March 3, 2023 • 36 mins
Adrian Ballinger is a British-American certified IFMGA/AMGA mountain guide, certified through the American Mountain Guides Association and a sponsored climber and skier.
Ballinger is the founder and CEO of Alpenglow Expeditions, and has been guiding full-time for 25 years. He has led over 150 international climbing expeditions on six continents, and made 18 successful summits of 8,000m peaks. He is known for pioneering the use of pre-acclimatization for commercial expeditions as early as 2012, which can cut the amount of time typically spent on an expedition in half.
Adrian is the only American to have made three successful ski descents of 8,000m peaks, including the first ski descent of Manaslu from its summit. He is also the fourth American to have summited both Mount Everest and K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen.
Ballinger is the founder and CEO of Alpenglow Expeditions, and has been guiding full-time for 25 years. He has led over 150 international climbing expeditions on six continents, and made 18 successful summits of 8,000m peaks. He is known for pioneering the use of pre-acclimatization for commercial expeditions as early as 2012, which can cut the amount of time typically spent on an expedition in half.
Adrian is the only American to have made three successful ski descents of 8,000m peaks, including the first ski descent of Manaslu from its summit. He is also the fourth American to have summited both Mount Everest and K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen.
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(00:10):
Hey, everybody is Mark Pattison.I'm back again with another great episode of
Finding Your Summit, all about peopleovercome a diversity and finding their way.
Before we get there, let's jumpto my website www dot Mark Pattison NFL
dot com. I've got two hundredand seventy five plus episodes of podcast with
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(00:34):
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especially me number two. Continue toraise money for Higher Ground, an
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it goes directly to Higher Ground,and that's where the funds go to
(00:54):
help others. And finally, youcan see the award winning Emmy Award winning
Best Picture film Searching for the Summitthe NFL did on that particular link,
and it will take you to NFLthree sixty and you can watch the thirty
thirty minute doc of me going upand down Mount Everest and speaking to Mount
Everest. I want to bring onmy rockstar guest today. His name is
(01:19):
Adrian Ballinger. Adrian, how youdoing. I'm doing great. Thanks so
much for having me. Yeah.You know so, just as I was
saying a minute ago, and I'llsay it again. You know, I've
been more or less stalking year aroundthe globe for many years. It goes
back to some shows that you've beenon. You've been pretty visible. You're
good at what you do, andfor that, I've got mad respect on
the way you've gone about it,and that is being the CEO of Alp
(01:42):
and Glow Expeditions. You've guided onehundred and I'm sure it's over two hundred,
but a boatload of expeditions all overthe world, a lot of people
like me who are aspiring mountaineers thatwanted to learn the game and go places
that take a lot of grit anddetermination. You've done that multiple time to
get to that point, like,well, we'll lead up to all these
(02:02):
crazy expeditions and projects you've done,but like, where did that love of
the mountains come? I know thatyou're up in the Squaw Valley region Paradise
I think was what they call itnow, something like that, But what
what brought you originally? Where you'rethat backcountry ski guy, you're that mountain
climbic guy, You're that rock guythat just has that love to get out
(02:23):
in nature. Yeah. Yeah,it's a it's a great place that's stalled
now. I think it's not asuper traditional story. You know. I
didn't have an outdoorsy family or anythinglike that. I actually was born in
England. My family is from England, and we moved to the United States
to Massachusetts when I was six yearsold. My dad was on a two
(02:44):
year like contracted IBM at the time, in the you know, eighties,
and we moved to the US,and I think my family was just like,
well, people in America they gocamping, and they go fishing,
and they go hunting, and theygo outside. So like, we started
going outside, but we didn't havea clue. I remember, you know,
unbelievably miserable nights and like little triangularpop tents, like trying to cook
(03:07):
hot dogs and a fire in therain, and like, you know,
definitely not doing things the right way. At the same time, I loved
all sports, but I was arelatively mediocre athlete in the sports. I
played things like basketball, soccer,tennis, and I have four hard and
(03:27):
soul into these different sports, butI never you know, and I played
through high school and things like that, but I never found my place.
At the same time, I startedrock climbing and mountaineering through a family friend
of mine, really diving in moredeeply at about twelve years of age,
and that's when I finally like,these two things clicked. It's like,
it's an athletic pursuit. It's anathletic pursuit that, at least in my
(03:51):
way of practicing, it had ahuge component of like suffering to be successful.
And for whatever reason, my workethic and my said and what my
family had taught me like worked thatI started to have success in this pursuit
of big mountains, climbing them,skiing them, rock ice, kind of
all the disciplines and I just fellin love. And so you know,
(04:15):
ended up going to school at Georgetownin DC. I was meant to be
a doctor. That was my family'spath for me. I you know,
Pepco. I did go to school, I did graduate, but at the
same time, every free moment Ihad, I was outside climbing and skiing
and trying to cobble together money togo places. And as soon as I
graduated. I said I was takinga year off before going to med school
(04:35):
and I was twenty five years ago. Yeah, well, you know,
it's funny that you say this.Number one, you said you're from England.
I just had Kenton Cool on theon the pod last week, and
I'm sure you know didn't. He'sa good friend, He's a good dude.
Man. I really enjoyed it.And we were together at base camp
on evers with Garrett who I climbedwith, and he had kind of attached
(04:55):
his wagon onto Garrett's machine and sowe had fut chat. But then we
got you know, I had reallyengaging conversation last week, So that was
a lot of fun. Number twoyou said, Yeah. Number two,
you said you moved to Massachusetts andthen you went to school in Georgetown,
which of course is DC, andthere's not a whole lot of rock climbing
that I'm aware of a lot ofmountains, you know down there. I
(05:15):
guess you can go noise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I would.
I was expecting your answer to beColorado or even my home state of
Washington up there in Seattle with rainierand things like that that I'm sure you've
climbed, So okay, so youhave this love of climbing, you know.
When I grew up it was itwas really I was athletically um born
(05:38):
with some skills, more in footballin particular. And what's really helped me
life after football because you go offa cliff and it's one of these sports
where you can just continue to doum, you know, as long as
you want to do it. Imean, it's really a choice. As
long as you can physically get upand down the mountain, that you can
put yourself through that. And whatI've really enjoyed is the pain and suffering
(05:59):
which you just talked to about inclimbing, and the satisfaction with overcoming those
certain things that I had in theNFL in college football that I have found
the same thing on these big mountains. Every single one has been a challenge
in its own different ways, youknow, and sometimes you have it and
sometimes you don't, but at leastit provides the process of going through the
(06:21):
daily working out for a particular goaland planning it, putting it all together,
and hopefully you can actually achieve thosewhile meeting cool guys like you you
know along the way and everybody bringsa little something different to the table.
Let's transition now over to you started. Well, I guess we should really
(06:41):
transition over to when you're now.You know, you're loving climbing and hiking
on the weekends and this and thenice and rock. But now there's a
there's a twenty five years ago ismaybe the timeframe when you decided to actually
make this into a business, likethis is going to be your career.
What was that like and where wasyour first expedition? Yeah, well,
(07:03):
as you could probably imagine that thepath now looking back seems so clear.
Right at the time, it suddenlydidn't feel that way. But yeah,
So while going to school, Iended up with a mentor. His name
was Chris Warner, and he ownedthe Earth Treks climbing gyms. And you
also an outdoor You know Chris.I know Chris, he's been on the
(07:25):
pot. He's a great dude.No, I would love to listen to
that. So Chris was overseeing anoutdoor education leadership program at Georgetown in between
his expeditions. That's how he wasfunding his expeditions, before he built his
gyms, before he did any ofthat. And so I was a freshman
in college when I first went toSouth America with Chris to Ecuador and climb
(07:47):
Cota, POxy Comb, and Chimborazo, and that's when I saw people working
with Chris and Chris himself who weremaking a living. I mean, it
wasn't a pretty living, but theywere making a living by working in the
mountains and by guiding. And soI was seventeen years old, I was
rowing crew. You know, Iwas a good athlete, but then you
(08:07):
know, there was really this piecewhere it was like, oh, like
this is amazing, Like climbing thesetwenty thousand four peaks. It was the
first time I felt not only ofcourse, physically challenged, mentally challenged,
the decision making of risk that yousee up there on a team, and
then the emotional side of dealing withthis level of adversity and uncertainty and risk
(08:28):
of failure. All those pieces cametogether on that expedition. So again that
was very early. But essentially whenI graduated from school and took that year
off, I was like, Chris, can I work for you? I'll
do anything, And so I basicallybecame like the coffee boy for Chris Warner
around the world. And so whenit was like an intern on the trip
(08:48):
he was guiding and his personal trips, saw how the industry worked, saw
what mountain guides do, saw thepower of the experience with clients that could
be ad in the big mountains,these these teams that form and do really
difficult things with uncertain outcomes. Ijust loved that feeling and experience, and
(09:09):
so that really started my guiding career. I obviously didn't go back to medical
school, let that go and startedgrowing as a mountain guide while also trying
to climb and ski for myself.Yeah. No, that's a that's a
great story, and that's the wayyou do. You know, you don't
go from from little league football tothe NFL. There's there is progression,
(09:30):
and it's the same way that I'vedone in the mountain climbing. Really I
took this on growing up, growingup in Washington area and climbing Rainier and
other mountains like that. Around adiamond dozen, but really where you start
taking the next leap up and youknow, at tacking the seven summits and
doing it in a chronological order.Most people don't go to everage number one
because they don't have the skill setyou know to do that. Okay,
(09:52):
So you've you've been on eight thousanda bunch of them, you know,
twenty plus times, these eight thousandmeter peaks, which is something roughly over
twenty four thousand feet. There's there'sonly so many of them around the world
ever since the towels K two.You've burned on both of these. For
some reason, I'm thinking that thatyour past. When you've gone to Everest,
(10:13):
you've been going from the north side, which is the Tapet side controlled
by China, versus the side thatI went to or went on two years
ago, which is through Nepal.Is that right? Yeah, more or
less that's certainly right today. SoI've spent thirteen years guiding and climbing on
Everest since two thousand and eight.My first seven years from two thousand and
(10:39):
eight two thousand and fourteen were onthe south side, on the Nepal side,
So I've actually summited six times onthe south side. Really loved that
side of the mountain and had alot of my most formative experiences there.
By two and fourteen, I madethe decision that the south side of Everest,
the ice fall had become too dangerousfor my calculation. This is,
(11:05):
you know, challenging because I havea lot of respect for some of the
guys that run on that side ofthe mountain. But my calculation was there
was no way if you were anexpedition operator on the south side of the
mountain running teams and you were goingto do let's I'm going to do this
for twenty years, There's no wayI couldn't have fatalities on my teams of
mountain workers that might be mountain guidesor chirpa or porters or clients. But
(11:28):
I'm a little, actually truly lessconcerned when I look at my business of
the clients. I feel like you, as a client on a team can
take a look at the risk,recognize it and make a decision. I'm
willing to take that risk as anindividual, but the mountain workers, the
CHIPA and the mountain GUIDs and theporters, they have to do this work
financially, and I believe that leadsus as the expedition operators to make decisions
(11:52):
around workers safety, just like OSHAwould help us to do in the United
States. There is no OSHA inNepal. So doing that calculation and I
think it's played out over the lastten years, There's no way companies don't
have fatalities guiding the south side ofthe mountain, and I felt like I
couldn't ethically pulled on to that asan expedition leader, and so I moved
(12:13):
my operation to the north side intwo and fifteen. So since twenty fifteen,
I've now been on the north side, the Tibetan Chinese side of the
mountain. That has been a terribledecision financially and from a business perspective,
but it is absolutely a decision Istand behind and believe in for my company.
(12:35):
So you're you're staying. It's beena tough decision financially because my guess
is that China decides the opener shutdown Tibet on a whim's notice, so
you can be all ready to go. So that's that's probably one guess of
mine, and the other guests wouldjust be because a lot of people like
(12:56):
me want to experience at Kumai's Fall, what that is like going through Nepal
and not have that risk of Chinashutting down, you know, really the
gateway. But it seems like itwould be super fascinating to go into Tibete
I mean, who goes to Tabettebeside you? Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's it's this incredible side ofthe mountain. I mean interesting in terms
(13:16):
of the history of the mountain,right like in the nineteen twenties, the
early expeditions were all on the ChineseTibetan side of the mountain, and so
it's got a lot of history toit. It's a beautiful route, it's
a dramatically safer route for workers.There's very little ice fall, rock fall,
cravas hazard, avalanche hazard because youclimb a ridge the entire time,
(13:39):
so anything that falls falls away fromthe route was on the south side,
the Nepoly side, You're basically ina valley the whole time, so everything
that falls falls on top of theroots. And so yeah, it's the
side of the mountain that I love. But it has this large challenge,
just like you mentioned, which isthe uncertainty of what the Chinese government will
(14:03):
decide to do with Tibet and Everesteach year. Will they open will they
not? We often don't find itout until weeks before. So anyone who
choose to climb on that side takesa risk that their their expedition could be
canceled, and when you're putting alot of time and money and effort into
training for this big experience, thatit is a smaller subset of climbers who
(14:28):
are willing to take that risk.And the last three years have been a
great example of that, right Like, so, you know, the Nepal
side of the mountain was only closedin twenty twenty for COVID and was open
in twenty one and twenty two.The Chinese side of the mountain remains closed
to foreign climbers this spring, fouryears later. And while I, you
(14:48):
know, have some respect for someof the decision making the Chinese make in
terms of safety on their side ofthe mountain, and part of that has
been maintaining this closure, it's suddenlypainful. And I now have a group
of climbers who have been waiting sincetwenty twenty to climb the mountain um and
still haven't gotten to get there.Yeah, so you know, I got
(15:09):
i gotta tell you my perspective reallyquickly, And I'm gonna ask you a
question. When I was, whenI was when I summited. I was
one of the last guys to summiton May twenty third, twenty twenty one,
right, and when I got upthere, and you know, it's
pretty, it's it's pretty. It'spretty pointy, right, like it looks
like like a TP of a tentright at the summit, and the Chinese
(15:31):
had painted like or I can't rememberwhat it was, but like a red
right like you cannot enter right,So all the time and all those things
were on the Nepal one side,yeah, which was really interesting. And
twelve, I want to ask youyour experience with this. So you were
(15:52):
on this show, which is agreat show by the way, um Everest
Beyond the Limits with Russell Bryce andand I can't remember were you as a
guide on that experience or what wasyour role with that? Yeah, So
essentially Russell and I started working togetherin two thousand and seven on eight thousand
meter peaks. I would bring Americanclients through my company, alban Glow Expeditions,
but I worked under the infrastructure ofHimalayan Experience. Russell was the great
(16:15):
grandfather of Himalayan guiding, eight thousandmeter peak guiding, and so when I
started, i'd been running Albanglow mycompany for a number of years, had
a lot of clients that wanted togo to eight thousand meter peaks, but
I didn't want to pretend that Ijust knew how to do that. I
found the single best mentor in thegame, which was Russell Rice. So
we worked together from two thousand andseven to two twelve, and Russell was
(16:38):
the overall expedition leader but didn't leavebase camp. And then I was like
the climbing leader on the mountain.I was this young, fired up,
super you know, climber than lovedworking with the chopin and so I would
run things above base camp and Russewould run things from base camp. Yeah,
it was interesting because I'm spacing onthis name right now. But the
biker that was kind of the rebelof the group I'm talking about, Yeah,
(17:00):
Tim Medvets. Yeah Tim, Iknow Tim. And I was introduced
by Def McKay and who's the bassplayer, the founder of Guns and Roses,
and so he wanted to connect mefor you know, the climbing reasons
of the world. But you know, it's it really illustrated, and I'm
not sure how much that he reallyplayed that up in terms of being the
(17:21):
bad boy and I do what Iwant, but you just can't, you
know, non climbing. It's justlike, even though it's an individual sport,
when you get on these big boymountains like that, just like my
football days, it has to beteamwork. You have to be in coordination,
and you have to have a leader, and it has to be a
vertically integrated group. Otherwise the majorproblems and he just seemed like he kept
creating all kinds of havoc around that. One. I understand at Tim's a
(17:47):
friend. I wasn't on the initialDiscovery Channel show and two thousand eight that
Tim was on, but I methim after that and we ended up sharing
a couple of mountains together in likethe twenty tens, and I still,
you know, get to hang outwith him when I go to LA and
things like that. And I wouldsay Tim absolutely does understand and it is
(18:07):
actually an incredible team member, butalso has this very you know, fun
side story that I think gets playedup. But I think also the mountain
kind of what we were speaking about, I think the mountains have taught him
a lot of that. So thoseare early seasons on Everest with the Everest
Beyond the Limit show in like twentyand seven, two thousand and eight that
(18:29):
I wasn't on. I'm not surehe was the same team player that he
is today. And through his organizationthat he put together, the Heroes Project,
I believe mountains have a lot ofcapacity to change us if we let
them. I love that and Ithink you're right too. And again I
have nothing negative. It's just youknow, watching the show, getting know
(18:52):
him and watching the show and seeingthe way he was portrayed. Enough tick
a mountain. Um, I wantto ask you too about this. I've
seen you on TV a couple differenttimes, and you were part of the
City Bower project in twenty nineteen togo up and see if Mallory and Irvine
had actually been the first guys toclimb the mountain. I think it was
(19:15):
nineteen twenty four, right, Andso it was televised around that and what
came first of all, what sidewere you going up? I don't know
what side that was. And thennumber two is what was your at the
end of the day? What wasyour discovery? Yeah? So yeah,
it was a Discovery Channel TV showlooking for the camera essentially the Mallory and
(19:36):
Irvine might have had. So Mallory'sbody was found by Conrad Anchor and a
team. I think in the latenineties early two thousands his part and he
didn't have a camera on him.So ever since people have been looking for
Irvine's body, hoping he might havethe camera on him, and if the
film could be developed, maybe wecould see if there's a summit photo to
see if they were actually the posedthe summit in nineteen twenty four, like
(19:59):
you said, and so I wasone of the members, one of the
searchers on the team. It wasa wild expedition for me because we actually
ended up spending eight nights living aboveeight thousand meters, so in what we
call the death zone above twenty sixthousand feet. You know how difficult life
is up there. We did havesupplemental oxygen, but eight nights living and
(20:21):
searching over two rotations was the longestI've ever spent up there. I feel
like I learned so much, Isuffered so hard. In the end,
we found many bodies. That's asad reality of Everest, something that had
never been found before because we weren'tjust climbing on the normal route. We
were setting up anchors and then repellingdown into nooks and crannies where a body
(20:44):
might be found. So we founda number, and that's a sobering reality
of the mountain. We never foundIrvine. We never found anything, So
what did I learn? You know, I think Irvine's body might be gone.
This was a very extensive search thatbuilt on decades of previous searches.
(21:06):
I think he might have fallen tothe glacier and therefore the body, you
know, has sort of been movedby the glacier and probably destroyed. I
don't think we're gonna find him,and I don't think we'll ever solve the
mystery of whether they were first,and I think that's kind of a special
thing. I don't think we needto take away the first from Tenzing,
(21:27):
Norgay and Hillary. But I thinkwhat this team did thirty years earlier in
the twenties, whether they topped outor not, it'll always be a great
mystery. It is. It wasso far before their time, ahead of
their time in mountaineering. I thinkit's really compelling. It is, And
you know, for those of people, I mean, you and I are
(21:48):
kind of walked out because we godo those things right, but most people
aren't that would be listening to thispod and and the thing that is really
interesting when you go back to nineteentwenty four and some of these, you
know, even nineteen fifth three.I mean you've got guys going up there
in tweed suits, right yep.And it's just like, this is basically
impossible. I mean after you know, I've got the full one piece thing,
and I've got all the equipment andthe minus four degree bags on stuff,
(22:11):
and they're in these canvas tents andthese other things that you would just
not in a million years if somebodysaid go do this, you do it.
I mean it's just so risky.And yet they took that on,
and that age of exploration, withthat level of risk was completely accepted and
even encouraged for like these these grandthings. It must have been an amazing
(22:37):
time. I think we're still ina discovery phase today. But the discoveries
were making a mountineering. They're morenuanced, right, They're like, can
we push our bodies faster? Canwe put one expedition after another after another
back to back to make things moredifficult? Can we find slightly different variations
of roots that are more difficult.There is still exploration happening, but it
(23:00):
is so different than that era.And then to your point, like with
the weather forecast. I think thetwo biggest things that have changed in mountaineering
a weather forecasting and communications, andthose two things now allow us to do
It's almost unethical to get caught ina storm high on a big mountain now
because we have such good technology aroundus to be able to descend to a
(23:22):
safe spot on the mountain where itsBack then there was just absolutely nothing.
Of course, you were going toget stuck in a storm for weeks at
twenty five thousand feet and some peopleon your team were not going to survive.
It's so wild to consider the sportin that way. Yeah, and
just side note, when I madeit up on the south side, when
I made it up to Camp Three'syou know you've been up there twenty three
(23:45):
five. I was stuck in acyclone for three days and as you know,
that is no place you want tobe stuck, no place you want
to be stuck, even with thebest gear in the world. And yeah,
you know, it's a testament officethat you and the team you were
with was strong enough to withstand that. Right, Like when I think about
(24:06):
whether I'm off as often thinking likeyou know, at whatever that I want
to get the most people to thetop that I can safely, let's say,
and there are a group of peoplethat might be able to withstand a
three day cyclone and then continue tothe summit, there are others with that's
gonna go past all level of tolerance, right, And those are the decisions
(24:27):
that we as exhibition operators have toconstantly make. Yeah, we started twenty
four and ten of us made it. So there you go on that.
Okay, I want to I wantto switch mountains for a minute, and
again and again. You've been allover the him Lean. You're you're a
rock star when it comes to,you know, climbing these different places.
Um, I've always been fascinated.Although I don't want to climb this mountain
(24:47):
which with K two and I knowyou did it without those, And so
tell me about that experience for you, because you know, when I'm talking
at Vistas and other guys like thathave done even Garrett. You know,
it's just with one of things thatit's described as the steepness, which is
nonstoff from beginning to end, andwith that comes rockfall and and you know
(25:07):
all kinds of other elements that reallymake that that mountain a very dangerous mountain.
Yes, where to begin? Imean K two is so important to
me and to my personal journey,so kind of like you mentioned, I
sort of have two sides to mycareer now. So I spend a lot
of time as a mountain guide andrunning alph and Glow expeditions to help others
(25:33):
to achieve, you know, summitingmountains that they dream of. But then
I also am fortunate enough to havesponsors and be able to do personal expeditions,
climb things that I'm very climb andski things that I'm really passionate about,
and K two really fed fell inthat category. I have a very
conservative mindset with alph and Glow expeditionsand guiding. It's why I don't guide
(25:56):
the south side of Mount Everest.I also don't guide too. I've been
asked for decades. It's another oneof those in the column. It would
be good for the financial health ofAlphaGo expeditions, but I don't think for
me my risk tolerance like the kindof like uncontrollable risks or hazards of K
two, like you mentioned, therock fall, of the ice fall,
(26:17):
the avalanches are too great for meto be able to feel like I can
consistently guide the mountain year after yearand not have fatalities, so I don't
guide it. But I have kindof this long history of the mountain.
I mean, obviously I've spent thirteenseasons on Mount Everest, the tallest mountain
the world. When I summited MountEverest without supplemental oxygen in twenty seventeen,
(26:37):
I was really proud of it,but I was also like, how much
of that is just almost like knowingthe playing field right? I was in
my home court, like I knewevery inch of that mountain in and now,
So I kind of questioned, like, could I do the same thing
on a mountain I didn't know aswell? And K two is the second
tallest, it's obviously much more technical, has all these hazards we're talking about.
(26:59):
And I have history because I wasinvited on a team in two thousand
and eight to go to K two. Ultimately didn't go because I was already
guiding Mona Slew and Everest and itwould have meant six months away from family
and my business and things like that. So I didn't go. And one
of the person who invited me,Ralph, was killed in an avalanche under
(27:19):
the bottleneck, along with I thinkeleven other climbers, and so at that
point two eight, I think itwas I was like, all right,
that's not my mountain, and Ifocused on these other mountains and these other
things, but it always was thereis something I'd like to go and see
for myself. So I decided togo in twenty nineteen because I had a
(27:40):
great team of any bour teammates,people I really trusted, felt like I
was at my peak kind of athleticallyand in my like risk management mindset.
Went had a really challenging expedition,but was fortunate enough to stand on top
without supplemental oxygen along with my teammatecall up Rezum, and we climbed something
(28:03):
called the chest and root, notthe normal root on the mountain, the
normal roots, a bruisy root.We climbed a slightly more difficult route,
but a route that I felt hadless hazard, less less random hazard,
more hazard from your climbing ability,less hazard from rock ball and ice fall.
And so we climb the chess Androute, and I mean, it
will always stand as a peak I'mso proud of. But I can also
(28:26):
tell you I definitely will not goback listeners who don't know all he's got
some called the bottleneck, basically underfoot tall by hanging ice band that is
constantly dropping pieces of ice off ofit since it's overhanging. Those ice chunks
can be anywhere from basketball size tosmall tahoe cabin size, and they are
(28:51):
funneled straight through something called essentially thebottleneck. Imagine a tight gully where everything
that falls has to come down,and all the roots on the mountain meat
and go through that gully. Soat twenty six thousand feet were on oxygen
for somewhere around one and a halflike two hours, or without oxygen for
somewhere like five or six hours.You are in this gully underneath the bottlenecks
(29:14):
or act and if something falls,there's absolutely no way to avoid your survive.
So you are purely playing Russian roulette. The more times you go through
it, the more time, themore likely you are to get the bullet.
And those six hours under that icefall for me were pretty intense.
I don't have a couple of sentencesto wrap it up, but I definitely
(29:37):
question i'd made the right decision beingthere. I feel so fortunate to get
through it. I will never gothrough it again. Yeah, I mean,
I don't blame you. And that'smainly the reason why that, you
know, that has not been oneof those mountains for me that I feel
like I need to go. Doyou know, Like you said, you've
used his words several times about therisk tolerance, and that's just not a
risk tolerant mountain that I feel likewhere I'm at life, I need to
(30:00):
go, do you know? So? Okay? Uh skiing summits m macalu.
I think that was the one.Hillary Nelson had been on this pot
a year ago, and you knowshe passed away. When she's skied.
I believe she'd come around, she'dsummoned it, and now she was starting
her way down on skis What isthat like for you? Going down?
(30:21):
Because you know so many these summits. When you get up into them,
you know, it's not usually likeit's a bluebird Well it might be a
bluebird day, but the ice conditionsin the mountain, you know, it's
just you're going down on a sheetof ice. And to me, I
live in some valley and I'm inbackcountry all the time, and so I
know it well, and I justyou know, when it gets down to
(30:41):
minus ten and these other you know, super cold and it turns into that
sheet of ice. I just don'tlike to be on it because, again
rist to honors of just breaking something. I'm not worried about falling to my
death on those mountains. But youknow, for you, where is that
love come of when you decided toclimb a mountain? You're going to either
climate or ski it. Yeah,so I you know, going all the
(31:02):
way back to the beginning, whenI moved to Massachusetts as six year old,
skiing was my sport. Like ifyou had asked me as a six
to eighteen year old, you canbe in a like Olympic athlete in any
sport that you play, And likeI said, I did all of them,
skiing would have been the one.It was the one I ployed hod
and soul into it. I couldwalk to this little ski hill called Mount
What Chu Sit, eight hundred feetof vertical but had night skiing, So
(31:26):
if I finished my homework, myparents would let me walk to Mount what
You Sit and ski. So I'dfinished my homework by four or five and
go from five to eight and skiand skipped dinner. And that was my
life for all those years, andI was never good enough to go pro
as a skier in any of thesports, as you probably know, like
I started too late, right thekids start at age two, you know,
(31:47):
and they're in Olympic training programs byyou know, the time they're teenagers
and things like that. But Iloved and I had kids who are going
to the Olympics and things like thatthat I skied with Junior Olympics, Olympics
and so a lot of great likepeople around. So I became a good
skier, but never good enough togo pro. But so skiing was still
always my personal passion all through college, in those early climbing years, and
(32:08):
when I was working with Chris Warner, skiing was where I was putting all
my personal energy while climbing and guiding, And eventually in twenty eleven the two
finally kind of came together where Ihad a private client of Russier and former
World Cup downhill skier who wanted toclimb and ski big mountains and started hiring
(32:30):
me on a private basis and westarted going around the world skiing big mountains
and it was an unbelievable skier,but not a climber, right so I
kind of brought in the climbing side. We started skiing these peak together.
So in twenty eleven we made thefirst ski descent of Manaslu, the eighth
tallest mountain of the world, andthat's the mountain that Hillary died on last
year. And we also made attemptson Makulu, the fifth tallest mountain in
(32:53):
the world. We tried ski everest, we tried to see load say,
we're all over so really, yeah, it's just been this thing where I
finally was able to combine my skillsat high out suit in the amount of
time I spended high out suit onbig mountains with my passion for skiing,
and eventually I became a pretty confidentskier with sponsors and things like that,
(33:14):
and those are really the personal expeditionsI chase. After there is a lot
of hazard, of course, andyou've heard my wrist tolerance, and I
backed off from a lot more bigeight thousand meter peaks that I try to
ski than that I succeed on Makaloo, for instance, the mountain I skied
this spring and made the post skidescent of the fifth tallest mountain in the
world. I had tried twice beforeand backed off of because of hazard before
(33:37):
finally coming together this spring crazy crazy. So we are in the beginning of
twenty twenty three and again you orthe CEO, the founder of Up and
Glow Expeditions take people all over theworld if that's what they want to do.
You've been on a lot of them. What does twenty twenty three look
like for you right now? Like? What are you trying to continue to
(33:59):
challenge yourself? Something that that like, how do you continue to evolve?
Um? So, so glad youasked that question. I don't know if
you know what my answer is goingto be. I don't I don't know
that this is this bland question.Well, eleven weeks ago my son Arrow
was born, so eleven week oldwith Emily Harrington, my wife, and
(34:23):
uh so, right now my challengeand my it feels like an expedition.
I don't know if you have kids. I feel like I'm on an expedition
of like not sleeping enough, beingexhausted, still needing to try to make
good decisions, dealing with epic longbirds of bottom punctuated by like moments of
sheer terror, Like this is myexpedition, that's not saying. Alfan Loard
(34:47):
got so many fun things planned.I'm still planning on going to some mountains
this year. But my heart andsoul right now is in this kid.
Yeah, I get everything you justdescribed reminds me of that of that crazy
storm where I was in at atCamp three on Everest. Have I do
have to I'm on the other sideof the fence. I've got two girls,
twenty four and twenty six, andso you know, you just stick
(35:12):
your your baby's head out the door, a little water in sunshine. You
know, they'll grow pretty quick andyou'll blink. Yeah, I know.
It's congrats though on that. Soit's a wonderful experience and journey. Yeah
yeah, yeah. So where canpeople find you? Yeah, the best
way to find me well post ofall we've mentioned it, but Alph and
Glow Expeditions is my guide company.You know, we're lucky enough. We
(35:36):
take up a six thousand people ayear out now climbing and skiing, much
of that in California, loads ofthat. It's introductory level for people who
have never tried before, and wego all the way through to the seventh
Summit's guiding Everest and also a lotof mountains and maybe people haven't heard of
before, but mountains that we asguides and climbers or skiers are passionate about.
(35:57):
So alph and Glow expeditions on Instagramor on the website. And then
I personally am at Adrian Ballinger onall the social networks. I love it.
I love it. Hey listen,I like I said in the very
beginning, I've been chasing it aroundnow for a couple of years and following
your progress and what you've been doing. And I always like to connect with
the fellow mountaineer and guys that havea zest for life, and you certainly
(36:21):
fall into that to that bucket.So I appreciate coming on and look forward
to running this podcast. Well,thanks so much, congratulations on all you've
accomplished, and look forward to youthe next mountain that you find yourself on.
All right, all right, wellthere is the one, the only,
Adrian Ballinger. Thank you so much.
Hey, everybody is Mark Pattison.I'm back again with another great episode of
Finding Your Summit, all about peopleovercome a diversity and finding their way.
Before we get there, let's jumpto my website www dot Mark Pattison NFL
dot com. I've got two hundredand seventy five plus episodes of podcast with
really inspirational people doing amazing things.Anytime you go to apple Love, the
(00:34):
ratings in review helps elevate the show'spopularity. We all need to be inspired,
especially me number two. Continue toraise money for Higher Ground, an
extension with familiar as ever, mydaughter is epilepsy. So helping others is
what it's all about, paying itforward. And so anybody goes that link,
it goes directly to Higher Ground,and that's where the funds go to
(00:54):
help others. And finally, youcan see the award winning Emmy Award winning
Best Picture film Searching for the Summitthe NFL did on that particular link,
and it will take you to NFLthree sixty and you can watch the thirty
thirty minute doc of me going upand down Mount Everest and speaking to Mount
Everest. I want to bring onmy rockstar guest today. His name is
(01:19):
Adrian Ballinger. Adrian, how youdoing. I'm doing great. Thanks so
much for having me. Yeah.You know so, just as I was
saying a minute ago, and I'llsay it again. You know, I've
been more or less stalking year aroundthe globe for many years. It goes
back to some shows that you've beenon. You've been pretty visible. You're
good at what you do, andfor that, I've got mad respect on
the way you've gone about it,and that is being the CEO of Alp
(01:42):
and Glow Expeditions. You've guided onehundred and I'm sure it's over two hundred,
but a boatload of expeditions all overthe world, a lot of people
like me who are aspiring mountaineers thatwanted to learn the game and go places
that take a lot of grit anddetermination. You've done that multiple time to
get to that point, like,well, we'll lead up to all these
(02:02):
crazy expeditions and projects you've done,but like, where did that love of
the mountains come? I know thatyou're up in the Squaw Valley region Paradise
I think was what they call itnow, something like that, But what
what brought you originally? Where you'rethat backcountry ski guy, you're that mountain
climbic guy, You're that rock guythat just has that love to get out
(02:23):
in nature. Yeah. Yeah,it's a it's a great place that's stalled
now. I think it's not asuper traditional story. You know. I
didn't have an outdoorsy family or anythinglike that. I actually was born in
England. My family is from England, and we moved to the United States
to Massachusetts when I was six yearsold. My dad was on a two
(02:44):
year like contracted IBM at the time, in the you know, eighties,
and we moved to the US,and I think my family was just like,
well, people in America they gocamping, and they go fishing,
and they go hunting, and theygo outside. So like, we started
going outside, but we didn't havea clue. I remember, you know,
unbelievably miserable nights and like little triangularpop tents, like trying to cook
(03:07):
hot dogs and a fire in therain, and like, you know,
definitely not doing things the right way. At the same time, I loved
all sports, but I was arelatively mediocre athlete in the sports. I
played things like basketball, soccer,tennis, and I have four hard and
(03:27):
soul into these different sports, butI never you know, and I played
through high school and things like that, but I never found my place.
At the same time, I startedrock climbing and mountaineering through a family friend
of mine, really diving in moredeeply at about twelve years of age,
and that's when I finally like,these two things clicked. It's like,
it's an athletic pursuit. It's anathletic pursuit that, at least in my
(03:51):
way of practicing, it had ahuge component of like suffering to be successful.
And for whatever reason, my workethic and my said and what my
family had taught me like worked thatI started to have success in this pursuit
of big mountains, climbing them,skiing them, rock ice, kind of
all the disciplines and I just fellin love. And so you know,
(04:15):
ended up going to school at Georgetownin DC. I was meant to be
a doctor. That was my family'spath for me. I you know,
Pepco. I did go to school, I did graduate, but at the
same time, every free moment Ihad, I was outside climbing and skiing
and trying to cobble together money togo places. And as soon as I
graduated. I said I was takinga year off before going to med school
(04:35):
and I was twenty five years ago. Yeah, well, you know,
it's funny that you say this.Number one, you said you're from England.
I just had Kenton Cool on theon the pod last week, and
I'm sure you know didn't. He'sa good friend, He's a good dude.
Man. I really enjoyed it.And we were together at base camp
on evers with Garrett who I climbedwith, and he had kind of attached
(04:55):
his wagon onto Garrett's machine and sowe had fut chat. But then we
got you know, I had reallyengaging conversation last week, So that was
a lot of fun. Number twoyou said, Yeah. Number two,
you said you moved to Massachusetts andthen you went to school in Georgetown,
which of course is DC, andthere's not a whole lot of rock climbing
that I'm aware of a lot ofmountains, you know down there. I
(05:15):
guess you can go noise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I would.
I was expecting your answer to beColorado or even my home state of
Washington up there in Seattle with rainierand things like that that I'm sure you've
climbed, So okay, so youhave this love of climbing, you know.
When I grew up it was itwas really I was athletically um born
(05:38):
with some skills, more in footballin particular. And what's really helped me
life after football because you go offa cliff and it's one of these sports
where you can just continue to doum, you know, as long as
you want to do it. Imean, it's really a choice. As
long as you can physically get upand down the mountain, that you can
put yourself through that. And whatI've really enjoyed is the pain and suffering
(05:59):
which you just talked to about inclimbing, and the satisfaction with overcoming those
certain things that I had in theNFL in college football that I have found
the same thing on these big mountains. Every single one has been a challenge
in its own different ways, youknow, and sometimes you have it and
sometimes you don't, but at leastit provides the process of going through the
(06:21):
daily working out for a particular goaland planning it, putting it all together,
and hopefully you can actually achieve thosewhile meeting cool guys like you you
know along the way and everybody bringsa little something different to the table.
Let's transition now over to you started. Well, I guess we should really
(06:41):
transition over to when you're now.You know, you're loving climbing and hiking
on the weekends and this and thenice and rock. But now there's a
there's a twenty five years ago ismaybe the timeframe when you decided to actually
make this into a business, likethis is going to be your career.
What was that like and where wasyour first expedition? Yeah, well,
(07:03):
as you could probably imagine that thepath now looking back seems so clear.
Right at the time, it suddenlydidn't feel that way. But yeah,
So while going to school, Iended up with a mentor. His name
was Chris Warner, and he ownedthe Earth Treks climbing gyms. And you
also an outdoor You know Chris.I know Chris, he's been on the
(07:25):
pot. He's a great dude.No, I would love to listen to
that. So Chris was overseeing anoutdoor education leadership program at Georgetown in between
his expeditions. That's how he wasfunding his expeditions, before he built his
gyms, before he did any ofthat. And so I was a freshman
in college when I first went toSouth America with Chris to Ecuador and climb
(07:47):
Cota, POxy Comb, and Chimborazo, and that's when I saw people working
with Chris and Chris himself who weremaking a living. I mean, it
wasn't a pretty living, but theywere making a living by working in the
mountains and by guiding. And soI was seventeen years old, I was
rowing crew. You know, Iwas a good athlete, but then you
(08:07):
know, there was really this piecewhere it was like, oh, like
this is amazing, Like climbing thesetwenty thousand four peaks. It was the
first time I felt not only ofcourse, physically challenged, mentally challenged,
the decision making of risk that yousee up there on a team, and
then the emotional side of dealing withthis level of adversity and uncertainty and risk
(08:28):
of failure. All those pieces cametogether on that expedition. So again that
was very early. But essentially whenI graduated from school and took that year
off, I was like, Chris, can I work for you? I'll
do anything, And so I basicallybecame like the coffee boy for Chris Warner
around the world. And so whenit was like an intern on the trip
(08:48):
he was guiding and his personal trips, saw how the industry worked, saw
what mountain guides do, saw thepower of the experience with clients that could
be ad in the big mountains,these these teams that form and do really
difficult things with uncertain outcomes. Ijust loved that feeling and experience, and
(09:09):
so that really started my guiding career. I obviously didn't go back to medical
school, let that go and startedgrowing as a mountain guide while also trying
to climb and ski for myself.Yeah. No, that's a that's a
great story, and that's the wayyou do. You know, you don't
go from from little league football tothe NFL. There's there is progression,
(09:30):
and it's the same way that I'vedone in the mountain climbing. Really I
took this on growing up, growingup in Washington area and climbing Rainier and
other mountains like that. Around adiamond dozen, but really where you start
taking the next leap up and youknow, at tacking the seven summits and
doing it in a chronological order.Most people don't go to everage number one
because they don't have the skill setyou know to do that. Okay,
(09:52):
So you've you've been on eight thousanda bunch of them, you know,
twenty plus times, these eight thousandmeter peaks, which is something roughly over
twenty four thousand feet. There's there'sonly so many of them around the world
ever since the towels K two.You've burned on both of these. For
some reason, I'm thinking that thatyour past. When you've gone to Everest,
(10:13):
you've been going from the north side, which is the Tapet side controlled
by China, versus the side thatI went to or went on two years
ago, which is through Nepal.Is that right? Yeah, more or
less that's certainly right today. SoI've spent thirteen years guiding and climbing on
Everest since two thousand and eight.My first seven years from two thousand and
(10:39):
eight two thousand and fourteen were onthe south side, on the Nepal side,
So I've actually summited six times onthe south side. Really loved that
side of the mountain and had alot of my most formative experiences there.
By two and fourteen, I madethe decision that the south side of Everest,
the ice fall had become too dangerousfor my calculation. This is,
(11:05):
you know, challenging because I havea lot of respect for some of the
guys that run on that side ofthe mountain. But my calculation was there
was no way if you were anexpedition operator on the south side of the
mountain running teams and you were goingto do let's I'm going to do this
for twenty years, There's no wayI couldn't have fatalities on my teams of
mountain workers that might be mountain guidesor chirpa or porters or clients. But
(11:28):
I'm a little, actually truly lessconcerned when I look at my business of
the clients. I feel like you, as a client on a team can
take a look at the risk,recognize it and make a decision. I'm
willing to take that risk as anindividual, but the mountain workers, the
CHIPA and the mountain GUIDs and theporters, they have to do this work
financially, and I believe that leadsus as the expedition operators to make decisions
(11:52):
around workers safety, just like OSHAwould help us to do in the United
States. There is no OSHA inNepal. So doing that calculation and I
think it's played out over the lastten years, There's no way companies don't
have fatalities guiding the south side ofthe mountain, and I felt like I
couldn't ethically pulled on to that asan expedition leader, and so I moved
(12:13):
my operation to the north side intwo and fifteen. So since twenty fifteen,
I've now been on the north side, the Tibetan Chinese side of the
mountain. That has been a terribledecision financially and from a business perspective,
but it is absolutely a decision Istand behind and believe in for my company.
(12:35):
So you're you're staying. It's beena tough decision financially because my guess
is that China decides the opener shutdown Tibet on a whim's notice, so
you can be all ready to go. So that's that's probably one guess of
mine, and the other guests wouldjust be because a lot of people like
(12:56):
me want to experience at Kumai's Fall, what that is like going through Nepal
and not have that risk of Chinashutting down, you know, really the
gateway. But it seems like itwould be super fascinating to go into Tibete
I mean, who goes to Tabettebeside you? Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's it's this incredible side ofthe mountain. I mean interesting in terms
(13:16):
of the history of the mountain,right like in the nineteen twenties, the
early expeditions were all on the ChineseTibetan side of the mountain, and so
it's got a lot of history toit. It's a beautiful route, it's
a dramatically safer route for workers.There's very little ice fall, rock fall,
cravas hazard, avalanche hazard because youclimb a ridge the entire time,
(13:39):
so anything that falls falls away fromthe route was on the south side,
the Nepoly side, You're basically ina valley the whole time, so everything
that falls falls on top of theroots. And so yeah, it's the
side of the mountain that I love. But it has this large challenge,
just like you mentioned, which isthe uncertainty of what the Chinese government will
(14:03):
decide to do with Tibet and Everesteach year. Will they open will they
not? We often don't find itout until weeks before. So anyone who
choose to climb on that side takesa risk that their their expedition could be
canceled, and when you're putting alot of time and money and effort into
training for this big experience, thatit is a smaller subset of climbers who
(14:28):
are willing to take that risk.And the last three years have been a
great example of that, right Like, so, you know, the Nepal
side of the mountain was only closedin twenty twenty for COVID and was open
in twenty one and twenty two.The Chinese side of the mountain remains closed
to foreign climbers this spring, fouryears later. And while I, you
(14:48):
know, have some respect for someof the decision making the Chinese make in
terms of safety on their side ofthe mountain, and part of that has
been maintaining this closure, it's suddenlypainful. And I now have a group
of climbers who have been waiting sincetwenty twenty to climb the mountain um and
still haven't gotten to get there.Yeah, so you know, I got
(15:09):
i gotta tell you my perspective reallyquickly, And I'm gonna ask you a
question. When I was, whenI was when I summited. I was
one of the last guys to summiton May twenty third, twenty twenty one,
right, and when I got upthere, and you know, it's
pretty, it's it's pretty. It'spretty pointy, right, like it looks
like like a TP of a tentright at the summit, and the Chinese
(15:31):
had painted like or I can't rememberwhat it was, but like a red
right like you cannot enter right,So all the time and all those things
were on the Nepal one side,yeah, which was really interesting. And
twelve, I want to ask youyour experience with this. So you were
(15:52):
on this show, which is agreat show by the way, um Everest
Beyond the Limits with Russell Bryce andand I can't remember were you as a
guide on that experience or what wasyour role with that? Yeah, So
essentially Russell and I started working togetherin two thousand and seven on eight thousand
meter peaks. I would bring Americanclients through my company, alban Glow Expeditions,
but I worked under the infrastructure ofHimalayan Experience. Russell was the great
(16:15):
grandfather of Himalayan guiding, eight thousandmeter peak guiding, and so when I
started, i'd been running Albanglow mycompany for a number of years, had
a lot of clients that wanted togo to eight thousand meter peaks, but
I didn't want to pretend that Ijust knew how to do that. I
found the single best mentor in thegame, which was Russell Rice. So
we worked together from two thousand andseven to two twelve, and Russell was
(16:38):
the overall expedition leader but didn't leavebase camp. And then I was like
the climbing leader on the mountain.I was this young, fired up,
super you know, climber than lovedworking with the chopin and so I would
run things above base camp and Russewould run things from base camp. Yeah,
it was interesting because I'm spacing onthis name right now. But the
biker that was kind of the rebelof the group I'm talking about, Yeah,
(17:00):
Tim Medvets. Yeah Tim, Iknow Tim. And I was introduced
by Def McKay and who's the bassplayer, the founder of Guns and Roses,
and so he wanted to connect mefor you know, the climbing reasons
of the world. But you know, it's it really illustrated, and I'm
not sure how much that he reallyplayed that up in terms of being the
(17:21):
bad boy and I do what Iwant, but you just can't, you
know, non climbing. It's justlike, even though it's an individual sport,
when you get on these big boymountains like that, just like my
football days, it has to beteamwork. You have to be in coordination,
and you have to have a leader, and it has to be a
vertically integrated group. Otherwise the majorproblems and he just seemed like he kept
creating all kinds of havoc around that. One. I understand at Tim's a
(17:47):
friend. I wasn't on the initialDiscovery Channel show and two thousand eight that
Tim was on, but I methim after that and we ended up sharing
a couple of mountains together in likethe twenty tens, and I still,
you know, get to hang outwith him when I go to LA and
things like that. And I wouldsay Tim absolutely does understand and it is
(18:07):
actually an incredible team member, butalso has this very you know, fun
side story that I think gets playedup. But I think also the mountain
kind of what we were speaking about, I think the mountains have taught him
a lot of that. So thoseare early seasons on Everest with the Everest
Beyond the Limit show in like twentyand seven, two thousand and eight that
(18:29):
I wasn't on. I'm not surehe was the same team player that he
is today. And through his organizationthat he put together, the Heroes Project,
I believe mountains have a lot ofcapacity to change us if we let
them. I love that and Ithink you're right too. And again I
have nothing negative. It's just youknow, watching the show, getting know
(18:52):
him and watching the show and seeingthe way he was portrayed. Enough tick
a mountain. Um, I wantto ask you too about this. I've
seen you on TV a couple differenttimes, and you were part of the
City Bower project in twenty nineteen togo up and see if Mallory and Irvine
had actually been the first guys toclimb the mountain. I think it was
(19:15):
nineteen twenty four, right, Andso it was televised around that and what
came first of all, what sidewere you going up? I don't know
what side that was. And thennumber two is what was your at the
end of the day? What wasyour discovery? Yeah? So yeah,
it was a Discovery Channel TV showlooking for the camera essentially the Mallory and
(19:36):
Irvine might have had. So Mallory'sbody was found by Conrad Anchor and a
team. I think in the latenineties early two thousands his part and he
didn't have a camera on him.So ever since people have been looking for
Irvine's body, hoping he might havethe camera on him, and if the
film could be developed, maybe wecould see if there's a summit photo to
see if they were actually the posedthe summit in nineteen twenty four, like
(19:59):
you said, and so I wasone of the members, one of the
searchers on the team. It wasa wild expedition for me because we actually
ended up spending eight nights living aboveeight thousand meters, so in what we
call the death zone above twenty sixthousand feet. You know how difficult life
is up there. We did havesupplemental oxygen, but eight nights living and
(20:21):
searching over two rotations was the longestI've ever spent up there. I feel
like I learned so much, Isuffered so hard. In the end,
we found many bodies. That's asad reality of Everest, something that had
never been found before because we weren'tjust climbing on the normal route. We
were setting up anchors and then repellingdown into nooks and crannies where a body
(20:44):
might be found. So we founda number, and that's a sobering reality
of the mountain. We never foundIrvine. We never found anything, So
what did I learn? You know, I think Irvine's body might be gone.
This was a very extensive search thatbuilt on decades of previous searches.
(21:06):
I think he might have fallen tothe glacier and therefore the body, you
know, has sort of been movedby the glacier and probably destroyed. I
don't think we're gonna find him,and I don't think we'll ever solve the
mystery of whether they were first,and I think that's kind of a special
thing. I don't think we needto take away the first from Tenzing,
(21:27):
Norgay and Hillary. But I thinkwhat this team did thirty years earlier in
the twenties, whether they topped outor not, it'll always be a great
mystery. It is. It wasso far before their time, ahead of
their time in mountaineering. I thinkit's really compelling. It is, And
you know, for those of people, I mean, you and I are
(21:48):
kind of walked out because we godo those things right, but most people
aren't that would be listening to thispod and and the thing that is really
interesting when you go back to nineteentwenty four and some of these, you
know, even nineteen fifth three.I mean you've got guys going up there
in tweed suits, right yep.And it's just like, this is basically
impossible. I mean after you know, I've got the full one piece thing,
and I've got all the equipment andthe minus four degree bags on stuff,
(22:11):
and they're in these canvas tents andthese other things that you would just
not in a million years if somebodysaid go do this, you do it.
I mean it's just so risky.And yet they took that on,
and that age of exploration, withthat level of risk was completely accepted and
even encouraged for like these these grandthings. It must have been an amazing
(22:37):
time. I think we're still ina discovery phase today. But the discoveries
were making a mountineering. They're morenuanced, right, They're like, can
we push our bodies faster? Canwe put one expedition after another after another
back to back to make things moredifficult? Can we find slightly different variations
of roots that are more difficult.There is still exploration happening, but it
(23:00):
is so different than that era.And then to your point, like with
the weather forecast. I think thetwo biggest things that have changed in mountaineering
a weather forecasting and communications, andthose two things now allow us to do
It's almost unethical to get caught ina storm high on a big mountain now
because we have such good technology aroundus to be able to descend to a
(23:22):
safe spot on the mountain where itsBack then there was just absolutely nothing.
Of course, you were going toget stuck in a storm for weeks at
twenty five thousand feet and some peopleon your team were not going to survive.
It's so wild to consider the sportin that way. Yeah, and
just side note, when I madeit up on the south side, when
I made it up to Camp Three'syou know you've been up there twenty three
(23:45):
five. I was stuck in acyclone for three days and as you know,
that is no place you want tobe stuck, no place you want
to be stuck, even with thebest gear in the world. And yeah,
you know, it's a testament officethat you and the team you were
with was strong enough to withstand that. Right, Like when I think about
(24:06):
whether I'm off as often thinking likeyou know, at whatever that I want
to get the most people to thetop that I can safely, let's say,
and there are a group of peoplethat might be able to withstand a
three day cyclone and then continue tothe summit, there are others with that's
gonna go past all level of tolerance, right, And those are the decisions
(24:27):
that we as exhibition operators have toconstantly make. Yeah, we started twenty
four and ten of us made it. So there you go on that.
Okay, I want to I wantto switch mountains for a minute, and
again and again. You've been allover the him Lean. You're you're a
rock star when it comes to,you know, climbing these different places.
Um, I've always been fascinated.Although I don't want to climb this mountain
(24:47):
which with K two and I knowyou did it without those, And so
tell me about that experience for you, because you know, when I'm talking
at Vistas and other guys like thathave done even Garrett. You know,
it's just with one of things thatit's described as the steepness, which is
nonstoff from beginning to end, andwith that comes rockfall and and you know
(25:07):
all kinds of other elements that reallymake that that mountain a very dangerous mountain.
Yes, where to begin? Imean K two is so important to
me and to my personal journey,so kind of like you mentioned, I
sort of have two sides to mycareer now. So I spend a lot
of time as a mountain guide andrunning alph and Glow expeditions to help others
(25:33):
to achieve, you know, summitingmountains that they dream of. But then
I also am fortunate enough to havesponsors and be able to do personal expeditions,
climb things that I'm very climb andski things that I'm really passionate about,
and K two really fed fell inthat category. I have a very
conservative mindset with alph and Glow expeditionsand guiding. It's why I don't guide
(25:56):
the south side of Mount Everest.I also don't guide too. I've been
asked for decades. It's another oneof those in the column. It would
be good for the financial health ofAlphaGo expeditions, but I don't think for
me my risk tolerance like the kindof like uncontrollable risks or hazards of K
two, like you mentioned, therock fall, of the ice fall,
(26:17):
the avalanches are too great for meto be able to feel like I can
consistently guide the mountain year after yearand not have fatalities, so I don't
guide it. But I have kindof this long history of the mountain.
I mean, obviously I've spent thirteenseasons on Mount Everest, the tallest mountain
the world. When I summited MountEverest without supplemental oxygen in twenty seventeen,
(26:37):
I was really proud of it,but I was also like, how much
of that is just almost like knowingthe playing field right? I was in
my home court, like I knewevery inch of that mountain in and now,
So I kind of questioned, like, could I do the same thing
on a mountain I didn't know aswell? And K two is the second
tallest, it's obviously much more technical, has all these hazards we're talking about.
(26:59):
And I have history because I wasinvited on a team in two thousand
and eight to go to K two. Ultimately didn't go because I was already
guiding Mona Slew and Everest and itwould have meant six months away from family
and my business and things like that. So I didn't go. And one
of the person who invited me,Ralph, was killed in an avalanche under
(27:19):
the bottleneck, along with I thinkeleven other climbers, and so at that
point two eight, I think itwas I was like, all right,
that's not my mountain, and Ifocused on these other mountains and these other
things, but it always was thereis something I'd like to go and see
for myself. So I decided togo in twenty nineteen because I had a
(27:40):
great team of any bour teammates,people I really trusted, felt like I
was at my peak kind of athleticallyand in my like risk management mindset.
Went had a really challenging expedition,but was fortunate enough to stand on top
without supplemental oxygen along with my teammatecall up Rezum, and we climbed something
(28:03):
called the chest and root, notthe normal root on the mountain, the
normal roots, a bruisy root.We climbed a slightly more difficult route,
but a route that I felt hadless hazard, less less random hazard,
more hazard from your climbing ability,less hazard from rock ball and ice fall.
And so we climb the chess Androute, and I mean, it
will always stand as a peak I'mso proud of. But I can also
(28:26):
tell you I definitely will not goback listeners who don't know all he's got
some called the bottleneck, basically underfoot tall by hanging ice band that is
constantly dropping pieces of ice off ofit since it's overhanging. Those ice chunks
can be anywhere from basketball size tosmall tahoe cabin size, and they are
(28:51):
funneled straight through something called essentially thebottleneck. Imagine a tight gully where everything
that falls has to come down,and all the roots on the mountain meat
and go through that gully. Soat twenty six thousand feet were on oxygen
for somewhere around one and a halflike two hours, or without oxygen for
somewhere like five or six hours.You are in this gully underneath the bottlenecks
(29:14):
or act and if something falls,there's absolutely no way to avoid your survive.
So you are purely playing Russian roulette. The more times you go through
it, the more time, themore likely you are to get the bullet.
And those six hours under that icefall for me were pretty intense.
I don't have a couple of sentencesto wrap it up, but I definitely
(29:37):
question i'd made the right decision beingthere. I feel so fortunate to get
through it. I will never gothrough it again. Yeah, I mean,
I don't blame you. And that'smainly the reason why that, you
know, that has not been oneof those mountains for me that I feel
like I need to go. Doyou know, Like you said, you've
used his words several times about therisk tolerance, and that's just not a
risk tolerant mountain that I feel likewhere I'm at life, I need to
(30:00):
go, do you know? So? Okay? Uh skiing summits m macalu.
I think that was the one.Hillary Nelson had been on this pot
a year ago, and you knowshe passed away. When she's skied.
I believe she'd come around, she'dsummoned it, and now she was starting
her way down on skis What isthat like for you? Going down?
(30:21):
Because you know so many these summits. When you get up into them,
you know, it's not usually likeit's a bluebird Well it might be a
bluebird day, but the ice conditionsin the mountain, you know, it's
just you're going down on a sheetof ice. And to me, I
live in some valley and I'm inbackcountry all the time, and so I
know it well, and I justyou know, when it gets down to
(30:41):
minus ten and these other you know, super cold and it turns into that
sheet of ice. I just don'tlike to be on it because, again
rist to honors of just breaking something. I'm not worried about falling to my
death on those mountains. But youknow, for you, where is that
love come of when you decided toclimb a mountain? You're going to either
climate or ski it. Yeah,so I you know, going all the
(31:02):
way back to the beginning, whenI moved to Massachusetts as six year old,
skiing was my sport. Like ifyou had asked me as a six
to eighteen year old, you canbe in a like Olympic athlete in any
sport that you play, And likeI said, I did all of them,
skiing would have been the one.It was the one I ployed hod
and soul into it. I couldwalk to this little ski hill called Mount
What Chu Sit, eight hundred feetof vertical but had night skiing, So
(31:26):
if I finished my homework, myparents would let me walk to Mount what
You Sit and ski. So I'dfinished my homework by four or five and
go from five to eight and skiand skipped dinner. And that was my
life for all those years, andI was never good enough to go pro
as a skier in any of thesports, as you probably know, like
I started too late, right thekids start at age two, you know,
(31:47):
and they're in Olympic training programs byyou know, the time they're teenagers
and things like that. But Iloved and I had kids who are going
to the Olympics and things like thatthat I skied with Junior Olympics, Olympics
and so a lot of great likepeople around. So I became a good
skier, but never good enough togo pro. But so skiing was still
always my personal passion all through college, in those early climbing years, and
(32:08):
when I was working with Chris Warner, skiing was where I was putting all
my personal energy while climbing and guiding, And eventually in twenty eleven the two
finally kind of came together where Ihad a private client of Russier and former
World Cup downhill skier who wanted toclimb and ski big mountains and started hiring
(32:30):
me on a private basis and westarted going around the world skiing big mountains
and it was an unbelievable skier,but not a climber, right so I
kind of brought in the climbing side. We started skiing these peak together.
So in twenty eleven we made thefirst ski descent of Manaslu, the eighth
tallest mountain of the world, andthat's the mountain that Hillary died on last
year. And we also made attemptson Makulu, the fifth tallest mountain in
(32:53):
the world. We tried ski everest, we tried to see load say,
we're all over so really, yeah, it's just been this thing where I
finally was able to combine my skillsat high out suit in the amount of
time I spended high out suit onbig mountains with my passion for skiing,
and eventually I became a pretty confidentskier with sponsors and things like that,
(33:14):
and those are really the personal expeditionsI chase. After there is a lot
of hazard, of course, andyou've heard my wrist tolerance, and I
backed off from a lot more bigeight thousand meter peaks that I try to
ski than that I succeed on Makaloo, for instance, the mountain I skied
this spring and made the post skidescent of the fifth tallest mountain in the
world. I had tried twice beforeand backed off of because of hazard before
(33:37):
finally coming together this spring crazy crazy. So we are in the beginning of
twenty twenty three and again you orthe CEO, the founder of Up and
Glow Expeditions take people all over theworld if that's what they want to do.
You've been on a lot of them. What does twenty twenty three look
like for you right now? Like? What are you trying to continue to
(33:59):
challenge yourself? Something that that like, how do you continue to evolve?
Um? So, so glad youasked that question. I don't know if
you know what my answer is goingto be. I don't I don't know
that this is this bland question.Well, eleven weeks ago my son Arrow
was born, so eleven week oldwith Emily Harrington, my wife, and
(34:23):
uh so, right now my challengeand my it feels like an expedition.
I don't know if you have kids. I feel like I'm on an expedition
of like not sleeping enough, beingexhausted, still needing to try to make
good decisions, dealing with epic longbirds of bottom punctuated by like moments of
sheer terror, Like this is myexpedition, that's not saying. Alfan Loard
(34:47):
got so many fun things planned.I'm still planning on going to some mountains
this year. But my heart andsoul right now is in this kid.
Yeah, I get everything you justdescribed reminds me of that of that crazy
storm where I was in at atCamp three on Everest. Have I do
have to I'm on the other sideof the fence. I've got two girls,
twenty four and twenty six, andso you know, you just stick
(35:12):
your your baby's head out the door, a little water in sunshine. You
know, they'll grow pretty quick andyou'll blink. Yeah, I know.
It's congrats though on that. Soit's a wonderful experience and journey. Yeah
yeah, yeah. So where canpeople find you? Yeah, the best
way to find me well post ofall we've mentioned it, but Alph and
Glow Expeditions is my guide company.You know, we're lucky enough. We
(35:36):
take up a six thousand people ayear out now climbing and skiing, much
of that in California, loads ofthat. It's introductory level for people who
have never tried before, and wego all the way through to the seventh
Summit's guiding Everest and also a lotof mountains and maybe people haven't heard of
before, but mountains that we asguides and climbers or skiers are passionate about.
(35:57):
So alph and Glow expeditions on Instagramor on the website. And then
I personally am at Adrian Ballinger onall the social networks. I love it.
I love it. Hey listen,I like I said in the very
beginning, I've been chasing it aroundnow for a couple of years and following
your progress and what you've been doing. And I always like to connect with
the fellow mountaineer and guys that havea zest for life, and you certainly
(36:21):
fall into that to that bucket.So I appreciate coming on and look forward
to running this podcast. Well,thanks so much, congratulations on all you've
accomplished, and look forward to youthe next mountain that you find yourself on.
All right, all right, wellthere is the one, the only,
Adrian Ballinger. Thank you so much.
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