In today’s episode we sit down with Jacob Urban. Mountain athlete and Founder of The Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute. Climbing put Jacob on a path and in his words climbing is what “led him to himself”. Now with over 30 years in the industry of Outdoor Education he is here to teach us not only how to survive in the mountains, but how we view ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. We hear about Jacob’s story…. cover topics such as Risk and Ethics….and finally discuss what our subconscious’ role is in how we interact with the world.
Please rate, review the show, and share this podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools to help us out.
Contact us:
IG: @the.climbing.majority
Email: theclimbingmajoritypodcast@gmail.com
Resources:
Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute
Jacob's Blog
In today’s episode we sit down with Jacob Urban. Mountain athlete and Founder of The Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute. Climbing put Jacob on a path and in his words climbing is what “led him to himself”. Now with over 30 years in the industry of Outdoor Education he is here to teach us not only how to survive in the mountains, but how we view ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. We hear about Jacob’s story…. cover topics such as Risk and Ethics….and finally discuss what our subconscious’ role is in how we interact with the world.
Please rate, review the show, and share this podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools to help us out.
Contact us:
IG: @the.climbing.majority
Email: theclimbingmajoritypodcast@gmail.com
Resources:
Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute
Jacob's Blog
00:00:00:14 - 00:00:27:20
Speaker 1
Hey, everyone. Kyle here. Welcome back to the Climbing Majority podcast, where Max and I sit down with living legends, professional athletes, certified guides and recreational climbers alike to discuss the topics, lessons, stories and experiences found in the life of a climber. If you haven't already, please subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody?
00:00:27:20 - 00:00:58:12
Speaker 1
Welcome back to the Climbing Majority podcast. In today's episode, we sit down with a gentleman named Jacob Urban. He is a mountain athlete and founder of the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute. Climbing put Jacob on a path and in his words, climbing is what led him to himself. Now, with 30 years in the industry of outdoor education, he is here to teach us not only how to survive in the mountains, but how we view ourselves and our relationship with the world around us.
00:00:58:14 - 00:01:07:13
Speaker 1
We hear about Jacob's story cover topics such as risk and ethics, and finally, we discuss what our subconscious says role is in how we.
00:01:07:13 - 00:01:08:03
Speaker 2
Interact.
00:01:08:05 - 00:01:22:07
Unknown
With the world.
00:01:22:09 - 00:01:23:03
Speaker 2
All right, everybody, welcome.
00:01:23:03 - 00:01:45:05
Speaker 1
Back to the show. We're sitting down here with a gentleman named Jacob Urban. You know, the way we met is actually pretty funny. I met Jacob. Well, actually, I've never actually met you, but I was put in contact with Jacob almost four, five years ago while I was living in Jackson Hole. And a fellow person said this guy was the person to know to be out climbing in Jackson Hole.
00:01:45:07 - 00:02:01:20
Speaker 1
And, you know, it was right at the time when I actually was about to leave suddenly from Jackson Hole. And so we never actually connected. And I saw a post on Facebook about, you know, his thoughts on risk and how it, you know, is incorporated in our life in climbing and life in general. And I was really moved by it and I was like, wow, this guy's got a lot to say.
00:02:01:20 - 00:02:19:07
Speaker 1
I want to see what he's all about. And instantly, our old Facebook messages popped up and I was like, Whoa, I've talked to this guy before. And yeah, we just circled back. I reached out to him, got him on a call, and here we are sitting down with Jacob today. And it's pretty cool full circle here. So really happy to have you on the show.
00:02:19:07 - 00:02:21:16
Speaker 1
Welcome. Welcome, Jacob. Welcome to the show.
00:02:21:18 - 00:02:27:17
Speaker 2
Kyle and Max, Thanks so much for having me aboard. I'm. I'm psyched to share with you all. So thank you.
00:02:27:19 - 00:02:29:01
Speaker 4
Guys. Stoked to have you here, man.
00:02:29:03 - 00:02:49:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, you know, just to get things rolling here, we usually do a pretty big deep dive into the past. I think that it gives our audience a good, well-rounded understanding of kind of where you come from and where you are. And I also personally just think it's super interesting to hear how people found climbing and kind of what their upbringing was all about because it really shapes who we are today.
00:02:49:13 - 00:02:59:15
Speaker 1
So, you know, you just want to dive back into the past a little bit and talk about how you grew up and essentially how, you know, your life led you to climbing it.
00:02:59:18 - 00:03:35:17
Speaker 2
Absolutely. I I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, and I can't say I was in a climbing belt, but there was there was access to climbing. And I didn't find that until my late teens. I did actually move back to Pennsylvania in between a spurt of deciding whether or not I was going to go back to school or not, I had been finding the outdoors and ultimately had there was a climbing area that was not too far from my house.
00:03:35:19 - 00:04:10:02
Speaker 2
I started hanging out there, basically causing enough trouble in order for somebody to grab me by the scruff of the neck and say, Hey, kid, you don't know anything, and here's how you can at least stay a little bit safe. They kind of took me under their wing. I started and I started doing some trips down to Seneca, West Virginia, and I had no idea what I was being what I was being introduced to, just kind of normalized Seneca Rocks.
00:04:10:02 - 00:04:40:20
Speaker 2
If you've ever climbed there, it's extremely exposed. It's unbelievably sandy, and the locals pretty much drink moonshine and smoke weed and climb. And it's it's really a unique environment. With that being said, it was the first time I got introduced to a group of people that were while they were living so much and I mean like living life.
00:04:40:22 - 00:05:08:15
Speaker 2
And honestly, I was really attracted to that whole kind of the freedom that they had. It just seemed like they didn't do anything else other than hang out and climb and while that wasn't the case, that's what they made the most time for, was to hang out with one another and to climb and ultimately found myself going back to college, went for elder education and recreation.
00:05:08:15 - 00:06:03:02
Speaker 2
Resource management, started teaching in the outdoor industry, started Mountain Guide and Ski patrol and teaching at the undergraduate level, teaching Expeditionary Studies, and got a chance to basically climb all over the world, get paid for it. And then I left that 17 years ago in order to move to Jackson Hole and at that time I really didn't know what it was I was seeking Other then I wanted some bigger mountains, I wanted a bigger venue and I wanted an opportunity to to really engage with the outdoors on an even more of a lifestyle, on a lifestyle approach than what I was even having, just incorporating it as much as I possibly could.
00:06:03:04 - 00:06:27:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, well, it is like a big jump there. I, I think it's, I think it's cool to see or hear that you, I don't know. You found climbing. You were, you know, shown that world in a very it seems like a glimpse and then you just dedicated your life to it. I think that's you know a lot of people might have been in that situation and not necessarily, you know, committed so fully to it.
00:06:27:09 - 00:06:45:20
Speaker 1
What about like I you know, you said the freedom, like, what was that the main driving force between dedicating, you know, the future of of your path towards that direction or were there other things about climbing that or mountain sports in general that kind of drove you to to dedicate yourself to it so quickly?
00:06:45:22 - 00:07:37:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, You know, it was intoxicating. The first couple of times I climbed, it was apparent that it just it consumed you. It took over your psyche. It forced you to be absolutely present and aware of the moment and know my family. Like, in all fairness, like I'm the youngest of six and my family is crazy. I like, you know, my dad was a bookie and my oldest brother was involved in the largest organized crime operation in the United States from 1974 until about 1986.
00:07:37:06 - 00:08:10:01
Speaker 2
And so my family had this really bizarre connection to to crime that was normalized, but specifically but specifically gambling and taking risks. And so the risk taking seemed normal. And so when I found the environment that felt better for me, my family thought I was the one that was crazy because they were like, this is a really bad outlet.
00:08:10:03 - 00:08:39:10
Speaker 2
And interestingly enough, it was it was the thing that grounded me. It was the thing that made me actually feel like I belonged because I definitely didn't feel like I belonged with my family. Not only just being the youngest, there was a generation between us. I was the hopes. And so the thinking that I was subject to with the people around me was antiquated.
00:08:39:12 - 00:09:08:07
Speaker 2
And then, you know, I came into this world and I just saw things differently than the rest of my family. And so climbing, climbing was the hook for me. It was the thing that got me outdoor. It was the motivation to to get out of the house and really start traveling and start interacting with the environment. And every time I did that, I kept finding out something else about myself along the way.
00:09:08:09 - 00:09:11:19
Speaker 1
Are you are you close to your family now?
00:09:11:21 - 00:09:40:02
Speaker 2
Huh? That's a that's a tricky question with half of my family. Well, I talk to all of them on a regular basis, half of them I've pretty deep conversations with. And then the other half we keep things on the surface, you know, So it's like, are we connected? Yes. That level of connection varies greatly depending on who the individual is.
00:09:40:04 - 00:09:49:21
Speaker 1
Fair enough. What you said you were the the oops. How much of an age gap is there between you and your older and oldest sibling?
00:09:49:23 - 00:10:15:22
Speaker 2
So there's two years between the first five siblings in my family. So my folks had five kids and ten years and then there was an eight year gap between me and and the next Wow. Next youngest or next oldest, however you want to say it. And so there's 18 years between my oldest brother and myself. So, like, it baffles me, I'm 52 and he's 70.
00:10:16:00 - 00:10:40:15
Speaker 2
And wow, it's interesting as a kid, as a kid, when we were hanging out, everybody always thought he was my father, and rightly so. I mean, there is just you know, it was, you know, a full, you know, a full generation in between us. And yeah, you know, it it that at that time it wasn't too uncommon for somebody that young to be around a young kid.
00:10:40:15 - 00:10:46:16
Speaker 2
So yeah, strange, strange fun dynamics.
00:10:46:18 - 00:11:30:23
Speaker 4
Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting sounding dynamic for sure. And obviously not something that I've experienced or I'm sure many, many people have very, very different. Right. I'm wondering here, Jakob, what around what age were you when you started to really experience climbing and experience the empowerment that kind of climbing? I guess I'm putting words in your mouth, but it sounds like I've experienced this myself where, you know, you start kind of finding your tribe and your people and yourself and that you're interested in these experiences and that climbing becomes such a deep state of meaning in your life and gives you purpose If you experience that.
00:11:31:01 - 00:11:34:16
Speaker 4
When around what age did you start experiencing that?
00:11:34:18 - 00:12:00:12
Speaker 2
I was I was 18 years old. I bought a rope. It put me into a leadership position and and other people were willing to trust me. And that's really what happened. I had no idea what I was doing. I was I was faking it until I could make it. And I like I said, I was 18 years old.
00:12:00:12 - 00:12:22:21
Speaker 2
I bought a rope and that was that was the day I figured the rest of it out from there. And that, you know, like, I laugh about it because, like, I look at the shit that we used to do and I can't believe nobody ever got hurt, but evidently our safety protocol was good enough. Yeah.
00:12:22:23 - 00:12:24:01
Speaker 1
Or you got lucky.
00:12:24:03 - 00:12:29:04
Speaker 4
Yeah. Better to be lucky than good. As we've we've heard on this podcast before.
00:12:29:06 - 00:12:32:10
Speaker 2
That's a whole nother, that's a whole nother topic unto itself.
00:12:32:10 - 00:13:02:12
Speaker 4
Yeah, There's this, there's this interesting paradox. I find that with individuals that we've talked to and that I've experienced myself, I think Kyle has as well, where you kind of have this period earlier on getting into climbing where you make a lot of bad mistakes and you do some really dumb things. But through that phase you also end up empowering yourself and teaching yourself that you can actually do things and accomplish things and you learn a lot.
00:13:02:12 - 00:13:24:03
Speaker 4
At least this is this is what I have experienced and what I think from from listening to people talk about it. And so when I say it's a paradox, I mean that it's almost kind of something that we'd want to stop. We'd want to not have climbers nowadays experience this period because it's so dangerous. And of course we don't want to have these unnecessary accidents.
00:13:24:05 - 00:13:59:01
Speaker 4
But at the same time, those are some of the most empowering experiences, is learning how to figure things out for yourself and that you can persevere through adversity. So it's this interesting thing where you don't want climbers to get hurt or make, you know, dumb mistakes. But at the same time, a lot of the climbers we talk to go through this period doing things such as making dumb mistakes and they end up being very empowered slash kind of learning a lot of how to persevere through these difficult situations.
00:13:59:01 - 00:14:10:09
Speaker 4
It's very character building. So that's what I mean by paradox. It's you almost want to avoid it, but at the same time, it's both character building and very empowering. So it's really interesting.
00:14:10:11 - 00:14:52:14
Speaker 2
It it's fascinating to hear you talk through that because if you're not having near-misses in a high risk environment, it's nearly impossible to learn. And I think that's maybe the most difficult thing for outside observers to wrap their head around, is the fact that we're making choices. We're literally making choices to risk our life. And then through that delicate balance, we get this opportunity to see how good we are, where we're mediocre, and where we pale in personal development.
00:14:52:16 - 00:15:22:10
Speaker 2
And that's the reflective nature of the outdoor environment, because it treats all of us the same. And that shows us how different we all are and the different skill sets that we come up in with. And that's the piece that I find fascinating is, is that if we're willing to take a risk and if you're willing to, you know, there's plenty of red flags that go off before the environment tries to kill you like a pretty convinced of that.
00:15:22:12 - 00:15:52:10
Speaker 2
And if you're tuned into them, you can pick up on them and then it's, I think, the most, in my opinion, the people that I've lost, those been the most powerful lessons. They've been the most powerful mentors and the most powerful teachers that I could have asked for was horrible. To lose them, although I don't lose the lesson that they left me.
00:15:52:12 - 00:16:27:16
Speaker 2
And I think sometimes folks get so wrapped up in the loss that they miss the little silver lining. And that's really hard to see, especially in the outdoor environment, because it can be brutal. I've seen so many people pass and so many people lose their lifestyle in their life. But I've also seen individuals lose their lifestyle and completely recreate their life.
00:16:27:18 - 00:16:53:23
Speaker 2
And so it's not what it is that we're doing, it's what we're doing with what we have at any given moment. And I think that's the important thing of all of this, especially when we're in the outdoors, because it's a continuum that changes for us and we change daily. And with that being said, if you're if you've learned to manage risk in the outdoors, there's a good chance you don't know how to live unless you're in less.
00:16:53:23 - 00:17:01:21
Speaker 2
That's the risk you're managing, meaning that's the medium that keeps teaching us something about ourselves.
00:17:01:23 - 00:17:21:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. I want to circle back a little bit to what Max said and that reminds me of the episode we did with Jory, the first year of track climbing. I think that, you know, like you said, there is this paradox of like, we need to be able to go out there and make mistakes. But I think that unfortunately with climbing, some mistakes will take your life.
00:17:21:16 - 00:17:42:04
Speaker 1
And so there's like this balance between knowing the risk, not having Overstock and having enough education to kind of like be in a space where you can safely make these judgment calls and expose yourself to risk in the proper way. And I think that, you know, at least for me, in my experience, I lean more towards the overstock.
00:17:42:04 - 00:18:02:05
Speaker 1
Like I just kept telling myself I'm safe, I'm safe. You know, systems are good, I'm safe. But I never really like, I didn't take it to heart as much as I should have. Like, there was this one time where I was getting lowered off a cliff face and the only thing that was bearing my weight was the wire that keeps your Etsy from falling off a carabiner.
00:18:02:07 - 00:18:26:05
Speaker 1
And it's like that could have snapped and I could have died. And it was literally just because I was too over stoked. You know, I was just like, I know how to use an Etsy and I threw it together. And I think that there's this like period in the beginning where I just want to like, lay the message down a little bit where it's like, it's really important to, to get someone to teach you, to have a mentor and to really understand like you can die if you do these things wrong.
00:18:26:07 - 00:18:37:11
Speaker 1
And yes, you can learn a lot through making these errors, but there is a line you can't really cross because if you if you die making an error, you can't come back from that.
00:18:37:13 - 00:18:50:07
Speaker 2
100, 100%. It's it's interesting because in my purview, the whole problem with what we are going on today is technology.
00:18:50:09 - 00:19:35:04
Speaker 2
It's important to realize that there were not eight CS when I started climbing. There were what did we have? We had stitch plates, but we didn't have we didn't have CS. And then the bike. I can't for the first few years that I climbed, we hit the weighted and so I find it interesting, the techniques that I put out today that I believe sometimes are antiquated and ultimately they've given a process and they've given me a backup and is I watched the continuum happen today.
00:19:35:06 - 00:20:07:06
Speaker 2
In all fairness, why do people get hurt if you put bolts up on everything and you make everything accessible? Everybody thinks everything is accessible and then it's and then if you go to a different area where the bolts are spread out or the grading is different, or it's a little bit of trad climbing associated with it, or if a piece of equipment doesn't work, the the progression is off and like and we saw this back in the eighties and nineties.
00:20:07:07 - 00:20:40:06
Speaker 2
I mean I laugh about it because it's like, oh, what's his name? SCHAMA You know, he was 514 climber that could not set a nut. And like, that's really important to recognize that somebody was capable to master a segment of climbing but not climbing. And no, but we really didn't see those things occurring prior to that because if you wanted to climb, well, you learn how to aid climb, you learn how to learn how to.
00:20:40:08 - 00:21:12:07
Speaker 2
You had to learn how to trad climb. You had to learn how to drill bolts if you wanted them. And, you know, and the other thing I think it's important to realize is that, you know, 30 years ago we were having a discussion as to whether bolts were good idea or not, and today nobody even considers them. And in an environmental consequence and I laugh about that shift where we went from here, we going to drill holes to, oh, we just drill everything and that makes everything safer.
00:21:12:07 - 00:21:34:12
Speaker 2
But the interesting thing is, is that the safer piece of it makes us dumber and we don't learn the progression that got us to these technological applications that save us so much time and energy. But the problem is, is when that piece of technology doesn't work, you're fucked. And if you don't have the if you don't have the background skill set.
00:21:34:14 - 00:22:06:13
Speaker 2
And so the mentorship piece of this is so important and at the same time it's important to realize that there's so many new people coming into the environment that there's not enough mentors to pick up the educational holes that the community is missing. And if there's anything that I would like to communicate, it's this whole idea that we don't know.
00:22:06:15 - 00:22:32:19
Speaker 2
We don't know where we're going, and it's hard for us to tell where we've been unless we have others showing that to us. Meaning my mentors. My mentors helped me understand how we got to a certain point, like when I had a stitch plate and I was being taught how to use that. The first thing, like I was like, Hey, I got my stitch plate and my mentor looked at me and he goes, Great.
00:22:32:21 - 00:22:54:14
Speaker 2
So to have you catch a big fall without a stitch plate. And I was like, Well, that's why I have the stitch plate. And he was like, No, no, no. And he was like, You actually need to know what it feels like to catch real fall around your hip. And he's like, Before I start letting you use this piece of technology and, you know, and he contrive situation that was, I shouldn't say contrived.
00:22:54:14 - 00:23:18:21
Speaker 2
It was he fabricated a fall that was backed up and safe. And if I've meaning if I wouldn't have caught the fall there was a backup and all of a sudden I realized I was like, holy shit. And he looked at me and he goes, Yeah, goes. That's why we don't fall. And so, like the whole idea of evenly climbing and falling is this, like, new idea?
00:23:18:21 - 00:23:48:04
Speaker 2
Why? Because we made it safe with bolts, but we lost the ethic of integrity of not falling and actually, like, risking your life. Well, yeah, like doing ground up a sense on things where you were like, I don't know if I can. Well, you believed you could get up it, but if you didn't, there was a chance you were going to get injured in the process because you didn't get to rehearse it.
00:23:48:06 - 00:24:18:08
Speaker 2
And the only reason why you were doing it was is because you had people around you that had done it and understood what you were capable of. And they were like, You should try this. You have. And so that was the community that really pushed one another and supported each other emotionally through desperate, desperate times were like, I can't tell you how many times I cried on the end of rope because I thought I fucked up and I was stuck.
00:24:18:10 - 00:24:48:16
Speaker 2
I was afraid to go up and I could not go down. And if I took the fall, I was going to get hurt. And so what did you have to do? You have to you have to evaluate your life, figure out what you're what you're made of, and actually step back into it. And I don't know if those experi ences are readily available anymore because of how we've manufactured climbing today into a safe environment.
00:24:48:18 - 00:25:18:01
Speaker 2
With that being said, I don't know if the I don't know if the collective consciousness could handle that kind of stress. With that being said, we've changed the mode of what climbing is over the last 30 years by making by making it more accessible and in all fairness, we've brought the bar down. We've allowed people to excel at things that they normally wouldn't have without a technological approach.
00:25:18:03 - 00:25:28:20
Speaker 2
But I can only see those things looking back 35 years and seeing how I've changed and how climbing has changed over over the last few decades.
00:25:28:22 - 00:25:49:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that what you said really, I've never heard it put like that. I think that it's, you know, the technological advance. It's like you say, it's making climbing safer. And I think that, you know, I'll use Daley's phrase here is that climbing isn't safe. It's risky. Inherently. We just we we are able to manage the risk a lot better now.
00:25:49:15 - 00:26:12:07
Speaker 1
And I think that it's interesting because we have this false sense of a false idea that climbing is safe. But the the the consequences remain the same. You know, you you can still die. And back in the day, that margin for error was a lot lower because you didn't have the technology. But now, you know, things can go right pretty easily.
00:26:12:07 - 00:26:38:22
Speaker 1
You know, it's not hard to use an ATC, It's not hard to use a degree. You can use these pieces of technology to keep yourself relatively safe. But the thing is, is like you don't use it right or you miss a single step. The consequence stays the same. It's it can be catastrophic within an instant. And I think that, you know, you the way you've talked about the progression of technology and stuff, I think that we have become a little bit washed out to the actual risks that we're running on a day to day basis.
00:26:39:00 - 00:26:45:14
Speaker 1
So it's just really interesting that you've you've kind of painted that picture over time and technology. So I appreciate that.
00:26:45:16 - 00:27:09:13
Speaker 4
Yeah, I really connected with a lot of the things you were saying. I've been contemplating quite a few of these things lately myself actually, where technology is both this wonderful, amazing thing that allows us to excel, but at the same time it is this hindrance to to ourselves. And something that I've been thinking of lately. And this is touching on what you were communicating where, okay, you're, you're climbing and you're blaming yourself and you've got a great career gone.
00:27:09:19 - 00:27:28:08
Speaker 4
See what happens if you drop the trigger, you drop the ADC, you know, Do you know how to use an Italian? Hit your munter however you want to call it, and to belay someone off that like do you? What happens? You know you or you get yourself in a situation I'm a59 climber, I'm a 512 climber, whatever it is.
00:27:28:10 - 00:28:01:21
Speaker 4
And you get halfway up the route and you're super run out. And what if you drop your last two pieces of the pro? Are you willing to, you know, put yourself in a situation where you're in an r X kind of run out, could potentially die or get serious injury. I think we like to from this position of safety or bolting and sport climbing, I have this assumption where we've associated a grade and our capacity to that, but not all things are equal and we can we can even like I've been climbing a lot of ice lately and we can extrapolate this to ice.
00:28:01:23 - 00:28:29:00
Speaker 4
I can easily climb by three, you know, I can climb other things as well. But but if I was if I was 30 feet above my last screw and then I got on to rotten ice and I could no longer down climb or put protection in, could I actually run out myself into a situation where if I fall, I will die and that is very different than saying I have the physicality of climbing a arbitrary number.
00:28:29:06 - 00:29:03:09
Speaker 4
But what if everything possible goes wrong and you get yourself into a situation where I think using your own words were crying on the end of a rope, quite literally. Right? I think a lot of people coming from these positions of the newer age of climbing and gyms and where you have this arbitrary number and you have associated I can do X number because it's a number, but you can get into situations on these numbers where you are really, really out of your league really fast, whether that's losing the technology that you had or getting yourself in these run up positions.
00:29:03:14 - 00:29:28:14
Speaker 4
And it is very interesting to to think of that. And that's something I have been contemplating lately, where I think there's a lot of situations you can get yourself into pretty quickly where a lot of people maybe aren't actually thinking, Am I actually psychologically prepared for this challenge if this happens and this is actually a possibility? And so I just think that what you were saying did did really resonate.
00:29:28:14 - 00:29:44:05
Speaker 4
And I think it's a message that should be communicated more in the community that this arbitrary number that you have associated yourself with is a very, very small piece of the puzzle that is being communicated when it comes to climbing in the outdoors.
00:29:44:07 - 00:30:17:19
Speaker 2
And you're lighting me up so much right now. It's outrageous because the the numbers thing like that, that probably once we started to see sport climbing coming in, the climbing went from the mind to the body. And when you know the mind is a really interesting thing because, you know, some of the people that I climbed with were these like it were like fool rock jocks or shredded.
00:30:17:21 - 00:30:42:04
Speaker 2
But then there were also these guys that were lanky, thin, not really well-built, that were climbing 512 like they were walking down the sidewalk and they would just make a fool out of everybody who looked strong. And in the end, those people commonly were saying to me, What does it mean to you? What does it mean to climb?
00:30:42:04 - 00:31:24:02
Speaker 2
What is it that you are feeling when you're when you're engaging with this and and being specific about what you were feeling while you were doing it, Not the accomplishment of climbing something afterwards, but actually being aware of the fact that you were in the in the journey and that the outcome was absolutely irrelevant. Like, I think that was the first thing I experienced when I came to Yosemite back in the late eighties, early nineties was the whole idea of just stepping up to the plate.
00:31:24:04 - 00:31:43:14
Speaker 2
I mean, like we used to joke about it, guys would walk around with wheelbarrows and that's what they were carrying their balls in in order to be able to get up to have to get up to Half Dome or El cap at that time. And, you know, and things have changed. Things have changed and, you know, the access is better and the bolts are better and whatnot.
00:31:43:14 - 00:32:07:09
Speaker 2
But the skill set that you had to have and then like specifically, I remember the first morning I woke up in Yosemite and I met an individual who didn't had the capacity to interact with me. And it was strange. I like I was like, okay, there's something mentally wrong with this individual. I should give them some latitude and some space.
00:32:07:11 - 00:32:28:08
Speaker 2
And then two days later, he came up to me and he said, Pardon me. He goes, I had been up on the wall for eight days and he was like, I was really trying to get a grip on reality. He was like, You're trying to talk to me about like what was in the bear canister? And he goes, I was trying to figure out if I wanted to live.
00:32:28:10 - 00:32:58:05
Speaker 2
And like, literally, like that's how intensive experience he had because they were actually trying to, they were trying to finish C a dreams, which is a nightmare, a four, which is now considered an A5 in Yosemite. And and so to meet you know the grade didn't grade didn't matter it was it was literally are you showing up Are you are you stepping up to the plate?
00:32:58:07 - 00:33:46:03
Speaker 2
Are you challenging yourself somewhere around your limit? And if you're not, are you just out enjoying it with friends? Because that was the whole game where it was like if you weren't testing your own psyche, you're really trying to connect with other people in a fun environment. It wasn't very stressful, you know? And so the great cheese thing I find fascinating because I really think it takes us away from our self, takes us, it distracts us into this accomplishment game that at the end of the day it's like, yeah, it's funny because the people that climb hard, they don't train, they train to maintain it, but they didn't train to get that good.
00:33:46:08 - 00:34:15:21
Speaker 2
They they just were like and, and I've seen that over and over and over again. Words like people who can climb five, 13 or five, 14 or even five, 12, they have the capability. Generally all you have to do is put them around people that are climbing that grade and they'll immediately start climbing it. But the people that are training the climb harder, I would argue, that are generally getting injured and that's if you're getting injured.
00:34:15:23 - 00:34:41:21
Speaker 2
We're trying to our word that we're going beyond our capabilities. And don't get me wrong, every once in a while we make mistakes in training. But if you're getting injured over and over and over and over and over again, you're out of your lane and you're trying to take something that's not yours and we're misidentifying. We're misidentifying where we're supposed to be in the environment.
00:34:41:22 - 00:35:01:07
Speaker 2
Those are mistakes I've made. So when I point those things out, I'm not calling anybody else out other than myself of making the mistake of thinking that I had something to accomplish in the train when all I needed to do was figure out how it was connected to the terrain.
00:35:01:09 - 00:35:26:12
Speaker 4
No, I think that's a really great point. I know for myself, I resonate with that where I, I personally, as someone who's studying kinesiology, I really like exercise physiology and training and and I've definitely gotten wrapped up in that. And then as well, I'm not the climber that I want to be or that I wish I was. And I do sometimes have this idea, Oh, I just want to at least be able to climb this grade.
00:35:26:14 - 00:35:49:08
Speaker 4
And that affects me psychologically. That makes me feel anxious or insecure. It does really remove me from that environment of why I'm out there. What am I supposed to be doing? You know, what is this arbitrary number? What is the distinction of that? And all of the best days and the most meaningful days I've ever had out have nothing to do with it.
00:35:49:08 - 00:36:10:12
Speaker 4
Great. It all has to do with going out and just being a part of the rock or the ice or the mountain and climbing something esthetic and feeling good and moving well and connecting with nature and, you know, challenging myself mentally and physically and at the end, you know, obviously, if you do end up topping out on whatever that means, then that's great.
00:36:10:12 - 00:36:32:23
Speaker 4
And even experiences where I haven't, I've still had really, really meaningful, empowering experiences. So yeah, I definitely I definitely resonate with what you were saying there. And, and I as someone who has, you know, in Bouldering Gyms, I've, I think done my way to pole once and definitely it wasn't climbing that I was doing for myself to feel fulfilled.
00:36:33:04 - 00:36:52:08
Speaker 4
It was I need to be better. I have to climb harder. I have to chase this grade like I'm not the climber I want to be. So therefore I have to try harder and I should just crank harder. And I definitely have been playing out of my lane before and paid the consequences for it. And I mean, my lane's pretty loud just for anybody listening, you know?
00:36:52:10 - 00:37:07:21
Speaker 4
But that's okay. We each have our own struggles and our own capabilities and stuff, and so that's not really what the point of climbing is, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at. So I definitely agree with what you were saying there, at least resonate with it.
00:37:08:02 - 00:37:55:06
Speaker 2
It's one more one more thing to add in on on the grade. It's around technology, which is culturally strange to me, which is what's the app Mountain project? So, you know, we need to have community based grading. What we had was, is we graded based off of the local community at a crag. And so if you put the roots up, the group of people that you were climbing with came to a consensus about what the climbing was at that crag and was like, This is what the grade is.
00:37:55:08 - 00:38:19:12
Speaker 2
And so that was the beauty of it, which is, is that every time you went to a different crag, you had to deal with the cultural adaptation of what climbing was at that area. So if you went to the monks, you found out in a hurry that you climbed overhanging starting at five two and then it just got completely upside down.
00:38:19:12 - 00:38:41:00
Speaker 2
By the time you were climbing five seven, But that was normal and nobody was like, Oh, these grades are stiff. And, you know, we need to change the grades and agree upon them. It was like no decade of climbers had put those up and were like, No, this is a59. And we were like, This is fucking terrifying. And they were like, Yeah, this is our culture.
00:38:41:02 - 00:38:59:16
Speaker 2
And and I joke about it because it's like I went to Rifle for the first time in the early nineties and I got news for you climb in 511 and rifle in the early nineties was a death wish like we climbed there for two days and we were like, Holy shit, we can't. These guys are so much better than us.
00:38:59:18 - 00:39:15:01
Speaker 2
And we were laughing at the bar one night with these guys and we were like, We were like, You guys are mental. And the guy looked at me and he goes, Where are you from? And I said, New England. He goes, Oh, he goes, I was at that disaster can. And Cliff, she goes, You call those five nines.
00:39:15:01 - 00:39:33:20
Speaker 2
And it was the slab climb that had like 60 feet to run out there. We had normalized. And so, you know, he was like it was like I was shitting my pants on a59. He goes, You're complaining about a 511. That's to run out because it's on bolts. And I was like, Yeah, but it was God awful steep.
00:39:33:20 - 00:39:56:05
Speaker 2
And I had never been on edges that thin. And he was like, That's all we climb here. And so the whole idea to crowdsource grading so that everybody agrees on it and then we drop the grade down in order to make us feel good about the grades were climbing. I can't even believe it goes on because it's like I joke about it.
00:39:56:05 - 00:40:19:10
Speaker 2
I have roots that I've put up that people are like, Those are not those grades. And I was like, They felt like it at the time, and you had to understand what was going on within the culture about how we were driving one another and if you think it's hard, well, you should hang out at this cliff long enough in order to figure out how much time we put into it to make it feel that easy.
00:40:19:12 - 00:40:58:07
Speaker 2
And those are the adaptations that, you know, it's like I think, folks, I think we want to take more and we don't want to give more. And I think that's the piece of it, because it's like there were 510 climbs trad climbs that were within my capability. That took me months where I was climbing 511, but I couldn't get the 510 and it was because I had something to learn, not because the grade was wrong, but I had to hang out long enough.
00:40:58:07 - 00:41:12:07
Speaker 2
And then there's still plenty of climbs out there that are within my grade that I still can't get up or I don't have the gumption to get up because the risk is too high and I'm not willing to take the fall onto the ground.
00:41:12:09 - 00:41:32:13
Speaker 4
But yeah, it's definitely complicated, right? I mean, this conversation makes me think of, you know, I recently just flew down to to Vegas and Kyle and I met in person, which is a really, really amazing, super cool experience. And we had a great time, but we went and climbed this, this, this five nine called Baloo his book. And it was a beautiful climb.
00:41:32:13 - 00:41:57:20
Speaker 4
It was a lot of fun. And I led the first pitch and I climbed this crack system and then I get up and I've never climbed in Red rocks. I wasn't really contemplating what was actually about to happen. And then I'm looking at this crack system and the crack goes into this massive it would be this huge off with chimney that there's no way would be, you know, first page was supposed to be really easy and and then I eventually talking to Kyle and he's like, oh yeah I know you climb the face and you protect the root.
00:41:58:00 - 00:42:01:17
Speaker 4
What is it called again? Kyle I can't remember.
00:42:01:19 - 00:42:05:13
Speaker 1
Patina. Patina, Yeah. You protect it on the BATNA. And I was sitting.
00:42:05:13 - 00:42:08:00
Speaker 2
Here going like, I was like, Holy shit. I was like.
00:42:08:00 - 00:42:28:15
Speaker 4
What's going on here? You know? And like, having to figure this out in real time. And, and it was really this, this learning barrier. It was a really cool, beautiful passage. Wasn't hard from a physical standpoint, but that added me not understanding. We could call it the culture, the area, the rock, what the type of climbing is. I never put pro in that before.
00:42:28:19 - 00:42:49:21
Speaker 4
And so, you know, that made that climb feel way, way harder than it should have felt for me, you know, And that's just the reality of the situation. It's very, very different. It's so many different places. And and I think on some level, the standardization does seem to be fairly accurate in, you know, and obviously I'm not that experience of a climber.
00:42:49:21 - 00:43:14:16
Speaker 4
So when I say fairly like take that with a grain of salt, but but ultimately yeah, if you go to a different place with a different culture and a different rock type, things are going to feel really different and there's going to be a learning curve and different expectations and different people are creating that. You know, maybe the person who put up the route is five five and you're sticking to their, you know, their roots favor a smaller person or a lighter person.
00:43:14:16 - 00:43:41:02
Speaker 4
There's there's so much variation. So the idea that you do have this perfect standardization and it's back to this arbitrary number system that we talked about, oh, I climbed, you know, 512 in Squamish, so therefore I can go anywhere in the world and just hit this number off and all five twelves are equal or 512 A's. It's, it's, you know, not that I know from climbing that grave from experience, but from everything I understand of climbing.
00:43:41:03 - 00:43:45:20
Speaker 4
That is not the case whatsoever. Right. So it is very interesting.
00:43:45:21 - 00:44:24:01
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, I think that's the I think that's the power of it, which is in order for, you know, when I when I was climbing in different areas, you know, 20, 25 years ago, the biggest thing was connecting with the locals in that area in order to be able to in order to be to get the inside deal on their tricks and to to figure out like what their approach and like how they climbed, how they interacted with one another, how they interacted with the with the environment in order to be able to give us those shortcuts to the relationship with the terrain.
00:44:24:03 - 00:45:16:05
Speaker 2
And it's interesting because, you know, guidebooks are so much different then than they were where it's like, you know, the the some of the guidebooks that I have, you know, friends of mine laugh. They're like, these things are worthless. And I'm like, No, you just have to be imaginative. And because they give you very little information and although they give you enough to go on in an adventure and, you know, I think that was I think that's just what the magic of what climbing is, which is at least for me, is to seek out the unknown and to depend on my community, to provide guide relatively good information that's like, Hey, do you think this
00:45:16:05 - 00:45:38:06
Speaker 2
is in your wheelhouse? You should give it a shot. But I always appreciated when a guidebook author was like, Hey, this is a death route. Have your shit together and you know, and then somedays you're ready to step up to the plate on those things. But you know, most of the time that's not, you know, we're not really looking for these death routes that, you know.
00:45:38:06 - 00:46:03:10
Speaker 2
And so I come back I come back to the whole thing where it's like the culture, the engagement, and without changing that culture in order to make us feel good about our own climate. You know, I think that that was probably one of the things that we were instituting at a cliff in Vermont, that we instituted a ground up ethic and we were bolting ground up.
00:46:03:12 - 00:46:31:04
Speaker 2
And some individuals came in and wondered, you know, if wanted to start building, we were like, and they climbed with us for a couple of weeks and they were like, Holy shit, this is so much more there's so much more going on. It's so much more empowering, it's so much more fruitful. And we're like, Yeah, because you've no idea what you're going up into as opposed to coming down it, cleaning it and putting the bolts where you want them.
00:46:31:04 - 00:46:48:03
Speaker 2
It's like, All right, why don't you get up and hand drill and step up to the plate? And, and folks would often say to me on some of these routes, they're like, it needs an extra bolt. And I was like, well, the problem was there wasn't a stance. And so we had a climb to get to a stance to actually be able to drill a ball.
00:46:48:05 - 00:47:16:12
Speaker 2
And so once people started to understand that culture, then it was like, okay, I have to like actually commit to getting to a stance, not a bolt. I have to commit to where the climb allows me to take a break, not I want to take a break. And that was probably some of the biggest changes that I've seen in regards to, you know, it's like I say, manufactured, but it's basically what I'm saying is, is just grit molding things.
00:47:16:14 - 00:47:38:07
Speaker 2
And, you know, granted, they do make things safer. It's almost a different sport, though, right? Like when you're talking about sport climbing and tried climbing and then kind of in-between or wall climbing for that matter, we were definitely talking about different completely different experiences with completely different meanings as well. Yeah.
00:47:38:08 - 00:48:06:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think we've, we've gone down a really awesome tangent for the conversation. I want to, I want to circle back to, you know, your story a little bit. You know, last time we kind of left off you, you had moved to Jackson Hole. You're doing outdoor education. You know, there was a big shift in your life and things kind of like took a turn and it gave you a chance to kind of rebirth who you were.
00:48:06:09 - 00:48:10:03
Speaker 1
You want to kind of dive into that story a little bit.
00:48:10:05 - 00:48:53:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I talk about it is the culmination of my career in the outdoors where everything that I was doing, everything I was doing, I was doing for somebody else. And so I was teaching, I was guiding, I was running a business. I was, I was managing a search and rescue team here in the county and ultimately what I found was that I didn't know why I was doing anything anymore and I was doing everything.
00:48:53:21 - 00:49:29:22
Speaker 2
I was doing everything to make other people happy. And it's wild because it's like my career. My career was search and rescue, my marriage. I lost my house lost my primary source of income, and I was about a quarter of $1,000,000 in debt all at the same time. I basically watched everything that I had created, kind of I thought it backfired and failed and really what it gave me an opportunity to do was to recalibrate.
00:49:30:00 - 00:50:03:21
Speaker 2
And, you know, in a really short amount of time, I was surprised because it was like I had a complete mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with a menagerie of different things from PTSD, long term depression, fatigue, burnout, a bunch of different signs and symptoms around neuroses, etc.. And I just stopped and I started one. I let everybody do work for me.
00:50:03:21 - 00:50:33:07
Speaker 2
So in my business, I let my employees kind of take the helm. And I took some time for myself. And I remember saying to myself, I was like, When are things best? And as I often used to say, Nothing is better medicine than throwing your backpack in the trunk of your car and going fucking climbing. And and so that's basically what I did.
00:50:33:07 - 00:51:07:12
Speaker 2
I, I basically realized that the more time I spent outside, the better I felt. And so that's what I did. I started sleeping on my back porch at night just so that I wouldn't be inside. And then I started doing low level recreation, like climbing like five, six, five, seven and skiing, but not doing like anything too risky, so to speak.
00:51:07:13 - 00:51:26:19
Speaker 2
Mainly because I had a bunch of near-misses that led up to that. And when I had the breakdown, I started to realize that I wasn't making good decisions. I was trying to prove to myself that I was worthy, that I was capable, that I was able to be in the outdoors. And literally I was trying to kill myself.
00:51:26:21 - 00:51:45:07
Speaker 2
And after a few near-misses and then a complete mental breakdown was like, okay, like I need to do this different and I need to recalibrate and and really figure out what it is that I'm in this war. And so that process started for me about six years ago. Well.
00:51:45:09 - 00:52:09:09
Speaker 1
I'm curious as to, you know, usually when we use climbing and we get really risky, it's usually because we're we're kind of like running from something or we're trying to mask certain things in our life. Was there a specific thing that you kind of like were or avoiding or that was kind of the leading factor in in this risky behavior and the lifestyle that you were kind of leading at the time?
00:52:09:11 - 00:52:42:23
Speaker 2
Yes. So it may not seem completely connected, but I'm hopefully I can lead you down this down this little path, which is all you have to do is grow up and not believe that you're good enough. And you start having reactionary responses to the world. You start trying to prove to the world that you belong and the problem is, is when you're not doing those things, you don't feel like you belong.
00:52:43:01 - 00:53:16:01
Speaker 2
And so for me, I turned to substance and that was that was everything. Like there was nothing off the table for me. It was like anything that could make me not feel or feel better without having to deal with feeling undeserving or that I didn't belong. Those substances were on the table for me. And so I found myself in this loop where it was like, okay, if I was, I would be working and I would be distracted because I would be focused on an outcome.
00:53:16:02 - 00:53:47:12
Speaker 2
And then as soon as I would get done working, it was like, okay, let's get into activity and stay active and stay engaged and then perform at a high level so that you can prove that you're good. And then when I had downtime and was by myself and it was getting quiet, it was like, give me booze, give me blow, give me something to keep me distracted so that I don't have to deal with feeling like I don't belong, feeling like I don't deserve to be here.
00:53:47:14 - 00:54:12:17
Speaker 2
And and it's nuts because, like, it's these subconscious programs that we get given, you know, mine was given by my family, and I don't blame them for it. It was just a function of the environment. I mean, don't get me wrong, I did blame them for a long period of time until I realized that there were lessons to learn from them.
00:54:12:19 - 00:54:31:10
Speaker 2
And and the lessons were extremely hard. But I got news for you. I understand how to read a room pretty well live with my family was involved in the mob. So guess what? You figure out how to read a room and you get to figure out how people are acting and you get to figure out who you can trust.
00:54:31:10 - 00:55:07:06
Speaker 2
And so there are some skill sets that were incredibly powerful. The the application for them is what I had to shift and so I didn't belong with my family. I mean, clearly, I wanted nothing to do with organized crime and gambling and all that. And so that was the struggle, which was like really trying to find out what it is that I belong to and then actually feel that I actually believe that.
00:55:07:08 - 00:55:33:16
Speaker 2
Because, believe me, I found it quite early. Like in my early twenties, I found the community that I belong to. When I left them, I didn't realize I never worked on it. I just depended on them to accept me. And I never worked on my own piece of it. So it was interesting. When I moved to Jackson, that was when I really started feeling like I didn't belong and I had this reactionary response.
00:55:33:16 - 00:56:01:07
Speaker 2
It's why I created such an and an amazing business is this is because I had something to prove. And so those demons drove me. But at a certain point they exhaust you. And and so once they get you to a certain point, you've got to dump these guys because they're really bad inhabitants. And they weren't doing much good for my they drove my career to a certain place.
00:56:01:09 - 00:56:17:07
Speaker 2
But if I would have hung out with those same behaviors any longer, I mean, I was already destroying everything. That's why everything fell apart in front of me. I just couldn't see it at the time because I was so locked into a way.
00:56:17:09 - 00:56:47:02
Speaker 4
I know, I know for myself. I've talked previously on the show of my my own experience with, you know, substance abuse. And I definitely have shared in the experience of, you know, the sense of discomfort and wanting and seeking constant distraction. And that's by kind of altering your state. I'm wondering what like maybe you could jotted down to a percentage or what part of climbing if you have experience.
00:56:47:02 - 00:57:10:14
Speaker 4
This was a just kind of almost a supplement for this altered state. And what part of it was true passion and finding your own, your own kind of tribe and purpose of that makes sense because I think climbing is in this interesting, this interesting area where it's kind of both, or at least once again, I don't want to project my own thoughts onto you, but at least for me.
00:57:10:14 - 00:57:41:20
Speaker 4
And my understanding of it is both for a lot of people where it's both this amazing experience, but at the same time, people who are generally feeling lost or hurt her looking for altered states or, you know, in a state of suffering, climbing can kind of be this escape and it can almost be this supplement. It can be this new drug that you have, you know, because when I'm climbing, I can't think of I don't need to worry about all the bullshit of the world that I feel I'm not supposed to be a part of and that I'm not coping with.
00:57:41:20 - 00:57:58:12
Speaker 4
Well, I'm climbing. I'm so present. I'm in the moment. I have purpose and I feel good. And so that can both be this, this escape and also this very empowering, amazing thing. And I'm wondering for yourself how much of that was kind of delineated in those ways for you?
00:57:58:14 - 00:58:37:06
Speaker 2
I think you're you're giving me a mirror representation myself when I listen to talk, I was drawn to this environment that was going to show me how to escape my how to climb away from my own problems, how to deal with them, how to actually mentally manage them. I think it dawned on me at one point as a young man where I was getting up in front of a group to do a presentation and I was afraid I would like I could feel it in me, like the jitters, the fear.
00:58:37:08 - 00:59:03:18
Speaker 2
And I was like, This is crazy. I was like, I've felt this much fear on a climb. And I started to I started to realize I was like, Huh, That's interesting because you don't realize you're climbing legs. You're like, You get so consumed in the project that like in don't get me wrong, when the fear shows up, all of a sudden it's omnipresent when you're like calm in the middle of climbing.
00:59:03:18 - 00:59:31:15
Speaker 2
And this is like, I shouldn't be here and I've screwed up. And, you know, you're overstimulated like crazy. But at the same time, in order to get out of that, you talk yourself through it. And and so I started to recognize these mirrors where I was like, well, if I talk myself through it when I'm climbing and I'm worried about losing my life, why can't I do this in other environments?
00:59:31:16 - 01:00:00:15
Speaker 2
And that was the flipping the switch and starting to recognize that climbing was a tool. It wasn't the thing. And and then also recognizing that the peak experiences that we create for ourself in the outdoor environment show us the capacity for us to create feeling, meaning we create the feeling and the experience where we create both of those things.
01:00:00:15 - 01:00:33:02
Speaker 2
But the experience does not create how we feel. And if we give that up, we become a victim. Meaning words like, Oh, I only feel good when I'm climbing. And it's like, No, you got to know how to feel good through climb. And so these been like these mentorships for me where I try to keep climbing in it's lane because huh for a period of time I thought like climbing was the thing and what did I do?
01:00:33:02 - 01:00:53:01
Speaker 2
I trained, I thought I could get good enough and I could get sponsored and I could live my life doing it. And then and then one day I realized I was like, How did do this? And I don't have to climb for somebody else. And that's what I started to see in the environment around professional climbers where I was like, Holy shit, these guys aren't climbing for themself anymore.
01:00:53:01 - 01:01:26:04
Speaker 2
They're climbing for a paycheck. And endorsements and having to do specific things where by creating my own business and creating my own avenue within the outdoors, it gave me the opportunity to not have to answer to anybody else but myself. And then recognizing I was making all of the problems for myself, whether that was in climbing or in life or in business or all of my relationships.
01:01:26:06 - 01:02:03:21
Speaker 2
You know, when you're when you're when you're on the end of that rope and, you know, you're standing there, there's nobody else to blame for whatever you're feeling. And and that's true in every part of our life, Meaning, yes, some people do shitty things to us, but we allowed that to happen. We put ourselves in that situation. And so if we own the fact that we created it, I think it gives us and I think it gives us an opportunity in order to be able to better understand the mediums that we're playing with in order to be able to use them as tools, not outcomes.
01:02:03:22 - 01:02:31:08
Speaker 2
And and climbing is the perfect example. Chase agreed. You're chasing an outcome outcome, interact with the environment and it's a means thing, what you learn and what you find out and how much better a day can be. It right in the middle of right in the middle of kind of like, I don't know what I call it, like where I wasn't seeing things very clearly.
01:02:31:08 - 01:02:52:08
Speaker 2
I had started to hang out with a new group of friends and they had asked me to come on a climbing trip I hadn't roped up in two years and I was terrified. And the reason why I was terrified was because of performance and because these folks are strong climbers. And they knew my background, They knew what I was capable of.
01:02:52:10 - 01:03:12:04
Speaker 2
But I also knew I had been out of practice. And I said the person that I got partnered up with, I was like, Listen, I was like, I need some space. I haven't climbed in. While I'm very capable, I'm very able. I have skills to share. I have a lot of experience, but I have no idea how I'm going to perform in this environment.
01:03:12:04 - 01:03:30:01
Speaker 2
And it's driving me crazy. And she turned around and looked at me and she goes, Thank you for saying that. She goes, I was really freaked out about getting partnered up with you. And I started laughing and I said, Well, it feels better. I was like, Feels better. I haven't been climbing in two years, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.
01:03:30:03 - 01:03:57:10
Speaker 2
And the irony of it was, is that both of us laid this out on the table, and both of us I was climbing three grades harder than I had in five years. And why, granted, experience had something to do with it. But at the end of the day, acceptance and not chasing a grade and, you know, and acknowledging the fact that, you know, hey, I'm feeling kind of weak, I don't know how this is going to work out.
01:03:57:12 - 01:04:18:00
Speaker 2
But, you know, if you're willing to if you're willing to try with me, let's go see what we can create. And that's what we did. So I think the mindset has a lot to do with what it is that we're trying to take, trying to learn and trying to take away from the environment. Mentorship and culture helps with.
01:04:18:00 - 01:04:19:23
Speaker 4
That.
01:04:20:01 - 01:04:33:01
Speaker 2
Because if you come into this where it's like, Hey, climb hard, guess what? That's what you're going to think. The environment is. If you're surrounding yourself with people that believe that you're going to take on and you're going to take on that behavior.
01:04:33:03 - 01:04:56:10
Speaker 4
I think it's really interesting what you were saying there about, engaging with the environment and the mindset and what it made me think of just doing some introspection on myself here is I don't I don't think I've ever and you mentioned chasing outcomes, and I think for myself, I was just thinking on that, and I don't think I've ever actually shown up to a climb.
01:04:56:12 - 01:05:37:11
Speaker 4
And rather rather than actually looking for an experience to challenge myself to that, that pinnacle of my ability, I've always kind of more so wanted the outcome where it's okay I've I've only ever on sighted ten be I really want to on site a ten C or a ten D like that's more so been the thought process or the motivation showing up rather than having this kind of intrinsic motivation to say, I actually want to seek the greatest possible challenge for myself here today, whatever that means, and being willing to and being open to that experience.
01:05:37:11 - 01:06:04:07
Speaker 4
And I think just switching that mindset and changing the wording to that, it's it seems so simple, but it's actually fun to mentally a completely different thing in my mind at least what I'm kind of thinking about right now. And I just think that's really, really interesting. It's just a totally different way of of engaging with the rock and what you're looking for and not having that chasing those outcomes essentially.
01:06:04:07 - 01:06:09:22
Speaker 4
Right? Yeah, when really fascinating. It's really interesting just having that kind of moment.
01:06:10:00 - 01:06:31:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Max We like one of the things that that myself and my partners do around this with all of the outdoor activities that we do, is that we create stated intention with one another. So we've created it in an objective where it's like, Hey, this is the thing we're going to go do. But as we joke with one another, we're like, okay, forget about that.
01:06:32:05 - 01:06:58:23
Speaker 2
What is it? What is it that we're here for? And so like you're saying, you know, for instance, in rock climbing, oftentimes, especially if I'm trying a hard route, it's like on the edge of my bandwidth or my pay grade. I often say I'm engaging with the rock in order for it to show me my limitations in order to help me grow not only as a climber, but as a but as a person.
01:06:59:01 - 01:07:30:07
Speaker 2
And I'm fascinated by that mindset. Mindset? How many that results in things that you never thought you were capable of doing because you dove into the deeper meaning and, because you were willing to risk finding something out about yourself, finding out that you're weak or finding out that you're not as good, or finding out the you know, you're just not in that good shape or it's out of your bandwidth.
01:07:30:09 - 01:07:48:13
Speaker 2
And, you know, when we those are the real risks that we're engaging with, which is accepting the fact that we're not as good as we think we are. That's what I really believe that risk is.
01:07:48:15 - 01:08:18:10
Speaker 1
I think that risk, you know, I think this is something you said before as risk shows as value. And the more you value, the more you have to lose. At what point because, you know, to circle back a little bit to the past when things were getting dark and you were using climbing as kind of an escape, at what point did you find the value in your life and the value in the world around you have more to lose.
01:08:18:10 - 01:08:21:19
Speaker 1
When did that shift kind of start?
01:08:21:21 - 01:09:00:12
Speaker 2
So there were two there were two events. One was when I was climbing and specifically I, I was climbing. So was I was free. I was free soloing and my feet completely slipped off the rock and I came full weight on my hands and it was the first time when I was climbing where I was like, You're this is a little out of control like, You're not doing this.
01:09:00:14 - 01:09:32:17
Speaker 2
Like you're doing this for that. I don't know why you're doing this. Like, what is going on and it's fascinating because I was also contemplating I was also contemplating my own life on like when I wasn't distracting myself. And so both of those occurred before I left substance. And so I had some inklings that that I wasn't serving myself well.
01:09:32:19 - 01:10:01:14
Speaker 2
But several months later, I kind of had this wake up where I was basically laying on my living room floor by myself alone, lonely as shit, and watching my life fall apart. And I started to recognize that that was me doing this in all parts of my life, whether it was climbing or whether it was in drinking, doing drugs or whatnot.
01:10:01:16 - 01:10:33:12
Speaker 2
It was this. There was no acknowledgment of the risk. It was acceptance of the need to the need to be seen, the need to actually be acknowledged within the community and somebody to like. That's why I was doing this should I wanted somebody to pay attention to me to be like, Hey, that's really fucking cool. Like, that's strong, that's powerful.
01:10:33:14 - 01:10:57:01
Speaker 2
And at the end of it, I was nobody cared. Nobody was paying attention. And like, I was off in my own little hole trying to prove something to myself. And what I realized when I realized through that whole process was, is that it was like, you got nothing to prove. Look around you. Look, you've created it. You deserve to be part of this.
01:10:57:01 - 01:11:19:21
Speaker 2
This is what you've been working on 30 years and you deserve to be part of it. And so start acting like it instead of acting like everybody's taken something from you that you've given away. And that was really what I did it. I gave everything away because I didn't value it and I didn't see the value in what I was creating.
01:11:19:23 - 01:11:36:15
Speaker 2
On the contrary, I thought about pardon me, I thought anybody could do it. That was that was probably the devastating thing, which is I didn't think anything I was doing was all that amazing. I just thought anybody could do it. The reality of it was, that's not true.
01:11:36:17 - 01:12:00:20
Speaker 1
Yeah It's interesting how we can completely shape our own reality, and I'm sure so many people around you did see you as completely successful and inspiring and looked up to you and saw so much value in what you've created and what you've done and what you do. And it's so interesting that you can talk to your self and tell your self the complete opposite and just put yourself in this box and be just so let down by yourself.
01:12:00:22 - 01:12:24:05
Speaker 1
And it's interesting also that, you know, while you can torment yourself for years with this mentality, all of a sudden it can switch. And obviously it's not completely night and day, but there is this kind of like crossing the threshold of of starting to look at the, you know, your your world and what you've done in your accomplishments in a different light.
01:12:24:07 - 01:12:50:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's just a it's an interesting paradox to find yourself in. And I'm happy that you've crossed the other side because you you've done so much man. Like the the things you've created, the life you've live in. It's not something that everybody can do, and you've definitely achieved a lot in your life. And so I think it's a perfect time to of bring it to the present day and, you know, talk about, you know, what you have created and where you are now.
01:12:50:22 - 01:13:04:22
Speaker 1
And and, you know, if I'm not you've you've branched away from the business you were working at before or are you back into the same thing? It's just more it's redesigned, it's reinvented yeah.
01:13:04:22 - 01:13:48:03
Speaker 2
So it basically redesigned and reinvented reinvented my business. I had been, you know, six, six, seven years ago, I had been not only running my own business, but also working for other other segments of the industry, creating curriculum, writing content and working for several different nonprofits. All while I was trying to run my own business. And and basically what I ended up doing is, is I left the industry and started writing curriculum for my own business.
01:13:48:03 - 01:14:24:17
Speaker 2
And so I left the largest curriculum creator who I was writing curriculum for in the avalanche industry, the largest curriculum creator in the world. And I left them and ended up writing my own curriculum, having it approved, getting the opportunity to be part of the larger industry. I think that was like maybe one of the most important things I've ever done from the standpoint of belonging and making myself believe that I belonged where it was like, Well, why are you writing curriculum for other people and for other organizations?
01:14:24:17 - 01:15:08:17
Speaker 2
Do this for yourself? And I rewrote our mission. I rewrote a tremendous amount of the curriculum and then ultimately found myself back in the classroom a lot more interacting, interacting around the medicine that I'm teaching and the risk management that I'm teaching and really getting back in the getting the reins back. So to speak, where it's like, yes, my employees are still very engaged, but I am with them in the in the trenches and specifically specifically mentoring the business how I want it to be.
01:15:08:20 - 01:15:26:19
Speaker 2
And that, you know, and it's that's something that took me a really long time to wrap my head around. Like, you know, as an entrepreneur you come in and you're like, oh, you know, I want other people's ideas and whatnot. And really what it comes down to is, is that if you're that creative person, you don't need other people's ideas.
01:15:26:19 - 01:15:52:13
Speaker 2
You need people to support you in your own ideas and once I realized that I needed to quit asking for opinions and I joke with this about everybody, they're like, Can you give me some advice? I'm like, Yeah, don't ask for any. Don't ask anybody for any advice ever, because you know what to do. Your heart knows what's right.
01:15:52:15 - 01:16:22:05
Speaker 2
And if you're contemplating that, you don't know what's right. Wake up and be honest with yourself and make the hard decision. That's the that might be the piece of it that I had to realize. Words like, I don't want opinions, shit. I have to make hard decisions and I have to execute them. And in order for me to get 1i1, I'm not going to make other people happy.
01:16:22:07 - 01:16:46:14
Speaker 2
And once I started recognizing that I can't make everybody happy, but can make me happy, my business started doing pretty damn well. And once I started and like even to the point where like when people would be like, you know, I don't like your product, go Great, here's your money, leave me alone, and you don't have to buy my product.
01:16:46:15 - 01:17:09:18
Speaker 2
And you know, it's like you can't do that across the board. You know, it's like you have to do business. But at the same time, I started taking contracts because I wanted to take them, not because I needed the money. And don't get me wrong, I needed the money, but I started making decisions based off of real value and meaning, not a monetary gain.
01:17:09:20 - 01:17:22:16
Speaker 2
And once I started doing that, my life started to become very, very successful. Focusing on impact, ignoring My career is really what it comes down to.
01:17:22:17 - 01:17:38:11
Speaker 1
So your your courses that you're teaching, you correct me if I'm wrong here. So at the very basis on a a fundamental level, you're teaching avalanche safety courses. Well, there's first responder and those are like the main focus of your your courses. Is that correct.
01:17:38:13 - 01:17:46:05
Speaker 2
Indeed. I also teach I also teach holistic health and I counsel individuals on health as well.
01:17:46:07 - 01:18:03:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so that's kind of what I was alluding to here is kind of what sets you apart from the rest of the industry is this kind of other aspect that you bring into these environments where, you know, yes, you can understand the fundamentals of, you know, understanding how to, you know, I don't know a lot about avalanche safety.
01:18:03:04 - 01:18:28:03
Speaker 1
So, you know, a lot of the things that go into that and, you know, we're those first responders, these technical aspects to it. But it seems like you approach these these lessons and these environments in a completely different way that the industry doesn't see. And so talk to us a little bit about that different side of the coin and what you're bringing to the table in this industry and in these courses that you feel like other areas are missing.
01:18:28:05 - 01:19:03:18
Speaker 2
So would well, what I started to understand or what the observation that I began to make with education was that it didn't matter what people's level of education was, the you still stood a standard, you still stood a good chance of getting killed. And ironically, like for instance, if you take a level one course you have, you actually are more likely to be involved in an accident immediately after your level one than then than prior to taking it.
01:19:03:20 - 01:19:06:06
Speaker 2
And I started asking, is.
01:19:06:11 - 01:19:28:01
Speaker 1
That strictly just because sorry, I was a little bit I was just curious if that's if that's is that mostly because people are cool? I did it. I can go out now and it's like this. People immediately feel like they can go expose themselves to these areas because they took a course Is that usually the reason why people have a higher incident like that?
01:19:28:03 - 01:19:57:17
Speaker 2
That that's a really simple explanation for which is fairly accurate. It's it's what we refer to as confirmation bias or anchoring bias where individuals like anchoring bias, people have new information and there's one thing that makes sense to them. And so they elaborate their entire world around that one concept and they make it all work confirmation bias where it's like, you know, like I did this.
01:19:57:17 - 01:20:19:12
Speaker 2
So now that I have this education, I can go do this. And so these are these blind spots that we create for ourselves. And so one of the things that we bring into it is, is we try to help people understand how your subconscious actually works. The fact that until you understand how your subconscious is working, you're not making decisions.
01:20:19:12 - 01:20:48:22
Speaker 2
You're reacting to the world based off of your past. And and that's the thing that's wild, which is, is that most people today aren't making decisions in real time. They're making based off of their previous experience. And the problem is, is that in a high risk environment, it does not repeat itself because sometimes you can get away with things and other times you can't.
01:20:49:00 - 01:21:16:04
Speaker 2
And so the feedback is not consistent and. So because the feedback isn't consistent, we have to recognize how we change within it. And so if we can, we begin to recognize how we interact. The actual real human factor. And people talk about all these different research based human factors and like and I laugh about it and I'm like, it's too simple.
01:21:16:06 - 01:21:41:01
Speaker 2
The problem is, is you're not teaching people how to observe themself in the environment. And if you can teach somebody how to observe themselves, then you can actually start to observe where your faults are. And you don't need anybody to point those out to you. They're glaringly obvious if you become practiced at this, at this game of observing yourself.
01:21:41:03 - 01:22:02:12
Speaker 2
And so I joked about it, I joked about it over the years with athletes practitioners, because it's like, what are we observing the snowpack? And people want to talk about all the data and this, that and the other and I'm like, hum, like you should observe yourself talking about this data. You act like you know what's going on when there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty and you're not being honest with yourself.
01:22:02:14 - 01:22:37:00
Speaker 2
So as I like to remind folks, whether it's, you know, in the outdoors, that's the thing that we're constantly dealing with, which is unseen certainty. Nothing is certain. And if it was, it would be totally boring and we wouldn't engage with it and it would suck and we'd be like, We're not going to do this. And and so that's the biggest change, trying to trying to help people understand how they fit in to the environment, how their intuition is actually correct.
01:22:37:02 - 01:23:10:04
Speaker 2
If you get the program right and how to be able to interact with the environment so that you can use your own emotions, use your own feelings as a compass in the environment instead of this detriment. You know, like I've joked with folks words like if you have somebody that's like completely breaking down in the field and somebody is like, Oh, they need to suck it up, I'm like, No, you need to change your behavior in order to accommodate them because they're afraid it's not their problem, it's actually yours.
01:23:10:05 - 01:23:32:15
Speaker 2
And these are the disconnects that I think that we see with the human interaction in the environment, which is a misunderstanding of what it is that we're managing. We're managing the human condition. We're not managing the environment. The environment's been doing fine on its own for a millennia. For many millennia. It's when we interact with it that we screw it up.
01:23:32:17 - 01:24:06:17
Speaker 2
And so again, observing ourselves in regards to how we interact with the environment and then being able to make better decisions, recognizing that that well, who are what is it that we're trying to take from the environment? What are we trying to learn about ourselves? And is that worth the risk? And I can't answer that question because there individual to that specific to every individual.
01:24:06:19 - 01:24:36:17
Speaker 1
You had said something about intuition and trusting that, you know, pretty exclusively, I would say that intuition is is important. But I think that the level of effectiveness of our intuition is built around our understanding of the environment around us. You know, we could we could be completely blind to an impending risk if we're not well versed in the fact that the risk even exists in the first place.
01:24:36:19 - 01:25:01:17
Speaker 1
So there's like this balance between knowledge and whether, you know, a difference between trusting this like book based knowledge that you read exclusively and then trusting our intuition exclusively. It seems like there's this middle area where we need to balance the, the, the subconscious understanding of kind of where we are and this this environmental space versus what we know and what we've studied.
01:25:01:19 - 01:25:27:06
Speaker 1
So, you know, in terms of you bringing into the equation of trusting our intuition, what kind of skills would you say we can practice to help us better understand ourselves in these environments? And also kind of how do you see the relationship between book knowledge and and trusting ourselves in these environments from from a core standpoint?
01:25:27:07 - 01:25:57:12
Speaker 2
So I'll talk about book knowledge first, which is is that book knowledge is 100% obtainable from interacting with the environment in a conservative approach, meaning there isn't anything that you can read about that you will understand better by reading. And so I'll argue every day of the week that book knowledge is just a good way to sell books.
01:25:57:14 - 01:26:43:19
Speaker 2
And the the real like for instance, it's like you can learn to tie and not buy from a book, but if you learn it from another person, you'll probably learn about eight different ways to tie that night and you'll be taught the applications for it. So don't get me wrong, like there is an academic approach, I just think it has extreme limitations, especially in the experiential environment, which, you know, I laugh about this because if you go to native cultures, they are it's unbelievable to see how some quote unquote primitive cultures operate without any book knowledge.
01:26:43:21 - 01:27:22:12
Speaker 2
And when you ask them where they learn these things, they're like, Well, the trees taught us. Nature taught us the taught us. And it's exactly what my mentors were saying to me. They were like, Yeah, here is this thing. But then the environment's to teach you, teach you more about. And then how that plays into intuition I think is quite fascinating, which is that, for instance, everybody's experience is different and that's the thing that's important to recognize.
01:27:22:12 - 01:27:43:07
Speaker 2
And then if you want to work off of real intuition, you actually have to be slowing down and you have to be in tune with what it is that you're feeling. And so if you're constantly on the go and you're trying to be distracted, trying to use intuition to help you is likely not going to be very powerful.
01:27:43:09 - 01:28:22:21
Speaker 2
And so, for instance, the technique that I often use today is, is that a majority of the experiences that I have in the outdoor environment are peak experiences. And so because of that, I let me back up in the winter time environment. I'm commonly having peak experiences and because of that, what I have to do is after I have a peak experience is actually get out of the train and reflect on it for a couple of days before I go back into the train because otherwise my nervous system hasn't had the time to process what's heard.
01:28:22:22 - 01:28:57:10
Speaker 2
And, and so if we're just moving from one thing the next, we don't create meaning and we don't understand the feelings that are associated with it. And it's funny because, like some folks will be like, Oh, that's kind of woo woo, this and that. And I'm like, No, it's actually how the emotional nervous system works. Like, these are fundamental biological processes that have been hijacked by society where it's like, Oh, don't pay attention to your feelings or your feelings.
01:28:57:10 - 01:29:20:13
Speaker 2
Get in the way, know your feelings, tell you what is good for you. For instance, my oldest brother, he was in the mob when I was five years old. I was of them. I never felt safe with them. What did my family do? They were like, He's fine. He tormented me my entire life when I turned 18 or when I turned 17, graduated high school.
01:29:20:13 - 01:29:41:17
Speaker 2
I left my house and people were like, Why? And I was like, because my family was trying to normalize as a feeling that I was having, which was I was not safe around somebody. And so when you're in the environment and somebody doesn't feel safe and they're your partner, you have to support that feeling in order to create trust.
01:29:41:17 - 01:30:07:09
Speaker 2
You can't talk them into something. You actually have to let them work through the feeling. And if you try to negate it being like, Oh, it's not that hard, that's not that exposed, you know, there's nothing to worry about. You create more anxiety the person and you make them feel like they don't belong. But that's their intuition, telling them that they're terrified and so they're not ready to do what's what's about to happen.
01:30:07:11 - 01:30:55:21
Speaker 2
And even if it even if the goes goes as planned and there's no accident, the emotional trauma that's associated with somebody doing something out of fear, that's why they never want to do these activities again. So it's it's complicated. Experience definitely plays into intuition, but the reality of it is, is that I go into environments that I've never been in before with people that I haven't been with as long as I'm moving slow enough, as long as I'm in tune with myself becomes very, very clear in terms of how my body is reacting and being able to make to make decisions based off of that somatic response to fight or flight is real.
01:30:55:23 - 01:31:06:10
Speaker 2
If you begin to if you begin to step into what that feels like, if you begin to step into what that feels like, it gives you the opportunity to use it as a compass.
01:31:06:12 - 01:31:36:07
Speaker 4
Would you agree that part of that compass on some level needs to be predicated on competency? And so what I mean by that is if you have either you need a mentor or you need enough experience in the environment to be actually having the intuition that that will work really well. And that doesn't mean never listen to your intuition if you're not having a huge bit of competency.
01:31:36:07 - 01:32:13:10
Speaker 4
That's not what I'm trying to say. But the idea that is, okay, you have no experience, you don't know anything about avalanches, you're just going to go backcountry skiing by yourself and you're just going to listen to your feelings. Like that's not really what the message is essentially like. There. There does need to be a bedrock. Obviously, you have some level of competency, but ultimately that human and human emotions have a really large role in playing, in assessing your environment and being a part of your environment and something that this kind of makes me think of, which is really interesting, is stars Baskin and Ice climber that I really like.
01:32:13:10 - 01:32:31:11
Speaker 4
He's really well known. I don't know, maybe you know who he is, but he's he's one of the probably best ice climbers in the world, without a doubt, in my opinion. And he was getting asked a lot of questions because he climbs really, really sketchy daggers and pillars and and people are always asking him, supposedly, you know, how do you know when the ice is good?
01:32:31:11 - 01:32:55:19
Speaker 4
And his response in this kind of message, I think, was on Instagram was essentially, you know, he doesn't he doesn't know if it's good. He was using a lot of Taichi lately to be in tune with him, his own emotions and himself and his body and the environment. And he just plays things by ear. He just gets there and he he assesses and he feels and he, you know, assesses his own emotion and stuff.
01:32:55:19 - 01:33:18:10
Speaker 4
And I'm hoping I'm interpreting his words correctly. But that's kind of what this makes me think about, is where your emotions and your feelings have so much utility. And I think in certain instances we're really, as humans, told to ignore them. But in reality they they are very useful and you should listen to them when you're interacting with the environment.
01:33:18:15 - 01:33:30:23
Speaker 4
I guess the only caveat that in a really long winded way I'm trying to pretty face here is that you also need to seek a bedrock of competency. Would you would you agree with that or disagree with that?
01:33:31:01 - 01:34:08:16
Speaker 2
I agree with that. In a in a strange in a strange way, which is that those that interact with the environment, which they're risking the most, you need the least outside guidance in order to understand how to be within. So let me say that again. So I haven't the more time you spend in the out-of-doors, the more in tune you come with, you become with the processes of the outdoors.
01:34:08:18 - 01:34:35:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. My it's interesting because my, my mentors would commonly say to me, I'd be like, How do you know when you're ready to climb something? How do you know when you're ready to ski it? And they would say, Climb around it or ski around it and climb similar to climb similar routes, like climb something with similar exposure, consulting with similar length but not the exact same thing.
01:34:35:13 - 01:35:03:20
Speaker 2
And and then one and and it was wild like you never like we stay on site these things all the time and like I remember in particular there was like you know at this of my climbing there was a ten pitch five eight and that I wanted to do on Shannon Cliffs. And I had never done it before and it just had this air of mystery and it wasn't very hard, but it had a lot of loose rock and it had a tremendous amount of root finding on it.
01:35:04:02 - 01:35:26:05
Speaker 2
And it had ten pitches that was surmised into about three sentences of a route description. And I remember saying to my one of my mentors, I was like, I was like, Give me some beta. And he goes, Because you got a climate to get the data. He goes, You have to step up to the plate. And I looked at him and I said, What am I ready?
01:35:26:07 - 01:35:49:23
Speaker 2
And he looked at me and he, you keep asking, doesn't seem like you are. And and so you get well, you go experience. And then one day you stand at the bottom of this thing and you're like, Fuck it, I'm ready. Let's give it a shot. And you expose yourself it. And as I just said, you give it a shot.
01:35:50:00 - 01:36:14:15
Speaker 2
I don't know what the outcome is going to be. And I've been amazed how many times our process has paid off, despite my experience. But I also had to be honest with myself. And so that's the piece of this words like I've had different times in my life where I've had better, better capacity to be honest, I was more honest with myself in my mid-twenties than I was in my late thirties.
01:36:14:17 - 01:36:38:23
Speaker 2
I was lying to myself in my late thirties, but in my mid-twenties was pretty honest about what my capabilities were, and I was also willing to go right up to the edge to make sure I knew where they were and take risks, fallen on tried gear. And, you know, in figuring out where the line was, you know, all through, all through experience, I remember the first time I took a lead fall on gear.
01:36:39:04 - 01:37:02:03
Speaker 2
You know what I did? The second I took the fall, I immediately climbed, streamed up through the problem. I was like, I can do it. This is completely easy. And but I had to experience a fall and realize that I could do it, but I had to take the risk and that's the piece of it where it's like, what's the calculated risk?
01:37:02:03 - 01:37:32:18
Speaker 2
Sometimes that's a broken ankle, sometimes that's torn ligaments, sometimes that's your life trying to figure out that line is tricky. That's that's what we're all trying to manage. And I don't think there is a perfect solution to that than allowing people to make mistakes and then ideally own our own mistakes in the process because another cognitive blind spot that people have, this is something that I saw in search and rescue, which is is that there are no accidents.
01:37:32:18 - 01:37:54:12
Speaker 2
They are all incident meaning there is a reason why they occurred. They were foreseeable. The problem was, is they weren't foreseeable by the party that they were involved with. Why? Because they couldn't see themself in the terrain. They couldn't see how they were interacting. And then even when you pointed out to them, they're like, no, that wasn't me.
01:37:54:14 - 01:38:23:20
Speaker 2
And you're like, But this is the action you did. And they can't acknowledge and they can't own it. And so that's arguably the trick, right? Recognize our weaknesses, recognizing we make mistakes, and then using management of risk to what's appropriate in terms of what you're willing to lose. Like, because there's been some climbs I've stepped up on to you and I didn't know I was going to risk my life.
01:38:24:00 - 01:38:28:12
Speaker 2
I decided partway through it that I was going to commit to that.
01:38:28:14 - 01:38:46:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that like, at least as a message to the audience, I think that like, it's it's about a slow progression. I think there is definitely a level of like trust in yourself and putting yourself out there and, you know, owning up and be like, All right, I'm ready to commit. I'm ready. Do it. You know, trust in yourself and getting yourself in that zone.
01:38:46:05 - 01:39:16:02
Speaker 1
But there is this level of like Max is saying, I think there's a level of level of competency. Competency you need to have order to make that decision accurately, because I think it's easy for at least for me, it was very easy to just be like over confident in my abilities and put myself out on the edge further than I should have been, because where I did trust myself really well, I did believe I had control of the environment, I had control of myself.
01:39:16:02 - 01:39:37:17
Speaker 1
But in reality I actually should not have fucking been in the situation that I was in. And so there's like this balance, you know, I think that's important for us to take risks, but we need to, at least in the first few years of climbing, the first few exposures to an area, whether it's a first time climbing in an area, first time getting into trad, it's this very slow, slow progression.
01:39:37:22 - 01:40:00:22
Speaker 1
Give yourself the time to interact with the environment, to give yourself time to, learn and get the experience and how to communicate with it before you can start to really actually tell yourself like, okay, I can trust myself and my intuition in this area because if you walk up to a new area, you walk up to a new sport, you just don't have that foundation there to be able to make that judgment call.
01:40:01:00 - 01:40:45:06
Speaker 2
I agree with you. 100%. I'll add to that the the community that you surround yourself with, the more diverse it is. Because as I joke with folks today, I'm like, if you're climbing or skiing or doing any high risk activity with everybody in the same demographic ethic all the time, you're you're missin a lineage or an ancestral piece here because I don't disagree, Kyle, But my the people I surrounded myself with when I would make these statements about, Hey, I'm going to climb this every once in a while, somebody would go, You don't have that.
01:40:45:08 - 01:41:18:13
Speaker 2
And immediately that would turn into, Holy shit, that's somebody I respect. And they just called me out. And so that's the relationship piece that I believe needs to be balanced so that we can better see ourselves. Because the biggest mistakes I've ever made have been in a complete vacuum where I misidentify who I am and I depending on other people, and I didn't trust other people in order to go, Oh, you're fucking blowing it.
01:41:18:15 - 01:41:58:05
Speaker 2
Like you are not prepared right now and you feel like you don't have enough experience and here's why. And, you know, so that's I think that's kind of the game, the dynamic that I like to throw into words like, how do we see ourselves through other individuals and through the environment? Because in all fairness, I don't know how strong I am, although I can see the confidence that I exude in other people based off of how I present myself, and then I get a better understanding of what my reflection is.
01:41:58:07 - 01:42:25:22
Speaker 2
So it is it's an incredibly slow process. I think that's the piece of it that's maybe even more frustrating. And if I were to give anybody, anything, I don't like to give advice, but if I was to give you a word of wisdom, it's I'm stronger at 52 than I was in my twenties. I climb harder, I can go farther.
01:42:26:00 - 01:42:50:19
Speaker 2
My physical capabilities are well exceed my capacity in my twenties and thirties. And and folks say to me like, you know, that's genetic or this and that and I'm like and for me I say, no, that's 32 years of doing this, of doing this over and over and over and over again, and then never giving up on the fact that I can be a better person.
01:42:50:21 - 01:43:15:02
Speaker 2
Day And then the side effect is, is that physically I am a better person as well as in an emotional being that has the capacity to hold space for other people in myself. And I think that's I think that's really what the trick is. Really what the trick is here is, is that is is to come back to the whole thing.
01:43:15:02 - 01:43:46:04
Speaker 2
On deserving. If you surround yourself with people that believe you, well, you don't have anything to prove. And the less you have to prove to other people the the less careless risks you're going to take. And then maybe the more meaningful risks you will take, because you're going to recognize the people that you value and that will that your fact by your poor decisions.
01:43:46:06 - 01:44:29:07
Speaker 2
Because I say to folks all the time, I'm not going to change my approach to risk because you don't think it's appropriate, although I can change my approach to risk if I think it's going to impact our relationship. And that's a big difference because. All of a sudden I'm valuing the relationship over the outcome. And and that's kind of these mental shifts that that we're playing in the classroom, folks around in these courses around risk, which is to help people understand that their individual, the process takes really long time.
01:44:29:07 - 01:44:55:04
Speaker 2
And if you want to engage with this for the rest of your life, you can. And if you choose to do something different and and risk risk, having a family or risk having a career risk doing all these other things, those things are great too. But don't waste your youth on the youth. If if you don't think you're going to be an athlete later in life, then you won't be.
01:44:55:06 - 01:45:22:08
Speaker 2
So decide what you want out of life. And if you have to work really hard for something that you think is yours and you keep not getting it and failing, step back and look at what it is that you're trying to take and take a take a serious assessment of oneself and recognize what skills you have to develop to get to where you want to go.
01:45:22:10 - 01:45:45:20
Speaker 2
It's those reflections that make all the difference. We're capable of doing anything we want if we accept the fact that we have to work on. And I think that's I think that's a I know it was a hard thing for me in my youth was recognized where it was like, okay, this is going to be a really long road what I'm trying to build is going to take decades.
01:45:45:20 - 01:46:14:06
Speaker 2
And if I want it to have the meaning that it has today, it's going to take decades. I couldn't I couldn't build it in my twenties or thirties or forties. It's taken my whole life. And and that in itself is all the difference. And.