The Steep Stuff Podcast
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The Steep Stuff Podcast
#76 - Christopher Fisher
Christopher Fisher's journey from Texas football fields to the highest Himalayan peaks represents one of the most remarkable transitions in mountain sports. In this candid, wide-ranging conversation, Chris reveals how his greatest "failure" – dropping out of Navy SEAL training – became the catalyst that ultimately propelled him toward extraordinary achievement.
With disarming honesty, Chris takes us through pivotal moments that shaped his meteoric rise in the mountain world. From setting the MaxVert Challenge record with 400,000 vertical feet in a month to completing all of Colorado's 14,000+ foot peaks in winter conditions, his accomplishments defy conventional limits. The harrowing details of his Winter 14ers project – navigating bulletproof ice, triggering strategic avalanches, and making life-or-death decisions solo in remote backcountry – illustrate both the dangers and the profound rewards of high-consequence mountaineering.
The conversation shifts to Chris's evolution in the Himalaya, including his unorthodox "fast and light" summit of Manaslu (the world's eighth highest peak) wearing just a sun hoodie and windbreaker at 26,800 feet. His partnership with elite athlete Tyler Andrews has helped redefine what's possible in high-altitude mountaineering, challenging traditional approaches to acclimatization and equipment.
Perhaps most valuable is Chris's transparent look at the realities behind the Instagram-worthy lifestyle. He discusses the financial struggles of professional mountain athletics, the support systems that make these pursuits possible, and his philosophy that these grand adventures compress "multiple lifetimes" of human experience into compressed timeframes. Looking forward, he shares ambitious plans including a speed attempt on Lhotse and a project to climb all 106 six-thousand-meter peaks in the Andes – a feat never before accomplished.
What's your next impossible goal? Listen now to recalibrate your understanding of human potential.
Follow Chris on IG - @chrisjfish
Check out Chris' Website - @ChrisFisher
Follow James on IG - @jameslauriello
Use code Steepstuffpod for 25% off your next order at Ultimate Direction !
What's up, fam? Welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast. I'm your host, james Lauriello, and today I'm so excited to bring you guys an episode with none other than the legend himself, mr Christopher Fisher. Chris was kind enough to come on the podcast to chat. It was fun to have a conversation. This is one that's been overdue for a long time. This is also my longest podcast.
Speaker 1:We started from top to bottom. We covered as much of Chris's journey and his story as we possibly could, and I was so appreciative that he was candid enough and kind enough to be able to sit down and tell his story. I mean, you guys name it, we covered it. We got into his Colorado's 14ers record, the winter record, his summer attempts. We talked about what he's been up to in the Himalaya, the projects that he was just doing as he was just down in South America coming back from Chile. What a beautiful area. We talked a lot about Chile and what he's been up to there. We also talked about the double world. We talked about Chris's origin story, how he even got into the sport, talked about growing up and trying to become a Navy SEAL. Just the origin story itself was just so inspiring. Chris is a like a really inspiring dude, um, one of those folks that, like you know, no, no, mountain too high. You know, no, no, c2 broth, like this guy, just goes and does it. Um, yeah, I can't sing his praises enough. It's a wild boy, um, and someone I can't wait to share time with the mountain, in the mountains with, um, yeah, and hopefully the summer. So, yeah, guys, I hope you enjoy this one. Like I said, it's a personal favorite of mine. This one is almost three hours, so buckle up and enjoy it. This is as good and quality and juicy of an episode as you're going to get, um, one of my favorite ones. So, without further ado, none other than Mr Christopher Fisher, enjoy, we'll see you next time. Ladies and gentlemen, we are live.
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Speaker 2:I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, dude, it's a pleasure. I've had so many requests to have you on the podcast. I know you and I have talked a little bit back and forth trying to figure out should we do this in person, should we do it on Zoom? And, given the circumstances, with a lot of traveling on your end right now, I'm just happy we're able to put this together. Man, so really excited to have you on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, you know I'll never be able to talk one way or another for in person, but obviously we're both in other places all the time, so you know it goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, part two. Part two We'll do a fun, fun in person one. Well, dude, welcome to the pod. Welcome back to the States. I know you just got back from South America. Maybe chat a little bit about that experience and what you were doing out there.
Speaker 2:Sure. So originally we went down there to help guide a trip my good friend and climbing partner, tyler Andrews he runs a coaching guiding company and so they had Chaski Camp, atacama, and that's where it all started. So Aaron and I got invited to be guides on that trip. I guided a dude up Ohos Desolado, which was an incredible experience, and helped some others get up some smaller 6000s and hit their PRs for altitude. So really really cool to be able to give back and experienced. You know, somebody that I know from climbing that has had Ohos on their list for some time, from climbing, that has had Ohos on their list for some time. We actually went over to Aconcagua after that to help guide and we me and my partner didn't make it to the summit. It's a long story, long story short. We had a really short weather window. We flew in with helicopters to try to make it happen within like two days or so and it just didn't happen. But yeah, so that was the start of the trip. And then, once we were down there, aaron and I were like, well, we might as well go see what else we can do. I mean, we have nothing else to do here.
Speaker 2:So we bounced down to Patagonia and kind of worked our way south to north. We went Port Williams, which is on Isla Navarino. It's the furthest most city in the world, depending on who you ask. If you ask Chileans, they're going to say it's the furthest most city. If you ask Argentinians, they're going to say it's Ushuaia. If you ask me, I don't really care, but it's cool, it's like the furthest town. So it was rad. We did a really awesome backcountry 30-mile 50K-ish loop that circled the Dientes de Neverino range, super epic. I mean it was like a 30 mile slog through some knee deep like Pete bog, like Pete Moss bogs. Um, kind of a crazy experience. And so, yeah, you know, I don't know how much, how deep you want me to go into the Patagonia stuff, but we uh, we just kind of bounced all over.
Speaker 2:So we spent a week in the Port of Williams and after we did our objective there we took a boat over to Ushuaia just across the I think it's the Beagle Channel. So over in Ushuaia we spent a couple of weeks running around the mountains there, beautiful place. The wind can kind of pick up and it gets pretty chilly because you know the furthest south most point of the world besides antarctica, so weather's kind of unpredictable, but incredibly beautiful place and the mountains are epic. You get big vert gain even from sea level. So, like, starting at sea level, you can run up to near 6 000 feet. Oh wow, and it's pretty rad. I mean, there's definitely more things I want to do there. There's so many mountains and they're honestly epic and being at sea level is pretty cool. So it's a lot easier to move around at sea level than it is at altitude. So it's fun to be able to like go further, go harder and, you know, just go faster.
Speaker 2:Overall, um, I chased a couple different fkts throughout the whole product or like throughout the whole um travel experience. So the first one, I guess, was dientes de neverino. That was an fkt unsupported. They do host a race on the course. Um, it was like two weeks prior us getting there. We had no idea of the thing. So, oh well, maybe next year. But yeah, we spent a couple weeks in Ushuaia and then we bounced north to El Shatan. We spent two weeks in El Shatan and the weather there is even more unpredictable. So we had I don't know maybe a handful of those two weeks were like decent days and two like really good days where we could actually get out and do like longer things, and so it was.
Speaker 2:It was incredible to go, like, look at the massifs of, uh, the Fitzroy and the Saratoga ranges. I mean those things are just giant granite peaks. It's yeah, it's insane. So it was real, it was really cool place and Aaron and I did uh, the Hulmel circuit together, which is about a 43 mile back country route through the, I guess that area I don't know what exactly it's called el shatan patagonia area. It pretty much goes from el shatan goes all the way back to the ice field, which is the second largest ice field in the world.
Speaker 2:Um, southern patagonia ice field insane. I mean it's just ice and mountains for as far as you can see, and like seeing some of the glaciers in the himalaya and all that kind of stuff, it's insane too. But, like, this was just a different level. I mean it, it's just massive, it's great. I don't even know how to explain it, honestly, besides showing pictures. It's, it's insane.
Speaker 2:So if anybody has the chance to go down there and check it out, you definitely should. Um, it's really cool and it's just spectacular, and there's some things I want to do out there as far as like traversing out on skis and skiing some peaks. So it added a few different projects to my list for the future. But anyways, that 43 mile loop, that was great. Aaron and I did that together as an unsupported like mixed gender FKT. We broke the mixed gender FKT by two and a half hours or something like that, and then we took down the women's time by maybe 10 minutes I forget exactly, but something like that. So that was cool and it's a route that I'd like to go back for and attempt the men's side on in the future, and as well as the La Vuela, a Hielo I don't know how to pronounce it, but there's another one.
Speaker 1:Spanish is not bad, it's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Un poquito Espanol. Yeah, I have a few words here and there I picked up a lot more words. I can't speak fluently, but I can kind of get my point across. So that's cool. Nice man man. Long story short, alshad. Time's incredible. But the weather is so sparse, so like it's hard to do a lot of big things and you have to be in the area to really, you know, nail a weather day. Um, if it comes, so yeah, in the future, I mean there's things that I would like to do there. Uh, as far as bigger routes, big ski missions and even climbing some of the tights, I mean I would like to get to the point where I can go climb like pitchroy and cerro torre. I mean that shit is just insane and it's very inspiring to see others do it and it just adds a whole other element. Moving to the mountains, so it's definitely got my mind spinning. Um, really rad.
Speaker 2:But that wasn't the last stop patagonia. We went up to Bariloche, another amazing place. If you've never been to Bariloche, it is, from what I understand, the mecca of trail running in South America and Argentina. They have trails all over the place, tons of mountains, and they have massive lakes, lagunas. They have lakes everywhere, beaches, I mean. It's like being like breckenridge or like summit county, but way prettier in my opinion, and a lot more lakes, and maybe not as many mountains just because colorado has so many mountains, but there's a lot to do. It's like a resort town. Um, it's like your typical ski town. It's the biggest ski. They have the biggest ski resort in south america, which is rad. So skiing, mountain running, swimming, boating it's like you can kind of do everything there and probably never get bored. So it's a place that I'll be spending a lot more time in the future.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, just stoked to have been able to go to patagonia. The one big route that I did while I was down in Bariloche was the Quattro Refugio, so like their classic backcountry route connects four refugios throughout the backcountry, it's like 20. It's like a marathon pretty much, with 13-ish thousand feet of climbing, and I kind of just did that for a nice long day in the mountains by myself and it was some pretty brutal terrain honestly. Like I was expecting they have a race on this course, right, so I was expecting to be like fairly runnable for the most part, but it's not. It's like the course record is, I think, six 23 by some dude from Spain saga.
Speaker 1:I think his name is Okay Um and I was like yeah, I mean some dude from spain saga, I think his name is okay. Um, it's just pretty close on distance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's with 13 000 feet, um, on some brutal terrain. So I was like, before I ran the ride I was like, oh yeah, I mean maybe I'll stay a little longer to run the race, because two weeks after we were planning on leaving it's actually in like two days. And so I was like, oh, maybe I'll just stick around and run it and try to go for the course record. And then I went out and did it for fun. I was like, well, course record's pretty stout, I didn't push it by any means. I think I did it like right under nine hours, kind of going pretty easy, and like maybe I can get close to it if I really really tried.
Speaker 2:But it's a brutal course. It's not like in like body thrashing for. So really cool and something I want to do in the future. Um, yeah, I don't know, patagonia just kind of opened up. The trip to patagonia opened up so many doors of possibilities and what can be done down there in the mountains and there's just endless amounts of exploration to be done. Um, you know, as far as doing the things that I like to do, yeah, do you think?
Speaker 1:you'll uh, you think that's where you'll start spending more winters. If you will like, instead of doing colorado winters, you think you'll start spending more time down there it's hard to say, um god, I love skiing so much.
Speaker 2:That's like the main reason why I moved to colorado and then obviously life's changed in this direction of where, like I'm a paid mountain runner, that's kind of like more so my direction is right now but like skiing has been, is, it has been, my favorite sport ever and it always will be. It's just like skiing powder. There's nothing like it. So it's hard to say, like, as much as I want to go ski powder, exploring patagonia and other places in the world is equally as satisfying, almost kind of you know. So it's like it's a hard trade-off. Like I know there will probably, at least in my lifetime, be snow in colorado to go ski and other places, but I don't know how long, how long I'll be able to keep up this like being able to travel and do big things, big places. So it's hard to balance. So, yeah, I mean absolutely right, there's a trade-off and it's hard to figure out what's more important. Yeah, they both are.
Speaker 1:It's like all right, well, how do I? And then you might as well just start, you know, continuing to mix, skiing in with the project, so that way you can. Right, you know, it makes it easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's kind of how the winter 14 years went. You know is half mostly skiing, with some slogging obviously. But yeah, like I would love to get to the point to where you know I could go and do these big projects with skiing and like add in these multi-sport faceted like projects. I mean I have so many ideas for these things and yeah, I think the one thing that's kind of holding back is being like more enabled by financials and brands, and maybe that's just me saying I need to go get an actual job.
Speaker 1:But let's tell these brands to pay more. Dude, there you go.
Speaker 2:That's. Yeah, that's kind of the point. I'm trying to get to that point, and conversations have started, so we'll see.
Speaker 1:I like to hear it, man. All right, let's, let's track this from the beginning a little bit, Because I mean, I think for the audience listening, we know so much about the endeavors that you have done and we'll dive into those. But I'm so interested to hear about like, like, what was your formative years? Like, like growing up, what got you into these adventures Because I understand you grew up in Texas Like what got you stoked about the mountains originally? And I also do want to talk about the Navy and that path of your life as well.
Speaker 2:Of course. So, growing up in Texas, man, I've always been an athlete, playing football, running track, cross country, baseball, kind of all your traditional sports. So background in pretty much any sport you think of, besides basketball not very good at basketball. Never have been, never will be. So yeah, it's a weird place. So I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where my uncle has lived in Breckenridge for as long as I can remember, as long as I've been alive, at a minimum, and so we grew up going out to ski like once every year, maybe twice a year, depending on, and immediately after I started skiing at a young age, maybe like three or four, I just loved it. So I always had this thing in the back of my mind of when will I get to the mountains and how will I get there and it'll. I'll finish that story up when we talk about the navy stuff, because that's kind of where it translates. But yeah, you know, I was an athlete my entire life, playing football, growing up and running cross country, and I was pretty fast back in the day, way faster than I am now, actually, like I was running uh, upper 15, uh, 15 minute 5ks as a freshman in high school and breaking five minutes of the mile as a freshman in high school, which nowadays I mean it's not that quick, but I mean it's still kind of fast, right, but like I can't do that right now. Um, and after high school I had a few offers to go play ball at a couple small like d, d3 schools and nai stuff and I never really took up on it. Um, I feel like I kind of got cheated out of my football opportunities, mainly because of my own fault. So I grew up as a stoner, I smoked pot growing up and I failed the drug test my senior year of uh, high school, at the very towards the end of my my season of my senior year football season, and I was on the way to potentially being like all-state middle linebacker and like make these stats and I had uh, college is talking to me and these things. When that happened I kind of got singled out by my team and by the school for whatever reasons, it doesn't really matter and that kind of just shut all that down and kind of shut down my ambition to keep chasing the sport dream. So for a while there I was kind of lost and stuck in this. What do I do now, because I had this vision growing up that I was always gonna be an athlete. Like I didn't really know what the direction I was gonna go after this was. And so, you know, being pretty good, I'm not sitting here trying to brag like being pretty good at sports and like, yeah, having that rug that's kind of ripped out from under you. It just kind of puts you in a place where, okay, well, where do I go now? And so, yeah, you know I was, uh, that's really how my childhood went beside, you know, at least as a sports side.
Speaker 2:You know I grew up in a great family. I can't complain um, your classic traditional family, um down in South Texas, and parents are great. My parents showed up to every sporting event I could ever imagine. So like the support has always been there. You know, whether it was like t-ball or my senior year football and track meets, like they were always there. So like having support was huge growing up. But yeah, you know, getting the rug pulled out, it really changes a person. And so I pretty much just stopped. Like after that happened, what? Maybe October of my senior year of high school, I was like, ok, well, I guess sports are off the table and kind of just walked away from that whole lifestyle for five or six years, something like that.
Speaker 1:Wow, so and so at what point then? So, coming out of high school, then did you go straight to the Navy?
Speaker 2:No, I actually went to college. I started at the Lynn Community College down in College Station, which is like the final school for Texas A&M, and at the point at the time I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was just going to school because that's all I knew to do and that's what everybody says to do and that's the traditional way. And it's like my parents like, oh, this is the best thing for you. And so I'm like, in the back of my mind, I knew I probably shouldn't have gone. I probably should have just picked something else and gone a different direction from the start and honestly, I wasted a lot of time. I didn't finish with a degree. I don't have a degree now.
Speaker 2:I ended up dropping out of school, maybe year three Around. The middle of that time I actually revisited one of my old NAIA contracts for football and was able to get on the team like year three of college, and so I went over to Missouri to play ball for a semester and ended up breaking my ankle like a month in a practice. So that was another rug. Okay, that's over. Shortly after, that is when I decided to go to the navy. I was kind of like in this place of no direction, not knowing like what I wanted to do in life, where I wanted to go, um kind of really just getting caught up in the wrong crowd, partying and experimenting with things and you know, just not not being.
Speaker 2:It's been a wild boy, being really wild and honestly, just like living a life with no purpose, no direction, no purpose is just a waste of time and space is what I look at it, as At one point I was sitting at my grandparents' lake house partying and this guy that was there was talking about how he was about to enter the Navy and I was like, oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:And you know, I'm at a point where I'm like I have nothing going on I don't even know if I was working a job, honestly and so I started picking his brain and I was like, so what's the Navy like? And like what are these things? And like what are the opportunities? And he started talking about Navy SEAL stuff and I was like, hey man, I want to be a navy seal. He was like, oh yeah, really like, what have you been doing for the past few years to get ready for that? And, long story short, he actually.
Speaker 2:So my parents grew up doing young life, which is like a non-denominational youth ministry group for churches and stuff, and one of the kids that he was a leader for ended up being a SEAL.
Speaker 2:They were really good friends and so he had this contact who was a SEAL and he called him the next day and like, got me into this training program and like, immediately had mentors behind my back, like teaching me and showing me the ways of you know how to train properly, and like the mindset and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:It started moving really fast, right? I don't know, maybe you have some other questions you want to ask around it, but that was really the transition was just being lost and not having any direction and then just bam spark, and I was like, oh okay, training for Navy SEALs, I mean, and not having any direction. And then just bam spark, and I was like, oh okay, training for navy seals. I mean, you have to be an athlete, like you can't. I mean, you can show up as regular joe schmo and make it happen, but like, typically, the people that are doing this stuff are athletes. And I was like, okay, well, this is a way for me to re-spark my like athletic dream of you know, using my body as my job essentially. And yeah, it kind of just took off from there.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm so curious to see like well, we can talk about buds after, but like and like getting into the buds process, but like, was it easy for you to just be able to like at that point in time in the world and, like in the military, just be able to get like a seal contract to like go to buds? Or did you have to like like how were you able to just go to a recruiter and they were able to like get you in on that, or how did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you have to earn a contract and to do that you take a PST. It's like a physical strength test. I honestly forget all the terminology. It's called a PST and pretty much it's a test of was it running or swimming? You have to swim a certain amount of laps, laps, do a certain amount of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups and then do like a mile and a half run. I forget the distance of the swim. It was maybe like 500 meters or something I forget. And so you have to do. You get scored on, like your results of these things.
Speaker 2:And, long story short, I started training for that PST and after about six months I passed it with high enough scores and got a contract, my first try. Wow, that's amazing, which is pretty cool. And they weren't really just handing it out Like I joined this group over in Lubbock because I was in Lubbock at the time going to Texas Tech. Well, dropped down at Texas Tech and, long story short, I was just training there with another guy that was doing the same thing. Yeah, not everybody got contracts. I mean, there's a lot of guys that were working really hard to try to get to that point and get to where they can run fast enough, swim fast enough, do enough push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups. For whatever reason I was able to do it first, try around, which I don't know they weren't really hinting about like candy, but like it's not a super hard test by any means, like anybody that's willing to go train for it could probably pull it off at some point so so you start buds, then you deploy, you start buds and you're going through the buds process.
Speaker 1:Dude, I am so curious to see, like is that just a kick in the dick? Like is it horrible? Like like what was? What was your take on on? Like getting to hell week at least? Like is it like sure, so impossibly hard yeah, it's interesting, you know buds is.
Speaker 2:So you have eight weeks of boot camp and then you have eight weeks of pre-buds and then you go out there and then you have like four weeks or something of that, of like another pre-buds type of thing and they kind of teach you like what bud is going to be like and then you go to buds. Um, so like there's this whole like five, six month process process of just getting to buds and throughout that process you still have to pass these psts and like keep on doing these tests and training and you have to keep making it. So by the time you get there, the class dwindles quite a bit. But no, buds is hard. I mean, it's the real deal.
Speaker 2:You know, I've heard things through the grapevine that it's been made easier. Um, we could talk about this for a long time and maybe that's a different conversation. But, um, we were in at a time where it was like very popular to try to become a SEAL and so I think when I understand, they were like making it harder because of how many people were coming. But regardless, yeah, it's a kick in the dick. I mean it's hard. I was maybe 23 when I was going through BUDS, maybe 22. I forget exactly. And yeah, I mean physically. If I'm being honest, I had nothing wrong with me physically. Like there's a lot of guys that get stress, fractures and like the body gets torn up and all these things, and I never had any issues with anything. I don't know if that's just like me being special and just having like a resilient body to hard things.
Speaker 2:But it's definitely a mental game. So that's what ended up breaking me and like getting into hell week was it was hard. I mean it just it's hard to like look back at it, cause I feel like I've done so many things since then that are probably harder than what I was doing at buds in hell week and I feel like if I were to go back now with like the mindset that I have now and like my strength of physicality, I could probably pull it off. But it's not something that I want to do, so that's why I wouldn't be able to pull it off. That makes sense, but no, it's. It's a hundred percent mental, a hundred percent physical and it's hard.
Speaker 2:I mean there's there's a lot that goes on like surf torture. That is shit, is not fun. Be laying in the cold and just getting smacked by waves and I mean you got guys getting hyperthermic next to you. They pull them out, form them up and you go back in the water. It's like you know, the water stuff is actually probably the easiest for me. It's like the drown proofing, all those like drills and techniques. I never had any issues with any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:The main thing that really got to do is running boats. Um, so the boats I'm heads, I'm sure everybody's David Goggins who's going to carry the boats and all that shit yeah, um, it's hard or whatever. Yeah, surf torture, that's a good one. Um, but yeah, I mean surf torture is pretty easy when it, when you're looking at everything else, I mean running with boats on your head really sucks, it's, it's just doesn't feel good and it hurts a lot. Um, and it's, yeah, it's just really hard.
Speaker 2:And so when I got to hell week, finally, I was put in a boat crew. And what if, for whatever reason, my boat crew was just not great and I was at seven people to a crew, yep, and within 24 hours, I believe, five out of seven of us dropped. So like I kind of of just followed the leader and ended up pulling out as well because I was so mentally drained from my team, like sucking boat and not pulling their weight and all these things. And you know, that's just me coping out with an excuse of just not having the mentality to pull it off. But yeah, I mean, if you have any specific questions about it that you want to know about, let me know no, I will one day.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just you know, dude, like I I grew up, so I I was in a similar position where, like, I went to college, I finished college but hated it, right, I was a terrible student and I like had that idea in the back of my mind for such a long time of like wanting to pursue obviously now I'm old, so and it doesn't excite me like it did before, but at one point in time in my life I really considered pursuing it, which is why I'm so curious and, like we all, like I've watched that youtube video the buds class 230 or something like a gazillion times, dude. Yeah, so I don't know, it's just interesting to me. Um, but yeah, it's an incredible story, man, like it's just I don't know and it's so cool to see where, like going through that process and then not finishing it, and then to the heights that you've risen to since then, it's just really interesting. It's a cool dichotomy, um yeah, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man um all right? Yeah, that was also the changing point for my entire life as well, like second changing point. Maybe that's what you're about to ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to pivot there. But if you want to take it from there, you're welcome to. But as far as like what the lessons you learned, like a lesson you took away from that and how it like catapulted you into some of the new heights that you've taken your career to, yeah sure you've taken your career to.
Speaker 2:Yeah sure. So at first after quitting, I honestly couldn't believe that I was back to this point of no direction, having no idea where I wanted to do, what I wanted to go in life, and I was like man, this really kind of sucks Like. I'm back to the same position that I was just a handful of months ago and it took me some time to realize that I actually wasn't. That wasn't the reality. I wasn't in the same position. I was actually still on a decent trajectory of trying to become somebody, and maybe that just wasn't going to be a seal and it obviously wasn't. So after some time and some reflection, I realized that I can pretty much do whatever I want in this world as long as I put the you know energy into doing it. And that's the biggest lesson that I learned from Quitting and Buds I can go and be whoever I want. I can go and do whatever I want, whether it's good or it's bad, I can go do whatever I want in this world. And, you know, all I have to do is put the steps together to make it happen, to get to that point of whatever it is right. So after getting out of the navy. I was like, okay, well, what do I want to do? I want to go to colorado and ski. And I got home, packed up my bags, put, got a loan on a truck and just drove out to colorado. My parents were like I think you should probably get a job and like maybe think about this a little more. And I was like no, I, I'm not gonna live in texas. This is not a place that inspires me, doesn't motivate me, there's nothing here for me. I gotta go. And I just packed all my stuff up and moved to colorado in hopes of just being a ski bum, honestly, and figuring it out from there and it's worked out so well.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I honestly can't even believe it hardly. It's like going from literally doing nothing with my life to now chasing these big endeavors and like trying to break world records, push human limits and hopefully inspire others. It's pretty cool and it's been an amazing journey, to say the least. It's like you have these backboard effects of everything you do and for me, fortunately, quitting Buds had this incredible story that I would have never imagined had I, you know, been told hey, if you quit right now, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:You know, I always hear like when I was in the Navy I always hear the stories of the guys that do quit, but it's like they end up most of them end up becoming like nothing. You know, it breaks them down so hard that they weren't able to achieve what they wanted to, and it just it turns you into a different person, to where you're like, okay, well, I'm not that great, so now I'm going to live a life that's not as great as I wanted it to be. For me, that was just not the case. I was like I need more.
Speaker 1:I love it, dude. No, and you know what, dude, it's amazing to hear you say that and you cause you really bummer stories of like people just don't fulfill the lives that they want to, right, they go. They either go back to a ship or something like that, especially if they're still in the navy, or they go out and become. They just don't. Let's say I guess I don't want to poo-poo on anybody, but like they just want to, they just go do what they didn't want to do in life, which is sad to see. Man, um, let's talk about your story. So so, now that you're out of Buds, or now that you left Buds, you're out of the Navy and you're doing your thing.
Speaker 1:I want to fast forward a few years and I want to kind of bridge this gap between that guy who moved out to Colorado to ski and that guy that went and knocked down all the 14ers in the winter and set the winter 14ers record. Uh, you, you first popped onto the scene for me when it was kind of this circ series, vert, max challenge, where you were trying to set the world record for the most vertical feet climbed. Um, it was, it was in a month, right, it's something like that it was a most right talk about that, because it's just like so interesting to me, um, how the circ, the Cirque series, which is such a special racing series, is so like keen to the core of your story.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, you know, after I searched, that whole thing probably popped up maybe year two of me living in Colorado. Um, I was living in Breckenridge and I just randomly happened to see on Instagram scrolling or something that hey, there's this challenge for Maxford October and I was like, oh cool, let's try it out and see what happens. So year one I just went in and tried it out. After about two weeks I realized that there's no way I was going to win this thing.
Speaker 2:Whoever was actually winning that year was way far ahead and I was like man, these numbers that people are putting up are crazy. Like I couldn't imagine someone doing 10,000 plus feet of bird every single day. I was like there's just no way that's real that people are doing this. And so, long story short, I ended up with like 250,000 feet my first year of doing it and it wasn't enough, Like the first six or the last six days of that, to get to that 250, I had to do. I think it was 17,000 feet a day to get to that 250. I had to do. I think it was 17 000 feet a day to get to 250 so 17 times six, whatever, that is like almost 100k.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, I was gonna say we don't do public math on this podcast now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, almost like 100k in six days or something like that. And I was like, okay, well, let's try it out. And so it happened. I was like, okay, well, that's cool. And I got to my goal. I think I was like fifth overall or something. And I didn't win it Not that I was really going in it with the mindset of winning, but I'm a competitive person and so I was like, well, I think I could do more. And the next year came around and actually, you know, that's kind of what started everything. So I met Julian through the first year and we kind of became friends and, um, he came out for my 25th here's my 25th birthday. I did 25,000 feet on that horse in there and uh what is that, and Morrison?
Speaker 2:And, uh, he came out to kind of like, you know, be a part of it, celebrate for a laugh or whatever. And that's where I met Julian and got connected to the surf series and so I started running the races that next summer and at some point at like maybe a month prior to the maxford happening, he was like, hey, man, you can do maxford again.
Speaker 2:And I was like well I don't know, I never really thought about it, but maybe I will. And then like a day later, like yeah, I'm gonna do it, and so I quit my job. Uh, just kind of stepped away. I was like, hey, guys, I got a good chase this thing. See, if you know what could happen and what could come out of this, and that's what I did I.
Speaker 2:I quit my full-time job where I was working at breckner ridge, packed up my bags and pretty much spent the entire month over in salt lake city going up and down doing labs on grand repeat um, and it was an incredible experience. It's like for me right now it's hard to fathom that I even did that. I mean, it was so much, for I think I averaged like 13 300 feet a day um over 31 days, and the last nine of those days were 18 000 feet every day. So like it was, it was insane and like I kind of did it off the couch. I literally didn't train for it. I kind of was like, okay, well, yeah, I had, I had a bummed angle ankle all summer and so I was nursing at all summer and just literally got up off the couch, went and tried this thing.
Speaker 2:And first, three days in a row I was doing 15 K a day and my knees were absolutely trashed after those three days and so I messaged my family and like Julia and other people and they're like, well, you could always do it next year, and I was like that kind of hit home because when I heard that from everybody, it kind of reminded me of Buds.
Speaker 2:Like quitting at Buds, I'm like man, I'm really just going to like throw in the towel again about something ridiculous that I could probably push through, and that was the mindset. It was okay. Maybe I am in pain, this is probably going to hurt a lot, but what happened in the past with buds, when I was in pain and hurt a lot and then the next day I was fine it's like that'll probably just happen again, and so you know, being able to use that lesson and put it into the MaxBird was really what got me through.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just thought every day about how hard it was going to be to do this, but also about how hard it was to go and quit something that I really really wanted to do, or at least that I thought I really wanted to do, right, and so that's what motivated me and drove me to finishing the max bird. That's really what put my name on the map. I did 400,000 feet. Yeah, it did it actually, it seriously did. I, shortly after that, was hooked up with RAB and signed a contract with them, and I've been with them for, boy, this is my fourth year now, I believe Something like that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it seriously changed my life.
Speaker 2:It was an incredible month and it was incredibly, incredibly hard. There's no way I could have done it by myself. I mean, I had my, my teammate, tyler valovic, who was out there every single day grinding laps away on grandeur as well, and many others who were competing in the competition out there grinding away, and so it was just like this huge community of people coming together to support each other, but also support me in trying to break this. You know big record that Noah sat the year before at 300 and maybe 30,000 feet, something like that. So, yeah, you know I put 70,000 feet on this record and it was? It was epic. I mean, I still can't believe that I did that for 31 days.
Speaker 1:So crazy. And the thing that's wild about it too is like it's not like you had an incline, Like the magnitude incline is so easy to do something like that on right, Like speaking, because it's less mileage, it's just up and down, Whereas, like with grandeur, I feel like there's a good degree of like yes, it's super steep, but you got to put a shit ton of miles in too to be able to run up and down or hike up and down this thing back and forth, you know. So it almost like, from an efficiency perspective, like it's got to take. We should have taken like way more time to do it the way you did it with grandeur.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny you say that because I actually did go to the incline for two days during that month and on grandeur I was doing mostly like half laps, so I was doing like the steepest sections over and over and they were. I mean, I did hundreds of laps on it probably and it's like to the point where I know every footstep, but I was able to do I mean, I think the fastest I did anything. I think it was like 19k and six and a half hours up and down, something ridiculous like that. I mean I don't think I can do that right now, honestly. Um, and I went over. We had bad weather days for whatever reason because of the weather, and, uh, I went over, I flew from Salt Lake to Denver so I could get out of the weather for three days. I keep my streak thing going and keep the momentum rolling.
Speaker 2:And I went down to the Manitou and I did day one on that thing. I did I think it was eight laps and I was smoked dude. First time ever it's hard, first time ever doing the incline, did eight laps and it was like I was like there's no way I'm going to be doing this shit for like another week I'm going back to Salt Lake, so yeah, it just wasn't. It was honestly slower and harder on my body to do it on the incline, which is crazy. I mean, I honestly, if you're like, if you're there doing that all day, every day, or that's like your training ground, it's probably not the case. You probably get used to the, the impact of the load. It wasn't for me, though.
Speaker 1:It's like I knew grandeur so well, like I need to get back to my stomping grounds, you know yeah, that's so interesting to me, dude, like I train, I'm on the incline me, especially during this part of the season where it's more fitness and building speed stuff. I'll probably only hit the incline like once a week, but I don't usually go the whole way. I'll only go to the first bailout and do a lot of repeats on it, like enough to where? Cause it's not, it's not the steeps right, where it's a completely different type of um, uh like modality, if you will. Um, but, dude, it's crazy. Like, even if I take a week in between efforts, like I am smoked after that effort, like in some serious, like it's carnage, which is interesting. I you know, I don't know what it is about the incline, but it hurts, it's not fun it's legit.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it hurts. Even when aaron did her uh, incline-a-thon, I was like jesus, yeah, yeah, it's real deal. Like after doing eight laps I think I told myself I never want to do that again. So me doing the interclinathon is probably not going to happen. Oh man, hey, James. Yeah, Can we pause for 30 seconds? I just realized my phone's about to die and I'm going to go grab a cord so it doesn't die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take your time. That's fine. I hate to do that.
Speaker 2:Hopefully it's not too hard to edit that out.
Speaker 1:No, it's super easy. Not a big deal, all good.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I'll be right back, sorry about that. No, you're good, thank you dude, I hate to do that. I had like 50 when I started this and it's now already down to nine, so zoom will do that to your.
Speaker 1:We'll rip that phone right down. It's no joke sure well, cool, I'm back.
Speaker 2:We were talking about incline incline.
Speaker 1:yes, all right, so I was going to pivot. Let's, I'll pivot from the incline and move to Okay. So after you finish the max vert this is the question that I have you go from. That changes your life. You get this big contract with Rab and now you're a sponsored athlete. At what point in time are you like starting to shift your focus? Then to like, okay, I'm going to start going after some big objectives there? Like, are you immediately starting to think about the Colorado 14ers and objectives like that? Or like, what was the process like in there?
Speaker 2:Sure, you know, I had these like dreams and aspirations to do things like Nolan's. And when I first moved to Colorado and started climbing the 14ers, nolan's was one of the first things that popped to my radar and I was like, oh, this is really rad, rad, and maybe one day it's like a live project, maybe one day I'll be able to do this, and that kind of just sped everything up for me. You know, I still haven't done nolans, but it started putting like thoughts in my mind that I could actually do these big mountain projects if I just like put the effort for it and tried. You know, whether I fail or not, it's like putting effort into it is what matters. And so you know that next, really all I did was ski that upcoming winter, but that next summer I started kind of hitting it hard again and I attempted a route called mosquito 10 mile traverse over in a mosquito 10 miles um, which is like, uh, it was 40 miles.
Speaker 2:It's the highest, longest ridgeline in north america outside of alaska, so the first 30 ish miles are all about 13 000 feet. Um, it tags, I think, 29 mountains, 13ers, a couple 14ers and a couple 12ers. Super epic route, right. So, like I started piecing together this big alpine route on the ridge, I thought it was super sick and, long story short, I ended up failing around. Well, you know, failing maybe the wrong word, but I ended up having to pull away from the record attempt, or even just the route attempt, about three-fourths of the way through on peak 10 in breckenridge. Um, for one, I was mega bonked. You know, this was like the first like real ultra thing that I've tried outside of max bird, a couple of the like big mountain runs and things. So this is like the first real thing I've tried and I was not putting in the proper calories. Like by halfway point I just couldn't eat anymore until like I had gone maybe 12 hours without eating, jesus christ especially above, above a tree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's brutal dude, it was hard and like where it really hit me was the section from wheeler well, even before wheeler, but wheeler to peak 10.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of scrambly stuff class three, four and even some fifth.
Speaker 2:We're like, if you fall, like you'll be lucky if you live, and I'm like I remember being so out of it, like balked, where I was like missing my handholds and like close to falling to my death, and I was like okay, this is not okay and so safely get off of all the hard stuff and just like crawl to peak 10.
Speaker 2:And I had somebody telling me about the weather and there was no way I was going to make it to the finish with the weather coming in. Like okay, say, there was a really perfect day, maybe I could have finished it, um, and just crawled it in, but there were storms coming and it was going to happen, whether I wanted them to or not. So I actually had my uncle come up to peak 10, pick me up off the mountain and bring me down, um, and about an hour later there was this massive thunderstorm that lasted like an hour and a half, just ground strikes all across the rest of the 10 mile where I would have been. I was like okay, yeah, I mean I would have probably died had.
Speaker 2:I stayed up there like it was pretty legit and you know it was just a huge lesson learned, right. So like that was my first kind of step into hey, let's try a big project. And shortly after that, jason hardrath, who you just talked to again recently, um shout out to the homie. Good dude, he reached out to me, or did I reach out to him? We reached out to each other and we're like, hey, he was like hey, man, I have this crazy idea. And I was like, oh, yeah, me too. And for whatever reason, we both had like looked at the world and had the idea of doing it out and back on it because nobody had ever done it. And he, yeah, so he definitely reached out to me about it. He reached out. I was like, dude, I was literally already thinking this Maybe we should do it together. And so we got together. I've never met each other besides through some Instagram messages. And they're like hey, yeah, let's do the out and back from the world, let's just go send it and see what happens.
Speaker 2:And this was another off the couch send for me, because after the Mosquito 10 mile, this is maybe a month and a half later. I was pretty wrecked. So I ended up taking some downtime, whatever, whatever. And we get to the salt lake to do the whirl and it was epic, it was legit. He had just gotten off of doing norman's 13 I think it is what it's called something ridiculous out there and the and the cali cali 14 a record like self-supported a bike, a mega project, like two weeks prior. So he was pretty wrecked I was not nearly as wrecked as him and we went out to do this big thing, um, together, and he made it one whole world with me. We did, we did a world, shared, an epic adventure. And by the end of it he was so trash I mean his feet had, like, it was just like his foot was a tire blister, um, and I was also trash, but in a different way. And he was just like his foot was a tire blister, um, and I was also trash, but in a different way. And he was like, hey, man, you gotta go do this by yourself, you gotta turn around and send it one more time. And I was like, oh shit, you're right, I do. And so it was this weird moment of like. You know, I got down expecting like, okay, we'll take an hour and a half nap, we'll turn around together.
Speaker 2:The first rule took us 32 hours something ridiculous. I mean I could probably do it less than 20 right now if I wanted to. That's besides the point. And I remember waking up from my hour and a half nap that got cut into 30 minutes because of weather coming in in two days or something like that. Joe, who was like crew leader, was like, hey man, are you ready to go back? And I was like, yeah, I mean I got nothing else to do today. This is literally the only thing I had planned for the day, so I might as well at least start walking back up the mountain. And I ended up pulling off the double whirl. Uh, first person to do it has took me like 66 hours of pretty much not sleeping at all.
Speaker 2:It was super epic.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of like double world, was like really what brought me into doing these big epic things after the 400k thing.
Speaker 2:So that was like the first like real ultra, like mega project experience I'd ever had. And that's what really started, like putting things on my map, like, okay, this is cool. These grand epic adventures are insane and you know, it's like for me it's the human experience. Um, you get to go and do these grand adventures, go on these grand epics, and it's just the human experience, you know. You get to feel every emotion on the wheel of what it is to be a human. You get to feel all the pain, all the suffering and you're going to do it all in a short amount of time. So it's like living multiple lifetimes in such a short amount of time and being able to do it over and over again is like, I don't know, it's like the craziest thing you could ever think of. It's like most people get to live that once that's their one human life. Right, it's like, and there's nothing wrong with that over and, over and over.
Speaker 1:No, there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1:But, dude, that's the spice of life, man, I talk about this a lot on the podcast and, like I said, the intention is not to poo-poo on anybody.
Speaker 1:But, for instance, dude, you live this Jason and I were joking about this because you just got back from South America.
Speaker 1:You live in a life that people would be very jealous to have and I work in corporate finance and accounting and, like, I live this like weird double life where, like, sometimes, I'm out doing these amazing adventures and training for these amazing races and then the other half of me is stuck in an office or whatever and, like you know, looking at spreadsheets, and it's like, dude I think about this a lot where, like the people that I work with, sometimes it's like dude, I think about this a lot where, like the people that I work with, sometimes it's like man, like you will never understand what it's like to like, chase, like, like, for instance, like something like what you just said with the world, or run up a mountain as fast as you can Like, and then some people get to live that over and over and over and over again, where others will never do it and it's kind of sad man. It's weird, it's a weird thought, you know.
Speaker 2:It is kind of sad and it is a weird thought and I think about that with the people I spend my time with, like my family, who has never experienced any of this kind of stuff, and you know they hear it from me and like they see what I do and like these things, but like there's a big difference between hearing it and like reading about it and doing it, like putting yourself into this place, and like going to a place where you have no idea what's going to happen. You know you sign up to go do this grand adventure and whatever comes your way is what you signed up for, regardless if you want it to happen or not. You know it's like that's part of human life, that's the human experience. So, yeah, it's, it's unique, right.
Speaker 2:And you know, jason was like, uh, he's been a mentor for me in this kind of space and he really helped me like kind of dig into like that mindset of around why do I do what I do, and you know how can I have it impact others or, like you know, allow to impact others in a positive way.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, the double world was a really cool experience to be able to share with a good friend and really start a really rad friendship with them and, just you know, be more intentful with what I am doing with these projects. Like it's one thing if you just go run and do all these crazy things, but like if you're able to make it and turn it into something that can, like, provide somebody a positive message or inspiration or some motivation or whatever it may be, it makes it tenfold better. It's like, yeah, yeah, not only am I able to go experience human experience on these levels, but at least somebody else can look and like maybe get inspired to go up and run up that mountain or go and, you know, do sign up for an ultra marathon or whatever it may be, right.
Speaker 1:I agree, man. I want to pivot a little bit to the, so I'm like split. I don't know if I want to talk about winter 14ers or your summer 14ers. Attempt, what do you want to talk about more?
Speaker 2:I'm open to talking about both. Let's, let's do a little it's on winter and then, and then we'll go into the summer, cause I mean, the summer was just epic, so it was a winter.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. I just dude. I just find it so absolutely absurd and crazy that you pulled off the winter 14 or like FKT, just because, like I don't think people realize how cold they don't and how brutal like the ability to get, like the the possibility of frostbite, all these issues and so many things you have to take into accountability.
Speaker 1:Talk about, talk about that record, uh, and I'll leave it open-ended like, however you want to talk about it and say, but yeah, just like what that meant to you, cause that's like one of the crown jewels of the many amazing things that you have done.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Yeah, the winter 14 years was. It was insane. I mean I don't like you said. I don't think a lot of people can grasp it. It's like for one here. Let's just start at the start. You know, me and aaron are driving back from somewhere in texas after we just did a long at the at together and we were listening to andrew and andrea's podcast about their winter 14er experience. Halfway the podcast looked around aaron. I was like hey, I'm gonna do that this year. And she was like all right, whatever. And this is literally like maybe 30 days prior to starting and so I was like no, I got, this is something I want to do like I want to do this, let's let's do it.
Speaker 2:And so somewhere around jan 5, I think, is when I end up starting the project and I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. If I'm being honest, I kind of like, yeah, I'm going to go do this and see what happens. And you know, I've had several years of backcountry skiing experience. I know how avalanches, the terrain works and how to like re-terrain, mitigate terrain and you know, do these things right. So, yeah, I'll just see what happens. And it ended up being a lot more than what I really thought it was going to be. I mean, that year was almost record breaking across the state for snowfall, which I don't think a lot of people understand. There was a ton of snow everywhere. You know, utah got like 300 inches over their average or something ridiculous, and I think the Elks and the San Juans are like really close to breaking records, and so, for one, it was this huge snow year and it was cold, yeah, but like, so God, it's so hard to break this down. So the initial idea about the project was I was going to try to do them all in 50 days. The idea was like, okay, I'm going to go in. I'm going to try to bang all 58, 50 days and that didn't happen. I did do 29 and 17 days and then it kind of all fell apart there. So we did 29 and aaron actually did all 29 of these with me.
Speaker 2:She started the project with me, we were on snowshoes, um snowshoeing around all over the backcountry and you know, kind of showing her how to read the terrain and all these things, because she's never done that kind of stuff and so it was. It was interesting to be able to like have to semi guide in a way like oh yeah, we don't want to go this way, whatever. But you know, I wasn't guiding her, obviously, but it was just this like snowshoeing for one, sucks, it's not fun, I will never do it again and it makes things way slower. And two, it's like it's just hard to do so many peaks back to back to back, like we were doing um. Long story short, she got, she got, uh, frostbite and the dropout of the project because she was kind of thinking about doing it with me.
Speaker 2:And once she dropped out, I got on skis and got back to doing what I actually loved and enjoyed and it made things way more enjoyable, way more fun and a lot faster Compared to doing 14ers in the summer. The winter for me I found it adds at least two to three times the amount of times. If quandary took me two hours in the summer, it's going to take me a minimum of four hours in the winter and that's kind of how it always was. And then quandary is an exception. Like you can do that one pretty fast, pretty easy from the road, yeah, but like any of the other peaks and hiccups, they were long. I mean I did three 21 hour days in the backcountry.
Speaker 2:Um, my god dude I can't even count how many 15 to 18 hour days I did. I think the shortest day was quandary at like four or five, and yeah, I mean there were more days above 12 hours and there were less, and so you know, it's like being having to figure out the mind to play a role in, you know, all these things of like. How do I stay safe for these many days in a row under these conditions, with so much snow and under these avalanche aspects and conditions which were, you know, red lighting and orange lighting and yellow lighting all over, all over the map? You know it's hard to be able to juggle all that, especially when you're solo. For a lot of this, like for the last half peaks, I did most of them solo. I had Andrew Hamilton join me on a few and we did a couple of really mega epics together.
Speaker 2:But like moving solo through some of those mountains and and first off in a place that I've never been before, so, like, prior to doing the winter 14 years, I'd only climbed, like I think, half the 14 years in the summer. So a lot of this was brand new terrain for me. I'd never been there, I'd never seen any of these mountains. I was just like, oh yeah, we'll go figure it out and like, yeah, it's just incredibly epic and it's such a big project. And I had no thought of like this is actually going to happen. Like I was like you know, from the start I was like, man, this is probably not going to actually happen, like I'm going to try it, see what happens. But the chance that this actually like is fulfilled is probably pretty slim. And it was pretty slim like, so god, there's so many stories I don't know, you know where to start.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I just like yeah, just yeah, list them off, because one of the, before you start listing them off on the stories, I do have one question, dude what the hell was it like? Like I can't imagine, like pyramid peak, like the creststone needle, like some of these full-on, like really pain in the ass peaks, to be able to do in winter, like can you talk about some of those as well? Like any Sure, any situations on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll talk about all those. So the Crestones actually was going to be day two for Aaron and I, day two of the project, the day after we did Pikes. We're like, ok, we're going to go for the Crestones. They just got some recent snow we didn't know how much because no one was up there and we didn't know like the snow tail stuff at that point. So we just like go in with our snowshoes and try to figure it out. I think we made it maybe like five miles up the valley in like five or six hours, literally like slogging through way steep, fresh snow and we get to treeline, maybe something like that. We can see the peaks and we're like this is just not gonna happen. I mean, it's gonna take us eight hours to get from where we are back to the car, or like a round trip from the car to where we weren't back. So it's like this is gonna be a 24 hour epic and that was like our first big fail during the project. It didn't happen. We didn't get any of those peaks. We learned a lot of lessons. Like one you gotta have flotation. Actually we didn't have any of those feats. We learned a lot of lessons. Like one, you got to have flotation. Actually, we didn't have flotation that day. That's why we learned that lesson, because we didn't bring the snowshoes because we thought there wouldn't be enough snow for it, and it just, yeah, it taught us a lot of lessons, right. And after that initial like no peak day, I didn't have a single other day that I didn't summit every single thing first try. After that, wow, um, that was like the first big lesson.
Speaker 2:And so the next time I went back to the creststones, I went in solo. This is after aaron kind of already had a full way and I did both of them together over the course of maybe 14 hours or something like that. And there was a group above, like above me that I knew was going to be out there. So like I had this understanding that there's gonna be some trail broken to where I could follow in, at least get up there. I climbed the crest on needle with them and I didn't bring skis for this.
Speaker 2:So like I was just on snowshoes and you know, just hiking in, because the the approach is kind of schwacky, it's hard, it's hard to ski through, and so I figured it'd be slower. And climbing the couloir up to the needle I was like I mean, it's steep, it's legit and it was rad. But coming back down, it was my first time ever down climbing a couloir. It's typically I climb them and I ski down. And I was like man, I don't have my skis on me. This is crazy. Like I can't believe I'm walking down this couloir right now.
Speaker 1:That would be sick with all that snow to ski down that thing I've never. I don't. You don't hear too many people skiing off the needle, like it's not as much talked about.
Speaker 2:It's rare. Yeah, that's interesting, but it can be done. It can be done. That's another project for the future skiing on the 14 years. But yeah, and so I broke away from the group I was with after we got out of the cooler and they ended up going back down to their camp, where they camp for the night.
Speaker 2:I went straight over to the Crestone Peak. I was like, okay, well, I'm not coming back all the way up here again, I'm going to go get the peak. So I climbed, you know, the peak's couloir, tagged the summit and glissaded like halfway down and got out of there. It was a long day, you know, but all the lessons that I learned from the first failure it translated into many successes after. It's like bring the gear you know, have the right nutrition, have the right water, make sure you have everything you need to stay safe, one and two to be able to actually pull it off.
Speaker 2:And that was like the first big, like stepping stone, and so it's like the next really big story God, there's so many. So, like the next one was going to the Chicago basin, that one was insane. So I had just finished up maybe snuffles and I was going into the basin with scott simmons, who is a pretty legit, uh, ski skimo dude, um, biker runner, all around badass. And I hit him up and I was like, hey, man, I just joined the scarpa team, do you want to? He was on the scarpa team or still up, and I was like, hey, man, I just joined the scarpa team, do you want to? He was on the scarpa team or still is. And I was like, hey, man, do you want to go out and do this crazy thing with me? And he was like, yeah, but I just got frostbite, uh, from 12 hours of skiing, like yesterday. And I was like, oh, that's a bummer. But he decided to still show up and we still went in together and we did the first 15 miles together.
Speaker 2:The approach, purgatory. It's like how to forget the exact mileage. But it's like 40 miles round trip or something like that, from purgatory to the chicago basin and back, and he, about 15 miles in, he took his boots off and his feet were so trashed because of the frostbite and everything that was going on. He had to turn around and bail and I was like, oh man, yeah, I would too if I were you, honestly dude. So like his feet were so trashed, I felt so bad for the guy because he came in with me and like he didn't get a summit it was it was kind of a bummer and for me it was kind of scary because I had never been back there before and these are brand new mountains to me and I know that they're a little bit more legit. Like there's a little bit more complex complexity to the, the like you know, mitigating avalanche terrain, all this kind of good stuff. And so it was a little frightening to like go into this by myself.
Speaker 2:And I remember the lesson of being like okay, well, I can either turn back with him and the project's probably over, or I can keep going and see what I can learn and find out about not only the mountains and the terrain but myself as well, to see if I have what it takes to even be doing what, whatever the hell I'm doing right now. And so I did go on and I did climb all four and it and that was another 21 hour day where more than half it was spent by myself. And, um, you know, I climbed windham. I skied down from windham to the base of sunshine boot, bootpack up Sunshine, ski down Sunshine and ski patch together, some snow patches and rocks all the way over to the others.
Speaker 2:And I remember climbing up the Olysses and the Snowface, which is typically the trail that cuts under the steep rocky piece, if you've ever been up there.
Speaker 1:No, I've actually never been out there.
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah, there's kind of a trail that cuts under this big cliff area that puts you on the ridge. And I remember boot packing up this snow face and it was just like bulletproof ice. Like had my crampons on and everything and I was like man, this is not gonna be fun to ski down.
Speaker 2:And so I tagged north eolis, go over to eolis, and I'm sitting there watching the sunset on eolisus by myself in the Chicago base in the middle of winter, like, oh my gosh, couldn't even imagine.
Speaker 2:Like I am here by myself, there's nobody coming to get me and I get to experience this by myself. Like this is the most amazing thing and amazing feeling ever, like being able to sit there and just be like, yeah, this is all for me right now, you know, like nobody's coming out, here'm the only person here and now all I have to do is get out of here alive, which is, you know, a big piece of it. But it was just like this super enlightening um day out there where it really showed me and taught me that, yeah, I have what it takes to pull this off. I just have to keep going. And that's what I did, you know. I skied down eolis in the dark. Um down that ice phase, which was not fun, and skied all the way out, and I skinned the train tracks all the way to purgatory um dude, that's so far.
Speaker 1:Oh, my god, because I know that area that is so far.
Speaker 2:That's crazy yeah, it was 40 something miles on skis that day, um, and by the time I got back to the tracks I was like I'm gonna get out of here. So I was doing like I was doing pretty quick on the skins. It was just slightly downhill, so I was moving like I want to say like six miles an hour, maybe even a little faster on the skins, which is really nice. Like man, it's going to be quick. And at the bottom of the last climb out to purgatory, my friend Brent met me and I was like, oh, thank God Someone's actually here to say hi. He showed up. I had no idea he was coming. It was really cool to have him, you know, kind of finish up the day with me. But yeah, you know, the Chicago Basin was like the first real, like hey, man, this is your test, can you do this? And I pulled it off and it was amazing. I couldn't have had it any other way but it, you know, I thought that there's no way it gets much harder than that and it did. It got so much harder and, for example, even Capitol Peak. I thought that was going to be the hardest and it wasn't. And it got harder than that and I climbed Capitol with Matt Randall. We met through Instagram, suggested through a friend, and I was like he's done it before. He's done Capitol in the winter before, maybe once, twice prior to that. So, yeah, I trusted him. I was like this guy, you know, he knows what he's doing with ropes, he knows what he's doing with the rocks Like he's legit, like he's a legit ski mountaineer. And so we got together, went out to Capitol and I remember seeing the knife edge for the first time ever and seeing that, covered in snow, I mean it's just this perfect knife and like there's this little bit of a cornice kind of cresting over the knife and I'm like, oh, this is pretty legit. Like you fall, you're gonna think about it until you die. You know two minutes later. So it's, it's legit and matt really is a trooper.
Speaker 2:He helped so much on that mountain and we ended up going ridge direct, which is what you have to do in the winter, because if you don't, then you have to cut through the gullies, which is avalanche prone, very, very avalanche prone. And so we climbed the ridge direct and maybe like 200 feet below the ridge, matt was like man, I think we need to turn around. Um, we're at a place where we have a storm coming in. We can see the storm coming in. It's gonna hit us within the next 30, 45 minutes. And you know, we're on this really, really exposed place, exposed ridge. It's our first time doing anything together.
Speaker 2:And he didn't want to get into an epic and I was like, yeah, I understand that that makes a lot of great sense. And then I forget exactly what I told him. But we talked through it for like maybe 10 minutes or so and it got to the point where he was like, yeah, let's actually keep going. And so he led a pitch and then belayed me up the pitch and then I led the rest of the ridge, the summit, which at that point, you don't need a rope, right? Um?
Speaker 2:it was just kind of like snow scrambling brush off the rocks. Put your axe in step a few times to cramp on, so don't slip off the mountain. Do that over and over until you get to the summit. Um, and it was cool because matt a person who was at the time and probably still way more experienced than me, um, as a ski mountaineer, you know wanted to turn back, and I'm sitting here thinking, well, if we turn back, my project's over for sure.
Speaker 2:So, you know, part of it was a little bit selfish, but also is more so. Let's see, like, what we can do, what the limits are, and it's like we know how bad the storm is going to be. We've been taught, we've been told by, you know, chris tomer, who was helping out with the entire project, what's going to look like. And you're like, maybe we're going to get in a little bit of a whiteout, but how much does that matter with where we were? Because there's only one way out the mountain and it's down the ridge we came up. So it's like, even if you can't see the full route, there's only one way back down it and you're gonna know whether or not you're on that ridge, going back down it, or you're not. You know it's like there's not really any other. You're either on satan's ridge or you're on that the right ridge, or on a face tumbling down the mountain. So, like I was, like dude, we can pull this off. Sure enough we did. We got to the summit, storm came in, white out, we repelled, I think, three sections um the old classic wrap the rope around a rock and wrap off of it, and I mean it was legit, I mean it was mega, and that was a 16, 17 hour day and it was spent with a new friend who was is a badass and taught me so much.
Speaker 2:Um, but you know, to keep the story a little shorter, it's like I expected that to be super damn hard and it was. I didn't expect anything to be harder, but it it got harder. Literally the next day, like the next day was a harder day than capital, and that was on eldiente and the wilsons and I met up with this dude who was going to do do them with me and pretty quickly into the, into the morning, I realized that wasn't going to happen. We just were on the same pace, not the same like vibes and all this kind of stuff and, long story short, I ended up leaving and he, he ended up climbing wilson, still uh, wilson peak and then mount wilson god, those confuse me. So I went up and over the pass, dropped down to the base and where wilson and the ldn they are.
Speaker 2:I remember climbing that, climbing wilson, up the uh north face, which was pretty much a snow climb, pretty simple. And then the traverse from wilson to ldn day, which I had never been on before was a classic uh traverse in the 14ers, brand new to me, took me, I think, six and a half hours, the skis on my back, you know, going through like waist deep snow across this mega ridge where on either side it's like you're probably not gonna live all of them, like you know, just being locked in. It's like having to be so locked into where it's just six hours of okay. You're like facing the ridge or on top of the ridge. You're stepping like step, step hand hand with an axe, like step, step hand axe, step, step hand axe, step, step hand axe, over and over and over and over for like six and a half hours to the point where I finally get to eldiente.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was just like massive ridge slog and by the time time I got there it was sunset again, so I dropped down the face of the ridge of El Diente to get to the north face of El Diente, which is, I believe, 63 degrees. It's a 63 degree pitch which is steeper than anything I've ever been on, ever skied before in my life. And I was up there by myself with my skinny skis like really tiny toothpicks, like looking down at this flat light valley and mountain after the sunset, like there's no light I can't see. If you've ever skied flat light, you can't really see that well. Like it's really hard to judge distance, like where you're going. And so like I'm at this mega, like 2,500 foot north face of this mountain that I've never been on before, the middle of the back country or a place Again, no one's going to come out here and if they do, it's going to take a long ass time and just skiing down this crazy face by myself in meaty powder on a North face and the sand wands in the middle of winter. I'm like just sitting there thinking like there's just way. Is it happening? Like, for whatever reason, the sand wands got a green light for like avalanche conditions. I was like, okay, I have to go take advantage of this. So that's what I did.
Speaker 2:It was, it was, it was insane. Like I'm just, yeah, you know, skiing the steepest, probably hardest line I've ever skied, by myself, on tiny skis, the middle of the winter. It's like it's hard to even imagine that. It's like a thing that people actually do and I'm like, yeah, this is me doing it, and so, um, it was a really cool experience, but it's a really, really hard day, and that was again another 18 hour day. I mean, just slog after slog after slog, but like these beautiful slogs, these beautiful places where you know it's hard to even comprehend what you're looking at, because, like nobody goes back there in the winter. I mean, people do, but like not a lot of people and much less. Nor do you hear about it. Yeah, um, and just so, yeah, that that one was just so rad. But then it gets even harder. And so, like I was like they can't get harder than that, like it gets harder. And so, like I was, like they can't get harder than that, like it gets harder. And so, like I meet up with andrew hamilton, who was who is the speed record holder for the summer, was the speed record holder for the winter and he helped me break his record.
Speaker 2:Um, he did two of the climbs with me. I guess. Technically three peaks, but two climbs. The first one we did together was oh no, four, we did longs together. The second one we did together was, oh no, forks we did longs together. The second one we did together was the bells. We did north maroon, south maroon together, over again another 21 hour, epic. Um, we skied in and climbed the northwest ridge of north maroon and we did the traverse out and back. Um, so we divert. Have you done the traverse up there? No, I've not the bells traverse. No, it's pretty legit, it's uh, it's super fucking cool.
Speaker 2:I, I did it in the summer. After that I did it in like. So, for example, we spent six and a half hours out backing the ridge in the winter and I did it in like 30 minutes one way the summer, shit dude. So we were up there on that ridge for a long, long time and it was so cold, so snowy, so windy and like just suffering, like me and him are just sitting there suffering together in silence. I think we both ate like 300 calories that entire 21 hours.
Speaker 2:Like just not recommended first off, but like just bonked and zonked out of our mind but, you know, still functioning to the point where we can put the ropes up and rappel and like be safe and belay each other back up these pitches. And it was again another incredibly epic day in the mountains and we had this insane sunset coming off north maroon for the second time, going back out of the mountains and god, yeah, just being able to share that experience somebody else in the middle of nowhere is one of the coolest things a person could do, you know, being able to actually like go and put ourselves in these places where, if something goes wrong, we may or may not make it, and it's just really. It's really. There's so many words you can put on it, but it's really touching to be able to share that with somebody else. Right 100, the experience is really cool.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I remember we get to the couloir, back to where my skis are, and andrew he'll even admit it, he's not the best skier in the world, so he stashed his skis way lower and I carry mine up to the couloir because I wanted to ski it and it's pitch black, can't see anything but like five feet in front of you with the headlamp, and he just sits on his butt and starts crusading down the couloir.
Speaker 2:I'm getting my skis on. I'm like whoa, like he's gone in like 10 seconds. His light is from right here and it's gone like I can't even see where he's at. I'm like, oh well, he just crusaded a thousand feet into the dark. This is crazy. I can't believe he just did that shit. And then I popped my skis on and ski down and meet up with them and it takes like it took him like 30 minutes to get his skis because he he's a. He's a guy where he carries ski boots and mountaineering boots and so he had to like switch boots and like they were frozen and it was a long, long night.
Speaker 2:Long story short I bet dude I'm gonna bring it to one more story to try to wrap up the the winter 14er part, um, because I don't want that to take up the whole thing. I'm sure you want to talk about other things. And so the next. I guess those were really close to the final peaks. The final peak was pyramid.
Speaker 2:I didn't know so, like from the start of the project, I had no idea how the order was going to go.
Speaker 2:I was kind of just chasing weather windows, going where it seemed safer, like what might have been easier, less snowpack, all these different variables, right, and for whatever reason, pyramid ended up being the final peak of the project and I had this weird suspicion from the start, like, whatever the final peak is, not knowing what it was going to be at the time. It's probably going to be the hardest, it's going to give me the most challenge and I'm going to have to really work for it, like it's not going to just be some walk in the park mountain, even if it was a different mountain, like and that's just what I kind of do going into this whole thing was, nothing is going to be easy and the last one's definitely going to be the hardest. And so it was, and that's exactly how it went and I set out to do pyramid with andrew, dr john and um, one other dude who joined, and man. So, god, it's another long day and so many things happened. We all skinned in really early together from I don't even know what the ranch is called, but we skinned in really early to go up pyramid and it wasn't a great day, like as far as Abby, like we knew that the Northwest faces were loaded and like we would trigger things, like things would happen as far as avalanches, and they did, and so we get up on the ridge, finally, of the East face no the west face
Speaker 2:we get up on the, the west face, with the, the west bridge face, area, a pyramid, and we, uh, remote trigger, like a pretty large avalanche down some slope pretty close to us. It was like a remote trigger and we're like, yeah well, we knew that was gonna happen and it finally did. Uh, fortunately we were all in a pretty safe place and we realized that was going to be the case for the rest of the day. Dr John, another homeboy, ended up flipping around and going back down after a couple more couloir climbs. So we were it's not your typical, standard way of climbing pyramid we're going up a route that Andrew kind of knew and he's done a few times that he daily remembered. At the time it all worked out great. But you climb these different couloir systems and gullies to get over to, like, this big bowl area pyramid and going up, each one of those couloirs were northwest bases and so we knew they were all going to slide. We knew the danger was there.
Speaker 2:It was the last peak and andrew and I were like yeah, we're going to do this, like we're going to at least give it a good shot, right? So, like you know, we're doing a very not untraditional way of mitigating the avalanche terrain. Like, literally, I'm like scrambling up the side of the couloir on the rocks, while stomping my foot through the middle of the couloir to hopefully getting its trigger. Oh my god, um, and it it works. Like I again, not recommended by any means, but you know, scrambling on the side of this gular and then stomping through the middle of it hoping it'll flush it out, which did every single time, and that's how we mitigated most of the risk was like either we would be tied into a rope doing that or on the wall just doing it one at a time. The other guys would hang out behind a corner or whatever. And so, yeah, we're mitigating this terrain the whole way up. I mean, it's legit, like I think we've probably purposely triggered six avalanches just so we could make a way for us to go up the mountain. Um, and we get to, maybe about 500 feet below the mount, the summit.
Speaker 2:And that's when dr john, another homeboy, ended up flipping around and Andrew looks over at me. He's like, yeah, dude, we're going to do this. What do you mean? Because I was like kind of back and forth, like all right, I don't know if we should do this or not. He looks at me and says we're going to do this, but one thing we can't die. And I was like that that's yeah, that's perfect. We cannot die, that's just that can't happen. Could it happen? Yes, but we're not gonna let it happen and it just it's a few more hours to the summit from there and we're just like mitigating all this terrain and this big bowl, right, so we could see it from a distance. This big bowl, which has this like ramp feature where you go around hit the summit uh ridge from like thunder pyramid ridge is like your typical way of doing it in the winter, and it's a northwest facing bowl on that aspect, and we knew that was just not going to happen. There's no possibility that we're going to traverse under these mega loaded slopes, um, but we still went up there and check it out anyways, and it turns out that we were able to find a sneak through some random like cliff ridge it was fifth class, like mixed climbing and we found like a little sneak through this. Yeah, this, this cliff that brought us to the summit. We were on the southwest facing slope which was like super soft I mean probably borderline soft enough. We're walking through the soft snow, gain the cliff finally and find a sneak to the summit. And it was crazy, like andrew and I had just kind of said, yeah, we're gonna do it and make it happen. And that's what we did.
Speaker 2:We got to the summit and I just remember falling on my knees and I just couldn't believe that I was standing on the summit at the final peak of the project, like in all of this actually has happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I still have to get down safely, right, but like just looking through the alks with andrew right there next to me and just thinking, man, like we really just pulled this off on like a very not safe avalanche day, which again not recommended.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean it was just so hard to hard to believe and imagine that we were on top of pyramid together and yeah, we had a long way to go to get out. And you know, another really cool thing about it is there's a couple people that are following along the project and they were seeing it aspen that day and they actually snapped a photo of us on the summit. While we were on the summit, which was so cool, I mean, we get down this dude's like yeah, man, we got a picture of you guys on the summit. We're like what? Like that is so crazy. Um, but yeah, you know, it's just like again, the human experience being in a place again where I just lived, however many human experience lives over the course of this project, to kind of bring it to a, to an end of, yeah, I mean, I don't even know how to explain it, it's just, it's kind of just mind-boggling how it all unfolded, honestly.
Speaker 1:So crazy dude. Can you talk about? So one of the things I did want to before we leave the Winter 14ers just how supportive Andrew was of you chasing that project, and it seemed like he helped you in a lot of sections too, which is crazy he was very supportive.
Speaker 2:You know, at first I don't think I reached out to him until maybe halfway through the project. I just, I just I honestly don't reach out to people and ask much like for much information. I kind of just try to figure things out on my own for the most part, which that's changed a lot over the years. But, um, yeah, when I finally reached out and he was like super stoked I mean he followed along the project the entire way and he was really excited about it and just really wanted to do what he could to be a part of it. And so I met him on Longs.
Speaker 2:He joined me and Aaron for Longs and we were like man, you know, this is a guy that I, when I first moved to Colorado he's one of the first names you hear about in the 14ers and I was like I can't believe I'm climbing with this legend right now, like this guy is the 14ers guy, you know, like he is the guy and he's here with us, like because he wants to be, and so it was really rad, you know, to be able to share these experiences with him and have someone that's like him, so supportive, like him and andrea are supportive of everybody and like anything like if you're gonna go chase one of the records or need help for something that they've done before, they're gonna help you like they want.
Speaker 2:They want to help where they, and it's really cool to see and I think that's a huge piece of the community, you know, keeping communities strong, at least, and helping others achieve their goals. And so, yeah, andrew was just over the top supportive and like he really enjoyed being out, at least from what it seemed, like he really enjoyed being out there in the mountains, you know, with me and helping me break his record and like I don't think he would have it any other way, like he wanted to be there, he wanted that to happen and so it was cool. You know, we, we finished, uh, we finished pyramid and at the bottom I have my family waiting and some friends and like it was cool, like Andrew got to finish it up with me and he he gave me a lot of beta, honestly too. So like I did it and I started asking him questions, like once we finally got connected, you know, I started asking him stuff and he helped me out with so many different things.
Speaker 1:So very supportive, very helping person it's amazing, dude, yeah, and I I can't sing his praises enough and andrea as well. I've heard only just amazing things about them in the community. Yeah, um, all right, dude, let's. Let's talk a little bit about the summer fkt or, or sorry, the summer 14er project, and then after that I want to pivot to Nepal and Asia. Yeah, we don't have to talk too much about the summer effort, but, dude, you gave it one hell of a shot. So I'm just curious to see, like, are you going to go back and try it one day? Like, what's the plan? I've seen so many people try I think it was a drew francis and a few other people tried and not come close to what you, you know you put into it.
Speaker 2:So I'm just curious to well, it's funny, you know, drew's given it two really solid attempts. In his first attempt he made it further than I did. Um, he made it to the elks. His body was trashed just out of there. So he actually made it further than I did and I can't remember I think my splits were just a little bit faster than his um at the time definitely faster for the first half, I believe. But yeah, I think there's only like three people that have attempted it in the past four years.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's such a mega project, right? So, like the main reason, I wanted to give it a go, and will I give it a go again? I'll answer that too. You know I had this crazy opportunity of trying to be, or becoming the first person, and maybe the only person ever to do both the winter and the summer record in the same year, back to back, and so it was just like kind of this I have to at least try, type of mentality, whether I didn't put it, put the project together the way I needed to, but I knew I had to at least try, and so that's what I did. I tried, you know, I trained really hard prior to it, stacking like 40 to 50 K Burt a week leading into the project doing a lot of this with Aaron.
Speaker 2:You know we're both training for our own things. So a lot of training, and I had the van built out ready to rock. I put together a small crew. My younger brother came out to help and then my good friend Joseph came out to help and it was literally just us three. We didn't have anybody else on crew, although there are a few other people that came and helped out here and there. So, like our friend nick came out with some four wheelers at some point which helped a little bit. You know he helped with some cooking and some support and like mainly it was a two-person crew trying to do this like mega thing right where you know we're trying to do nine.
Speaker 2:My goal was sub nine days to break, take 21 hours off andrew's time and I was on pace to do that until I pulled out, um, but it all kind of fell apart from the start.
Speaker 2:You know like this is also one of my first really big endeavors as far as like having a crew and like logistics and all these things and so like I didn't really know what I was doing, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2:I mean I asked Andrew for a lot of advice and I slapped together this plan, like the logistic plan of like what you need to do to get to each mountain and get around, is pretty simple.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's like kind of one way to do it where you can alternate a few things to make it faster, but that's pretty simple. But, like you know, I pulled together two dudes that have never crewed before on anything, and so they're just just as new to it as me, and put them in this place where they're going to be mega sleep deprived. They're both driving vehicles. You know, one's driving a four wheel drive truck, one driving my van, you know, driving to different places to pick me up, and so, like it really failed, it really just didn't happen because I wasn't prepared, I didn't prepare my career the proper way, right, we gave it a hell of a shot and you know there's so many stories that happened over that four and a half days. Um, so many amazing things happened and you know, maybe I just just start from the beginning and just kind of dive in a little bit, I don't know how much you want to talk about it, but I'm here all night.
Speaker 2:I want to help tell your story, so you told me, as long as you want to do this yeah, I mean I've got, I've got no time limit. So, yeah, so you know we started out like I'm out in the Chicago Basin, I climb all four. I'm out there with my buddy Gabe, gabe the film guy. Do you know Gabe? No, he runs F4D Studios out of Golden Another really good friend. He helped make the film about my 400K back in the day.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so he was coming out to help film some of this stuff and you know we're planning on making a project out of it and still are. Um, and he joined me for the chicago basin, kind of came in and like captured, like you know, me getting ready to start the project and all these things. So I, I do it, I start the project, I pull out all four of the chicago basin and I can't remember the time, it was pretty fast. I mean, I was waiting for the train for like 30 minutes. I took my time getting down there. So, like, long story short, I could start later in the day. That's what I'm getting at. But, um, you know, I get on the train, I get to Silverton, my crew picks me up. This is the first time I'm seeing my crew in like 24 hours. And you know what I gave them was a list of foods, a list of things like a few locations of gas stations and like, okay, this is like your map. I gave them a cal topo of like directions of where you need to go to get to each place, like where you should be at each time, so like they had the basics right, but it wasn't structured in a way to where everything was just so broken down that they knew exactly what to make, exactly what to have ready for me, and so, like the first two days I don't think I really had any cooked food like so I was bonked by day one. I mean, I I finished the san juans in less than two days because I was at calabra in 48 hours.
Speaker 2:But I remember, on wetterhorn, going over to uncapagre, you know, I was just so bummed and I was literally crawling up the bounce into uncapagre, like I don't think I ever moved this slow in my life and everything was going well, like I had already climbed four, seven, eight, eight of the peaks, nine, ten, eleven of the peaks prior to this. And so, like I'm like 11 peaks deep, you know, or 12 peaks deep, trying to get up to uncapagre, and I'm like crawling, I can't even believe it. You know, I've had like almost no food besides, like gels and bars and these things that just you can't do that for an effort like this. And so it fell apart from the start really, and we were just kind of trying to like glue pieces together and keep the wheel spinning the whole way. Um, and finally, eventually I started getting food like I would have like a backpacker meal ready for me every time. I got back and like it was great but like it wasn't what I needed and so I learned all these things.
Speaker 2:Sure, but yeah, you know, it was this crazy project where I kind of just threw myself out there. You know, I made it to Calabria in time, the whole like 12 hours going to Calabria, like San Luis. I remember stressing out so hard in the middle of the night trying to climb San Luis and get back in time so I can make it to the gate Calabria at the right time, because you know you have to be there what 6.00 AM or something, and they won't let you in later. I mean, there is some flexibility depending on who you are. I'm not saying names, but yeah, you know it's like, well, I was told I have to be there and I can't be late, and so like that was the goal I have to be there, I have to get what 14 of the peaks finished and get all the declaver in 48 hours and I made it. And I made it with like 10 minutes to spare, so not a lot of time, um, but my crew busted their ass to make that happen too, like my brother put his truck, his tacoma, through the ringer on some of these four wheel drive roads to get me down them and get me back in the van where I could rest a little bit. Now it's just like this crazy mix of you got people driving here and moving these things, you got to have food and calories and all these different aspects moving and it's it's too much for a two-man crew to do properly. And so, first off, huge shout out to them for just like hopping into the ringer with me and just getting absolutely wrecked. Because they got wrecked and so did I. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's kind of how it started. So I get down calabra.
Speaker 2:I remember this is where nick popped into the story, my friend nick carroll. Um, he came down with his van and his four wheelers to help out with some stuff. I remember I call him when I'm coming down to Calabria. I'm like hey man, can you get me a shake from Sonic? I just need like a large. I forget the flavor. I need a large shake.
Speaker 2:When I get down and I get down and my crew is gone and he is there, for whatever reason, he sent my crew to go to Sonic when I asked him to get it for me and I would just, like you know, been awake for over 48 hours like couldn't believe that, oh my god, my crew isn't here with me, like I don't have my crew, I don't have my vehicle to lay in and like sleep in and, worst of all, I didn't have my milkshake so I had to tune a sandwich instead and it just kind of set this weird, weird mood for the rest of the day and like I didn't have because I was using the shake to get a bunch of calories down, um, and I didn't have it, and so it kind of like set things back and doing that that was right. Before I went and did uh lindsey, which I didn't actually do, but I did do it, I don't really care. Um, little bear, uh, uh little bear. Blanca and Ellingwood, and so that group you know I'm coming to that one again Calorically Deposite, which is going to be a part of this project like this, and it's such a hard day, like it was my first time doing these in the summer, and so like going up and down Little Bear's Hourglass was just absolutely heinous.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember I was in there like midnight by myself in the middle of the night just climbing up this mountain with like cart and that ain't a car size but like like a stove size boulders just rolling down. I stepped on the wrong place. I'm like man, if someone was below me like they would be fucking dead. And so I was really glad to be there in the middle of the night by myself, but like not a place you want to be, and like I didn't like it very much. And I remember coming down the road uh, what is that road called? What is that como road? Yeah, lake como. That road is the worst. Man, I had rained like three times in the past. I remember how bad it was, but after you've been moving for like 60 hours, that thing sucks.
Speaker 2:Like I was just cussing and going nuts, like I was just throwing a fit, just an absolute temper tantrum, which was, you know, this is part of the human experience sometimes. I guess it wasn't fun and that's what I signed up for. And at one point I realized, ok, this is what I'm here for, so like I can throw a fit or not. And I still did, but it didn't get any better. It honestly probably made it worse and it was just this long, hard project of kind of that circle, uh like a rotation of like really good things happening and then it kind of just going down the shitter and like I think that's how big projects go and that's like you know something I learned, uh, as far as like a mindset to bring into these next things. But yeah, god, then that was only like two and a half days in, so like there's a whole another two days, I remember.
Speaker 2:After that we're taking a nap. Me and the team were like, okay, we're all, we're all tired. They haven't slept for two and a half days either. I've been awake for two and a half days climbing mountains and like we're all tired. So we're like, okay, we'll do a 30 minute nap. And I wake up an hour and a half or two hours later, just like absolutely out of my mind.
Speaker 2:I had no idea where I was, didn't know what was going on, but I realized that we overslept the alarm by like a decent significant amount, like over an hour past what we were planning on, and so like I just went into this weird, like frantic mode of like what is happening? Like are they that messed up too to where, like we just kind of like dropped the ball in the entire project and it was god. It was so crazy to experience that after being awake for so long. You know it's, it's hard because, again, like I didn't set my career up for success, I didn't set myself up for success, and we were just trying to do this big thing and see if it would work. And you know, I'm in, I'm in this place where God like yeah, I haven't slept, they haven't slept and, like we just way overslept our alarm clock. No one even said an alarm clock. They expected me to set the alarm clock, for whatever reason, is what the case was. I'm like guys, I, I'm running a mountains Like this is not my job.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like come on now.
Speaker 2:Um, but things made a turn, so like right after that I I met up with Dr John. Um, I don't know if you know Dr John, but Dr, John, I actually had broken arrow.
Speaker 2:He's a friend. I know there's mixed feelings with him about in the community but he's a good friend and I like the guy a lot. Um, he joined me for um, what are those? Like the, the creststones, and um, kit carson, challenger and humbles. We did all five together like a big link up. He joined me for all five of those and by the end of it, um, I was back on top ready to rock and roll. My buddy, gabe the film guy, got my crew back together and they started actually cooking meals and having things ready and we were in this cycle of everything is going great, everything is perfect. We're back at it.
Speaker 2:It started off for a really rough three days. Nothing was really going the way it should have gone and now we're actually kind of clicking and figuring it it out and it went well for about 24 hours and then I remember going at princeton after doing pikes and then antero and chavano and tabawash. It just keeps going. It's like pretty much you have an hour ish of rest in between each of these peaks, like there's not really any sleep. I mean it's kind of just laid out and hopefully you get a little bit of rest and then get up and keep going for nine days, um, and it was like four days in I'm climbing princeton, making good time. I'm like I think I'm going faster than I've ever done it before, ever and I started coughing up blood, um, so I didn't really know what was going on. Like I knew what hate was like, I know what hate is, what it is and all that kind stuff, and I started messaging around to some friends and nurses that I knew and they were all like you've got hate, like you need to get down and whatever, whatever. So they started this. Like there's this big like fear-mongering thing happening. And, honestly, my body was fine, like I didn't have any issues at the time. I just had to just cough up a little blood, which is not great, I'm not saying it's okay, but you know, everybody was telling me to stop. For the most part, andrew and Andrea were like nah, you'll be fine, just keep going. And, for whatever reason, I didn't listen to the legends you know we went down to. I should have just listened to them. No-transcript, even though I was coughing up blood, which wasn't a ton of blood, people were really concerned and yeah, that's why I pulled out, honestly, and I thought I had hate and honestly I don't think it was hate at all because I've done these crazy things at 8 000 meters without oxygen and never had any issues.
Speaker 2:I think what it was was just overuse and like literally just you know, breaking my body down and would I have gotten worse over the next four days? Probably, I mean more than likely, wouldn't have gotten better, right, but like yeah, it kind of just it really put a stop to the project. And it's sad because, like you know, it wouldn't start the way it should have gone, like I should have put it together better, should have, could have, would have right. But it's sad and it's not. And it's beautiful because now it's put this perspective on me to where I know I can do it, like I know I have the physicality to do it, I know I can make and put together like a proper support team and make it happen.
Speaker 2:It's just when and like right now where I'm at in life, like I had these opportunities to go to the Himalayas, do these things and like travel the world and climb these big mountains, like you know, chase these other dreams that I've had for a long time. So it's been hard for me to like balance, putting something like this on the calendar again to where I can give it a shot. Um, I do want to go back and, do you know, give it a go, and I want to and I want to see it through and realize that dream I think it will have. I know it's going to happen at some point. It's just a matter of when, and it's probably not going to be this summer, if I'm being honest, and it it may or may not be next summer because I have another huge project I'm gearing up for, so it's like it's gonna take some time yeah it's gonna take time you can be older and still do it like it's not, like it's right you have to do in your.
Speaker 1:You know at any point in time in your 30s like you could easily go do it in your 40s maybe a little bit slower, but like, well, yeah, I mean, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I don't know. You know Andrew did it in his forties, so so it's like and yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I think you have plenty of time, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I think the mindset at the time when I pulled out of the project because of the blood and the stuff is like, well, you know, maybe I do go, maybe I do finish, but maybe I destroy my body where I can't keep doing these things for another 10 or 15, 20 years the way I want to, and that was kind of the mindset. It was like this will be here, but if I destroy myself and actually get hurt or injured, like you know, messed up like maybe it won't be here, so that you know it's there, it'll be there. It's a mega project. I mean it's probably the hardest FKT peak bagging project out there. I mean I don't know anything harder. I mean there's just so many aspects to it and there's definitely not a lot of people that have what it takes to even like give it a go. Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we haven't seen too many people try since you, man. It's been interesting. Every now and then in the summer someone will spray a little bit and be like I'm gonna go do it, and they'll try to put together a group and never pull it off.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't know, I might not be touched for a long time yeah, so it's interesting I don't see it being touched.
Speaker 2:You know it's like, yeah, there's a lot of aspects you gotta have, you gotta be willing to put in like five grand minimum into the whole thing, and that's like doing it on a very cheap, low-end budget, like when android andrea did their thing last year. They had atvs and vehicles and vans and you know I guarantee you like their friends came to help them but like it still costs money, right, I mean, you know, putting gas and all those things and feeding all these people, yeah, it's, it's a lot, it's a, it's a big project yeah, it's crazy, man, I dude.
Speaker 1:Thank you for breaking both of them down like I. I don't. I mean, I haven't heard it described and you know from you personally like in such an eloquent way. So it's like it's cool to be able to, you know, have it like, have the story told, which is pretty dope. Yeah, man, so I appreciate that. Um, yeah, of course, let's talk. Let's talk himalaya. I think that's the, the ending capstone that I want to go, like what you're. We'll talk future plans for the himalaya as well, but I want to talk about what you've been up to, like amadablam, and I probably just really butchered the pronunciation of that.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's how's how you pronounce it, did I get it.
Speaker 1:Oh man, all right, I'll let you take it away from here, but I'm so curious to hear what you've been doing in the Himalaya with Tyler.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So I met Tyler through Jason Jason Hardrath, good friend, you know. I joined him for the Atacama stuff. I'm the host of Salado, you about that, so I won't go into too much detail. But long story short, he put me in touch with tyler and you know tyler was gearing up to go to the himalaya for his second expedition or third, something like that, and I met tyler on the atacama as well. So I joined him for another atacama trip.
Speaker 2:We clashed, everything was great, you know. We, you know, had a good time together and our styles are very similar. And so he invited me to come to the himalaya and I was like sick, like I can't believe I'm getting invited to go on an 8,000 meter expedition. Like less than a year after I did the winter 14ers, like you know, my dream was I want to climb 8,000ers, I want to do these big mountains. I didn't expect it to be so fast, like literally within a year, I was in the Himalaya. It was insane, like even think that things can move that fast. But tyler and I teamed up, we joined together to attempt a speed record on lotse um, that was kind of the main goal for the spring himalayan expedition um, we failed miserably on all of our objectives. So we were planning to do pamori, lotse and then, if things went well, try makalu as Lou as well. For for records and long story short, we didn't summit any of those. We did summit Island Peak and La Boche, some smaller, 6,000 or so.
Speaker 2:I got a couple of Himalayan summits under my belt and we spent like six or seven weeks up in Himalaya, our Everest base camp and, long story short, there it's like base camp sucks. I hate that place Honestly. It's like it's beautiful First off, it's amazing, but like it's a hard place to live. Living at 17 plus thousand feet is not easy and like you just can't really train. Like we were still training more than anybody else out there, but like you just can't train and recover, like come down and, like you know, recover to go do it again the next day, and so it's a different lifestyle and I'm not a big fan of it honestly. Um, at least not the everest base camp, like some of the other base camps I've been to, have been great. I've enjoyed it a lot. Like even just going down 2 000 feet makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:So yeah, first spring, first himalayan season, was kind of a botch. We, uh, we showed up with these big aspirations pulled out. Nothing didn't make a single thing happen. Besides, you know, some training days, and it was a good experience. You know we learned a lot. Um, we learned, you know what our limits were and, like, how to be safe about our limits, and like we learned how to you know mesh with each other and make good decisions as teammates. Um, like, for example, you know, our lots of attempts.
Speaker 2:We turned around at camp one because when we were climbing through the ice fall and the camp one, we got caught in a whiteout blizzard and the tracks were covered. Like you couldn't see any of the tracks from the past, you couldn't see the ropes, you couldn't see the crevasses, and so you know, we're walking in this whiteout, in this crevassed, glacial, uh, ice field, where you take the wrong step you're gonna fall into a, into a crevasse, probably not get pulled out. One, because it's the middle of the night and there's nobody out there. And two, because we're traveling so light that we're not carrying all that kind of extra stuff. We're planning on following the ropes that are set for us to get up the mountain. That was the idea. And so, yeah, you know, weather hit and we turned around and tucked our tails behind her, behind her legs, and ran down the mountain and got out of there. It was just this big, epic failure and it was still rad. It was an awesome experience and I wouldn't have had it any other way, honestly. But you know, fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 2:Tyler and I rejoined together. We head back to the Himalaya for my second season and whatever season it was for him for monoslu. His goal was to climb monoslu, set a speed record and mine was to ski it. So I went out there with the intention to skiing it. I brought my ski boots, my skis, all my goods, all that stuff and I didn't have skiing it. Long story short, but I was able to summit it and it was this crazy thing.
Speaker 2:So, like monoslu is the eighth highest mountain in the world, it's a little bit easier than like Lhase and Everest and some of the others. It's not the easiest but it's easier. You know they're all. When you're climbing a fixed route, it's all pretty simple. You just follow the rope and if you have the strength to get up it, you can get up it. I mean, I'm not saying it's like super hard by any means, but there's other aspects that make it hard. It's like the altitude, for example. So you know, going to prior to this, prior to the Monaslu, the highest I had been was 7,300 meters, which is right around 24,000 feet, I think. People that don't do the old meter meter metric system.
Speaker 2:So we're, you know, we're on Monaslu're, we're there for a couple weeks, we're only there for like three weeks. Man, it was a short season, really epic. We fly straight into the valley, hike up to minaslu base camp, which is at like 15 000 feet, um, much lower than ever space camp. It's a place where you can actually like kind of run around, go up, go down on trails and, you know, not come back to base camp feeling like you're about to die and it's hard to live, and so it was a little bit more enjoyable being at Manassas Base Camp. It was great. Sherpas are nice, we got great cooks, great food. Dawa Steven over at Asia Trekking, he's the man, we love that guy. So good things all around.
Speaker 2:But to get into the climb, we broke our climbs into different days. So you know, we trained together. We carried heavy loads up to camp one, then to camp three with, you know, our big mountain, high mountain gear just in case we need it, ended up not needing it, so we carried like 40 pounds of gear each for almost no reason, to camp three, which is right around 6600 meters, um, so that's like 22,000 feet or so, um, and that was like a pretty good acclimation day. You know, we had only been up to 5,800 meters prior to that and so we kind of just started jumping.
Speaker 2:Tyler and I go at this different. We do things differently as far as acclimating. We have never slept up high. We have never done like your traditional go to camp one, sleep, go to camp to sleep, go to camp three, come down. We've never done that. What we do is because we're able to enroll a bit faster than most people, as we go up as high as we can or where we're planning for the day, touch that maybe, hang out there for a few hours and then come back down, and that's how we go about acclimating. Because spending nights up at those altitudes, Honestly I don't think it helps, unless it's, unless you just have to, like some people, that's just their only option, right, but like for us it's not. So we try to get up high fast and get back down. That's how we animated um.
Speaker 2:A couple days after that I went up to 7 000 meters carrying my skis. I stashed my skis around 7,100 meters and the reason I turn around is because I was wearing, like some, lightweight boots not 8K, not 6K boots like some I can't even remember just like regular trail runners or something ridiculous and it was a really, really cold, windy day. So I stashed my skis much lower than I was expecting. I was planning on bringing them to camp four, which is like 700 meters below the summit, 2,100 feet below the summit, and so my whole thing was kind of stretched out a little differently, like I didn't have my skis where I wanted them. I didn't have them where I needed them to be, so it changed plans for me and I ended up getting sick again. Right after that. I got a stomach bug, so it put me in bed for a few days.
Speaker 2:Tyler went up for his last acclimation day, which actually ended up being his summit day. Um, he was going to go to camp four to acclimate and pulled out the record on that same day, went to the summit in like nine hours and 50 something minutes from the base, which is like 12 000 feet of climbing um, all the way up to 26 800 feet or something like that. Um, I can't remember the exact numbers. So, yeah, you know, like I wake up from being sick and tyler just smashed the record by like three hours, I'm like, oh wow, I thought it was supposed to be a vaccination day for him. He went from 6600 meters, not going any higher than that prior, straight to 8200 meters. So, like it goes to show that the way that we're acclimating it works for certain people, and it worked for me too, like when I, before I did my summit push, I only gone to 71 and I went a thousand plus meters higher than that for my summit push. Um, so let's dive into that a little bit.
Speaker 2:I guess you know the idea behind the way that, like, our style is to go base camp to summit and not stop and sleep on the way, just kind of go up, get down, and that's what we did, and that's what he did and that's what I did as well, but separately. No support on the mountain doing everything ourselves besides following the fixed ropes which, if I'm being honest, the fixed ropes is a huge piece of support. Like I wouldn't say it's not because what the what those guys do on those mountains is it's big time and it helps out so much with anybody climbing and I won't take that away from that. And personally, I don't even know if I, if my like real mountain, um the vibe is using fixed ropes in the future. I just don't know how I feel about it yet. Um.
Speaker 2:So anyways, um, I get up to my skis after pushing for however many hours and I'm carrying my skis from 71 up and during the summit push. You know I'm carrying these heavy ass skis. For whatever reason, I don't have my super light skis. I don't know why. And um, I'm moving too slow, you know. I I realize that the speed that I'm moving up this mountain, it's going to put me at the summit right around sunset and I'm not too keen on coming down an 8 000 meter mountain by myself at sunset with skis and probably not enough warm gear, like again, I'm traveling light.
Speaker 2:I was on the summit of Manaslu with, like your regular sun hoodie and a windbreaker on. Wow, that's crazy, insane, it's crazy. It's like it doesn't make any sense. And so I don't have the 8,000 meter suit with me, I don't have AK boots, I don't have any of the stuff that's going to help me survive through the night if I want to or if I have to.
Speaker 2:Because, you know, our idea is to get up and get down fast and you know, I know myself and like my abilities well enough to where, if something isn't happening right and I need to get down, I can get down to wherever I need to fast enough.
Speaker 2:And part of that, like intuition, was, hey, I need to drop my skis here at camp four and go to the summit without them, and so unfortunately I didn't get to ski the summit.
Speaker 2:I carried my skis all the way up the mountain almost to do no skiing at all, and it's like, okay, well, maybe it's just a big training, weight training day for the future, but you know it's kind of a bummer, but it didn't really matter that much to me at the point and it still doesn't. It's like I dropped those skis and summit around 4 30 pm and I was the only person on the summit of minaslu at that time of day and there was no wind, it was perfectly still. I hadn't seen a person in like three hours and I'm on the eight highest mountain in the world by myself, with no oxygen and just hanging out and like perfect weather like I'm talking, probably warmer. I mean, it was so warm I could can't even express to you what it's like being up that high and feeling like you're in colorado in the spring or something um what that's.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, literally. I mean like the average person listening to this is thinking like are anybody climbing a mountain that high? Like you said, 8 000 meter suits you're in you know one of these life suits, basically that's so hard to think. You're like in a hoodie and a and a. Uh, you know a light jacket that's bananas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just absolutely perfect weather. You know, it's like I'm wearing like, oh, just a regular old Gore-Tex pant, like nothing too special, like just your average hiking van, which, again, this is not recommended for your typical average person because, yeah, it's just not, for obvious reasons, right so, but yeah, it's insane to even think that that's even a possibility. You know, I think that both tyler and I, and others as well, are in this position of being able to like kind of change the style of climbing these big mountains. Like tyler did that trail runners he went to the summit of monastu and trail runners um, so like, if that speaks volumes to anything, it's like these mountains are being climbed in a way to where you know, like the majority of people are climbing the mountain, in the way to where you have to have these things, because they're just too slow to be up there in the first place, to, you know, not have that gear. Like you have to have it for most people, because most people are just too slow for it, which is not a problem. I mean that to each their own right. But you know, for us we're like, yeah, we're fast and light, like we're not gonna carry all the shit that we don't need, because it just makes you slower and in return, if you're slower, you need more stuff. And so it turns into this like rocket fuel effect, right where it's like okay, now I'm slower, I have to stop here, so I need more stuff so I can stop there, and then so on, so forth. Um, but it's crazy. You know, it's like going from this climbing all the 14ers in colorado in the winter to standing on top of my first 8 000 meter peak by myself.
Speaker 2:Um, in like perfect weather. Yeah, it's a, it's a feeling it's it's impossible to describe. I mean, I guess you could just say a human experience is all there is to it. I remember just crying and I was able to get a phone call down to my parents and I was able to get a phone call from the summit through the radios to my parents. Ollie in Texas Talked to them for a short amount of time. I was able to send a message to Aaron from up there. Crazy, I mean, yeah, it's so wild dude. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, yeah, it's so wild dude. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. And but you know it wasn't, it wasn't easy by any means.
Speaker 2:It was so damn hard Like it was.
Speaker 2:It was hard, but like it was still easier than I thought it was going to be. I, you know, I went into this mindset of like this is going to be like impossible Once I get to the death zone. It's going to be impossible to keep moving. It's going to be impossible to keep moving. It's going to be so slow. And yeah, it was slow like, and I was moving at 150 to 200 meters an hour, which is like 600 plus feet or so, not even, and you know it's slow, but like it was never to the point where I was thinking, man, this is like actually like super, super damn hard. Like, yeah, it is hard, like it's, it's incredibly hard. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done at the time, but like it was much easier than I envisioned it in my head which I think is a good thing to do is like to purposely envision to making these objectives harder. And when you go to them and they're actually easier, it's like, oh well, I'm gonna keep doing that, so I keep tricking myself and make these things easier, but I mean, in reality, it's like it's still damn, it's really hard, like it's.
Speaker 2:I remember coming down the mountain like in the middle of the night and I was just out of it like I was so jacked by the time I got to camp three. I ended up laying down for a few hours at camp three and like I was crawling into camp like just destroyed. But again, like you know, you hear so many people talk about, you know, getting to the summit to one thing, getting down to another and honestly, getting down was way harder than it was getting up getting to the summit. It was hard, but like it wasn't like okay, well, probably do it again if I wanted to, but getting down was really tough. So yeah, crazy experience, man.
Speaker 1:That's wild dude. Let me ask you this real quick and I don't want to pivot too hard, but I'm just curious like physiology perspective, like when you're that high and you stay that high for that long and then you come back to like sea level or even like Colorado, do you feel like a God when you run? Like does it feel super easy? Like how does it cause I've never I think the highest I've ever been is just like a little over 14 000 feet. For what albert? Like that's so bananas to think that like you're almost double that and then you come back like what does that feel like?
Speaker 2:there's definitely benefits to it. You know it's kind of a two-way street, because one you're not training as much as you would be up there as you are down here, so you come back a little less fit. So it kind of like correlates to itself, like you're not as fit but you're way more acclimated, so things are easier. Your body is able to process more oxygen, so it's much easier to do things. But if you're not fit you still can't do it right, right, right, and the power.
Speaker 1:And then there's the power generation. Right, like you can't generate power as quickly that high, so like if you were to try and do something fast down low. It's like, it's like a trade-off, right.
Speaker 2:It's just interesting, yeah, yeah yeah, I think the way to do it is you need to go into the himalayas, like, like, if you're trying to do these big objectives, you have to go. They really, really fit and then understand that you're probably going to lose a little bit. You could maybe, you know, kind of do what we did and hold on to a lot of it prior to your objective, but at the end of the day, when you leave the himalaya, if you're going up to these high altitudes, you're probably going to be less fit than you were when you got there, and that's just how it goes. And so, yeah, it's hard to say like superhuman, yeah, like altitude, all that stuff's super easy. But yeah, it translates across the board right what's it like having tyler as a partner?
Speaker 1:just because like I mean Just because Tyler's reputation precedes him in the fact that he comes from a track and field background, the dude is just a freak athlete. Not saying that you're not, you're obviously a freak athlete as well. But what is that like working with him from a partnership perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it's interesting. He's five years older than me, so he's got a few years on me and he's been doing it much longer. Yeah, you, you know he's five years older than me, so he's got a few years on me and he's been doing it much longer. Yeah, you wouldn't ever guess. By just looking at him, he definitely looks younger than that. You're welcome, tyler, for listening to this. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, he is obviously a world class athlete. He's mega fast, I mean, one of the fastest dudes I've ever met and fastest guy I've ever ran around with. So chasing him up and down the mountains is it's not easy. Like I am not his speed and I won't even act like I am. And could I be his speed, I believe. So I believe in five or six years that I could be at that level and I could be doing the things that he's doing at his caliber of speed, and I think it's possible and I think that's one of the really interesting parts about a relationship.
Speaker 2:It's like he comes from this background, like you just mentioned, but also as a coach and has coached so many athletes to do amazing things, and just being able to pick his brain and, like you know, ask him about his training and like how he goes about living and like what he does to you know what he's done to get to the point where he's at. It's been very helpful, you know. It's changed my entire way of training, the way I go about approaching mountains and my objectives. Um, I'm a lot more focused into doing like work, both indoor and outdoor, that is going to be more beneficial to my objectives, rather than just going and playing in the mountains, which, first off, that's great. I love just going and playing in the mountains. But when you have these goals of trying to become the best in something, you know you have to do things that other people aren't doing and you get to do more of it. And so, you know, I've been trying to learn how to structure all this and he's helped a lot with that, and so it's been really cool to have him kind of as a mentor in the world of really just trying to become more elite, you know, become more fat, you know, just to get faster, get more fit and do all these things and you know, beyond that, it's it's cool.
Speaker 2:You know he's a funny dude. We get along really well. We laugh a lot, we, we talk a lot of shit and it's just great Like we have a good time together and it's never a dull moment, um, good guy to be around, really easy to talk to, and you know he's just down to earth. So, yeah, I love him man he's. He's a good dude.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to doing more stuff with him. He's helped me in numerous ways, you know, whether it's sponsorship stuff or just teaching me. You know how to train more properly, and so I think our strengths are different. Like I think I'm more comfortable with the very quote unquote scary stuff like exposed, doing big things on the mountains that don't involve speed. Exposed, doing big things on the mountains that don't involve speed. Um, and he's better at being fast, like when we, when we team up on certain projects, like big Himalayan stuff. You know we do our training days together because he knows and I know that I'm more comfortable in the hard and scary stuff and you know he's faster. So, like we, we balance each other out in those ways and so we're able to help each other in those aspects, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, okay, and that answers exactly what I was kind of thinking like the way it would work out with the dynamic. That's cool, man. I couldn't imagine having a better partner. That's dope he's a good dude, dude and shout out he's a La Sportiva teammate of mine, even though I've never met him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, a teammate of mine, even though I've never met him yeah, I gotta meet him at some point in time, but anyway, you should um. Yeah, we gotta have him on um. Where was I going with this? Alma de blom? What? Yeah, talk to me about that. I want to hear all about this record because you have two route variations, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2:Two route variation fkts on that yeah, so actually I took down tyler's uh route from the base uh ping boat j, which is the village at the very bottom of the mountain, to the summit back. Well, to the summit and to the summit back. So I took down tyler's record. Um, yeah, it was kind of this crazy experience. So I that was like one of my main goals going into this trip. After monoslu, you know, we spent I forget how long six weeks for the kubu running around doing different things, and a lot of that I actually spent sick. I got sick probably three times throughout that six weeks, whether it was a stomach bug or whatever, and it kind of put a damper on my training and so prior to Amidabom, I hadn't gone up. Amidabom is right below 6,900 meters and so, like prior to my attempt, I hadn't gone above 6,000 meters. In almost three weeks the highest I'd been was like 58 and I wasn't able to train. Like my plan was to go to amitabh, spend like maybe 10 days or so kind of going up and down the route learning it, um, doing the things I needed to do to learn it. You know, going to the summit and going to camp three and camp two and all these things. Right. Well, I got sick again and it pretty much took out all those plans. Like my only training day on amitabh was me carrying all gear that I needed to self-support myself at camp one and I went up there and I dropped that stuff off. I was with tyler and erin that day and that's the only training I did on amitabh. It was kind of a bummer. Like my plan was to go in and like maybe run it five and a half hours up or whatever, or six hours up and like take off a good chunk of time, and it just didn't happen. I wasn't acclimated, I was sick. I showed up to the starting line. I still pulled it off and it was incredible Like I was stoked to be able to do what I did under like the circumstances, but it wasn't, it wasn't the full deal. Like I could go back and I could shave off hours and I know I could, and so it's kind of one of these things where, like maybe I'd be open to trying it again, but like, yeah, it was cool, I mean it was fun, it was an interesting experience, you know, again tying in the human experience to this one specific one, it's like, you know, being sick and like like not being able to train for your objective and still being able to pull it off kind of speaks a lot to I feel like speaks a lot to my capabilities, and that's where I'm like, hey, man, I just need to be enabled, you know so.
Speaker 2:But it's a rowdy mountain, I mean I think it's nine and a half thousand feet vert from the bottom straight up and like less than 11 or 12 miles round trip. So super steep route, super fun, and yeah, it's kind of an ass kicker, I mean, especially when you're not acclimated and you're not prepared for it like the way you wanted to be. You know, going above camp one, I had never been. I guess let me take that back. I had been up to almost camp two in the spring with tyler. Um, long story short, we didn't summit. Um, it's kind of just a training, acclimation day, and so I had never seen anything above that.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of pretty legit terrain. Again, it's all roped, so like if you can jumeir yourself up the mountain, that's, I mean, you have to, unless you're like a legit alpine climber, which is kind of the way I'd like to climb it in the future. So yeah, you know, like not knowing what to expect on the mountain played a big role. Being sick played a big role. Not having the support I need to play a big role. But still pulled it off.
Speaker 2:It was, yeah, it was rad.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't want to like downplay it by any means, and it's hard to talk it up to where it should be, just because I know what my capabilities are like, what I could actually do on that mountain, and so, yeah, and then coming down it, coming down it, it's kind of a shit show, like you had to plan it so perfectly because there's so many like places where you can get caught up in groups and if you get caught behind a group, getting around people in some of these groups, it's like you have to go off rope where you have like a 5,000-foot drop to your left and be comfortable enough to put it around somebody, clip it in and not get kicked off the mountain.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's ways to be safer, but if you're moving fast and light, it's like you want to do it a certain way and I got caught in several trains. I remember standing in one spot for like 45 minutes on the way down waiting for these people to get down with the uh gray gully or something like that. So yeah, I mean I probably lost two plus hours just waiting around on the descent. So again, there is so much time to take off of that record and yeah, I mean I'm stoked and I'm proud of what I did with circumstances, but it's like, yeah, there's just a lot of meat on that bone.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it, man, dude, what? All right. So I gotta ask the question. I know you in, I know you're not gonna give me too much just because I wouldn't, but like, what is next? Like, what is that? What is the where's this leading? Like, where are we going here? Are we going to everest? Like what, what's the plan?
Speaker 2:yeah, man. So I signed up for my first 100 mile race, did you? Um, yeah, it's gonna be right, it's gonna be rowdy. Um, I will announce it when it comes. Okay, and then after that I'm going back to himalaya for another big project. So I will be re-attempting lotse, uh, going for the speed ascent by myself.
Speaker 2:Tyler will be on everest, which I don't even know if I'm supposed to say that or not. I don't think it matters. But, um, yeah, maybe so, and so we're going to be attempting records on those. And then there's a big project around that. I'm not going to talk too much about it because I don't know if I'm supposed to, but there's a really big, really cool project around this whole next himalayan expedition in the spring, and it's gonna be sick, like after the, after the spring. If we chat again, I'll fill you in on more details. But, yeah, and or once we get off the phone, but it's gonna be rad, um, it's gonna be really cool. And then aaron's also gonna be there going for amitabh.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, this spring it'll be a big season of sending it out in the himalayas one more time, um, trying to do some cool things. And, you know, go back for what we missed um list lat or you know, a year ago. All I can say so that's the next big, big ish thing. It's pretty big. Um. The really big thing I have coming up in the future is this mountain project that I'm working on with jason hardrath. You know I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I'll tell you what it is and what it'll kind of look like at some point. There are 106 000 meter peaks in the andes and nobody has climbed all of them.
Speaker 2:They've all been climbed but nobody's climbed the entire list okay so my idea is to go and do that, and whether it works out the way I plan probably won't happen, but you know there's a lot of aspects into it and I'm happy to talk more about it, and I think it's one of those things to where I would rather talk more about it once we get closer to it, because you know I'm still working on putting this project together, but it's going to be this pretty much just mega mountain project, all about 6,000 meters, 100 peaks, and nobody's done it, and there's a lot of really, really, really hard peaks and some of those have only been climbed once or twice, and so there's a lot of different logistic aspects that go into it. And yeah, I guess you're really hearing it here first because I haven't announced it or said anything about it.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what I'll give you.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, dude, you got some serious goals bro. Oh my God, here I am like, oh, I'm going to run the Cirque series this year, and then I hear all this, like dude, aaron and others is like it never used to be possible to pursue these goals without being like, having to be like a dirt bag, if you will like, like bare minimum, scraping by no sponsorships, and if you are, it's like very little. But now it's like I'm not saying like it's like you know, jim Walmsley, level money, but like I'm. What I am saying is like you guys are able now to it's a different world, like you can have a career doing this, and you know for however long it is, which I find to be very interesting. And I feel like it's this new frontier, if you will, of these athletes pursuing like yourself, like Aaron, like others pursuing these big objectives in the mountains, um more so on the FKT and speed record.
Speaker 1:Tyler's a great example as well. I'm so happy that Sportiva brought him on and he's been able to do what he's been able to do. So it's just interesting to me I don't know if you could speak more to that what your thoughts are as far as that goes. Am I missing the mark or what are your thoughts on?
Speaker 2:that You're pretty close. I mean it's interesting, right. Like there are people making a lot of money and I know what some people are making doing these things, and like there are people making a lot of money, like more than your average American, to do this kind of stuff. And you know, I'm not. I'm not at that point.
Speaker 2:When I first started out and got my first contract with Rab, I still had a lot of money saved. Like I put away a bunch of money just so I could kind of go chase this for some time and I don't have that money anymore. Like I've literally spent all the money I've had saved and put it into this lifestyle in hopes of getting to the point to where it'll like actually support me. And I'm getting closer. You know, like I'm stoked to be where I'm at and it's growing every year, and so I'm close to being able to do the things that I want to do. But it's not to the point, like some of these products that I have, they're so big and so like quote unquote impossible without the right amount of funding and the people behind it that there's no way I could do some of my goals without proper sponsorship. And even with proper sponsorship, I'm not saving any money, um. So I'm hoping that's going to change in the next couple years, like I think some of these bigger projects are going to change that for my life and things are already starting to change. But if I'm being honest, I'm putting all of my money back into this lifestyle right now and I'm trying to like shift that. So, like the next few years is trying to shift that to where I can like not only, you know, do this lifestyle, but build it into more than just, hey, me going and playing in the mountains, you know. So, like you know, I've started doing different things, like with Tyler's company, coaching and guiding. So I joined him on guiding trips and I do a little bit of coaching on the side as well. I've also dabbled in photography over the past year and a half, and so you know these are different aspects that I'm starting to work into my, my expeditions, adventures, whatever you want to call it, and it helps. Like you know, half of my, half of my income for the year as of right now is from photography and again, it's not like maybe not half, I would say a little more than a third, but it kind of puts it on perspective right.
Speaker 2:Like I'm not able to do these things without proper sponsorship and if I'm being honest man, you know I've had, I've been fortunate to have my family being willing to support me in a lot of aspects of my life over the past few years, just because they believe in what I'm doing and it's beautiful. I love that. I can't thank them enough. I mean, like I wouldn't be able to have done what I've done, the same way over the past few years, without their support too. So like, if I'm being honest, like the sponsorship is great and it's really good for a lot of people and some people, but like, yeah, it's it's a weird thing to say, but like my family has really helped me just because they know and believe it's it's a weird thing to say, but like my family has really helped me just because they know and believe and so do I, and I believe it's going to get to the point here in the near future where that's all going to change.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's, it's a hard lifestyle. Like it's, you know, it's hard to be like, yeah, I'm doing all these things, it's really cool, like it's really rad, like I wouldn't change my life for anything, but I also don't have any money, you know. So it's, it's weird and it's not like. You know, you need money to live and at some point I won't be able to do what I'm doing. So, like, my perspective right now is I won't be able to do any of this stuff, and maybe 15 or 20 years, like just not to the level that I'm doing. Like there's just no chance, right. I mean, can I still go adventure and do really rad stuff? Yes, but like to what? The? The goals that I have set for myself and things that I'm trying to do? It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 2:So, like I don't want to wake up in 10 or 15 years and think, like what, if, like what if I would have done this? Instead, like what if I would have gotten, got that job that would have given me six figures or whatever it may be. You know, like that's not the kind of person I am and I know, like I can always make money in this life and, and so that will happen. If it doesn't happen with this, it'll happen at some other point. And again, like I truly believe that the trajectory that I'm on and the people I'm surrounding myself with, all this stuff, is going to work out just the way it needs to, and so I'm not too worried about it, honestly.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you know, people are making legit careers out of this lifestyle and it's really cool to see. And it's really cool to see and it's super inspiring and it makes me want to work harder because I know that it's not just a handout. Like you know, I spent a lot of time training and that's it's almost a full-time job. So like, yeah, there's a lot that goes into this stuff and I know that's the same for anybody. That's training for a race or whatever it may be, and so like not to downplay anybody's abilities and what they want to do with their life, but like like it's not easy, you know.
Speaker 1:So oh, dude, it's to train at the highest level of the sport, or as high of a level as you could possibly make it, as it is a full-time job. And then you've got to factor in recovery. Did you got to factor in a lot of shit, man? Yeah, it's it. It turns into it's a conversation that, like I think people see shit on Instagram and like they're like, they think like one way, but it's like yo, that's not reality, Like Instagram is not, it's not. Like that's not the way this actually works, Like there's a strong reality to it and it's a business at the end of the day, which is crazy. No, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm happy to talk more about it and like, fill anybody in that wants to reach out. So it's like it just is what it is. You know, and again I'm, I'm fortunate to be where I am because of a lot of people, different things, and so, yeah, it's, it just is what it is. It's an interesting world.
Speaker 1:That said, I will say one thing the beautiful thing is like you're living your dream, dude, and like sure I don't meet too many people that can say that you know. It's like, yeah, that beats the hell out of you know, working a nine to five, you know totally drinking a beer and watching television.
Speaker 2:It's like absolutely, you know it's, it's it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would much rather trade off right.
Speaker 2:Like a hundred percent. I'd much rather go grind and put it all on the table and see where I can bring this thing rather than, you know, step down to that which is again.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with how anybody wants to live, but for people like us, yeah, I squirm when I think about like doing that for the rest of my life, but yeah, it's interesting, interesting, um, yeah, dude. So as we start to wind down now I want to get into some ending questions. I'm very curious to see who inspires you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know that's an interesting one. I kind of got thrown into this mountain world without anybody I looked up to, besides my uncles both my uncle John and uncle Steve were the only like real mountain athletes that I knew and so, like, growing up, you know, I looked up to them as athletes and like who they were and like what they did in the mountains and or just playing football and whatever it may be, and so it took a few years because I didn't know what any of this shit was five or six years ago. Like I was, I'm brand new to this stuff. Still, I would say, and you know, since then it's grown. And you know, since then it's grown and like people like Julian Carr who are, who absolutely are and have pushed human limits in the ski world, huge inspiration, good friend, love the guy. And like he was probably my first like real mountain inspiration, um, that I, you know, met in real life, and like that's why it became an inspiration, cause I, I saw him and I saw what he was doing with what you know, his sport and just his community, and it inspired me.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, beyond that I would say, you know, jason obviously is a huge inspiration just because of his. You know the way he lives his life, his mindset, around everything and, like you know, being a person that truly is a helper, that wants to help people. I think that inspires me to want to be a helper. And then, if you look at, like Aaron, I mean she's, you know, a groundbreaking woman and you know the FKT mountain world, coming from a non-athletic background, kind of just chasing her dream as well and making it happen on really high levels, and so these are the people same with Tyler, you know, it's like these. Those are the people that really inspire me and I think it's safe to say that, like, there's a lot of other people that do inspire me, you know, and I watch people's stuff and I like I look at Instagram and I see what people are doing, but I'd like to keep my community close and like the people that inspire me close. So, like, typically, the person that inspires me is the person that's right next to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, no. I love that. That's a beautiful answer, dude. You're getting ready for a race or you're getting ready for a hard effort? What song are you listening to like?
Speaker 2:what kind of music? What kind of music are you into? I shuffle it all around the board, man, but I think one of the ones like the og pump up would be like uh, it has to be.
Speaker 1:Kanye can't tell me nothing oh, oh, dude, that's a solid, that's a good song, all right, all right, he's kind of a crazy dude but, it's a solid one.
Speaker 2:You know, I just can't. Yeah. Yeah, man, when I'm going on really hard or like shorter efforts, I will pop in the rap and really just dig deep in the rap. But if it's like a longer thing, I like my morning jacket and pink floyd I'll let those kind of like simmer and just kind of enjoy, enjoy it all um so kind of a big mix everything all right, all right, dude.
Speaker 1:So now we're gonna get into a weird question. Uh, I always ask everybody one weird one. It's usually a mix of aliens bigfoot or ai or something like that. Dude, I'm very curious to see, like, do you believe in aliens? Like, what's your take on the aliens?
Speaker 2:I was hoping this was the one you're going to ask me. Yes, absolutely. I just find it really hard to believe that there's not any other life anywhere else and, depending on who you ask, I mean there could be aliens in the ocean. I mean, how deep do you want to go with it? You know I it's funny cause I actually like grew up in high school reading and like kind of like studying conspiracy theories. So, like some people may think I, if they actually learn about some of the things that I think or I thought and like looked into, they would probably think I'm a nut job but yeah, like about myself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so absolutely Do. I think aliens are real and I think, honestly, they probably live amongst us and we just don't realize it. Um, it's, it could be. It could be a really long conversation around this.
Speaker 1:Uh, dude, open it up. Uh, let's, let's. I'm just so curious to say, cause, like, dude, I'm, I'm a big believer man. Like, especially, like I don't know, you're out more in the wilderness than I am, like you really look up in the sky and see some crazy shit. Like, have you ever seen a ufo?
Speaker 2:you know it's hard to say I I can't say I've ever seen one, and I feel like if you want to see aliens, you have to like say it out loud and think it that you want to see them, otherwise they're not going to show up. I think it's one of those like like spiritual things like you have like truly right. It's like like I think if I were to go out to some of these crazy ass places in the middle of nowhere and like sit there, like meditate on it and like believe like they're gonna come and show me, show me, like I think that it would probably happen, but I've never done that and it's kind of scary. So, um, no, I yeah, it's an interesting thing like I think they're out there, I think they're again amongst us, I think that they're flying around, but, um, I have never seen anything and I know that, like my brother has, and he's got some crazy stories with aliens slash whatever you want to call them, he calls them demons.
Speaker 2:Um, so okay, all right he's had like a personal encounter. And yeah, I mean, as much as I like think I would want to have these encounters, I don't really think I do because from his experience it seems really really scary and you know, everybody can take that the way they want. But again, I'm happy to talk about this and I'm happy to tell him, have him come talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to him. I've talked to him about this stuff. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's weird, it's a weird thing, it's a real, it's got to be real. I remember one time I was reading uh, conspiracies back in the day, and I don't know if you like read into mars very much, but there's one one like theory around how humans are, were once, you know, civilized on mars and then whatever happened, they got into a nuclear war, just, you know, became a wasteland and they all moved earth or whatever it may be. So that could be a I believe what was.
Speaker 1:I was just listening to a podcast recently and like actually no, it was um, dude. There's like a whole thing with elon now that, like elon wants to fund like he's already funding like uh, descending like a specific rover to mars because they found something that like very much looks. This sounds crazy, but like very much. I don't think it looks like a pyramid. I gotta look it up after this. Yeah, I need a jamie, I need someone next to me bring this shit up so I can like have it on the screen. But anyway, right, um, long story short, like they're, they found something that looks like a building, more or less right, it's like it's like all right, well, that holds weight.
Speaker 1:A little bit like, if you found something that like crazy, it's very possible that, uh, you know that there's either that that could be where we came from, that could be another extraterrestrial group of people, you know, group of whatever beings came from. I tend to think, just because space is so big and vast, like from the physics perspective, like I think of it as like well, maybe there are things that like live on different planets, but like even more so I think a lot of the stuff we see might be like from a different dimension. I think the way we sure we perceive reality is only in you know so many dimensions and there's so many more beyond that. So it's like one of those weird things. That's like the shit we see like maybe it's coming across the sky or in the ocean or whatever like could be. You know absolutely. We're just accessing that plane of existence by being able to like just tap into that dimension, which is fucking crazy.
Speaker 2:It is crazy, and I I absolutely believe that too, and it's crazy to think, I mean, we have what is it? 3d? How many more dimensions are there? So it's it's. It's a crazy thing to think about and, yeah, I think it's a big piece of it. You know, when you're able to access different dimensions, whether that's through meditation or psychedelics or whatever you want to do, it's like I think there's definitely ways to see and if you want to see, you will dude, have you ever heard this whole thing?
Speaker 1:and I don't want to drag this on all night but like every like I've heard, like from so many people that have taken dmt now I'm talking about illicit drug use on the podcast here we go, um but like people that use dmt, like they all see, and I've heard this about people that take mushrooms too, like you see the machine elves, which, oh, yeah, yeah, it's like a very common thing, that like everybody sees, and it's like are you tapping into like another plane of existence with that? Like what is that, you know?
Speaker 2:because everybody seems to see the same group, group of characters there oh yeah, it's fucking fucking wild dude yeah, I don't know if you've ever done that stuff and I don't know if I want to talk about it here.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I can't. I mean I can't confirm if I have or I haven't, but that's right, I'm right there with you, that's right it's a, it's a crazy thing, um, and I believe it.
Speaker 2:I'm a believer in that stuff, and whether it's good or bad I don't know, but like, I've read a lot of stories and I've read a lot of trip reports about that kind of stuff and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:I mean it's pretty, pretty crazy and interesting stuff, um yeah, yeah, wow, dude, listen, brother, I don't want to keep you here all night when you come back to colorado. We got to hang out, we got to talk about yeah, let's do it let's do it.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm wishing you the best of luck on your upcoming race, Um, you know, and and projects throughout the spring and summer. Um, definitely won't be the last time you and I talk. We're going to have many conversations going forward, but I think this is a great, great starting point to be able to help tell your story thus far, and I really appreciate you coming on to uh to let me help tell your story. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I appreciate you having me. It was good talking to you finally, and well, I'm sure we'll do it again. So yeah. I appreciate you as well, James.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brother, thank you so much, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:What'd man, what an amazing episode. Just so many great and just like really cool inside baseball stories there from all of Chris's like like just legendary records and some of the crazy things that he's done. Yeah, what a fan. I'm such a fan of this guy. Before you guys get going, hop on Instagram, give him a follow. If you don't already follow Chris, give him a follow at Chris J fish. You can also find him on his website, that's at chrisjfishcom as well. Guys, if you enjoy this episode, send him some DMs, let him know what you guys think and just send him some words of encouragement. Chris has got a 100-mile race up his sleeve in the next month or so that he's going to be taken down, so it'll be cool to follow along as he makes that attempt in the next month or so. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star rating and review on Apple, spotify or YouTube. That's how we can continue to get these great episodes out to the world and to help tell the stories of these amazing athletes.
Speaker 1:Very last but not least, hop on ultimate directioncom. The race and ultra vest are out now. Um, in two color wheels the white and blue and the black and green Absolutely sick. I'm so excited that these have finally dropped. You can get them on ultimate directioncom and use code steep stuff pod for 25% off. Um, these vests are going to change the way you view the brand. They are so exciting, just like I don't know just in my opinion, some of the best vests on the market right now. Everything has been thought through. Just amazing pieces of technology. I'll be wearing them at a bunch of my races and training runs as well. Just awesome, awesome, awesome pieces of equipment. So get them in ultimate directioncom and use code steep stuff pod for 25% off your cart. Thanks guys, thank you, thanks for watching.
