19| Chasing a First Ski Descent in the Himalaya w/ Arc'teryx Athlete Eric Carter

In today's episode, we speak with Eric Carter. Eric is an Arc'teryx athlete who resides in Squamish British Columbia. He spent 5 years on the us national ski mountaineering team and holds the speed record on Mount Rainier and the Tantalus Traverse. Eric has an M.S in Exercise Physiology and a PhD where he studied the affects of altitude on humans. In this conversation we cover the topics of snow safety, avalanche training, and training for the mountain athlete and alpinist. We also do a deep dive into Eric's recent trip into the Himalaya, where he searches for a first ski descent on a peak called Bhrigupanth near Meru (The Sharks Fin) in India at the head of the Ganges river.

What does it take to do a ski descent in the Himalaya? To find out listen to the episode!

https://arcteryx.com/us/en/athletes/eric-carter

@the.climbing.majority

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Climbing Majority Podcast. I just want to say a quick thank you to all of our listeners. Your viewership is keeping Kyle and I stoked to continue having these conversations and finding great, engaging guests to have on the show.

In today's episode, we speak with Eric Carter. Eric is an art director athlete who resides in Squamish, British Columbia. He spent five years on the U.S. national ski mountaineering team. He holds the speed record on Mount Rainier and the Tantalus Traverse.

Eric has a masters in exercise physiology and a Ph.D. where he studied the effects of altitude on humans. Today's episode will cover topics such as Eric's journey from racing cross-country skiing to skiing the big mountains. We discussed snow safety and the importance of avalanche training.

How to manage time as an athlete and a student. We discuss Eric's training volume. Having fun, proper rest, uphill training, and the importance of strength training and your aerobic base. And finally, we do a deep dove into Eric's recent trip to ski, a first descent on a peak in the Himalayan.

You are where you decide, you know, where you grew up, that kind of stuff, just. And then it will kind of go from there.

Sure. Yeah. And I live in Squamish, British Columbia, and I've been here for probably about 13 years and moved to B.C. to go to UBC for grad school. I specialize in human genetics or kinesiology, I guess, and kind of environmental physiology specifically, so like altitude and that kind of related stuff.

So that's what brought me here. Before that I was born in or I grew up in Minnesota, I should say, and was primarily like a cross-country skier. And so that was kind of my sporting base. And so that means in the summer, lots of running and then did quite a bit of of climbing there as well.

You know, Minnesota's not really like a climbing destination, but there are some cool spots. There's a place called Taylors Falls that was the closest outdoor climbing to where I lived. And then there's a decent bit of ice climbing up in northern Minnesota, and then you're not too far from like Devil's Tower.

And so I was pretty lucky that I got kind of exposed to that. There's an early gym there called Vertical Endeavors.

And.

And got to go kind of play around there and then do a bit of actual outdoor climbing before moving to Vermont for college where I cross-country skiing as well. So I kind of took a bit of a break from.

From.

Climbing even though there's also good climbing in but but was was more focused on the skiing and then eventually did come to to B.C. knowing that there was a lot of cool mountain sports and all that kind of stuff here.

That was the big draw. It was around the time of the Olympics and stuff. And so it seemed like a cool way to get out of the States and go someplace that kind of piqued my interest in the school was really good as well and much cheaper than any American university, which is nice.

So yeah, it was kind of like a.

Of.

All signs point to point it north or mostly west, I guess, and came out here and then obviously being close proximity to Squamish for school, just climbing tons, skiing tons. When I first came here I was still actually mostly cross-country skiing, but actually is or the coast is not very good for cross-country skiing.

You know, we've got a few places on the North Shore and up by Whistler, but because of like the amount of snow we get, there's just so much snow and often how wet it is at lower elevations, the cross-country skiing is quite, quite bad unless it's really good and then it's awesome.

But pretty quickly, you know, you're you're cruising around like in the rain or whatever on the east and looking at the mountains above getting snow. And it's like, oh, you know, maybe it's worth getting up there and getting off the kind of hamster wheel.

So pretty quickly pivoted.

From.

From mostly cross-country skiing and.

And and.

Kind of rock and alpine climbing and then into more ski mountaineering.

Or.

Just kind of what's led to to where I am.

Now.

Nice. I want to roll it back real quick. So back when you were like, how early did you start your cross-country skiing? Was it in high school? Elementary school?

Yeah, I was like, as long as I can remember, I think, wow, my dad had me out skiing when I was really little. So and I'm not going to claim that I learned to ski before I walked, but it was pretty much very, very small.

Yeah.

And climbing you. So you're basically you are someone who got introduced to climbing from a gym.

You know, I think. Where I lived in Minnesota. There was this kind of before there was an area nearby. There was.

A.

Shop called Galleons, which was kind of like a sports checker or something like not quite as fancy as area have an outdoor shop. Anyway, they had like one of those kind of small walls at the back of the store, but I think was more for trying shoes on than anything.

And, and I remember trying it there and being just try and climbing on the wall. I think my dad actually took me there a few times just to like play on this wall. I think the staff were just kind of like, Yeah, whatever.

But I think they had an.

Advert for a guide and we went with him to Taylors Falls. So it was pretty quick that I got to try outdoor climbing and then from there it was kind of a mix of doing little trips, trips there and learning how to kind of set up an anchor and all that stuff and then also climbing.

So it was a bit of a mix actually, but yeah, probably a bit more. More gym time.

Cool. I mean, that sounds pretty cool. You definitely got into the outside pretty early on and it looks like you had the guiding experience right at the beginning, which is, at least in our experience that we've interviewed in for ourselves is pretty unheard of, which is pretty sweet.

And yeah, did you have like a mentor in your in your kind of climbing and I guess athletic field most of your life? Or were you kind of charging ahead on your own, kind of like leading that path and finding out what you needed to do on your own?

Yeah, no doubt. Like. Tons of people that I would kind of consider mentors, I would say throughout the different aspects of my career, I think in in more organized sports or cross-country skiing, I was on teams with formal coaches and stuff like that and a few of those guys I would definitely kind of consider personal mentors as

well. And then, yeah, I got to well, when I was climbing with my dad, you know, neither of us had any clue about what was going on. And so we were, I was trying to learn from, from other people and yeah, occasionally going out with guides and things like that, but.

Then.

Coming here and doing more alpine climbing and and ski mountaineering for sure. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't say I've had any, like, formal mentor, but I've been really lucky to be surrounded by. Partners and kind of people that have.

She wanted to to spend time together and to kind of impart that experience. So kind of on a less formal side. But I would still I would still consider that kind of the best form of mentorship, really, for sure.

I mean, I think, you know.

Yeah, it seems like you're surrounded by people who are able to impart knowledge onto you rather than constantly being surrounded by people who you're the one importing knowledge on to them, even though you might not be that experienced.

There is like that that stacking of level of absorbing knowledge constantly and progressing, which is what it's just pretty cool that you've had that most of your life.

Yeah. I think, you know, a big advantage for me is coming into it with a big aerobic capacity or experience. So, you know, if I want.

To.

Go do something, it's actually like not the physical challenge that's going to hold me back or at least when I was kind of learning. So, you know, I'm not going to be the guy that's like dogging it on the approach.

And I think that goes a long ways. You know, for partners that are looking for people.

Yeah, maybe they're.

Willing to tolerate if you can just follow the whole, you know, the whole route or whatever, but not so much if you can't even make it to the base kind of thing. So for me that was a big advantage and I think that goes a long way.

Yeah, I've heard that. I like cross-country skiing is pretty synonymous with what you're talking about. Like I've heard it quoted that it's like the highest VO2 max of any sport. And I think a lot of really elite athletes come out with a cross-country ski background.

So yeah, I mean, no surprise there, at least from my end on that. I'm wondering like, do you do you view yourself like as a climber and a skier or do you view like climbing is something that you do to like facilitate better skiing and bigger skiing objectives.

A little bit of both, I would say. Definitely. Skiing is my preferred method.

The.

Like it just sucks walking downhill, you know, compared to skiing. It always sucks. There's no way that it's fun. Whether you're running, whether you're hiking, skiing is just 100% better. So I would rather be doing that. As far as like kind of.

The ideal day for me is really like choosing the best tools and like the best style or technique or whatever you want to call it to kind of accomplish that goal that that I want to set out for for that day.

So like, I like to go to really cool places. I like spectacular views. I like being in technical terrain, and I want to do that in kind of the most efficient and logical style that I can. There's no sense in lugging up a bunch of extra gear if it.

If it's not necessary. But also like if I can ski down faster, then that's great too.

Are you at this point in your life? I guess. I don't I'm not a skier. And so forgive me for my lingo here. I'm definitely mostly a climber. But are there are there skin phase? Like first ascents, first descents are there, like, okay, now are you at that point in your life or in your career where you're

chasing the what are they called or what are they called.

Defensive.

First descents? Are you chasing that or. And if you are, at what point did did you shift from repeating routes to transferring into this more explorative medium?

Yeah, that's a good question. It's definitely one of the things that kind of drives my skiing or my goals in the mountains is like looking for stuff that's new.

Or.

That hasn't been done before. But it's not really, I would say the only thing. Skiing is a funny one because. I guess with climbing, there's there's kind of an unending progression, right? Like, technically, climbs can just get harder and harder, like steeper and steeper and smaller and smaller holds.

And so the limitation is the human ability to actually stick to that wall. But with skiing like snow only sticks to a certain degree of slope. And so once you find that like maximum steepness slope, it doesn't get a whole lot harder, which, you know, a lot of people could probably take issue with that, but.

Practically that is.

True.

Then to to make it more complicated, you add in things like objective hazard, you know, like if there's cracks or cornices or things like that on the line and then maybe there's technical sections where you have to climb up or down or you have to climb something to it to access it.

So realistically, skiing does get harder. And so.

In.

In kind of like. Training or or progressing in the sport.

There are. Lots of skylines.

That you can look at as kind of progressively more and more complicated and bigger and bigger ticks. But in reality, like when you're actually making turns in good snow. That is very much not a progression. So it's all these other skills that you have to develop.

To to push that along. And so I've kind of deviated from your question, but for me, I guess. Yeah. Looking for.

Those.

Those things that haven't been done or that maybe some people have looked at and kind of not even thought about as as an option. And I think that's a really common thing, even in pretty busy places. I hear a lot of people talking about like, oh, you know, this place or that place even even around here is

, is get out. And all the the plumb lines have been picked. And I think that's kind of a silly thing because often, you know, you have a really nice cooler that's been skewered and get Skittle out and it's super classic.

And then like right next to it, there's something that's smaller and more technical and that maybe costs a little bit more. But because people just zone in on that one classic, it kind of gets overlooked. And and I think that's pretty well shown in the Mont Blanc range around Chamonix, where people are still skiing first descents, you

know, the top guys and women are still. Taken down these lines that.

Like should have been skied.

20 years ago or something because there's just so many people doing it, you know, it's like such a a hub for ski albinism. It's kind of like, wow, if they can pluck these lines, then certainly we can on the coast where there's friggin nobody, you know, that there's like no roads.

It's hard to get places and there's very few actual, you know, people going for it. So there's so much here to go after. It's pretty cool.

How early on did you did your mindset shift from. Oh yeah, I'm repeating rounds to to this. That's cool. I loved your your answer. Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to go on another tangent there. I think the other cool thing about skiing and this is similar to alpine climbing or ice climbing is that the routes change so much between seasons or between days even.

You know, you can get a route and boilerplate conditions that's freaking terrifying or you can have it and pow and you just like making glory turns like it's awesome. And so.

The the big.

Lines, you know, the really scary lines around here or anywhere. Especially like when there's not multiple parties going on them. You know, in a season or in a month, it does kind of feel like you're a little bit out.

What's the right word? Not on your own, but doing something, something new. You know, you're kind of exploring it for the first time. And. And so even repeating roots, I think, in skiing is is something that we need to treat fairly seriously as they get into the more more.

More serious roots. Sure. When you have like a trade route that's getting squeezed every week or whatever, it's it's a little bit less like that. But yeah, so to actually answer your question. It wasn't really until kind of.

Kind of covert, I guess I would say. So when I did come to B.C., I started competing in ski mountaineering racing, which is kind of well, it's obviously the competitive form of ski mountaineering, and it's a little bit silly.

It's kind of a cross between cross-country skiing and downhill racing, but it is super fun. You're kind of just like running around in the mountains, like a bit of a psycho and just rallying around stuff. And so.

The.

The scene is quite serious in Europe, where it kind of came.

From.

Military skiing. So in the Alps, they would go on these military patrols through the mountains and that turned into to racing, like to prepare for it. And then that kind of translated into the civilian racing. And then that became an actual competitive sport with, you know, professionals and all that stuff.

So I competed on the national team from 2014 to 2019 and did three seasons living in Germany, you know, racing in the World Cup and all that stuff and.

I in. So it would have been.

Yet. The 2019 season I competed and then the 2020, 2021 season was supposed to be a world championship season. They do it every two years instead of every year. And so that was kind of my goal was to compete in that event and then probably finish racing.

You know, I'm a little bit older than a lot of the or I was and even then a lot of the other competitors. And so it's kind of looking like a good time to stop racing and focus on other stuff.

But obviously with COVID, all the racing got canceled and I didn't go spend another season there, all that. It was really good. I was able to finish my degree, but not good for competing. So at that point I definitely pivoted.

From.

Being more competition focused to more adventure focused. And you know, even while I was competing, I was still getting out on some pretty great adventures. Like, I'm not I can't complain. I will admit that there was definitely some conflicting moments when I was in, you know, training between races and you're like skinning up the piece in the

zoo and then you're looking at Mont Blanc and.

All the.

The peaks up there.

It's like, I would definitely be rather.

Climbing and skiing up there than skinning up this piece. But I still I still had a chance to do quite a lot of rad stuff both in Europe and and here. But yeah, certainly once. Once the competition chapter closed, moved more into adventure stuff.

And I think by that time I had accumulated. A lot of that. You know, a lot of the classics and and kind of the repeat stuff. And, and then it was like, okay, I'm stuck here. You know, we can't travel anywhere.

We couldn't go to the Rockies. You can do anything. So what's the stuff locally that I want to tick off? You know, what are the lines that I've been eyeing all these years on training? What is the new stuff that I'm thinking about or, you know, that I saw flying around or anything like that?

And and that's when it really like was like, okay, let's, let's take some stuff off. So I think last last season, which would have been the 21, the 2021 season was was super productive because it was just like, all right.

We're here.

We're watching conditions don't have anywhere else to go. I got a list and. Yeah.

Nice. That's super cool.

Yeah, super cool, man. So I guess, you know, like, we've kind of gone through this progression you're talking about, like, competing and stuff, and now we're getting a little more into the adventure side of things you do. And I know like recently you came back from a trip from the Himalayas and you I mean, I think when

we were like corresponding, I mentioned like the the just your like your ski descent of the chief and you're like, Oh, there's things that I've done that I like. I was way more proud of that than that. Like, I think that was like a really clicky clicky thing.

But like for me I thought that was quite fascinating and I was wondering if maybe you'd be open to just like talking about a few of these experiences and potentially just like starting, starting with the Himalayas. And I'm quite interested like, like what, what goes into that process of like Section two packing for the expedition to kind

of going out there and you know, where did you go and what were your objectives?

Yeah, well, that's a pretty long story, but I'll do my best.

So, yeah, with.

With sticking around here the last two kind of springs is definitely Jones and to go somewhere and yeah, I've been kind of trying to like mind my travel and be a little bit more responsible with it. Previous years, you know, with competition, like making two or three European flights and a handful of American flights, it felt a

little, a little silly. So it was actually kind of nice to reset and not go anywhere.

And then think.

About like, okay, how can I do this? You know, it's my job to to go cool places and travel and all that stuff. But also I want to do that responsibly. And so so that was part of it and it was kind of thinking like, okay, if I'm going to go somewhere, let's make it rad and make

it worthwhile. And you know, certainly the Himalaya has been on my radar for as long as I've been a climber. I remember again, like, you know, my dad taking me to.

A a.

A slideshow by Ed Visitors who's an a fairly famous American.

Mountaineer.

In Minnesota. And, you know, when I was ten or something and being fairly impressed by his exploits in the Himalaya and so, you know, stuff like that like sticks with you and obviously like classic mountaineering literature has a big, big Himalayan component anyway.

Yeah. So. Last spring and summer, I started to think like, okay, this is a good opportunity for me. You know, I don't have a family. It's it's like a good time to go there and see what's going on.

And and try hard. So.

You know, did a decent amount of research, research reading the.

The.

Alpine journals and looking at the Himalayan database.

And.

Just kind of like cruising around people's social media profiles and stuff like that to get a sense of of where people go and what people do. You know, it's it's not a super well reported on scene Himalayan skiing like you can look at the list of ski descents on 8000 meter peaks and that's pretty well recorded.

But other than that it's it's kind of under the radar. And I'm not super interested in skiing in 8000 or like. I don't want to die at altitude. I don't want to even particularly suffer at altitude. So that stuff is kind of like.

I mean, I don't don't know that I would turn down a trip, but it's not my first choice. So then started to kind of look at different places that would be interesting to go. And there are a few guys locally here that have done some Himalayan trips.

One guy, Trevor Hunt, is like a major. Kind of first essentialist and an adventure skier here in the coast. And so I had some good talks with him and a few other guys about places to look and.

Then.

Honestly, like it really was. I use an app called Fat Map, which is kind of like Google Earth. You can visualize like 3D satellite imagery and it was just like flying around in that map and looking at mountains and being like.

Oh, that.

Looks cool.

You know?

So started looking for, you know, based off these areas that I kind of knew might have potential just cruising around and looking for big faces and big cool hours and eventually found one that really jumped out. Trevor had suggested looking at the area near Meru, which is the one that the Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker made a

climbing movie about Meru. And so that zone is right at the headwaters of the Ganges River. There's Meru, there's shoveling, there's the bigger three peaks. And it's like a super. Yeah. Super well known zone for climbing. Like lots has been done there.

And then the the.

Town at the road head is a place called Gangotri and that town is fairly famous within India as the starting point.

For.

Well it's there's a temple in Gangotri that a lot of Hindu pilgrims go to as part of a religious festival to more or less collect holy water, I think from the Ganges. I'm probably butchering this a little bit, but it is a popular area.

And then from that town, some of those pilgrims will hike.

A.

Day or two up to literally the headwaters of the Ganges, where it comes out of the Gangotri Glacier. And that is a fairly sacred spot to kind of scoop water from, basically. But there's these big ice caves and stuff.

So. All to say it was a an area that had infrastructure in place and also had some pretty wild peaks. And so tried to do some research.

Couldn't find any or.

Much history of very much skiing in that area. Shoveling has been skied. But we were looking at a piece called Baggy Pants and that was kind of often a side validates like a 6900 meter.

Peak.

And it's got this beautiful face on it, really spectacular looking. And so.

After that.

Kind of started finding.

Around.

You know, ideas to some some potential partners and starting pitching it to sponsors. And and so that kind of like is a logistically challenging portion, is convincing sponsors that they should pay for it, convincing partners that they should trust you and go for it.

And then also kind of starting to plan the actual in-country logistics. And so trying to get all that in the right order is a little tricky. But ultimately it worked out really well because we were funded, we were able to go reasonably like we weren't fully on the lowest budget plan.

And so we actually reached out to the guys that Jimmy and Conrad used for Meru as their logistics company. So you kind of have to have.

Someone.

Helping you in country. And for us, like especially going as skiers, you know, for a longer period of time, you just you have to have.

A.

Base camp, basically. And and that means you have to have porters and cooks and all this kind of stuff. So very quickly, logistically, it becomes more challenging anyways. We use this company called IBEX Expeditions.

And.

The owner there is Mandeep Singh Soin and they were super helpful. They're very familiar with that area obviously because they've been on a bunch of these expeditions.

And all.

Their guys were really experienced. And so then once we got them involved, it was a lot easier to start the preparations kind of in-country. You know, you have.

To apply.

For permits, which in India is fairly expensive. It's much cheaper than climbing a thousand meter peak. But compared to like Pakistan.

It's a lot.

Could you buy a lot more?

Could you ballpark a price of expensive just out of curiosity, like what is it for like a permit for a.

For us.

I think it was. Ultimately do we kind of stuff all together. But I think the peak fee was around $3,000.

US.

So. So not terrible. Right. But it's still it's a chunk of money. Yeah, it's substantial, but it's not like $10,000 that you pay forever.

It's the lucrative industry of clients.

I'm sure you know.

The lucrative industry of owning a mountain. Yeah. I'm curious as to more about these logistics especially and I don't know if I mean, you know, if you don't know, it's totally fine. But like more wild places like Pakistan and Pakistan.

Like, who is. Who's the governing body for those peaks? And, like, how does that whole system work? I'm I'm interested. The fact that you are paying people to get on to a mountain like that, that concept to me is is is foreign.

So do you have any more information on that process.

Going for the world, especially high altitude peaks is like you have to pull permits. Same thing for any 8000 meter peak. You've got to pull permits. You got to get everything worked out, the logistics. So. Yeah, but you can answer.

Yeah.

Totally. I mean, it's not unlike climbing on Rainier Denali where you buy a climbing permit, I think. Well, actually, this is probably arguable, but. I suspect the climbing fees here go a little bit more directly to benefit the mountain itself, but I'm not so sure about that either.

But I can speak to India, less so to Pakistan or other countries. Yeah. In India we.

Were the peak.

Figures to the Indian Mountaineering Federation, so it's kind of like a quasi governmental organization. I think they're somewhat related, but it's like kind of the equivalent of the Alpine Club of Canada or the American Alpine Club. So they regulate all the expeditions.

And the cool thing about India is that they don't actually grant multiple.

Permits.

For the same zone. So like if you want to go to shoveling and you get your.

Peak permit or you go.

Excuse me, you get your permit from the IMF, you're going to be the only team on shoveling at that time. It's not like, say, Nepal, where there's hundreds of teams climbing certain routes on certain peaks. So it's pretty cool.

You know, India feels pretty wild. And the other cool thing for us is I think and I could be wrong about this, but this is the impression that we got going there was that we were the first team from out of the country to come since COVID.

So we were the first, you know, non-Indians to be climbing there, which people seem pretty psyched about, to have, you know, foreigners coming for the first time in a while. But yeah, I think generally like India has a bit more red tape than some of these other countries.

Probably I, I would guess because there's just this like super residual hangover of British colonialism and that really messed up a lot of kind of what's going on there. I mean, maybe there's some good things to it, but for the most part, like it seems like they carried on a lot of bureaucracy and kind of red tape

. That is just the result of of the British rule there. And so I think there are a lot of. Government organizations and jobs and things like that that are just in place to kind of create.

Work and.

To be jobs. And so I think that's probably the case here. But yeah, I mean if if our so.

The area we.

Were is part of a national park and it was protected and there were rangers and stuff like that.

Around.

Not quite like you'd see in US national parks, but it seemed like they were trying to.

Protect.

These places and take care of it. So I'm hopeful that ah you know, our funds went there not to some bureaucrat's pockets or whatever. Yeah.

But now when you were, when you were choosing a partner, it was this objective technically possible without a partner.

Hypothetically, I guess. Kind of anything is but.

For me.

I guess like, what were you looking for in your partner? And. Yeah, and what, what are the biggest things that you see beneficial to having a partner for this particular objective. Yeah.

I skiing like.

You kind of want to have partners for the most part just out of, you know, avalanche concerns and all that stuff, which ultimately didn't turn out to be too much of an issue. But that's further in the story.

And so yeah. And then for.

Me.

I really like doing stuff with Partners in the mountains. I certainly love solo missions when they're appropriate, but I think like mountain climbing and skiing, it's it's a partner sport. You know, you work better as a team and you can handle stuff and you can and and do stuff in that that sense.

And I'm really lucky that I have.

An.

Amazing, you know, group of partners around me that I. I can operate on a pretty high level with and so that. Is like a it's like a performance enhancing thing. You know, it's not a detrimental thing to have partners around.

So for this.

You know, basically. You need a partner that is willing to go to the Himalayas on a whim.

And.

Is capable of kind of the technical components which aren't super crazy but are real.

And you're going to get along for.

Like a month in India and not kill each other. That's probably which is probably.

The most important one. Yeah. And then like.

And then, you know, there's kind of the smaller things like you have to kind.

Of.

Be on the same page about, about certain things. But yeah, so for me it was.

Like.

Pretty, pretty easy decision. Like I have a partner that I ski with the vast majority of the time. A friend named Paul Greenwood. And we've he was actually the first person I met in Canada, which is funny. We both rented a room at the same place and, and really like realized that we were both into the same

stuff, climbing and skiing. But, but we do most of our skiing together. And so, you know, he was obviously the first, first person that I sent the text to with the screenshot being like, hey, let's go here.

And.

And he's ours pretty reliably in.

And then the.

The other guy that came with us was a another athlete on the architect's team named Tom Phifer. And he's a free ride world tour competitor. And just like an amazing skier can ski anything.

Almost.

To his detriment.

But we.

Had done a bit of touring last.

Year and.

I kind of. You know, I remember watching him ski. And then also I remember seeing him. We're climbing on Nokia Baldy here in town.

And he I.

Think it was his first time. Maybe it wasn't his first time putting crampons on or something, you know, something crazy like that. We had to climb this.

Relatively.

Easy mixed pitch.

And I led up it. And then.

And he was just like, Yeah, no problem. Like, I'm on a top rope, I can do this.

And I.

Was like, Oh.

Cool, sweet.

And sure enough, you know, he cruised right up it like no issues as we got to the top and then we skied off and ripped down this thing. So I was like, okay, this guy is super solid. Like, he can do stuff in the mountains.

And so. Yeah, we we've kind of gotten to become better partners since then. And then back in October, when I was starting to put this together for real, I sent him a message with the photo again, was like, Hey, you interested in going to India in the spring and.

And right away, like, you know, you see the bubbles. And then he replies, It's like, Yep, I'm in. And a couple of days later I texted him again and I was like, Hey, this is actually kind of coming together like.

Are you willing to go to India for a month this spring? No, I'm serious. Yes. And then he texted back right away, like, yes, I'm 100%. And I was like, sweet.

So how are you? So that.

Was pretty.

Cool.

Yeah. So the both those guys, you know, it was just. It's easy because you have people that you don't you're not worried about when you're in the mountains. Like you're not thinking about, Oh, can they do it? Can you know, are they going to be okay?

What are they thinking? You just you just like. All right, sweet. We're all focused on this same task, and we're going to go to get it done together.

And then the fourth.

Guy that came with us, we we wanted a photographer. I've got a good friend in Canmore named Justin Bruns. He's an awesome photographer. He was with the Sherpas guys last year filming La Liste in Pakistan. So he had some Himalayan experience and he's an aspirant guide, so just a total mountain ninja.

And when I called him and was like, Hey, you got a gig.

For you in India.

Tried to do some skiing. He was like.

Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah.

That's a pretty sweet gig.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm wondering, so, like, you're, you know, you're getting there, you've got your crew, you've got the logistics and all the planning done and you're, you know, you're in India. Like, I'm wondering things like like what's I don't know.

I mean, it's kind of like a little bit ambiguous. It can get so complicated whenever you're talking about snow safety and stuff. But maybe if you have like, like some tips or tricks or just your approach to like, you know, like looking at the weather, what is the difference?

Like, how do you how are you getting weather in the Himalaya? What your approach to like snow safety is, maybe just anything like that and kind of like more so in mind of like the view or like some stoic skier climber who's listening to this, like maybe some things that they can get out of that.

Yeah.

Well, I'll dial it back a little bit from the Himalaya, but.

I ski.

130 days a.

Year and.

A lot of that is in island strain.

And and in.

Island conditions. Like I'm a big believer that like even high avalanche conditions, you can find good skiing and you can find safe skiing. But we also do a lot of skiing in considerable or moderate conditions that I think I would consider somewhat risky or fairly risky because, you know, there's.

50 centimeters of fresh snow and you're skiing steep trees and that kind of thing. And so even like kind of small avalanches can be pretty dangerous.

And and the.

More experienced I've become, the more basically scared of avalanches I am. You know, I've I've lost plenty of friends in the mountains and and seen a lot of crazy avalanches that didn't kill people kind of miraculously. And I've been very lucky not to have a serious incident myself, but.

I'm I'm pretty. Yeah.

Pretty scared of avalanches. And I really don't want to die in an avalanche. So we take it pretty seriously. And again, this like all wraps back around to having an amazing group of partners. And that also kind of like the partner slash mentors who also want to take it really seriously.

And and so where I was pretty much skiing together. And so we're relatively on the same page. You know, when we're skiing, we have kind of our our systems are and our communication styles that are pretty dialed. There's not a whole lot of like yelling going on.

It's pretty. Pretty streamlined.

You know, just like some chirps and loops. And we know where everybody is and what's going.

On.

Or we're using radios or something like that. And so.

And then.

That translates over to avalanche.

Practice.

As well. And so I think a lot of people.

Will.

Take.

An.

Enhanced one in the city, too. I don't know what the American equivalent is, but it's similar like the avalanche skills training.

And then.

Kind of like that's it, you know, like suite I did the class, now I'm good to go. And for me.

Now, having.

Kind of done a bit.

More.

Practice, I'm like, Oh my God, like.

I know you forget how to do stuff you like.

You go out to practice. It's not a a learn at once and kind of it's there forever skill. It's something that needs to be developed and and can be refined, refined as new things I learned about how we do these rescues, all that stuff.

And, and so then you look at like the heli ski guiding industry and how they kind of do this stuff and they do really, really serious practice and skill development and they're learning like the new best practices every year and all that stuff because friggin heli skiing.

Is challenges.

All the time. Like you don't really hear about it, but there's so many accidents.

It's crazy.

But those guides are just so dialed and so good at that. And so for me it was like, okay, we need to be in that same space because we're exposing ourselves to similar.

Kind of.

Similar amounts of risk. And so we need to be at that same level of preparedness. And so the last few years, actually, not only have we kind.

Of.

Practiced on our own, but every year at the beginning of the season, we organize with a guide here in town who's also one of our bodies, and we do a day of avalanche training with him. And so it's not that specifically a course, but he's basically just setting up routines.

And we're running through these drills like as if it were the real deal in groups. And for me, this has been like a totally mind opening kind of experience because not only am I learning new skills, but all of a sudden like.

I'm realizing how I use my beacon. Like there's really fine nuance to how you do this. And it only comes through practice and how you shovel snow when you're digging and all that stuff. And so.

Yet.

Even just after the first year, we were like, okay, this is something we're going to do every single year from here on out that we're skiing and make this happen. And I really can't recommend that enough. It kind of blows my mind that guides don't offer something like this.

Like, you know, it's not an st2 plus. But I feel like once you've done s t to the next step for a lot of people is to go to the in Canada, we call it ops, which is like if you want to become a forecaster or something, you go to Ops level.

One and level two. But that doesn't make.

Sense for a recreational skier. Like, I don't need to learn how to, you know, do all these super fine snow science stuff. I just need to know how to dig my buddy out really fast and take care of some of these big, big concepts.

And so I feel like guides should be offering yeah. That that one day a refresher course for avalanche for for the experienced skier you know it doesn't matter whether you're, you know, one year out of your T or you're, you know, 20 years into a pro career.

I feel like this stuff is is so important and so yeah that's my divergent there. But but yeah for me, like that's the most important skill to kind of be constantly sharpening and and we're pretty serious about that and again like.

I would count myself very lucky to have partners that are kind of on that same page for sure.

I think those are some really interesting points you brought up. You know, like for me personally, like snow terrifies me, you know, like dying in an avalanche. And part of that is the fact that it's just so volatile.

And the other part is like my ignorance to the median, like I don't have a lot of snow safety training or any of that stuff. And because I understand my ignorance in this department, you know, I'm especially terrified of that totally.

You know, so I think like I've some I think that's a really interesting point as well that you brought up with just like getting a guy to like cater a specific course to you. Like I've done that a couple times and offers no safety buffer for like climbing related things.

And yeah, it's just like, it's really interesting that like most of the time people adhere to this structure of like, okay, I need to look up the guy, of course, and then, oh, this is the course they're offering or they're offering this course.

And it's like, No, you can just go talk to a guide and then be like, I need to focus on these skills and learn these skills, you know? And then the last thing you touched on, I think like we've talked about this before, but like it's kind of analogous to like CPR training, right?

It's like, you know, just get certified once. It's like every single year. This is a skill. It's important. It's for saving lives, let alone like your own life or your partner's life. You know, you you want to recertify those things all the time and have those kind of skills, like, ready and present, right?

You know, like another a good buddy of mine, Luke, really, really great guy. But he, we were kind of talking like I used to work at MCC. And so, you know, it's so easy to get, like, tacky and into gear and obviously, like Avalanche Pact people are so, like, fascinated by and these kind of approaches always like

, like always choose more more snow safety training over like an AVI pack, you know, he's like, if you're going to have the choice between getting an RV pack or spending like two days out with a guide, learning more about like avalanche safety and stuff because I think I mean, that was his approach, though, and I think it

makes total sense. Like ultimately the the best way to not dying an avalanche is to not get in an avalanche and not be. Yeah, right.

Totally. So so.

Yeah.

I just think that's like that's pretty fascinating. Have you seen the movie? You know, is it solving for Z? You know what I'm talking about? No, no, it's it's Patagonia movie about this guy in the T times. I forget his name and totally portraying this, but for anybody listening, they can look it up really, really cool, super

rad ski movie. And this guy's just this pretty much like totally crusher awesome ski guide in there. And I think he facilitated like a lot of pros who wanted to go in the area and ski and the documentary kind of ends with him like being caught in an avalanche.

And, you know, like, sure enough, it's just like it can happen to anybody, right? So.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's pretty crazy man. Yeah.

And that's, that's part of the thing. Like, you know, like you say, the best way to not dying. And I'm, I'm just not caught in one but. Realistically, we're not that good at predicting them. You know, we're okay.

But avalanches still happen, and pros get caught in them all the time. Like, all the time. And. And that kind of sucks. And so.

Yeah.

Like you want to develop those skills.

For.

Predicting as best you can. And a huge component of that just comes from experience, like from spending time in the mountains. And so, you know, every day that.

You're.

Poking your ski pole into the snow and feeling the conditions or climbing, you know, through on your way to an ice climb, whatever, all that stuff adds up to helping you forecast. But in the end, it does also come down to your buddies being able to dig you out really fast.

And so also the avalanche not being that big.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So I think we kind of like jumped around here a little bit, but I was wondering if we could just kind of jump back to the Himalayan real quick and just like as far as like actually like how the trip went, like, I hate the word successful because like the idea of like not somebody or something

doesn't mean the trip wasn't a success. But, you know, like, like how was that experience and that like skiing for you guys and also like, what did you do for for acclimation?

Yeah.

Real, real quick, Max. I'm sorry. Let's jump in here. I wanted to at at some point, you know, answer this question. I want you, if you can, to try to paint the picture in the in the eyes of a climber of the route from start to finish.

You know, like what are the what was the approach to get up to the top? How far were you going? What were the objective hazards kind of like what what was the rally and the view of a climber?

So kind of kind of if you can mix those two together, that'd be awesome.

Okay.

Sorry. So keep me on track here as I wander around this question. But to to kind of roll back, I think previously you were asking when the avalanche stuff came up.

About how.

We treated that in the Himalayas. And so one point that I kind of wanted to bring up related to that is leading into this trip.

I knew how.

Challenging, you know, just the logistics and all this stuff was going to be going to the Himalayas.

Like a lot.

Of people say.

You know, you're probably not going to be super successful like. Climbing in the.

Himalayas is hard. Skiing is even harder, you know. Have your your expectations tempered and all that stuff.

And I'm like, Yeah, yeah. And I.

Think I did a reasonably good job of.

That. But in.

Hindsight.

I look back at the months before the trip and I'm like, okay.

I need to dial in my.

Steep turn, like make sure I can I can feel.

Comfortable on firm snow and I'm making a super steep jump turn and I should be building lots of anchors. So I'm comfortable building anchors and stuff like that.

And, and.

You know, I focused on some of these kind of like, pinnacle technical skills and.

In reality.

The crux of the trip was when I was like sitting on a boulder in the middle of this moraine and this giant glacier area. And a couple of our porters are telling me, like, Oh, and there's like a storm coming in, it's starting to rain, and I'm all by myself.

Like half the team is in front of us, half the team is behind. And some of the porters are like.

We don't really like this.

We're going to go home.

And I'm sitting there like, What the fuck? Like, what do I do? So, like, all this time.

We spent preparing for like.

The top 1%.

Of our.

Our trip, when in reality, like, it was the.

The totality of the trip that was actually really challenging.

And the the pure.

Technical skills were like almost unimportant. But that was a big realization kind of in the moment. I was like, Whoa, that was stupid. I didn't need to worry about any of that stuff. But okay, so to take it back, so.

We, we took, we flew into Delhi, the.

The big city in India. It's crazy. There's people everywhere in India. There's always people.

Everywhere.

There's a lot of people.

And we.

Like I said, we were kind of traveling a little bit luxury. We had people that met us at the airport and basically escorted us around India the entire time. And so we had a bus that carried us around and didn't have suspension.

Or very.

Good brakes or much of a transmission. But it was still our own bus. So that was.

Sweet.

And and then you also have a liaison officer with you in India. So and I think it's the same in Pakistan, but it was previously an army officer that would go on the expedition with you. And now it's just a person that's appointed by the IMF.

And so we were unsure of how that was going to go, like what what the liaison officer would be like, you know, is he going to be super serious about the rules or is he going to be like a fun guy that wanted to just go climbing?

We didn't.

Know. But anyway.

We met all our guys.

Hopped in.

The bus.

And then it's.

A day drive from Delhi to a town called Rishikesh.

Which is on.

The Ganges, super famous, kind of a cool zone.

And then from there.

So that was all flat. Then from Rishikesh to another town called Uttar Kashi was like classic Himalayan switch backing up these roads. In these just crazy valleys, you know, kind of what you imagine in the foothills of the Himalayas.

And then from Kashi to Gangotri, the road head was the classic.

Super Steve Wall.

Road kind of chipped out of the.

Mountain. Gravel one lane, like.

Cars coming at each other. And then somebody has to back up and might go along the cliff. It was it's crazy, you know, and super bumpy.

And the wheels really screwed out of.

Your like when you see, like, footage of those kind of things. Like, I always think like it's funny because you think of like the climb and things like freaking out, but you're like looking at the driver. My band, that seems terrifying.

Oh, for sure. Driving is much more dangerous than climbing.

I mean, yeah, I don't know. Luckily, we were in a bus.

So we were kind of going slower. But yeah, also, you feel like you're way further off the ground and you're like looking down the canyon. They're like, burnt out.

Are there are just like a grave.

Oh, yeah.

There's like a graveyard of cars at the bottom of the valley.

Yeah. Occasionally I said, yeah.

So that so that was, that was kind of our first like they were like, whoa, this is.

Getting a bit more real.

You know? And that was where we got the glimpses of the Himalayas and stuff, because in the valley it's super like lots of air pollution. They burn, burn wood fired. So you can't see anything, unfortunately. But then once you.

Climb up kind of.

Above your Kashi, above 1500 meters, you start to see blue sky and stuff in the hills popping out.

So. So. Four days of driving.

Yeah. Four days.

Driving. And then we get.

To the road head and and yes, they're rebuilding everything because it washes out every year in the monsoon.

And they have.

To build it all before this festival starts because thousands and tens of thousands of people come to this festival in Gangotri. So they're like frantically rebuilding the road and all these washouts and stuff. And you just like driving over it as they're building it.

There's no like no single lane alternating traffic or anything like that. It's just.

Just give her.

As the like, diggers.

Scooping.

Gravel off the the slope above or.

Whatever. But we, we rolled.

Into Gangotri and we were actually on a pretty limited timeframe. We only have a month in country because of our visas. India had changed their visa from being a six month visa to a one month visa. And that's now changed, like it.

Changed while we were in.

In India, back to the original one, the pre-COVID one. But we were like on this timeframe. And so we rolled into Gangotri. I think we had a day there in town to, to repack our gear and then our porters met us and then we were off up the valley.

And so we spent one day.

On the.

Main tourist trail, which is kind of like.

I mean, like.

Kind of classic national.

Park nice.

You know, not quite double wide, but like a well-maintained trail. And they the.

They were.

Rebuilding that as well. And yeah, it was in really good shape. A couple of the guys got sick the night before.

I was going to ask gathering? Yeah. I mean, everybody, I think.

Like you get a certain level of G.I. issues when you travel to a country like.

That.

Kind of baseline diarrhea is pretty normal. And so we're all, like, suffering a little bit.

To that point.

Yeah, but.

What.

Is it? What does it come in from? The water, the food?

All of the above. All the above, yeah.

Are you drinking out of bottled water or where's the water coming from?

Either bottled water or filtered water still.

So.

Yeah, yeah. And like.

You don't.

Know, microbes and different things, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

You know what's on the vegetables, how well they got cooked, what's in the chicken? You know what's how they wash the dishes. You know, it could just be that they wash the plate in the river, our guys. So we had a cook with us and an assistant cook and they were.

Pretty like they were.

Very good, but we were still eating in roadside stops and stuff on the way there.

So they.

They would like go into the restaurant and check it.

Out and then.

Be like, yes, we can eat here.

And and.

Stuff like that. But it was still, you know, you're still kind of at the mercy of your stomach and and what happened. So that first.

Night when.

We were to start hiking, two of the guys got like viral infections and really, really sick.

And that.

That was a rough day of hiking, you know, because it was like on this.

Super mellow.

Like barely any grid tourist trail. And, you know, our team is just like stumbling up this trail.

With.

Super light packs, too, you know, because the porters we had 40 porters, you know, we had this big train of porters because as soon as you start adding, you know, skis and then all that stuff on top of the climbing gear and then.

The liaison.

Officer and then the cook and the guy and all this, like it adds up super fast. So you end up with like this huge train and porters, which is kind of funny. It's just crazy to think about. I was like, What?

But then you see them and you're like, Oh yeah, that's all their stuff. Wow. And so it made it into a small village kind of on this trail. Spent the night there. The guys felt a little better, so we knew we could keep going.

And then the next day we were going to go off the trail and we.

Had to cross the Ganges, which most of the tourists don't do, and then head up the side valley to the glacier that we were staying on. And so our porters and the local guy didn't want to go further up the trail and then cross out a cable car.

They wanted to ford the.

River and they were.

Like, oh, you know, it's early, it's still spring. The the major runoff hasn't started. We can afford it. You know, they'll save us 6 hours or something. But I was like, All right, well, you guys are the locals.

So the next.

Morning we wake up and get a cab packed up and walk over to the river because you can't right next to it.

And, you know, looked.

Low, but not like it wasn't a creek. It was it's definitely still a river. Yeah, big boulders and stuff. And I'm like, okay, well, let's, let's try it and see and we can decide.

And the head porter.

Just like gives her, you know, he had.

A full load.

Like he didn't try it without the load.

He just like.

Which maybe like held him down a bit better.

There's like this.

Five foot tall Nepali guy probably weighed like £85, but he had to you know, these guys are carrying some of them working double loads. So like, you know, the 100 meter expedition, devil's.

Just.

Stuffed and they're just carrying.

It with one.

Strap over their forehead. So it's, it's like it's full on, you know, or big like propane tanks and stuff like that is just like, okay. So anyway, he like goes in and he makes it most of the way across.

And then like the far side was where the crew was and we see him.

Like wobble and I'm like, Oh my God, this is.

Where someone, like, dies, you know, like if he gets swept under, not only do we lose all our tents and all that stuff, but like a freaking person dies like.

This. But, you know.

He wobbles, kind of like stumbles and then catches it and then, like, fully sticks it on the other side of the bank. And then all the porters on our side are like.

You know, and cheering, like, let's go. And I'm like, No, no, no, hold on. We're going to put up a hard line, like we're going to stretch the rope across.

And so you got that going on. And, and then yeah, like, you know, there's 40 dudes in their underwear crossing this river at seven in the morning and I'm just like, Oh my God, what are we getting ourselves into?

Like, this is a little bit more real, I think, you know, when you're trekking to Everest, it's like a.

A pretty but.

You know. Smooth experience, whereas I was like, Oh, this is.

Leisure, we're going into the wild.

So that was a cool feeling. But then from there, we, we headed up.

Up the.

River a bit more and then turned up this, this glacier valley. And at this point, we're like a little bit starting to be concerned that we hadn't seen snow.

Yet.

Because we had planned on camping on snow on this glacier.

And we're like, Oh, that's a that's a little.

Weird, but maybe it's a little dry.

And then a little.

Bit after that started storming, we're super spread out because some porters are fast and porters are slow. And that's where I was. I had that kind of moment where I'm sitting on this rock like.

Oh no.

What is going on?

But I get up to.

About I think we're at 4200 meters. So it's so the town was at 3000 meters, base camp was at 42 or 43.

And our our cook.

And lo they found. Kind of sandy grassy spot in this like just in the Marine basically at the end of the glacier. I don't know if we're.

Well, no, we were on ground, too, right up to.

The base of the glacier. And they're like, this is it, this is our spot. And we're kind of like, okay, well, whatever you say, you guys know better than we do. And in hindsight, I wish we had gone another kilometer to up the glacier, but in the end it was okay.

So we had this kind of like. Dusty, rocky spot on the Marine there, and there's a nice little creek running next to us. And it was funny because, you know, we're like, oh, yeah, perfect. Right by a creek.

That'll be convenient. You'll lot of water. We won't have to melt snow or anything. But the creek made, like, a lot of noise and. Basically until I came back to Canada. It was just constantly noisy. Like when you're in Delhi, in the village.

In base.

Camp, it was just like there's always noise and I was just using my earplugs religiously, but. Yeah. So we set up camp there that was going to be our spot for like two, two and a half weeks, kind of depending on how things went.

And and then from there.

The glacier kind of wove its way up.

Like.

A pretty gentle valley. And it was just pure, like dry rock glacier. So, you know, bare ice with lots of rock on top of it. You could you could feel the ice, but we wouldn't wear crampons or anything on it.

And then that.

That went up to about 4500 meters where we put advance base camp. So it took us a day to carry loads up to ABC.

At.

The base of an icefall. And the icefall was the big question mark of the trip. And so we had seen in the fan map and imagery and it actually found map got us updated imagery for that area. And so we had pretty good like idea of what.

What the what the zone looked like. And it also talked to a pair of British climbers that had attempted the route as a climbing route back in the nineties, but they didn't quite summit. And so we knew this icefall was there.

We knew it might be a little bit challenging, but we figured we could probably find a way up one of the sides or something.

But with.

Like literally no snow on the glacier, the icefall was pretty much an icefall.

You can.

Imagine like a valley coming to like a.

Horseshoe end.

Like cliff, and then just a ton of ice kind of spilling over it with cracks and stuff, kind of ringing the top. And so that the right side of the cliff was just constantly serac fall and then the icefall itself kind of stuck out.

So we're looking at it like, okay, you know, we. It's it's less than vertical, which is good, but it has cracks all over it and chunks, you know, above it and all that kind of stuff. And it's just littered with ice at the bottom.

But we're like, well, you know, we got to go have a look at it and and see how that kind of goes, because that leads to the upper glacier, which then is a long, gentle glacier to the base of the the face that we wanted to climb, the steep face and the peak.

And we still hadn't seen the peak at this point either. It was like a round the corner of the glacier, like we had no clue. So a few days getting started.

There.

And the question of altitude.

Going.

From 3000 to 43 was the worst day for me. I got a bit sick at base camp the first night. It was funny because it was like a super stressful day. Like I'd kind of said.

And like very.

Effortful and finally like pretty late at night, lay down in bed and was trying to go to sleep. And I remember I was kind of like I was breathing super fast and shallow. Like it was like and I'm laying there and and I was like, Oh, I've been laying here for like 10 minutes.

I'm not still just like. You know anything from when they retire.

Something is wrong. And so now we pulled.

Out.

The.

Pulse oximeter, and my my SAT was like.

79, which is like super, really low.

It should have been 90 or something. And so that was like, Oh, shit. But there was just that one night that I was I was sick and everybody else was feeling fine. But that was a big jump. You know, going 12 or 1300 meters at that altitude is is a lot.

It'd be like, you know, going in and camping on the summit of Mount Baker or Mt. Rainier from from sea level here kind of thing. So yeah, we established ah ABC and then wanted to go have a look at the ice file.

And both Justin and I are pretty capable ice climbers like Justin is actually a very good ice climber. I know I can get up stuff. Paul is a generally a good climber all around, but not like he doesn't do a lot of ice leading.

And then Tom.

Has never led a pinch of ice in his life. But he did do some YouTubing when we were in in town, so he was feeling pretty confident.

So we go to the.

Go to the ice fall. Justin and I went to go just kind of for an exploratory climb to see if we can get up it. And we our plan was to fix ropes up the ice fall. We had a three or 460 meter rope so we could fix.

And then that way.

The whole team could jog the lines to move loads up onto the upper glacier because it was just not going to be practical to like fully bully out every time that we needed to bring loads up. So we were going to fix these, these ropes.

And so, you know, Paul and Tom kind of wave goodbye. We'd all scoped the the icefall together and then the day before and then we got to head up and it was kind of like we were leaving for our funeral.

The atmosphere.

Was not great in Canberra, were like, what the hell, guys like.

Support here, you know, but.

But we had up and we would go up to the base and we're just putting on our crampons like, you know, sitting on a rock kind of just outside of the the ice fall zone there.

And.

Looking up at it. And I was just like, oh my God. Like there's just, you know, those detached thorax ringing the entire top of the room. And you can see where they fall down the section that we would want to climb and stuff like that.

And I'm like.

Man, that looks like, you know.

I know you and I can climb this.

Pretty.

Quickly and get up and down this, but I don't know if we can do this multiple times. And then Justin was like, Oh, let's fly the drone. And because we had two little, little drones with us for for photos and stuff.

And so he like.

Fires it up.

Blasts up to the top of the icefall and does a loop around it. And we're kind of looking at the tracks hanging over it and and like, oh, my God, that looks terrible. And then he's like.

Oh.

I think I could fly to the peak from here, you know, if we're lucky. And I was like, Oh yeah, definitely do that. And so he kind of cruises up the glacier.

And.

Above 5000 meters, like the drone is not operating at its optimal.

I mean.

I was just wondering that like.

Yeah.

Beeping, you know, power load, reach and all that stuff and we're like, ooh, it survives. But it comes around the corner. And yeah, we got the full view of the face and it was just blue eyes, like pure blue eyes and then all gray ice and like no snow whatsoever.

And he just.

He's sitting there with his jacket over his head because it's like super sunny, you know, and you can't fly the drone without doing.

That.

And and so, you know, I'm kind of sitting there next to him, like looking at the sky and stuff. And then he's like.

Oh, no. And.

You know, I stick my head under the jacket and and looking at the screen and I see this this face, and I'm just like, well, that kind of that kind of solves it for us. Like, we're obviously not going to see that.

And so there's really no point.

In.

Committing the team to going up and down this like really serious hazard. I was like, I think I'm going to make the call.

Right.

Now. And Justin was like, Yeah, I think that's the only decision. And so we called the other guys on the radio and we're like, Hey, guys, we, we actually got to see the mountain. We're looking at the thorax on.

The the peak or.

On the icefall, and it just doesn't go like we're not going to be able to do it. And they're both like, Oh, thank God.

So.

So that was, that was funny because I was like day three in base camp on this two and a half hour trip. And the thing is, like, we kind of assumed, okay, you know, maybe we won't get to see the face for whatever reason, but there'll be other.

Stuff.

To see, you know, there'll be other.

Things.

We can do.

But where we.

Were, there should have been five feet of snow on this glacier. There was none. And so there was no like mini golf. There is.

No other.

Objectives that really kind of jumped out at us. And so, you know, the next day we're kind of thinking about this and we're like, oh my God. Like, what are we going to do now? And luckily we did have one plan B, which is another peak called Manta two.

That was kind of like.

Our.

Original plan was at the end of the glacier.

Are plan.

B there's a cooler that goes off from the base, the icefall. So we didn't need to climb the icefall to head up towards Manitou.

And still a big peak. Looks cool.

Didn't know if had been climbed by that route or not, but. Seemed worth trying. And so we're like, okay, we're going to.

Pivot and we're going.

To refocus our efforts on Mamata. And so basing out of that, that ABC, we made two attempts and both attempts didn't get super far. So it turns out we were in India in like one of their.

Bigger.

Key waves in northern India in in some time. And so where we should have been in, yeah, like I said, five feet of snow.

On.

The glacier and pretty cold temperatures. It was like. Minus two overnight. And that kind of thing at best. And no snow. And so both attempts we made.

The.

First one. One of the guys got a bit altitude sick and was having trouble kind of like staying bounce and I think that was at about 5800 meters, which is a pretty big jump.

And then the second attempt we made.

Was it didn't freeze overnight. So we we started out like midnight, slept most of the afternoon and ABC and then got up.

And left.

And it just didn't freeze. And so we're booting up this this entrance cooler.

Into the.

Into kind of the funnel of the cooler. And then above that, it opens back up into this giant face like.

This big bowl.

Up to like 6900 meters.

And I'm like.

I was I was at the back of the group at this point, and I was punching through and like going to my knees and my.

Hip.

In this, like, slushy snow. And I was like, all right, guys, this is this is just not safe. Like, we can't climb in this kind of this kind of snow, and it's not getting better. Like it's only getting warmer.

Yeah. So.

So that was our second attempt. We didn't get quite as high as the first one, but yeah. So that was, that was definitely a bummer. And that kind of speaks to your kind of question about success. Like objectively, our trip was like an utter failure.

Know, like we didn't succeed on plan A or B or C, which sucks obviously. Like I would much rather ski than our and send it and you know, have the summit photo and all that stuff like all the glory.

But, but ultimately we did learn a ton, like it was a hell of an intro trip to the Himalayas. And so I think for me that was almost I mean, I wouldn't say it was more important, but it was definitely something I expected.

And really valuable.

Like now I feel like I could go back and all those kind of minor.

Complications and and.

Logistical challenges and all that stuff. Like I feel much more confident that I could just show up and kind of handle that. So lots of learnings, I guess so. So in that sense, the trip was absolutely success. And then also there's still a hell of a time like.

You know, even when we bailed on the route.

You know, we're sitting in this cooler.

And like.

An objectively very scary.

Spot and we're like, well, you know, we're going to turn around.

But before we do, we're going to like sit down. You know, Tom had a little flask of whiskey that he had brought. You know, we clicked off our headlamps. We're sitting in our puffy suits and, like, looking out at the stars, you know, above the Himalayan peaks around us, like above Meru and shivering and stuff.

And.

And it was like, whoa, this is pretty, pretty rad. Like, not too many people have the opportunity to. Even try to go skiing in the Himalayas. And so to to have that chance definitely makes it a success.

Yeah, for sure, man. I think that's more of like a common thread nowadays, right? Is like, like obviously the polished finished product like you talked about like at the summit photo is like really sick and great. But I think the vast majority of like climbing ski mountaineering, skiing, it's really like all about like failure and like dealing

with failure, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's the majority of climbing. And so I think like those kind of experiences, not that I've had one like you're talking about, but in general just experiences like that, like you actually have to enjoy the process, right?

And if all you're trying to do is just get like the shiny photo at the top, you're really going to miss a lot out of that. And I think like you're saying, like you've learned a lot from this experience.

It was a super cool experience and you know, it's only going to set you up for the next kind of trip you're going on, which I think is really, really cool.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. It definitely it was cool that you took the time to to be present and to experience what was around you. And I think a lot of people can miss that. A lot of people are like, all right, let's just go down and like miss that cool opportunity to just take it all in.

Yeah. So yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Sure. I mean, I'm definitely like a very motivated and.

Moody.

Movement oriented person, and that's just my style of moving in the mountains, too, is like moving quickly, you know? That's my racing background. I like trail running, I like skiing. And so it's just constant movement. But it is it is certainly nice to like in The View once in a while.

And don't get me wrong, like. I would much prefer to have summited and to have have done the rad stuff and my gotten the glory and you know, for sure, yeah. All that kind of stuff. And I do like.

I roll.

My eyes real hard when people are like, oh, it's not about the, you know, the objective, it's about the journey and all that stuff. Like, I don't buy that for one.

Sucker if you're talking about it.

The objective does matter to you. But, but certainly, like, I.

Think.

You have to enjoy all.

Of it.

You can still you can still want to be successful and be motivated and that's totally fine. But you also have to to enjoy the rest of it.

So yeah.

Yeah, for sure, man, I think.

Did you did you see any huge success or anything fall while you were out?

Oh, yeah. Totally massive avalanches. Like early in the trip. It did snow.

Like more.

Or less a dusting. But, you know, when there's 3000 meters of slope that's accumulating and dusting, you can still get some pretty wild avalanches. But the ice fall. Yeah, like camping and ABC was kind of horrifying because we had the icefall on one side that was constantly spinning sacks.

And then on.

Either side of the glacier was the Marine, and it was like a.

Friggin 300.

Meter marine wall that was just constantly spitting out.

Rocks.

And so, like, we don't get that so much in B.C., those those big, steep marine walls. But every once you find them. But in the Himalaya, like because those glaciers are so old and so deep and now are receding so much, the the marine walls are enormous.

And so laying in my tent, like.

You know, I knew I'm in the.

Middle of this big wide glacier and I'm totally far away from that. But you just hear these like massive, like car sized rocks come tumbling down.

The moraine in the middle of the night. And you like that? So like.

Yeah, flags are the key. I think earplugs and acid are, like, by far the most important.

Yeah.

Could you see, like sparks and stuff coming off the rocks as they're coming down the mountain?

Oh, yeah.

Was it like. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy, man. Do you have any footage or anything of of that particular carnage?

I don't know if we took much of. Those Marines.

Because we're.

More just like trying to sleep at that point. I mean, definitely.

Yeah.

We've got a few videos of us trundling rocks down Marines as.

We're walking.

And stuff, but.

I'm wondering.

If you guys bring any, like, high altitude medication with you or anything like that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We had kind of the whole I mean, the mean to our Dymocks and dexamethasone, so.

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

Any oxygen canisters?

Oh, yeah. What do you think.

Of, like, skiing an 8000 meter peak with O2? I know you said you're not interested in that in general, but I mean, like, what do you think of in general? Like climbing with oxygen?

I mean, I'm kind of indifferent to it. It seems like it's a huge hassle, I think.

Yeah.

I guess that's what you need to do to. To go out there and do your thing. That's fine with me.

I probably wouldn't.

Choose to do it myself. You know, it's hard to say unless you're in that situation. Like if. If next year I was offered a trip to an 8000 or on an expedition like that, I don't know.

I think.

Personally I would rather try it without, but.

I don't know.

Like even the guys that go without on those peaks, like there's just so much of a safety net around you anyway. I don't even know how much you can really say like that. That's like it's obviously different. You know, physiologically you're you're at a major disadvantage.

But I think for the people that are climbing without oxygen. As soon as they decide, like, oh, this is too hard, you know, they can grab oxygen even if they're not bringing it up there. And so that alone, like mentally is a pretty big safety net.

And the same goes for fixed ropes, all that kind of stuff. And so that's where like to me, it's kind of like.

Well, yeah, it's cool and.

You know, you did a thing.

And.

Physiologically it definitely challenging, but. Psychologically, it's a lot different than being.

On.

A remote peak all by yourself. So I look to the, you know, the guys that are climbing hard routes in Alaska or hard routes in the Himalayas without oxygen, alpine style, like.

On remote peaks.

As just I mean, they're pretty it's not even comparable. Like it's a totally different game. So.

Yeah, totally. Did you did you see that? I think it was like Jackson, Marvel and someone else. They did like the Slovak director and under like 30 hours, you know, that was pretty.

Wild. Yeah.

That's like a really pretty cool route. I've been interested in that. Like, I'm a huge fan of Steve House, so I know about like their original, like 60 hour push they did on that. And so yeah, like 30 hours was pretty unbelievable.

Yeah. I mean.

Rad stuff is still happening. Like, that's the other thing, you know?

All that you could.

Slog your way up an 8000 or with oxygen but you know the guys that are. That are really pushing the limits. I think that's pretty rad. And it's it's going down all the time. There's a big, big climb on Chang a bang and then a couple other peaks got climbed this the similarly in season because the weather

was so good and then yeah tons of stuff happened in Alaska. I wasn't really around for it, but now I've kind of seen a few things that's trickling out, so that's pretty rad for sure.

I think it's also like perspective, right? It's like what's what's harder, like being oxygen, less like, you know, slogging up steep like hillside or mountainside or like climbing Y6 at like 5500 meters. You know what I mean? It's like, like I haven't done either of those things, so I'm really not one to like comment, but like I

feel like there's probably an argument to say like not there's a lot of people who'd rather be slogging up the mountainside than trying to climb by six and like, you know, 5500 meters. So that's it's definitely, definitely all this perspective and context matters a lot.

Yeah. I mean, like we're at an hour and a half into this. So I'm wondering, like, we can kind of just like switch gears a little bit here and you know, I think like something Kyle and I were talking about is like.

So you were saying, like, you know, you've got your you've got your masters in exercise physiology right now and you're a PhD candidate, I believe. Right.

I finished my teaching.

Really? Wow, man. Congrats.

Crazy.

Yeah. Maybe a little bit about your experience about what you're studying because it's so relevant. But then also how as an athlete, do you manage your time? You know what I mean? Like like how do you have the time to to do the things that you do, to study, to do all these things?

Like, like maybe if we can have a little bit into that.

Um, yeah, I, I think my PhD supervisor was probably the most, most patient ever in history.

But it took me eight and a half.

Years to do my PhD. So that would be.

A big part of it.

You know, every season that I was competing on the.

National team, I took leave.

Took leaves of absence.

From.

My program basically for the winter. And yeah, my supervisor was okay with that, which is unusual for sure. But also he's.

A.

Skier and climber as well, you know, and that's the reason I chose that program.

So he was really.

Like an integral part, I would say, in both my academic career and my athletic career. You know, he he kind of enabled that. But being a student, like, it's kind of a.

A convenient.

Side project to being an.

Actor that worked well.

With being an athlete, I should.

Say.

You know, a lot of what I did, I did a lot of lab experiments.

And so I did.

Need to spend time at the university. But as a student, like, a lot of what you're doing is writing proposals or writing results. And you can do that from anywhere, whether it's the show office in McDonald's.

Or.

Oklahoma. It's like it doesn't really matter as long as you're writing. And so you can write at night, you can write in the morning, like you can write when you're tired. Yeah. For me, it was like a. It was almost like kind of a.

Non.

Question like I was going to do stuff in the mountains. And so I had to make sure my my academic program allowed that to happen. Otherwise, I wouldn't have finished. Like I could never have finished my Ph.D. if I had had to be in the office every day, day in and day out, like I just would have

. I would have quit.

And so I guess for like people who are like, you know, haven't like read about you or don't know about you, like I'm like, maybe you want to just give, like, a quick break down on like what, what your PhD was on and like.

Yeah, a little bit about that.

Yeah, I.

I came to.

UBC, mostly interested in kind of continuing that exercise physiology. Stream that I started in in Vermont in my undergrad.

And I knew.

That I was interested in doing research.

And.

I knew I was interested in in altitude and things like that. And so, unfortunately, you know, compared to like. Cancer and things like that. There's not a lot of money into high altitude research unless you're in the Army.

And I'm not not very military focused, but there is still like kind of.

A.

Niche to carve out there. And initially I was looking at purely altitude illness, so my masters was looking at high altitude pulmonary edema and there's actually a very similar illness called immersion pulmonary edema that happens to swimmers and divers.

And so for my master's, I was comparing those two and trying to see if.

The.

Mechanism of, uh, of the edema was similar. And so.

Then.

Going into my Ph.D., I wanted to do similar stuff. And actually because of that master's project was doing a bit of, of actual just purely diving research. Even though I'm not a diver by any stretch, I'm not really a water person, but they do cool stuff and again, there's military resources behind it.

So I was working a bit in Toronto where they have the the Canadian. Clearance divers are based out of there. And so that was actually pretty interesting. And they have like really cool equipment and stuff. But after doing that for a couple of years, I was like, Oh, I don't really want to work for the military.

And I'm not a diver, nor do I have any interest in doing diving stuff. So I, I changed their back to focusing more on how to tude. And obviously as an athlete it was like, okay, how can I look into performance and how that relates to altitude?

And a big question that I had was, you know, if we.

If we're all we're.

All ten runners and we live at sea.

Level.

And then we go to compete at. 2000 meters at altitude, kind of.

We're all going.

To do worse than we would at altitude. At sea level. Excuse me. We're going to run a little bit slower.

But one of.

Us might.

Run.

A minute slower. One of us might run 10 seconds slower. One might run 3 minutes slower. There's not, like, a really good way to figure out how altitude affects individuals.

Differently.

Especially relating to performance. And same goes you could argue for climbing like some people. Experience altitude illness much more severely or much earlier than other people. And so we don't know what accounts for that entire individual variability. And that's what I wanted to look into.

Unfortunately, all the things that I hypothesized as as factors turned out not to be major factors. And so I don't have any really good insights other than it's probably not the stuff that I think the truth the real answer is there's a whole bunch of things that go into how we respond to altitude.

Like if you imagine, you know, a bank of switches you want to have like all those switches flipped in your favor. Most people probably have.

Half on and half off. And some people have all of them on.

And they're like superheroes at Oxford. And some people have all of them off and they're just like, doomed.

But yeah.

So that's the quick summary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Fair enough. And I mean, obviously seems really, really useful if you're getting into more high altitude stuff and wanting to go to the Himalayas. So that's pretty common.

Did you use real quick, did you use any of your actual on site experience up at high altitude in your in your research and in your, you know, your schooling? Like, were you able to combine your your sport and your schooling effectively?

No.

None of the.

You know, none of the competing I was doing or anything was was relevant for like data collection, you know, that was all lab based.

Stuff.

But the idea of like, how come I feel way shittier than my partner that I train with every day, you know, in Squamish and now we're in the Alps and he's like, he's crashing or vice versa. So that kind of stuff, like it does inspire you.

And then, yeah, like.

When you're in the mountains, you know, and somebody is like, Oh, my heart rate's really high.

And I have a.

Pretty gnarly headache. You know what's going on? You're like, Oh, yeah, I know what that. Read read those symptoms before kind of thing.

So yeah, definitely.

Like a little bit of carryover for sure.

Cool, cool, cool. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm kind of curious, what is your like your annual trading volume? Maybe if you want to guess through a little bit about like your training and how you like ramp up your seasons and particularly from like the aspect of like, you know, someone listening to this that they keep trying to

absorb some information, if that makes sense.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

It does depend a little bit on how you want to count training. Like, you know, if. If Melo's key to.

Her.

Counts as training or not, I kind of think it does. Like, I think basically anything that it helps your aerobic base.

Is.

Going to be pretty useful. But then, like, I don't I don't like rock climbing as training, so so yeah, that depends a little bit. But in terms of like aerobic hours, like about 1000 hours a year.

Lately and.

That's been pretty consistent probably since college.

Oh, wow. But then yeah, yeah.

I mean, like maybe a little bit more depending on kind of the skiing because ski touring, you can obviously like ski 7 hours a day or something. So it depends on how you kind of look at that. But I'd say like of, of, of effective training, about 1000 hours a season for me, I'm not so good at

like practicing what I preach in terms of ideal training and stuff. And, and part of that is because I actually do kind of enjoy like all seasons. We're really lucky here on the coast because, you know, the summers are beautiful.

We can go rock climbing, the trail running, we can go Alpine, you know, climbing and running. It's like it's rad in the.

Summer and then the falls.

Like, yeah, things kind of get gross weatherwise and, and, you know, maybe it's not ideal.

But then all of a.

Sudden, like when it gets cold, the high peaks get snow and ice. And like, we have a really sick alpine and mixed season here, and Squamish and Whistler, like some really outrageous routes.

High in the mountains, you know, like October, you know.

Good hard mix climbing. And then.

All those routes.

Get covered in snow.

And.

Disappear and they turn into ski lines and you have a rad winter. And you know, and in December and January and stuff like it's just snows so much and like that's that t line. Like, it just.

It snowed so much.

This season in town, which is crazy. And, and we just ski so much power, like, almost to the point where it's like, oh my God, I just hope it stops selling for a little while so we can get up in the Alpine and, you know, breathe a little bit.

And then.

Later in the season, it turns into ski mining season and we can ski big lines and get up in the.

Alpine and.

Then spring rolls around and it's like, go, go to the Rockies, go to Alaska, go to the Himalaya, whatever. And then it's all of a sudden volcano season and then pretty soon you're back to trail running. So we're pretty lucky that we have all that.

And then I'm just like, I just want to do it.

All and.

And have the most fun on each day, basically. So I'm not so great at kind of periodization my training nowadays. Now that I'm not competing, I'm kind of like psyched to just like, like, go hard.

All year long and.

Then occasionally take like, that mandatory week of rest. But I do try to. Try to try to rest when when appropriate. And there's often kind of a time later in the summer when it gets really hot here and the snow is melted out so much that the alpine routes aren't all that great.

Like in August, I typically take a bit of a break.

And then September.

Even late August, September, I'm generally kicking back into prepping for skiing, which is a lot of uphill training. So either.

We're.

Really lucky again that we have a gondola here. So I can just like hike a vertical.

Kilometer.

Pretty direct and then take the gondola down and not have that beat on my legs. Or if it's been raining for two weeks straight and I just can't stand the idea of being white again going into Stairmaster or something like that.

And then also at about that same time a year, I switched to a fairly heavy strength training cycle.

And that.

This is actually something I was really, really curious about is like your, your strength training, like less sports specific and more like foundational strength training and muscular and.

Totally. Yeah.

I mean, I like obviously what I do is, is primarily requires anaerobic base.

You know.

When days are.

6 to.

20 hours long, it's aerobic. But also like when you're booting up a thousand meter face, like if you imagine that it's like doing back steps, right? Like it's doing a thousand meters where the buck steps of the pack.

So you still need like pretty solid muscle endurance.

And that.

Really just comes from strength training. And so I lifted a gym here called the.

Squamish Barbell and they're there.

Like a powerlifting gym, which is hilarious because, you know, it's me and a couple of my ski buddies that are like.

You're not a tiny guy, but I'm pretty.

Skinny compared to the power lifters. Yeah, which is funny, but they're, they're like super size, you know, they're like.

They will.

They think it's rad that we're trying, you know. And then.

When they.

You know, go and do their one k run or cheer them on. So it's pretty fun.

And, and.

And yeah. So that's like a that's a pretty classic powerlifting phase for me, like focusing on squats.

And a lot.

Of single leg stuff. I get a little bit of knee issues, especially with running, and so.

I'm.

Trying to kind of just protect that and offset like, you know, in the, in the winter with skinning and and hiking and stuff. Glutes get so, so tight, so trying to offset that a bit.

And.

Just get ahead of that stuff. So when that strength is usually it takes me through.

December.

When the skiing starts getting really good and then it's just too hard to like ski. You know, 7 hours or 8 hours a day and also strength training. It's just like it's too dangerous. So.

Yeah.

Do you keep, like a maintenance period where like you try and maintain like at least like a strength or cut through the period? Or are you just like once you've done your strength phase, that kind of carries you a long enough period of time that you just I.

Wouldn't call it the strength training.

I just do like a I call it like a maintenance routine. And so that's like, you know, it's like clamshells and just some like unweighted single leg stuff.

But it's not it's.

Not powerlifting like a, like the main strength phase would be.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I try to do that as much as I can. I mean.

There.

Times in the season where that falls away as a priority. But are you.

Are you coach? I think. No so anymore. But like were you previous you previously when you were competing and stuff were coach, right.

Oh totally. Yeah, yeah, totally. And then I mean in the gym I work with a a strength coach there, but not an overall coach. It's just.

A my.

My point performance is no longer my priority. It's more just like keeping fitness high and maintaining.

You know. Like functional.

Yeah, it's really and so.

And.

Then just, you know, with 20 years of experience at this kind of stuff, like I can, I can keep myself going to do stuff like this.

Yeah.

Reasonably well. So.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. Super cool. Really interesting, I think. Are you familiar with like the athlete in, like, Scott Johnson, those guys? Yeah. Like I'm I'm a huge fan of them. I really, really like their stuff. That's like kind of the majority of, like the principles of, like what I base like training and trying to do things

off of. And I think he just like Scott in particular, just has like so much, really, really great practical advice. But one thing I've really been like adhering to is just like, like a lot of my friends who, whether they're like climbers or runners or skiers or anything, like none of them really do like like much any

, like foundational strength. And like we're not talking about like going to the gym and becoming a bodybuilder, right? Like we're talking about like good foundational strength work that's going to like increase bone density and tend to density and increase your strength reserve and you know, reduce like having floppy legs on like really, really long days and stuff

. Like really, really just good foundational stuff. And yeah, I don't know, it's, it's something that I'm really interested in like and there's even people I've been like, Yeah, hey, you should, you should be doing this. And then they just like, we'll never go put any hours in the gym.

And I just think that at a certain point, if you're only doing like your sports specific stuff or just constantly getting out, like inevitably you're working against yourself and then like the fitter you are as an athlete, like someone like you who has like a 20 year base aerobically.

Like, you know, you can get away with a lot more and do a lot more than like someone who's like starting out. I think so. Yeah. It's it's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

I mean.

Those uphill athlete guys are great. Scott's a former cross-country skier, so their.

Whole training.

Philosophy is based in the Norwegian cross-country ski model, which is what I kind of grew up in as well. But it's kind of like it's classic, classic endurance training.

And.

They just do a good job of translating that to to mountain athletes. But yeah, to your point, like, I wish I had dove into the strength training. I mean, I've been strength training my entire competitive career, but I wish I had gone as hard at it as I am now.

You know, ten years ago or.

Or even.

Five years ago.

I would be a lot.

Better off at this point and I would have been a lot better off then. And that's certainly something that most runners and skiers and and folks are missing. You know, it takes time. Like you have to go to the gym and you have to pay for it.

And you have to.

Find a good gym.

Like it.

It doesn't work to do it at the 24 hour fitness place. You know, you got to be at the the place that's got the the right group and all that kind of stuff. But but it once you find that, it's, it's a huge payoff and so it's worth it.

Yeah. For sure. Mean yeah. I think like I'm on my end kind of wrapping up here. I do have a few more questions so I don't want to take you for too long. So I know we're out like an hour and 46 minutes here.

And I don't know, Kyle, if you have if you have a few more here, but, um.

Yeah. No matter where I am.

Yeah, well, I'm just wondering. Okay, so, like, you know, you know, what are some cool lines for like in a, like someone who's like, you know, getting into ski mountaineering. They have like reasonable competency in the mountains here on the coast.

What are some cool lines that like something you'd say they should be checking out?

The. Yeah. The.

The Matthew and Joffrey Group up and near Pemberton off the Duffy Lake Road are kind of like the. The really classic I wouldn't call it like beginner because it's definitely like real skiing, but it is, you know, it's kind of like the first step into steep skiing, I would say, like, you know.

Yeah, they're fairly real, but they're still friendly. You know, you could fall down it and not think. And so that zone is really good.

And as soon as.

You so there's there's three really classic lines the ozone cooler.

The.

The northeast face of Matier and the north face of.

Smog which.

Are kind of those yeah those classic inter roots. But as soon as you go off those and you look on the other sides of the peaks, there are some really gnarly steep lines that are no longer intro lines and requiring rappelling and cornice management and all that kind of stuff.

And so, you know. Even without kind of naming stuff. Like if you just look at that fat map for those peaks and look on the backsides and start thinking like, Oh, does that cool our link? You know, how do we get into that?

That's where developing those skills goes. And so that's kind of how you do it, really. The other zone, the next step up there from there, I would say is around Wedge Mount Lake.

And.

Wedge Peak in Whistler. And that's a super sweet spot that has almost no traffic in the winter because it's a little bit harder to get to. But it is very steep and some really pretty rowdy lines. There's a couple like a couple more intro ones, but for the most part, they're pretty rad.

And then in Squamish, I would say the area around Mount Garibaldi doesn't get nearly as much traffic as it should. The the never traverse gets a lot of traffic and the classic northeast face.

Of Garibaldi gets.

Skewed. But there.

Are.

Some really cool lines.

On every.

Aspect of that.

Peak that.

Maybe get skied once every couple of years kind of.

Thing. So yeah.

Lots to explore there.

Yeah, absolutely, man. And I guess last thing you were saying that you had, you know, some things that were exciting you and I'm wondering, like what they are, you know, what? What's in store for you? Like this this coming, you know, at the end of this season or next season kind of thing?

He.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny, I did put a lot of mental effort into India and making sure that that would go well.

And and.

Yeah, just everything associated with that. So I kind of it was one of those things where I if we got back and I was like, Oh shit, what now? Like, what's next? But ski season is mostly wrapped up here, I think hopefully I'll get out one or two more days.

But, but the kind of the big cool stuff is probably mostly done. Transitioning into more like alpine climbing and alpine running. I think.

The.

Tenants range here above town kind of has my heart.

For.

For summer activities. And then there's a couple things that I have left to do up there, a couple of routes and a couple. I'm only missing one peak in the range that I haven't.

I.

Haven't climbed yet, which is red tusk, mostly because it's like a volcanic pile. But I do need to go take that off and then some other kind of fun running adventures, but mostly this time of year, like looking for Alpine to mercy climbs.

And that kind.

Of thing.

And then, yeah, I have to figure.

Out what I want to do next year in terms of skiing. I think that's been the other realization from this trip is skiing in the Himalayas. There's a really low likelihood of success just period. Even climbing in the Himalayas, let's put it that way, has a low likelihood of success and then skiing is even less likely.

And so I think the.

Way that people are successful there, this is my impression.

Because I am not successful.

There.

But is.

That basically you keep beating your head against the wall and you.

Go there year.

In and year out on multiple expeditions and you dedicate your life to it. And there's, you know, examples of.

Of incredible climbers in, you know.

In Canada and stuff that do this and they go year in and year out, and some years they fail and some years they're successful. And it's not so much a measure of how good of a climber they are.

It's it's kind of luck in terms of conditions and partners and all that kind of stuff. And so for me, I'm trying to decide.

You know, I'm.

Really excited to go back. I definitely do want to, but I don't know if I want to dedicate my life to that. Like there's.

A heck.

Of a lot of cool.

Stuff.

To do, even just like within 100 kilometers of my house.

That is much lower cost.

And higher likelihood of success.

But perhaps.

You know, the stuff in in the Himalaya is like. The it's it's high cost, it's low likelihood of success. But then what's the reward?

I don't I don't know.

Where that all lines up for me. And if I want to be one of those guys that goes every year to on a big expedition and leaves I like I don't know if I want to leave my wife every year for a month and a half or two months.

That's not super.

Fun.

But maybe I do.

I don't know. It is a pretty cool place. See, I don't want to lose her. I would like to be here with you.

But I may want to go. Go do that. And so I got to figure that out.

Totally, man. Well, I think that's all I got on my end. I just wanna say thanks so much for talking to us today and stuff. I really appreciate you taking the time and it was great having a conversation with you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. My pleasure. Thanks for.

Having me. I appreciate it.

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