July 14, 2024 • 59 mins
This is part 1 in what will be a multi-month interview with Rob's Dad - Mike.
Flashback to the 1970s as we embark on an extraordinary journey with Michael Silver, my dad and the first guest in our interview series. Imagine the thrill and audacity of putting your PhD studies on hold to join a mountaineering expedition with the Pittsburgh Explorers Club.
Michael recounts his decision to venture into the unknown, heading to Pakistan to tackle Nanga Parbat—one of the tallest and most daunting peaks, all without any prior mountaineering experience. This episode is filled with rich historical context, from the geopolitical climate of Pakistan to the logistical challenges of planning such an ambitious trip.
From the cultural shock of landing in Lahore to navigating the bureaucratic maze of securing permits in Rawalpindi, Michael paints a vivid picture of the journey. He shares anecdotes about key historical figures who played a role in facilitating their expedition, including the army's chief of staff, Zia-ul-Haq. As they traverse the Babusar Pass and interact with local villagers and Japanese climbers, the narrative delves into the gritty realities of mountaineering in a politically charged landscape. Michael’s reflections on significant political events, like Henry Kissinger's secret talks with China, add layers of intrigue and context to their adventure.
The episode crescendos with tales of high-altitude trekking, porters' strikes, and the sheer exhilaration of glimpsing Nanga Parbat's peak. Michael shares his thoughts on the extreme conditions of the Himalayas, known as the "death zone," and compares the majestic beauty of the Alps and the Rockies. This episode is a treasure trove of adventure, history, and personal reflection, offering a rare glimpse into the world of mountaineering through the eyes of someone who dared to dream big. Join us for an unforgettable adventure that showcases the awe-inspiring scale of the world's greatest mountain ranges.
Send us a voice note, check out show notes and more at our site: https://www.fitnessfiasco.com/
Host Mike - https://www.instagram.com/mikeosunafitness/
Host Erik - https://www.instagram.com/erikbustillo/
Host Rob - https://twitter.com/RobStrength
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rob (00:00):
So welcome guys.
Eric Mike, we have our firstinterview podcast, our first
guest podcast, and it is goingto be my dad, michael Silver.
Mike (00:12):
Hello Love that.
Rob (00:14):
Thank you for joining us.
Erik (00:15):
That's it.
Thank you for being here.
Rob (00:18):
He has a lot of stories, many different topics that we
can go down, but the topic thatI want to focus the most on
today is his adventures inpakistan in the 1970s and he has
written up most of them andhe'll talk to us about it.
But it was he I don't want tospoil some of the good parts of
it but basically, on a whim,ended up flying out to pakistan,
(00:40):
didn't have a passport yet,hadn't been outside of north
america, hadn't climbed anymountains, to do a
reconnaissance trip up NangaParbat, which is the second
tallest mountain in Pakistan.
It is one of the top 20 in theworld.
Mike (00:54):
There's 14 peaks that are over 8,000 meters, which is a
magic number, and they're all inthe Himalayas.
Nanga Parbat is number nine outof the 14.
Rob (01:07):
so ninth tallest mountain in the world to do a
reconnaissance trip.
It wasn't to to summit it,unfortunately.
Well, or fortunately yeah, orfortunately, and this was in the
70s, so a very different, verydifferent world.
So I think the first question Iwant to start off with what was
the main drive to put down yourPhD at the time and just jet
(01:33):
off to Pakistan for amountaineering trip that you
never really mountaineeredbefore?
Mike (01:38):
Well, I wasn't really a deep member of the Pittsburgh
Explorers Club.
I was living in Pittsburgh atthe time, going to the
University of PittsburghGraduate School in Physics.
But a lot of my friends weremembers of the Explorers Club
(02:02):
and it had quite a history.
It had started right afterWorld War II like 1946, 1947, by
at least one veteran I can'tremember his name anymore and
they had done a lot of thingsand they decided that for
America's bicentennial, whichwas 1976, for those of you who
(02:23):
have forgotten your civicslesson they would climb one of
the tallest mountains in theworld in celebration of
America's bicentennial.
Now, as it happened, there wasthis Pakistani living in
Pittsburgh who several of themwere friendly with, and they
(02:51):
thought, well, having thisperson give them introductions
to various officials in Pakistanmight make going to Pakistan
easier than going to Nepal,which is the other obvious place
you would go, which?
Rob (03:04):
for most mountaineering now that people see in the
himalayas.
And everest goes through nepal.
Mike (03:08):
But nepal didn't really open to outsiders until well, in
the 50s they were, they wereopen then but it was still.
Rob (03:14):
It was a newer concept to go to nepal, to climb the
himalayas, then pakistan orthrough china and tibet.
Not really not at that point itwas normalized yeah, it had
been normalized In the 50s.
Mike (03:27):
Nepal opened up.
After all, hillary, when heclimbed Everest was 53, with
Tenzac Norgay, his Sherpa, and,by the way, many years before
Tenzac Norgay had gone to NangaParbat with a group.
(03:48):
And, yeah, most of Nepal openedup in the 50s.
Pakistan as well.
The one thing that kept it alittle bit closed was Pakistan
and India were continuallyfighting over a couple of the
frontier provinces, namelyKashmir, and one or the other
(04:10):
country would close themountains that were close to
that border, which includedNangarparbat and K2, or the two
probably most well-knownmountains in Pakistan, and they
had just opened it up again likea year or two before we went to
Mountaineers.
(04:30):
To go back to Pakistan, I don'tquite remember the political,
what was going on politicallybetween India and Pakistan at
that time.
I remember Pakistan had a primeminister by the name of Ali
Bhutta who was sort of Westernin his orientation and his
(04:50):
behavior.
His daughter later became primeminister as well, benazir
Bhutta, and she was assassinatedsome years later I can't
remember the year.
Yeah, so at that time Pakistanwas a little bit more
Western-oriented than it hadbeen in the past under Bhutto,
(05:12):
and that was the prime ministerwhen we went.
So it all made Pakistan a moreobvious choice for our group
than Nepal, and those are reallythe well.
Bhutan has a mountain that'salso in the 14 or less, or the
(05:34):
14 that are over 8,000 meters.
But it's basically Pakistan'sgot several and Nepal's got most
.
Erik (05:45):
Now that you said that, I do want to throw something out
there for those that may notknow, and I had to look this up
because I didn't know off thetop of my head.
So it's over 8,000 meters, yousaid right.
Mike (05:57):
Correct.
Erik (05:57):
Now that's over 26,000 feet, which is just about five
miles.
That's massive.
Rob (06:03):
Correct and to put that in perspective, the tallest
mountain in north america isdenali, which he had summited a
few years later, which is 21 00020 320 so the tallest mountain
in north america is 20 320 feetand all these that are over 8
000 meters are over 26 000 feet.
It's's a different geography.
Mike (06:30):
And they're all in that same arc of the Himalayas where
the Indian plate hits theEurasian plate, and up went the
mountains.
Rob (06:39):
And then that 8,000 meters up is what they call the death
zone as well.
If you look at the Everestclimbing videos, where it's
entering the death zone is 8,000meters and over, and that's
where lower oxygenconcentrations make people do
rash things.
So you end up going to Pakistan.
Mike (06:58):
Yes.
Rob (06:59):
How was the journey to Pakistan?
Mike (07:02):
Well, I guess it was my other than Canada, my first time
outside the United States, sothat always makes it interesting
and I went by myself.
Well, what happened is one ofthe people in this Explorers
Club and there were 14 of themthat ended up going to climb
(07:24):
nangarpa about the year after wedid our reconnaissance.
Well, one of them hadvolunteered to do the
reconnaissance, but he wantedsomebody along with him.
He was a good friend of mine inthe physics department, um, but
he couldn't talk anybody elsein the club to go with him.
They went down to the Andes anddid some practice climbs, but
(07:47):
he needed somebody.
He just wanted somebody alongand he had already had all his
plane reservations andeverything.
I couldn't get everythingtogether.
I didn't have a passport at thetime.
I got one real quickly, ofcourse, otherwise I couldn't
have gone at all and so I went,maybe three, four, five days
after he went, and I met him inwhat were we?
(08:14):
At Lahore?
That's where we met up, inLahore, which a major city in
Pakistan, not the biggestKarachi's the biggest but Lahore
is in what's called the Punjab,which is close to the Indian
(08:34):
border, and Punjab means fiverivers.
There's five big rivers comingdown from the Himalayas full of
snow melt every year, and that'swhat Punjab means.
It's the most populous andfertile of the provinces of
India, and then Pakistan has itsown Punjab, and so does India.
Rob (09:08):
So that's what that name means, if you've heard it before
the Punjab, the five rivers.
So that was 50 years ago.
But what do you remember fromwhen you get off the plane in
Pakistan and start lookingaround at your first not Western
country?
Mike (09:19):
Well, the plane, the international flights at that
time, all went into Karachi,which is the biggest city in
Pakistan it's not the capital oranything, and it's down in the
southern part of Pakistan and Iwas supposed to exchange flights
(09:42):
to go to Lahore.
Well, my flight from New Yorkto Pakistan was quite a bit
delayed and so I missed myconnection to Lahore.
Well, my flight from New Yorkto Pakistan was quite a bit
delayed, and so I missed myconnection to Lahore, and they
put me up in a little hotelLooked like any hotel from the
50s you would find along UShighways and yeah.
(10:02):
I basically snoozed a bitovernight and caught the plane
the next day and didn't look somuch different really, because
you're in this motel hotel thatlooks similar to what you would
see here at least maybe 20 yearsbefore in the 50s.
(10:23):
You would see here at leastmaybe 20 years before in the 50s
, and at that time now Iunderstand there's a big
military presence at all theseairports, in these places.
Not so much then.
Rob (10:49):
So it wasn't a huge cultural shock, not until I got
into Lahore itself, which what?
Mike (10:54):
was the big cultural shock in Lahore.
Well, basically I mean you knowthis before you go the massive
poverty People I mean most ofthe population living in tents,
I mean we have that problem nowhere in this country, but it's
still a very small percentage ofthe overall population there.
(11:15):
It's a large.
It's like what you see ofrefugee camps today.
That's the way most of thepopulation was living, and the
better neighborhoods of Lahoreand any of the towns would have
these compounds where the betteroff people lived and you're all
(11:36):
walled off from the city.
Everything pointed towards theinner courtyard and not out to
the street.
Erik (11:47):
I'm curious where were you living at that time?
Mike (11:50):
I was in graduate school in Pittsburgh.
Erik (11:52):
Okay, gotcha, and what were you going to grad school
for?
Mike (11:56):
Physics.
Erik (11:57):
And did you end up finishing that?
I did your.
Mike (12:00):
PhD.
Yes.
Erik (12:00):
Okay, gotcha, and I actually had my career in that
field as well In PhD.
Yes, okay, gotcha.
Mike (12:04):
And I actually had my career in that field as well.
Erik (12:08):
In physics.
Yes, I don't know how anyonedoes that, so I applaud you, I
bow my head to you, because oneclass in physics alone is
something A PhD in.
That is its own category.
That's amazing.
Rob (12:28):
Yeah, a bit of a yeah different, uh, different,
different hobbies for surephysics and mountaineering.
Mike (12:34):
So then you, you met up with dan in lahore yeah, dan,
was was one of the co-leaders ofthe expedition the following
year, one of the the primedriver of organizing this and
yeah, so his name is dan bunce.
He was also a graduate studentin the physics department.
He was a much more seriousmountaineer, since I had never
(12:57):
done anything and I still don'tconsider myself anything like
that, even though I live in themountains now.
But in colorado, um, yeah, yeah.
Rob (13:11):
So we met up in lahore so then now, if you know someone in
in the us, or even in in southamerica, I wanted to go
mountaineering.
Fly into a local airport, youcan rent a a truck and go to get
to a trailhead pretty, prettyquickly.
How, how many steps were therefrom getting from lahore to up
(13:33):
into the valley and tonangaparbha, which is one of the
easier mountains to access too,I believe?
Mike (13:39):
uh, nowadays it's easier because there's a highway there.
That was not at that time.
Uh, so I'm not sure why we metup in lahore.
Probably because that's where.
Well, because there's nogovernment offices in lahore
which we would have to deal withto get the permits to go to the
(14:00):
mountains.
Uh, so the steps, the stepswere basically after he spent a
few days in Lahore.
Oh, I remember now why we wentto Lahore.
The father of this gentleman,who lived in Pittsburgh, was in
Lahore at the time.
Some of his family lived thereand he was one of these people
(14:25):
they they call was there atindependence.
Uh, there's, there's this eldergeneration at that time.
They're all gone now, but thegeneration of gandhi and nairu
in india, and um, um, uh, what'sthe name?
And the Pakistani guy, muhammadAli, no, not Muhammad Ali.
(14:45):
Um.
Well, I apologize to anybodyfrom Pakistan that's listening
to this that I don't rememberthe name of your founder right
now.
Remember his picture, cause itwas everywhere.
But um, uh, but he was a memberof that founding generation.
He was, um, the head of head ofthe health department before
(15:08):
the separation of India andPakistan in 1948.
Mr Silver, you're correct, it'sMuhammad Ali Jinnah.
Jinnah, yeah, thank you.
Chat GBT.
I'm the Jamie of the podcast.
Try to help out.
(15:31):
Jinnah, yeah.
So I mean he and Gandhi andNehru were the three big pushers
for independence.
And then the separation as well.
Gandhi really wanted to keepthem together and Jinnah really
wanted to be separate from India.
(15:57):
And Pakistan means land of thepure in Urdu, which is the old
language of the area.
So just calling yourselves theland of the pure sort of makes
you not want to be connected toanother country where the
religion is different.
Of course India's getting itsrevenge now, but not to go into
(16:22):
modern day politics.
So from yeah, so he gave us.
He wanted to give us a tour ofthe historical things to see in
that part of Pakistan and he didthis.
doctor, the father of thisfriend and he gave us.
He was a wonderful tour guide,told us many stories.
(16:44):
Remember we went by a coffeehouse oh, that's where
revolution was plotted.
And he was a wonderful tourguide, told us many stories.
Remember we went by a coffeehouse, oh, that's where
revolution was plotted, back into kick the British out.
So, and then we went to thecapital city and it's a twin
city Islamabad is the capitaland that's a new planned city
(17:16):
and Rallapindi is the old city.
That was there and Rallapindiwas the old army, the center of
the army, like the main armybase, both in British days and
the British raw and for thePakistani government.
But that's where we would haveto go to get all our permits and
find out what restrictions we'dhave, if any.
And so we spent a A good week,perhaps more than a week,
(17:38):
dealing with the bureaucracythere.
Now, many of them were veryhelpful, they wanted to be
helpful, but it takes a while ina third world bureaucracy to
get things done.
And I think one of theinteresting parts I remember is,
because of our connection, thisdoctor I mentioned.
(18:02):
He had given us a letter ofintroduction to the chief of
staff of the army there.
Name of ZL Hawk.
Check that out on me.
Check that out on me.
And he later ended up deposingthe prime minister, who was this
(18:25):
Bhutto that I had mentionedearlier, and actually ordering
his death, and most of theWestern countries of the world
tried to get him to stop.
He later died in a plane crashwith the US ambassador on board
and under mysteriouscircumstances that have never
been explained, that I've, atleast I've never found an
(18:47):
explanation for.
Maybe it was a pure accident,maybe it wasn't, but he sort of
reinstituted Sharia law, or aversion of Sharia law from the
very western approach of Buddhato the more.
Rob (19:05):
Well, I'll just call it Sharia law, you can decide label
it as you wish so it was a verydifferent Pakistan than in the
70s, than it is now, well, forexample.
So it was a very different.
Mike (19:20):
Pakistan than in the 70s, in the 70s, than it is now.
Well, for example, I'm Jewishand I had no problem there.
I don't think a Jew could setfoot in.
Pakistan today.
Rob (19:30):
And then, on that note, I remember you said there were two
words that all the kids knewwhen you were walking around.
Two phrases In English.
Mike (19:41):
No matter how remote a town we went to, they would say
American, you know, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali,
he's the greatest, and for kidsin this part of the world to
know Muhammad Ali, he must havebeen the greatest it just shows
you how popular he was at thattime, right.
Yep, Yep exactly.
Rob (20:03):
So from Lahore you go up to Nanga Parbat.
Mike (20:06):
Well, from Lahore, we spent a couple of weeks in this
twin town of Rallapindi Capitaland Islamabad, and the two
interesting things that I'llmention about that.
We did go and visit theheadquarters of the army in
Rawalpindi because we had thisletter of introduction to the
(20:30):
chief of staff and while wedidn't see the chief of staff,
we saw his primary assistant.
We got into his office andthat's something I mean.
I was in the army as a private.
I never got into anybody'soffice of any sort.
Here I am in in the office ofof of the commander, the
(20:52):
commander of the armies forPakistan.
But anyway, I just found thatamazing.
And let's see, there wassomething else I wanted to
mention.
I'll get back to it when Iremember it, because I'm almost
the Trump and Biden's age.
You can be our president.
(21:14):
It's a good benchmark.
I'm only a year younger thanTrump.
It's a good benchmark.
Rob (21:18):
I'm only a year younger than Trump.
How do you transport fromRathapindi to Nangaparbha?
Mike (21:26):
All right.
So we found a transportationcompany, or a travel agent, if
you will, and it was one of theperhaps the only woman owned
company in all of Pakistan, youknow, a Muslim country, almost
(21:48):
100% Muslim and very rare, andso they arranged well, did you
know the significance of thatthen, or was that more in
hindsight?
than it was.
No, no, we had been given hername, and so we met her and
(22:13):
learned all this in real time.
But the government, one of therestrictions the government put
on us was not to travel alonebut to travel with another
expedition that was going there.
But I think Miss Davis was nolonger with us by this time, or
Mrs Davis, and so we met up withthem.
(22:49):
We were staying in anotherhotel in Rallapindi.
I think Mrs Davis's was thetraditional place for Westerners
, western adventurers, to stay.
We had been given the name ofanother hotel, which we later
learned was probably not thebest place to stay when you're
dealing with government agencies.
It had a reputation for havinga brothel upstairs, it sounds it
(23:14):
the title itself the City Hotel.
Yeah, it sounds it the titleitself.
The City Hotel.
Yeah.
But anyway, we never saw anyevidence of it, but that's what
we were told, so we met up withthem.
The Japanese expedition, theJapanese expedition.
They had rented a large truck,a lorry, and if you've ever seen
(23:37):
, if you look through some ofthe pictures I have over there
of the trucks in Pakistan,they're all gaily painted.
And so, this very gaily paintedtruck, they loaded all their
stuff, a little bit of our stuff, and then we had a van, a
normal van, that we all wentinto Like I don't know what it
(24:04):
was right now, and we took thatfrom.
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh, they were all British trucks, they were all British
manufactured trucks.
(24:25):
I remember that Bedford, maybe,bedford, belford, belford,
bedford is the name of the truck, the manufacturer of the truck
company, the manufacturer of thetruck company.
And so we took this route intothe mountains and it went
through this town calledAbbottabad, which had no
(24:49):
significance to me at that time,but that is the town where
Osama bin Laden hid out and wasfound and was also where
Pakistan had its West Point.
So that sort of implied to methat the Pakistani government
knew where Osama bin Laden was.
(25:10):
Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but if their West Point is
just down the street from wherehis compound was, here's a
picture of a bus that hasBedford as a logo on the side.
Rob (25:25):
So yes, you were right Bedford Yep.
Mike (25:35):
The other interesting thing, that same sort of idea of
Abbottabad being famous.
Later, when we were inIslamabad, Rolopindi, we went to
visit the US Embassy.
It was our independence.
In fact, it was over July 4th.
Unfortunately, I had gottenheat stroke and I was in a
(25:57):
hospital, which is another greatstory.
I think it was heat stroke,they thought it was malaria, the
doctors.
So Dan went to the July 4th atthe embassy and I had been to
the embassy earlier in the weekand maybe later.
I went to the embassy againearlier in the week and maybe
(26:19):
later.
I went to the embassy again andit's way on the outskirts of
Islamabad, like two miles fromthe rest of the government,
things right at the very edge ofthe city.
They were building, and then afew years later, there was a
problem at the main mosque inMecca, which the Saudi
(26:40):
government blamed on the US, andso there was a mob that
attacked the US embassy inPakistan and burned it down.
I mean, it was a brick building,but a couple of people were
killed, I think a couple of therioters and a couple of maybe a
Marine defender and a couple ofthe Pakistani employees, not a
(27:05):
small handful.
But from my experience I knewthe Pakistani government said
there was nothing they can do.
This was a spontaneous riot andand we couldn't get any police
protection there in time or armyprotection there in time.
Well, I knew how far it wasfrom everything else in
Islamabad and I knew it wouldtake quite a while to march all
(27:27):
these marchers down there.
So I knew that was a lie.
Whatever it was, something thePakistani government wasn't
coming uh, completely truthfulabout.
This is what happens when youhave local information, even
though it's so, not rare, Iwould call it, but such a
(27:50):
happenstance and you just happento be to the embassy.
You knew it was far from town,so if there was a bunch of
rioters there, that it wasorganized and it took a while to
get there.
So anyway, that was uh.
So we took the uh, our, our umvan, with, with the, with the
(28:13):
japanese climbing club, and ouruh and ourselves and our truck,
and we went as far as the pavedroad would go and at that time
we transferred into Jeeps andthe Jeeps were all Toyota's
versions of Land Cruisers and wetook the Jeeps for a day or two
(28:36):
up this valley called the KaganValley.
It is a place where, a fewyears ago, the Taliban tried to
foment a lot of trouble andfought the army.
The Pakistani army finallycrushed the Taliban there.
It was okay for them to be inafghanistan and do their thing,
(28:58):
but not okay even though thepakistani armed forces and
secret services were the mainbackers of the taliban.
But only in another country,not in ours, um, which I think
know growing up hearing some ofthese stories.
Rob (29:19):
That is another, just another thing detailing how
unique of a time it was in aplace to be when you were able
to be in Pakistan, in thosevalleys at that time, being
Jewish, being a small expeditionfrom America.
Mike (29:31):
And another.
Well, two other interestingthings.
My jacket that I wore becausein the mountains it's going to
get a little chillier, was myold Army field jacket from when
I was in the Army, with my nametag still on it.
I think I took off.
I did take off the US Army nametag on it, but that's kind of
(29:55):
stupid in retrospect on acountry that well, at that time,
as I said, buddha had a Westernorientation and Kissinger was
actually in the country when wewere there.
Henry Kissinger, our Secretaryof State I don't know if he was
Secretary of State yet Is he 76?
(30:15):
Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, of State yet Is he 76
?
Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, and he was at that
time setting up secret talkswith China so Nixon could go to.
Now Nixon was Let me get thisstraight Now Nixon was gone by
(30:38):
then.
So one of his setting up sometrips between US high officials
and self with China, he didthrough Pakistan and he was in
Pakistan while we were there.
So, yeah, completely differentvibe then.
So we took the Jeeps as far aswe could and then it was walking
(30:59):
.
We went up through somethingcalled Babassar Pass in the
Jeeps and down the other side.
Babassar Pass was 14,000 to16,000 feet, which is as tall as
anything in continental UnitedStates, as tall as any of our
mountains, but that's just thepass States.
Rob (31:16):
As tall as any of our mountains, but that's just the
pass.
Which tallest mountain in thecontinental US is Mount Whitney
at 14,300, 400 feet, californiaRight.
Mike (31:35):
So down on the other side, on the other side of Babassar
Pass.
I think Babassar Pass meansPass of the Tiger, because when
the Mughals came in in the15-1600s, came down from the
north and took over northernIndia, pakistan region.
They're the people that builtthe Taj Mahal and a lot of other
famous things.
The very first one supposedlycame down through Babasar Pass.
(31:56):
He came down with his army, sowe were going the reverse way
and when we got down to thefirst village on the other side,
there was hundreds of peoplemilling about because the
government had ordered the menin the area be made available to
(32:18):
haul the Japanese equipment tothe mountain.
Japanese had everything and Ithink most expeditions do the
same thing had everything inboxes that two feet by three
feet by two feet, something likethat, and the rule, one of the
(32:44):
rules, regulations, was no boxcould be heavier than oh, I
don't remember, it's in theresomewhere, but they were pretty
heavy.
It wouldn't be anything I'dwant to carry and I had a pack,
you know, a backpack.
They're not as nice as they aretoday, but uh.
(33:05):
And then we started our, our, uh, our hike, in our trek in um,
we had to sign in.
All all the what were calledporters had to sign in.
We were also introduced to acouple of high-level well, I
wouldn't say high-levelPakistanis, but not porters.
(33:27):
There was our climbing porter.
The name was Ashraf Aman, whoI've kept in touch with ever
since Hopefully, I with eversince, hopefully.
It's been four years since I'vehad anything from him, so I
(33:47):
hope he's okay.
And also, the government has aliaison officer connected with
you and we had met him back inRallapindi and had gone to his
home for a farewell feast.
This was to be his bigadventure before he got married
and settled down.
He was a major in the army andthat.
(34:09):
But you always get somebody togo with each expedition a
liaison officer.
Go with each expedition, aliaison officer and he was very
good.
He was very good.
He had been in the war.
I don't know if you know any ofthis, but Pakistan used to have
two geographic locations.
There's West Pakistan, which iswhat we call Pakistan today,
(34:33):
and there was an East Pakistan,which we now call Bangladesh.
But it was one country backthen and they fought a war to
separate except India's inbetween.
So India went on the side ofBangladesh and he became a
prisoner of war.
He was hospitalized.
Anyway, he finally wasrepatriated back to West
(34:57):
Pakistan Major Malik, that washis name, major Malik and off we
walked.
Major Malik had a friend of his.
He brought along the Japanesehad, I think it was about a
dozen.
Their medical person was anurse, miss Koga.
(35:19):
It was the only female along Ofthe Japanese that were there.
The only one we really got toknow a little bit better was the
climbing leader.
He and Dan sort of reallymeshed well because they were
(35:42):
both climbers, but it was asix-day hike and all these
passes we had to cross a bunchof passes and they're all like
14,000 feet.
I think we had on foot, I think, two, maybe two major passes we
went over, if I look in thatquickly I could find it.
(36:03):
but that's all right, we'llleave it at two.
And if it was three, all right.
And on the maybe even threepasses, I remember the next to
last pass, the second, yeah, thenext to last pass.
We got up there and in thedistance it's all cloudy.
(36:25):
You really couldn't seeanything.
And one of the porters startedpointing way, way, way in the
distance and there you could seea little bit of nanga parbat,
the snowfield, shining throughthe clouds.
I mean way up there I mean,we're whatever, we were 14 000
(36:45):
feet or so, and so you'relooking for mountains.
You're used to something thatwould be.
It's the same level you are,but here's this mountain.
That's still quite far away,and to see the summit you had to
tilt your head back.
Rob (37:01):
And now You're at 14,000 feet and the peak is at 26,000,
which you can almost say is 28,which is almost double.
If you're on the top of thetallest mountains in Colorado or
California, down to the sealevel is 14,000 feet.
You have to double that, soyou're basically we're at the
equivalent of sea level, lookingup to the top top of the
(37:22):
highest California Sierra Nevadamountains.
Mike (37:26):
And then, as we got closer to Nongar Parbat, a couple of
the stream crossings.
Well, the rivers are reallyflowing, the streams are really
flowing coming down from thesnow fields around Nangarparbat,
and some of those crossingswere a little hairy.
The bridges, just a log thatwasn't so well built, well put
(37:51):
in.
In fact, one got washed away.
One of the crossings got washedaway while we were in the
mountains so couldn't go backthat way.
So I think it was a six-daymarch in, and about a day, maybe
(38:16):
two days.
Well, let me back up a littlebit.
Every night, when we'd reachcamp, the porters would go on
strike.
I mean, this is the only.
I mean I don't blame them, thisis their only chance to make
money and they're going to tryto make money however they can.
So I mean it really gets thepeople running the expedition
(38:39):
Dan in our case, and theJapanese and Mr Malik, major
Malik ticked off, because everynight they would have to put
down this strike and promisethem something Either lighten
even though that had been agreedto before lighten the loads, or
more money, mainly more money.
(39:00):
And then, two days out fromNangar Parbat, this other group
of men came and said we're theones that haul all the equipment
from here into Nangar Parbat.
You other guys get out of here,and so there's a bit of
(39:25):
fisticuffs and some of the menyou know it's like the US, they
carry their weapons openly, butnone of those weapons were ever
used, thankfully Few rocks, fewsticks, a lot of verbiage, and
(39:47):
this other group then took over.
Well, the head of that groupwas the village head of the last
village before Nanga Parbat,and his name was Sir Kunder, the
last village before NangaParbat, and his name was
Sarkandar.
Now, if you think aboutSarkandar, what it sounds like,
can you imagine that it'sderived from Alexander.
(40:08):
His claim is that his peopleand they were lighter skinned
are descendants from Alexanderthe Great's army and Alexander
the Great's army this is aboutthe limit of what they got to
Right around this part ofPakistan and so they claim they
(40:28):
were descendants of the Greeks.
All right, his name is Secunderand that means Alexander.
So that was pretty cool gettingthis connection to ancient
history.
Rob (40:44):
Now they can do a genetic analysis and see.
Mike (40:46):
Oh yeah, that's true.
Rob (40:48):
If the villagers would want to, or just continue to claim
it.
Mike (40:55):
Yeah, so with Sircunder's village men, and they didn't.
It was a small village, theydidn't have really enough
porters, so they had to dodouble carries.
We finally got to what is usedas the base camp of Nangarparbat
on the western side, which iscalled the Daimir flank, used in
(41:34):
climbing the original climbback in 1954 by germans.
Uh is the north side and uh,the man who first summit is the
name named by the name of hermanbuell, and he ended up dying
later that year or the next year.
He came back to do another peaknearby and perished and he did
a solo push from the upper campthat the Germans had and he did
(41:55):
a solo push all the way to thetop of Nangar Parbat and back,
which is considered one of themost outstanding feats in
mountaineering.
That solo push, that's thenorth side.
Solo push, that's the northside.
The north side was closed to usbecause the Chinese asked
Pakistan not to make itavailable, because the Chinese
(42:16):
were going to put in a highwayconnecting western China to
Pakistan and the route would goright by the base there.
So that was the old way in thisroad on the north side.
The Silk Road yeah, a modernSilk Road I don't know if the
(42:38):
old Silk Roads ever went thatroute.
It could have been, becausethere were a number of Silk
Roads.
We get to the base camp and wehelp.
The Japanese were following theplaybook of another German
expedition some years before 10years before and they were
(43:02):
putting all their camps wherethey put.
The Germans had written aboutexactly where they did,
everything and whatnot, and wefound a lot of evidence of
german trash around, cans of lowand brow on the mountain.
Um, well, what dan and I endedup doing one day?
(43:27):
We hauled up to the first campthat's actually on the mountain.
You have base camp and camp oneis up on the mountain and we
hauled some of the Japanese justas a thank you for letting us
be there.
We hauled some of their stuffup and um, so that's the first
time I did any seriousmountaineering, because there
was some treacherous parts onthat first part and Dan told me
(43:50):
what to do and I did it and I'mhere to tell about it Didn't
fall in a crevasse, and whatelevation is base camp?
Base camp.
I'm going to guess this isabout 16.
And the first camp up on themountain.
(44:11):
You have to cross where theglacier comes down.
So you have to cross theglacier and then you go up a
scree slope which is like abunch of ball bearings with the
ice underneath, maybe 1,000 feetup.
It wasn't that dramatic.
(44:32):
How physically challenging washiking specifically there
between base camp and Camp 1?
Well, the hardest hiking wasactually on the hike in.
It just seemed forever to getto a pass.
It always looked like a falsesummit.
Oh, there's a summit rightthere and you get there.
Oh no, it's still going andstill going.
Just because of of your viewand your angle, you think you're
(44:52):
getting to the summit.
But so the hardest hiking wasactually there and I I carried
my backpack.
I didn't have that much weightin it but it was still probably
40 pounds, probably close to 40pounds, just to get into shape.
(45:14):
And I was told later by thecook, one of the Pakistani
people, and this is all inPanamine, and this is all in
(45:39):
Panamine.
But he later told me the way Iunderstood it, because you were
carrying your pack when youcould have had one of the
porters carry your pack, weassumed you had all the money.
That didn't make me feel sogood when they were having a
strike every night, but I didn'tfind this out until several
days later.
Erik (45:51):
You mentioned a cook, and I can't help but think what the
eating circumstances were like.
What would you eat, how often,and also, how would you maintain
hydration?
Was there any sort of salt thatyou would add, or tablets, or
anything like that?
Mike (46:10):
Electrolytes were not known back then.
Our water source was a streamcoming down from the side and
then we'd purify it mainly byboiling the water.
But a side stream not themainstream coming down where the
well there's a tongue of theglacier fills half the valley
and the other side is rock anddirt and grass, and so we had to
(46:37):
cross over the glacier to getinto the valley.
So the glacier is rightalongside of us really, as
opposed to in front of us.
It's also in front of us, butit's also on our side.
Do in front of us.
It's also in front of us, butit's also on our side, and it's
melting and there's waterrunning down the bottom of it,
but it's all full of rocks andstuff.
But one of the side streamscoming down from a snow field on
(47:01):
one of the ridges on the sideis where we get our water.
Food we had a lot offreeze-dried food.
Let's see, I'm trying to thinkwhat the Japanese because we ate
with the Japanese I'm trying toremember what they brought in.
I just can't remember what theycarried beside freeze-dried,
(47:25):
because that's what you're goingto have on the mountain.
I do know that one of the localvillagers who had a rifle went
up into the ridges and came backwith a goat and we ate that
goat and I must admit it wasvery good.
You're eating food at that point.
Rob (47:46):
Roasted it.
Mike (47:46):
Cajacina style.
Yeah, that goat is uh roastedit cajina style, yeah like so,
rob, you had mentioned that hetook this.
He filled the spot when yourfriend asked, when dan asked you
to join him, correct?
And so this is short notice youhad your passport right, right,
what gave you the confidence?
What were you doing at the time, physically fitness wise, to
(48:08):
give you the confidence to?
What were you doing at the time, physically fitness-wise, that
gave you the confidence to say,yeah, I could go climb, you know
, do some recon on a mountainhalfway across the world?
No, I was completely not trainedat all.
Really, I didn't do any.
I think I walked around thetrack at the university a few
(48:29):
times.
Right, as you're taking a breakfrom your doctorate in physics.
Yeah, no, I didn't do.
I mean, I had done a little bitof backpacking.
I had taken up backpacking,maybe one or two years before
(48:55):
before, and I was pretty good atwalking with weight on my back,
more so than some of the guysthat were bigger than me.
So I don't know, I didn't doany training.
I hadn't done any training.
So I'm sorry.
Your business is completelyirrelevant.
Rob (49:03):
I'm gonna edit this part out so to to go trekking in the
Himalayas.
You don't need electrolytes youdon't need fancy nutrition.
Mike (49:13):
You don't need prior training just go, you just need
to be good at walking withweight on your back I had a
friend of mine that just didkilimanjaro and she trained for
six months leading up tokilimanjaro and it's not nearly
as high as no, it's not as high.
But that's a pretty cold spot to19,000, almost 20,000 feet.
Yeah, I almost think that I canhike better in these last five,
(49:41):
six years than I could everhike back when I was in my 30s,
20s, 30s, 40s, because I do itall the time now.
I guess the lesson is doing it,just do it.
Yeah, the power of youth, rightLike your mid-20s.
Right, let's see what was it?
(50:02):
I was 28, I think when I wentto Nonger Parbat 28, I think
when I went to Nonger Parbat.
Rob (50:14):
How many from Camp 1 did you go above Camp 1?
I did not, so that was thehighest.
You made it on this trip,correct?
Did you spend any?
Mike (50:22):
nights there.
No, we spent a night at what wecalled the depot, the night at
what we called the depot.
So base camp was a mile or twobefore the foot of the mountain,
and so we put a depot right atthe foot of the mountain.
Rob (50:41):
Was that for avalancherists to be that further away, or
just?
Mike (50:45):
I'm not sure I mean I thought about that.
You know why back there.
Well, the water was a littleeasier to get, the ground was a
little bit flatter.
It wasn't flat, but it wasflatter, so a little bit easier
to set up camp.
It's where the Germans hadalways set up camp because they
had tried to climbNangarpurabhat.
They had a history of climbingNangarpurabhat back in the 30s
(51:08):
and then the 50s and into the60s, so it was always called the
German mountain.
Well, everest was the Britishmountain and Annapurna, which
was the first 8,000-meter peakclimb, was by the French, so
that was the French mountain.
And K2, the second highestmountain, was first climbed by
(51:30):
the Italians, so it often iscalled the Italian mountain.
So just from the first people,germany had a long history and
climbers from Germany of tryingto climb Nagra Perbat.
And yeah, I won't go into itbecause they lost a lot of
(51:50):
climbers, they lost a lot ofSherpers in the 30s.
There were two bad attempts inthe 30s with storms and bad
accidents.
So we would have been the first.
The Japanese would have beenthe first Japanese to make it to
(52:10):
the summit.
They did not make it to thesummit and the following year,
when the rest of the group went.
We would have been the firstAmericans up there, but we did
not as well.
Rob (52:23):
It's challenging to make it to the top of these mountains.
It's a lot of exposure.
It's challenging to make it tothe top of these mountains.
Mike (52:29):
It's a lot of exposure.
One of the problems with theHimalayas, more so than, let's
say, denali, because Denali isfar north, it's cold, it doesn't
avalanche as easily, avalancheseasily.
(52:55):
Himalayas are really on thesame elevation as central
florida on up, and it's a bigarc, so the eastern end of the
arc is probably remember when Iwas in nepal and I called you
and you said oh, you're the samelatitude as point de verde,
florida or something.
Rob (53:06):
Yeah, so, um the same latitude as Pointe Verde,
florida or something.
Yeah, yeah, so it's the monsoon.
The monsoons dominate theHimalayan weather and the
climbing seasons.
Mike (53:15):
Exactly, and it's wet and it makes the snow and it gets
warm.
It gets cold and it gets warm,so it makes avalanche.
They're much more avalancheprone, especially Nanga Parbat,
so that's what really makes themdangerous.
Rob (53:33):
And smaller climbing windows generally because of the
you have to go after winter butbefore the monsoons.
Now people climb year round,but they're the crazy ones.
Mike (53:43):
Yeah, the main climbing season in the Himalayas is
pre-monsoon, which was typicallyMay, and that's when most
people attempted, and thenOctober, november, before it
gets too cold.
Now I'm going back, not so muchas you say today, but as it was
before a whole mess of globalwarming, which has probably made
(54:05):
things a lot different.
Rob (54:18):
So then you start to come back, or is there any stories
from when you were up at basecamp that are worth recollecting
now?
Mike (54:26):
Well, one story is our first time we went from base
camp to the, to the depot,that's to the foot of the
mountain.
That two mile stretch, it tookus forever.
And then, after doing it two orthree times and we could almost
run it, we could almost run itwhich?
Rob (54:48):
is two miles at 15,000 feet , 16,000 feet elevation.
You adapt.
Let me check something butthat's also how, that's also why
current expeditions not thesuper serious ones who are
trying to do it as sprints, butthey'll.
You go to base camp.
You go up to camp one, spend acouple nights at camp one.
Go back to base camp.
Then you go base camp up tocamp one, up to camp two, couple
(55:08):
nights at camp one, go back tobase camp.
Then you go base camp up tocamp one, up to camp two, couple
nights at camp two and comeback and it's just this
continuing laddering up and down, up and down, up and down, to
slowly acclimatize, and thenfinally you work your way up and
from the top camp try to summitbecause typically the distance
between one camp and the otheris a beast more in elevation
it's more on elevation, yeah andfinding a good, a good place
(55:28):
for for the camp.
But you know, it's if base campsat at 15, which I think what
ever space camps about the sameheight, it's not that much
higher 14, 15, 16, right, it's alittle higher, a little higher,
but the top's at 28 andcurrently there are four camps.
There's base camp, camp one,two, three and four, and then
from four you go up to summitand then it's from 16 to 28 000.
(55:49):
So 12 000 feet every 3 000 feet, every four, three or four
thousand feet, you have a a campand how?
Mike (55:57):
how long do people typically stay at these base
camps?
Is it just like an overnightstop, or you're there just to
get acclimated to the weatherand let's go well?
there's.
There's a number of people thatstay at the base camp that are
just there to support theclimbing memory.
You know, not everybody in anexpedition may be a climber.
Sometimes they are especiallythe smaller ones.
But on bigger ones you'll havea health officer, you'll have
(56:20):
the cook, you'll have maybenowadays a radio operator or
something up to the satellitesup there, operator or something
up to the satellites up there.
I'm just looking here.
I see Camp 1 was at about 5,000meters, so that's 16,400 feet.
(56:42):
So that's Camp 1.
So base camp would have beenlower around 15,000 feet.
Rob (56:48):
All right, there's a lot more to the story, but I know
we're reaching a hard stop onthis episode today, but you'll
be back in October before youventure down to Patagonia at age
for more hiking, all right Ican stop it there then, and we
can continue on in a few months.
Mike (57:08):
Thank you so much, that was very interesting, and we can
continue on.
Erik (57:09):
Thank you so much In a few months.
Very interesting, yeah, yeah,truly, because I think about
like I'm from Miami and I go toColorado and I go upstairs and
I'm like trying to catch mybreath.
Mike (57:21):
I just think about higher than anywhere in Colorado, jess
and I went to the Red Rock towatch Old Dominion and we're
going upstairs and we're likewe're in pretty good shape here
and we were struggling.
We'd have to stop every now andthen at some of the foundations
because we just couldn't makeit up there.
So I can't imagine what it'slike to even just get the base
camp.
Erik (57:38):
For sure.
That's where the acclimationprocess is used too.
Rob (57:41):
I think the scale of some of the larger mountain ranges in
the world is just somethingthat's so tough to comprehend
until you're there.
I remember going the firsttimes to the Alps because the
Alps are from the base of theAlps to the top of the Alps is
so much more than anything inthe Rocky Mountains.
It's just growing up.
In the US we're used to theRocky Mountains being the
(58:01):
primary mountains that we seeand a lot of mountain ranges out
there are a lot bigger and it'sfrightening.
Mike (58:08):
Yeah, the top of the Alps is very similar to the top of
the Rockies, but the base islike 10,000 feet less than the
base of the Rockies, so it makesthem look almost Himalayan in
scale.
Rob (58:22):
Wow, All right, good stuff, good work.
Mike (58:29):
Thank you, thanks for work , thank you.
Erik (58:31):
Thanks for coming, thanks for being here.
So welcome guys.
Eric Mike, we have our firstinterview podcast, our first
guest podcast, and it is goingto be my dad, michael Silver.
Mike (00:12):
Hello Love that.
Rob (00:14):
Thank you for joining us.
Erik (00:15):
That's it.
Thank you for being here.
Rob (00:18):
He has a lot of stories, many different topics that we
can go down, but the topic thatI want to focus the most on
today is his adventures inpakistan in the 1970s and he has
written up most of them andhe'll talk to us about it.
But it was he I don't want tospoil some of the good parts of
it but basically, on a whim,ended up flying out to pakistan,
(00:40):
didn't have a passport yet,hadn't been outside of north
america, hadn't climbed anymountains, to do a
reconnaissance trip up NangaParbat, which is the second
tallest mountain in Pakistan.
It is one of the top 20 in theworld.
Mike (00:54):
There's 14 peaks that are over 8,000 meters, which is a
magic number, and they're all inthe Himalayas.
Nanga Parbat is number nine outof the 14.
Rob (01:07):
so ninth tallest mountain in the world to do a
reconnaissance trip.
It wasn't to to summit it,unfortunately.
Well, or fortunately yeah, orfortunately, and this was in the
70s, so a very different, verydifferent world.
So I think the first question Iwant to start off with what was
the main drive to put down yourPhD at the time and just jet
(01:33):
off to Pakistan for amountaineering trip that you
never really mountaineeredbefore?
Mike (01:38):
Well, I wasn't really a deep member of the Pittsburgh
Explorers Club.
I was living in Pittsburgh atthe time, going to the
University of PittsburghGraduate School in Physics.
But a lot of my friends weremembers of the Explorers Club
(02:02):
and it had quite a history.
It had started right afterWorld War II like 1946, 1947, by
at least one veteran I can'tremember his name anymore and
they had done a lot of thingsand they decided that for
America's bicentennial, whichwas 1976, for those of you who
(02:23):
have forgotten your civicslesson they would climb one of
the tallest mountains in theworld in celebration of
America's bicentennial.
Now, as it happened, there wasthis Pakistani living in
Pittsburgh who several of themwere friendly with, and they
(02:51):
thought, well, having thisperson give them introductions
to various officials in Pakistanmight make going to Pakistan
easier than going to Nepal,which is the other obvious place
you would go, which?
Rob (03:04):
for most mountaineering now that people see in the
himalayas.
And everest goes through nepal.
Mike (03:08):
But nepal didn't really open to outsiders until well, in
the 50s they were, they wereopen then but it was still.
Rob (03:14):
It was a newer concept to go to nepal, to climb the
himalayas, then pakistan orthrough china and tibet.
Not really not at that point itwas normalized yeah, it had
been normalized In the 50s.
Mike (03:27):
Nepal opened up.
After all, hillary, when heclimbed Everest was 53, with
Tenzac Norgay, his Sherpa, and,by the way, many years before
Tenzac Norgay had gone to NangaParbat with a group.
(03:48):
And, yeah, most of Nepal openedup in the 50s.
Pakistan as well.
The one thing that kept it alittle bit closed was Pakistan
and India were continuallyfighting over a couple of the
frontier provinces, namelyKashmir, and one or the other
(04:10):
country would close themountains that were close to
that border, which includedNangarparbat and K2, or the two
probably most well-knownmountains in Pakistan, and they
had just opened it up again likea year or two before we went to
Mountaineers.
(04:30):
To go back to Pakistan, I don'tquite remember the political,
what was going on politicallybetween India and Pakistan at
that time.
I remember Pakistan had a primeminister by the name of Ali
Bhutta who was sort of Westernin his orientation and his
(04:50):
behavior.
His daughter later became primeminister as well, benazir
Bhutta, and she was assassinatedsome years later I can't
remember the year.
Yeah, so at that time Pakistanwas a little bit more
Western-oriented than it hadbeen in the past under Bhutto,
(05:12):
and that was the prime ministerwhen we went.
So it all made Pakistan a moreobvious choice for our group
than Nepal, and those are reallythe well.
Bhutan has a mountain that'salso in the 14 or less, or the
(05:34):
14 that are over 8,000 meters.
But it's basically Pakistan'sgot several and Nepal's got most
.
Erik (05:45):
Now that you said that, I do want to throw something out
there for those that may notknow, and I had to look this up
because I didn't know off thetop of my head.
So it's over 8,000 meters, yousaid right.
Mike (05:57):
Correct.
Erik (05:57):
Now that's over 26,000 feet, which is just about five
miles.
That's massive.
Rob (06:03):
Correct and to put that in perspective, the tallest
mountain in north america isdenali, which he had summited a
few years later, which is 21 00020 320 so the tallest mountain
in north america is 20 320 feetand all these that are over 8
000 meters are over 26 000 feet.
It's's a different geography.
Mike (06:30):
And they're all in that same arc of the Himalayas where
the Indian plate hits theEurasian plate, and up went the
mountains.
Rob (06:39):
And then that 8,000 meters up is what they call the death
zone as well.
If you look at the Everestclimbing videos, where it's
entering the death zone is 8,000meters and over, and that's
where lower oxygenconcentrations make people do
rash things.
So you end up going to Pakistan.
Mike (06:58):
Yes.
Rob (06:59):
How was the journey to Pakistan?
Mike (07:02):
Well, I guess it was my other than Canada, my first time
outside the United States, sothat always makes it interesting
and I went by myself.
Well, what happened is one ofthe people in this Explorers
Club and there were 14 of themthat ended up going to climb
(07:24):
nangarpa about the year after wedid our reconnaissance.
Well, one of them hadvolunteered to do the
reconnaissance, but he wantedsomebody along with him.
He was a good friend of mine inthe physics department, um, but
he couldn't talk anybody elsein the club to go with him.
They went down to the Andes anddid some practice climbs, but
(07:47):
he needed somebody.
He just wanted somebody alongand he had already had all his
plane reservations andeverything.
I couldn't get everythingtogether.
I didn't have a passport at thetime.
I got one real quickly, ofcourse, otherwise I couldn't
have gone at all and so I went,maybe three, four, five days
after he went, and I met him inwhat were we?
(08:14):
At Lahore?
That's where we met up, inLahore, which a major city in
Pakistan, not the biggestKarachi's the biggest but Lahore
is in what's called the Punjab,which is close to the Indian
(08:34):
border, and Punjab means fiverivers.
There's five big rivers comingdown from the Himalayas full of
snow melt every year, and that'swhat Punjab means.
It's the most populous andfertile of the provinces of
India, and then Pakistan has itsown Punjab, and so does India.
Rob (09:08):
So that's what that name means, if you've heard it before
the Punjab, the five rivers.
So that was 50 years ago.
But what do you remember fromwhen you get off the plane in
Pakistan and start lookingaround at your first not Western
country?
Mike (09:19):
Well, the plane, the international flights at that
time, all went into Karachi,which is the biggest city in
Pakistan it's not the capital oranything, and it's down in the
southern part of Pakistan and Iwas supposed to exchange flights
(09:42):
to go to Lahore.
Well, my flight from New Yorkto Pakistan was quite a bit
delayed and so I missed myconnection to Lahore.
Well, my flight from New Yorkto Pakistan was quite a bit
delayed, and so I missed myconnection to Lahore, and they
put me up in a little hotelLooked like any hotel from the
50s you would find along UShighways and yeah.
(10:02):
I basically snoozed a bitovernight and caught the plane
the next day and didn't look somuch different really, because
you're in this motel hotel thatlooks similar to what you would
see here at least maybe 20 yearsbefore in the 50s.
(10:23):
You would see here at leastmaybe 20 years before in the 50s
, and at that time now Iunderstand there's a big
military presence at all theseairports, in these places.
Not so much then.
Rob (10:49):
So it wasn't a huge cultural shock, not until I got
into Lahore itself, which what?
Mike (10:54):
was the big cultural shock in Lahore.
Well, basically I mean you knowthis before you go the massive
poverty People I mean most ofthe population living in tents,
I mean we have that problem nowhere in this country, but it's
still a very small percentage ofthe overall population there.
(11:15):
It's a large.
It's like what you see ofrefugee camps today.
That's the way most of thepopulation was living, and the
better neighborhoods of Lahoreand any of the towns would have
these compounds where the betteroff people lived and you're all
(11:36):
walled off from the city.
Everything pointed towards theinner courtyard and not out to
the street.
Erik (11:47):
I'm curious where were you living at that time?
Mike (11:50):
I was in graduate school in Pittsburgh.
Erik (11:52):
Okay, gotcha, and what were you going to grad school
for?
Mike (11:56):
Physics.
Erik (11:57):
And did you end up finishing that?
I did your.
Mike (12:00):
PhD.
Yes.
Erik (12:00):
Okay, gotcha, and I actually had my career in that
field as well In PhD.
Yes, okay, gotcha.
Mike (12:04):
And I actually had my career in that field as well.
Erik (12:08):
In physics.
Yes, I don't know how anyonedoes that, so I applaud you, I
bow my head to you, because oneclass in physics alone is
something A PhD in.
That is its own category.
That's amazing.
Rob (12:28):
Yeah, a bit of a yeah different, uh, different,
different hobbies for surephysics and mountaineering.
Mike (12:34):
So then you, you met up with dan in lahore yeah, dan,
was was one of the co-leaders ofthe expedition the following
year, one of the the primedriver of organizing this and
yeah, so his name is dan bunce.
He was also a graduate studentin the physics department.
He was a much more seriousmountaineer, since I had never
(12:57):
done anything and I still don'tconsider myself anything like
that, even though I live in themountains now.
But in colorado, um, yeah, yeah.
Rob (13:11):
So we met up in lahore so then now, if you know someone in
in the us, or even in in southamerica, I wanted to go
mountaineering.
Fly into a local airport, youcan rent a a truck and go to get
to a trailhead pretty, prettyquickly.
How, how many steps were therefrom getting from lahore to up
(13:33):
into the valley and tonangaparbha, which is one of the
easier mountains to access too,I believe?
Mike (13:39):
uh, nowadays it's easier because there's a highway there.
That was not at that time.
Uh, so I'm not sure why we metup in lahore.
Probably because that's where.
Well, because there's nogovernment offices in lahore
which we would have to deal withto get the permits to go to the
(14:00):
mountains.
Uh, so the steps, the stepswere basically after he spent a
few days in Lahore.
Oh, I remember now why we wentto Lahore.
The father of this gentleman,who lived in Pittsburgh, was in
Lahore at the time.
Some of his family lived thereand he was one of these people
(14:25):
they they call was there atindependence.
Uh, there's, there's this eldergeneration at that time.
They're all gone now, but thegeneration of gandhi and nairu
in india, and um, um, uh, what'sthe name?
And the Pakistani guy, muhammadAli, no, not Muhammad Ali.
(14:45):
Um.
Well, I apologize to anybodyfrom Pakistan that's listening
to this that I don't rememberthe name of your founder right
now.
Remember his picture, cause itwas everywhere.
But um, uh, but he was a memberof that founding generation.
He was, um, the head of head ofthe health department before
(15:08):
the separation of India andPakistan in 1948.
Mr Silver, you're correct, it'sMuhammad Ali Jinnah.
Jinnah, yeah, thank you.
Chat GBT.
I'm the Jamie of the podcast.
Try to help out.
(15:31):
Jinnah, yeah.
So I mean he and Gandhi andNehru were the three big pushers
for independence.
And then the separation as well.
Gandhi really wanted to keepthem together and Jinnah really
wanted to be separate from India.
(15:57):
And Pakistan means land of thepure in Urdu, which is the old
language of the area.
So just calling yourselves theland of the pure sort of makes
you not want to be connected toanother country where the
religion is different.
Of course India's getting itsrevenge now, but not to go into
(16:22):
modern day politics.
So from yeah, so he gave us.
He wanted to give us a tour ofthe historical things to see in
that part of Pakistan and he didthis.
doctor, the father of thisfriend and he gave us.
He was a wonderful tour guide,told us many stories.
(16:44):
Remember we went by a coffeehouse oh, that's where
revolution was plotted.
And he was a wonderful tourguide, told us many stories.
Remember we went by a coffeehouse, oh, that's where
revolution was plotted, back into kick the British out.
So, and then we went to thecapital city and it's a twin
city Islamabad is the capitaland that's a new planned city
(17:16):
and Rallapindi is the old city.
That was there and Rallapindiwas the old army, the center of
the army, like the main armybase, both in British days and
the British raw and for thePakistani government.
But that's where we would haveto go to get all our permits and
find out what restrictions we'dhave, if any.
And so we spent a A good week,perhaps more than a week,
(17:38):
dealing with the bureaucracythere.
Now, many of them were veryhelpful, they wanted to be
helpful, but it takes a while ina third world bureaucracy to
get things done.
And I think one of theinteresting parts I remember is,
because of our connection, thisdoctor I mentioned.
(18:02):
He had given us a letter ofintroduction to the chief of
staff of the army there.
Name of ZL Hawk.
Check that out on me.
Check that out on me.
And he later ended up deposingthe prime minister, who was this
(18:25):
Bhutto that I had mentionedearlier, and actually ordering
his death, and most of theWestern countries of the world
tried to get him to stop.
He later died in a plane crashwith the US ambassador on board
and under mysteriouscircumstances that have never
been explained, that I've, atleast I've never found an
(18:47):
explanation for.
Maybe it was a pure accident,maybe it wasn't, but he sort of
reinstituted Sharia law, or aversion of Sharia law from the
very western approach of Buddhato the more.
Rob (19:05):
Well, I'll just call it Sharia law, you can decide label
it as you wish so it was a verydifferent Pakistan than in the
70s, than it is now, well, forexample.
So it was a very different.
Mike (19:20):
Pakistan than in the 70s, in the 70s, than it is now.
Well, for example, I'm Jewishand I had no problem there.
I don't think a Jew could setfoot in.
Pakistan today.
Rob (19:30):
And then, on that note, I remember you said there were two
words that all the kids knewwhen you were walking around.
Two phrases In English.
Mike (19:41):
No matter how remote a town we went to, they would say
American, you know, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali,
he's the greatest, and for kidsin this part of the world to
know Muhammad Ali, he must havebeen the greatest it just shows
you how popular he was at thattime, right.
Yep, Yep exactly.
Rob (20:03):
So from Lahore you go up to Nanga Parbat.
Mike (20:06):
Well, from Lahore, we spent a couple of weeks in this
twin town of Rallapindi Capitaland Islamabad, and the two
interesting things that I'llmention about that.
We did go and visit theheadquarters of the army in
Rawalpindi because we had thisletter of introduction to the
(20:30):
chief of staff and while wedidn't see the chief of staff,
we saw his primary assistant.
We got into his office andthat's something I mean.
I was in the army as a private.
I never got into anybody'soffice of any sort.
Here I am in in the office ofof of the commander, the
(20:52):
commander of the armies forPakistan.
But anyway, I just found thatamazing.
And let's see, there wassomething else I wanted to
mention.
I'll get back to it when Iremember it, because I'm almost
the Trump and Biden's age.
You can be our president.
(21:14):
It's a good benchmark.
I'm only a year younger thanTrump.
It's a good benchmark.
Rob (21:18):
I'm only a year younger than Trump.
How do you transport fromRathapindi to Nangaparbha?
Mike (21:26):
All right.
So we found a transportationcompany, or a travel agent, if
you will, and it was one of theperhaps the only woman owned
company in all of Pakistan, youknow, a Muslim country, almost
(21:48):
100% Muslim and very rare, andso they arranged well, did you
know the significance of thatthen, or was that more in
hindsight?
than it was.
No, no, we had been given hername, and so we met her and
(22:13):
learned all this in real time.
But the government, one of therestrictions the government put
on us was not to travel alonebut to travel with another
expedition that was going there.
But I think Miss Davis was nolonger with us by this time, or
Mrs Davis, and so we met up withthem.
(22:49):
We were staying in anotherhotel in Rallapindi.
I think Mrs Davis's was thetraditional place for Westerners
, western adventurers, to stay.
We had been given the name ofanother hotel, which we later
learned was probably not thebest place to stay when you're
dealing with government agencies.
It had a reputation for havinga brothel upstairs, it sounds it
(23:14):
the title itself the City Hotel.
Yeah, it sounds it the titleitself.
The City Hotel.
Yeah.
But anyway, we never saw anyevidence of it, but that's what
we were told, so we met up withthem.
The Japanese expedition, theJapanese expedition.
They had rented a large truck,a lorry, and if you've ever seen
(23:37):
, if you look through some ofthe pictures I have over there
of the trucks in Pakistan,they're all gaily painted.
And so, this very gaily paintedtruck, they loaded all their
stuff, a little bit of our stuff, and then we had a van, a
normal van, that we all wentinto Like I don't know what it
(24:04):
was right now, and we took thatfrom.
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh, they were all British trucks, they were all British
manufactured trucks.
(24:25):
I remember that Bedford, maybe,bedford, belford, belford,
bedford is the name of the truck, the manufacturer of the truck
company, the manufacturer of thetruck company.
And so we took this route intothe mountains and it went
through this town calledAbbottabad, which had no
(24:49):
significance to me at that time,but that is the town where
Osama bin Laden hid out and wasfound and was also where
Pakistan had its West Point.
So that sort of implied to methat the Pakistani government
knew where Osama bin Laden was.
(25:10):
Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but if their West Point is
just down the street from wherehis compound was, here's a
picture of a bus that hasBedford as a logo on the side.
Rob (25:25):
So yes, you were right Bedford Yep.
Mike (25:35):
The other interesting thing, that same sort of idea of
Abbottabad being famous.
Later, when we were inIslamabad, Rolopindi, we went to
visit the US Embassy.
It was our independence.
In fact, it was over July 4th.
Unfortunately, I had gottenheat stroke and I was in a
(25:57):
hospital, which is another greatstory.
I think it was heat stroke,they thought it was malaria, the
doctors.
So Dan went to the July 4th atthe embassy and I had been to
the embassy earlier in the weekand maybe later.
I went to the embassy againearlier in the week and maybe
(26:19):
later.
I went to the embassy again andit's way on the outskirts of
Islamabad, like two miles fromthe rest of the government,
things right at the very edge ofthe city.
They were building, and then afew years later, there was a
problem at the main mosque inMecca, which the Saudi
(26:40):
government blamed on the US, andso there was a mob that
attacked the US embassy inPakistan and burned it down.
I mean, it was a brick building,but a couple of people were
killed, I think a couple of therioters and a couple of maybe a
Marine defender and a couple ofthe Pakistani employees, not a
(27:05):
small handful.
But from my experience I knewthe Pakistani government said
there was nothing they can do.
This was a spontaneous riot andand we couldn't get any police
protection there in time or armyprotection there in time.
Well, I knew how far it wasfrom everything else in
Islamabad and I knew it wouldtake quite a while to march all
(27:27):
these marchers down there.
So I knew that was a lie.
Whatever it was, something thePakistani government wasn't
coming uh, completely truthfulabout.
This is what happens when youhave local information, even
though it's so, not rare, Iwould call it, but such a
(27:50):
happenstance and you just happento be to the embassy.
You knew it was far from town,so if there was a bunch of
rioters there, that it wasorganized and it took a while to
get there.
So anyway, that was uh.
So we took the uh, our, our umvan, with, with the, with the
(28:13):
japanese climbing club, and ouruh and ourselves and our truck,
and we went as far as the pavedroad would go and at that time
we transferred into Jeeps andthe Jeeps were all Toyota's
versions of Land Cruisers and wetook the Jeeps for a day or two
(28:36):
up this valley called the KaganValley.
It is a place where, a fewyears ago, the Taliban tried to
foment a lot of trouble andfought the army.
The Pakistani army finallycrushed the Taliban there.
It was okay for them to be inafghanistan and do their thing,
(28:58):
but not okay even though thepakistani armed forces and
secret services were the mainbackers of the taliban.
But only in another country,not in ours, um, which I think
know growing up hearing some ofthese stories.
Rob (29:19):
That is another, just another thing detailing how
unique of a time it was in aplace to be when you were able
to be in Pakistan, in thosevalleys at that time, being
Jewish, being a small expeditionfrom America.
Mike (29:31):
And another.
Well, two other interestingthings.
My jacket that I wore becausein the mountains it's going to
get a little chillier, was myold Army field jacket from when
I was in the Army, with my nametag still on it.
I think I took off.
I did take off the US Army nametag on it, but that's kind of
(29:55):
stupid in retrospect on acountry that well, at that time,
as I said, buddha had a Westernorientation and Kissinger was
actually in the country when wewere there.
Henry Kissinger, our Secretaryof State I don't know if he was
Secretary of State yet Is he 76?
(30:15):
Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, of State yet Is he 76
?
Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, and he was at that
time setting up secret talkswith China so Nixon could go to.
Now Nixon was Let me get thisstraight Now Nixon was gone by
(30:38):
then.
So one of his setting up sometrips between US high officials
and self with China, he didthrough Pakistan and he was in
Pakistan while we were there.
So, yeah, completely differentvibe then.
So we took the Jeeps as far aswe could and then it was walking
(30:59):
.
We went up through somethingcalled Babassar Pass in the
Jeeps and down the other side.
Babassar Pass was 14,000 to16,000 feet, which is as tall as
anything in continental UnitedStates, as tall as any of our
mountains, but that's just thepass States.
Rob (31:16):
As tall as any of our mountains, but that's just the
pass.
Which tallest mountain in thecontinental US is Mount Whitney
at 14,300, 400 feet, californiaRight.
Mike (31:35):
So down on the other side, on the other side of Babassar
Pass.
I think Babassar Pass meansPass of the Tiger, because when
the Mughals came in in the15-1600s, came down from the
north and took over northernIndia, pakistan region.
They're the people that builtthe Taj Mahal and a lot of other
famous things.
The very first one supposedlycame down through Babasar Pass.
(31:56):
He came down with his army, sowe were going the reverse way
and when we got down to thefirst village on the other side,
there was hundreds of peoplemilling about because the
government had ordered the menin the area be made available to
(32:18):
haul the Japanese equipment tothe mountain.
Japanese had everything and Ithink most expeditions do the
same thing had everything inboxes that two feet by three
feet by two feet, something likethat, and the rule, one of the
(32:44):
rules, regulations, was no boxcould be heavier than oh, I
don't remember, it's in theresomewhere, but they were pretty
heavy.
It wouldn't be anything I'dwant to carry and I had a pack,
you know, a backpack.
They're not as nice as they aretoday, but uh.
(33:05):
And then we started our, our, uh, our hike, in our trek in um,
we had to sign in.
All all the what were calledporters had to sign in.
We were also introduced to acouple of high-level well, I
wouldn't say high-levelPakistanis, but not porters.
(33:27):
There was our climbing porter.
The name was Ashraf Aman, whoI've kept in touch with ever
since Hopefully, I with eversince, hopefully.
It's been four years since I'vehad anything from him, so I
(33:47):
hope he's okay.
And also, the government has aliaison officer connected with
you and we had met him back inRallapindi and had gone to his
home for a farewell feast.
This was to be his bigadventure before he got married
and settled down.
He was a major in the army andthat.
(34:09):
But you always get somebody togo with each expedition a
liaison officer.
Go with each expedition, aliaison officer and he was very
good.
He was very good.
He had been in the war.
I don't know if you know any ofthis, but Pakistan used to have
two geographic locations.
There's West Pakistan, which iswhat we call Pakistan today,
(34:33):
and there was an East Pakistan,which we now call Bangladesh.
But it was one country backthen and they fought a war to
separate except India's inbetween.
So India went on the side ofBangladesh and he became a
prisoner of war.
He was hospitalized.
Anyway, he finally wasrepatriated back to West
(34:57):
Pakistan Major Malik, that washis name, major Malik and off we
walked.
Major Malik had a friend of his.
He brought along the Japanesehad, I think it was about a
dozen.
Their medical person was anurse, miss Koga.
(35:19):
It was the only female along Ofthe Japanese that were there.
The only one we really got toknow a little bit better was the
climbing leader.
He and Dan sort of reallymeshed well because they were
(35:42):
both climbers, but it was asix-day hike and all these
passes we had to cross a bunchof passes and they're all like
14,000 feet.
I think we had on foot, I think, two, maybe two major passes we
went over, if I look in thatquickly I could find it.
(36:03):
but that's all right, we'llleave it at two.
And if it was three, all right.
And on the maybe even threepasses, I remember the next to
last pass, the second, yeah, thenext to last pass.
We got up there and in thedistance it's all cloudy.
(36:25):
You really couldn't seeanything.
And one of the porters startedpointing way, way, way in the
distance and there you could seea little bit of nanga parbat,
the snowfield, shining throughthe clouds.
I mean way up there I mean,we're whatever, we were 14 000
(36:45):
feet or so, and so you'relooking for mountains.
You're used to something thatwould be.
It's the same level you are,but here's this mountain.
That's still quite far away,and to see the summit you had to
tilt your head back.
Rob (37:01):
And now You're at 14,000 feet and the peak is at 26,000,
which you can almost say is 28,which is almost double.
If you're on the top of thetallest mountains in Colorado or
California, down to the sealevel is 14,000 feet.
You have to double that, soyou're basically we're at the
equivalent of sea level, lookingup to the top top of the
(37:22):
highest California Sierra Nevadamountains.
Mike (37:26):
And then, as we got closer to Nongar Parbat, a couple of
the stream crossings.
Well, the rivers are reallyflowing, the streams are really
flowing coming down from thesnow fields around Nangarparbat,
and some of those crossingswere a little hairy.
The bridges, just a log thatwasn't so well built, well put
(37:51):
in.
In fact, one got washed away.
One of the crossings got washedaway while we were in the
mountains so couldn't go backthat way.
So I think it was a six-daymarch in, and about a day, maybe
(38:16):
two days.
Well, let me back up a littlebit.
Every night, when we'd reachcamp, the porters would go on
strike.
I mean, this is the only.
I mean I don't blame them, thisis their only chance to make
money and they're going to tryto make money however they can.
So I mean it really gets thepeople running the expedition
(38:39):
Dan in our case, and theJapanese and Mr Malik, major
Malik ticked off, because everynight they would have to put
down this strike and promisethem something Either lighten
even though that had been agreedto before lighten the loads, or
more money, mainly more money.
(39:00):
And then, two days out fromNangar Parbat, this other group
of men came and said we're theones that haul all the equipment
from here into Nangar Parbat.
You other guys get out of here,and so there's a bit of
(39:25):
fisticuffs and some of the menyou know it's like the US, they
carry their weapons openly, butnone of those weapons were ever
used, thankfully Few rocks, fewsticks, a lot of verbiage, and
(39:47):
this other group then took over.
Well, the head of that groupwas the village head of the last
village before Nanga Parbat,and his name was Sir Kunder, the
last village before NangaParbat, and his name was
Sarkandar.
Now, if you think aboutSarkandar, what it sounds like,
can you imagine that it'sderived from Alexander.
(40:08):
His claim is that his peopleand they were lighter skinned
are descendants from Alexanderthe Great's army and Alexander
the Great's army this is aboutthe limit of what they got to
Right around this part ofPakistan and so they claim they
(40:28):
were descendants of the Greeks.
All right, his name is Secunderand that means Alexander.
So that was pretty cool gettingthis connection to ancient
history.
Rob (40:44):
Now they can do a genetic analysis and see.
Mike (40:46):
Oh yeah, that's true.
Rob (40:48):
If the villagers would want to, or just continue to claim
it.
Mike (40:55):
Yeah, so with Sircunder's village men, and they didn't.
It was a small village, theydidn't have really enough
porters, so they had to dodouble carries.
We finally got to what is usedas the base camp of Nangarparbat
on the western side, which iscalled the Daimir flank, used in
(41:34):
climbing the original climbback in 1954 by germans.
Uh is the north side and uh,the man who first summit is the
name named by the name of hermanbuell, and he ended up dying
later that year or the next year.
He came back to do another peaknearby and perished and he did
a solo push from the upper campthat the Germans had and he did
(41:55):
a solo push all the way to thetop of Nangar Parbat and back,
which is considered one of themost outstanding feats in
mountaineering.
That solo push, that's thenorth side.
Solo push, that's the northside.
The north side was closed to usbecause the Chinese asked
Pakistan not to make itavailable, because the Chinese
(42:16):
were going to put in a highwayconnecting western China to
Pakistan and the route would goright by the base there.
So that was the old way in thisroad on the north side.
The Silk Road yeah, a modernSilk Road I don't know if the
(42:38):
old Silk Roads ever went thatroute.
It could have been, becausethere were a number of Silk
Roads.
We get to the base camp and wehelp.
The Japanese were following theplaybook of another German
expedition some years before 10years before and they were
(43:02):
putting all their camps wherethey put.
The Germans had written aboutexactly where they did,
everything and whatnot, and wefound a lot of evidence of
german trash around, cans of lowand brow on the mountain.
Um, well, what dan and I endedup doing one day?
(43:27):
We hauled up to the first campthat's actually on the mountain.
You have base camp and camp oneis up on the mountain and we
hauled some of the Japanese justas a thank you for letting us
be there.
We hauled some of their stuffup and um, so that's the first
time I did any seriousmountaineering, because there
was some treacherous parts onthat first part and Dan told me
(43:50):
what to do and I did it and I'mhere to tell about it Didn't
fall in a crevasse, and whatelevation is base camp?
Base camp.
I'm going to guess this isabout 16.
And the first camp up on themountain.
(44:11):
You have to cross where theglacier comes down.
So you have to cross theglacier and then you go up a
scree slope which is like abunch of ball bearings with the
ice underneath, maybe 1,000 feetup.
It wasn't that dramatic.
(44:32):
How physically challenging washiking specifically there
between base camp and Camp 1?
Well, the hardest hiking wasactually on the hike in.
It just seemed forever to getto a pass.
It always looked like a falsesummit.
Oh, there's a summit rightthere and you get there.
Oh no, it's still going andstill going.
Just because of of your viewand your angle, you think you're
(44:52):
getting to the summit.
But so the hardest hiking wasactually there and I I carried
my backpack.
I didn't have that much weightin it but it was still probably
40 pounds, probably close to 40pounds, just to get into shape.
(45:14):
And I was told later by thecook, one of the Pakistani
people, and this is all inPanamine, and this is all in
(45:39):
Panamine.
But he later told me the way Iunderstood it, because you were
carrying your pack when youcould have had one of the
porters carry your pack, weassumed you had all the money.
That didn't make me feel sogood when they were having a
strike every night, but I didn'tfind this out until several
days later.
Erik (45:51):
You mentioned a cook, and I can't help but think what the
eating circumstances were like.
What would you eat, how often,and also, how would you maintain
hydration?
Was there any sort of salt thatyou would add, or tablets, or
anything like that?
Mike (46:10):
Electrolytes were not known back then.
Our water source was a streamcoming down from the side and
then we'd purify it mainly byboiling the water.
But a side stream not themainstream coming down where the
well there's a tongue of theglacier fills half the valley
and the other side is rock anddirt and grass, and so we had to
(46:37):
cross over the glacier to getinto the valley.
So the glacier is rightalongside of us really, as
opposed to in front of us.
It's also in front of us, butit's also on our side.
Do in front of us.
It's also in front of us, butit's also on our side, and it's
melting and there's waterrunning down the bottom of it,
but it's all full of rocks andstuff.
But one of the side streamscoming down from a snow field on
(47:01):
one of the ridges on the sideis where we get our water.
Food we had a lot offreeze-dried food.
Let's see, I'm trying to thinkwhat the Japanese because we ate
with the Japanese I'm trying toremember what they brought in.
I just can't remember what theycarried beside freeze-dried,
(47:25):
because that's what you're goingto have on the mountain.
I do know that one of the localvillagers who had a rifle went
up into the ridges and came backwith a goat and we ate that
goat and I must admit it wasvery good.
You're eating food at that point.
Rob (47:46):
Roasted it.
Mike (47:46):
Cajacina style.
Yeah, that goat is uh roastedit cajina style, yeah like so,
rob, you had mentioned that hetook this.
He filled the spot when yourfriend asked, when dan asked you
to join him, correct?
And so this is short notice youhad your passport right, right,
what gave you the confidence?
What were you doing at the time, physically fitness wise, to
(48:08):
give you the confidence to?
What were you doing at the time, physically fitness-wise, that
gave you the confidence to say,yeah, I could go climb, you know
, do some recon on a mountainhalfway across the world?
No, I was completely not trainedat all.
Really, I didn't do any.
I think I walked around thetrack at the university a few
(48:29):
times.
Right, as you're taking a breakfrom your doctorate in physics.
Yeah, no, I didn't do.
I mean, I had done a little bitof backpacking.
I had taken up backpacking,maybe one or two years before
(48:55):
before, and I was pretty good atwalking with weight on my back,
more so than some of the guysthat were bigger than me.
So I don't know, I didn't doany training.
I hadn't done any training.
So I'm sorry.
Your business is completelyirrelevant.
Rob (49:03):
I'm gonna edit this part out so to to go trekking in the
Himalayas.
You don't need electrolytes youdon't need fancy nutrition.
Mike (49:13):
You don't need prior training just go, you just need
to be good at walking withweight on your back I had a
friend of mine that just didkilimanjaro and she trained for
six months leading up tokilimanjaro and it's not nearly
as high as no, it's not as high.
But that's a pretty cold spot to19,000, almost 20,000 feet.
Yeah, I almost think that I canhike better in these last five,
(49:41):
six years than I could everhike back when I was in my 30s,
20s, 30s, 40s, because I do itall the time now.
I guess the lesson is doing it,just do it.
Yeah, the power of youth, rightLike your mid-20s.
Right, let's see what was it?
(50:02):
I was 28, I think when I wentto Nonger Parbat 28, I think
when I went to Nonger Parbat.
Rob (50:14):
How many from Camp 1 did you go above Camp 1?
I did not, so that was thehighest.
You made it on this trip,correct?
Did you spend any?
Mike (50:22):
nights there.
No, we spent a night at what wecalled the depot, the night at
what we called the depot.
So base camp was a mile or twobefore the foot of the mountain,
and so we put a depot right atthe foot of the mountain.
Rob (50:41):
Was that for avalancherists to be that further away, or
just?
Mike (50:45):
I'm not sure I mean I thought about that.
You know why back there.
Well, the water was a littleeasier to get, the ground was a
little bit flatter.
It wasn't flat, but it wasflatter, so a little bit easier
to set up camp.
It's where the Germans hadalways set up camp because they
had tried to climbNangarpurabhat.
They had a history of climbingNangarpurabhat back in the 30s
(51:08):
and then the 50s and into the60s, so it was always called the
German mountain.
Well, everest was the Britishmountain and Annapurna, which
was the first 8,000-meter peakclimb, was by the French, so
that was the French mountain.
And K2, the second highestmountain, was first climbed by
(51:30):
the Italians, so it often iscalled the Italian mountain.
So just from the first people,germany had a long history and
climbers from Germany of tryingto climb Nagra Perbat.
And yeah, I won't go into itbecause they lost a lot of
(51:50):
climbers, they lost a lot ofSherpers in the 30s.
There were two bad attempts inthe 30s with storms and bad
accidents.
So we would have been the first.
The Japanese would have beenthe first Japanese to make it to
(52:10):
the summit.
They did not make it to thesummit and the following year,
when the rest of the group went.
We would have been the firstAmericans up there, but we did
not as well.
Rob (52:23):
It's challenging to make it to the top of these mountains.
It's a lot of exposure.
It's challenging to make it tothe top of these mountains.
Mike (52:29):
It's a lot of exposure.
One of the problems with theHimalayas, more so than, let's
say, denali, because Denali isfar north, it's cold, it doesn't
avalanche as easily, avalancheseasily.
(52:55):
Himalayas are really on thesame elevation as central
florida on up, and it's a bigarc, so the eastern end of the
arc is probably remember when Iwas in nepal and I called you
and you said oh, you're the samelatitude as point de verde,
florida or something.
Rob (53:06):
Yeah, so, um the same latitude as Pointe Verde,
florida or something.
Yeah, yeah, so it's the monsoon.
The monsoons dominate theHimalayan weather and the
climbing seasons.
Mike (53:15):
Exactly, and it's wet and it makes the snow and it gets
warm.
It gets cold and it gets warm,so it makes avalanche.
They're much more avalancheprone, especially Nanga Parbat,
so that's what really makes themdangerous.
Rob (53:33):
And smaller climbing windows generally because of the
you have to go after winter butbefore the monsoons.
Now people climb year round,but they're the crazy ones.
Mike (53:43):
Yeah, the main climbing season in the Himalayas is
pre-monsoon, which was typicallyMay, and that's when most
people attempted, and thenOctober, november, before it
gets too cold.
Now I'm going back, not so muchas you say today, but as it was
before a whole mess of globalwarming, which has probably made
(54:05):
things a lot different.
Rob (54:18):
So then you start to come back, or is there any stories
from when you were up at basecamp that are worth recollecting
now?
Mike (54:26):
Well, one story is our first time we went from base
camp to the, to the depot,that's to the foot of the
mountain.
That two mile stretch, it tookus forever.
And then, after doing it two orthree times and we could almost
run it, we could almost run itwhich?
Rob (54:48):
is two miles at 15,000 feet , 16,000 feet elevation.
You adapt.
Let me check something butthat's also how, that's also why
current expeditions not thesuper serious ones who are
trying to do it as sprints, butthey'll.
You go to base camp.
You go up to camp one, spend acouple nights at camp one.
Go back to base camp.
Then you go base camp up tocamp one, up to camp two, couple
(55:08):
nights at camp one, go back tobase camp.
Then you go base camp up tocamp one, up to camp two, couple
nights at camp two and comeback and it's just this
continuing laddering up and down, up and down, up and down, to
slowly acclimatize, and thenfinally you work your way up and
from the top camp try to summitbecause typically the distance
between one camp and the otheris a beast more in elevation
it's more on elevation, yeah andfinding a good, a good place
(55:28):
for for the camp.
But you know, it's if base campsat at 15, which I think what
ever space camps about the sameheight, it's not that much
higher 14, 15, 16, right, it's alittle higher, a little higher,
but the top's at 28 andcurrently there are four camps.
There's base camp, camp one,two, three and four, and then
from four you go up to summitand then it's from 16 to 28 000.
(55:49):
So 12 000 feet every 3 000 feet, every four, three or four
thousand feet, you have a a campand how?
Mike (55:57):
how long do people typically stay at these base
camps?
Is it just like an overnightstop, or you're there just to
get acclimated to the weatherand let's go well?
there's.
There's a number of people thatstay at the base camp that are
just there to support theclimbing memory.
You know, not everybody in anexpedition may be a climber.
Sometimes they are especiallythe smaller ones.
But on bigger ones you'll havea health officer, you'll have
(56:20):
the cook, you'll have maybenowadays a radio operator or
something up to the satellitesup there, operator or something
up to the satellites up there.
I'm just looking here.
I see Camp 1 was at about 5,000meters, so that's 16,400 feet.
(56:42):
So that's Camp 1.
So base camp would have beenlower around 15,000 feet.
Rob (56:48):
All right, there's a lot more to the story, but I know
we're reaching a hard stop onthis episode today, but you'll
be back in October before youventure down to Patagonia at age
for more hiking, all right Ican stop it there then, and we
can continue on in a few months.
Mike (57:08):
Thank you so much, that was very interesting, and we can
continue on.
Erik (57:09):
Thank you so much In a few months.
Very interesting, yeah, yeah,truly, because I think about
like I'm from Miami and I go toColorado and I go upstairs and
I'm like trying to catch mybreath.
Mike (57:21):
I just think about higher than anywhere in Colorado, jess
and I went to the Red Rock towatch Old Dominion and we're
going upstairs and we're likewe're in pretty good shape here
and we were struggling.
We'd have to stop every now andthen at some of the foundations
because we just couldn't makeit up there.
So I can't imagine what it'slike to even just get the base
camp.
Erik (57:38):
For sure.
That's where the acclimationprocess is used too.
Rob (57:41):
I think the scale of some of the larger mountain ranges in
the world is just somethingthat's so tough to comprehend
until you're there.
I remember going the firsttimes to the Alps because the
Alps are from the base of theAlps to the top of the Alps is
so much more than anything inthe Rocky Mountains.
It's just growing up.
In the US we're used to theRocky Mountains being the
(58:01):
primary mountains that we seeand a lot of mountain ranges out
there are a lot bigger and it'sfrightening.
Mike (58:08):
Yeah, the top of the Alps is very similar to the top of
the Rockies, but the base islike 10,000 feet less than the
base of the Rockies, so it makesthem look almost Himalayan in
scale.
Rob (58:22):
Wow, All right, good stuff, good work.
Mike (58:29):
Thank you, thanks for work , thank you.
Erik (58:31):
Thanks for coming, thanks for being here.
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