52: Big wall climbing, real-life survival and accidental comedy with Andy Kirkpatrick

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Okay, everybody, that was anadvert. I have no idea what it
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If you become a supporter of theshow, then you can magically make
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to all the exclusive extra content.Hello everybody, and welcome back for another

(00:25):
episode of Modern Outdoor Survival. Wehave a guest this week, or say
a guest. This was more ofan opportunity for me because the other human
on this podcast is a guy calledAndy Kirkpatrick. So Andy is a British
mountaineer. He is an author,best selling author, motivational speaker and all

(00:52):
round interesting character. That pause wasthere, I suppose because I and it's
difficult to describe this, but mycareer such as it was in the outdoors
started in the mid two thousands.Really, I've been climbing and doing stuff
in the outdoors in the years beforethat, but it was only I really

(01:15):
started taking it seriously as a careeroption from about I don't know, two
thousand and four, two thousand andfive onwards. And it was around about
that time that Andy really started tocome to a prominence. So around the
mid two thousands he was known forclimbing big walls, very vertical sheets of

(01:38):
rock, things over a thousand metershigh or thereabouts, things like the Troll
Wall in Norway or El Capitan,stuff like that, the sort of thing
where it's less about athleticism and it'smore about siege tactics and suffering and being
able to hack away with effort atthis ascent over hours and hours and hours

(02:06):
or days in some cases. Sohe was becoming famous for that, but
he was also really becoming known inBritish mountaineering circles for his talk. So
it's been the standard for authors togo and do sort of in person events
around that, around the UK oraround Europe or wherever when they have a

(02:30):
book to plug, and Andy's stuffwas different to that. Normally, you
just get the author up on thestage and he or she will have a
PowerPoint and some photos and they'll say, oh, yes, I did this,
I did this, and this bitwas in the book, and this
bit and the anti brave Andy's stuffwas. It was like stand up comedy

(02:50):
and it was a combination of real, down to earth expression about what he
was doing and what these places meantto him and how he achieved it,
combined with not sort of a workingclass ethic, But it was obvious that

(03:10):
this wasn't a public schoolboy who hadhad every opportunity in life and had the
opportunity then to go off and bea professional explorer without getting a real job.
This was a guy with severe dyslexiathat he talks about in the books
and in those talks, and whoisn't you know it doesn't You don't look

(03:34):
at him and think that is ahoned natural athlete. You look at him
and go, that's Andy lives downthe road. That's just a normal looking
guy. But when you look atwhat he has done, and I do
urge you to go to his websiteor go and look him up and see
just all these amazing outdoor things he'sdone, it he breaks the mold in

(03:55):
that respect. He's also somebody whohas been inspirational to me, not just
because of the outdoor stuff, butbecause of the way he's gone about doing
things for himself. I didn't bringthis up in the episode because it would
be weird too, but it wasAndy and following his stuff and following his

(04:16):
post and what he was writing about, what he was talking about that first
put me onto the idea that youdidn't have to go through somebody else to
learn to build a website, orto create content or to write. If
you could learn how to do thosemechanics, how to do those very basic
things yourself, then you could reachan audience yourself directly. And looking back

(04:42):
on it, he effectively helped buildmy business, even though he didn't realize
it. So this was a reallyspecial episode for me. And this is
a longer intro than normal and anyonewho's listening for the outdoor Survival content probably
I switched off by now, butdeuced say with us. This wasn't really
an interview because I just let Andytalk and he can keep He can talk

(05:04):
for a long time because he hasa hell of a lot to say and
he has done a hell of alot. But he has an interesting take
on things and hopefully that really comesacross in this episode. And we carried
on talking for about two hours afterwe were recorded, about all sorts of
things. And this is outside ofour normal content, But if you like

(05:27):
everything else we do, I thinkyou'll really like this. And I do
urge you to go and look upwhat Andy has done and his doing and
his writing, and go and tryand find one of his books, one
of his best selling books. We'vetalked about them, I think in episodes
before, particularly one called Down,which is basically the manual for how to

(05:49):
descend, how to descend a mountain, a cliff face, whatever you want
to talk about. So this isa rambling intro, and I'm going to
shut the hell up now and justgo to the episode. But please do
listen to this one. I thinkyou'll enjoy it. So I've got this

(06:12):
is our third interaction. Now yoursand mine properly, because like the email
setting up, this podcast doesn't count. The first interaction was I reckon about
two thousand and eight and you cameto North Wales to do us on a
speaking tour and you came to climbdidno on the coast and you did one
of your It was like the mymater told me that there's this climber,

(06:34):
is this mental climber who is likea stand up comedian. We doesn't talk.
It's not just a slide show withhere's me climbing a thing. Here's
me climbing a thing. It islike a stand up comedy tour, so
I went along to that and itwas one of those there's a thing that
happens with towns that are near anoutdoor center, because when a mountaineer or

(06:57):
someone outdoors it comes to do atalk, everyone gets out the oldest down
jackets that are covered in bits ofduct tape and things, not the brand
new, shiny one or a normalcoat. They get there, Oh yeah,
I've been somewhere and done something downjackets and they all wear that to
go to that event, and younever see that coat anywhere else. So
that was the first interaction I sawyou there and we had about three seconds

(07:18):
of talking afterwards. The second wasI did a review for UK Climbing for
some trousers or something, and there'sa photo of me wearing the trousers in
the review, and you commented saying, hey, it's it's good that they're
finally getting someone with a proper sizedbody on to do gear reviews, which

(07:40):
you know has stayed with me asa man of gentle size, and now
this is now. So this ismy third interaction with you, and it's
not the greatest opening to a podcast, but yeah, it's not meant to
be funny. That's that I alwaystell people. It's kind of you know,
you don't like I did a Iwent climbing once with What's your man?

(08:01):
Um? Who does? He doesTV programs where he goes away with
somebody Ed Burns, the comedian EdBurns, and we went we went climbing
together. The ideas we had togo climbing together and then we were going
to do like a comedy routine likea festival, which is a kind of

(08:22):
bizarre because he had some sort ofoutdoor I think he maybe wrote for like
Trail magazine or somebody. So someonesaid, why did we get Ed Burns
and Andy Kettpatrick to go climbing together? So we spent this like romantic weekend
together in North Wales And the biggestproblem was he didn't understand anything I was
saying because of my accent. Sowe were climbing. Is it Cluith or

(08:43):
whatever it is? That thing they'resnowed that big CHOSSI pile of chos.
I think it's like a thousand footlong route. I don't think I've actually
been climbing before, which only foundout at the end. And as as
we're so, I just said I'llstart climbing. When the rope goes tight,
you start climbing as well. SoI started. I just said,
I remember we started through a waterfall. It was like this big green sponge

(09:07):
and I just started up this greensponge with water coming over it. And
then the rope went tighten head startedcoming up and I kept I kept saying
to him, it's not far tothe summit, and he was like,
there's something what. I was like, it's not far to the summer.
Like what's she talking about? Whatsummer anyway? So um, So I
think we should make a TV problemcalled the Seven Summits. So um.

(09:31):
But there was one point quite nearthe top where we he was climbing up.
I'm sure you've done some rock someclimbing. This is one. This
is like grass climbing, wasn't reallyrock climbing. So we were climb I
was climbing. I got to thetop and there wasn't a beelis. I
just like sat on the top withthe rope. I was like holding onto
the rope like there was no waythis guy's going to fall off this Like

(09:52):
it's impossible. You have to wantto throw yourself off. And I was
like just pulling the rope up throughmy hands, and I'm pulling the rope
at pulling. He meets a ropeand suddenly the ropes started going out instead
of going instead of going up coming, it was going out. I was
like, I was like, Iwas like ed ed ed, and I
was like shouted ed and the ropesgoing out and out. And what happened

(10:13):
As he was climbing up, therope got caught on a spike of rock
somehow, So as he was climbingup, the rope was pulling downwards around
this spike of rock. So ashe you know, when he when he
climbed ten feet, he was goingto fall twenty feet, and when he
climbed fifty feet, he was goingto fall like a hundred feet. And
he suddenly realized what had happened,you know, he suddenly had this terror

(10:35):
of just realizing he was basically freesoloing like Alex Honold's style up this chelsea
pile of grass. And he thought, I thought maybe I should untie the
rope, you know, and lethim dangle fall down and then but anywhere.
So luckily he managed to climb overto the rope going up and he
flicked it off and suddenly I gotall this slack and pulled him up anywhere.

(10:56):
So so he climbed up, andI think we did. I think
we did. We did Bristly Rate, not Bristly Ridge. We did the
Snowden Horseshoe the next day, justbecause that's it's there for on crib Gork.
But again he didn't I didn't realizehe hadn't really done a lot of
scrambling. And there was one bitwhere he was he thought he was going

(11:16):
to fall to his death and herealized the last thing he was going to
shout was Andy, and people wouldquestion who this Andy character was, like
why didn't write shout for his wifeor something? So um So anyways,
so that night I had to doa talk somewhere in a climbing wall for
the Matter Rescue. So we rusheddown and we kind of rushed in there

(11:39):
and we almost had a lot ofclimbing gear on basically, and there's all
these climbers they're waiting. So soI did my talk and afterwards Ed eds
like a professional comedian, like successfulcomedian, and he's like, oh Andy,
can I give you some pointers?Like I've noticed that when you say
something really funny, everyone's laughing.You just keep talking, you don't stop
and give people pause to laugh.And and he's giving all these pointers about

(12:01):
being, you know, to befunnier, and I was like, I
was like, it's not ed.It's not meant to be funny, Like
I'm just I'm just telling this story. It's like kind of serious, and
everyone keeps putting me off by laughingall the time, and it's you know,
it's not meant to be funny.So then we end up coming to
this festival. So Edard worked outall this material, you know, he
had like like cards with all thewith all his material for the for our

(12:26):
from Our Adventure. And I'd justbeen I'd just had some massive thing where
I've just been to Venice. Iwon an award in Venice for a book
like a translation, and I thinkI had to work on the Friday night
at the Kendall Fun Festival. ThenI had to be in Venice on Saturday

(12:46):
afternoon to get this award, otherwiseI won't get the money. It was
like a you know, like youcan have the award, but you have
to be here otherwise not going togive you know, we're going to give
you, you know, some money, and then I have you back on
the Sunday to do this thing withEd. So it was so it was
a mad I think I went Fridaynight. I got in my car,
drove all the way to East MidlandsAirport, slept in my car. I

(13:07):
was like driving there was in sucha rush that I was trying to wee
into a plastic bottle and like wasjust pouring it all off of myself.
Get to the airport, get onthis plane, thinking of Wei and being
a total state. I arrived justthinking it's going to be a load of
climbers who are going to give methis award. But it was actually in
the like a Michelin starred restaurant inVenice, and it was like it was

(13:30):
like they were not like the Brits. It was like, you know,
like it was a massive deal.And there was only three people are winning
awards, and the other two werethese old Italian academics, and then there
was me, and everyone looked likethere was like a hundred judges in tuxedos,
and there was a translator who wasdressing like a ball gown, and

(13:50):
I was there with my jeans coveredin Wii and stinking of sweat and just
looking at Absolute Mac a crazy person. And then these and each of us
had to get up and say,uh, say say something to the judges.
And what I realized was as theysaid, I'd won two thousand euros,
which I was absolutely skinned at thetimes. That was great, But

(14:11):
on the night the judges would decidewho was who have these three books that
won this prize, was that,you know, it was a total winner.
Would would get like I think itwas eight eight thousand euros or something.
So I was like, I didn'trealize this anyway. And I was
like I need to catch him aplane back as well, so I hope
this is not going to take toolong. So I had to go and
each of these old men got upendto give this speech, and they were

(14:33):
so emotional, like yeah dad,the Gunda lad have any CEO and they
and everyone was like like in tearsand they were so emotional, these guys
till it giving their their their youknow speech about the book. And I
got up and I had no ideawhat I was going to say. And
I was like hello there, hi, and the woman was like hello Bonjo.
No, you know, you know, retardio and and I was like,

(14:56):
um, like until until the ageof nineteen and never had garlic.
And that was and or being ingladiatorial compass, and so everyone was like
the woman was like hekkay. Andso it was. And it was eventually
the speeches are all done out theway, and then each of the judge
had to each judge had to comeand castro vote for which was the best

(15:20):
of the three books. So thisbook of mine was the trans Italian translation
of Psychovertical, which had nothing todo with In fact, the publisher got
in touch me recently and was like, oh, we'd like to republish Psychovertical.
I was like, well, henever paid me for the previous version,
so why not. So um.So they were all casting, it

(15:41):
was, and it was like sothe casting things with a big box and
this the woman was like picking themout at the end like and it was
like, oh, Gondela the hysteria. And there was then that this little
marker would move along like a raceand he was like the psychothetical and the
psychotical and he ended up winning thisthis prize. So I think on the
Friday almost had no money whatsoever.And then I suddenly had like a ten

(16:03):
thousand yeards or something, which wasgreat, and then they were like and
then they were like, oh,now we will go through into the Michelin
Star restaurant. And I was like, I can't. I have to get
the plane back. I have toget on the plane in like two hours.
And they give me this big awardand I was like, I can't,
I can't take it. So I'vegot you know, I'm getting luggage
and they said you must sign yourbook. So I was like sitting there

(16:25):
signing these books and realizing how smellyI was everything else, and this most
attractive man you've ever seen in yourlife kind of came up and he was
looked like Italians look amazing, noteven like homeless Italians look you know,
look like anyway, So he cameup and I was like, oh,
I'm really sorry, really sorry aboutthe way I look. I'm just such
a mess. And he was like, no, Endy, you are free.

(16:48):
So I always I was thinking aboutthat. Anyways, right arrive back
arrived back as somehow managed to getback to the Kendall Film Festival for this
thing. So um so Ed goesup and Ed's got some really good jokes,
like he has this joke that dehydratedfood taste, like, you know,
taste awful, So he got hishimself for deydraator so he could make

(17:11):
his own food that tasted awful instead. And and then it was then it
was my turn, and I gotup and I was just telling the story
of going to this film festival andall that kind of stuff, and it
was kind of it was probably asequally as funny as Eds, but he
had nothing to do with going climbing. And then what had happened. I
actually climbed El cap in Yosemite withmy daughter that year. So my daughter

(17:32):
was there, who was thirteen,and Ed was like, oh, why
don't we get your daughter up andyour daughter can say something as well,
because you're sitting in the audience.I was like, I'm gone then,
So so he got my daughter upand he was trying to interview and he's
like, Hella, do you realizehow amazing it is for like a twelve
years or thirteen year old girl toclimb El Capitan? And she's like,
yeah, of course I do.And anyways, basically, my daughter ended

(17:52):
up being much funnier within me thaneither me or ed with with no training,
no experience whatever. So it was, yes, it was I always
I always said to people, it'sbecause sometimes if if people think it's going
to be serious, like people are, they almost need like a laughter track,
you know, otherwise it don't quiteknow what to you know, how

(18:15):
how to take it. Is thisguy actually telling the truth here or um,
you know, like I often say, like I've got three kids,
I've got one of each, andyou know, and people like, it's
that's always funny in America because peopleactually that is actually, you know,
these these days, that's not funnyanymore. It's kind of normal. But
at the time it was kind offunny, like it used to be a

(18:37):
boy or girl and the hairdresser.That was like in the nineteen seventies,
that was the joke. But nowI've got four kids, so it doesn't
work anymore, that joke. It'sbalanced out now, wasn't it. Yeah,
So yes, I do apologize.If you thought you're going to go
and see this talk and it wasgoing to be like Chris Bonnington or Doug
Scott or me as or somebody,and it was and it was me,
So it was pretty good. Youweirdly have had an influence on my life

(19:00):
through business, my business development stuff. But I'm gonna talk about that later
because that's a weird thing to doat this part in the show. So
I'm going to ask the really boringquestion now. But yeah, my gets
into some topics of you were bornand then you're here. Now, at
some point you started doing something inthe outdoors. How did that come about?

(19:25):
Well, luckily or unluckily, Iwas born to My father was a
PTI physical training instructor in the Heactually went into the RIF as a storeman
because my granddad was in the army. And this is a very long story,

(19:45):
is that my like all my stories, is my granddad. In nineteen
seventeen, when he was almost likehe must have been like no, he
was already very young, his motherstarted beating up his father started being up
his mother, and he stepped into defend his mother. And because of
this both of them, his motherand father, threw him out the house.

(20:06):
And he had the only thing todo in nineteen seventeen, you know,
it was to join the army.So he went to join the army,
which is probably I think at thetime, someone turning up in nineteen
seventeen say I'd like to join thearmy. Was was, you know,
it's like someone's going to join theRussian Army now or something. It was
probably not a big thing. Sohe joined the army and he went to
Like I live in Ireland these days, so I tried to not tell the

(20:29):
story how my granddad was in theEast uprising, like he was one of
the people like driving a tank.I remember looking all these photographs when I
was a kid of like tanks,you know, because in the East in
the uprising, and he had liketanks in belt in Dublin. So he
wasn't then, and he was inEgypt, he was in Palestine, he
was in India. He had avery interest a lot, like the whole

(20:52):
lifetime career in the army. Andso when my dad was born, well
my dad grew up, you know, like you're going to go in the
army, going to go on themilitary anyway, and the best job you
can get is a storman because basicallyI think a storm and they don't really
do anything, just sort of youknow, could take things in and out,
and his prep, you know,the storman's don't get shot and things
so it's probably a you know,this is this is like a lifetime soldier's

(21:15):
idea of a perfect job. Youknow, it's like to be the storman.
Really so he m So, mydad went into the RAF as a
storman, and within a very shortspace of time he realized it was the
worst job in the in the world. It was the most boring job.
You know, you had to have, you know, learning about you know,
what kind of nut this is,and a you know, and it
wasn't like it wasn't the cool stuff. It wasn't like, you know,

(21:37):
combat fatigues and things. So mso he decided to become a PTI instead.
So he became a PTI. Sohe did all his running around with
a vest on and and all thatkind of stuff. And then for some
reason, I think at one placewhere he was a PTI, they had
a mountain rescue team r IF mattRescue. So people a lot of people

(21:59):
don't understand the original matter. Iguess the original mountain rescue we're like shepherds,
you know, the policeman would getthe farmers and the shepherds and they
go looking for people on the hills. And in the Second World War they
had a lot of crashes in themountains in the UK, so a lot
of people, a lot of pilotswould potentially have survived and died of exposure.

(22:19):
So the RF formed these Matter RescueTeams which were trained to go into
the mountains and rescue people or tosecure wreckage and things. A lot of
wreckage, a lot of dangerous thingson. So so my dad got involved
with the Matter Rescue Team and wasjust a young, you know, young

(22:41):
fit guy going the Matter Rescue Team. But he absolutely loved climbing, clark
climbing, mountaineering, all that kindof stuff, So I don't think he
really had any background in it.Like he grew up in hole where I'm
from, and it was like thisas flat as you can find, and
it's like you might, well,it's like linky but like less kind of
sexy, like in fact it youknow, the Humber Bridge joins Lincolnshire and

(23:03):
Humber Side, like two places nobodywants to go. That's why never worked
out, so U so yes,so he he then, through through being
a physical training instructor, he managedto go to just he went to Sardinia
with Nate with like natal kind ofthings and eventually end up being like an

(23:23):
outdoor instructure in the raf in Tawingin mid Wales and above near Aberdove,
like around that kind of area.So as a child, I remember like
growing up on these on in Tawing. That was that was my first kind
of really strong memories. And hewas like he'd be getting up at you
know, like five in the morningand taking all these young guys and throwing

(23:45):
them in the sea and then youknow, going walking and climbing. So
my probably one of my earliest memoriesof a class of them being on a
mountain was climbing cada Ridderus, probablyone I was like five years old.
Maybe I was either four or five, but maybe maybe I was, But
I remember going up there and rememberthe top when it was very misty,

(24:07):
and remember the when I don't knowif it's still there, like the shelter
on the top, and yeah,so I have a few few memories of
that kind of thing. Then,Unfortunately, I think it would be interesting
to have not interesting in your lifeif life continued how it was, how
things would how would things would turnout? But my mum and dad split

(24:27):
up when I was six, andmy mum took me and my brother and
sister back to Hull for some reason. And and and I spent like the
rest you know, a lot ofthe next part of my life in the
place where there was living in ablock of flats, the misery, mason
nets were cold, which were fairlyfairly grim. And I think that I

(24:52):
think the trauma you have the traumaof your parents splitting up, but I
think it was the trauma of beingwrenched away from so much freedom. And
like literally as as a small child, five year old, I could walk
out the front door and I couldjust walk out into the fields and the
sand dunes and all this kind ofstuff, Like I had this amazing about

(25:12):
of freedom. There was very likea few times I never came back and
they had to get the entire armycamp out looking for me. Remember the
days you can reallys to like drainlake, you know, put hooks in
lakes, all that kind of stuff, you know, But anyway, so
that you know you'd have them amum would you know, My mum would
be so pleased to see how stillalive when they found me. You're sleep
in a haystack or something that shewould like belt me so um so yeah,

(25:37):
So so the wrench from going fromthere to living in a in this
horrible block of flats where you've gotthe lists, the lift stink of you
know what, and the you know, it's just it was just kind of
grim. Really well it wasn't grim. It wasn't grim. It was it
was completely it was just really reallyit was so different. It's only like
I think my mum was really poshedfor some reason. I know why,

(25:57):
but you know, she's always goingon that we didn't have garden. We
just had a We just had ayou know, like a balcony, and
we didn't really you know, yourkids like adapt so easily to where,
you know, to to wherever youare. So also I often say that
all the green spaces where we lived, like the grass and the you know,
the bits of the school field withtrees in or uncut grass, they

(26:21):
kind of took on an amazing theywere kind of your wilderness. And also
just next where where where this was, was a place called Hezel Road where
all the fishermen used to live.All of you know, people went in
the fishing industry. So just beforewe got there, the fishing industry was
absolutely decimated and they basically bulldozed thiswhole community and moved them to some new

(26:45):
town on the outside of Hall.But there was still the remnants of this
one's huge fleet, you know RobinsonCrusow, he was supposed to have got
set off from Hall and there wasamazing history, but all of it was
kind of you know that thing thatthe end of the Second World War,
like two thirds of all people whowent in the countryside left. You know,
you had a whole like ecosystem andculture that just was vanished, like

(27:10):
in the space off months. Probablywell it's probably the same for whole so
was this um so. But weused to go playing in all these one
s mighty docks, so there waslike Victoria dark and Albert dark. And
as it was over time, Imean it was the way they were built.
They were built to last for athousand years with these huge you know,
you know all nate you know,metal bridges and everything else and cranes

(27:33):
and stuff. And it was usedto go swimming in the docks, which
looking back on it, it waslike, I don't know how we didn't
die of bubonic plague or something.You know, they'd be like dead animals,
like floating in the water and allthat kind of stuff. It was.
It was like hideous and we usedto walk along the I used to
get the train out o out ofhole and then walk along the river Humber,

(27:55):
which is the most polluted which wasthe most polluted river in Europe.
I think the time used to walkalong the mode and we were ten,
were in like Vietnam, you know, we think we've ten were a rambo
or something would be in the modelike up to our waist. And then
I remember once my brother once wehad an argument or something. So my
brother was probably like six or something, and we had an argument. He
stormed off to get the train home, but he wasn't allowed on the train

(28:17):
because he was so he looked likehe just you know, he's actually covered
in mud. So yeah, hehad to walk all the way home.
But it was yeah. So butbut whenever you see my dad, because
by now he's in the matter rescue. He ended up being like a team
leader at the time. He endedup being like quite a he was I
think it was one of the longestserving team leaders in the RAF Matt rescue

(28:37):
teams. And the reason was washe was actually a bit of a rebel.
He didn't really fit in the RAF, but he was actually very good
at that that one job. Likehe was too. He was too.
He was a bit of an Ithink it was a bit of an outsider,
you know, like those kind ofpeople like I've met. I've done
it quite a lot of work forthe military, and those kind of people
they either kind of leave or endup being going in the SAS or the

(29:02):
Special Forces because in those kind ofunits, they're the people that's where you
kind of need. Those weird people. You remember some I remember when I
was a kid, some guy itwas training, some friend of my dad's
was training to go in the SAS. Remember him sating. You know,
I had this, you know,because obsessed with the army and everything else,
was a kid and he was likeand he was like, the thing

(29:22):
is andy all he wanted someone whocan can live in a hedge. You
know, yeah, you know,you have this idea like sas to be
like abseiling in into buildings, butit really they want someone who can live
in a hedge. So so sobecause my dad was involved in the amount
of rescue every weekend to be goingout doing the training. So that kind

(29:42):
of cut into how which time hecould travel to hole and see us.
So in my in my memory wasa lot of space where there was no
Dad. But whenever he was there, he would try and do something outdoorsy,
so you know, going like hangingout of hanging you absetlling out of

(30:03):
a tree or or something or somethinglike that. And then when we've gone
to see him once a year inWales or in Scotland wherever he was living,
we've got we do the sort ofclimbing and stuff. So I think
I think that gave I know,you, like you need kind of meaning
and purpose in life, and Ithink that gave me some kind of like

(30:25):
I'm kind of different. Like it'slike it's horrible to say it, but
like a lot of the kids thatgrow up with there, they kind of
never escape from. They're almost likeborn like into a mold of who they
were going to be. They're kindof condemned. Really, it's very hard,
especially and it's to do. It'snot it's almost like your class,
your class. Like people will sayI'm obsessed with class, but your class

(30:48):
is like what you're born into.It doesn't it doesn't matter how rich you
are, you know, It's it'slike it's like kind of in, it's
in you forever. Really, You'relike Michael Caine. You know, Michael
Caine could be a multimillionaire, buthe's you know, and he's been rich
for sixty years or whatever, buthe's still he's still kind of that person
really, so um so. Yeah. But but this this outdoor stuff,

(31:11):
it made me feel like I havesomething I'm I'm not like everybody else.
And I think also being a childat a military child who had lived already
in several places before I got totow In, I think you have that
kind of outsider mentality as well.You know, you never ever feel like

(31:33):
you're quite fit in. And itwere looking back like a lot of my
friends at school, like Hole wasa place where one of the one of
the original places in the UK inthe seventies and eighties where they just dumped
a lot of refugees and so sobecause they were also outsiders, I end
up having the best friends were likea guy from lad from Lebanon, one

(31:53):
from Ghana, you know, likea seat guy. And and looking at
that was why because I felt more, you know, I felt more like
it's almost if you're an outsider,it's almost better's going to live somewhere where
you are completely alien to that place, because I don't know, it doesn't
make any sense. Like if you'resupported, if you're sport, I think

(32:15):
it's the same. Like if you'relike like an African American, you can
never feel like if you know,like I've met African Americans who are into
Africa and the and you know,and all the Africans are like, you're
American and they're like, no,I'm hob No, no, you're an
American, you know. So there'sthat weird thing about being like I think
being outside is a really really valuablething, but it's not. It's not.

(32:38):
It's not that easy sometimes. Soso yeah, so I think I
had this um, I had thisfeeling that this was something that was special,
that that I could do. Soso I left. I left school.
I didn't have any I didn't haveany qualifications. Like later on in
life, tend out I was likereally dyslexic. So it's only when my

(33:00):
when my brother was born, thatmy mother realized there was something kind of
wrong wrong with me. Like Icouldn't I couldn't like tie my shoelaces.
I couldn't. I was I wasin those days you just said you were
slow basically. So I kind ofstruggled with a lot of a lot of
things at school and I just schoolwas it was kind of a punishing,
you know, punishing thing. Youdidn't come out You kind of went in

(33:22):
okay, and you came out pretty, you know, pretty torn up by
it all. So I just wentI didn't go to university. I remember
kids would be like, don't doyour A levels, You'd be overqualified.
So this is this is the thingabout your Your class kind of holds you
in, keeps you. So soI just went on the doll and I
was living on the doll and Ihad this idea about joining the Marines for

(33:44):
some reason, and I think becausebecause I know I knew the Marines.
They went and did stuff in thein the in Norway and had some kind
of climbing related stuff, and Ididn't I really didn't understand. Like I
knew there was things like expedition,but I thought an expedition was like where
you you know, you're invited onit by Chris Bonnets, their Chris Bonnington

(34:06):
or something. I didn't realize itwas just a holiday, you know,
like anyone can go on an expeditionholiday like an expedition, it is a
holiday don't pay for. So itwas just so I didn't really understand like
the idea of like the idea nowyou just google it and you'd be like,
oh, I can get a jobin North Wales in an outdoor center,
or I can do a you know, some kind of qualification and I'll

(34:30):
get on my outdoor qualifications. ButI think in the nineties that just didn't
It just wasn't. I remember atKing's Lynn there was a course in King's
Lynn and it was something to dowith outdoor education, and remember thinking or
American do something like that. ButI couldn't have any air levels. I
just looked like I was an idiotbasically. So it was that was a
bit of a problem. So Iwas so I was living, I was

(34:50):
living on the door, I wasliving in a squat. Things were looking
that great. But then I metI met my few your ex wife and
and and who was doing like aFrench degree. And she she was the
one who said, oh, Ithink there's I think you're not as stupid
as you think you are. Youshould go and get yourself tested or something.

(35:14):
So I went and got a hadone of these dyslexia tests, and
the guy was like, after doingthis test, he was like, well,
you've got like ninety nine percent rightin your three dimensional problems stuff,
and you've got sixteen percent right inyour your numbers. So you're basically,
you know, you're you're an idiot. Basically you're you must be like a
savant or something. So um soyeah, So a joke that I said,

(35:37):
like, what what we're gonna dowith that skill? He says,
you need to get yourself a threedimensional problem solving jobs. I got a
job in a couble box factory,but I actually we ended up I moved
to London, and this was thiswas probably what what's so I did actually
go to the I did actually goto the Navy recruiting place and asked about
joining the Marines. But I toldhim I was I was going to London.

(36:00):
He said, when you get toLondon, going in London, you
know, go and ask in London. So I, um, so I
went to London and my my wife, future wife, she was gonna she
was trying to get a job asa she had a degree in French.
She was going to get a jobwith the government or something. So so
I was like, I don't whatskills ever got. And I was like,
well, I do know a bit. I've got like Lofty Wiseman's Survival

(36:22):
Handbook, you know, I knowof stuff like that. So there was
do you remember Survival Aids? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So Survival Aids
in London in Houston Station, theywere looking for shop assist, a shop
assistant. So I went, Idon't know, I don't even know you'd
find out in those days, likethere'd be no no internet or anything.

(36:43):
So anyway, so I found outthis job in the window. Yeah,
probably, so I went I wentdown to went to went went there and
the manager was this guy called Paul, who was probably quite clueless about the
outdoors, used to work from MarkSuspensers. But he was just like a
manager, manager manager. So sowe go downstairs into this little little office
and he's like write in right right, you're in the jangle. What do

(37:04):
you need. I'm like, um, a hammock you You've got the job.
So um. Then he was likethen he was like, what about
what about a down sleeping bag?And I was like I was like,
oh god, this is a trickquestion. This is a trick question.
I was like, no, itwould get wet, and he was like
really, I was like, yeah, yeah, I get wet. You

(37:25):
wanted to down sleeping bag? Allright? Yeah? Yeah yeah. Anyway,
so I got this job and Isuddly found myself my first real job
in my life working in this outdoorshop with all these people who had like
degrees, you know, they wereall they were all you know there there
were they were just kind of anodd bunch again, but a bunch of
outsiders. Really, he didn't reallyfit in. I think it was two

(37:49):
of them had like art degrees,and there was someone I had like some
degree in philosophy or something. Iwas the only one who wasn't qualified.
But in a shop when it comesto like talking about yeah, you don't
need a degree, you just needto be enthusiastic and and I learned.
I learned like a lot of stuffworking there. I got made redundant because
it got assets stripped. So thatwas that was that was a lesson being

(38:13):
made redundant your first Joe. Thatwas good. But yeah, I just
learned, like there was lots ofthere was a lot of weird characters came
in that shop. There was therewas one guy who it was called Colin
and used to come in and yousay, like, like, everything I
own is in two bags so Ican move at moment's notice. And I
was like, that's a bit that'sa bit weird, but that's not that
weird compared to compared to other peoplecome in this shop. And then several

(38:36):
years later, well maybe three yearslater, Joel, who was the assistant
manager, he rings me up andsays, you'll never guess what kind of
that guy Colin outside at the infive minutes something, Yeah, I said,
like he was a serial killer.And it turned out to be this
guy called Colin Ireland who was aserial killer who killed they kill like seven
people in London. And and whenthey when they'd readed his house and found

(39:00):
all these survival ads catalogs, andthey'd gone gone to Joel and asked him
if he'd remember this, uh,this this character stuff. But he was
probably one of the most sane peoplecame in that shop. You get all
these like like it was when thewar was going on in Yugoslavia, so
you'd get all the what the walkcorrespondence coming in from the BBST, and
then you get like the mercenaries comingin or going over there, and the

(39:22):
British soldiers and the French Foreign Legionand it was really really mad. You
know. You get someone come inand that we'd have this like lofty Wiseman
survival knife you know, in thewindow, and someone would say, oh,
I've seen someone hecked to it withone of those knives, and he'd
like, yeah, do you wantto buy it or not? Just you
know, And so eventually got eventuallygot sacked, eventually made with made redundant,

(39:46):
didn't get my resundancy money, andand and and then it just led
to like a series of working outdoorshops. Like I waked in North Wales.
I got this job in the Peakdistrict. I was, so I
moved to Sheffield because that was whereall the climbing was. I had this
idea of like I really suddenly gotinto actually going out with these guys at

(40:07):
the shop. We get the trainfrom London on a Friday night after work
and go all the way to wejust get you get dropped off it is
it Land for faken or one ofthese plays on the coast like Harpus eleven
at night and then we'd walk intothe hills until about two in the morning,
walk around for two days and thenget the last get the train back
to But those those those days,you're so keen when you when you live

(40:30):
somewhere where there's no mountains, whenyou're living in the mountains, you don't
do anything. You just just watchhim tell us so we so we um
so yes. I got this jobin the Pete district. And it was
actually Hamish Hamilton, who who wasthe inventor of the Buffalo Buffalo jacket Buffalo
Mountain Share, who had managed tomake friends with by pestering him on the

(40:52):
phone, ringing him up, askinghim about Buffalo, because I was really
obsessed with with with Buffalo, andI think I was always I think I've
always been interest did in niche thingsor like borderline stuff. And they often
think that people there's a lot ofinteresting stuff that just kind of gets forgotten
or doesn't get doesn't get enough interestbecause there's not enough stuff marketing or whatever.

(41:15):
So things like like monopoint crampons likeAnd when I started later on in
life, I started writing gear articlesthat you know, would I would find
something and I would get really intoit, and I start writing about it,
so I'd say it was one ofthe first people to ever write about
monopoint crampons or even even a lotof the sort of soft what became soft
shell, you know, a lot, a lot of stuff that people just

(41:37):
didn't really you know, know about. Sonnyways, I got this job and
he's just have to cycle like twentyfour miles a day to cycle over this
from Sheffield about Sheffield down into intoHope and near dal work in this shop.
It's like a caving shop, whichis again it was like kind of
interesting, like cavers are kind ofinteresting people. So and then eventually got

(42:00):
a job in a shop called Outside, which some people might have heard of,
and the in between had a fewjobs. I'll move back to London,
went to London for a bit inthe city, you know, and
but yeah, because I then Ispent the rest of the rest of my
next until I was at thirty yearsold working in Outside in Hafsage And they're

(42:22):
a kind of I think again likeI was. I was always so enthusiastic
and in that shop at the timewas like a lot of really good outdoor
shops and you would come in Ithink someone say it was like come in
to buy a newspaper. You gotto buy like a copy of the Telegraph,
and someone's like, the guy behindthe camps, like, you don't
want to read the Telegraph. Youwant to read the Guard you know,
you want to read this or youknow, Private Eye or something. He's

(42:44):
like, no, I just wantto read this. That is why I
want to, you know. Sothat it was one of those outdoor shops,
or someone would come in and saylike I want to buy a gothic
shacket. Oh you don't want toOh I don't want a bout you gotic
shacket. You know about sympathext jacket, And you would like so confuse them
that they wouldn't buy anything, youknow. But it was I guess it
was that thing about you. You'realways selling the next car, you know.

(43:05):
You know, so you'd often tellpeople to spend less on something,
or you would try you always saylike, well this is what i've this
is what I've got, And thenpeople would think, well, this guy's
an absolute you know, obsessive aboutgear, like if he's got it,
must he spends his whole life inhere. So there was so I worked
for this guy. Dick Tambull who. Which is which is kind of weird
is that Dick Turmbull was well knownfor trying to climb the six North Faces

(43:30):
in winter in the Alps, andhe had written this article about winter climbing
in the Alps. And when Iwas working in the other shop down the
road, the caving shop, hadread this article and I was like,
oh my god, this is thisis what I need to do. I
need to get out in the Alps. Did even know what the Alps were.
I didn't even know, you know, I didn't even know the guy,
you know, not what the Guidebrockwas like. So I read this

(43:51):
article, I was inspired, Ineed to go and do that. So
I I packed in that job andI had a friend had met met in
chef Field and we got the busfrom Sheffield to Shammony. I think it
was one hundred quid. I don'tthink it'd ever really been, you know,
obviously at that point, and Iwas like everything was so it was
like I can't believe it, youknow, it's so exotic, and it'd

(44:12):
be like next stop Victoria bus station, and so it was. We had
this like two weeks in the Alpsin the wintertime, which was a complete
waste of time, you know,to go there, you know, with
not knowing what what in what's whatwas? It was a disaster, But
we didn't die. We did allsorts of stupid things and but we didn't
die. But for some reason,again it was this like alaw wasn't very

(44:35):
good at this Alpine stuff. Itfelt it felt different, and I think
I was. I was always reallyobsessed with science fiction as well as a
kid, because it had a verygood imagination. So this kind of going
to the Alps or being on aglacier in winter and there was nobody around
in the storm, or digging asnow hall, or being you know,
in the night, you know,in the super cold temperatures. This was

(44:58):
like being in a science fiction film. This was like being on a different
planet. And I think those twothings probably came together. And then so
what was weird was then by thefollowing year, I was actually working for
the guy who had written this article. Anyway, so one day Dick Tambil
comes up to me, It's like, here, you've been to the Alps
in the winter, And he madehe made a stupid assumption that if I'd
been there in the winter, Imust have been the Lords in the summer,

(45:20):
I must be super experian And hewas like, do you want to
come climbing with me this winter?I was like, oh, yeah,
yeah, that'd be great, likeyou know, and when he went away,
I was like, oh my god, Oh my god, what I'm
going to do. So anyways,I end up going to the Alps with
Dick, and I remember we drovethere there days in the days before we
went on the plane. We droveaway from Sheffield to Shammony and I remember
We're driving through the Alp, youknow, driving through the you know,

(45:45):
through France, you know, twoin the morning, and Dick's like,
right, need to stop, youknow, so st I couldn't drive at
the time. Stops a car,pulls out this huge down jacket, puts
it around himself and falls asleep.And I'm just there in my my fleece
jacket and just like I'm just old, you know, for a couple of
hours, just like real really cold, debts say anything anyway. So Dick

(46:07):
eventually wakes up, looks at me. He goes like sleep OK. I
was like, oh, it's alittle bit cold. You're like, you're
not one of those people that complainsthe whole time, are you? So
we get we get to the mountainsand he wanted to do this thing called
the Drew cool what was the drew? Nor face the drew? And anyway

(46:28):
it was it was mad. Itwas madness. It was madness. We
almost died and it was god,it was but any but but it was.
I think there was that. Itwas only eventually. I think it's
only on my third trip to theAlps I ever actually climbed anything. And
it was a route where it wasso grim that the guy was climbing with
basically gave up climbing and never climbedagain. A friend of spare. It

(46:52):
was cold, and and as Iwas climbing, I was like, this
is I really really hate this,but this is like the only thing I've
ever done that kind of makes anysense. And I think that's probably when
I sort of thought like, thisis what I'm gonna have to keep it,
this is what I need to do, and that's I kind of led
into. Eventually I wrote an articleabout that climb, which talk me about

(47:13):
two years because I was totally illiterateat the start, and then we get
that got published in an American Climbmagazine, and that was kind of the
beginning of a career as not justworking the climbing shop, like working writing
and getting up on the stage andtelling a very a very long story to
a very short question. So Iforget what no no I was going through

(47:39):
that I was thinking, should Ijust break into this and no, no,
I want to hear this story.So I've got some notes here because
I am there. You were sayinga few interesting things there that I thought,
Oh, yeah, I want tolook back onto that advert. If
you're annoyed by the advertisements in thisshow, then why not become a patron.
If you do, they're all magicallyaway and we'll reward you with extra

(48:01):
bonus content. Now back to theshow. You said about the outsider thing,
and I remember I was listening toa podcast a year or so ago
is Brett Weinstein Weinsteinstein, which theone that's not the one that's not half
No no U, And he wastalking about something called the weird sheep concept.

(48:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,and that you that's it's an evolutionary
trait that you've got to have outsidersbecause they're the ones that go off and
find different ways of doing things orlook at a problem in a different way.
In any kind of tribal society,including a flock of sheep, you've
got to have the one that's abit weird, the one that does things

(48:44):
differently, because that often helps solvethe problem that no one else can solve
because you can see it in adifferent way. And you mentioned that that's
a common trait within the special forcesor people who do specialists roles within whether
the military or maybe the police orthings like that. And you know,

(49:05):
we've got a few of those peoplein our audience, I know from other
interactions. Is that something that you'veseen in yourself, you know, is
it something that's continued in your careerin the outdoors because you to me,
you look you know from I've beenfollowing you for what nearly twenty years twenty
two, it's not fifteen years now, and your stuff is different to other

(49:30):
people's like everyone else. When I'dread an article from people and they're saying,
yeah, this is the best wayto do something, because it's the
best way, whereas your article oryour book would say these are twenty different
ways of doing something. I've triedall of them. This works for this,
This works for that but sorted outyourself. And that's a different approach

(49:51):
to what you would see from therest of climbing literature, climbing instructors,
for want of a better word.Is that something that you noticed through yourself,
you know, once you started doingstuff in the outdoors under your own
steam and doing bigger things and goingon to do the Arctic stuff and the
big wall stuff that you went ontoo, did you did you carry on

(50:13):
being an outsider or was there apoint where you kind of you fell into
the pile with everyone else where youwere doing the same thing. I think,
I think, I think I amlike an autodid autodidectodiect. Remember I
wanted to I wanted to know howto make a harness, probably when I
was it was like fourteen, andI and I rang my dad up and

(50:34):
I was like, Dad, like, you know, how do you make
a harness? He said, I'llsend you a book. And you sent
me this book with a load ofwhite webbing, and I kind of had
to, you know, make thisharness myself that probably just would just fall
off as soon as you, youknow, took your weight off it.
And and yeah, I think hehad that approach of you need to let
work it out for yourself. Andand I think like I kind of had

(50:59):
to lend to read myself, likeI just like I had a very I
lent to read very late in life, and probably I'm still I'm still trying
to learn lent to write very littlelate in life. And I and I
think like even as an adult,like even now after I would I can
spell. You know, I've writtennine books, and I've won lots of

(51:19):
awards for wright for writing and stuffand and that kind of stuff, but
I still can't spell, you know. I still don't know what a present
imperative is or a now nor averb. But I literally do not know
what a verb is. And althoughmy kids will tell me it just it
just doesn't stick. It just kindof it just it doesn't stick. So

(51:39):
I think I think like I callit like my son they said he had
at tension definite syndrome, And Ithink it's called a tension focus syndrome because
you just can't focus on anything you'reinterested in, no matter how much you
try. So when if I wasinterested in trying to solo a big wall
or climb a big wall like climblCapitan for the first time. You know,

(52:00):
I'm living in Derbyshire. There's nobig walls, there's the highest routes
for twenty five meters, so Ijust there was no internet. There was
one book that was like tiny,little, tiny, almost like a pamphlet
type book. So I just hadto go to this quarry and just work
it out for myself. And Ihad all sorts of near death experiences because
I was climbing by myself. Sonot only was it time to tie how

(52:22):
you aid up a crack or something, and how your duma and how your
haul, I was also learning howto solo it because it was only by
myself. So through that, throughthat process, and you just had to
work out yourself. There was noone to ask. Maybe if someone came
in the shop, I'd say,oh, you've climbed all cap like what
do you do? Like? Youknow what? How you know, you

(52:44):
often make a lot of problems upin your head. They just aren't true
in the you know, in thein the in the at the time when
you once you get there. Ifin my mind it's always dark when you're
imagining something, but when you getthere, it's always light. It's always
it's always very clear what to do. So, um, so I think
that that like even lying too ski, Like I never I didn't have to

(53:05):
ski. And I went to Greenland, ski across Greenland, and I never
even clipped the boots onto the skisin my life, Like and so you
know, you're setting off it toski like five hundred miles. It was
called Greenland and with this guy who'slike Finish Special Forces and I'm like passy,
like how do you clip the bootsonto the skis? It's like,
oh, you're very funny, haha ha. I'm like, yeah,

(53:27):
but how do you do it?And but five hundred miles later, I
was pretty I was pretty good atit, you know what I mean.
So there's so so I think ifI've I haven't got any qualifications, so
that probably helps, you know,Like if once you've become an instructor,
there's quite a quite of a rigidthis is way to do this because you're
trying to you know, it hasto be very to a formula like we

(53:51):
know this is going to keep yousafe and you know, blah blah blah.
But but if you haven't got anyqualifications, you kind of do what
you want. And one thing Inoticed I've climbed all cap thirty something times
that I five times, and everytime I did it it was different.
You know, if I had areally rigid way of doing it, it

(54:12):
wouldn't work the next time. Sothings that things that stopped doing the second
time, I might start doing againthe fourth time, or the equipment might
change or so it was that andpeople often say, you know I did.
I was like guiding people and Iwould open the boot of the car
and like everything would fall out.It was just absolute mess. And people

(54:32):
would say, like, how isyour everything in your life as a mess,
But the second you start climbing,everything is where everything works flawlessly.
And I was kind of like,well, like if everything's like on a
wall, everything's chaos. It's ropes, it's the wind, it's the gear,
it's dropping stuff. So being adaptableto that situation in your if every

(54:53):
day, every day life's like that, you're always losing your wallet, you're
always you know, running out ofmoney, you know this kind of stuff,
then on the wall, if you'rereally really rigid, and if you're
a perfectionist, you just get destroyed. When when it's you and you know
you're on incompetence and nature and everything. So yeah, like I often,

(55:15):
I often often have this thing whereI've been with people who are very qualified.
There are level five this or levelyou know there there's someone who has
been training for something all their lifeto be competent, but when things go
really wrong, it's never quite inthe way they've trained. They've been told
how it would happen. You know, some something happens and they kind of

(55:38):
they don't know how to adapt tothat situation where you have no training or
no expectations of what's something that canhappen. You may be you may be
able to deal with it, youknow, you know, you know,
people are not written someone's name ontheir forehead. I've not done you know,
some some stupid thing that someone toldyou do on some wilderness first head

(55:58):
cast. So yes, you haven'tgot that sometimes easy. Yet there's a
thing that improvisation and being able toit's not just think on the fly,
but it's also being able to seethe wider problem. That was something A
couple of days ago, we intervieweda guy who who is a senior Seer

(56:21):
instructor for the Mystery of Defense.So his podcast, this episode would have
been out by the time this onecomes out. But we were talking about
that about where things have to beprescriptive, you need to do something in
this way, you have to doan then c and where it's just knowing
principles and well, if you putthese things together in this order, this

(56:43):
will happen. But if you missthis one out, it'll still work,
it just won't work as well.And the thing he came up with was
if other people are expecting you todo something in the same order, so
they're expecting you to do this,then that then that so that they can
come and get you or the everyonearound you is working to that same standard.
That's the point where everything has tohappen in the right order. But

(57:08):
the vast majority of real survival trainingafter that then is is improvisation almost because
you can't train for every single scenario, and particularly if you're training once every
five years or so, if youraircrew and you're you're not doing survival training
every weekend, you're going off todo a very specific course and then you'll

(57:29):
have to do a refresher again infive years time or whatever. Maybe there's
a parallel with that in in climbingbecause if you're climbing as a pair,
then the guy that the leader,you're got to get to the top.
You're building the b lay. Theperson the second has got to got to
expect that leader to do things ina certain way, to give the calls

(57:51):
in the right order, or givethe right call, or at least they've
built the b lay correctly, they'veequalized it. They've put everything incorrectly.
And I always found that when Iwas doing because I pretended to be an
outdoor instructor for about fifteen years andI still am now, but I always
in the first ten years of doingthat, I was very entrenched in the

(58:16):
this is how you do things becausethat's the way I was taught, and
that's the way everyone I looked upto they did it that way, and
that's the proper way of doing things. And I was in mountain rescue at
the same time as well, whichreally didn't help. I think I was
an insufferable ass actually for their firstten years because I was. I was
a bit My partner is sat therenodding at me. I felt like,

(58:39):
yeah, by the book, andalso like passively judgmental on everyone else because
they weren't doing it. By thebook and at some point something clicked that
it was no. No. Theimprovisation is the more important part of that,
and the greater understanding comes from knowingwhen to be when to be prescriptive,

(59:00):
when to do things in the rightorder, when to do things you
know, A, then B,then C. And I felt like I
understood things better then. But also, you know, you have those moments
in life when you look back atwho you were and you think, oh,
god, yeah, I guess youmeet people this guy Carston, who,

(59:22):
like I did a lot of climbingwith Norwegians. Now Norwegians really have
the stuff together, but they're they'reyou know, the idea like the pole
that our our polar heroes are peoplewho you know, they set off,
they get frostbite, frost biting genitalia, they have to like saw them off.
You know, they lose all theirfriends, die in a cravass,

(59:44):
and they keep on going and whenthey get there, they've gone the wrong
to the wrong pole or something theyfall off the edge of you know,
you know, they die, butthey die heroically. You know. That's
how we're kind of our heroes.Where the Norwegians, it's basically guy goes
somewhere, nothing happens, it comesback them when he set off, and
you know there there they're so goodwhat they do, but they don't.

(01:00:06):
They don't. It's not it's notlike false bravado or try. There's not.
There's no, there's not a lotof an ego there. He's like,
well, this is just what wethis is, this is just what
we do. And this guy castand he used to used to take like
this the Norwegian Special Forces and theseare people who've never been climbing in their
lives and Caston was like a toplevel climber and he would just get to

(01:00:29):
the somewhere like in Lafoten Islands andthey'll be a big like big big rocky
mountain, big big face on themountain. You're like find with high and
he would he would just give thema rope. He would just give them
the gear with no experience of howwe've got to do with it, and
he got attack and he would justpointing them at the mountain and that was
it and he said like it wasbut it always whacked because they would you

(01:00:54):
know, like it's not actually thatdifficult. Yeah, you know, if
you can strip a machine gun andyou can and you know, all that
kind of stuff you'll quickly work out. So sometimes maybe you kind of over
complicate it. I think. Ithink later in life, I feel like
I feel like I'm at set inservice to climbing in that I want to

(01:01:15):
pass on all the stuff that's,um, that's important, and none of
the stuff that's not that important.You know. So if I wrote a
book, so this book. Writtena few books, the technical books,
so one of them is, um, you know, I wrote this book
Me, Me, Myself and Eye, which is how to solo a big
wall. And it has has stufflike someone said, like in this book,

(01:01:36):
it's got a bit about taking aluggage strap so you can strap your
whole bag onto a trolley, Likethat's why why you know, why you
waste? And I'm like, haveyou ever have you ever pushed like,
you know, one hundred and fiftywhole bag through an airport or into a
lift? You know, like thatis that's probably the best bits of advice
in there. So it's like gettingaway with a lot of getting away of

(01:01:59):
all stuff you can wear for yourself. And it's all the stuff, all
the stuff where it's like ah,like you know, like not tying both
ropes together when you're abseiling, youknow, at the end, so the
so the kinks can work the workthe way out, or tie figure of
eights so you can clip them intoyou if you get to the end,
and you know. So it wasall these little bits of information that you've

(01:02:19):
learned, the hardware that you're tryingto pass on to another generation. And
maybe some people won't. You onlyyou only understand some things. You're like,
don't pour fuel into a into atransja while it's still lit. You
you only you only understand that lessonyou know when you when you've done it,
or you know, don't try andlight an MSR stove by looking down

(01:02:40):
the you know off you know.So it's there's a lot there's a lot
of things like petrol is a petrolis something like that is that like petrol
is something you think you know whatpetrol is until you've got it really badly
bent by it. There's always likevideo other people like you know, putting
petrol to someone's letter box and thentrying to light it and blowing themselves up,

(01:03:01):
and like that guy's like I wishI hadn't I wish i'd known.
You know, that's why they're notactual in tanks. You know, they
have diesel so um. But butyeah, it's that. There was there
was a really good story. Itwas someone they were in like Delta Force
or something like. In the USArmy, you're not allowed to put your
fingers. You're not allowed to putyour hands in your pockets. You know,

(01:03:21):
if someone sees you with your handsin your pockets, it's like absolutely
whatever. So this guy works,you know, works in the military for
you know, twenty years and eventuallygets to the Tier one ultimate fighting unit
and we tends up on the firstday. The guys stood there, the
guy, the instructor stood there withhis hands in his pockets. There goes

(01:03:42):
hi, guys, do you knowwhy I got my hands in my pockets?
And they're like, no, sergeantor something, because I've got pockets.
If you're not, it does notmake any sense. It just makes
sense. There was a thing sayingthat thing about you know, trying to

(01:04:02):
do things by the book and I'mtrying to be like everyone else. There
was something I noticed once I gotinto my own swing of of comfort because
as the thing, because I stoppedmy first qualification I got was Mountain Leader,
which is like hiking leader without winterconditions in the UK, so it's

(01:04:23):
fairly basic stuff. But it tookme a couple of years of working with
that award that to me to actuallyget my head together with it as to
you know, what you do witha group, how you interact with people
in the mountains when my clients thatkind of thing, and I realized it
was something that I was comfortable doing, which was talking about my mistakes,

(01:04:44):
which wasn't really prevalent within the outdoorprofessional community as it's kind of they call
themselves and you don't talk. Youonly talk about, yes, I did
this thing, and I did thisamazing thing, and I did this thing,
and oh yes, someone I wasclimbing here, whereas I be talking
about, yeah, I fell overover there doing that, and I did
this, and yeah I got abash my headloon in this because I was
stupid. And I think that's avaluable thing for any kind of instruction,

(01:05:08):
because you are now an instructor,whether you like it or not. With
the podcast, with the books,you know you're doing it by proxy,
but you are sharing the benefit ofyour information and your experience There's a thing
I think that all instructors should do, which is normalize failure. Normalize that

(01:05:28):
iterative failure of you make a mistake, you go on and make a different
mistake next time, and then youmake a different mistake. And what I
say to clients now is that Ianything I got right the first time by
fluke is of no value to thembecause I can't tell you how to replicate
that. But I can sell thesum total of all my mistakes every time

(01:05:50):
I've cocked up every mistake I've madeof firelighting or stuff in the mountains,
or doing stuff on the coast oron rivers or wherever it might be,
that all the cock ups have madedoing those things. That's where the real
information is. And again that's somethingI've always value with your content, whether

(01:06:11):
it's you speaking, whether it's thefilms, the books and everything else like
that, you seem to embrace thosefailures. I think there's a lot of
them, That's why. But yeah, but that's the thing, and I
think you're willing to experiment. Youwere willing to experiment, And just like
you say with the Big Wall stuff, get get the world's smallest book on
Big Wall climbing, go to theprobably not the worst county in England to

(01:06:34):
try and learn how to do it, but you know, get on with
it and then nearly die because offlaky bits of rock of a quarry falling
off on you. But I thinkI think, like often, like I
went through probably forty years of life, think I'd think I had low self
esteem, but actually I didn't.I just thought I did. I was

(01:06:56):
actually like I was massively common infident, but I just never It's like it's
like probably when I was also probablythe same time someone told me I was
very charming, you know, toto women. I was like, really
really, you know, so likeI'd say things like I'm not clever enough
to get a degree, but ifI did a degree, i'd get a

(01:07:18):
first like like there's some there's someweird, there's something kind of weird,
and often I think I think I'doften write myself off so there's no ego
there, there's nothing to there's nothingto lose. Like yesterday I was out
on the on the corrub this lakewhere I think it's the biggest lake in

(01:07:38):
Ireland, one of the biggest lakesin British child and I was lighting a
fire. There was my son whowas like two, and there was a
kid who was four, friend whowas four, and then their dad.
And I was like, oh,I light a fire because we're on the
water levels go up several meters fundof how much rain has been here.
So I started making this fire.But everything was wet. So I started

(01:08:00):
making this fire, and I kindof knew, like a lot of it's
wet, it's probably not gonna work, but you know, But there was
no like, there's no like ego, like I didn't work, that's it.
It wasn't like I've got a lotof pressure now I really need to.
I really need to, you know. And I kind of got I
got the I got the fire going, and but I wasn't. I wasn't

(01:08:23):
like like on the on the wayup coming back from this island in she
Gale, it's cold, so it'sa it's a fair distance and the core
of this this lake, a lotof people drowned on it because you've got
these big mountains at the end andit's very it's got a lot of shallow
parts of rocks, and when youget a high wind as the fetch is

(01:08:44):
quite, it creates a lot ofvery high waves and fishermen are always drowning
on there. Any So, we'regoing we're going back and there's like four
adults and three chick kids in thisboat. Me we're going along and the
boat the engine just you can telllike the engines got going. It's and
you start saying like, I'm hangingon here. You know, I'm not

(01:09:05):
feeling very well. You know,I think I'm gonna you know, it's
like just keep just keep going,and and any of the engine started working,
and you're there on this you know, it's getting dusky and you're on
the slick with all these people andyou and then it's not ego. You
just have to pretend that everything's okay. That's what the mountain instructors meant to

(01:09:28):
do, or the mountain guide iswhen something goes wrong, they just have
to say, oh, don't worryabout it. You know, this always
happens, you know, you know, a stupid engine and anyway, I
see you pull the engine a fewtimes, it comes back, it comes
back to life, and you're you'regoing along, and it's that I think.
It's that's not ego. That's um. Just to remain calm when you

(01:09:49):
when you when something's not going right, and I think when you when you
so back to this low self esteemthing. It's like, often I would
solo big walls because I didn't feelI was good enough to climb with somebody
else. I think that I wouldthink they would see that I was being
um, I was incompetent, ordidn't really know what I was doing.

(01:10:11):
But when you're by yourself, youdon't have to worry about that because there's
there's any of you there you canmake as many mistakes. And also you
can't blame anybody. You know,all the mistakes and all successes belong to
you, So you become very acceptingof of either in a way, and
then you know that's the way.That's how you end up soloing one of
the hardest routes in the world atthe time because you don't feel able to

(01:10:33):
climb with somebody on the route halfas hard because you're not good enough.
There's there's some weird, weird stuffgoing on. But I think, yeah,
I think that I think the egothing, that you always have some
ego, But I think I thinksort of not being like look you're like,
look, I'm not qualified, youknow, you can't. You can't
sue me, you know not,You're not you know so it's uh,

(01:10:56):
maybe that's a cop out. Youknow you have enough, you have enough
experience to holp do it and workout the things you can't do quickly enough
so people can't I don't notice.But yeah, just just adapt to your
own your own incompetence. Do youdo you prefer doing solo trips or because
all the trips you've done with otherpeople, that seems to be almost an

(01:11:19):
element of challenge with the other personbeing there, you know, doing things
with people who are severely disabled,or doing things with children, Well that's
gonna be in context, isn't it. Well I think I think Alex Alex
Huber was like, you know,super one of the best climbers in the
world. He once told me thatI was I was, I was self

(01:11:41):
sabotaging. But everything I did,like I was either swallowing it or climbing
it in winter, or climbing itwith a blind person or something with a
ginger hair or something I'd always I'dalways been doing something that almost would be
an excuse why I didn't do it, But then when I did do it,
it just made it more interesting,you know what I mean? Yeah,

(01:12:03):
because this is, you know,ostensibly a survival podcast, but the
way we talk about things is thatthe best survival training is to do a
job before you get there, doa good job while you're doing the thing,
and sort of review it well whenyou get back afterwards. But I
always classify survival as as being somethingunplanned. If you're going out planning to

(01:12:27):
do a survival thing, then you'relet you're going out planning to do survival
camping. You are just going camping, but less comfortably or with fewer things.
And for you who someone who's habituallyput yourself in harm's way, you
know you've done dangerous things willingly,again and again and again. Do you
have a sort of a point whereyou switch from this is something I plan

(01:12:51):
to do to this is now asurvival situation or this is the edge of
oh yeah, this isn't going aswell as I wanted it to. Now
I'm going to fight for my life. Is that a point you've reached?
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah.Like I often say, there's a difference.
You know, people say how manytimes have you thought you're gonna die?

(01:13:15):
And I'm like, well, it'snot how many times you thought you're
gonna die, So how many timesyou knew you were going to die,
that's kind of that's a better measure. That's how kind of measure it these
days, Um like this, likethis, there's literally too many too ready
to list, but there's I thinkit's generally when you're you're in a you're
in a situation where you're trying tocontrol everything, you know, everything,

(01:13:39):
everything that's potentially going to kill youor kill the person you're with, You're
trying to control it. And it'swhen things start going out of control that's
when things get really dangerous. Likean example would be I was I was
climbing El Cap and there was therewas three or four of it, and

(01:14:00):
we got we knew this big stonewas coming, and we got to the
very last pitch of Elkapy Towns.Elkappy town You've got basically a thousand,
nine hundred meters plus below your feetand it just goes from you know,
an overhang at the very very topinto like a slab and then you've got
bushes and the top of the mountainjust just behind there. And we I

(01:14:25):
got to I got to the summitand it was dark, and then the
two other people with our friends,like they climbed up the rope and I
said, like, go over there, find a tree, like cliff into
the tree. And then I startedlike hauling the whole bags, and the
whole bags have got all your yourbavy equipment and your stove and everything to

(01:14:45):
you know, but i'd actually i'dmade everyone put the waterproofs on before anything
had happened, because because the classicthing is the storm comes and you're just
in your normal, normal clothes andyou're in the sea areas. So even
in the summertime, you can gofrom being very very warm to being like
snowing or hailing on top of you. And I've had situations where I've literally

(01:15:09):
been in a short and T shirtand the hailer has been pounding down on
top of me, and you know, you've probably got you've probably got ten
fifteen minutes before you can lose yourdexterity in your hands. And once you
lose your dexterity in your hands,when you're on a big wall, you're
basically going to die of hypothermia.And people have actually been like basically been

(01:15:30):
found just covered in ice because theycouldn't they couldn't go up, they couldn't
go down. They just got stuckanyway. So so our friends went to
the top and my wife is climbingup the rope in the dark below me,
and I see as she comes overthe top of the edge. I
see it from my head touch andthere she's maybe like ten meters below me.

(01:15:53):
And I'm hauling these bags up andthe rope is going off a bolt
bealer, solid bealer down over thelip, and as the bags come up,
they kind of get stuck on thevery last bit. So I'm like,
Vanessa, just just go down overthe lip. So now she's like
hanging in space, you know.So you're like, is it four times
higher than the Well Trade Center tower? You know, so you're pretty pretty

(01:16:15):
high up. You have a longtime of falling wondering what you did wrong
before you hit the ground. Soshe goes over the edge, and then
there was there was just this noiselike how would you describe it, like
a wave, like a wave wascoming in, like a wave was crashing
in and what it was this stormthat was coming it was coming down from

(01:16:38):
Alaska and it was just it wentfrom one minute it was completely dry,
you know, fairly chilly Californian night, to just like a deluge of water
just coming down on top of us. Because the top of l Cap is
like a big dome. So withina minute, a waterfall was coming down,

(01:17:00):
and it was going over the edge, and it was going over me,
and it's going over my wife whowas in the water. And having
been in that situation before, whenyou suddenly when the temperature drops, what
happens is you rope start freezing andyou can no longer climb them. That's
that's one of these people might gethypothermia or die because they literally cannot escape

(01:17:20):
the situation, and again you loseyour dexterity. So so I was trying.
I knew I had to get thisbag up because the bag had all
out. We're already soaking, likeyour water proofs. You're star't gonna do
anything when you're in a waterfall.So in the in, the in the
in, the whole bag was allour stuff would need to not get hypothermia

(01:17:40):
when we got to the top ofthe top of the mountain. So I'm
trying to set this whole system andmy wife is just struggling, you know,
it's like do I hold the bagsup or do try and hold hair
up? And suddenly everything that gowrong went wrong. Like my shoes for
some reason, they were at theend of being super slippy when it was
wet, and I was trying tostep up to haul the bag up and

(01:18:04):
my feet were just slipping, andthe pulley, you know, the pulley
would normally work completely fine. Hehad two three pulleys. They're trying to
do like a three to one toget this bag up. For some reason,
one of them it had like alittle catch that kept clicking itself on,
so it was locking the whole systemrigid a micro traction. So if

(01:18:27):
I had it reverse the opposite way, it would wouldn't have done that.
But this this started happening, allthese little tiny little things which were just
annoying normally, was potentially going tokill my wife and whatever. So I
remember, eventually I just physical justphysically the system wasn't working. I just

(01:18:49):
physically grabbed the rope with my handsand just started pulling the whole bag up
hand over hand. So this wholebag could have weighed fifty key those or
something, and I just started justphysically pulling this this bag up hand over
hand until I had hold of it, and then I kind of clipped into
the clipped into the bee layer.And then because the whole bag wasn't there,

(01:19:12):
my wife was able to get overthis lip and managed to get to
me. And by then she wasso cold that she couldn't couldn't do anything.
She couldn't like unclip or untie notwhatever. So just getting from where
we were there maybe twenty feet,ended up becoming like an epic just to
get off the point where you couldslide off the top of our cap.

(01:19:36):
And I remember, you know,by the time we managed to get to
safety, one of our friends camedown. He was like, oh,
I'm getting very cold up here.You know, I had no idea that
just found paying for our lives onthis thing. And I remember we got
all our bavy gear out, andyou know, we had like synthetic sleeping

(01:19:57):
bags. You did, We dideverything you would do to survive such a
situation. And although we had wedid have dry bags, like everything was
just wet. Our sleeping bags werewet and everything else. And you have
like a fly sheet that goes onthe top of your of your portal edge,
So just laid that flat and wejust took all our clothes off rather

(01:20:18):
than getting in with any wet clotheson. And instead of instead of getting
in one sleeping bag each or zippingtwo sleeping bags together, we just opened
both sleeping bags and laid them oneon top of the other, so you
had you know, like, becausebecause I've had so many similar situations,

(01:20:40):
you know, when someone says,oh, synthetic sleeping bag, it's almost
as warm when it's wet. LikeI'll tell you what a down sleeping bag
it's got zero warmth when it's wet, And I'd say, like a cynic
sleep bag is like fifty percent ofit's warmth something. But in this situation,
we were so cold already not hypothemic, but we're getting that way that

(01:21:01):
you know, we just got inthere and you needed the body heat of
the other person and you needed liketwo layers of sleeping bag to just start
getting somewhere. And I remember thinking, like, if we get up,
if we get up in the morningand this storm is still going everything,
we've got to wet all our clothes, our shoes, everything, Like we're
going to be in a real stickysituation to get down off this off this

(01:21:25):
wall. But luckily when we wokeup in the morning, although it's everything
was covered in snow, it wasyou know, it was the it was
we could get down. And Iremember it's like, it's such a tiny
little thing. You know, you'vedone all these other things. You're on
the north face of the Eiger orwhatever that that you know somewhat so perilous,

(01:21:46):
but it was just such a littletiny thing that was gonna get to
you. Then another example would bewent to try and climb d Nali in
Alaska in the wintertime. So againwith my wife Vanessa, who had basically
know no mountaineering experience really where she'skind of Irish, you know, sending
the Irish so um, and she'slike, it's kind of a tough,

(01:22:11):
tough woman, so do that thing. Like the greatest things are done by
people are either really really stupid andignorant or astronauts. You're like, what
if once you start learning and knowyou know you won't do it because you're
not experienced enough. But if youdon't know what you don't know, you
you'll give it a go. Soum, So we we've got we're going
to we're gone to Narlie and weend up being there for over a month,

(01:22:35):
and the temperature how high point wasprobably about minus fifty so so as
probably as cold as you're gonna gonnaget, probably on a mountain. And
what we had we had a wehad a sister. So you've spent like
a lot of time thinking about this. And the biggest thing that was going
to probably if we had an earthquakein the snow hall that that potentially could

(01:22:58):
be quite serious. But one thingwas carbon monoxide poisoning. So I had
this system where the pan was elevatedabout about twenty thirty centimeters above the position
where it should be on the stove. So we had a we had a
whisper light, which most people wouldhave like an XGK, but whisper light

(01:23:19):
is actually very good stove for thiskind of thing, so we had it.
And also it's like if you havea month with like an XGK going,
you'd be deaf. I'd be deafby the end. So we had
the system where you just elevate elevatethe pan a little bit higher than normal,
like an old fashioned stoves, likethe stoves that like Nansen would use

(01:23:39):
and early early early mountaineering stoves,they had winter legs and summer legs,
and winter legs were longer for thisvery reason. But in the way that
the world works, someone was like, why are we giving people these long
legs? You know, we wantto have like as short as possible.
They want to get like the fastestboiled time because people love that kind of

(01:24:00):
stuff. You know, this one'sten seconds faster than this one. So
anyway, so we basically used thisstove in a snow hall, nearly all
of it was in a snow hallfor for a month, and with no
carbon monoxide kind of you know problems. And then and then we had to
go up to the high camp beforewe went to the summit, so this

(01:24:23):
is like seventeen thousand feet, andso we decided to leave the windshield and
just take the stove and the panto try and reduce the weight going up
there. So now we went backto having a system which wasn't as good
for carbon wasn't as good as forcarbonoxide, which is a system most people
would use anywhere. So we climbedup and we ended up having to bivouack

(01:24:45):
ones on this ridge, which waspretty hairy, as we had spent two
nights on this ridge, it wasvery hairy, and all we had was
the fly sheet of the tent.We didn't have the inner tent. And
there you are in this you know, super extreme thing. But on that
trip, the biggest the biggest factor. It wasn't like we're going to get
to the top. It was allabout survivability. So everything we had,

(01:25:09):
clothing, stove, mitten's sleeping system, everything was about survivability. So everything
was synthetic and everything was he wasvery heavy. But Vanessa was Vanessa's that
the highest woman to ever to youknow, the highest woman on denially in
winter. That she's got the she'sgot the records, only one of the

(01:25:30):
woman though she got that. Shekind of got the record, which is
kind to be impressive since she hadno experience and she was dressed with a
lot of heavy, heavy gear.Anyway, So but we get to the
we get to the camp. Nowthis is probably that this is like being
on a different planet at this point. You know, you get up there
very short days in winter it's justjust just barren ice minus fifty unbelievable under

(01:25:54):
it. But it's a dry cold, you know, only doesn't feel any
colder than minus forty. So weput the we put the tent up,
the fly sheet up, and weget our sleeping bags, every everything,
everything's sort sorted out, and wespend one We spend one night there and
the next day we just we juststay there because we have to try and

(01:26:14):
get acclimatized going to the summit.Then the following morning it maybe three in
the morning. I kind of reallyit's very hard to like operate a stove
in those temperatures. So you know, everything is set up like you sleep
with your with your with the fuelbottles inside your thing, because the sea
although you have like winter winter gradefuel pumps in the stove, you have

(01:26:40):
because they're still not there're still notdesigned for that temperature. So if you
don't have if they're not you know, warm enough, if they're not,
like then the fuel starts just leakingout everywhere when you when you try and
use them. So I get thestove, get the stove going. The
temperature in the tent warms up toyou know, minor start to or something,
and oh, I'm roasting. Sowe put the stove on and Vanessa's

(01:27:05):
there next to me and suddenly she'slike, I'm falling. I'm falling and
falling, and I turned around.She's just like like looking really really weird.
And what it was she got likeshe got up carbon monoxide poisoning from
the from the stove. Like Ihad my head right next to the stove
because I'm from a whole I thinkI'm like commune to all that kind of

(01:27:25):
stuff. And anyway, so shewas like really out of it, and
I tend the stove off, andI remember like I knocked over the pan,
the pan and a little bit oficy water in it. I knocked
over the pan and trying to soare we're trying to do all this without
getting frost by in your you know, while you're doing it all. And
then she was like, oh no, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm

(01:27:46):
okay, Okay. We only hadenough. We were very short of food,
and we only had enough food readyto get back down the mountain if
nothing went wrong. We'd really pushedit to the extreme end of things.
And Vanessa's like, no, norm, ok okay. And you have that
You've just invested so much time,so much effort, so much money,

(01:28:06):
so much commitment, so much sufferingto get within like you know, maybe
eight hours there and back to thetop of the Narlie Winter and this could
be this would be amazing, youknow, amazing thing to do for Vanessa,
you know, it'd be great forme and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, no,we can't, we can't go.
We have to go back down,like we've just got carbon monoxide poisoning,

(01:28:30):
you know, and people do thatis a thing about experience, Like less
experienced people do have that summit fever. You know, they're just they're going
to give it one hundred percent toget to the top. And it's like,
well, you know, you needto leave it a good fifty percent,
you know, or maybe ninety percentto get back down again. And
and she was like really like,she was really like sad, basically that

(01:28:54):
we have to go back down.So I packed everything up, Let's get
back down. And we started togoing back down. And we got down
and when we got down to fourteenthousand feet we had a snow hole.
We've dug there. Getting the snowhole. She's like, Oh, we
could have done it, we couldhave done it, you know, like,
oh, I've made the right choice. So I'm like, don't even
think about it, you know,like, if this is the choice we

(01:29:15):
made, this is the choice wehave to know. If no books,
you know, just just live withit. Like I spent my whole life
bailing from stuff, and it meansI've had a life of some successes and
lots of failures, but I've hada life. So and then the morning
when we got up there was ayou could just see all the wind blowing
off the off the ridge. Solike if we if we'd gone to the

(01:29:38):
summit, we we never got allthey back down again. We'd had to
bivvy up there one more time.And in those temperatures, you're looking at
minus two hundred and two hundred orsomething in that kind of in that kind
of wind. So like almost everythingalways always it's like being made redundant by
survival aids. Like everything everything happensfor a reason, really, So we

(01:30:00):
uh, it's kind of funny becausewe managed to get all the way back
down and we had almost no foodleft. And when we got down to
the when we got down to thebottom where the plane would pick us up,
it took us maybe two or threedays to get all the way back
down It took us a month toget there. Took us two or three
days to get back down to theto the where we'd left to stash of

(01:30:20):
food where the plane would pick usup. And the rangers that said leave
a week's worth of food. AndI was like, oh, bag of
pasta, that's that'll lasts a week. It's like, you know, if
you're a student or something. SoI just left a big bag of a
big thing as spaghetti. You know, spaghetti would last you, you know,
a couple of meals, and Ijust left it in the dugger hole,

(01:30:41):
put the spaghetti in there, andwe had we had quite a fuel
and said to us, if youneed to get to get to the pickup
point by nine am tomorrow, otherwisewe might not be able to get you
because the storm front's coming in andwe were we were absolutely exhaust posted trying
to get to this last any base, it's called it's called a heartbreak hill

(01:31:03):
because you've gone all the way downfrom d Nali and then to get to
the where the plane takes off,you actually go uphill. And we're going
up this hill maybe like two inthe morning, three in the morning,
and you're just kind of hallucinating,and you're just like and we had like
a garment, little garment telling uswhere to go, and I don't you

(01:31:24):
know, sometimes something is going onwhere you know you're heading towards this point.
Then suddenly you know you're going away. It's point's what it's pointed to
go, but the numbers are goingup instead of down or something, and
you start getting really confused, likewhat's going on? He started like having
those there's something wrong with the GPSsatellites are broken or something. There's something,

(01:31:44):
something really obvious is happening, butyou're so tired you can't work it
out. And we've suddenly gone toan area of sarak debris and cravasses.
I was like, Vanessa, wejust have to stop, you know,
we have to put the tent up. It's just not safe to keep going.
So we put the tent up andwe'll set the alarm for seven o'clock.
And at seven o'clock we'll just gettingup with this race that we was

(01:32:04):
only eating. Maybe it's like threehundred meters. Well, you know,
it's not really far to where wehave to get too fo hundred meters,
So get the tent up, fallasleep, we wake up, it's like
eleven o'clock, eleven o'clock in themorning and it's snowing outside and we've we've
blown it. So we managed toget to where this where our stash was,
and they're like, we can't come, we can't come today, We'll

(01:32:26):
try and come tomorrow. And thatcontinued for like seven days. So we
basically had one bag of pasta tolast's seven days. And so if anybody
says leave leave a week's food,leave a week's food. So I think
by day three we're eating all thepasta. And the only food we had

(01:32:46):
was this. We had one thingof porridge, American porridge with some with
something in it, and it wasthought, it's so disgusting, it was
like inedible, even though I wasgoing to unstaff to day before eating this
porridge. So we didn't. Ididn't. I didn't get out of that
tent for seven days. I didn'tneed to have a crap or anything.

(01:33:08):
I just laid there for seven daysand we managed. We had like a
little on our radio. We canmanage to pick up a radio station.
Just laid over seven days. Wemust have had tea bags, otherwise I
would have gone insane. But wejust ran the stove for seven days,
just keeping keeping our spirits up.But Vanessa was really very hyperactive, so

(01:33:29):
you should just get up and startdigging a hole in the snow, or
like walking around the tent or doingsit ups. And I was like,
Vanessa was starving. We could staffto death here, like you just you
wasting too much energy. And afterseven days they were like, we can
see a break in the clouds.We're gonna Basically, they say we don't
get you today. They kept saying. They kept saying his message saying how

(01:33:53):
much food have you got left?And we'd be like none. They get
they got like no, but howyou know precisely how much food have you
got left? Were like it's gottenon and they just didn't believe us.
We had no food. And andthen they were saying, give us a
weather forecast. And we had ana what's what's the garment messenger thing?

(01:34:15):
In reach? In reach? Youhad an inReach, So you know,
I don't if you have in reach, you have to It's like it's like
it's like hello, It's like hSo it's like give us a foot you
need to give us a full weatherforecast. For where you are, and
we'd go like crap, and andthey go, no, no, we

(01:34:35):
need like a more detailed weather forecast, and go like very crap because I
didn't realize all we had was astupid in reach thing. So after after
seven days, what we're going todo the US Air Force, We're going
to fly high altitude over the Naliand drop a parachute with a GPS something

(01:34:57):
that could steer the parachute, andthey're going to transteer it to us within
a football pitch sized area with foodon it, which would have been really
cool to have done that, butbecause they were there by now everyone was
concerned, like my parents, youknow, Vanessa's Vanessa's dad who's basically he
had a bad car crash. Youcan hardly walk, and he's like,
oh, do you want me tocome out, you know, come out

(01:35:18):
to Alaska to help to help.It's like like everyone everyone thought we were
like we were dying. We justlaid in the ten listening to like NPR
or something, so yeah, soum, you know, eventually it was
like there's a there's a clearing atthis end, Talkita, can you see
him out? Fica And we lookedout at the ten. It were like,
I can't see it, but tellhim we can see it. It

(01:35:40):
was like yes, like we're onour way. I was like, please
let that clear because if they tellup even it's not clear any The cloud
just cleared and we heard the theplane like coming in coming in, coming
in, and it kind of itcame in. It couldn't believe it.
It kind of landed and it dida circle. Then it just took off
forgetting and we're like, oh thetricks. And what it was was they

(01:36:02):
have to land several times to tocreate some kind of runway because the snow
so deep. And then you you'vegone from being like laying on your back
for seven days to like quick packeverything up and get in the tent getting
the plane, and it's so exhaustedwhen you've not done it for seven days,
You're just everything is so exhausting,and you know, gathered all of

(01:36:25):
stuff, shift it in, theshift it in the shoved it in the
plane, and like maybe like halfan hour later, you're you're dumped out
on the airstrip, you know,locked the plane up sear by. That's
the end of your adventure. Sobut I think, but but when when
we went to the ranger station andwe did like a debrief of what happened.
Like I think maybe at the timeit was something like fifty percent of

(01:36:48):
people who tried to climb to NarlieWinter had had died or had very serious
frostbite or something. So we've putnot two bad odds, so the average
was the average was, you know, it's not too bad. But the
ranger said that this was like themost perfect, you know, blueprint for

(01:37:08):
an expedition, even though you didn'tget to the top, because you basically
did everything right, Like we weresuper cautious. You know, we made
some mistakes, but we were supersuper cautious. And but it's that moment
when you're in the most hostile environmentyou could unless you're like scot unless you're
like at the bottom of the ocean, or you're like jumping out of a

(01:37:30):
plane or something, you're in anincredibly hostile environment where there's no rescue undern
early in the wintertime, it's toono one's going to fly up there,
No helicopter is going to go upthere, so you're really on your own,
and once you start feeling things,you're losing control. You can't start,
you know, like, hope it'snot something it should be in your

(01:37:53):
tool kit really, like I hope, we hope we make it down.
You know you should really Yeah,it's not it's not. It's not good.
Like like a lot of big wallclimbing is a little bit like bomb
disposal, is that you can't justbe like you don't want to be like
closing your eyes and just like youknow, like red or green, red

(01:38:15):
or green. You know, soso there is that there is that like
am I in control of the situation. I can't afford to, you know,
for this to get out of control. Like the idea of you dying
would be bad, but the ideaof somebody else dying. Because if you're
like, like, optimism is probablythe most dangerous things to have in extreme

(01:38:38):
situations. Like optimistic people, likethey're very, very dangerous. You know
someone who's like a motivational speaker,like I'm a sort of demotivational speaker,
But you know someone who's always likepositivity. They're often a bit of a
liability in those kind of places becausethey're a lot often it's just an act

(01:38:58):
and when things don't go well,and those people just have like a crushing
you know, it's just you justfall apart and I've an ever breakdown where
you know, if you're you know, what's that thing you can be?
You can? Now what's that saying? You can? You can either have
it fast, you can kind ofquickly high quality or or cheap. We

(01:39:21):
can only have two or something.Is that the right? Yeah? Yeah,
pick two. But the the otherone is like we might be crap,
but we're cheap. That's one ofThat's like a that's a good sort
of mentality for for a lot ofthese things. I just think that you're
actually not really good at this,but you're cheap. You know. So
if you go in there thinking,you know, I'm going to my force

(01:39:42):
of personality and confidence is going toturn the situation around. When I've got
like a bone sticking out of myleg, you know, like that's not
gonna that's not going to happen really, So man, that is I've got
a weird thing going on there whereI want to I want to keep talking
to you and keep asking you stuff, but it's going to go on for

(01:40:04):
hours and hours and hours and hoursand hours because I've got loads of stuff
written down here. I want toask, but do it. We'll do
it quickly. Yeah, I'll dothat. Well, what I'm gonna do
instead is can you thank you forcoming on? Can you tell people where
to find your information if they wantto find out more about you, get
in touch with you, see yourwriting? Where read your writing and that's

(01:40:25):
where it should be. Where?Where should they go? M probably whenever
one podcast if you will say likewhere when people are like where, where
can we see you? And Iwas like, oh, do bother?
You know, I've got nothing tosell, Like, I've written a few
books Psycho Vertical, Cold Wars,Unknown Pleasures. They're like story books about

(01:40:45):
adventures and all the other books likemore like technical books. Have a website
Andy hyphened Kirpatrick sounds a bit poshAndy dash kittpatrick dot com, And uh
yeah I have. I have.I have a lot of odd opinions,
so people people have to I havea I am a bit of a lightning

(01:41:11):
rod for having strange opinions. ButI think that's just I think that's just
again, that's just part of embracingbeing like an outsider. Like I'm always
fighting with Mountain Guide Associations and youknow, you know being being a dissident
and a rebel. I think so. But I think it's all again,
it's but I think it's all partof of adversity. Like I think,

(01:41:31):
I think adversity creates opportunity. AndI think I'm always afraid that once you
start getting too comfortable and then you'vehad you've had it basically, you know,
so you always need to be fightingwith somebody. I think it's in
your whole I think it's in mygenes, whole genes. I think I
think there's there's a penalty that comesfrom thinking like everyone else does because that's

(01:41:53):
the way they think. That's theway everyone thinks, so I should think
like that, Yeah, I think. I think also also I've in like
I've lived in the Middle East threeyears, done a lot of traveling in
a loads of loads of places,and I think people kind of forget that
not everyone thinks the same everywhere inthe world, you know, Like I

(01:42:13):
remember when I was living in aliving in qaight. So there to be
you know, to be a Holocaustdenier is normal. That's the default setting
for everybody, you know, Soif you start talking about the Holocaust happening,
people think you're like a crazy AlexJones kind of person. So so,
so I think people don't realize that, you know, like and also
it's a it's again, it's likea stratified in class, you know,

(01:42:36):
cetain. Certain certain groups of peoplein society believe completely different things to other
groups. So it's so yeah,so it's I think, but it is.
I think I'm always willing to I'malways willing and maybe that's a bad
thing these days. I'm always willingto consider that I'm wrong, you know,
or someone who is a bad personis might have some some point something.

(01:43:00):
So yeah, and that's why Icall like Africa, because think Africa
people have no filter. You know. It's like, hey, fat Mama,
you know what, We'll just I'lljust say they'll be they'll be like
the most racist, xenophobic, bigotedpeople, but they're like Africans and just
say it in such a nice way, and I'd be like a child.
So I think that's what I am, actually, just like a child.
I think I just take things asthey are. Ye, that's probably a

(01:43:25):
good bombshell to end on the right. Andy, thank you so much for
your time. We're going to gooff and record the after show, Andy's
promised me a story about bear grylls, so we're going to go and record
that, and thank you to everyonefor listening. Thank you for listening to
this episode of Modern Outdoor Survival fromOriginal Outdoors. If you go along to

(01:43:47):
Modern outdoor Survival dot com. Thereyou will find links to all of the
content and everything we've talked about inthis episode, plus links to all of
the previous episodes and the show notesfor those episodes. You will also find
links to our Patreon page where youcan become a supporter of the show and
get rid of all of those peskyadverts and access to bonus extra content and

(01:44:10):
stuff that the public never gets tohear, and behind the scenes stuff and
a few other things that are hiddenaway within there. You've also got our
Instagram account, which is at ModernOutdoor Survival. We don't post on there
a huge amount, but we dopost photos from things that we talk about
in the episodes. You will alsofind a link to our discord platform,

(01:44:30):
where we have a group for OriginalOutdoors as a wider community. There you
can meet and talk to people anddiscuss things, but all with the anonymity
of a early two thousands forum orbulletin board. It's a nice retro way
of going about things. I'm goingto leave you now with our three principles

(01:44:51):
of Modern Outdoor Survival, and theyare Number one, make good decisions at
the right times. Number two,prioritize training over shiny new equipment. Number
three, remember Instagram is not yourtraining provider. Bye. Modern Outdoor Survival

(01:45:24):
is produced and edited by Amy Greenand is an original outdoor media production.

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52: Big wall climbing, real-life survival and accidental comedy with Andy Kirkpatrick

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