March 27, 2025 • 25 mins
Brian Dickinson is a former Navy Aviation Rescue Swimmer and alpinist that has climbed the highest peak on each continent. Check out our entire interview on Ep. 211.
Support the show
https://jcramergraphics.com
https://ANGLICOshop.com
https://patreon.com/formeractionguys
Brian's Site
https://briandickinson.net/
00:00:00 Tibet Route vs Nepal Route
00:04:09 Acclimating to Everest
00:07:27 Summit Day
00:09:59 Gear Malfunction
00:13:52 The Final Push | Summiting Everest
00:19:57 Verifying a Summit
Support the show
https://jcramergraphics.com
https://ANGLICOshop.com
https://patreon.com/formeractionguys
Brian's Site
https://briandickinson.net/
00:00:00 Tibet Route vs Nepal Route
00:04:09 Acclimating to Everest
00:07:27 Summit Day
00:09:59 Gear Malfunction
00:13:52 The Final Push | Summiting Everest
00:19:57 Verifying a Summit
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You mentioned also the Tibetan and Nepalese kind of routes,
which one is considered the harder route. I mean, is
there one that's harder than the other. I know there's
summer easier, easier to do because that it's more diplomatically
easy to get a pass to go on, right.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Nepal is such a poor country that they're
you know, major part of their GDP as the tourism,
so they I'll always figure out how to make things
work to get their money. Tibet's not so much, so
it's more difficult to get in. Plus I haven't done Tibet,
(00:37):
so again back to my earlier comment, but I know
plenty of people that have. It seems like the weather
is quite quite a bit worse on the northern side,
just the way that the where they're exposed and the
weather comes in. You drive to base camp so you
don't have to hike in that that far. You have
(00:59):
the step which is kind of like a ladder right
near the summit, and that can be a little sketchy,
you know, when you're trying to work a little technically
getting up something like that, because if you follow you're
falling for a couple of miles. But on the Nepalese side,
just to me, it just seemed more interesting. And I've
(01:20):
heard that it's it is more difficult, just from a
technical perspective, just because you're going through the Kumu ice
fall multiple times, going through the western comb where there's
like five ladders tied together with this bottomless crevass.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I see those photos of that, and I'm like, what
are they doing. They're climbing over these crevasses on a ladder.
That's insane genius.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I know. Like back in the day they would bring
like logs and like try to like throw a log
across like that's like at the Pacific Northwest, or there's
spinning on the logs with their spikes. That's what I
would say. I think, just spins. I don't know how
you'd anchor that thing down.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, who wants to be the first guy?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You know, the ankle up on the other side, like
paper rock scissors.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
You know, it's something like that. You talk about the
ice fall area, and it's ever changing, right because it's
it's so even if you go back, it's not gonna
be what you remember, and it's gonna be like a
completely different obstacle.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Correct, Yeah, every time I went through its different. So
they employ like and they employ like five ice fall doctors.
They call them so sir, But that's all they do.
They don't really go above that. Every safe day they'll
go through and reroute, you know, or fix the route.
You know, I've I went through and you know, look
like a bomb went off at one point, like totally different.
(02:39):
Ladders are just like broken but then kind of tied
back together. One day you might have to like ice
climb up, you know, a fifty foot wall, repel down it.
The next that whole thing's gone and you just walk
right through, you know. Even like these little pyramids had collapsed,
you know on the way up. I went up and
coming down like huh, this is different. And even one
(03:03):
of them there was like four ladders tied together, and
I was by myself a lot like I went. I
went through this like by myself and crossing this ladder,
you have like ropes that are anchored on the other side,
so you can connect into that and like hold it
like for the stability. Well that thing I was halfway
across and the whole anchor came loose, So I was
(03:27):
just like free standing over this crevasse where I couldn't
even see the bottom, and I remember just laying down
and on it, you know, and like crawling across. Like
there's nothing glamorous about mountaineering by any means. It's the
crawl whatever to get across. It's all survival.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's wild, dude. That's like something that would happen and
I'd be like, you know what, maybe not, Maybe I'm good,
maybe I'm right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's just like I'm not smart enough to recognize the signs.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You just have to, like, you have to put that
aside and go, you know what, It's okay. I almost
fell into a couple hundred foot you know thing where
no one would have ever found me. But it's fine,
totally fine, it's fine. We'll just come up tomorrow and
did it again.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's cool.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, you know, you mentioned you have to go through
a multiple times. I think that's something that people that
don't really know much about Everest kind of understand. As
you're doing that acclamation and you're you're going up, you're
going down, you're going up. What is from the time
you got to base camp to the time you made
it to the peak? How many days were you on everest.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
From base camp. Yeah, so the whole expedition is two months,
so you figure it took a little over a week
to get to base camp. So then the remaining portion
of that is there, and that's a month of acclimating.
That's going up touch Camp one, come back down, sleep
for a few days, go up bypass Camp one, or
(04:51):
sleep there. I slept there as easter and I watched
the Empire strikes back. I had a little many nice laptop,
and then went up to Camp two, touched it, came down,
and it's just kind of this yo yo until you
go up stay in. I at Camp three and Camp
three is on this that's where you see the tents
on the side of the cliff, the ice cliff, that
(05:13):
are just anchored in there. So if you yeah, you
don't want to slip there. So you're pretty much always
just kind of roped up and the everything's just attached
to the ice wall. But when you're in the tent,
you can't even tell until you open the vestibule and
you're like, oh gosh, we're up here.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Don't mess that up. Can't just step out and use
the bathroom real quick?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
No, just just arc it out.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, oh, man, bring a bottle.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I had like a gatorade ball or whatever. You
just you want to make sure you get the right bottle. Yeah,
take a swig.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Oh and so every day you're just learning more about
the mountain. You're learning more about the path you're taking
and stuff like that. And you know, as someone that's
been doing mountaineering for a while at this point and
this is like the pinnacle for a lot of people,
what did it feel like to actually be working your
way through these iconic areas of Mount Everest.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That's surreal. So yeah, I've read all the books that
you've read, and anytime you read a book, I think
in your mind you put the characters. You just form
a character. It's the same with you know, depending how
they describe an area, you you just you form this
in your mind. And all of that was different. So
I had it in my mind like even like the
(06:32):
ice fall was on the opposite side of camp type
of thing. So it was like it just felt all like,
I don't know, just shattered all of my my own thoughts.
But it was just it was so surreal to just
create these impressions in these you know, where you just
you know, you have limited time, and you just you
(06:53):
wanted to like capture it all and embrace it at
the same time get it done with. You know, it's
like this this extreme you know, both ways. But it
it is amazing when you're on these things and you've
you've read these these books and these stories and I've
you know, followed other climbers and this. They're amazing experiences
(07:13):
and just to be walking there and and at the
same time, some of those amazing guides are still there
and I'm interacting with them as we're passing each other
in different areas. So yeah, it's it was awesome, I
guess to sum it up.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, So when it gets to to the day, you know,
the summit day, what's going through your mind, Like today's day,
We're ready to go. Let's get this, you know, let's
get going.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, it's it's it is nuts because I've I've summoned it.
I've I've I've soloed a lot of a lot of mountains,
you know, I've I'm What's interesting is my job, you know,
flashed back to the military. My my job is one
of very few where we're we're on our own. You
(07:56):
jump from the helicopter. You know, in most jobs you're
a part of a team, and we're still part of
the team, the aircrew. But once I'm in the water,
I'm in it's may you know, and it might be
hand to hand, you know, with a with a survivor
who's you know, not happy or whatever. So I think
I'm just comfortable in that. So I train a lot
by myself. I've soloed a lot of mountains myself, so
(08:19):
I was on the mountain quite a bit by myself,
but the song was with me and heading up towards
the summit. So as we you actually start at Camp three,
so you don't spend too much time at the high camp.
That's in the death zone. The south coal at twenty
six thousand feet, so when we were heading up, you
(08:40):
got to go another mile just straight up this rock
and ice face, and there was like seventy mile an
hour winds. It was. It was legit. Most people, there
was a couple groups that attempted the summit. I think
a couple did make it. The Japanese climber I mentioned
earlier did not passed away, but most people retreat it
(09:02):
and they were heading down, but we had triangulated the
weather and the next day would be sufficient for a summit.
It's just you get some crazy weather up there and
you have to you know, there's only a couple of
days where you can summit on everest because the monsoon
season comes in and you just get these these crazy
(09:23):
winds and weather. So going up it was it was
tough because it seemed like every step forward it was
just you had to time it within the wind gusts
of like pushing you back. But you just take a step,
hunker down, you know, take another step, and it was
it just took a while. So a lot of times
(09:45):
you're not even thinking about just how surreal this the
fact that you're actually making a summit push is. It's
like I just need to get to point B, like
just you know, break these little milestones down and just
you know, accomplish these little goals. But that's where I
had ended up cracking my goggles for me just to
get into this. Yeah, yeah, okay, So I got about
(10:09):
I think it was like fifteen hundred feet above Camp three,
so I'm still in this ice face and the weather
would just fluctuate. And that's what's crazy, is as soon
as a calm comes. You're roasting because I'm in this
full down suit, oxygen goggles, you know, gloves, massive boots
(10:30):
that go up to your knees, crampons, harness. I'm attached
to this rope and as soon as it stops, it's
like eighty degrees, so you have to really like kind
of filled like on zip and you know, just make
sure you don't go from like sweating to hypothermic to
you know, so you're totally just managing this whole scene,
(10:50):
you know, this personal scene, because everyone's body is different.
So I stopped to get a drink and I anchored
off and again I'm like on this wall. And as
soon as I've anchored off, I had a carabiner with
like some webbing into an anchor point. I have to
remove my mask and my goggles and my mask to
(11:14):
then you know, be able to find my mouth so
I could actually drink. Well, as soon as I'm there,
my foot slipped off and my goggles released from my
hand because I had put them around my wrist and
they just they're gone, They're just they're heading on them out,
And I'm like, crap, because you don't typically bring extra
goggles like I will and like I did an anart,
(11:37):
well now I will, but in Antarctica at different places.
But it's not usually because you're going to lose them
or whatever. It's because they freeze, so you just alternate
goggles so you can have like a less frozen parn.
But they went down and I thought they were gone,
but looking down, like about one thousand or five hundred
feet probably, there was some Sherpa that were coming up
(11:59):
to a higher camp three and they were waving at me,
and they were like pointing that they got the goggles.
So that's a miracle in itself. So I told the
song you go up to high camp, I'm gonna repel down.
So I left my bag, my oxygen, everything I wrapped
down got to them, and when I saw them, they
were cracked in the So goggles have two lenses, the
(12:23):
internal lens was cracked. So I put them on, and
then with the contrast of my warm breath and the
cold outside, they were freezing between the layers, so I
couldn't really see too well. But I still I donned them,
and I continued up, climbed back up, got my gear
and kept moving. I eventually just ripped out those internal
the internal lens I was cracked and just tossed it
(12:46):
so then effectively cut their their effectiveness in half. So
not realizing at the time, and I have blue eyes
a more susceptible to the bright lights. So made it
up to high camp twenty six thousand feet search for
a song. There's a few tents, a lot of them
are collapsed just because of the high winds, and found
(13:09):
them and then you know, we made some radio calls
just to make sure we were good to go for
that night. Because you on highly glaciated peaks, you climb
through the night because that's when the ice is the
most frozen. Once the sun comes up, things become very unstable.
All those anchor points are metal, so those are conductors
of heat, so they can melt out. So it just
(13:31):
becomes more dangerous avalanches, everything else. So you always want
to climb through the night, try to get to the
summit when the sun is rising, and then use gravity
to get your way back down. So we laid in
our tents with eyes wide open, trying to get some rest.
It's not possible because it's like they were going for
(13:51):
the summit and are out eight nine o'clock. The sun
went down. It was pretty amazing to watch the sun
go down at the highest camp in the world, you know.
Took a couple of picks, and then we geared up
and started heading up. And from there it's just it's
slow moving. And I don't think we realized at the
time we were the only two people going for the
(14:14):
summit on either side, the Tibet or Nepoli's side. So again,
very very unusual because you only have a couple of
days where you can summit. There's only one way up,
one way down, which is why when you see crowds,
you know, that amount of people on any other peak
wouldn't be that many people. It's just when you're in
a line, you know, and everyone's you know, brave behind
(14:36):
a keyboard, they make their comments and that's just kind
of how it is. In my situation, I was, you know,
it's just a song in myself, so it's pretty pretty
amazing from that perspective. So heading up to the balcony,
so if you read in the thin air, there's a
lot of stuff that happened there on the balcony with
(14:57):
deck weathers and different people. And I started edging away
from the song and you know, we're not roped together,
We're on the fixed lines. And I got to the
balcony at twenty seven five hundred feet about an hour
before he got there. So I waited for him, just
(15:18):
kind of hung out and it's pitch black, but there
was like an electrical storm way in the distance below me.
Like it was just just so again, just amazing, just
to I'm at the highest point. I'm the highest person
in the world at this point, and just you know,
just trying to take all this in. And he eventually
showed up and he just he let me know he
(15:40):
wasn't feeling well. So and he said he ran out
of water, and I'm like, okay, here, I have extra
So I give him some water and he throws up.
I remember just saying keep it, like you need this,
And we had a conversation at that point. It's I
figured we were done. If he's sick, we need to
(16:01):
get back down. So we had that conversation. He's like, no, no, no,
I'm fine. I just needed some water. And you know,
he has more experience on Everest than I do. So again,
you live and die by the decisions. You make those
decisions with the information you have at the time. So
we continued, went up to about twenty eight thousand feet,
(16:22):
which is where it starts getting more technical, and that's
where he tapped out. He's like, I'm I'm done, Like,
I'm gonna head back to the balcony, which is, you know,
pretty close, and he's like, I want you to continue
up and I'm like, I'm like no, if you're sick,
we need to go down. So we had this conversation
at twenty eight thousand feet and I'm weighing out things
(16:43):
like how am I doing I'm I felt strong, I
was doing good. How's the weather. The weather was no
wind whatsoever at this point, so typically the wind will
stop during the middle of the night and it'll kick
up later in the next day. So completely calm. Most importantly,
can my friend Pasan get down? And he's like, no, no, no,
(17:04):
I'm fine. I'm gonna wait right here, and he, without hesitation,
he pulled out an extra oxygen bottle, buried it in
the snow right there, and he turned around and walked
down to the balcony, and I turned around and started
moving up the south rock step. He ended up not
(17:24):
waiting at the balcony. He went all the way down
to high camp, which he needed to do, yeah, otherwise,
so but that's just that's the situation. So in that moment,
it was the right choice. So I continue up and
(17:44):
get up about halfway to the South Summit, and I
look out and I see that perfect pyramid being cast,
that shadow of the sun rising behind the highest point
in the world down over the Himalayas. It was just
I took my camera, my video camera, a little handheld
and captured that. I just I just posted that on Instagram.
(18:06):
That's what I posted on my summit day, which is
May fifteenth. Just an amazing thing. But my camera did
the froze after that, and I didn't wasn't able to
un thought for like a couple of weeks. I'm so
so grateful that I got that because it was just
to be in that moment and to see that I'm
so high up, you know, in the death zone, five
(18:27):
vertical miles up and just you know, can after that,
just put it away and continued moving. Got to the
South Summit, which is degrading because you actually drop down
and then have to climb up to get to the
base of Hillary's step, which is you know, like a
forty foot rock climb, and it usually a point of
(18:49):
contention because you're up there and if there's a lot
of people, there's only one way up, one way down.
You gotta wait. Yeah, there's no one there. So I
just kind of bounced up that. And then there's this
area called the Cornice traver switches. You know, it's a
couple feet wide, and it is literally a two mile
drop on each side of you. So two miles onto
the left into Nepal or two miles to the right
(19:11):
into Tibet. It's like you have these options. But I
just kept moving forward, and at that point I could
see the true summit, and it's it's a lot to
take in, like you can work your whole life or something,
and then it's there and it's like, I don't know,
everything's moving so slow, but it's so fast at the
(19:32):
same time where you just you cannot process it, and
knowing how you know, thirteen years later, I still haven't
processed and I probably never will. But then just taking
those final steps was just just insane. You know, you're
just there and you're looking around. You can go no high.
I could go no higher on this earth than I
(19:54):
was at that moment.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's wild man, and you have to do it alone.
That just still blows my mind. You know, that opportunity
is something that I mean, there's probably only a handful
of people that have gotten to go up and experience
the summit by themselves, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So in the Himalayan database, so they're they're very adamant
about capturing the data of who climbs in the highest peaks.
I haven't checked it lately, but I'm one of two
people to have ever had the top to myself completely
on on a given day. There's probably more, it's just documented.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, you bring that up, that database. I don't know
if it was in that book or I read it.
I think I might have read something about it in
like Outdoor magazine, but I remember they were saying that
there's like an old lady in like the village. I
would keep the record of every no one actually summitted
unless she said that they summitted like she was, like
the record is that? Is that still the case?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (20:48):
How does that work? I mean, how do they confirm
that you did it when you were at the top.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, she was still around, but she passed away just
a couple of years ago. So yeah, I don't know
who's doing it now, but I still, yeah, it was
it was still a process like I had to submit pictures, selfies, times,
like radio calls like all of that. So yeah, it's
it's good. I mean some people I don't know what
(21:14):
AI now. I guess you and I could get on
the top right now if we wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I remember a few years ago someone got called out
for faking it. There was a they had a fake photo.
They had a photo that said that you know that
they said they made it to the summit, but something
in their photo like, no, you didn't, and so they weren't.
I think they were actually on everest, but they never
actually summited, and there's something with the photo. I don't
know if it was photoshopped or maybe the photo they
(21:39):
took wasn't where they said they were or something like that. Yeah,
it's they take it seriously.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
They should though, well they should, but I mean flip
it around, like who the heck would take like lie
about something like that, Like for what reason are you
doing it? Like that's just sean.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Fame, right or you know, some kind of notoriety. Imagine
all the people that lie about serving in the military,
you know, yeah, and think of this too. Think about
the guys that are in the military that lie about
the ship that they did after they got out, and
it's like, bro, you did enough, Like what are you
lying about?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
You?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I know, man, go to go to go to a
therapy session with those guys because they're they're definitely trying
to check some box that they never got from their
family or something. I don't know, man, that's yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah, So I'm not surprised that people would lie or
fake it or whatever, but it's I do remember, and
I always thought that was super cool that there was
like a lady that she was like the one person that,
you know, everyone went to verify if someone had been up.
I saw a list online the other day, a website,
but I don't know if it's like an official list
or anything. But man, so, how long did you spend
(22:48):
at the summit?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. You could spend your whole
life trying to get there, and you you cannot stay
for long. And that's that's a lot of summits. It's
just it's too dangerous, so I wouldn't. I don't know,
time wise, I know it was less than an hour.
I know, I had time to make a radio call down,
(23:10):
and like that was tough in itself. I had to
practice a few times. Like I didn't realize how choked
up I was, and I didn't want to like come
across as like a you know that was my voice totally.
It's funny the things you think about.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
But yeah, there's anybody would judge you. You're on top
of the world. You just climbed everes this pussy crying totally.
How dare you be happy?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh? That's me. Yeah, I just made a radio call
down and you know, talk to some people that were
down at you know, one of the main people that
was sharing the camp one of my camps, he was
coming up going to make his attempt that night. So
he was at Camp three and I had been climbing
(23:57):
with him and lock Bay his his shirt, but who
had five summits at that point And at that point,
no one knew I was alone. So that radio call
was pretty significant because they're you know, he's like congratulations,
It's like you and Pasong, you know, you know, be
careful on your way down, And it was at that
moment it registers like, oh that's cool, but the song
(24:19):
went down like over an hour ago. He's like, you're alone.
He's like yeah, He's like, oh, be careful. And we
had a conversation after and I have it in my
book Blind Ascent their conversation. But he asked Lockebaw who
knew me, and you know, I'd been climbing with me,
knew my skill set, just how long it was going
(24:39):
to take for me to get down to high Camp.
And he's like, oh, Brian, it'll be maybe two three
hours and they wouldn't hear from me for seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I can't imagine what they were thinking, you know, Like
I mean, obviously thinking the worst. You might be a
little late, but once you start pushing that five, six,
seven hour timeline, they're probably like me, and it's you know,
You mentioned also the Tibetan and Nepalese kind of routes,
which one is considered the harder route. I mean, is
there one that's harder than the other. I know there's
summer easier, easier to do because that it's more diplomatically
easy to get a pass to go on, right.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Nepal is such a poor country that they're
you know, major part of their GDP as the tourism,
so they I'll always figure out how to make things
work to get their money. Tibet's not so much, so
it's more difficult to get in. Plus I haven't done Tibet,
(00:37):
so again back to my earlier comment, but I know
plenty of people that have. It seems like the weather
is quite quite a bit worse on the northern side,
just the way that the where they're exposed and the
weather comes in. You drive to base camp so you
don't have to hike in that that far. You have
(00:59):
the step which is kind of like a ladder right
near the summit, and that can be a little sketchy,
you know, when you're trying to work a little technically
getting up something like that, because if you follow you're
falling for a couple of miles. But on the Nepalese side,
just to me, it just seemed more interesting. And I've
(01:20):
heard that it's it is more difficult, just from a
technical perspective, just because you're going through the Kumu ice
fall multiple times, going through the western comb where there's
like five ladders tied together with this bottomless crevass.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I see those photos of that, and I'm like, what
are they doing. They're climbing over these crevasses on a ladder.
That's insane genius.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I know. Like back in the day they would bring
like logs and like try to like throw a log
across like that's like at the Pacific Northwest, or there's
spinning on the logs with their spikes. That's what I
would say. I think, just spins. I don't know how
you'd anchor that thing down.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, who wants to be the first guy?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You know, the ankle up on the other side, like
paper rock scissors.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
You know, it's something like that. You talk about the
ice fall area, and it's ever changing, right because it's
it's so even if you go back, it's not gonna
be what you remember, and it's gonna be like a
completely different obstacle.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Correct, Yeah, every time I went through its different. So
they employ like and they employ like five ice fall doctors.
They call them so sir, But that's all they do.
They don't really go above that. Every safe day they'll
go through and reroute, you know, or fix the route.
You know, I've I went through and you know, look
like a bomb went off at one point, like totally different.
(02:39):
Ladders are just like broken but then kind of tied
back together. One day you might have to like ice
climb up, you know, a fifty foot wall, repel down it.
The next that whole thing's gone and you just walk
right through, you know. Even like these little pyramids had collapsed,
you know on the way up. I went up and
coming down like huh, this is different. And even one
(03:03):
of them there was like four ladders tied together, and
I was by myself a lot like I went. I
went through this like by myself and crossing this ladder,
you have like ropes that are anchored on the other side,
so you can connect into that and like hold it
like for the stability. Well that thing I was halfway
across and the whole anchor came loose, So I was
(03:27):
just like free standing over this crevasse where I couldn't
even see the bottom, and I remember just laying down
and on it, you know, and like crawling across. Like
there's nothing glamorous about mountaineering by any means. It's the
crawl whatever to get across. It's all survival.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's wild, dude. That's like something that would happen and
I'd be like, you know what, maybe not, Maybe I'm good,
maybe I'm right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's just like I'm not smart enough to recognize the signs.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You just have to, like, you have to put that
aside and go, you know what, It's okay. I almost
fell into a couple hundred foot you know thing where
no one would have ever found me. But it's fine,
totally fine, it's fine. We'll just come up tomorrow and
did it again.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's cool.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, you know, you mentioned you have to go through
a multiple times. I think that's something that people that
don't really know much about Everest kind of understand. As
you're doing that acclamation and you're you're going up, you're
going down, you're going up. What is from the time
you got to base camp to the time you made
it to the peak? How many days were you on everest.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
From base camp. Yeah, so the whole expedition is two months,
so you figure it took a little over a week
to get to base camp. So then the remaining portion
of that is there, and that's a month of acclimating.
That's going up touch Camp one, come back down, sleep
for a few days, go up bypass Camp one, or
(04:51):
sleep there. I slept there as easter and I watched
the Empire strikes back. I had a little many nice laptop,
and then went up to Camp two, touched it, came down,
and it's just kind of this yo yo until you
go up stay in. I at Camp three and Camp
three is on this that's where you see the tents
on the side of the cliff, the ice cliff, that
(05:13):
are just anchored in there. So if you yeah, you
don't want to slip there. So you're pretty much always
just kind of roped up and the everything's just attached
to the ice wall. But when you're in the tent,
you can't even tell until you open the vestibule and
you're like, oh gosh, we're up here.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Don't mess that up. Can't just step out and use
the bathroom real quick?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
No, just just arc it out.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, oh, man, bring a bottle.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I had like a gatorade ball or whatever. You
just you want to make sure you get the right bottle. Yeah,
take a swig.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Oh and so every day you're just learning more about
the mountain. You're learning more about the path you're taking
and stuff like that. And you know, as someone that's
been doing mountaineering for a while at this point and
this is like the pinnacle for a lot of people,
what did it feel like to actually be working your
way through these iconic areas of Mount Everest.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That's surreal. So yeah, I've read all the books that
you've read, and anytime you read a book, I think
in your mind you put the characters. You just form
a character. It's the same with you know, depending how
they describe an area, you you just you form this
in your mind. And all of that was different. So
I had it in my mind like even like the
(06:32):
ice fall was on the opposite side of camp type
of thing. So it was like it just felt all like,
I don't know, just shattered all of my my own thoughts.
But it was just it was so surreal to just
create these impressions in these you know, where you just
you know, you have limited time, and you just you
(06:53):
wanted to like capture it all and embrace it at
the same time get it done with. You know, it's
like this this extreme you know, both ways. But it
it is amazing when you're on these things and you've
you've read these these books and these stories and I've
you know, followed other climbers and this. They're amazing experiences
(07:13):
and just to be walking there and and at the
same time, some of those amazing guides are still there
and I'm interacting with them as we're passing each other
in different areas. So yeah, it's it was awesome, I
guess to sum it up.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, So when it gets to to the day, you know,
the summit day, what's going through your mind, Like today's day,
We're ready to go. Let's get this, you know, let's
get going.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, it's it's it is nuts because I've I've summoned it.
I've I've I've soloed a lot of a lot of mountains,
you know, I've I'm What's interesting is my job, you know,
flashed back to the military. My my job is one
of very few where we're we're on our own. You
(07:56):
jump from the helicopter. You know, in most jobs you're
a part of a team, and we're still part of
the team, the aircrew. But once I'm in the water,
I'm in it's may you know, and it might be
hand to hand, you know, with a with a survivor
who's you know, not happy or whatever. So I think
I'm just comfortable in that. So I train a lot
by myself. I've soloed a lot of mountains myself, so
(08:19):
I was on the mountain quite a bit by myself,
but the song was with me and heading up towards
the summit. So as we you actually start at Camp three,
so you don't spend too much time at the high camp.
That's in the death zone. The south coal at twenty
six thousand feet, so when we were heading up, you
(08:40):
got to go another mile just straight up this rock
and ice face, and there was like seventy mile an
hour winds. It was. It was legit. Most people, there
was a couple groups that attempted the summit. I think
a couple did make it. The Japanese climber I mentioned
earlier did not passed away, but most people retreat it
(09:02):
and they were heading down, but we had triangulated the
weather and the next day would be sufficient for a summit.
It's just you get some crazy weather up there and
you have to you know, there's only a couple of
days where you can summit on everest because the monsoon
season comes in and you just get these these crazy
(09:23):
winds and weather. So going up it was it was
tough because it seemed like every step forward it was
just you had to time it within the wind gusts
of like pushing you back. But you just take a step,
hunker down, you know, take another step, and it was
it just took a while. So a lot of times
(09:45):
you're not even thinking about just how surreal this the
fact that you're actually making a summit push is. It's
like I just need to get to point B, like
just you know, break these little milestones down and just
you know, accomplish these little goals. But that's where I
had ended up cracking my goggles for me just to
get into this. Yeah, yeah, okay, So I got about
(10:09):
I think it was like fifteen hundred feet above Camp three,
so I'm still in this ice face and the weather
would just fluctuate. And that's what's crazy, is as soon
as a calm comes. You're roasting because I'm in this
full down suit, oxygen goggles, you know, gloves, massive boots
(10:30):
that go up to your knees, crampons, harness. I'm attached
to this rope and as soon as it stops, it's
like eighty degrees, so you have to really like kind
of filled like on zip and you know, just make
sure you don't go from like sweating to hypothermic to
you know, so you're totally just managing this whole scene,
(10:50):
you know, this personal scene, because everyone's body is different.
So I stopped to get a drink and I anchored
off and again I'm like on this wall. And as
soon as I've anchored off, I had a carabiner with
like some webbing into an anchor point. I have to
remove my mask and my goggles and my mask to
(11:14):
then you know, be able to find my mouth so
I could actually drink. Well, as soon as I'm there,
my foot slipped off and my goggles released from my
hand because I had put them around my wrist and
they just they're gone, They're just they're heading on them out,
And I'm like, crap, because you don't typically bring extra
goggles like I will and like I did an anart,
(11:37):
well now I will, but in Antarctica at different places.
But it's not usually because you're going to lose them
or whatever. It's because they freeze, so you just alternate
goggles so you can have like a less frozen parn.
But they went down and I thought they were gone,
but looking down, like about one thousand or five hundred
feet probably, there was some Sherpa that were coming up
(11:59):
to a higher camp three and they were waving at me,
and they were like pointing that they got the goggles.
So that's a miracle in itself. So I told the
song you go up to high camp, I'm gonna repel down.
So I left my bag, my oxygen, everything I wrapped
down got to them, and when I saw them, they
were cracked in the So goggles have two lenses, the
(12:23):
internal lens was cracked. So I put them on, and
then with the contrast of my warm breath and the
cold outside, they were freezing between the layers, so I
couldn't really see too well. But I still I donned them,
and I continued up, climbed back up, got my gear
and kept moving. I eventually just ripped out those internal
the internal lens I was cracked and just tossed it
(12:46):
so then effectively cut their their effectiveness in half. So
not realizing at the time, and I have blue eyes
a more susceptible to the bright lights. So made it
up to high camp twenty six thousand feet search for
a song. There's a few tents, a lot of them
are collapsed just because of the high winds, and found
(13:09):
them and then you know, we made some radio calls
just to make sure we were good to go for
that night. Because you on highly glaciated peaks, you climb
through the night because that's when the ice is the
most frozen. Once the sun comes up, things become very unstable.
All those anchor points are metal, so those are conductors
of heat, so they can melt out. So it just
(13:31):
becomes more dangerous avalanches, everything else. So you always want
to climb through the night, try to get to the
summit when the sun is rising, and then use gravity
to get your way back down. So we laid in
our tents with eyes wide open, trying to get some rest.
It's not possible because it's like they were going for
(13:51):
the summit and are out eight nine o'clock. The sun
went down. It was pretty amazing to watch the sun
go down at the highest camp in the world, you know.
Took a couple of picks, and then we geared up
and started heading up. And from there it's just it's
slow moving. And I don't think we realized at the
time we were the only two people going for the
(14:14):
summit on either side, the Tibet or Nepoli's side. So again,
very very unusual because you only have a couple of
days where you can summit. There's only one way up,
one way down, which is why when you see crowds,
you know, that amount of people on any other peak
wouldn't be that many people. It's just when you're in
a line, you know, and everyone's you know, brave behind
(14:36):
a keyboard, they make their comments and that's just kind
of how it is. In my situation, I was, you know,
it's just a song in myself, so it's pretty pretty
amazing from that perspective. So heading up to the balcony,
so if you read in the thin air, there's a
lot of stuff that happened there on the balcony with
(14:57):
deck weathers and different people. And I started edging away
from the song and you know, we're not roped together,
We're on the fixed lines. And I got to the
balcony at twenty seven five hundred feet about an hour
before he got there. So I waited for him, just
(15:18):
kind of hung out and it's pitch black, but there
was like an electrical storm way in the distance below me.
Like it was just just so again, just amazing, just
to I'm at the highest point. I'm the highest person
in the world at this point, and just you know,
just trying to take all this in. And he eventually
showed up and he just he let me know he
(15:40):
wasn't feeling well. So and he said he ran out
of water, and I'm like, okay, here, I have extra
So I give him some water and he throws up.
I remember just saying keep it, like you need this,
And we had a conversation at that point. It's I
figured we were done. If he's sick, we need to
(16:01):
get back down. So we had that conversation. He's like, no, no, no,
I'm fine. I just needed some water. And you know,
he has more experience on Everest than I do. So again,
you live and die by the decisions. You make those
decisions with the information you have at the time. So
we continued, went up to about twenty eight thousand feet,
(16:22):
which is where it starts getting more technical, and that's
where he tapped out. He's like, I'm I'm done, Like,
I'm gonna head back to the balcony, which is, you know,
pretty close, and he's like, I want you to continue
up and I'm like, I'm like no, if you're sick,
we need to go down. So we had this conversation
at twenty eight thousand feet and I'm weighing out things
(16:43):
like how am I doing I'm I felt strong, I
was doing good. How's the weather. The weather was no
wind whatsoever at this point, so typically the wind will
stop during the middle of the night and it'll kick
up later in the next day. So completely calm. Most importantly,
can my friend Pasan get down? And he's like, no, no, no,
(17:04):
I'm fine. I'm gonna wait right here, and he, without hesitation,
he pulled out an extra oxygen bottle, buried it in
the snow right there, and he turned around and walked
down to the balcony, and I turned around and started
moving up the south rock step. He ended up not
(17:24):
waiting at the balcony. He went all the way down
to high camp, which he needed to do, yeah, otherwise,
so but that's just that's the situation. So in that moment,
it was the right choice. So I continue up and
(17:44):
get up about halfway to the South Summit, and I
look out and I see that perfect pyramid being cast,
that shadow of the sun rising behind the highest point
in the world down over the Himalayas. It was just
I took my camera, my video camera, a little handheld
and captured that. I just I just posted that on Instagram.
(18:06):
That's what I posted on my summit day, which is
May fifteenth. Just an amazing thing. But my camera did
the froze after that, and I didn't wasn't able to
un thought for like a couple of weeks. I'm so
so grateful that I got that because it was just
to be in that moment and to see that I'm
so high up, you know, in the death zone, five
(18:27):
vertical miles up and just you know, can after that,
just put it away and continued moving. Got to the
South Summit, which is degrading because you actually drop down
and then have to climb up to get to the
base of Hillary's step, which is you know, like a
forty foot rock climb, and it usually a point of
(18:49):
contention because you're up there and if there's a lot
of people, there's only one way up, one way down.
You gotta wait. Yeah, there's no one there. So I
just kind of bounced up that. And then there's this
area called the Cornice traver switches. You know, it's a
couple feet wide, and it is literally a two mile
drop on each side of you. So two miles onto
the left into Nepal or two miles to the right
(19:11):
into Tibet. It's like you have these options. But I
just kept moving forward, and at that point I could
see the true summit, and it's it's a lot to
take in, like you can work your whole life or something,
and then it's there and it's like, I don't know,
everything's moving so slow, but it's so fast at the
(19:32):
same time where you just you cannot process it, and
knowing how you know, thirteen years later, I still haven't
processed and I probably never will. But then just taking
those final steps was just just insane. You know, you're
just there and you're looking around. You can go no high.
I could go no higher on this earth than I
(19:54):
was at that moment.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's wild man, and you have to do it alone.
That just still blows my mind. You know, that opportunity
is something that I mean, there's probably only a handful
of people that have gotten to go up and experience
the summit by themselves, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So in the Himalayan database, so they're they're very adamant
about capturing the data of who climbs in the highest peaks.
I haven't checked it lately, but I'm one of two
people to have ever had the top to myself completely
on on a given day. There's probably more, it's just documented.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, you bring that up, that database. I don't know
if it was in that book or I read it.
I think I might have read something about it in
like Outdoor magazine, but I remember they were saying that
there's like an old lady in like the village. I
would keep the record of every no one actually summitted
unless she said that they summitted like she was, like
the record is that? Is that still the case?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (20:48):
How does that work? I mean, how do they confirm
that you did it when you were at the top.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, she was still around, but she passed away just
a couple of years ago. So yeah, I don't know
who's doing it now, but I still, yeah, it was
it was still a process like I had to submit pictures, selfies, times,
like radio calls like all of that. So yeah, it's
it's good. I mean some people I don't know what
(21:14):
AI now. I guess you and I could get on
the top right now if we wanted.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I remember a few years ago someone got called out
for faking it. There was a they had a fake photo.
They had a photo that said that you know that
they said they made it to the summit, but something
in their photo like, no, you didn't, and so they weren't.
I think they were actually on everest, but they never
actually summited, and there's something with the photo. I don't
know if it was photoshopped or maybe the photo they
(21:39):
took wasn't where they said they were or something like that. Yeah,
it's they take it seriously.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
They should though, well they should, but I mean flip
it around, like who the heck would take like lie
about something like that, Like for what reason are you
doing it? Like that's just sean.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Fame, right or you know, some kind of notoriety. Imagine
all the people that lie about serving in the military,
you know, yeah, and think of this too. Think about
the guys that are in the military that lie about
the ship that they did after they got out, and
it's like, bro, you did enough, Like what are you
lying about?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
You?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I know, man, go to go to go to a
therapy session with those guys because they're they're definitely trying
to check some box that they never got from their
family or something. I don't know, man, that's yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah, So I'm not surprised that people would lie or
fake it or whatever, but it's I do remember, and
I always thought that was super cool that there was
like a lady that she was like the one person that,
you know, everyone went to verify if someone had been up.
I saw a list online the other day, a website,
but I don't know if it's like an official list
or anything. But man, so, how long did you spend
(22:48):
at the summit?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. You could spend your whole
life trying to get there, and you you cannot stay
for long. And that's that's a lot of summits. It's
just it's too dangerous, so I wouldn't. I don't know,
time wise, I know it was less than an hour.
I know, I had time to make a radio call down,
(23:10):
and like that was tough in itself. I had to
practice a few times. Like I didn't realize how choked
up I was, and I didn't want to like come
across as like a you know that was my voice totally.
It's funny the things you think about.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
But yeah, there's anybody would judge you. You're on top
of the world. You just climbed everes this pussy crying totally.
How dare you be happy?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh? That's me. Yeah, I just made a radio call
down and you know, talk to some people that were
down at you know, one of the main people that
was sharing the camp one of my camps, he was
coming up going to make his attempt that night. So
he was at Camp three and I had been climbing
(23:57):
with him and lock Bay his his shirt, but who
had five summits at that point And at that point,
no one knew I was alone. So that radio call
was pretty significant because they're you know, he's like congratulations,
It's like you and Pasong, you know, you know, be
careful on your way down, And it was at that
moment it registers like, oh that's cool, but the song
(24:19):
went down like over an hour ago. He's like, you're alone.
He's like yeah, He's like, oh, be careful. And we
had a conversation after and I have it in my
book Blind Ascent their conversation. But he asked Lockebaw who
knew me, and you know, I'd been climbing with me,
knew my skill set, just how long it was going
(24:39):
to take for me to get down to high Camp.
And he's like, oh, Brian, it'll be maybe two three
hours and they wouldn't hear from me for seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I can't imagine what they were thinking, you know, Like
I mean, obviously thinking the worst. You might be a
little late, but once you start pushing that five, six,
seven hour timeline, they're probably like me, and it's you know,
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.