don't like to sit in my truck I like to move you know if I'm going to go drive somewhere I want to drive there and park and get out and go in and do my deal and come back and then you know the trails are pretty pretty populated too you know you go climbing you've got a wait in line um sometimes you know like so you go up like like ROP climbing like when people are going up sides you better get there at dawn and really get up yeah that's it's a lot of people getting busy out in the woods which is cool but you know I'm just feeling like you there a lot of lot of folks turns out the older I get the less people he wants to talk to but do you think also that's you know you're involved in these intense situations like being in Iraq or like being on everon sometimes you just want to sit back back and process it all

109:54yeah and sit on the rocking chair and I like to you know I want to mow my yard I a tractor I want to drive my tractor around and you know sip on a beer I'm a I'm a southern boy at heart and I like Quiet Things I know a bunch of guys who've moved out there for that very reason yeah it makes sense and uh so we're moving there here in a couple weeks that's awesome the in the landscape couldn't be prettier it's nice beautiful it's real nice how are the winners brutal they ain't Gold Hill winners though no no that's that's way worse but it's brutal you know you got to ready you got to get ready yeah we live on we live on a dirt road H yeah out there huh I pulled up to Joe's house there's an old Power Wagon his old house in Boulder an old Power Wagon with a snow plow and there's a couple snow machines down there and I'm pulling like do you know why those things are there

110:41Joe cuz you got to pile yourself out got snow I'm not scared of snow man I when I lived in Boston I drove uh a van I drove I delivered newspapers I drove 365 5 days a year so I drove every day every time a blizzard hit every time snow hit I'm not scared of snow I know how to drive in snow I mean it's not fun to get stuck and you will get stuck but it doesn't bother me doesn't freak me out but to someone who's never been in snow Yeah it ain't the place it ain't the place but if you got to choose between like it's you know it's it's a tough call because like would you rather live in like Phoenix right now I heard it's 124 degrees that dude they're they're canceling flights because it's so hot they're canceling flights yeah you know I mean I don't there's something about that cold and snow too that's like really peaceful like there's something that people don't

111:31like I remember when I was a kid one of the things that I really liked about snow is especially when I had to deliver newspapers is like I would have to be out there and you would hear nothing because the snow muffles all the sound so it's like you get a kind of peace and quiet that you don't no one's driving because it's you know there's two feet of snow so you're out there and it's just nothing nothing and everything's soft and you hear that for your feet on the ground and that's it you know it's like you and then I think people that live in those environments like live in the cold you appreciate summer for real like you really appreciate summer out here every day is summer nobody gives a it's 75 degrees and perfect in January you know and you go into Boulder and on the CU campus you know like you get a a 60 degree 50 degree day in the spring and all just go down to their Daisy

112:28Dukes who you know like they're like time to put up those feathers let that scent fly yeah wow so what's next for you man what are you going to do now I don't know we got to figure it out between now and next spring cuz Spring's when I start get to itch um you know to go do something and so how do you guys work it out do you like come to him with an idea or does he do you guys sit down and talk about it well we can't talk about our talk potential well he just pitched something to me yesterday that's pretty interesting and adventurous and fun and curious and a mystery a bit of a Jeff good TV I mean he's a good person in general but he's also really good TV we have a mystery two guys have already died trying to do it oh Jesus um check check yeah and it's pretty dangerous and I want to put a team together and Jeff leading the team and see if we can go pull it off oh my god

113:23dude well listen don't die and uh come back when you live and we talk about it come back when I live yes I like that idea it's fun living turns out oh yeah I enjoy life you know and do you enjoy it more when you come back yeah yeah once again like gratitude T her like you know like I love it all I don't my kids a total slob and like really just drops and makes mess everywhere and I'm like I love that boy you know like you're a little up and I just love you just remember what you were like right yeah exactly and boy I mean it's it's that's the that's the universe saying what's up yeah you go here you go what are you GNA do with this kid you going to take him to Everest yeah I he's a little long-haired kid that's just trying to find his way and I can relate you know he's trying to figure it out no one just knows their way there is no everyone finds their way no you have

114:18to I'm still looking man and you always will be yeah and that's the good I think that's part of what I'm doing why I'm doing it I'm still looking 100% you know I'm still trying to figure it out and I'm trying to do the best I can helping people where I can I don't have I don't have a wide array of skills but I know how to help people when they're having a hard go that's a great path though I mean the path of service the path of helping people and the Gratitude and the the experience that you get from that it's it's very positive yeah yeah I mean it's I I feel like if I can instill any of that into my boy like I win you know it's be be grateful like live live a grateful life and and by living that what does that mean is like you know Pay It Forward show gratitude show love show compassion um and and allow people to to be the best version of them and do the

115:14best you can to make them better you know well said and I didn't know I didn't know that till I met Eric to be honest with you he was Catalyst for all that wow wow that's amazing that one person can change the course of your life that much just by existing and being around them and experiencing how they navigate life yeah that's what I learned well listen man thanks for doing this really appreciate it bud thanks for bringing him on we'll do it again back when you guys survive cuz you're going to survive right oh yeah you know okay we'll do it again we'll do it again and we'll talk about it all right that was fun brother thanks for thanks man thank you Joe see you those pain