102 | Surviving the Goliath Traverse w/ Michael Vaill & Tanner Wanish

Today we once again have the honor of sitting down with The Quad Fathers—Michael Vaill and Tanner Wanish. The last time I spoke with them, they had just wrapped up their legendary Yosemite Quad. But little did we know, on the descent from Half Dome they were already scheming their next big objective: The Goliath Traverse. 

To give you a sense of scale, let’s break this thing down. The Goliath Traverse is a south-to-north, ridge link-up of two of the biggest traverses in the Sierra Nevada.

The first is The Full Monty—a notoriously difficult 16-mile traverse of technical rock and mountaineering terrain. It involves 5.10 climbing, horrendous rock quality, immense exposure, and extreme endurance. It extends the already burly Full Palisade Traverse and by itself is a career-defining objective.

The second half is The Full Evolution Crest, running from Bishop Pass to Piute Pass it involves miles of alpine rock, climbing up to 5.10, countless peaks over 13,000 feet, endless elevation gain and loss, and complex route-finding. First completed over eight days in 2008 by Scott McCook and Kyle Sox.

Now imagine linking both of those together; that’s The Goliath Traverse. At 32 miles of climbing, more than 60 summits, nearly 50,000 feet of vertical gain, it is considered the longest technical ridge traverse in the Western Hemisphere. It was first completed in 2021 by Vitaliy Musiyenko in a solo, unsupported, alpine-style push over just eight days—no caches, no partners, no support. Just Vitaliy, his mind, and the mountains.

In today’s conversation, we begin with a harrowing story from Tanner and Michael’s preparation trip to the Alps—a reminder of just how dangerous and unpredictable the mountains can be. When I say these two are lucky to be alive, it’s no exaggeration. At moments, it felt like I was talking to ghosts of fallen mountain athletes.

We then dive into their successful second ascent of The Goliath, and how the experience has reshaped the way they’re setting goals in the mountains—at least for now.

After his first ascent in 2021, Vitaliy reflected, “It didn’t feel like I had conquered Goliath…I had merely survived him.” As you’ll hear, Tanner and Michael would come to understand just how accurate that statement really was.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:04 Opening
• 22:22 Accident on the Dru
• 1:09:05 The Goliath
• 2:28:13 Closing Words

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:24
Kyle
Welcome to the Climbing Majority podcast, where I capture the stories, experiences and lessons of nonprofessional climbers, guides and athletes from around the world.

00:00:09:26 - 00:00:14:17
Kyle
Come join me as I dive deep into a more relatable world of climbing.

00:00:15:29 - 00:00:23:12
Kyle
Before we dive into today's episode, I am super stoked to announce our shows for sponsor Lives in Designs. That's live n.

00:00:23:12 - 00:00:28:10
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lives in is an outdoor apparel company built on the idea of owning less and living more.

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Plus, they stand behind their work with a lifetime warranty program

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00:00:43:18 - 00:00:49:29
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Lives and has made a commitment not just to its customers, not just to its sustainability, but also to you, the climbing majority.

00:00:49:29 - 00:00:55:29
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They've taken a leap of faith in sponsoring the show and become the first partner to stand beside this growing community.

00:00:55:29 - 00:01:03:13
Kyle
While this will always be a passion first project for me, partners like this give me the time and resources to grow the show into something even bigger.

00:01:03:13 - 00:01:07:16
Kyle
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00:01:07:16 - 00:01:15:10
Kyle
Be sure to head over to Live's Incom, that's LiveScience.com. To learn more about our sponsor and to make your first purchase

00:01:15:10 - 00:01:16:22
Kyle
towards supporting this community.

00:01:16:22 - 00:01:29:03
Kyle
Also lives in his extended and exclusive discount just for you. Use code TKM 15 for 15% off your next lives in order. That's TKM 15 for 50% off at checkout.

00:01:29:25 - 00:01:50:10
Speaker 1
Today, we will once again have the honor of sitting down with the quad fathers, Michael Vail and Tanner Harnish. The last time I spoke with them, they had just wrapped up their legendary Yosemite quad. But little did we know, on the descent from Half Dome, they were already scheming their next big objective, the Goliath Traverse. Just to give you a sense of scale, let's break this thing down.

00:01:50:12 - 00:02:16:13
Speaker 1
The Goliath Traverse is a south to north alpine style ridge link up of two of the biggest traverses in the Sierra Nevada. The first is The Full Monty, a notoriously difficult 16 mile traverse of technical rock and mountaineering terrain. It involves five nine climbing, horrendous rock quality, immense exposure and extreme endurance. It extends the already burly full palisade traverse and by itself is a career defining objective.

00:02:16:15 - 00:02:46:18
Speaker 1
The second half is the full evolution crest running from Bishop Pass to Piute Pass. It involves miles of alpine rock climbing up to five nine countless peaks over 13,000ft, endless elevation gain and loss, and complex route finding. First completed over eight days in 2008 by Scott McCook and Kyle Socks. Now imagine linking both of these together. That's the Goliath traverse at 32 miles of climbing more than 60 summits, nearly 80,000ft of vertical gain.

00:02:46:20 - 00:03:11:23
Speaker 1
It is considered the longest technical ridge traverse in the Western Hemisphere. It was first completed in 2021 by fatality, mostly Yenko, in a solo, unsupported alpine style push over just eight days. No caches, no partners, no support. Just Vitale, his mind and the mountains. In today's conversation, we begin with a harrowing story from Tanner and Michael's preparation trip to the Alps.

00:03:11:25 - 00:03:32:13
Speaker 1
A reminder of just how dangerous unpredictable the mountains can be. When I say these two are lucky to be alive, it's no exaggeration. At moments, it felt like I was talking to ghosts of fallen mountain athletes. We then dive into their successful second ascent of the Goliath, and how the experience has reshaped the way they're setting goals in the mountains, at least for now.

00:03:32:16 - 00:03:46:24
Speaker 1
After his first ascent in 2021, Vitale reflected, it didn't feel like I had conquered the Goliath. I had merely survived him. As you'll hear, Tanner and Michael would come to understand just how accurate that statement really was. So, without further

00:03:46:24 - 00:03:51:14
Speaker 1
ado, here is my conversation with Michael Vail and Tanner varnish.

00:04:04:05 - 00:04:09:00
Kyle
About

00:04:09:00 - 00:04:13:21
Kyle
this specifically or just in general? In general?

00:04:13:22 - 00:04:20:10
Kyle
Yeah.

00:04:20:12 - 00:04:35:22
Kyle
I can see and hear you. You're a bit fuzzy. I think, it might just be the internet connection. Okay, so you guys are on Starlink? Yeah. Yeah, that's probably just trying to pick up satellites and stuff.

00:04:35:24 - 00:04:41:21
Kyle
Got it. You were saying, though.

00:04:48:18 - 00:05:01:12
Kyle
Yeah.

00:05:01:12 - 00:05:13:00
Tanner Wanish
you all the time, nobody knows what the Goliath is still like. Nobody's heard of it. I think it's just too big to really comprehend what you're actually even talking about. Unless you've, like, been out there and done some of the sections and stuff.

00:05:13:16 - 00:05:24:14
Kyle
And I would imagine that'd be the same mentality you guys kind of had going into it in the first place, just not even knowing what you guys were getting into. In a way.

00:05:24:17 - 00:05:42:17
Kyle
Yeah. Like and so like you had gotten so much I mean, I guess Vitaly had done this before. It didn't seem like he had much to really offer you guys in terms of beta. Like, what exactly did you pull from him and, like, how much of it was him? Just kind of like, you sure you want to do that?

00:05:42:17 - 00:05:45:05
Kyle
You know, good luck. Kind of. Kind of. I.

00:05:46:14 - 00:06:04:23
Tanner Wanish
I mean, we we sat down with them, for a for basically a full afternoon. We had, like, a physical map, and we had, Cal Topo pulled up on a phone and another map on a computer, and we were kind of cross-referencing all three of these, and he was trying to talk us through each day and kind of what we could roughly expect, but

00:06:04:23 - 00:06:10:11
Tanner Wanish
it just doesn't really translate to to like reality much when you're talking about it.

00:06:10:11 - 00:06:23:17
Tanner Wanish
It's kind of abstract and you're like, yeah, you know, you go up and over this tower and you try to go left around this and like look for this five eight chimney on the backside of this face that's going to be your down climb and stuff. And it's like, you know, you hear that and you're like, that's fine.

00:06:23:17 - 00:06:40:04
Tanner Wanish
But when you're out there it's it was just so different. It would be impossible to really describe it, without having an experience out there. I mean, I've even I've even done it a couple of the sections before, but I was I feel like grossly unaware of what we were actually doing until we were in it.

00:06:40:05 - 00:06:58:08
Michael Vaill
So yeah, that type of better like, oh yeah, I think I down climbed this summit from A58 chimney. But then when you're on your 10th, some of the day and you're looking down, there's five different ways you can go. We probably didn't even end up going the same way as him, you know, that often, just because of the nature, route finding and that type of alpine terrain.

00:06:58:11 - 00:07:17:15
Michael Vaill
But I think the big benefit from speaking with Vitaly and getting better was not like, this is the crack that you climb on this mountain, but more just the overall, kind of psychological benefit of saying like, okay, we know Vitaly did this, so hopefully we can do this. And then the first couple days we did almost exactly the same mileage that he did.

00:07:17:18 - 00:07:38:04
Michael Vaill
So kind of more like setting expectations was like more important to use his information than like actual route finding or how do you climb each peak? Because the end of the day, we just climbed one mountain. We looked down, we saw another mountain climb, the next one. As far as, like, like beta that you normally get for a route.

00:07:38:06 - 00:07:44:24
Michael Vaill
So it was, it was almost more like, a week, like a really zoomed out psychological, benefit that

00:07:45:22 - 00:07:46:21
Kyle
Yeah.

00:07:46:23 - 00:07:52:23
Kyle
Like a high level understanding of exactly kind of what the big picture was that you guys are getting into.

00:07:52:23 - 00:08:17:18
Tanner Wanish
just it was just, understanding that these are the days that he did. And I know Vitaly very well, and I think I know his capabilities pretty well. So it was just saying that it is possible to go from here to here today. It is possible to go from here to here today. And whether we choose the same routes or we don't struggle throughout finding or whatever, it was just good to have a rough template for like this is generally our timeline that we should be on.

00:08:17:18 - 00:08:34:12
Tanner Wanish
And, that was super helpful because if if he hadn't done it or told us that, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have set a lot of those goals because it would have seemed way too audacious to go from, you know, this mountain to this mountain in a day, if that hadn't already been done by Vitaly, I would be like, that's not possible.

00:08:34:14 - 00:08:40:12
Tanner Wanish
But he did it, so we knew that we could do it. So that was kind of our template for our timeline overall on the Goliath.

00:08:40:19 - 00:08:49:29
Kyle
Now after after having done it in the first place I would imagine like understanding what Vitaly actually did was even more mind blowing after the fact.

00:08:49:29 - 00:09:07:13
Michael Vaill
Yeah, yeah. I mean comparing comparing our experience to what his experience must have been like like I'm still just shocked. Like, yeah, wow. Him going up there having no idea what it was going to be like day after day, just waking up and saying, well, I'm going to climb as far as I can. As opposed to us waking up and saying, well, Vitaly made it this far, so we probably can too.

00:09:07:13 - 00:09:09:12
Michael Vaill
I mean, that is just a huge difference.

00:09:09:13 - 00:09:10:02
Tanner Wanish
Totally different.

00:09:10:03 - 00:09:16:22
Michael Vaill
I mean, he was like. He was like. He was like landing on Mars, you know, we were more like going to the moon. Like we kind of know

00:09:20:03 - 00:09:22:04
Kyle
Yeah.

00:09:22:06 - 00:09:22:16
Kyle
Yeah.

00:09:22:16 - 00:09:23:23
Kyle
For sure.

00:09:23:26 - 00:09:44:16
Kyle
That's wild. So I'm curious like just to circle back a little bit. You guys did the quad last year. You guys were on the show. What about like, what about you two has you chasing objectives like this and pushing the bar further instead of, like, resting on, like, your past successes? Like. I feel like that's a personality trait.

00:09:44:19 - 00:09:59:11
Kyle
So, like, have you guys thought about that? Like, you could easily could have just been like, man, the quad was groundbreaking. I'm just going to chill and have fun and push grades or kind of just become, you know, content with, what the achievement that you guys had.

00:09:59:22 - 00:10:03:11
Michael Vaill
Well, that's what we're doing. There's a bunch of boats right here for sport climbing this afternoon.

00:10:03:13 - 00:10:07:29
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. No, I don't think we even talked about that. I mean, we we are having fun. This is fun

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:27:02
Kyle
Yeah. I don't mean it's not fun, but you know what I mean. Like, you did the quad, and now it's like the next big thing, the Goliath versus, like, I don't think a lot of people would have immediately gone and done something like that within the, like, calendar year. Like, is there something about you, too, in terms of, like, how you're choosing these objectives and like, why you're pushing the bar like that?

00:10:27:02 - 00:10:34:02
Michael Vaill
one thing that's interesting is we decided to do the quote, or we decided to do the Goliath, like, with certainty as we were walking down from Half Dome,

00:10:36:28 - 00:10:42:27
Michael Vaill
a bit like I was interested. Tanner was super psyched. He had asked me a couple times, I'm like, yeah, maybe.

00:10:42:29 - 00:10:53:08
Michael Vaill
But then, like, literally as we were walking down from the quad, he was like, I don't know, I think we should like, take a big objective for next year. Do you want to just go all in on the Goliath? And I'm like 100% like, I'm super psyched.

00:10:53:20 - 00:11:18:07
Tanner Wanish
And which is sweet. Yeah, I was I was bugging him about it for like the last year and, yeah, I think we both like being really, like, super engrossed in these big objectives and the feeling that you get when you're successful is just such an overwhelming sense of like, community and accomplishment and stuff. When everybody gets to get together and put, you know, a big community effort behind something like this.

00:11:18:07 - 00:11:44:14
Tanner Wanish
And I said it last time, it feels selfish that we get to be the ones to, like, do the actual climbing and get to experience that. But, I just think we both gravitate toward, the more, I don't know, the, the super intense, like comprehensive experiences that really require everything. And it's, it's a really addicting feeling to be a part of, like a high functioning team like that.

00:11:44:14 - 00:12:03:09
Tanner Wanish
It's it's it's just an incredible dynamic when when you, are a part of a, a group of people that are all on the same page and they all are willing to sacrifice for, like, something bigger like this, a big objective. And yeah, I don't know, it's it's not ever it's not ever been a discussion about like, do we want to take time off.

00:12:03:09 - 00:12:21:14
Tanner Wanish
It's always just like, okay, what's next? And like we're picking goals that are fun for us. So it doesn't feel like work. It's feels like it's it's like an opportunity. It's like we're like picking a gift from like a toy store, like which one you want. And we get to like pick one and then kind of go all in on it for a while and, and enjoy the experience.

00:12:21:17 - 00:12:29:08
Michael Vaill
Yeah. And also like, I mean we did the quad nine months ago, you know, and this is the biggest thing we've done since then. So it's not like we're, you know,

00:12:33:11 - 00:12:37:24
Michael Vaill
other stuff. We went on an international trip and then like we came back home and and got this done.

00:12:37:24 - 00:12:39:29
Michael Vaill
So you know, it's it's been a process

00:12:40:29 - 00:12:41:28
Kyle
Yeah, I.

00:12:42:00 - 00:12:56:07
Kyle
I think that's the word. Right is process. I think you guys I think I like how Tanner frame that. It's like you guys are engrossed in the process of these objectives rather than chasing the result of an objective in a way. And I think that's that's beautifully said. Yeah.

00:12:56:07 - 00:13:23:14
Tanner Wanish
99% of it. Right. This has been this process started back in I mean for, for me back in December, January when I started kind of focusing training specifically on this. And we've been talking that like we're making a movie that lost 41 chorus as graciously funded or super excited to share. But we've been in this process between that and the actual training and the ramp up and the planning and logistics and everything for, you know, 6 or 7 months now.

00:13:23:14 - 00:13:42:23
Tanner Wanish
And that's fun. It's really fun to have, like a common shared goal that people can rally around. It's just like this flag pole where we all meet and we, you know, are kind of all, we're all combining all of our efforts and, and, free time and stuff toward this one thing, and it creates a stronger community.

00:13:42:23 - 00:13:47:26
Tanner Wanish
And, yeah, it's just a cool shared experience to share with friends and and family and stuff.

00:13:47:29 - 00:14:08:23
Michael Vaill
Yeah. I think part of my, like, not being as psyched on the Goliath before this year was that I've always had such big goals in the Valley, so it's possible that, like doing the triple in the quad, I'm like, okay, this is such a big accomplishment in Yosemite that I'm kind of okay, you know, looking maybe to go back to scrambling in the mountains a bit, as a first year, if it's like season after season.

00:14:08:26 - 00:14:27:11
Michael Vaill
I was like so psyched to always get back to Yosemite. So spending a summer just, like, scrambling sounded not as appealing. Since I wanted to, like, show up in Yosemite, ready to crash. But this, you know, after the cloud is kind of like, okay, like, I've spent so much time in year 70. Now, if maybe if I don't have as big of a year in the Valley, I'm kind of okay with that.

00:14:27:11 - 00:14:31:20
Tanner Wanish
So, yeah, we frontloaded a whole season of of, climbing deer in the quad.

00:14:37:02 - 00:14:38:06
Kyle
Yeah.

00:14:38:08 - 00:14:57:11
Kyle
Yeah. It's. I'd say you both had quite a Yosemite season and just an alpine season in general. Just outside of this, this, objective of the Goliath, which has been pretty impressive to watch, with the you said the community aspect of it, which objective had more of a community element in terms of support? Was it the quad or the Goliath?

00:14:57:19 - 00:15:21:16
Tanner Wanish
I think the quad. Quad I mean that's but that's specifically because the quad was a super supported event where we, we heavily relied on support between every wall. And we had breakfast waiting for us, and we had people meet us on walls, and we had people drive us from walk ins to the valley and stuff like that. We our goal for the Goliath was Self-supported, which we which we mostly maintained.

00:15:21:18 - 00:15:49:14
Tanner Wanish
But we intentionally made the decision that we want it because if Italy did it alpine style, you know, he had no cash is nothing we want to do. At least do it self-supported because I feel like as soon as you accept the first, you know, the first, like meal en route or whatever, you might as well have a helicopter dropping off your camp every single night and people carrying your bag and feeding you bars like there's no difference on paper between one one snack bar and you being fully supported by an entire crew.

00:15:49:18 - 00:16:06:16
Tanner Wanish
So we wanted to try to stay self-supported in the sense that we didn't want to take too big of a step back in style from how Vitaly did it. So we did want to do an alpine style. We knew that and we talked to him about it. He said he chose that because he wanted to. He wanted to make it as hard as he physically could.

00:16:06:16 - 00:16:26:19
Tanner Wanish
He went out of his way to try to see how hard he could make it. We weren't interested in that specifically. So we decided, you know, at least break our food up into two sections. So we dropped a single cache halfway. And that was an attempt, I guess, to pay homage to, Vitaly at least a little bit and not go completely supported by a whole race crew.

00:16:26:19 - 00:16:46:12
Tanner Wanish
So. And it would be really hard to do support it anyway. You would have to like, I mean, you would need to have like several teams of really fit mountain athletes to even make it to any of the saddles or passes that we were sleeping at. Like it would be an enormous objective just for our crew to like, try to get us food and water each night if that's what we chose to do.

00:16:46:12 - 00:17:02:19
Michael Vaill
So yeah, we could have recruited and paid a whole team of porters and, you know, to stash every night and just just done it with a running vest on. But like, yeah, we kind of wanted a little bit more of a, of a mountain adventure than that, where we were carrying our camp with us and, and having the flexibility to kind of do whatever felt

00:17:04:09 - 00:17:04:19
Kyle
Yeah.

00:17:04:22 - 00:17:24:01
Kyle
No I mean look looking at the two because the two basically there's like two main sections that you guys are linking. Right. It's the full Monty and what's the other one, the evolution crest. And to me, when I saw the breakdown, I was like, okay, that makes sense. There's like a clear halfway point where that's where you break it in half.

00:17:25:09 - 00:17:33:07
Michael Vaill
that pass, like, like a few miles from the parking lot. So we're like, well, we might as well just at least, you know, leave some bare hands with the second half of our food there.

00:17:33:16 - 00:17:34:04
Kyle
Yeah.

00:17:34:06 - 00:17:59:09
Kyle
That's cool. Yeah, definitely I would it's interesting how you like you said, there's even more of a supported role, but it's almost impossible to even like pull off in a way. It's like you almost have to do each of those objectives separately, lay caches and then come back again solo to go get those caches again. It seems like you guys picked the nice balance between what Vitaly did and what the other option could be.

00:17:59:09 - 00:18:21:26
Tanner Wanish
seemed like an obvious option. And anything else seemed really, and obvious. And it would just be an extraordinary amount of work to drop caches anywhere on that ridge. And then also, we didn't know where we were going to Bivvy. Like, we had ideas. We had goals each day where we wanted to, but we had no idea if we're going to be able to keep the tallest pace or if we're going to struggle with route finding or whether it was going to pop up.

00:18:22:02 - 00:18:50:23
Tanner Wanish
So if we're relying on berries or caches dropped at specific points and we do get hit with a Sierra squall now, are we stuck on the ridge with nothing at all because we went supported and have no gear? Like, you know, it's, the way we did. It seemed like the obvious organic way and the good middle ground between like, it's not going to take us a year to drop caches before, but we also do get to like drop half of our food for the entire thing, which is which is huge.

00:18:50:26 - 00:18:52:15
Tanner Wanish
So yeah, it seemed like an obvious

00:18:54:02 - 00:18:59:02
Kyle
Hell, yeah. So you guys go ahead, Matt. Like.

00:18:59:02 - 00:19:13:26
Michael Vaill
huge hiking trail going to the Bishop Pass in the middle and like, not stashing food there would almost be as contrived as, like, stashing food every night. And which was kind of I'm not criticizing Vitaly, saying it's contrived. He was trying to make it as difficult as possible.

00:19:13:29 - 00:19:35:09
Michael Vaill
And I think that in contrast, like our strategy is usually to make something as fun as possible. So which is just something I've always lived by. Climbing, like climbing is the funnest thing I've ever done. And it's also really hard and challenging mentally and physically. But the whole idea is it's supposed to be fun. So if we can, you know, hike with whatever, 6 pounds of food instead of 12, like that's

00:19:37:27 - 00:19:49:11
Kyle
I'm interested. I listen to Vitale's podcast. I'm interested in wonder. I'm interested in learning why he wanted to suffer so much in that moment in his life. So maybe I'll be able to cross that bridge one day.

00:19:49:14 - 00:19:57:27
Kyle
I know I talked to him a bunch, and he said he's, a little intimidated with all the interviews he's done recently, so he's got to wait at least a year before he talks again publicly.

00:19:57:27 - 00:19:59:29
Kyle
So.

00:19:59:29 - 00:20:11:07
Tanner Wanish
likes any self-promotion. Almost to a fault. He's, extraordinarily accomplished. And and, like, the best guy you'll ever meet. But he's also, like, humble to a fault. So you got to really. You got to really draw

00:20:12:12 - 00:20:13:16
Kyle
For sure.

00:20:13:16 - 00:20:16:23
Tanner Wanish
got he's got some incredible stories. But yeah, he's a tough nut to

00:20:17:09 - 00:20:33:09
Kyle
Yeah. No, I'm stoked to get on the show. He says he loves the show. He loves what we're doing here, and he definitely wants to. Come on. He just need some space between the his interviews. So he'll be on. Okay. So you've got, like, the logistics, you've got your plan, you know, like what you kind of what you're going to get into.

00:20:33:09 - 00:20:44:04
Kyle
How are you guys like physically and mentally preparing leading up to the objective? What goals are you setting? What climbs are you doing?

00:20:44:04 - 00:20:51:20
Michael Vaill
and mentally, our plan was to go to San Jose and, like, just do a bunch of big alpine climbs for. We were there for five weeks,

00:20:51:22 - 00:21:13:29
Tanner Wanish
You know, spend time at altitude, spend time climbing a lot, you know, just get really comfortable in granite, comfortable with these big days, maybe doing some different tactics where we're similar climbing or soloing like alpine routes and just getting a lot of time, I mean, physically to get fit, you know, because everything up there is at 12,000ft or above or something if you're taking the lifts up.

00:21:13:29 - 00:21:29:20
Tanner Wanish
So it's good acclimation and, good to like we were doing a lot of work dialing our kit in our systems, using the bags that we wanted to use in the Goliath, and testing out gear and testing out our different setups and stuff. So, yeah, the intention was good.

00:21:29:23 - 00:21:46:19
Michael Vaill
That was the intention. Yeah. So horror story, a whole a whole storyline behind this. Is that the first climb we didn't do Simone. We had an accident, and I broke my ribs, and I ended up basically not climbing for the two months before the Goliath. Yeah. So Tanner was able to run around and he, like, found other partners that climb the 70.

00:21:46:24 - 00:21:48:07
Michael Vaill
I spent a month on the couch.

00:21:48:10 - 00:21:50:07
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. Which was which, I mean, oh.

00:21:50:08 - 00:21:51:18
Michael Vaill
Was it which wasn't that great.

00:21:51:18 - 00:22:10:19
Tanner Wanish
Almost sideline to the whole Goliath for, for for two reasons. One, because the accident we had was like pretty jarring and kind of really challenging to bounce back from mentally to kind of feel comfortable in the mountains again. And then second day secondly was like, yeah, I was injured with broken ribs, like laid up on a couch for six weeks at least before we stepped off.

00:22:10:19 - 00:22:17:02
Michael Vaill
So so we did one big climb when we first got to Shamone. And then basically I spent the rest of the trip, eating cheese and drinking

00:22:21:08 - 00:22:21:28
Kyle
Yeah.

00:22:22:00 - 00:22:40:11
Kyle
You know, Tanner, you did that right up. For people who aren't familiar, you know, it's it's definitely something to check out. Super detailed. Maybe give people a teaser. A short, high level view of kind of what happened. So people have an idea of kind of reframing this and how it plays into your risk management in the actual, objective that we're going to talk about.

00:22:40:11 - 00:23:04:16
Tanner Wanish
We, So we got to Shamone, and we were super stoked on the drew. It's this really iconic formation in Germany. It's. I think it's one of the most beautiful walls on planet Earth. It's just a perfect, like, almost 4000ft spire. It's just perfect. And we. Yeah, we want to do the American direct on it, which is a rural Robbins route.

00:23:04:16 - 00:23:33:22
Tanner Wanish
It seemed like a cool homage to the valley up in Germany. And, it's just this, like, mega classic international line that doesn't get done a ton because it's really dangerous on the drew. There's a lot of rockfall and the conditions are pretty poor. Often there's there's a lot of snow on route and mixed climbing that you can do in rock shoes, or you can do with tools and picks and, yeah, we just it just seemed like a good goal to kind of come out swinging on in Shamone.

00:23:33:25 - 00:23:57:00
Tanner Wanish
So we that was the first climb we did there. We're there for like two days. We took a train up, hiked down, vivid, about an hour from the base, stepped off, climbed the entire route in like six hours or something. Which is which is insane because we we sampled the entire wall, you know, on site, climbing up to, up through like five, 11.

00:23:57:00 - 00:24:21:29
Tanner Wanish
There's a couple, five, 11 pitches up there and we, Yeah, I think we did really well on the actual climb itself. We were really comfortable and we climbed, really well. And I was really happy with our, our performance and our tactics and strategies and stuff on there. We started to get close to the top, and, I had a really big scare where I had a piton pull on me.

00:24:22:02 - 00:24:42:26
Tanner Wanish
We were kind of off route, and I was looking to orient as I wanted to check the map on my phone to see kind of where we were on the on the Drew's face. There was so much snow up there. It was such like, early season conditions that we couldn't really stay on route, even if we knew where that was, because we basically were kind of getting forced into whatever was dry rock.

00:24:42:28 - 00:24:59:23
Tanner Wanish
The North Face had quite a lot of snow and ice on it still. So yeah, I got a little lost and I saw, a couple pitons. I assumed that was en route. I went up to hang on a piton and, when I clipped into it, I sat in my harness to look at my phone, and immediately I was in the air.

00:24:59:24 - 00:25:00:27
Tanner Wanish
I was I ended up

00:25:03:15 - 00:25:09:01
Kyle
Jesus! Oh my God!

00:25:12:28 - 00:25:16:04
Kyle
Wow!

00:25:16:04 - 00:25:19:15
Tanner Wanish
rope out, and he was doing all of his own chores, which I know is going on.

00:25:19:17 - 00:25:43:14
Tanner Wanish
And the climbing was we just weren't placing much gear because it was we were somewhat climbing. So I only had I had a single like black totem placed and then 20m above that I had a, piton clipped and then probably 20m above that was where I clipped into the other piton and then took took the fall. So, yeah, took an enormous, like 60 footer and we shot the rope, like, into oblivion.

00:25:43:14 - 00:26:07:28
Tanner Wanish
I mean, we had like a ten foot section of just cord, no sheath at all. Which, looking back, we got really lucky on because I could, you know, the rope probably should have just cut and killed us. So, Yeah, we pulled back on to the wall. That was pretty scary. And we finished up to the top, and we ended up having a lot of route finding trouble up at the top because there was so much snow on top, like it was a matter of what can we physically climb right now?

00:26:07:28 - 00:26:21:24
Tanner Wanish
Like, every chimney is packed, every crack has ice in it. There's a million different options, and they all dead end at different points. And like, we probably tried ten different ways to get up to the summit block before we actually found anything that would even go.

00:26:21:24 - 00:26:26:14
Tanner Wanish
So we summited and then you have to traverse to the Grand.

00:26:26:16 - 00:26:47:27
Tanner Wanish
It's a little bit of a, a little bit of a snowy ridge traverse on these kind of cornices up there. And then you climb three more pitches, you get up to the top of the Grand Drew, and then you rappel off the south face of that off the backside. There was so much snow up there, like an, I mean, just feet and feet of snow that everything was buried and there was no signs of human life at all.

00:26:47:27 - 00:27:10:06
Tanner Wanish
There's no footprints. There was no like nobody had been up there probably that whole season. So we had this entire blank canvas where we're looking for two repel bolts. And just this gigantic summit sea of snow. And, Yeah, we ended up looking for several hours, and tensions were getting pretty high up there because it was getting late, and it was.

00:27:10:13 - 00:27:20:21
Tanner Wanish
We summited the Grand Drouet 4 p.m. or something, and we spent an hour looking for bolts and then two hours looking for bolts, and then coming on three hours, three hours

00:27:24:13 - 00:27:25:13
Kyle
Yeah.

00:27:25:15 - 00:27:32:27
Kyle
And this is after. You've already, like, both almost died. So, like, cortisol levels are shot. You guys are, like, at wit's end at this point.

00:27:32:27 - 00:27:36:22
Tanner Wanish
light on this. We didn't bring anything. We had like a micro puff, I think, between

00:27:37:13 - 00:27:38:09
Kyle
Wow.

00:27:38:09 - 00:27:48:09
Tanner Wanish
we fully committed to the end of day style. And we were comfortably doing that with the, with the, the, you know, the speed that we ascended and our timeline was looking really good and we summited with.

00:27:48:13 - 00:27:50:16
Michael Vaill
With like eight hours of daylight when we.

00:27:50:19 - 00:28:09:16
Tanner Wanish
Hopped out the route and, and the wheels were just falling off where we you can't just, like, wing it going down because it's like 15 double rope repels. We don't have enough gear to, like, leave and just make our own repel. Right. We have to find the actual repeller out, you know? So. And now we have core shot ropes that we had to cut.

00:28:09:16 - 00:28:26:19
Tanner Wanish
And we know that we're already gonna have to make some adjustments because we're not going to reach, some of the repels. And it was just getting really stressful because we were starting to worry that we could be benighted up there without, again, any overnight gear. And it's up at almost 13,000ft. And, yeah, it would have been a bad situation.

00:28:26:29 - 00:28:32:08
Kyle
Do you guys have, like, a inReach device? Could you guys have called for a rescue, or is that even an option?

00:28:32:08 - 00:28:37:24
Tanner Wanish
actually took. Yeah, we we didn't even consider that or we didn't talk about it. I don't think that we would have I.

00:28:37:24 - 00:28:43:06
Michael Vaill
Think it would have been a really bad night, but, like, our lives weren't in danger. We would have just had to, like, cuddle all night.

00:28:43:08 - 00:28:49:28
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. I don't think we never even discussed like that. I'm not going to call for rescue unless I'm going to imminently die, so I we.

00:28:49:28 - 00:28:56:04
Michael Vaill
Yeah, we're I think worst case scenario, it would have been really miserable and really cold. But like, we weren't our lives weren't at risk.

00:28:56:04 - 00:28:59:08
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. I'm not going to call a helicopter if it's just going to be a cold night for comfort.

00:28:59:20 - 00:29:02:07
Kyle
Yeah. Not respect.

00:29:02:07 - 00:29:21:03
Tanner Wanish
finally found the repel bolts through this convoluted, series of fixing lines and dropping into gullies and stuff. And, it was just really, really stressful. It was. It felt like we were going to be stuck up there overnight. And it was stressful because I felt like we had this, like, really good victory kind of at our fingertips.

00:29:21:03 - 00:29:40:25
Tanner Wanish
And it was good. It it was slipping away because we were botching the descent, which is, you know, the most dangerous part of the day. The day is not over until you're back on the ground. So, yeah, we started rappelling and, we did a couple repels and we were we it took us hours to do the repels because we were having to string around that every single repel.

00:29:40:25 - 00:29:43:00
Tanner Wanish
We'd have to swing around and look for the next set of bolts.

00:29:43:00 - 00:29:48:06
Michael Vaill
And there are some where we were having to dig through the snow, like, just. Yeah, just like hoping to find a bolt.

00:29:48:06 - 00:29:57:17
Tanner Wanish
Like looking up at the pole and being like, it should be somewhere around this area. We're digging through snow and looking for like, where would a repel station be in theory, if it was bolted in this area?

00:29:57:17 - 00:30:16:15
Michael Vaill
And this is pretty solid rock. I might put bolts here and then dig. Nope. Okay, how about this one? Nope. Okay. Oh look, there's bolts. Cool. After like an hour of that and. Yeah, yeah, like we had to do some extra repels because there's some there was like one repel that said, cool your rope and walk 100m. And it was just like a 60 or 70 degree snow slope across the ledge.

00:30:16:15 - 00:30:25:23
Michael Vaill
You're supposed to walk on. Yeah. With like, you know, halfway up the mountain with 500m of air. So you're not just gonna walk across that, like, especially without crampons there. Yeah. So.

00:30:25:24 - 00:30:43:05
Tanner Wanish
So we had to get creative. We we just didn't find some repel anchors. We had to leave slings. And we fortunately, we were able to find the next set and stuff like that. So, we got to the third to last. Repel or the second to last repel. We got to the second to last repel. And,

00:30:43:05 - 00:30:44:12
Tanner Wanish
never found the bolts.

00:30:44:12 - 00:31:08:00
Tanner Wanish
It looked like it was at the top of this chimney system. Kind of, this little, like, sheer vertical, basically chimney, but it's like a vertical cooler kind of thing where it kind of funnels into it. And we, a couple repels. Prior, we had switched over to similar repelling because we were struggling to find the bolts so bad that we figured that it would be better if we could both swing around and look for the bolts at the same time, at least split the work up.

00:31:08:02 - 00:31:23:11
Tanner Wanish
So we never found the bolts on the second to last repel. But we found this, this enormous pillar that looks like it has been rappelled off of for like 50 years. It had brand new, a bunch, a lot of brand new cord and tat on it. It had old tat on it. It looked like a good station.

00:31:23:11 - 00:31:40:23
Tanner Wanish
So, Mike actually found that first and called me over. We got to it, we tested it, we tested the slings, everything. It seemed like seemed fine. It was new. It looked like new gear. It's on the repel or. Or like. Oh, maybe this is just the anchor. Maybe there's no bolts here. Maybe it's this giant pillar.

00:31:40:23 - 00:32:00:19
Tanner Wanish
I don't know. And it was about dark. There it was. It was actually getting dark there. That's that's the repel station that we pulled our headlamps out on. And we're kind of celebrating at this point. We're like, man, we're two. Two more repels. We're almost to the ground like this nightmare's almost over. And, yeah. So we went in.

00:32:00:19 - 00:32:24:02
Tanner Wanish
We both went into direct or indirect to this anchor, so we're both hanging from it. We pulled the rope from the last repel. We threaded it through this one, and, we just kept similar wrapping because that's what we had been doing. And, you know, in, in hindsight, maybe we, we wouldn't have simul wrapped off of, like a gear anchor as opposed to bolts.

00:32:24:02 - 00:32:51:16
Tanner Wanish
But I mean, in my head, like, if I can't simul wrap off of an anchor, I don't want to repel off it myself either. So I'm assuming that these anchors are good because we tested it, and it's obviously been a repel route for years. So, yeah, we, we did our little checks to go on more repel and, you know, both loaded the rope and then, Mike, it was a pretty tight chimney, so I let Mike drop below me.

00:32:51:18 - 00:33:13:20
Tanner Wanish
I was just going to kind of hover above him as we dropped and as Mike dropped below me. I'm like, kind of hanging on the anchor, just like, you know, doing whatever. And, this, like, super, like reality war path where I'm, like, looking at the anchor and then I see it, like, start to just, like, lean out toward me, and I.

00:33:13:21 - 00:33:30:08
Tanner Wanish
I didn't really understand where I was, like, it felt like I was having vertigo or something. I was like, it felt like the whole world was moving in front of me. You know, the the whole wall in front of me is leaning out, like actively moving. And it took me a second to understand, like, that can't be what, like I can't be seeing what is actually happening right here.

00:33:30:08 - 00:33:54:19
Tanner Wanish
I must be dizzy or having some sort of hypoxic episode or something. And then. No. Sure enough, the entire pillar just kept leaning and it hit the point of no return where I'm like, okay, this are anchors failing? It's actively failing right now. So I just all I managed to yell was Mike. And Mike looked up and at that point the anchor was was, you know, nearly 90 degrees and was falling out of the wall.

00:33:55:16 - 00:34:03:08
Michael Vaill
I mean, we we both tried to like, grab some holds because there was a bit of a stance there. So we both tried to like, grab something, but it's hundreds of pounds of granite.

00:34:03:08 - 00:34:04:01
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I got.

00:34:04:01 - 00:34:04:29
Michael Vaill
Over clip two.

00:34:05:00 - 00:34:18:03
Tanner Wanish
Yeah I grab this like really, really positive. Like handlebar jug thinking I'm going to save us. And the second that Mike and the Rock, you know, the weight caught me. It just ripped me off like a fly. I never had a clearance. I.

00:34:18:03 - 00:34:36:12
Michael Vaill
Just felt the rock flip since it was clipped to my belay loop. Obviously, I felt it just rip me off and just pull me down like face first. And there's just this rock ahead of me flying down a vertical wall, and I'm clipped through it. And then I see the glacier below. And we're just freefalling to our deaths at that point.

00:34:36:19 - 00:34:59:14
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I was it was this really intense time dilation where it felt like I've never experienced anything like this, where the whole incident felt like it lasted ten minutes, but it was like five seconds. But everything was happening really, really slowly. I remember having a bunch of, like, really intense, coherent thoughts all while it was happening and like a matter of a second.

00:34:59:16 - 00:35:19:07
Tanner Wanish
And it was in that moment I knew for a fact that we were going to die. I wasn't curious about if that was a possibility. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, we were dead. And it was this really kind of jarring, realization where it's I wasn't, like, scared. I mean, Mike said the same thing, like, I wasn't scared.

00:35:19:09 - 00:35:37:08
Tanner Wanish
I was just like, fuck, you know, here it is. This is this is it. And, it like you, you hear about stuff like that happening, but you don't think it's going to happen to you. And it was this, like, really crushing, almost embarrassment, like, as we were in the accident where I was like, I can't believe we just did that.

00:35:37:11 - 00:35:53:17
Tanner Wanish
And I don't know, I remember thinking like, one of my last thoughts was just like, I wonder if this is going to hurt. Like as we as we hit here and, yeah, just waiting, waiting for it to happen because we had just accepted that, like, well, we're dead. This is there's no way to get out of this.

00:35:53:17 - 00:35:59:20
Tanner Wanish
Like, we're attached to this giant boulder where we have several hundred feet to the glacier below us. There's nothing to be done

00:36:05:22 - 00:36:16:16
Kyle
Mike, what was going through your head?

00:36:16:16 - 00:36:47:27
Michael Vaill
up in high places like that and reading and learning about accidents, you you kind of like, hear about these types of things happening. And, of course, you pretty much never hear about survivors, but you hear about people I don't know falling off veil cap or ripping anchors in the mountains and and, I'm always there's maybe this morbid curiosity about like, oh, you know, I wonder what that's like, or I wonder, you know, what people experience when they go through a horrible accident like that and fall off a mountain

00:36:47:27 - 00:36:58:01
Michael Vaill
to their death and in those seconds, like, as the anchor ripped and we were just free falling. I just remember having this thought like, oh, this is what it's like.

00:36:58:04 - 00:37:20:00
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I visualize this a lot, which sounds psychotic, but I've, you know, I, I do a lot of soloing and we do a lot of high risk things. And for me, a way to manage that fear and stuff is I've, I've visualized what it would feel like or what it would look like to be in these accidents. And it kind of helps me process the reality of like, well, this is a possibility.

00:37:20:02 - 00:37:33:26
Tanner Wanish
And if I'm okay with that, I can do this anyway, but I'm not going to act like that's not a possibility. That's not a good way to approach this. I want to I want to think about what it would feel like to go through this, and then I can choose to go anyway. But I'm not going to act like that doesn't exist.

00:37:34:01 - 00:38:00:13
Tanner Wanish
So I've kind of visualized this a lot. And that was a big part of that accident, was like. You know, experiencing it like really experiencing what it was like. And we got to experience that whole accident right up to the point where we should have died, but we didn't. And we got away with it. But it kind of reframed my visualization of this whole thing, because now I've actually lived it in like a real way.

00:38:00:13 - 00:38:13:02
Tanner Wanish
And I felt those emotions where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was dead. I was going to die, I knew that. So I've kind of run through that gamut of emotions now in my in my head and experienced it. And,

00:38:13:05 - 00:38:54:07
Michael Vaill
I mean, that's the reason that I read and I encourage everyone to read like accidents in North America, climbing just to like, like every year, just to understand, like what are the possibilities of participating in this dangerous activity. And, you know, you understand the possibilities, but that's different than experiencing them. And then when you experience it, it's almost, I want to say satisfying and like you're happy about it, but it's satisfying is in like, you, you just get to like, see something that you visualized so much and, and in that moment, yeah, it was just this, like, satisfying, that morbid curiosity of like, okay, you know, now it happened to us.

00:38:54:12 - 00:39:18:25
Michael Vaill
Now it happened to me like, that's it. I mean, we're dying, but also like, okay. Now I see. So having that, like, feeling of knowing that this is what's happening was almost, like deep acceptance of like. And I will say satisfaction like that. Not I using that word in a very specific way

00:39:19:08 - 00:39:46:24
Kyle
Yes. So you guys have been preparing for this mentally just because of the nature of the environment that you're in. How far off were your expectations of reality? So you spend a lot of time in soloing terrain where you are visualizing falling to your death to familiarize yourself and to, like, actually conceptualize the risk that you're putting yourself in and then choosing to move forward.

00:39:46:25 - 00:40:07:03
Kyle
Right. So you're you're visualizing this fall to your death. Now you're actually falling to your death. How close were your expectations, your visualizations, like were you on point? Was it a sense of familiarity? Or like, wow, I'm here. I've been planning for this. In a way. I've been visualizing this. Or was it like, this is fucked. This is so far worse than I ever imagined.

00:40:07:04 - 00:40:11:02
Kyle
Like, how far off was your expectation versus reality?

00:40:11:02 - 00:40:33:03
Tanner Wanish
don't think it was. I mean, it was it was extremely jarring. I had I kind of struggled with some, like what I would probably describe as PTSD after that, for a couple of weeks where I was having these, like, really jarring nightmares that I was, I almost every night I was waking up in this explosion of body parts where I had just fallen to my death again, and I couldn't stop replaying the visual of the wall leaning out.

00:40:33:03 - 00:40:54:22
Tanner Wanish
I just kept having this picture in my head of everything that I'm standing in front of, just teetering out and failing. And that's that's imminently leading to my death. But I think in the moment, it wasn't it was such a guarantee that we were that we were dead there. It was such a sure thing that there was nothing to do except just accept it.

00:40:54:22 - 00:41:19:28
Tanner Wanish
There wasn't it wasn't like scary. It wasn't there. I don't know, it was just this really, like, kind of void. It. Yeah, I don't know. There was just nothing to do, but just, like, take the ride at that point. And it was this. Yeah. It was just this really kind of dark acceptance again, where I was just like, man, fuck, here it is.

00:41:19:28 - 00:41:37:00
Tanner Wanish
Let's let's go. Let's take the ride and let's, let's see what this is all about. So, I mean, there was a lot of emotions afterwards in the following weeks and stuff that came and went and a lot of processing that had to get done to kind of be able to digest this in a way that allowed us to go back into the mountains.

00:41:37:06 - 00:41:41:13
Tanner Wanish
But in the actual moment, it wasn't exciting. It wasn't scary.

00:41:45:20 - 00:41:46:25
Kyle
I guess. Sense of emptiness.

00:41:46:25 - 00:41:51:29
Kyle
Yeah.

00:41:51:29 - 00:42:03:02
Michael Vaill
like that happening is like imagining you're like soloing and you get off route and you're all like Elvis foot. And then all of a sudden you fall and die or or you're, you're chugging a rope that you know is over a sharp edge and you're up high on an El cap, and you think you're going to fall and die.

00:42:03:02 - 00:42:18:22
Michael Vaill
And all those times you think you're going to fall and die, that's not when it happens. Yeah. It's like we were mentally like, oh, great, we're about to get down to the glacier before dark. And and part of the motivation of like trying to get down a little bit faster was that the propels and on top of a heavily crevasse glacier.

00:42:18:25 - 00:42:20:25
Michael Vaill
So we were hoping to navigate that before dark.

00:42:20:25 - 00:42:25:26
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, we had to we had it. We were at least two hours of navigating this big ice field.

00:42:25:29 - 00:42:33:04
Michael Vaill
So there was like a reason to get off the mountain before dark, because if we got we we didn't want to get benighted on the glacier. That might even mean worse on the mountain which.

00:42:33:06 - 00:42:36:23
Tanner Wanish
Which happened to our friends. They they got down to the glacier and then they got so

00:42:40:01 - 00:42:45:02
Kyle
Wow.

00:42:45:05 - 00:42:49:08
Kyle
Yeah.

00:42:49:08 - 00:43:08:05
Tanner Wanish
they got benighted and spent, you know, ten hours wandering around this heavily crevasse ice field. So we've already gotten away with one close call today. We have seemingly got away with a second close call today by not finding the rebels for three hours. And now we're almost to the ice fields, and it feels like we're almost out of this shit show.

00:43:08:11 - 00:43:15:06
Tanner Wanish
And then so almost we're almost like celebrating at this point because we're two rebels off the ground. And, so.

00:43:15:06 - 00:43:45:17
Michael Vaill
That mental transition like that being the setup for then all of a sudden being that experience of like, oh, now this horrible accident that I've always dreaded is finally happening. I think it was just like the most jarring and noticeable, like element of this accident happening because because there's all those times where you think you're in a really sketchy situation and like, I think if something like that happened, like when you're already really stimulated and like kind of waiting for it to happen, it would probably be a very different experience than when you're like, calm and like, okay, we've just done 15

00:43:49:06 - 00:43:50:20
Kyle
Find death. Yeah.

00:43:50:22 - 00:44:06:27
Kyle
Yeah. No I think that's a really good point. I think the I'll I'll just like look at an anchor. Obvious. It's super bomber. But the, the conceptualization of what you're talking about here like you're just hanging onto a wall like all of a sudden in a fraction of a second, everything can just be fucked, like your exact situation.

00:44:06:27 - 00:44:17:03
Kyle
And that transition from safety to death in such a fraction of a second is like, yeah, it's like almost too much for your brain to even comprehend. Whereas.

00:44:17:03 - 00:44:33:29
Tanner Wanish
situation where, you know, the anchor had started leaning, and I'm like, Mike, Mike, we have to get off the anchor. And then it starts to lean a little more, and then we're, you know, it's in this precarious situation for five minutes where we're freaking out and we're trying to get attached. And like, I could see that being a really, really dreadful situation.

00:44:33:29 - 00:44:52:19
Tanner Wanish
But we didn't have any time to like, you know, transition into fear or being scared for our lives or anything because we were just falling before we knew what was happening. So I think if there was a situation where we saw that coming on and we had the human instinct to be scared for our lives as it was happening, I'm sure that would have happened.

00:44:52:19 - 00:45:09:03
Tanner Wanish
We would have been freaking out. And, you know, it would have been a totally different experience. But, fortunately, if that is applicable here, that wasn't the case. We just were good and then we weren't in a matter of a second. So there wasn't there was no transition period. It was just like, okay, here it is. Like,

00:45:10:14 - 00:45:31:09
Kyle
So I, I get this feeling sometimes ride my street bike around like I'll get home, I'll start cooking dinner and then I'll have this weird feeling like, is this real or did I die on the highway. And I'm just like living. I'm like living through this like post death reality. And I'm going to realize I'm dead at some point.

00:45:31:12 - 00:45:48:19
Kyle
Like.

00:45:51:13 - 00:46:02:14
Kyle
Yeah. Or. Or it's like it's this hallucination that you're living out that, you know, you you can't decipher the reality between whether you're dead or not. Like, did you guys have that experience after you survived?

00:46:02:14 - 00:46:23:15
Tanner Wanish
did it. I actually did have that. Yeah, I had this really it's like kind of hard to articulate, but this really abstract feeling of like, I wonder if we did die there and this was and this is just some sort of big replay or this is just some sort of reset or something like that, because it felt like it was such a shared thing that like, I don't know, I mean, also to, to, to finish the story because I

00:46:24:17 - 00:46:29:14
Kyle
Yeah. We're still free. We're still free. Falling in the story.

00:46:29:14 - 00:46:29:26
Tanner Wanish


00:46:29:29 - 00:46:49:04
Michael Vaill
Mike well, well basically like we fell and we had those like all this experience we're talking about, it was like two seconds. Yeah. Or like not even maybe. And then as so we were totally free falling. I definitely had the sensation of absolutely free falling into like a vertical wall. But somehow as we fell, there were like some boulders sticking out, like a small slab slowly.

00:46:49:05 - 00:46:50:05
Tanner Wanish
Fell into the chimney.

00:46:50:05 - 00:46:57:12
Michael Vaill
And I well, I think I bounced into the chimney. I think that's when I broke my ribs was I hit something and somehow it bounced me backwards

00:47:00:02 - 00:47:07:21
Michael Vaill
feet hit something and my shoulders hit something. And I stemmed across the chimney. And then Tanner landed on my back.

00:47:07:21 - 00:47:08:13
Tanner Wanish
So. Yeah. So.

00:47:08:13 - 00:47:23:07
Michael Vaill
And then at that moment, I was first thing I thought was, oh, that rock is about to pull us out of here again, because we came to a stop and I looked down. I was going to be like, can I unclip from it before it rips us down again or something? And I looked down and all the slings are just in a mess below my legs.

00:47:23:14 - 00:47:28:18
Michael Vaill
And I see the rocks still just free falling end over end all the way down to the glacier.

00:47:28:21 - 00:47:49:23
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. So what? So. So Mike fell probably 30 or 40ft and managed to like. I will never understand. I don't in a million years how I just, I just bounced in. He managed to like self or rest in this vertical chimney after falling like 40ft of sheer vertical rock, he managed to like expand his body to like, wedge into this chimney.

00:47:50:00 - 00:47:52:20
Tanner Wanish
And then I just landed on him straight from like 40. I just.

00:47:52:20 - 00:47:54:01
Michael Vaill
Felt his boots on my back.

00:47:54:08 - 00:47:54:17
Tanner Wanish
And,

00:47:54:23 - 00:48:02:17
Michael Vaill
And I was just like this, like I've had, like, my arm behind my head and my feet were on like a hold. There's like, a pretty good foothold. And I was just stimming. Yeah.

00:48:07:08 - 00:48:07:14
Tanner Wanish
crushed.

00:48:07:17 - 00:48:08:11
Michael Vaill
Or not dead.

00:48:08:11 - 00:48:24:29
Tanner Wanish
And, Yeah. Same thing. So we came to a stop for a brief second, and then we were waiting for the rock to pull us off. Obviously, when the rope caught and I remember we both were like, trying to rip our gregorys off. And then, like Mike said, we like, a couple seconds gone by and we hadn't been ripped off yet.

00:48:24:29 - 00:48:29:27
Tanner Wanish
And we started to like, we didn't want to move because we were like very precariously wedged in this total, just.

00:48:29:28 - 00:48:31:01
Michael Vaill
All this loose rock.

00:48:31:01 - 00:48:46:09
Tanner Wanish
And, and, so we like, are turning our heads, looking around, and then we see the whole nest of slings, just like sitting on this rock right next to us. And so apparently when this giant pillar teetered over and it flipped upside down, somehow all of

00:48:47:22 - 00:48:52:07
Kyle
Oh my God!

00:48:52:07 - 00:48:55:10
Michael Vaill
ripped us off the wall. Because first of all, the rock ripped us off, and.

00:48:55:10 - 00:48:55:23
Tanner Wanish
Then we then.

00:48:55:23 - 00:48:57:16
Michael Vaill
Rotated again. Yeah. And

00:48:59:04 - 00:49:01:07
Kyle
Wow.

00:49:01:07 - 00:49:22:23
Tanner Wanish
was like perfect that when it caught it just pulled everything off the top. And I don't know how like in a million. If you simulated that literally a thousand times I don't know if that would happen again. That seems like everything had to happen perfectly. The Rock had to be the exact correct orientation when it went tight for the slings to not just like, because if it had been, you know, 20 degrees more.

00:49:22:23 - 00:49:38:02
Tanner Wanish
Either way, it's not going to slide off the top. It's just going to rip like it would have taken the I mean, a 10 pound rock would have ripped us out of the chimney like we were so precariously perched so, yeah, we came to a stop in the chimney and realized that we weren't going to be ripped off.

00:49:38:06 - 00:49:41:06
Tanner Wanish
And then it went into just. Yeah, like crisis management.

00:49:41:06 - 00:49:50:01
Michael Vaill
I'm I'm standing there standing on my back like all the ropes are tied around us. I couldn't breathe because I just had to get, ripped out of me.

00:49:50:01 - 00:49:53:21
Tanner Wanish
I thought Mike broke his back because it was like. I was like, owning, really? I was.

00:49:53:21 - 00:49:54:25
Michael Vaill
Like, you know, whenever you

00:49:55:04 - 00:50:02:05
Kyle
Yeah. Yeah.

00:50:02:08 - 00:50:03:00
Kyle
Yeah.

00:50:03:02 - 00:50:05:02
Kyle
Got her, like a guttural sound.

00:50:05:02 - 00:50:06:25
Tanner Wanish
first thought was he's. He

00:50:10:08 - 00:50:25:05
Tanner Wanish
This was an enormous fall already. And then, I got up and I'm like, I'm in. I'm in this fifth class chimney, and I'm. All I want to do is just be attached to the mountain. Then, anyway, so I start slamming cams and every crack I can find because it's.

00:50:25:05 - 00:50:26:07
Michael Vaill
All toast, like, now.

00:50:27:21 - 00:50:29:06
Kyle
Yeah.

00:50:29:06 - 00:50:41:16
Tanner Wanish
I did, I put the cam in and I pulled it right back out. Everything was loose, nothing was attached. Everything was iced over. There was like, no, there was just like no gear. And I was starting to freak out because I was like, dude, we're we

00:50:43:00 - 00:50:44:13
Kyle
Yeah.

00:50:44:14 - 00:50:50:11
Tanner Wanish
I can't find any gear in this chimney. Our ropes are shot to oblivion. They're all. They're all piled up.

00:50:50:11 - 00:50:52:17
Michael Vaill
When the rock fell, it landed right on our ropes.

00:50:52:21 - 00:51:00:20
Tanner Wanish
And it like, I mean, we had, like, over a dozen core shots in the ropes. And, yeah, I eventually started finding cracks, and I built, like, a

00:51:03:11 - 00:51:04:11
Kyle
Yeah.

00:51:04:11 - 00:51:12:26
Tanner Wanish
cams in everywhere I could find and tied everything together, and we took, like, I don't know, ten minutes maybe to collect ourselves.

00:51:12:26 - 00:51:29:23
Tanner Wanish
And I just kept I just kept saying, oh, my God, I can't believe that just happened. Oh my God, I can't believe that just happened. I was like in the shock where I was like, yeah, I can't believe that just happened. You know, like and I'm mostly talking about I can't believe that we're still alive right now. So yeah, we ended up building an anchor.

00:51:29:23 - 00:51:46:29
Tanner Wanish
We had to leave behind a couple cams, which we're happy to do. And, we actually realized we were on the second to last rappel, and we fell, so far, when it was all said and done, that we only had to do one rappelled to get to the ground. So we. Yeah, it was like, yes.

00:51:47:01 - 00:51:48:02
Michael Vaill
Yes. So the good news

00:51:51:06 - 00:51:51:18
Kyle
Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:51:19 - 00:51:56:08
Kyle
Descent. Beta. Freefall. Repel. Number or the second to last. Repel.

00:51:56:08 - 00:52:17:12
Tanner Wanish
we ended up getting down to the glacier, at around 11 p.m. or something like that. 1030 11 we got our rope stuck on the last pole, and, and, but but we needed it because we had to we had more repairs to do to get off the glacier. And then, so I'd, I had to reclaim this last

00:52:17:28 - 00:52:20:15
Kyle
Jesus Christ.

00:52:20:15 - 00:52:38:00
Tanner Wanish
was, like, in pretty bad shape. He's like, got broken ribs and he can barely walk. And, so, yeah, I had, I went up and got the ropes and, had the kind of short rope mike down the glacier because he was, like, literally barely able to walk. And it took us 2 or 3 hours to get through the crevasses.

00:52:38:00 - 00:52:42:17
Tanner Wanish
And Mike was a trooper, man. He was like, barely, barely mobile in any way.

00:52:42:21 - 00:52:45:28
Michael Vaill
The tanner's, like, stomping steps in the snow ahead of me. And he's like, come on,

00:52:51:28 - 00:52:59:13
Kyle
Holy shit.

00:52:59:15 - 00:53:03:29
Kyle
Yeah. Like how what was the extent of your injuries? Did you have, like, flail chest or like.

00:53:03:29 - 00:53:15:11
Michael Vaill
honestly, I don't know. I was just in a lot of pain, and then I was kind of. I kind of was optimistically thinking like, oh, it's probably just really bruise. Like, I'll probably be able to climb in a week or two, but a week or two went by and I was in just as much pain.

00:53:15:11 - 00:53:19:14
Michael Vaill
And I honestly like didn't feel better until like a week or

00:53:19:21 - 00:53:27:12
Kyle
Did you go get X-rays? Did you see medical attention bro. Come on.

00:53:27:12 - 00:53:39:08
Michael Vaill
of thinking like, oh, it's going to be better or it's going to be better, and after a few weeks is a little better. But I'll still like as in, I could like sit up in bed, but, it was still like, too painful to, I don't know, climb or even go for a run or anything.

00:53:39:19 - 00:53:53:18
Kyle
Did you ever have the impulse to sneeze?

00:53:53:20 - 00:54:04:16
Kyle
Yeah. Laughing. Yeah.

00:54:04:19 - 00:54:06:13
Kyle
Jeez.

00:54:06:16 - 00:54:16:05
Kyle
That's crazy, you guys, I fuck. Dude, I wish I could give you guys a hug or something. That is just the fucking gnarliest story I've heard in a long ass time.

00:54:16:05 - 00:54:33:03
Tanner Wanish
was. I feel like we got away with that in a really genuine way where it's like, that little or. No, I'm not super religious at the moment, but it, that, I mean, yeah, I just don't know how you would recreate that scenario where we walk away in a thousand simulations.

00:54:33:03 - 00:54:52:29
Tanner Wanish
It's pretty, pretty intense. So. So then we got down to the sharp, poor hut at about 1 a.m., and it was this really jarring experience where we had just been fight, literally fighting for our lives for the past several hours. And then we just opened the door to this hut that was totally empty. It's this beautiful modern mountain hut built right on the side of the Sherpa Glacier.

00:54:53:00 - 00:54:57:04
Michael Vaill
Totally warm in there from like, baking in the sun all day. It is warm and it's warm.

00:54:57:04 - 00:54:58:11
Tanner Wanish
It's beautiful.

00:54:58:14 - 00:55:00:13
Michael Vaill
There's mattresses. Yeah, blankets.

00:55:00:13 - 00:55:17:00
Tanner Wanish
Blankets and a kitchen and everything. And we walked in and it was just like we opened this portal to, like, another world and walked in and sat down and, we just sat in silence in the dark, in the Shampoo hut for a couple minutes. And just like, tried to, you know, that was the first time that we got to take a breath.

00:55:17:00 - 00:55:31:25
Tanner Wanish
The entire this entire event where we were like, okay, we're not going to die tonight. We know that we're going to be okay. And it was this really, like, crushing cascade of emotions and stuff that kind of rolled over me. And, yeah, it was, it was that was a tough night. It was a

00:55:32:17 - 00:55:33:24
Kyle
Yeah.

00:55:33:26 - 00:55:41:26
Kyle
Yeah. What? What, like. I mean, it's been a while. I mean, we haven't even gotten into the with traverse yet and how that has played into all this, but like.

00:55:43:13 - 00:56:04:03
Kyle
The weeks after, like, what was that kind of psychological decompression like, like, how were you guys rationalizing the event? How did you guys, like, justify your survival? Because I think a lot of this, I think about these moments where we survive and it's like where we where we survive, where we literally shouldn't have, especially in your guys's case scenario.

00:56:04:05 - 00:56:20:09
Kyle
And at least the way I've justified it in my life through experiences that I've gone through, is like, there's just a reason for me to be here, and it's my job to figure out what that purpose is like. I have to complete something. There's a reason I'm here, and whether that's spiritual or not, it's like a purpose that kind of drives me.

00:56:20:11 - 00:56:27:29
Kyle
Like, is there some sort of justification or any sort of thought process like that? You guys have gone through?

00:56:27:29 - 00:56:51:01
Michael Vaill
think I can accept something without rationalizing it or justifying it. It's more about just acceptance. Because the world and the human experience is so chaotic. And that chaos exists on a spectrum. And maybe this is, like, near the far end of that spectrum, but, like, I've just accepted that, like, life is chaotic, the world is chaotic.

00:56:51:03 - 00:57:11:05
Michael Vaill
You know, people die every second. Like such horrible things happen around the planet, like constantly that like, I can just accept that, like, this falls into that spectrum of the chaos of the human experience. I don't need to, like, rationalize it or justify it or give it a divine meaning or give it any meaning. Like I can just accept that this is what happened and accept that we survived.

00:57:11:05 - 00:57:15:02
Michael Vaill
And, you know, be happy to live my life as it is. Like I don't feel

00:57:21:19 - 00:57:31:16
Tanner Wanish
make sense logically. I think for me and just in my daily life as well, I think I need things to make sense to be at peace with them. And it was easy to rationalize. It's it was a heavy winter there.

00:57:31:16 - 00:57:56:07
Tanner Wanish
It, you know, this rock has probably been getting freeze thaw, freeze thaw cracks in it for decades now. And, we rolled the dice and we didn't, you know, we weren't lucky this day, and we were the ones we were probably the first ones to repel off the anchor this year. And so it's easy to rationalize the fact that, like, this is a possibility in the mountains.

00:57:56:07 - 00:58:19:22
Tanner Wanish
This is a possibility in the alpine. This can happen with, you know, that same pillar could have been bolted. It was big enough to be bolted. Like the same thing could have happened if it was bolted. Anchors. Where the entire feature, the entire monolith fails like that. That that's a possibility. So I, I needed to make it.

00:58:19:24 - 00:58:42:17
Tanner Wanish
I needed to logically tell myself that just because this accident happened doesn't mean that another accident is more likely to happen. These are independent events. They're not relying on each other in any way. So we rolled the dice and we lost on this on this run where we again, like, if it wasn't us, it would have been the next party that rappelled off, that it wasn't like the cosmic universe trying to kill us.

00:58:42:17 - 00:59:09:18
Tanner Wanish
It was just this was a time bomb that was waiting, and whoever repelled off at first was probably going to die. And, yeah, I just told myself that, like, this is, again, this is a known risk in the, in the alpine environment. And, it doesn't make it more likely to happen again. It actually is probably less likely to happen again because now I'm going to implement all these psychotic tertiary and secondary and, you know, whatever checks for every anchor I ever get to for the rest of my life now.

00:59:09:25 - 00:59:31:11
Tanner Wanish
Because, while we checked this anchor, like, maybe, I don't know, there's there's definitely a way to approach these repel anchors. Now, that's going to be a little more thorough than what we've done in the past. And and still knowing what we know now, I wouldn't have done anything differently then. We just didn't know that this anchor was a land mine ready to go.

00:59:31:14 - 00:59:53:09
Tanner Wanish
But yeah, I don't know. It's definitely it took a lot of work to feel comfortable in the mountains again. After that, it felt like, it felt like everything I was climbing after that. In the following couple weeks, I had this feeling of impending doom. I was waiting for the next accident to happen, and I had to keep telling myself that just because that happened doesn't mean this is more likely to happen.

00:59:53:11 - 00:59:55:12
Tanner Wanish
And that's that's kind of how I dealt with it.

00:59:55:12 - 00:59:55:28
Michael Vaill
So,

00:59:55:28 - 01:00:12:22
Michael Vaill
I mean, I basically didn't climb for I didn't define for the rest of the month. And then, after we got back to California, the first day we met climbing, we went to Lover's Leap to, like, climb a bunch of moderate routes. And I kind of had, like, a panic attack. Like after a few routes, which I've never experienced anything like that in my life.

01:00:12:22 - 01:00:29:20
Michael Vaill
Like, we were just simul climbing something. I was on some like five, 9 or 10 crag or something, and I just, I couldn't and I just stopped and brought Tanner up and I was like, hey, if you want to climb this route, you need to lead this, because my body's like, my mind is not functioning right now, like I, I, I had just exactly like what Tanner described.

01:00:29:20 - 01:00:33:17
Michael Vaill
I had this feeling that something horrible was about to happen. Like every move.

01:00:33:19 - 01:01:00:20
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I, I had the opportunity to immediately go climb again and kind of confront and deal with these issues that I had now. And, you know, process them in real time, like on the Rock and kind of work through these, these new mental barriers that I had just created. And I think that was really helpful. It was it was one of those things where, like, you got to get right back on the horse or it's going to be really, really hard later.

01:01:00:20 - 01:01:01:18
Tanner Wanish
And Mike didn't have that, or.

01:01:01:19 - 01:01:06:18
Michael Vaill
I was pretty jealous of that. I just spent a month, you know, sitting there in pain, thinking about how scary climbing is.

01:01:06:21 - 01:01:30:13
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. But like after like after we did that, I climbed. I mean, a couple days later, I climbed. Grandpappy Stone was up with our friend Isaac, and, the climb went relatively well on the way up. I wasn't to wait out on the way up, but as soon as we started rappelling, I went into this like, hyper manic, like, alert state where I was.

01:01:30:13 - 01:01:50:13
Tanner Wanish
I mean, it's I looked at my watch metrics at the end of the day, and my highest heart rate the entire day was rappelling. It was like once it was like resting 160 where I was legitimately on the verge of a panic attack. The entire rappelled down, where every single anchor we went into, I was having this like fight or flight like, this is going to fail.

01:01:50:13 - 01:02:06:27
Tanner Wanish
This is going to fail. This is going to fail. Even if it's two bolted anchors with chains. I'm like, something is going to happen. And I had to I mean, I told Isaac was like, dude, I need you to lead these repels. You're going first. I want to see you on the anchor. I want to see that it's not going to break you find the next one.

01:02:06:27 - 01:02:11:11
Tanner Wanish
You test that one before we pull this rope. Like. And he was great about that. And I was really

01:02:18:00 - 01:02:27:21
Kyle
Well I mean you've got to, you've got to teach your brain through evidence. Right. It's like you prove to prove to me that this stuff works because right now I don't believe it because I just had this crazy experience.

01:02:27:21 - 01:02:34:09
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, yeah. And so I got to work through all these issues right away, which I feel like is really important.

01:02:34:12 - 01:02:51:14
Tanner Wanish
I, I had a skydiving accident where a guy, a guy died on, on my load, and this is in a training military course, and it was the same thing. We we hit the ground. This guy cratered, was no longer with us, and the instructor said, we're going to go right back up. Everybody on this plane we're jumping right now.

01:02:51:17 - 01:03:11:02
Tanner Wanish
Because if you guys don't jump right now, you might never jump again. Because if you let this doubt in this fear, like root in you, if you let this happen and you and you just fester and think about what could happen, you might never be able to get out of this. And this is the same thing where I had to immediately go climb again and show myself that I can still do this.

01:03:11:02 - 01:03:30:28
Tanner Wanish
And it's not inherently more dangerous now because we had an accident and it was this. It was this kind of unique situation I haven't been in. In a long time where I had to deal with a lot of mental barriers that I typically don't have. I don't get very scared climbing. And now I'm freaking out and I'm really uncomfortable in this place that is typically for me.

01:03:30:29 - 01:03:45:05
Tanner Wanish
Then my comfort place. I go to the mountains when I'm upset or when I'm happy, or when I'm scared or when I'm sad. I go to the mountains. That's like my that's my comfort home, you know? And now I'm struggling to feel comfortable in this place. That is typically the place I go

01:03:46:05 - 01:03:51:01
Kyle
Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot.

01:03:51:01 - 01:04:04:03
Tanner Wanish
the incident in kind of a, almost a delusional, positive way where I'm like, well, we got away with it now we're going to be extra safe in the future, and we're going to do all these double checks, and we're going to share our story, and maybe that'll save somebody else's life and stuff like that.

01:04:04:03 - 01:04:05:03
Tanner Wanish
So.

01:04:05:16 - 01:04:20:20
Kyle
Yeah. My. How did you get past it. I mean at this point you know in the story you've, you know unable to climb, you've got to Lover's Leap. You're having kind of an attack and having this PTSD symptoms like how did you get on the other side. Because you know we we did get to the Goliath and you did do it.

01:04:20:20 - 01:04:22:18
Kyle
So.

01:04:22:18 - 01:04:35:20
Michael Vaill
say, whenever we're there in Shamone, like a week or two after the accident, like I tried taking a bunch of Tylenol and, like, go and climbing, and I just couldn't, like, lifting my arm over my head. Felt like I was getting kicked in the chest, so I just like. Yeah, no amount of time I was going to help me climb.

01:04:35:25 - 01:04:47:28
Michael Vaill
So I just accepted that didn't climb for a month. I was pretty jealous of Tanner. Like, not just because he was doing some climbs I wanted to do, but mostly jealous because I knew he was like back on the horse and I knew he was facing that, and that was something I would have to face down the road.

01:04:48:00 - 01:05:08:01
Michael Vaill
So once we got back to Tahoe, yeah, the first day we climbed, we like we're going to oh, it'll be really chill. It's a similar climb these like moderate routes that that ended up for me not being that chill mentally. So we decided to go kayaking and I said, you know what? I'm just going to, like start at zero and just like, enjoy climbing because I had this.

01:05:08:01 - 01:05:26:26
Michael Vaill
I mean, climbing is like my favorite thing that I've ever done. And I had this crazy feeling of like, I didn't really enjoy it. I was kind of over it. And I was like, well, this kind of sucks because I know that I've had this feeling of being passionate about this activity before I was, I was wondering if I lost that.

01:05:27:00 - 01:05:28:04
Michael Vaill
I was like, am I ever going to enjoy

01:05:28:04 - 01:05:30:20
Kyle
Yeah.

01:05:30:23 - 01:05:41:24
Kyle
Do you have to resort to bird watching?

01:05:41:24 - 01:06:05:15
Michael Vaill
you know what? I'm just going to step as far back as I need to. And I was saying rotator up until and, we went sport climbing, and I said, you know what? I'm just gonna top rope today. So we went to this park, and I just stopped, and I just felt the feeling of moving over the rock and, you know, hanging on the rope and just taking it easy.

01:06:05:18 - 01:06:18:25
Michael Vaill
And I had a little bit of fun that day. And there were still times where I was like, getting to the crag, and I was like, I don't know if I even really want to be here right now. Like, I kind of I'd kind of like, I don't know, rather just be safe at home then, like up here trying to climb this wall.

01:06:18:25 - 01:06:19:18
Michael Vaill
This is kind of dumb.

01:06:19:18 - 01:06:27:22
Tanner Wanish
It felt like work for a bit. It felt like work when we had to do this thing that we weren't crazy about, to, like, work through this issue and get

01:06:30:25 - 01:06:40:20
Kyle
Yeah. It's almost like. It's almost like you were, put in the shoes of someone who doesn't understand climbing at all and is scared of it in the first place.

01:06:40:23 - 01:06:42:21
Kyle
Yeah.

01:06:42:21 - 01:07:02:17
Michael Vaill
of cracking like that, like I let it like lead some like easy, well bolted routes and top rope some stuff and the end to feel like, oh yeah like the movement and just enjoying that again. And then the last day we climbed in Tahoe, we went to Donner Summit and kind of a snow schedule, which like there's the office cracks.

01:07:02:17 - 01:07:21:14
Michael Vaill
They are just so much fun. And I like, like all the stuff there. And for me, that was like it. I was like, okay, I'm back. Because it's interesting. That place has been like a haven for me. Like, I think that's the third time because a few years ago, like, I finished a long trip and I was like, I don't know, feeling kind of a little burnout.

01:07:21:14 - 01:07:34:10
Michael Vaill
And I went to like the office cracks and I got super psyched again. And then last year before we did the triple, we spent like a few days there and like, got really, like, dialed. Yeah. And then this year after the accident, like, I was like, I don't know, top roping sport climbs. And then I went and like, led the office

01:07:38:03 - 01:07:47:20
Michael Vaill
been like my, I don't know, my my refuge, like my therapeutic center. There's like all those like nice 511 and 512 like splitters on the North Face.

01:07:48:12 - 01:07:56:10
Kyle
That's awesome. Man. That's important that you found that. And I think it's, It's a good place to come back to if you ever find yourself in that situation again.

01:07:56:12 - 01:07:59:25
Kyle
Yeah. Wild, wild.

01:07:59:28 - 01:08:12:00
Kyle
What a crazy story. Well, I mean it. I'm sure I'm speaking for everybody here. I'm glad you guys are alive. I'm glad you guys are sitting down with us today. And, Holy shit.

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01:09:05:13 - 01:09:17:11
Kyle
So I think, you know, with that foundation to kind of preface where you guys were when you guys are going into this objective, I think is, this is where we we jump in.

01:09:17:13 - 01:09:20:05
Kyle
So let's see.

01:09:20:07 - 01:09:21:03
Kyle
Man.

01:09:21:06 - 01:09:42:27
Kyle
I guess. Yeah, I want to frame I want to frame the, the objective just a little bit in terms of logistics and conditions before we dive into like the mental and physical challenges of, of the objective in the first place. So what was the route finding, like you guys don't have much detail on? Kind of like what specific routes the sent up to to do.

01:09:42:29 - 01:09:47:25
Kyle
What were some of the areas of the objectives that were like the route finding was the hardest for you?

01:09:48:24 - 01:10:05:03
Michael Vaill
Well, I don't know if there's any one area or, like, peak. That was more difficult or less difficult. I think a lot of it had to do with just rock quality. Yeah, because if you're standing on a peak and you're looking at the next one, you see, okay, the ridge is descending for a quarter mile or whatever, and then it goes up to the next mountain.

01:10:05:03 - 01:10:21:12
Michael Vaill
And then sometimes there's a headwall where you have to climb a few pitches worth of like more vertical rock. And if you kind of see like, oh, there's a corner system over there, oh, maybe we can traverse around the tower a little bit over here. You know, if they if the rock is solid, you can just kind of like pick whichever what you want and go for it.

01:10:21:14 - 01:10:34:28
Michael Vaill
But it was more like where it was difficult was whenever the rock was really bad. And you're like, well, that looks really exposed and like five nine lie backing. I'm not going to do on horse. Whereas if it's like bomb or granite, you're like, oh, whatever. Like I'm just going to climb that hand crack.

01:10:35:26 - 01:10:39:27
Kyle
So I mean ultimately you're you're following rock quality.

01:10:39:27 - 01:10:56:28
Tanner Wanish
saying, yeah. So we had the on, we had the on, we had zero information on any of these routes in terms of like rail fighting. So you would get to the top of a mountain. Like Mike said, there are generally be a 500 to 1000ft drop on the other side of some big notch, and then you have to climb up another 501,000ft to the next one.

01:10:57:02 - 01:11:13:14
Tanner Wanish
And you just did that 60 times. So from the top of it, you're looking at the next wall and you're trying to game plan different weaknesses and, you know, different ledge systems or different ways that you can connect and so we had a general idea from the top of the previous mountain how we wanted to get up the next one.

01:11:13:18 - 01:11:28:26
Tanner Wanish
But like Mike said, sometimes you would get over there and the rock quality would be so horrific that like a broken hold here with this exposure, we're dead immediately. But maybe this other way is going to add a bunch of elevation and we have to go up and over and around. But the rock classic.

01:11:28:26 - 01:11:31:20
Michael Vaill
Spurs, yeah, it's maybe the rock is also shit, but it's just less

01:11:32:17 - 01:11:38:28
Kyle
How many? How many times did you guys make a wrong decision and had to backtrack?

01:11:38:28 - 01:11:42:06
Michael Vaill
of. Yeah a few times it. Yeah. Yeah. But also a lot of times like,

01:11:42:06 - 01:11:55:10
Michael Vaill
like one of the pieces of advice that Vitaly gave us was like, try not to backtrack just because, like if you see a line and just go and you climb it, like if it doesn't feel great, like push it as far as you can because it'll probably work out.

01:11:55:10 - 01:12:01:28
Michael Vaill
And if you're constantly backtracking, trying to find the best way on 60 mountains, like you're never going to finish it.

01:12:01:28 - 01:12:11:04
Michael Vaill
Yeah. So it's usually like, well, I don't know, this looks like a hard move. I can do one more move. And also keeping in mind the classic like soloing mindset of, like, only do moves you can reverse and all of that.

01:12:11:04 - 01:12:18:27
Michael Vaill
And and usually you just kind of like pick a line and you know, it's not the best line, but it's the line you chose and you're just going to like, yeah, stick with it. Yeah.

01:12:18:27 - 01:12:40:07
Tanner Wanish
And and we also had kind of a strategy that we're doing where somebody was generally in front kind of scouting and doing a little bit more of the legwork where you're, you know, maybe climbing up and climbing down and going this way and climbing up and saying, hey, don't come this way. This doesn't go. So now you push ahead and you go that way, or we would split up and find different routes and hey, this is good.

01:12:40:07 - 01:12:58:22
Tanner Wanish
This will go, come over here, stuff like that. So it was a lot of, just trusting your intuition to say, like, I think this is going to go I've climbed enough mountains at this point in enough granite that I think that the way that this corner system is developing, I think that this should take us to the top or something like that.

01:12:58:22 - 01:13:20:12
Tanner Wanish
So, yeah. And it but it was always a sliding scale of like, how far do you want to take this line before you're so committed that like, now you're doing, you know, five, ten moves and you're just hoping that it's going to connect at the top, or maybe you can't see the last ten meters and there's a chance that that's going to terminate without a crack system and stuff like that.

01:13:20:12 - 01:13:33:16
Tanner Wanish
So it's always a gamble when you're committing to that. But ideally, we had enough of perspective from the mountain before to have a pretty good idea on the line that we wanted to take, at least in terms of like how steep it is, or if we can see features

01:13:35:22 - 01:13:43:16
Kyle
So you're doing lots of, like, small scale route finding and also big picture route finding that like simultaneously. Yeah.

01:13:43:16 - 01:13:49:14
Michael Vaill
had walls that we looked at like you can see a few lines and you usually just pick one and climb it. But I guess the main difference is like

01:13:49:14 - 01:13:53:17
Michael Vaill
the difficulty of the route finding was more related to the overall rock quality on the mountain. Yeah.

01:13:53:17 - 01:13:58:13
Michael Vaill
Just because when it's solid rock, just the most obvious line, you would just climb that one.

01:13:58:15 - 01:14:09:17
Michael Vaill
But when there's like a mixture of different lines you could choose, but also like different rock qualities. Or maybe it's all bad. You have to be a lot more careful. So we might not just like push forward with the most obvious line. If the rock is like imminently going to explode

01:14:10:29 - 01:14:11:23
Kyle
Yeah.

01:14:11:25 - 01:14:15:29
Kyle
Which it seemed like there was a lot of.

01:14:16:01 - 01:14:18:04
Kyle
Yeah.

01:14:18:07 - 01:14:29:14
Kyle
And like based off of, like the stuff I read, it seems like the biggest crux for you guys was like just the simple mental attrition that you guys felt, just the sheer amount of exposure and loose rock and, like, no fall zones.

01:14:30:18 - 01:14:46:23
Kyle
Talk to me about that. Like, physical exhaustion takes its own toll. But then when you have that mental exhaustion as well, it just makes everything more tired, like, tiring, exhausting and dangerous. Like, how did you maintain to, like, how did you work to maintain mental acuity during that experience?

01:14:47:08 - 01:15:19:05
Tanner Wanish
I said after our. After our speed season last fall. Like the all the speed climbing we're doing that. I thought that was way more mentally taxing than physically. I think might disagree with me, but I feel like being in that really high consequence terrain for super extended time like that, you know, 15, 20 hours. I was just so mentally tired at the end of those days because you're subconsciously redlining the entire day where you're, you're, you know, your subconscious knows that any mistake is going to cost you probably your life.

01:15:19:07 - 01:15:42:19
Tanner Wanish
This was an entirely new level of that where I it was, it was really, really mentally exhausting and like a really profound way where I hadn't experienced maybe ever in my life. I, I cried at the end of the third day. I think just because of how tired I was, I told Mike I was, like, talking to him about how fucked this was.

01:15:42:19 - 01:16:07:16
Tanner Wanish
And I just, like, started crying. And I was like, I told him I was like, I have no idea why I'm crying right now. Like, I've. I was like, laughing while I was crying. I was like, I'm just so overwhelmed right now with like, how scared I am for my life and that constant exposure to being in this no fault zone that like, I just had this overwhelming flood of emotions and I was just, I guess I just hit a, you know, I, I sprung a leak up there.

01:16:07:19 - 01:16:27:11
Tanner Wanish
I was like, dude, I'm like, this is so much, man. I, I, it's the constant exposure was by, I mean, for me, the hardest part because I, I really did again, I genuinely felt like we could die up here any of these days. We could die with any mistake. And it felt really overwhelming a couple

01:16:28:05 - 01:16:33:19
Kyle
Like, how did you handle the exposure like that?

01:16:33:19 - 01:16:53:29
Michael Vaill
definitely feels way different to me because speed climbing, I always feel really safe. Like when I'm not, I know it's dangerous and yes, like any mistake, you can be in a horrible situation when you're like running out on a wall. But like if you're climbing the nose for the 10th time or whatever, you know where you're going, you're comfortable, you have gear, you have cracks, you have a rope, you have good rock.

01:16:53:29 - 01:17:11:21
Michael Vaill
Yeah. So you can kind of like, make that decision to protect yourself as you wish. But here, whenever we're just, like, questing up another big chase mountain, like, for the 10th time of the day, and you're physically tired. You feel like there's no safety net, like you couldn't. Like you can't just, like, plug Occam and hang on it and say, hey, I'm done.

01:17:11:21 - 01:17:21:05
Michael Vaill
Let's bail. Like you're climbing speed climbing in the valley. You can, like, bail with a single rope from anywhere. Here we're, like committed. Yeah, we're in the middle of it.

01:17:21:07 - 01:17:34:00
Tanner Wanish
I just want to add that the difference is speed climbing. If there's a mistake, it's our fault. We made the mistake. We didn't. We did something wrong. We climbed poorly. We made a technical error. Whatever. Here, it felt like

01:17:34:00 - 01:17:40:11
Tanner Wanish
we could do everything perfectly, absolutely, perfectly, and still die with no notice at all, at any moment

01:17:40:11 - 01:17:41:19
Tanner Wanish
up on this crust.

01:17:41:19 - 01:17:59:08
Tanner Wanish
And that was a variable that I hadn't experienced in the valley before, where I'm when we're speed climbing, I'm monitoring my own performance in my own logistics, and I'm making sure I'm doing everything right, so I know there's not going to be an accident. But here there was this like new variable

01:17:59:08 - 01:18:01:23
Tanner Wanish
where it was basically just like, we're we're climbing.

01:18:01:23 - 01:18:11:04
Tanner Wanish
And I felt like there was a guy following us playing Russian roulette where he's like, he's just all it. He's just following us around spinning the chamber, and he just keep pulling the trigger

01:18:11:04 - 01:18:14:06
Kyle
Yeah. Yeah.

01:18:14:08 - 01:18:20:18
Kyle
His name is chaos.

01:18:25:29 - 01:18:31:01
Tanner Wanish
right and still get hit here. Like, I just don't feel like there's anything we could do to mitigate this risk.

01:18:31:01 - 01:18:31:08
Tanner Wanish
I mean.

01:18:31:08 - 01:18:51:00
Michael Vaill
That's something we talked about a lot, like. Yeah, the roulette, like using that analogy. Yeah, like Russian roulette. Because when you get to a peak or a ridge or something, and the way up is to just scramble up this Jenga pile of death blocks, like that's what you do. And it's all falling apart and disintegrating and it's super exposed.

01:18:51:00 - 01:18:55:20
Michael Vaill
And if it. Yeah, something breaks or a big boulder rolls over, you might just.

01:18:55:24 - 01:19:12:15
Tanner Wanish
Die. It's like you get to the top and you're like, okay, that was a blank. We're okay. Yeah. And then you mountain and it's like spinning the chamber again. And then you get to the next one and you're like, okay, that was a blank. Spin it again. And you do that 60 times and it's like Jesus Christ man, this is exhausting.

01:19:12:18 - 01:19:28:17
Michael Vaill
The analogy that I've come up with to kind of describe it is like when you're imagine you're driving and you're driving through like a city that you're not familiar with in rush hour, and you have to get across like six lanes of traffic to get to your exit ramp. And there's like motorcycles cutting the lanes, and there's like pedestrians.

01:19:28:24 - 01:19:45:21
Michael Vaill
You know, that feeling for for 15 seconds while you're, like, changing all these lanes in the middle of LA at 5 p.m., you're like totally stimulated. You're looking around, you're looking for the motorcycle, you're looking for the pedestrian. You're paying attention to all these things that turn signals. But then you get off the exit ramp and then you're like, kind of calm again.

01:19:45:24 - 01:19:59:12
Michael Vaill
This feeling of the Goliath was like hours and hours a day of that exact same sensation when you're just like, looking around, paying attention to everything. Is this rock good? Is that rock good? You know, where's where's my partner? Like, is he going to knock something on me? Am I going to knock something on him below me here?

01:19:59:18 - 01:20:03:12
Michael Vaill
And it's just like you're constantly totally overstimulated.

01:20:03:14 - 01:20:04:06
Tanner Wanish
It. There's a million.

01:20:04:06 - 01:20:07:01
Michael Vaill
Deal with that feeling. Yeah. For hours on end.

01:20:07:01 - 01:20:07:22
Tanner Wanish
Is your roof.

01:20:07:23 - 01:20:08:17
Michael Vaill
Every single day?

01:20:08:17 - 01:20:25:12
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. Is your micro root finding good? Is there a safer option? Ten feet to the left. Is your macro route finding good? Is this crack system even going to take us to the summit. And then how's how's our water. How's our food. Have we eaten today. What's our timeline right now as the weather looking like we have eight more days of this.

01:20:25:12 - 01:20:47:24
Tanner Wanish
It's like you're so overstimulated with so many variables. It's like you're you're in a cockpit and you're looking at, you know, 500 different gauges and you're trying to monitor them all at once. And any of them could kill you. Is are overhead hazard? Is there something above that's going to send rocks down on us? Am I going to pull this block out of the wall and kill Mike below me like it's it's that all day for eight days.

01:20:47:24 - 01:20:49:04
Tanner Wanish
And it's it was really,

01:20:51:16 - 01:21:08:07
Kyle
But I think it's interesting that you tell you as you describe this, you like, have a smile on your face and, it seems like, you know, I think one of the reasons why we love climbing is because it forces us into the present. It's like we have to pay attention to everything around us, and you can't pay attention to anything else.

01:21:08:07 - 01:21:16:28
Kyle
And there's something so special about that. It seems like the experience you guys had up there was just a like, exponentially increased version of that.

01:21:16:28 - 01:21:34:27
Michael Vaill
that's actually what I was going to get at as far as, like, how I found the best way to deal with it was that in the moment when you're, in, whatever down finding this face, and there's, like, 100ft below you, and you have to get down to the call and you look in front of you and there's like these holds.

01:21:34:29 - 01:21:49:19
Michael Vaill
I would just spend the majority of the day focused on the next move and like basically the next pitch, like, how do we get down to the call. And then sometimes when we were on top of the summit, we'd be like, oh, look, we can see our bivvy like right there, like, you know, a mile or two away.

01:21:49:25 - 01:22:05:07
Michael Vaill
And we were super psyched, like, but then as soon as you leave that summit, you know, you have like another five mountains. So you just focus on climbing this one. And every time, like, my mind began to wander to like, oh, we have four more mountains today. And then we don't know, where are we going to sleep tonight?

01:22:05:07 - 01:22:25:07
Michael Vaill
And then we have six more days. I would start to get like really stressed out. So I just focus on, well, that absolutely has nothing to do with whether or not I'm safe or successful. You know, thinking about those things, the only thing that matters, the only thing that's going to affect, like our safety and success is like down climbing this next, like ten feet.

01:22:25:09 - 01:22:26:25
Michael Vaill
So you just go back to.

01:22:26:25 - 01:22:47:08
Kyle
I would say that that mentality works while you're moving through the mountains. But what happens in the evening when you stop. Because like each day is already so taxing, you have to do it again and again and again each day. And I'm sure the anxiety of like the anticipation of the next day after you're done with the current day and you're just sitting at camp like, and you're like, fuck, I have to do that again.

01:22:47:08 - 01:22:57:09
Kyle
And I have to do that again and again and again. Like, how did you guys deal with that anxiety? Like, I would imagine there would be anxiety in the evenings, like before you were. No.

01:22:57:09 - 01:22:58:23
Both
Because I think we were really good.

01:22:58:26 - 01:23:02:10
Michael Vaill
I think as a team we're good at, like the strategy and logistics. Yeah.

01:23:02:10 - 01:23:10:10
Tanner Wanish
We're. And we're also good at, I don't think mental resiliency would be the right word. Maybe something more resembling like

01:23:21:21 - 01:23:24:07
Kyle
Hell, yeah.

01:23:24:07 - 01:23:27:09
Tanner Wanish
and, and set up camp and put on the office.

01:23:27:09 - 01:23:34:03
Tanner Wanish
And we didn't really stress about the next day's ever you get we like, started to talk about it. We would just be like, let's just worry about this.

01:23:34:03 - 01:23:34:21
Both
Tomorrow or.

01:23:34:21 - 01:23:51:23
Michael Vaill
You can do the same thing. And going back to the moment, like right now, we need to find somewhere to pitch our tent. Right now we need to like cook dinner. Right now we need to whatever, you know, or yeah, put on a TV show or just or you just click into the, kind of strategy mode where we're, like, looking at the map and just talking, you know, no different than if we weren't on the ridge.

01:23:51:25 - 01:24:06:04
Michael Vaill
No different than if we were, like, hanging out in the van looking at the map. It's like, okay, what are we doing tomorrow? We're doing this peak, this peak, this peak. It looks like we can probably beat it here. So we're either like just focused on what we're doing in camp or back in our kind of like, strategizing mode that we're comfortable with.

01:24:06:04 - 01:24:27:02
Tanner Wanish
I think we're I think we're good at compartmentalizing. And we did a good job at like, not stressing when we didn't need to. So at night, that was our time to recover. And so we we did. We ate as much food as we had each allotted each night. And we rested. Well, I just I just shared this on Instagram.

01:24:27:02 - 01:24:44:29
Tanner Wanish
I think I got like an average of 8.5 hours of sleep a night, like really good sleep. We went down. I mean, we didn't do anything except for set up camp, eat and lay down. And then we got up at first light and packed up like, you know, our, our camp. And then you just start climbing and it's like, there's not a lot to figure out.

01:24:44:29 - 01:24:58:29
Tanner Wanish
Just point north, you know, you're already on the crest point north and starting to start going. And like, we don't even I don't have to think about the next mountain. I have to think about what's 100ft in front of me right now, and I'll deal with what I'll do with the next hundred feet when I get to the end of this one.

01:24:58:29 - 01:25:14:25
Tanner Wanish
And like, I think we did a good job at not stressing too much. Those are definitely the lowest points of the traverse, was when we got too zoomed out and we started thinking about how many days we have left and how many mountains we have today. And this was so scary. I know there's another scary section coming up and stuff like that.

01:25:14:25 - 01:25:30:21
Tanner Wanish
That's when things got bad. But if you just stayed really present and tried to focus on what you were doing at the time, there's no singular move that's going to stop you. There's no singular section that is going to stop you, you know, short of an accident or something like that. So it, I think that was our strategy.

01:25:30:21 - 01:25:41:17
Tanner Wanish
And I think we did good at that. But that's, that's kind of been our strength for a lot of these bigger link ups has been being able to stay present and not stressing about what's, you know, three hours down the road, because that doesn't matter right now.

01:25:41:18 - 01:25:58:21
Michael Vaill
I think that might have been a huge benefit for us going up there together, as opposed to Vitaly being alone. Yeah. Because like he told us like he didn't sleep almost at all. Like, you know, whenever he was up there, he was super stressed and anxious and thinking about all these things that were coming up. But since we were up there together, we were mostly able to kind of focus on the team and focus on each other.

01:25:58:21 - 01:26:20:01
Michael Vaill
It's like, okay, I'm either like climbing with a friend or I'm setting up camp with a friend or we're like, we can talk about these things with each other. But I can imagine being up there by yourself once you start kind of getting into this rabbit hole of spiraling, you could easily spiral. And like, if I, whenever I'm by myself in the mountains, like the mental challenges that you can just like spend hours just, yeah, dwelling on something.

01:26:20:01 - 01:26:25:20
Michael Vaill
But as soon as you like, have to communicate with your partner, then you can kind of like get snapped out of it and get back to where you are. So I think that was

01:26:27:13 - 01:26:37:05
Kyle
Yeah. That was actually one of my questions. Was whether or not, like, the partnership helped or hindered the objective in certain parts. And it sounds like it was a keystone element of your guys's success.

01:26:37:05 - 01:26:37:19
Tanner Wanish
Tonya.

01:26:37:19 - 01:26:41:09
Michael Vaill
I think I think Vitaly doing it solo was like way more hardcore.

01:26:41:09 - 01:27:01:22
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, yeah I mean mostly my hardest most of my hardest days mentally have been big solo days because it's like you it's easy to spiral. It's easy to like get stressed out. And as soon as something routes like that, you're fucked. You're never going to dig out of that. If you're by yourself, I mean, it's going to take an act of God for you to stop that cascade where you just implode internally.

01:27:01:24 - 01:27:10:01
Tanner Wanish
And yeah, I have the opportunity to tell Mike, like, Mike, I'm not doing too good right now. Like, I'm kind of struggling mentally. I need some support or.

01:27:11:13 - 01:27:36:14
Tanner Wanish
Being able to strike up conversation about whatever we're excited about. And it just distracts you. It makes you not think about, you know, how miserable this is. And if I'm focused on how's Mike doing? I'm not thinking about how miserable I am, and then vice versa. So if we're focused on the team and each other, and how are we doing as a, you know, as a team, we're not thinking about how tired we are and stuff like that, because that's not the greater good, the greater good is the team success here.

01:27:36:14 - 01:27:37:12
Tanner Wanish
And that's more important.

01:27:37:19 - 01:27:52:21
Michael Vaill
And also just being able to like have like a back up to your decision making, because if you get to somewhere and you're going to repel and you kind of put in some nuts and put a sling around like a block and you're like, I don't know, I guess, I guess this looks good enough. If you're by yourself, you just decide it looks good enough and you go for it.

01:27:52:28 - 01:27:57:24
Michael Vaill
But whenever you can, like ask your partner, hey, do you think this looks good? And he's like, yeah, I think so too. That

01:28:01:03 - 01:28:01:24
Kyle
Yeah.

01:28:01:27 - 01:28:05:07
Kyle
Know for sure that that makes sense.

01:28:05:07 - 01:28:12:11
Michael Vaill
partner remove it honestly like yeah, yeah. Like we had some nuts in a couple games with us. And a lot of times if we were doing a repel, we'd place the cams as back ups. And then

01:28:12:11 - 01:28:12:21
Michael Vaill
the second.

01:28:12:21 - 01:28:37:16
Tanner Wanish
Person I think we backed up every repel, which is something that we wouldn't have ever done before the accident. We would have we would have repelled off sketchy shit and taken more chances because we hadn't seen that in reality. And we approach that way differently on this. We backed up every repel. We put new Tad, even if there is already tat like we took all these extra safety precautions because that was a big that was a big scare for us, was we knew we were going to have to do some sketchy repels.

01:28:37:16 - 01:28:51:24
Tanner Wanish
That's just the reality of this. And so we were trying to mitigate that risk as much as we possibly could, because it would be so stupid to do this and survive all of the, like, insane 510 char soloing that we had to do and then die on a repel because we didn't want to back it up like

01:28:52:13 - 01:28:56:26
Kyle
Especially after the accident with the drew. It's like God alone. Got to learn the lesson.

01:28:56:27 - 01:28:58:04
Kyle
Yeah.

01:28:58:04 - 01:29:10:12
Michael Vaill
And usually we still like, didn't repel unless we absolutely had to like. Yeah. If you if it's an easy enough down, you feel like you can do it. Three points on I'd rather be like soloing you know three points on then trusting your life to an anchor and.

01:29:10:14 - 01:29:11:23
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, for sure.

01:29:11:26 - 01:29:12:21
Michael Vaill
Because that's it. That's

01:29:13:09 - 01:29:34:04
Kyle
In in in partnerships. They're the it's best of the strongest team is when each person plays to their strengths. Right. Like you can't be completely equal. So what would you say your guys's strengths are individually that you bring to the team. I mean I think I would say they're one and they're like tandem. They're I would say they're one in the same.

01:29:34:06 - 01:29:44:03
Kyle
Right. No. Okay. Let's,

01:29:44:05 - 01:29:45:00
Kyle
Okay.

01:29:45:02 - 01:29:54:25
Kyle
Okay. Let's talk about the Goliath and what what what strength that each of you bring to the table in the partnership.

01:29:54:25 - 01:30:18:20
Michael Vaill
like, getting the like. I like driving ahead at, like, whenever you're have this, like, moment where we're tired. Like, there are definitely some points. Especially since I spent, like a month not climbing where I was, like, physically really tired. And Tanner was just like, keep charging. And I think that was like really important at some points.

01:30:18:23 - 01:30:35:06
Michael Vaill
I don't, I mean, I don't think I was ever about to like, quit or anything, but there were definitely times where I was just feeling worked and Tanner was able to be like, no, like, let's just keep going. And kind of like pushing the momentum a little bit that way.

01:30:35:09 - 01:31:03:17
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I, I think Mike is, is like psychotically resilient and he's able to suffer really positively. I never really saw him have a bad attitude or be negative in any way on the traverse. And that's like when I favorite parts of of Mike and climbing with Mike is he's, yeah, just astoundingly positive in his suffering. And even when because I got to come into this thing off of basically a six month ramp up, I was really fit.

01:31:03:17 - 01:31:28:22
Tanner Wanish
Like I was really alpine fit for this. And Mike came into this of almost two months of like, being bedridden with broken ribs, and he still showed up and put out an incredible display of effort, and knew that he wasn't physically in the best shape for this as he could be due to that accident. But he gave 110% and he never complained.

01:31:28:24 - 01:31:49:06
Tanner Wanish
And he was positive even when I wasn't. And, yeah, that's just huge. That's like such a big part, I think, of our success is the ability to to stay positive when things are grim. And Mike's better at that than anybody I've ever climbed with. So even coming into this with a bit of a handicap like he did, just not going to sugarcoat it.

01:31:49:06 - 01:32:08:09
Tanner Wanish
Like I would have been fucked if I was veteran of that too. So I was able to take on a little bit of extra work where I knew I was a little more fit for this. So I was able to push ahead and find the best lines and be like, hey, don't go this way, come this way, and that'll save him a little bit of extra work or like, hey, you can stay low here.

01:32:08:09 - 01:32:26:27
Tanner Wanish
You don't need to go up and over. So that'll save him a little bit of extra effort. And Mike is repaying the favor by keeping us positive and happy and like, reminding us, like when things got bad, Mike would be the first to say, hey, let's just have fun. Let's focus on having fun. We're having fun today. Put on music, we're climbing, we're in the High Sierra.

01:32:27:00 - 01:32:34:18
Tanner Wanish
Let's have fun doing this. And that would snap us out of our funk faster than anything. And it was so valuable up on the ridge. It was really, really helpful.

01:32:34:23 - 01:32:49:18
Michael Vaill
Yeah, I guess like, you can focus on the present moment and like the process, but you also have to have like your goal and like where you're going. So I feel like psychologically, we kind of had a bit of, like divide and conquer, like Tanner was always really good at, like reminding, like, okay, this is where we need to be, okay.

01:32:49:18 - 01:33:01:06
Michael Vaill
This is where we need to go. But then I was also always thinking like, okay, yes, but also we're we're like here right now. Yeah. So between the two of us, we were kind of always like focus on where we are right now, but also focused on like the bigger place we

01:33:01:19 - 01:33:07:15
Kyle
Yeah. Each person sharing the load respectively.

01:33:07:15 - 01:33:24:21
Tanner Wanish
I'm not very good at pacing in general. That's not a, that's not a like a self-aggrandizing thing at all. I need to be better at it. I generally have like an on and off and that's it. So, Mike is really good at, like, I feel like sometimes a bit of a dog on a leash where I'm just trying to run.

01:33:24:25 - 01:33:34:05
Tanner Wanish
And Mike is really helpful at holding that leash and being like, hey, you can't do this pace for eight days. Like, this is not realistic. And he's good at,

01:33:41:07 - 01:33:44:01
Kyle
Yeah.

01:33:44:01 - 01:34:00:09
Tanner Wanish
snapping out of these performance mindsets. Because I have two relationships with the mountains. And one is I love them. And they're this incredible place for me to go connect with nature and, you know, experience a deeper side of life and stuff like this.

01:34:00:09 - 01:34:20:16
Tanner Wanish
And it's this really, like abstract, personal relationship that I have with this place. And the other relationship with the mountains is, is performance. And I'm there to work hard and I get sucked into this performance mindset where I'm not even having fun half the time. I'm just focused on like pushing as hard as I can and doing whatever I said to do.

01:34:20:16 - 01:34:37:11
Tanner Wanish
And Mike was really, really good about trying to snap me out of the performance mindset a lot of times because I would have burnt myself out on day 2 or 3, like, there's just I just wouldn't have been able to do it. And that I think that we complementing each other really well in that way where I'm trying to run.

01:34:37:11 - 01:34:52:24
Tanner Wanish
And Mike is like, hey, enjoy this experience, enjoy where we are. Like, we have nowhere to be except for our bivvy tonight we have everything on our back. We can stop early if we need to. We have water, we have food, we're fine. And that was really, really important for something as big as this, for how long it went.

01:34:52:27 - 01:34:53:21
Tanner Wanish
Because I think my

01:34:58:16 - 01:34:59:24
Kyle
Yeah.

01:34:59:26 - 01:35:07:27
Kyle
I like how you guys answered that question for each other. I think that was. That was pretty sick.

01:35:07:29 - 01:35:28:15
Kyle
Yeah. No, I, you brought up this is a bit tangential, but very topical. So you brought up the difference in climate between performance and, like, this abstract value that we draw from it. And I think it's interesting how you tagged performance with like, the lack of or the absence of happiness. It's like it's this all encompassing thing that we're driving for and it pushes us.

01:35:28:15 - 01:35:35:16
Kyle
But we almost lose the joy in climbing when we obsess over performance. Would you like agree with that statement?

01:35:35:16 - 01:35:56:08
Tanner Wanish
I drive a lot of happiness from success and pride of knowing that I gave everything I had and tried hard and stuff. And so maybe that's more like type two fun stuff like that where I'm. I'm like, this is not going to be fun while I'm doing it. But I'm going to have fun and I'm going to have pride afterwards knowing that, like, I tried really hard and you have that feeling of accomplishment.

01:35:56:10 - 01:36:25:26
Tanner Wanish
But I definitely let myself get sucked into that way. More than I'd like to admit, where I'm like, I'm just focused on succeeding and I'm not actually enjoying the thing that I'm doing. It's something I'm working on. I just it's part of that hyper fixation on whatever I'm kind of oriented toward at the moment. And, yeah, I think Mike is the best person I've ever seen at not doing that where he just he's always having fun and he's always focused on like enjoying the experience and, and the presents and stuff like that.

01:36:25:26 - 01:36:42:15
Tanner Wanish
And, yeah, I don't know. I just, I think the mountains are a cool arena where you can really try as hard as you, as hard as you want. There's no ceiling, there's no winning. You're not going to just, like, win one day and be done with it, you know? So I like the ability to pour in as much as I can to this and then see return on that.

01:36:42:22 - 01:36:49:10
Tanner Wanish
But a lot of times that goes too far and I have a tendency to get way too.

01:36:52:26 - 01:37:11:17
Kyle
I think I think the one issue with performance is that it has diminishing, diminishing returns. I think we're human. We get older, we aren't going to be able to perform as much as we can. And our prime. And so if you spend an entire life of climbing, chasing performance, you're eventually going to get burned by climbing because you.

01:37:17:07 - 01:37:34:25
Michael Vaill
result or is it the process? Right. It's like the classic dichotomy. So if what you enjoy about chasing performance is trying your best and trying hard and feeling like you've you've grown and feeling like you've reached the potential and reach that place within yourself, then I don't think it grows old.

01:37:34:28 - 01:37:58:06
Michael Vaill
And for me, that's the reason I chase. Performance is like if I send an 11 or 15 a whatever, I don't really care. It's like, or if I do a, a hard, I don't know, two mile run or a ultramarathon, what's the difference? You know, what matters is like what my ability is at the moment and what part of myself I'm able to reveal through that experience.

01:37:58:08 - 01:38:16:13
Michael Vaill
So if it's really difficult, like there's times where I'm just walking uphill with a pack at a good pace, my heart rate is high, my legs are tired, and I feel so good because I know, like, I'm like reaching a certain level of of performance. I guess I would say. And and that's like a really satisfying feeling to me to like,

01:38:19:26 - 01:38:50:04
Kyle
What do you think the secret is? Because of? Envision yourself in your 60s. 70s? Maybe you have some sort of, like, health issue that prevents you from climbing very hard. Maybe, like, the best you can climb is, like, five, nine, five, ten. Do you still feel like you're going to be able to carry that mentality into the that version of your life and find meaning and joy in these outdoor pursuits without that, the same level of performance that you've had as the past version of yourself.

01:38:50:04 - 01:39:08:03
Michael Vaill
all, there's two ways I enjoy climbing. One is just to be in the mountains, in the climb, and the other is the performance. And but but like I said, the performance is scalable. And like, for example, free climbing, sport climbing, like every year because I do walls and alpine climbing and these things like for the last few years, my like free climbing ability has fluctuated about a number.

01:39:08:03 - 01:39:28:26
Michael Vaill
Great. Every year, like I go in the mountains, I run around, I do all this other stuff, I come back, I like climb a number grade weaker, but at that time, like usually the first couple sessions, like, okay, like I have to recalibrate, but then I can have fun trying hard unlike whatever the grade is. So if I get to the point where I completely lose that and I am like trying hard at all is like, I can't recover.

01:39:28:26 - 01:39:42:18
Michael Vaill
Like if my limit is ten a a and I'm 70 years old and I climb a ten A and I'm in bed for a week, I probably won't do that anymore, but maybe I can still climb 55 and then I'll lose that part of like trying hard and feeling like I'm performing whatever the grade might be at that moment.

01:39:42:20 - 01:40:03:07
Michael Vaill
But I'll also still have the ability of of going and just being happy to be in the mountains. I mean, if I can climb Cathedral Peak for the rest of my life, like I will be so satisfied or whatever it is, or go for, you know, a hike up to snakes, hike or or even just walk down to the crag here and climb whatever bolted five eight there is.

01:40:03:07 - 01:40:10:19
Michael Vaill
Like I will be able to be outside and be in nature and connecting in that way that like I enjoy just from being outside and climbing. Yeah, the.

01:40:10:26 - 01:40:11:01
Both
The.

01:40:11:01 - 01:40:30:09
Tanner Wanish
Performance is totally relative. It's it's just, you know, it's totally subjective based on your own capabilities. So like Mike said, like I'm, I'm hoping to send I'm hoping to send this 12 b today that I've like done a couple times that I, I'd like to get, I'd like to read point and like for half the people at Pine Creek they're like warming up on that.

01:40:30:11 - 01:40:51:10
Tanner Wanish
You know it's like it's it's not not a hard grade here in Pine Creek. Everybody climbs 513. But like for me that's this is more on the performance side of things where like I want to climb that because it's hard for me and it's at my limit for whatever reason right now. And that's, you know, that's tickling the performance side of the climbing where I, I get to try hard and work towards something and then hopefully accomplish it.

01:40:51:10 - 01:41:02:18
Tanner Wanish
So the grade doesn't matter. It's just the relative difficulty of being able to come up to a challenge and then know that you tried really hard and know that you gave it everything you had and succeeded or failed. So yeah.

01:41:02:18 - 01:41:21:20
Michael Vaill
I mean, I've, I've heard interviews with people who like climb, you know, professional level bouldering and sport climbing and they're climbing V 17 or whatever. And they're like, yeah, I think, you know, I've spent like five years adding one kilogram to my dead hang and they're like it and they're like, yeah, I think if I like can't climb like my hardest grade ever, I don't even know why, why, why I'll want to climb.

01:41:21:20 - 01:41:38:16
Michael Vaill
But I think maybe for us, like both having started climbing like it over like 20 is like like late 20s, like who cares? Like what grade you climb. Like, that's not what ever made me climb in the first place. I'm never going to climb a route that's hard enough that anyone cares how hard it is. Like I'm just climbing because I love it so and and I and I climb.

01:41:38:16 - 01:41:40:10
Michael Vaill
I challenge myself because I love challenging myself.

01:41:41:02 - 01:42:02:01
Kyle
No, I totally agree with you guys mentality. But I think the example of the limit boulder or sport climber that has lived in this performance box their entire life and built their ego and identity around it really has a, has a cliff that they're going to have to deal with at some point in their life. And so I think this perspective that we're talking about is extremely important to share.

01:42:02:01 - 01:42:29:23
Kyle
Let's be real for a second. The current blueprint for a successful climbing podcast is simple. Interview the best climbers in the world. Big names mean big followings. Lots of SEO power and a built in audience that helps boost every episode. But this show, this show has never been about that. From the beginning, I have made it my mission to bring you stories from the climbing majority, the climbers who don't live in the limelight, the ones who avoid interviews, quietly put up roots and give back in ways that are rarely recognized.

01:42:29:27 - 01:42:46:16
Kyle
And while that's what makes this show special, it also means we have an uphill battle when it comes to growth. And that is where you come in. If you're psyched about the show, if you've been inspired, entertained, or fired up about an episode. Word of mouth is the single most important way you can help the show. Share an episode with a friend.

01:42:46:20 - 01:43:04:04
Kyle
Play one on a group road trip. Post about the show on social media. Jump onto Reddit threads and Mountain Project forums and share with people what you've been listening to. Be sure to tag the show, tag your favorite guests, and spread the word. And if you want to help even more, I'm currently sending posters to climbing gyms around the country.

01:43:04:08 - 01:43:17:20
Kyle
If you'd like to support one in your climbing gym, be sure to reach out. Email me at the Climbing Majority podcast at gmail.com and I will be sure to send you one. Let's band together and show the climbing community that the climbing majority has a voice.

01:43:18:24 - 01:43:40:22
Kyle
All right. I want to, let's, circle back to the the Goliath real quick and kind of bring this to a close. So real quick, before I talk about, like, reflections and kind of the end process of it, just the closest call you guys had, or the most exposed terrain. The the most the most heightened moment.

01:43:40:24 - 01:43:48:13
Kyle
It seemed like it was that giant slab down climb that you guys did. No.

01:43:48:13 - 01:43:50:12
Kyle
Okay.

01:43:50:15 - 01:43:51:11
Kyle
Okay.

01:43:51:13 - 01:43:54:13
Kyle
What? What was it then?

01:43:54:16 - 01:43:56:03
Both
Day through in the in.

01:43:56:03 - 01:43:59:18
Michael Vaill
The Palisades. There's a few towers that are super exposed and really bad rock.

01:43:59:18 - 01:44:00:29
Tanner Wanish
Between, like.

01:44:01:01 - 01:44:01:11
Both
On the.

01:44:01:14 - 01:44:02:19
Michael Vaill
Middle and Norman Clyde.

01:44:02:20 - 01:44:36:23
Tanner Wanish
That was a big section of whack and balcony. Yeah, yeah. I was just going to say, like, there's a spire called don't do don't. That is just like 500ft spire of, like, stacked shit. Every single thing is super steep. Every single thing you grab is, is not attached. Every single hold you grab is not attached. And that was the day that I kind of had a breakdown at the end of the day, because it felt like most of the entire day we were in like super high consequence, fatal, no fall zones.

01:44:36:25 - 01:44:53:29
Tanner Wanish
But every hold you grabbed was, was not attached and every foot you stood on would crumble as soon as you stepped off it and there were no cracks. It was all face climbing, so there's no gear. Even if we had gear to place and we couldn't build rappel anchors because the rock was so bad and like.

01:44:54:01 - 01:45:01:17
Michael Vaill
And it was and it was like any fall you would have just, like, tumbled straight off the mountain, like there was it wasn't ledges, it wasn't third class. It was like fourth and fifth class the whole way.

01:45:01:24 - 01:45:02:04
Tanner Wanish
Yeah.

01:45:02:04 - 01:45:13:11
Michael Vaill
And this is the one spot where in Vitale's AJ right up of the first ascent of the Goliath. He wrote like, oh, I wish I had a partner to wrap up with. But then once we're there, like, the rock is so bad, there's no where you can protect it anyway, so there's no point in roping it out.

01:45:13:14 - 01:45:33:15
Tanner Wanish
Like and like on site solo route finding in approaches or the 25 pound bag is like you have to make the right decision with your route finding it's very high consequence. So like you can't really climb up and down a lot of these sections because you feel like every hold you grab is falling away after you grab it.

01:45:33:15 - 01:46:00:07
Tanner Wanish
So even if you want, if you climb up, maybe you can't climb back down because there's literally not the same holds. Like it? It felt really serious. And, yeah, man, that was a tough day. That was that was gnarly. That was just a big day in general, the amount of elevation gain that we were doing and down climbing and stuff, but the rock quality and kind of super sustained exposure and, yeah, that was that was really intense.

01:46:00:07 - 01:46:09:27
Tanner Wanish
I was like, man, this is that was the day that I was like, oh, I think we actually could die up here. Like, like if we're not perfect, we will die up here.

01:46:10:04 - 01:46:26:18
Michael Vaill
And like a lot of the week, like we were on loose rock and it was whatever, you know, we were kind of dealing and it was scary. But I remember thinking like, okay, like that was a cool ridge or this was a nice little ahead wall crack or something. But that day, the only thing I remember thinking that we talked about, it was like, nobody should do this.

01:46:26:23 - 01:46:44:16
Michael Vaill
Like, that was the only section where I'm like, this is like, not cool. Like there's nothing redeeming about this other than the fact that it allows us to do the whole line. And it's like a piece that we need to do if we want to do the whole thing connected. Like if people want to go climb. Norman climbed a middle palisade and some of those peaks like peak bagging, or there's some cool ridge is going to do it.

01:46:44:16 - 01:46:47:02
Michael Vaill
But I'll just put it out there, like on this podcast.

01:46:47:02 - 01:46:48:00
Both
Like.

01:46:48:02 - 01:46:50:12
Michael Vaill
Don't do like don't traverse from.

01:46:50:14 - 01:46:50:21
Tanner Wanish
Don't.

01:46:50:21 - 01:46:52:07
Michael Vaill
Traverse from basically.

01:46:52:09 - 01:46:53:19
Both
South the south.

01:46:53:19 - 01:46:57:23
Michael Vaill
Or pass to Norman Clyde. Yeah. Like it's fucked. Don't do it.

01:46:57:27 - 01:46:58:14
Both
Yeah it.

01:46:58:14 - 01:47:17:20
Tanner Wanish
Was. Yeah. And a lot of the other sections that were scary and had bad, bad rock and stuff, you know, if you fell, maybe you'd fall 30ft and land on a ledge or maybe, maybe you would, you know, it was low angle enough that, like, know, cheese grater or something. This section was like, if a hole breaks, you're going to fall like 1000ft.

01:47:17:25 - 01:47:37:29
Tanner Wanish
You're not going to hit anything, you're just going to it's going to take weeks to find your body, because you're probably going to put an entire tower on top of you as you fall. And, yeah, just felt like every decision that we were making was permanent. Like, you didn't have the ability to reverse a lot of options, and everything that you did had to be really perfect in order to make it through that.

01:47:41:06 - 01:47:41:28
Kyle
Wow.

01:47:42:00 - 01:47:54:21
Kyle
You had talked about the guy following you with the, Russian roulette gun. Senior chaos.

01:47:54:21 - 01:48:10:16
Kyle
What percentage? Like, if you were to allocate a percentage value towards the amount that luck played into your survival during that objective, what would you say that percentage was?

01:48:10:16 - 01:48:10:22
Michael Vaill
mean.

01:48:10:29 - 01:48:14:12
Both
Ten that crazy, I see. I don't.

01:48:14:12 - 01:48:37:22
Michael Vaill
Want to. I don't want to, like, categorize, like, as if there's, like, luck and skill that are like two elements in the same category. Because the kind of framework that I've processed this is, is like it was 100% luck that like, we didn't break anything and basically we didn't have any accidents. And we spent eight days climbing up there and everything went fine.

01:48:37:24 - 01:49:05:09
Michael Vaill
And that was like the groundwork, like because we were lucky. We had the solid terrain and, you know, chose the right ways, like all day, every day, and nothing happened. And then with that being given, there's like a second layer that we did good route finding. We supported each other. We like performed well, and we used our skill and abilities and teamwork and everything to accomplish the goal.

01:49:05:11 - 01:49:27:04
Michael Vaill
But it's almost like 100% luck and 100% skill. That makes sense. Like, to me, they don't overlap at all. It's like, yeah, I can't say it's like 20% luck or whatever. Like, yeah, I don't want it. Because if anything had gone, gotten unlucky, we wouldn't have even had the ability to exercise our skills. So yeah, if that makes sense to kind of.

01:49:27:08 - 01:49:46:22
Tanner Wanish
I don't know. That way. I don't know if luck is like the right word either. Like we did, we did make all the right decisions in theory that let us complete it and make it home safely. But I just think, I don't know. I don't know if luck's right word, but there there's always a chance that I mean, maybe it's just like the standard alpine risk multiplier that you just experience from being up there.

01:49:46:25 - 01:50:10:25
Tanner Wanish
But it's that extrapolated to, you know, 60 mountains now. So you're doing kind of, an entire lifetime's worth of risk exposure on this one week. So, I would say as much as luck is a factor in any alpine climb, this it was a factor here, but it was just at such a grander scale because of how many mountains we did and how many, you know, we did 10,000 moves on granite.

01:50:11:02 - 01:50:24:00
Tanner Wanish
So like, as much of luck is a factor in any of these alpine climbs, it just happened to be a thousand times greater just because of the the prominence and, you know, magnitude of this. We're just

01:50:25:12 - 01:50:28:17
Kyle
The amount of time you spent in that kind of environment.

01:50:28:20 - 01:50:32:19
Kyle
Yeah. Wild.

01:50:32:21 - 01:51:02:23
Kyle
Vitaly had said, it didn't feel like I had conquered Goliath. I had merely survived him. And you both, you both had described finishing, feeling lucky survivors rather than triumphant athletes. Talk to me about that kind of feeling a little bit. It seems like you both had a very similar experience coming out the other side, and this is kind of tangential to this whole element of risk and the the chaos and the randomness that you guys survived.

01:51:02:23 - 01:51:24:27
Tanner Wanish
I shared I shared that after we, after we finished on on Instagram. That post about, I, I had envisioned this. I'm really big in, imagery, and, and I like to play through things in my head, especially something like this hundreds of times before I actually do it. I think that helps me a lot with, the actual like, game time, experience.

01:51:24:29 - 01:51:52:10
Tanner Wanish
So I had pictured completing this, and I had pictured failing off of this probably way more than I had pictured completing it where I had. I had envisioned what it would feel like to fail, or what it would feel like to quit, or what it would feel like if somebody got hurt. I pictured that hundreds of times in my head, and I'd also pictured completing it and in my head, it was us running down in the Paiute Pass, and we've got all of our friends there and everybody's cheering and, you know, we're like, yeah, we've done it.

01:51:52:11 - 01:52:14:17
Tanner Wanish
We've like done the Goliath. It's this incredible experience where we're, you know, just full of pride and and so stoked to have like completed the second ascent. And that wasn't the reality at all. We we finally saw Paiute pass from the crest and drop down and we like, weren't even talking. We were just kind of slogging toward the first trail we had seen in nine days.

01:52:14:17 - 01:52:34:25
Tanner Wanish
And, I just felt really void of any emotion at all. I was I wasn't happy, I wasn't proud, I was just like, I just felt like this empty carcass. I was just blank where I was just. I was grateful. I was very grateful to be done. And I was grateful to be sure that I wasn't going to die that day.

01:52:34:27 - 01:52:47:09
Tanner Wanish
But I did. I feel like we, Yeah, I don't know, it's it's kind of hard to explain. I just I didn't feel a lot. I was just like, Thank God. Get us off. Get us off this crest.

01:52:47:09 - 01:52:58:22
Michael Vaill
I just felt relieved that nothing horrible had happened. Yeah, because there was definitely this feeling, like every day that something horrible could happen. Yeah. And it didn't. So whenever we, like, saw the pass and walked down and hiked out, it was like, thank goodness. You know.

01:52:58:22 - 01:53:06:04
Tanner Wanish
Like that was the that was the problem. And it felt really was just relief. Yeah. Just like okay. You know, that's that's done.

01:53:06:07 - 01:53:23:11
Michael Vaill
And because there was this layers of like it feels like luck. And then we also got to display our skill. But it kind of was like, you know, dependent upon the fact that like, nothing no rock explosion, nothing horrible happened. We were talking like that last day, a little bit like, is this something that we're even going to be proud of?

01:53:23:13 - 01:53:45:19
Michael Vaill
And just because, like, it kind of felt like we had done something reckless in the moment. And now that it's been a couple of weeks, I'm looking at it and I am proud that we, like, displayed our skill, even if it was in an environment that's objectively dangerous and maybe a little bit reckless. Like regardless of the danger in the environment, we chose to put ourselves in like we still did, like do something really difficult and come through it.

01:53:45:22 - 01:54:03:29
Michael Vaill
But, yeah, that's still something a little bit to like. Reconcile was like, was it worth it going into that environment in order to accomplish this difficult thing when. Yeah, there's also plenty of difficult challenges to accomplish that aren't so kind of reckless. I'll say it's kind of reckless

01:54:05:27 - 01:54:07:05
Kyle
Yeah.

01:54:07:08 - 01:54:23:11
Kyle
You guys are kind of talking about this idea of dread. Like a feeling of dread. Like something that is bad is going to happen. It seems like Vitaly had a very similar experience. He said something about like, this voice that was telling him he was going to die if he continued to move forward. And that was actually the time that he bailed.

01:54:23:14 - 01:54:40:25
Kyle
On his first attempt. So it sounds like, you know, he listened to that voice. You guys had that voice and continued to push on. You know. Did you guys have a contingency plan? Like, did you guys talk like, hey, if one person's, like, fucking over it, you know, we have to bail or, like, what was that conversation like?

01:54:40:25 - 01:55:00:09
Kyle
And how do you guys balance that? Like, how are you balancing listening to this innate human fear and just understanding like, man, like this is fucked. I like, could die here. But I'm going to continue to step forward, even though I have this innate biological feeling of telling me not to move forward. Like, how were you guys balancing all of that?

01:55:00:16 - 01:55:04:10
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, we talked about it beforehand. If somebody bailed, the other was going to keep going.

01:55:04:20 - 01:55:06:02
Kyle
Oh, wow. Okay.

01:55:06:02 - 01:55:07:14
Both
both super stoked.

01:55:07:18 - 01:55:11:24
Michael Vaill
That was a little bit in the context of, like, if something happened, if someone twisted their angular. Had a minor injury.

01:55:11:24 - 01:55:12:28
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. Yeah, I don't think.

01:55:12:28 - 01:55:24:02
Michael Vaill
I think if there's, like, a tear on the belt, I would have been less likely to go on by myself than if he, like, rolled his ankle. It would have been maybe a little bit more difficult, but I don't know what I think. We I don't think I don't.

01:55:24:02 - 01:55:24:27
Tanner Wanish
Think just quitting was.

01:55:24:27 - 01:55:26:02
Both
Ever honestly.

01:55:26:02 - 01:55:34:21
Tanner Wanish
Well we don't we didn't we weren't just going to quit for, for no reason. But, yeah.

01:55:37:11 - 01:55:38:05
Kyle
Yeah. He did.

01:55:45:29 - 01:55:51:02
Kyle
It's par for the course. Yeah.

01:55:51:02 - 01:55:57:20
Michael Vaill
that happens, like maybe the other person is probably going to have to assess, but like probably would have done it solo.

01:55:57:20 - 01:55:57:28
Michael Vaill
Yeah.

01:55:57:28 - 01:56:07:02
Tanner Wanish
Oh, I mean, we also said that if like if somebody is quitting because they think it's too dangerous or something like that, if we're just quitting because like we're not comfortable with it, we're probably both going to be quitting it.

01:56:07:04 - 01:56:11:00
Michael Vaill
Like we have pretty similar risk tolerance is yeah, that's why we're good. So for this type of thing.

01:56:11:00 - 01:56:38:15
Tanner Wanish
So if if one of us is actually like actively trying to bail on it, it's probably so fucked that we're on the same page. So that's something we talked about. Like I was never worried about my quitting. We're not just going to quit. We don't quit. You know anything like that just because it's hard. So if it was objectively too dangerous, that probably would have been a team decision where we said neither of us need to be up here because like Mike said, we have very similar risk tolerances and it's very, very unlikely that one of us would have just been like, I don't want to do this.

01:56:38:15 - 01:56:45:27
Michael Vaill
I think if like, for example, every day was is like that is the third day, there's the possibility we would have said, this is dumb, let's not do this after Bishop Pass.

01:56:45:27 - 01:56:48:05
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I think that would I think we would have bowed out there.

01:56:48:05 - 01:56:52:27
Michael Vaill
But that day was particularly bad, and the other days were all bad and loose and scary. But it wasn't like.

01:56:52:27 - 01:56:53:15
Tanner Wanish
A system.

01:56:53:15 - 01:57:14:05
Michael Vaill
All day. Like we climbed like eight hours most day. And like I would say, we spent like 2 or 3 hours, like, kind of scared for our lives. And that day we spent like eight hours scared for our lives. And I think if we had had more days like that, we might have like had that discussion. But the way most of the train was, it was like just under the threshold of being like, no, this is like a reasonable challenge.

01:57:14:08 - 01:57:36:20
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. And I shared this too. And this is like, I'm kind of wrestling with this idea a little bit. Since we completed it and I this is kind of like a half formed thought. So I don't want to I don't want to, like, I'm not I'm not married to this, to this opinion. But I think that there is a chance that I would be more proud if I had bowed out at Bishop Pass.

01:57:36:20 - 01:57:58:18
Tanner Wanish
I think that there's a chance that, if I had knowing what was on the back half because we still had some very scary, super engaging, fatal, you know, terrain to cover. I think that there's a chance that I would have been more proud if I had had the humility at Bishop has to say we had the experience we came for.

01:57:58:21 - 01:58:09:16
Tanner Wanish
We we've accomplished something really big by doing the full monty. I don't need to keep putting myself in this risk because I almost regret it. And I still almost it's kind of hard to explain.

01:58:09:16 - 01:58:30:01
Tanner Wanish
I don't regret finishing it, but part of me does regret continuing so far past my my risk tolerance. Because we did. I think looking back, I was significantly beyond what I would deem acceptable risk almost every single day.

01:58:30:03 - 01:58:47:25
Tanner Wanish
And I'm almost ashamed of that in a way that I didn't have the humility to step back and say, this is too dangerous. I'm not willing to do this, but we chose to go anyway. We performed well, we had luck on our side, and we were successful. So it's easy to say that on the backside. After a success.

01:58:47:27 - 01:59:08:09
Tanner Wanish
I know that if I had bailed, a big part of me would still be wanting to go back and doing it again and completing it or something like that. But, it's something weird. I've been wrestling with the idea that maybe I should have said, I don't think we should be here, at at Bishop Pass because,

01:59:08:11 - 01:59:22:16
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, it just it felt like I, I drew a line in the sand, you know, as everybody does for what they're willing to expose themselves to in terms of risk. And I blew past that significantly. And that's how people die in the mountains. And,

01:59:22:16 - 01:59:25:06
Tanner Wanish
yeah, I don't know, I that that's

01:59:27:28 - 01:59:34:13
Kyle
No. It makes sense for sure. And and that was at the halfway point right where you said you could have,

01:59:34:13 - 01:59:35:08
Kyle
you could have bailed.

01:59:35:08 - 02:00:05:29
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, yeah. At Bishop Pass. Yeah. And that was, that was our second hardest day by by you, by a huge margin was the day that we stepped off from Bishop Pass. It, and it was really, really hard to go from the safety of Bishop House and seeing Hannah and our friends and we had a we had a rest day because we put enough food of the cast to take a zero day there and, leaving that security and safety and going and being right back into it again, was really challenging.

02:00:05:29 - 02:00:26:26
Tanner Wanish
And it had us both thinking, what are we doing here? Like, we have a safe out now. The van is four miles away. We can just walk down this trail, be at the car in an hour, beaten copper top for dinner tonight, laying in our beds, and instead we're out here in a terrain where we could die at any moment, you know?

02:00:26:28 - 02:00:46:29
Tanner Wanish
And, that was a really tough mental, mental game to kind of work through on. Is it worth going still? And, I think the way that both of us are in the mountains and we're just inclined to just keep going and keep trying and, you know, going until you can't. And we didn't have an objective reason to stop in the moment.

02:00:47:05 - 02:01:10:02
Tanner Wanish
So we just kept going a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further. But looking back, that resulted in me being a mile past my risk tolerance, kind of before I realized it. And it's not it's not something I'm proud of. I kind of, I, I don't know. Yeah. I'm still I'm still working through my relationship with that whole concept of continuing to push through.

02:01:10:02 - 02:01:15:03
Tanner Wanish
And, yeah, it's kind of a novel experience I haven't really gone through before.

02:01:15:07 - 02:01:24:01
Kyle
this is one of the points I wanted to talk about. We're talking about the halfway point. You know, this is this is, like, extremely contrary to the style that Vitale had chosen in the first place.

02:01:24:01 - 02:01:46:23
Kyle
You guys chose to split this up in half, right? And it almost seemed like that decision was a curse and a blessing. It seemed like it was a blessing because you guys got to reset. You had a cache, you got to see your your people. But then, just as Tanner was alluding to just previously, it almost opened up this chance of reflection of like, oh, we could just easily tap out and bow out here and you have a chance to reflect on how much risk you've put yourself in.

02:01:46:23 - 02:01:59:28
Kyle
And so it had this, like Yang or this, this negative side to this decision to split it up. So, you know, Tanner, you talked about kind of how it had affected you, like Mike, did you have a similar experience halfway?

02:02:00:02 - 02:02:23:05
Michael Vaill
Well, I'll say, like, splitting up with the cash was a great idea because we carried half the weight of the food. What was not such a great idea was taking the zero day there. Because we had built so much momentum doing this for five days to get there, that we were climbing well and moving well and just kind of like chugging along and then spinning that day there, we just lost all of our momentum.

02:02:23:07 - 02:02:47:22
Tanner Wanish
And lost all the callus, like the mental callus that we had built up to the risk and to the suffering, because that's that is like I mean, it's a real thing that really happens, you know, like you kind of recalibrate your risk meter as you're going and you experience higher risk sections. So then a section that follows that maybe would have been scary isn't as scary now because you just did something way scarier.

02:02:47:29 - 02:02:52:01
Tanner Wanish
And we completely reset that from scratch after the rest. It.

02:02:52:04 - 02:03:16:20
Michael Vaill
So we had built this routine of waking up in the morning, you know, soloing a bunch of chores, finding a camp, going to bed, waking up and repeating it. And then we ended that routine by waking up in the morning at Bishop Pass, laying out by the lake, hanging out with our friends, chilling all day, going back to bed in the same place, not having to wonder where we were going to camp.

02:03:16:20 - 02:03:30:01
Michael Vaill
Not having to wonder, you know what? If we should climb this Chaucer that chores. And then the next day we woke up. You hiked out of Bishop Pass. We got to the first Chelsea Ridge section, and we were like, why are we doing this?

02:03:30:07 - 02:03:31:08
Tanner Wanish
Yeah.

02:03:31:10 - 02:03:49:08
Michael Vaill
Whereas before there was no question of why before that day, after like days three, 4 or 5, like after we were in it for a few days, we were kind of like had just accepted, this is what we're doing. This is the nature of this challenge that we've chosen to take on, and we could just deal with it.

02:03:49:08 - 02:04:00:28
Michael Vaill
But then after taking that day off, we were out of the challenge. It felt like. And then all of a sudden we were back in it and we're like, well, it was, you know, what's the point of this? It's just yeah.

02:04:00:28 - 02:04:08:23
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, that was that was the closest that I was to to bailing or proposing that we, that we might not need to be doing this.

02:04:08:23 - 02:04:26:22
Michael Vaill
So that that day, day seven because they six was our zero day. So day seven, we, got to Mount Thompson, which was one peak before we were going to be. And it has like a plateau in the summit. And we got up there and we looked at the next ridge, which was more exposed, steep course. And we just decided to camp there.

02:04:26:26 - 02:04:42:24
Michael Vaill
We said, you know what? Like, let's just stop here and then, yeah, we set up our tent. We got inside the tent and we actually, like, recorded like, kind of a debrief that night. I think Tanner posted some of that on one of his Instagram stories. No.

02:04:43:00 - 02:04:44:02
Both
No regret the next morning.

02:04:44:08 - 02:04:45:04
Michael Vaill
Was it the next morning?

02:04:45:04 - 02:04:46:12
Tanner Wanish
As we were so.

02:04:46:15 - 02:04:51:19
Michael Vaill
Oh, that's that night? I was like, I was like, hey, this is like a big point. You want to, like, debrief.

02:04:51:19 - 02:04:53:07
Tanner Wanish
Very raw, like moment.

02:04:53:09 - 02:04:55:25
Michael Vaill
And Tanner was like, I think we should do that in the morning.

02:04:55:28 - 02:05:10:20
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I, I just, I didn't even talk, I was, I was I really struggled. But that evening I was in a pretty bad place mentally. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to take the risk. I didn't want to be scared for my life anymore. I was just like, what the fuck are we doing, man? Why are we up here?

02:05:10:20 - 02:05:16:28
Tanner Wanish
Why are we doing this? Like, this doesn't seem worth it anymore to me. And, Yeah, that was that was a really tough day.

02:05:16:28 - 02:05:18:11
Both
And, Yeah.

02:05:18:13 - 02:06:01:19
Michael Vaill
Something we talked through then was, about, like, motivation. Yeah. And I think we had a big shift there because I've kind of like, thought about this a bit and we talked about this, we had like, there's like two motivations to do something like this. And one is to, like, have the experience of being in the challenge, which involves, in this case, being in the mountains, finding your way to these beautiful summits, you know, sustaining yourself for day after day, like, you know, climbing the ridges, navigating, like doing the climb, like having the experience of doing the climb is like a motivation to do this.

02:06:01:22 - 02:06:28:27
Michael Vaill
And then another motivation is to set a big goal and achieve the goal. So when we first set out, we had like two things driving us. One was to like do this difficult thing and be in the mountains, and the other was to, accomplish a goal that we set for ourselves. And after five days of climbing on the Goliath and getting the Bishop pass, we spent five days experiencing the climb.

02:06:28:29 - 02:06:45:25
Michael Vaill
And then we took that zero day where we just experienced hanging out by the lake with our friends. And then the next day, we went back to the climb and with five days behind us of experiencing the climb, I think we lost our motivation to experience it. You said, okay, we've been there, we've had the experience. Now why are we still doing this?

02:06:45:28 - 02:07:08:01
Michael Vaill
Well, it's only because we set this goal and we're motivated to accomplish our goal. So kind of accepting that. And then we talked about it that day and woke up the next day. And and for me at least, I had like this big internal shift of like acknowledging that and accepting it, like, okay, now I'm doing this because I'm accomplishing a goal and I'm still happy to be in the mountains.

02:07:08:01 - 02:07:40:13
Michael Vaill
I'm still happy to be climbing. I'm still happy to be challenged. But but I've experienced enough that I don't need more. Like if I do five days or eight days of soloing chores. Like I'm kind of satisfied with soloing chores, but but accomplishing a goal that you've set for yourself becomes like the main factor to continue. And I think the fact that we accepted that and discussed it and put it on the table, like made a big transition, because in the next day, our second day of moving after we left the pass, we were kind of like back in and saying, okay, now we have like a reason to go on.

02:07:40:13 - 02:07:47:01
Michael Vaill
And and also that day we got to the evolution range, which is a lot more trafficked. And it was just everything was kind of

02:07:47:26 - 02:07:48:17
Kyle
Yeah.

02:07:48:19 - 02:07:55:19
Kyle
No, that's. That's a powerful switch for sure.

02:07:55:19 - 02:08:17:10
Tanner Wanish
two best days on the entire route, which was day four and day. And I think that that's one of our strengths is we're really good at, we're really good at the mental, I guess reframing where we're we each each at the end of each load day, we had a discussion about why we can't do that again.

02:08:17:10 - 02:08:50:05
Tanner Wanish
We cannot have another day like that because we're going to implode. So we made this really intentional shift to like, have fun on the next days and to enjoy what we're doing. And we would play music on our phones and we were singing and we were just having fun. We were like playing in the mountains. And it was really important to intentionally make that switch because we were coming off of such bad days that we had to really do like a really intentional push to, like, we have to turn this around or we're going to fail here.

02:08:50:07 - 02:09:02:19
Tanner Wanish
And I think that kind of speaks to our partnership in terms of how we are able to stay positive in the face of this adversity or risk or suffering or whatever. And that's one of our biggest strengths, which is which

02:09:05:14 - 02:09:06:04
Kyle
Yeah.

02:09:06:07 - 02:09:20:23
Kyle
No, that's super cool. I really like that change of perspective. And it's so interesting that it's like, related to the two sections of the climb to. It's like this halfway point. There's just so much dichotomy there. It's really interesting.

02:09:20:26 - 02:09:24:02
Kyle
Yeah. 100%.

02:09:24:02 - 02:09:34:00
Michael Vaill
day seven, I think because of that zero day, we were like, oh, we accomplished something and now we're going to cover something bigger. It was all about the accomplishment. About the outcome. Yeah. And we totally lost touch with the process. Yeah.

02:09:34:00 - 02:09:40:26
Michael Vaill
And then the seven we suffered because of that. And then day we were back to like, okay, we're climbing mountains. We enjoy climbing

02:09:42:26 - 02:09:56:25
Kyle
The only way to get through it is to have these swings from one way to the other. So you have something different to focus on. You're not overwhelmed each day. That's cool.

02:09:56:25 - 02:10:07:08
Michael Vaill
was listening to some music or something. And I just, like, all of a sudden was overcome with this. I actually started to think about the drill, and I thought about the fact that, like, we shouldn't have even made it home from Europe.

02:10:07:10 - 02:10:26:21
Michael Vaill
And now here we are doing this like incredible thing. And it it was after we were into the evolution region. And I just it was like a little bit feeling like we were going to do it for sure. And like something just happened and I were tired and I just like started to cry, which I like. It's not like, I don't know, like ever cry.

02:10:26:23 - 02:10:32:20
Michael Vaill
And I just had this, like, crazy feeling there. I was like, are you all right? And I was like, yeah, I'm just really happy. It was like just.

02:10:32:20 - 02:10:33:19
Both
The joy and.

02:10:33:19 - 02:10:40:25
Michael Vaill
And and exhaustion and adrenal fatigue and everything. Yeah, it's it's pretty powerful moments along the way.

02:10:41:02 - 02:11:10:27
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. Some really, really raw, vulnerable moments up there. Just having that again that long in that state of exposure and stuff just strips you down to your most your most raw. You know, it's just it's really hard to replicate that, that scenario without putting in days and days of grinding you down to nothing and just stripping you bare of all everything that you, that you all these talismans that you have in your life to kind of guard against this vulnerability.

02:11:10:29 - 02:11:27:25
Tanner Wanish
You you just have nothing after that many days and you're everything is on the surface. And, it's a really special place to experience. It's it's, it's a unique mental opportunity to be able to go there and, Yeah, it's it's it's it's really

02:11:29:16 - 02:11:43:06
Kyle
I think those, those moments are extremely transformative. Like, how would you guys consider each of you different in a way like different humans, different climbers, different partners. How have you changed after the subjective.

02:11:44:10 - 02:12:11:02
Tanner Wanish
I, I mean, I think I'm, I think I'm going to have, my relationship with risk is, is adjusting. Right now, I'm intentionally trying to take a big step back from these high risk, activities and objectives. I. We've had a couple of close calls this year. You know, some closer than others. And, I feel like I'm good on that right now.

02:12:11:02 - 02:12:36:28
Tanner Wanish
I don't need to, inject this risk into my life in an artificial way to feel accomplished or to feel that vulnerable state of raw, you know, transparency in my in my own life right now. And, yeah, I just, I think that would be the biggest way. It's not like a deep answer, but I think that I'm just maybe I've, I've been to the edge now.

02:12:37:00 - 02:12:54:16
Tanner Wanish
I've been I've been on the edge looking over, more than once this year and I don't I just want to take a step back and and enjoy my, enjoy my time with with my wife and with Mike and with friends and stuff. And, do it in a way that I'm not scared for my life all the time.

02:12:54:19 - 02:13:17:27
Tanner Wanish
And I think I've been kind of prone to these high risk objectives. For whatever reason, I think I'm, there's some sort of me that is pursuing those for whatever reason. I think probably because of that experience that you can only get from these really, exposed objectives. And, yeah, I just feel like I'm. I'm good.

02:13:18:01 - 02:13:29:25
Tanner Wanish
I'm good right now. I'd like to I'd like to stay around for a while and do this for the rest of my life. And I don't think that the pace that we're going right now or, or specifically the objectives that we're choosing is going to be good for

02:13:32:04 - 02:13:38:11
Kyle
Have you reflected on why you want to live?

02:13:39:14 - 02:13:55:04
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. I mean, I want to live for, you know, I want to live for heaven. I want to I want to see I want to have our kids and and show them all this stuff and I want to take my kids to the valley and show them all the walls that we've climbed and, you know, teach them how to how to climb.

02:13:55:04 - 02:14:24:24
Tanner Wanish
And, and, I want to see the world at hand. And I just have I just have a lot of stuff I want to do, and I, I, I want to be fair to the people that I love and the people that love me and not put them through these, you know, kind of torturous little streaks of like, ha, you know, I, I feel like there's been a couple times where I'm like, extended leave for like a week or two at a time in these, in these kind of high consequence zones where Hannah's told me that she's like, you know, she gets in these states where she's like waiting for a phone call in

02:14:24:24 - 02:14:28:19
Tanner Wanish
the middle of the night or something. And it's I don't want to put people through that, and I don't

02:14:30:11 - 02:14:31:03
Kyle
Yeah.

02:14:31:05 - 02:14:50:11
Kyle
No, it's cool man. I think it's, with with how many close calls you've had. It's. I feel like it's the, the main logical way to go about it. And I think, you know, we only get a certain number of chances like that in our lives. And, Yeah, it's smart to listen. So what's cool to hear?

02:14:50:13 - 02:14:51:10
Kyle
How would you like.

02:14:53:10 - 02:15:15:02
Michael Vaill
Yes, it's a little bit similar. Like, I feel like like, for example, one thing I was I noticed is last week we're up into colony and usually, like, if I'm somewhere like that and it's like the afternoon and I'm restless and I want some exercise, I'll like, go do some easy soloing or something. And then there was one day where I was like, in the van and I kind of want some exercise, and I went for a run and I was like, this just sounds really fun.

02:15:15:02 - 02:15:36:26
Michael Vaill
I'm like, I could go like a solo one of the dance. And I was like, that just doesn't sound fun at all. I'd rather like just go for a jog or a hike or something like I. Yeah, it's just that risk. Like it just doesn't feel the same. It just doesn't feel as casual to me. I did, and that doesn't mean that you guys won't see me, like on the maneuver pilot this fall or something, but I'm just saying, it's like.

02:15:36:26 - 02:15:56:02
Michael Vaill
It's, like, not as appealing as it normally is. And I'm like, oh, there's other things I can do. Like, I enjoy jogging, I enjoy, I don't know, making music with friends, like, I enjoy these other things. It doesn't always have to be something that's like so intense. So, so actually especially what happened in Gemini. And then just in general, just being in this environment so much this year.

02:15:56:04 - 02:16:13:18
Michael Vaill
Yeah. I feel like really driven to find joy in other ways. Yeah. Like that day we got down from the drew that night. So we spent the night in that hut. We, we got down that day and I was like, back at my friend's house and we just, like, had a beer and with Isaac. And I was like, playing guitar.

02:16:13:18 - 02:16:40:25
Michael Vaill
We were making music, and I just felt so much joy for doing something in a safe environment. Like we were in our friend's house, like the doors closed, just like warm and clean and safe. And there was like, no way I could have died in that moment, like from some random hazard. And I was like, filled with joy from, like, music and friends and, and I was like, oh, like, maybe I need to, like, find more of this joy and a little bit less of the joy where, like, a random, like, falling block could kill you.

02:16:40:25 - 02:16:59:12
Tanner Wanish
So yeah, it's it's it's cliched, but I just think it's made us really appreciate the, the safe, you know, like little things in life a lot I actually might just talked about. So on the dome, I walked up to Fairview Dom last week with the intention on soloing the regular route, which is something I've wanted to do for a while.

02:16:59:14 - 02:17:19:24
Tanner Wanish
And, I climbed to the first pitch and there was parties above me, and, I just decided, like, I don't want to take this risk. And I had already decided I was going to solo it, which is like I try to make that decision before I get started. Like, are you going to do this or not? And then you decide to do it and then you just turn off the fear and you just go.

02:17:19:26 - 02:17:34:24
Tanner Wanish
And I had already decided I was going to do it, but, I just got one pitch up and I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to. I was I felt that risk again that I had felt in the Goliath where, you know, all your decisions are relatively permanent and you need to do everything perfectly.

02:17:34:26 - 02:17:47:29
Tanner Wanish
And I just didn't want to be exposed to that risk. And, you know, weeks prior I would have just eaten that thought and just kept going because that's what I would typically do. But I just don't want to.

02:17:48:03 - 02:17:48:19
Both
Put.

02:17:48:19 - 02:18:12:09
Tanner Wanish
Myself in a situation where my wife is afraid for my life and she's concerned about me, and I don't want to be in that situation where, I'm feeling that imminent certainty of all my decisions being consequential. And yeah, so I, I down climbed in and walked out and I didn't commit. And that was definitely a result of the Goliath and the risk that we experienced there.

02:18:12:11 - 02:18:32:20
Tanner Wanish
So yeah, I think that we're both we've both got our fill on that risk multiplier for, for a good while right now. And we're just going to enjoy the, the little things because it's, it's it's nice. There's a lot of little things to enjoy. And you don't have to inject that multiplier into your days to feel like this vibrant, you know, sensation anymore.

02:18:32:20 - 02:18:38:00
Tanner Wanish
Because we've been there and we've we've done that and we don't we don't need anymore.

02:18:38:03 - 02:18:52:23
Michael Vaill
I mean, before this summer, we were talking about, like doing a big trip to Patagonia this year and stuff and like, yeah, we didn't even talk about it that much. But we like, just know that we're not doing it like we think we, we like this spring, we're like, okay, maybe we should get a house in the, you know, South End or these things.

02:18:52:23 - 02:18:54:26
Michael Vaill
And then like, that's for sure. Out of the question.

02:18:54:26 - 02:19:00:11
Tanner Wanish
We've I think the only thing we said about that was like in passing, we're like, hey, we're not going to Patagonia anymore, right?

02:19:00:12 - 02:19:01:19
Both
You're like, oh yeah, yeah, I've.

02:19:01:19 - 02:19:02:12
Michael Vaill
Heard you obviously.

02:19:02:12 - 02:19:09:01
Tanner Wanish
And like that was it. We both just knew, like, yeah, we're not going to go do that because we want to take a step away from that, that scene for a bit.

02:19:09:05 - 02:19:12:01
Michael Vaill
I got a bunch of new sport climbing, quick draws and like it's.

02:19:12:01 - 02:19:13:06
Both
Like, no, I yeah.

02:19:13:06 - 02:19:28:22
Michael Vaill
I've like I never had like good sport climbing draws for all the years I've climbed because I just don't sport find out much. But I was like, okay, it's time I like got to like, yeah, we're here now at the crag, like just the climbing pitches, or you can clip a bolt every six feet and just enjoy rock climbing and.

02:19:28:25 - 02:19:29:08
Both
Yeah.

02:19:29:08 - 02:19:30:18
Tanner Wanish
I think getting back to basics a little.

02:19:30:18 - 02:19:30:23
Both
Bit.

02:19:30:28 - 02:19:52:03
Kyle
Yeah. Sure. Now. I mean, you guys are still, I would say, relatively fresh off the glass, fresh off of these reflections. If you're being honest, how long do you think that this new framework is going to last?

02:19:52:03 - 02:19:52:22
Michael Vaill
or in a few.

02:19:52:22 - 02:19:53:16
Tanner Wanish
Weeks, but not higher.

02:19:53:17 - 02:19:54:07
Michael Vaill
But that's it.

02:19:54:10 - 02:19:55:23
Tanner Wanish
Just not. We're going call.

02:19:55:23 - 02:20:10:19
Michael Vaill
It alpine sport climbing like a degrees of both and anchors and stuff. Like I'm still a little bit psyched on that. And then like this fall in the Valley, like I'm thinking about like you're talking about climbing if you badger is or like free climbing idol copper stuff where it's like you're not like running it out. You can just kind of like, we're not set it bolted.

02:20:10:19 - 02:20:24:09
Michael Vaill
Blaze and belay and place a bunch of gear and just like, have fun and have adventures. But it's a different type where there's just so much less objective hazard where if something goes wrong, it's probably because you made a big mistake. And if you're vigilant and mistakes become less likely.

02:20:25:28 - 02:20:32:21
Kyle
Nice. What do you think people miss when asking you about the life.

02:20:33:21 - 02:20:57:20
Tanner Wanish
I don't know, it's hard to describe it. I got a guy I was sharing some stuff the other day, and I got a message from this guy who kind of bluntly asked, like, we've obviously talked a lot about the objective risk that we experienced and how surprised we were at how, like really intense it was. And this guy just bluntly said, like, hey, Vitaly was pretty clear about how dangerous this was.

02:20:57:22 - 02:21:23:17
Tanner Wanish
Why were you guys so surprised at how dangerous it was? And it's it's hard to understand the scale of it until you're really in it and it's hard to describe, and it almost feels fruitless to even try to describe the experience up there, because the sheer magnitude is nearly impossible to digest unless you've been out there and done a lot of these big sections and you understand how grand this whole project is.

02:21:23:17 - 02:21:46:19
Tanner Wanish
So I don't think any questions are being missed much, and I don't really know how we could even begin to really describe the experience. We're making the film, I think, and Josh is an incredible filmmaker, and I think he's going to a really good job at telling the story. We got some cool footage across the entire traverse and leading up to it, but it it's kind of hard to describe it anyway.

02:21:46:19 - 02:21:51:29
Tanner Wanish
So I don't I can't really think of any questions that we would answer beyond what we've already tried to do.

02:21:52:03 - 02:22:08:26
Michael Vaill
Well, let's it's so different hearing about something and seeing something and then like doing it and feeling it, it's like, yeah, it's like if someone like reads about how awesome Yosemite is and watch his free solo. But when you get to the valley for the first time and you get in your car and you look up at El Cap, you feel it and you're like, whoa, you know, or something like that.

02:22:08:26 - 02:22:23:07
Michael Vaill
It's like you can hear a story or do this, but whenever you're actually there in person and whenever you walk to the rim of the Grand Canyon or sit stand at the base of El Cap and you just like, feel this incredible thing, like it's going to be different than someone telling you about it. So.

02:22:23:29 - 02:22:38:15
Kyle
That makes sense. What is. So I was reading into this objective. There's something bigger. The full Sierra crest.

02:22:38:18 - 02:22:51:00
Kyle
Do you think that, like having done the Goliath. Like, how much more of a scale is the full Sierra crest? Is it, like, twice the objective? 3 to 5 times. Holy shit.

02:22:51:00 - 02:22:52:16
Tanner Wanish
Yosemite or something, right?

02:22:52:16 - 02:22:59:13
Michael Vaill
It's, starts like Kernersville or something. It's basically like equivalent of doing the John Muir Trail, but like.

02:22:59:13 - 02:23:00:10
Both
Yeah, on all.

02:23:00:10 - 02:23:01:11
Michael Vaill
On the peaks.

02:23:01:11 - 02:23:11:20
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. But that's like, you know, Vitalis talked about that, you know, a couple times. He's been kind of open about that being like maybe the, the most grand thing ever in the world, but like you would need.

02:23:11:22 - 02:23:26:04
Michael Vaill
And there's different ways to do it. Like actually it goes from like Tahoe to, like south of Whitney. It's. Yeah, you could do like a Sierra Crest Traverse where you're doing like a backpacking trip and bagging peaks along the way, but doing like a true, like ridge traverse like the Goliath. For that far.

02:23:26:12 - 02:23:27:07
Tanner Wanish
You would need such an.

02:23:27:07 - 02:23:27:19
Michael Vaill
Endurance.

02:23:27:25 - 02:23:28:27
Tanner Wanish
Support team. You would have.

02:23:28:27 - 02:23:30:10
Michael Vaill
To end weather window, and you'd.

02:23:30:10 - 02:23:35:04
Tanner Wanish
Have to have 5050 caches dropped on the ridge. You obviously couldn't carry your stuff. It would be.

02:23:35:06 - 02:23:37:17
Michael Vaill
That could be like a lifetime goal to do it in section.

02:23:37:18 - 02:23:38:11
Tanner Wanish
That would take like we're.

02:23:38:12 - 02:23:39:10
Michael Vaill
Doing it in a push.

02:23:39:10 - 02:23:55:05
Tanner Wanish
It would take like three months probably. Yeah. So it's like, you know, it's all your naming is the Sierra Crest because it's just the that is the continuous ridge on. That's. Yeah. So it's like, I don't even know how that would be possible, but I'm sure I.

02:23:55:05 - 02:23:57:03
Michael Vaill
Mean, if the glides is possible then I think that's. Yeah.

02:23:57:06 - 02:24:02:20
Tanner Wanish
Yeah it's possible. Yeah. But it would be hard to that would be a logistical nightmare.

02:24:02:21 - 02:24:03:17
Both
Yeah.

02:24:03:17 - 02:24:05:01
Kyle
Yeah.

02:24:05:11 - 02:24:19:12
Kyle
All right guys. Well for anybody listening that's inspired by your story, inspired and genuinely considering attempting the Goliath traverse in their life, what advice do you have for them?

02:24:19:14 - 02:24:20:22
Kyle
Yeah.

02:24:24:13 - 02:24:41:16
Tanner Wanish
obsession of mine for four years, I remember watching Vitali do it, in real time and just being so incredibly captivated by this achievement, and. And I knew when I got done that I have to do this. I have to do this. This is the biggest thing in the Sierra.

02:24:41:18 - 02:25:00:01
Tanner Wanish
This is the ultimate High Sierra tour. There is no bigger test to prove that you're a Sierra hard man than this, and I. I knew that I had to do this for for the years leading up to it and now having done it, like I said, I a part of me regrets finishing it. A part of me regrets doing this.

02:25:00:01 - 02:25:26:29
Tanner Wanish
I almost feel shame that I exposed myself to that much risk. So I understand that there are other people out there that are going to be drawn to the same thing because it's the biggest, and because it's the pinnacle of High Sierra climbing and, you know, alpine traverses in the country right now. But, I just think the risk on this was so disparate, high compared to anything I've done by a huge margin.

02:25:26:29 - 02:25:40:11
Tanner Wanish
And, there's, there's better there's better stuff out there. There's safer stuff out there. And, and I don't think that a rope or a rack would help you in most of the dangerous sections, because rock is so bad and it's face climbing. And.

02:25:40:14 - 02:25:44:16
Michael Vaill
It would just make it way more dangerous because, you know, pulling rope off on your partner.

02:25:44:16 - 02:25:46:14
Tanner Wanish
And yeah, I would just be.

02:25:46:19 - 02:25:47:16
Michael Vaill
Super slow and.

02:25:47:17 - 02:26:02:24
Tanner Wanish
I would be really intimately aware with the reality that you could die up there. It's not a long shot at all. I said in the thing I shared that. I wonder if that's. I wonder if we were the accept option instead of the expectation. Yeah.

02:26:02:24 - 02:26:05:07
Michael Vaill
It feels surprising that three out of three people have survived it.

02:26:05:10 - 02:26:25:00
Tanner Wanish
Yeah. So I don't think that's actually something. Another thing I've been kind of wrestling about is how do we share this in a way that's not going to inspire some 18 year old kid to go do this next, because I think statistically, the odds are very much against you. And the more that this gets done, if it gets done again, somebody's going to die on it.

02:26:25:00 - 02:26:28:04
Tanner Wanish
That's there's no way that's not going to happen. I'm.

02:26:28:04 - 02:26:32:18
Michael Vaill
Just never going to encourage someone to go soloing, and I'm certainly not going to encourage them to go soloing on bad rock.

02:26:32:19 - 02:26:53:17
Tanner Wanish
Yeah, I would say so. I would say if you're if you're seriously considering doing this, go check out, go, go check out that section. You know, go to South Fork Pass and mosey north and see how you, how you feel about it. And understand that that's going to be every single day somewhere on the traverse. Yeah.

02:26:53:17 - 02:27:14:17
Tanner Wanish
I just, I just bluntly I wouldn't recommend it. It's not a good it's not a good testing ground unless you're okay with like, it's like you either win the gold medal or you die. There's not like a middle ground there. You have to be perfect or you die. And I think this is unique in that way. And yeah, I just wouldn't I wouldn't recommend the experience because I, I'm not particularly proud of it.

02:27:14:17 - 02:27:38:10
Tanner Wanish
I'm proud of our performance and I'm proud that we were successful. But I'm not particularly proud of the actual Goliath itself because like I said, I felt like I pushed so far. I have a very high risk tolerance in general. I understand that about myself, and I was so far past my own risk tolerance. I'm I'm wondering how I even wound up there without some sort of alarm bells going off saying like, you need to stop.

02:27:38:13 - 02:27:48:26
Tanner Wanish
So yeah, I feel like we almost got boiled alive on it, where we just kept incrementally exposing more and more and more risk until you look back and you said, how did we get here? This is

02:27:48:26 - 02:27:53:00
Kyle
So fucked. Yeah.

02:27:53:02 - 02:28:00:24
Kyle
Nice, guys. Yeah. I appreciate your time. It's all I got. You feel like, missed anything? Yeah.

02:28:00:24 - 02:28:00:27
Kyle
but.

02:28:00:27 - 02:28:13:02
Kyle
Yeah. No, I appreciate you guys. You know, I know you guys are busy. Logistics and stuff are hard, so, I really appreciate you carving out some time to sit down and chat with me. It means a lot.

02:28:13:16 - 02:28:32:15
Kyle
That's it for today's episode, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. If you'd like today's episode, be sure to head on over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts to give the show five stars. These ratings significantly help the show reach more people. Also, a lot of you have signed up for our email list. It's now to the point where I feel guilty for not delivering something in return to those who subscribed.

02:28:32:23 - 02:28:54:09
Kyle
So I'm going to start a TCM newsletter beginning this month. It will contain behind the scenes information regarding the development of the show, information about upcoming guests, exclusive discounts and deals, and much more. So be sure to head on over to the Climbing majority.com. Click the subscribe button to join the newsletter. Stay tuned for our next episode where I sit down with Las Vegas local legend Andrew Fulton.

02:28:54:16 - 02:29:01:29
Kyle
Until then, keep exploring, stay safe. And as always, thanks for being a part of the climbing majority. See you in two weeks.