The Mountains test us, and shape us. We cannot lower the mountains. So we must elevate ourselves to their level. We should strive to choose goals in life that will challenge us, test us and that we think are impossible. Only through aiming at the highest peaks we can possibly envision will we truly transcend the suffering of the world to find meaning and purpose. For some this may be being a good life partner, having kids and enjoying the outdoors. For others it may mean climbing the wildest and gnarliest lines possible.
Our guest today at the age of 23 has managed to complete a lifetime of climbing accomplishments and he's just getting started. Nathan Longhurst is an endurance athlete and climber. In our conversation we discuss how he climbed the infamous Bulger's List at the age of 21. This consists of climbing Washington’s 100 highest peaks. As crazy as that is, it pales in comparison to his journey climbing the Sierra Peak Section (SPS) which involved climbing 247 peaks in 138 days. This accomplishment is mind blowing and a true feat of grit, endurance and logistics.
Finally we chat about Nathan’s solo ascent of Denali’s infamous Cassin Ridge. Nathan climbed this with skis and ski boots. A mind blowing accomplishment. Nathan is clearly a master in the mountains.
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
The Mountains test us, and shape us. We cannot lower the mountains. So we must elevate ourselves to their level. We should strive to choose goals in life that will challenge us, test us and that we think are impossible. Only through aiming at the highest peaks we can possibly envision will we truly transcend the suffering of the world to find meaning and purpose. For some this may be being a good life partner, having kids and enjoying the outdoors. For others it may mean climbing the wildest and gnarliest lines possible.
Our guest today at the age of 23 has managed to complete a lifetime of climbing accomplishments and he's just getting started. Nathan Longhurst is an endurance athlete and climber. In our conversation we discuss how he climbed the infamous Bulger's List at the age of 21. This consists of climbing Washington’s 100 highest peaks. As crazy as that is, it pales in comparison to his journey climbing the Sierra Peak Section (SPS) which involved climbing 247 peaks in 138 days. This accomplishment is mind blowing and a true feat of grit, endurance and logistics.
Finally we chat about Nathan’s solo ascent of Denali’s infamous Cassin Ridge. Nathan climbed this with skis and ski boots. A mind blowing accomplishment. Nathan is clearly a master in the mountains.
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
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:15
Unknown
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Climbing Majority podcast, where Collin I sit down with living legends, professional athletes, certified guides and recreational climbers like 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.
00:00:25:12 - 00:00:28:06
Unknown
The mountains can test us and shape us.
00:00:28:06 - 00:00:33:07
Unknown
We cannot lower the mountains, so we must elevate ourselves to their level. We should
00:00:33:07 - 00:00:46:22
Unknown
strive to choose goals in our lives that will challenge us, test us, and that we think are impossible. Only through aiming at the highest peaks we can possibly envision will we truly transcend the suffering of the world to find meaning and purpose.
00:00:47:00 - 00:01:14:18
Unknown
For some, this may be being a good life partner, having kids and enjoying the outdoors. And for others, it may mean climbing the wildest and gnarliest lines possible. Our guest today at the age of 23, has managed to complete a lifetime of climbing accomplishments, and he's just getting started. Nathan Longhurst is an endurance athlete and climber. In our conversation, we discuss how he climbed the infamous boulders list at the age of 21.
00:01:14:22 - 00:01:37:20
Unknown
This consists of climbing Washington's 100 highest peaks. As crazy as that is, it pales in comparison to his journey climbing the Sierra Peaks section, which involved climbing 247 peaks in 138 days. This accomplishment is just mind blowing, and it's a true feat of grit, endurance and logistical planning.
00:01:37:20 - 00:01:43:10
Unknown
Finally, we chat about Nathan's solo ascent of Denali, his infamous Carson Ridge.
00:01:43:15 - 00:01:46:12
Unknown
Nathan Climb this with ski boots and skis.
00:01:46:12 - 00:01:49:03
Unknown
What an incredible accomplishment.
00:02:01:07 - 00:02:20:10
Unknown
Yeah. Awesome. Welcome back, everybody. We are sitting down with Nathan Longhurst. I have a knack for getting the last names wrong, So, you know, is that. Did I get it right? That was perfect. Good job. my God. Wow. So amazing. As you probably like. Like, break the ice and get that out of the way first. But, you know, there's some kind of excitement of just doing it, you know, while recording.
00:02:20:10 - 00:02:42:05
Unknown
Yeah, but awesome, man. You know, I'm really happy we, like, pin you down here. We made this work. You know, I'm really excited to talk to you, and you're you're a very accomplished individual, and I think that's a really common thread in the conversations we have. And most climbers are so humble when they get like praise or something that like, me, no, I'm not like, you know, none of this.
00:02:42:05 - 00:03:05:16
Unknown
So that's my general experience. But you know, you've done a lot. Like, how old are you, Nathan? I just turned 24. Like two days ago. Well, happy birthday, man. That's awesome. Happy birthday. Yeah. But, yeah, you know, like, I obviously we met on Denali. We exchanged virtually barely any words. I think we were taking the. The purple bus back.
00:03:05:16 - 00:03:21:21
Unknown
And you were pretty haggard. I was haggard. Saw you at the house a bit and stuff. And eventually, you know, connected with Jack and talked to people. And, you know, we got messages on social media saying, hey, you got to interview this guy. And we had already been in the process of setting this up, which was kind of awesome.
00:03:21:21 - 00:03:50:14
Unknown
But yeah. Can you just round us off a little bit? Like, you know, my understanding is that you first got into endurance sports and that kind of led you into climbing. Is that true? Yeah, it was kind of all simultaneous, roughly around like middle school, early high school. It was getting into I was like running cross-country on my school team and then getting into going to the climbing gym.
00:03:50:14 - 00:04:14:14
Unknown
And then when I got my driver's license and started have some freedom, I just sort of combining, started combining all those things on my own in the mountains. That's awesome. And so you started racing first, is that correct? Running, racing, that kind of stuff? Yeah, actually, I don't have a lot of history of like organized trail races. I've done like, I don't know, maybe ten total, 15, something like that.
00:04:14:16 - 00:04:32:20
Unknown
But I did run track and cross-country and was pretty into that for several years when I was in middle and high school. If you don't mind me asking. So I was a runner as well. What was your mile time? What's your fastest mile time? I would have to check the records for an exact, but it was somewhere in the mid four forties, maybe like 445.
00:04:32:20 - 00:05:01:04
Unknown
Wow. Nice. Nice. Yeah. My, my, my whole time. Still to this day, it's my email. It's my all time. 439 I wear that badge proudly, but it's been like fucking two decades at this point. Not. I want to go for a couple of years now. Maybe I'll actually do it now that I'm putting it out in public. I've had the standing go to get in, you know, some sort of fast shape again and run a sub five minute mile because it's been several years now since I've run anything remotely.
00:05:01:07 - 00:05:24:17
Unknown
It's it's pretty pointless, honestly. You know, like you just basically sprinting for a mile. It's just like pure, unadulterated suffering. So on that note of suffering, you had said that you'd done one of the road races before in wet socks, is that correct? It was like one of the most suffer fests you've ever done. Like you don't have to go into it to deep, but brockers through that a little bit.
00:05:24:19 - 00:05:48:19
Unknown
The the one and only road marathon that I've ever ran and ever will run. I think I was like 13 and somehow got roped into slash roped myself into running this road marathon in central Washington. And it was same as it ran the whole time. It rained the whole time. I was like, not prepared at all, both gear wise or fitness wise.
00:05:48:19 - 00:06:08:23
Unknown
And it was just painful. Lessons learned to never run on the road again, Right? So, you know, given that, I think endurance sports just you kind of maybe have to have this proclivity or be built into it, that it is just a lot of suffering. And at a young age, you know, that's a pretty young age to get into suffering like that and like persevering in those.
00:06:08:23 - 00:06:33:16
Unknown
Like what kind of what drew you what was your interest where you were? You just always someone who liked to suffer. You're kind of masochistic or, you know, was that something that you kind of have to like, cultivate a love of? I think it was more that a love of it stems or maybe originated from an interest in like adventure and exploration.
00:06:33:17 - 00:07:10:18
Unknown
And then, you know, those first forays into, yeah, doing really challenging things and suffering physically. It was just an extension of that desire for exploration. Exploring myself in my own capacities. Did you find the suffering more mental or more physical up through Probably especially. Yeah. My first really long things when I was maybe less physically prepared, it was probably more physical pain and like my my brain was still like psyched and ready to go, but my body was just like absolutely in pain.
00:07:10:19 - 00:07:28:08
Unknown
But I mean, it's all it's all tied together. It's all kind of the same. Like you can't really draw a distinction between physical and mental suffering. Yeah. When everything is hurting, it's hard to hard to make that. I mean, your brain's the thing that's processing the pain anyways, right? So it's it's all mental suffering. Yeah, that is. It's there.
00:07:28:10 - 00:07:45:19
Unknown
You break your leg. You're just like. Yeah. Are you telling me I'm hurting? That is actually really bizarre to think about though, in the sense that obviously you're feeling the pain in the area, like neurologically where you've been hurt. But like, I don't know, maybe I'm talking to my ass here, but my understanding is like, exactly. Like you said, it is all mental.
00:07:45:19 - 00:08:07:04
Unknown
Like on some level, like the pain is just this manifestation of like no C receptors in your nervous system. Like his his name is escaping me right now, but there's this. This infamous cyclist who at one point held the record for the hour, which is like like the notorious challenge in cycling, just how far you can ride on a track in an hour.
00:08:07:06 - 00:08:25:04
Unknown
And his motto is like, shut up, legs. And his his whole strategy for doing that was basically, you're just like, have this mental disconnect between then, like between his brain and the entire lower half of his body. Just like, yeah, I'm just not going to process any of the signals that I'm getting from my legs. Yeah, it's kind of like Alex Honnold and his amygdala in fear, you know?
00:08:25:04 - 00:08:43:11
Unknown
It's just like, Cut it off. I don't need it. Just slice off the amygdala. I don't need the process to figure something. But sometimes information that your brain is receiving is not at all useful to your current situation. I think being able to recognize and differentiate that can be a very valuable skill in a lot of mountain and endurance things.
00:08:43:16 - 00:09:21:12
Unknown
Do you think that's a skill that you have? And if you have that skill, is it something that you've kind of come naturally to through experience, or is that something you actually work on to cultivate? I would say yes, especially when it comes to things like managing. Yeah, managing fear and managing stress. And when you get into full on situations, I'm pretty good at just like focusing on what I need to and then ignoring what I, what's not useful to me.
00:09:21:13 - 00:09:42:07
Unknown
I think that's probably mostly a product of just experience and getting into full on situations and realizing what you need to prioritize in those situations. Yeah, if you had like a first moment, you know, you've spent a lot of time in the mountains, you've, you know, you started being a endurance athlete or an adventure athlete at a pretty young age.
00:09:42:09 - 00:10:03:19
Unknown
Do you have a first moment where you kind of cross that line of like, whoa, like this isn't just an athletic pursuit anymore. I'm taking on risk, you know, like, whether that be I know I might not make it down because this route is technical or the weather's coming in. Like, what was that first situation where like that kind of risk started to creep in and show itself to you?
00:10:03:21 - 00:10:36:10
Unknown
Yeah, I actually have a very yeah, a very specific answer and a very distinct memory. It was, well, see, this is probably summer of 2017, I want to say, and I was in the North Cascades going out just for a day trip solo, intending to climb a mountain on the east side of Ross Lake called Jack Mountain and got up there and to access it, you kind of traverse around the flanks of a shorter peak called Crater Mountain.
00:10:36:12 - 00:10:59:01
Unknown
So after first round Crater Mountain and then got into some some lower elevation clouds, you know, it's common in the North Cascades. Get these inversions where you get really dense valley clouds. Since I was traversing out towards Jack Mountain, I got into these really dense clouds. I had just some hard time with the navigation. So pretty new to route planning and route finding in the mountains.
00:10:59:01 - 00:11:20:08
Unknown
So definitely kind of dropped the ball there, got turned around and eventually after, you know, probably a couple of hours of just floundering and in these clouds, I just decided to bail out. But on my way back out, I realized like, I can probably just climb up and over Crater Mountain and get a little, you know, Constellation Summit, if you will.
00:11:20:10 - 00:11:43:12
Unknown
And so, yeah, I started picking my way up the north face of this thing and has a so Crater Mountain has a trail up sort of the south side of it. But I was on the opposite side and I was like, it's climb up and over. And so I was looking up at this north face and it was just, you know, a classic, classic case of like foreshortening of a technical face here at the bottom, like directly underneath it and looking up, you're like, it looks like this weakness is fine.
00:11:43:12 - 00:12:06:21
Unknown
Inspiring to be like third class and no problem. But as I got up into the school, it just gradually got steeper and steeper and looser and icier and muddier and just generally worse. And, you know, eventually being young and dumb and naive, I climbed up into a place that would have been pretty challenging to down climb back out of just Yeah.
00:12:06:21 - 00:12:41:11
Unknown
And some really like nasty kind of muddy frozen gravel stuff and yeah, I got like super, super gripped and it was just pretty, pretty frozen, just kind of petrified for a while, realizing kind of the consequences of my actions that I was pretty committed to continuing up, which I eventually did, and bit the top in one piece. But to this day, I still consider that probably by far like maybe the closest call I've had in the mountains, just in terms like being in really, really terrible conditions and really insecure thinking.
00:12:41:15 - 00:13:08:08
Unknown
That happened really early on in your kind of like journey into adventure in the mountains and stuff like that. That kind of set a precedent for you of like, you know, this is something I really want to avoid and I want to make sure I'm gaining the necessary, necessary skills to avoid this. Yeah, absolutely. So I was like, that was in the middle of my first summer of doing technical things in the mountains.
00:13:08:10 - 00:13:41:15
Unknown
And yeah, that whole summer proved to be pretty. It was kind of a trial by fire, if you will, because I was just like really psyched. I was already rock climbing pretty hard because, you know, I was coming from a gym in a sport climbing background psych, and then I was running a lot. So I had the fitness and also reasonably good technical skills, but I didn't have any like mountain knowledge at all, so I was just throwing myself into like all these kind of gnarly routes and not really knowing like the implications or all the, you know, subtle soft skills of finding and watching the weather and things like that.
00:13:41:15 - 00:14:00:09
Unknown
So yeah, that was definitely like the one like really full on close call that summer feel like I learned a lot from that. And then, you know, I was able to apply it and ended up learning a lot for sure. Yeah I know that's really interesting. And to say that up to this, up to this point, that was the closest call you've had.
00:14:00:11 - 00:14:22:13
Unknown
And you know, you are so much more successful in terms of what you've accomplished up to this point. It's pretty cool to hear. It seems like you've you've handled the risk. You've gotten to a point of understanding the mountains and the way you need to move through them in a safe manner. Is that correct? In the fact that like that was the one main close call you've had up to this point in your career?
00:14:22:15 - 00:14:55:11
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest change from then till now might not even necessarily be an increase in technical skill, although I certainly had some of that. But I think it's more so a very intimate knowledge of like what is and isn't secure movement and what kind of terrain I can move up and what kind of terrain I can move down through safely and secure and what kind of things I should just avoid in general, like nasty, muddy gullies.
00:14:55:13 - 00:15:35:23
Unknown
Yeah, sounds pretty bad, honestly. So I'm just I'll try and throw a couple of questions here, but I'll try to make it reasonable. But so I'm assuming prior to this, as you kind of alluded to, you had run a couple of ultramarathons. Is that true? You'd been running you had been running ultras, is that correct? Yes, I'd done I'm not sure exactly how the time line would be, but I'd done several 50 kids and 50 milers and then 100 miler, which is I think right before I think it was that same summer, probably right before that experience on Crater Mountain.
00:15:36:01 - 00:16:00:10
Unknown
So I enjoyed I got I was going to say like I enjoy organized trail races, but I've just found that it's sort of more fun and more engaging to make my own challenges and just got in my own in the mountains. And yeah, yeah, I think Pick Your own Adventure is for people who have a knack for climbing and engaging with the environments.
00:16:00:10 - 00:16:33:02
Unknown
There's just something so different about it and how you can go out and engage with the mountains in these peaks, right? It's kind of like the endurance component is really amazing. Racing's really fun, it's exciting, it's its own thing, but it's almost and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but at least my experience was with this, and I don't have as much experience as you, but it was racing and those experiences was kind of like a test and a way to facilitate the aerobic base and the training to actually go and get out into those adventures more if that makes sense.
00:16:33:02 - 00:17:00:09
Unknown
Like, did you, did you view any of that like for yourself like that? Yeah. So I guess something I'm wondering here then is like, so you're young, you're starting to get into these experiences. You built this huge fitness base and you know, you're climbing at the time and stuff as well too. And then, you know, I think something that this kind of like a natural progression for this story is you get into this, you know, the the the Bulger's summit list.
00:17:00:09 - 00:17:19:19
Unknown
It is Bulger's, I think. Right. Yeah. And so maybe if you can take us through a little bit about that, like, you know, how did how did that what is it? First of all, how did it come to be that you decided to take on this adventure and let's get into this because it's a really amazing story. Yeah.
00:17:19:21 - 00:17:57:00
Unknown
Yes. Yeah. The Bulger's list is a fun little challenge among Washington climbers and peak baggers. Yeah, it's FLC. It's a climbing humbleness. Okay. So it's a fun, big challenge. It definitely is. Definitely like Chicago. It's essentially a list of what at one point was considered the 100 highest peaks in Washington. There's some weird sort of parameters and also with more recent accurate measurements, it's the true top 100 list is a little bit different now.
00:17:57:00 - 00:18:29:17
Unknown
But at one point there's this club called the Boulders, and they made this list of what they considered 100 highest peaks in Washington. And for whatever reason, that list is just stuck. And so, yeah, it's 100 tall peaks certainly in Washington and so, yeah, I'd been aware of the list for several years and have been sort of ticking off some of the peaks on the list, mostly just because a lot of the peaks with interesting alpine climbing routes in Washington are on the list.
00:18:29:17 - 00:19:07:10
Unknown
But so I've been sort of definitely aware of it like a, you know, a vehicle long term goal. But then going into, let's see, this would be summer of 2021, I had been in contact with this gentleman, Jason RATH, about some of his affinity routes in Washington that he'd done. So I just been chatting with him about some of those for, you know, just because I was inspired by him and asking him about some, you know, routes, specifics and things like that.
00:19:07:12 - 00:19:25:01
Unknown
And he mentioned this project that he had coming up, where he was going to go and try to climb to become the first to climb the entire modulus in a season, taking more of a sort of a through hiking approach to it rather than a, you know, weekend warrior lifeless approach. And I was like, Well, that sounds cool.
00:19:25:06 - 00:19:49:10
Unknown
But, you know, I didn't think a ton of it until he invited me on. He said, yeah, you should come and join me. Awesome. It's not like be a great opportunity to get some mentorship in the mountains. And it just so happened that his day one fell on a weekend. I was actually working at the time and so I drove out from Spokane across into the Poseidon Wilderness, which is kind of the eastern edge of the North Cascades.
00:19:49:12 - 00:20:19:22
Unknown
And I joined him for his first day, which turned out to be like this 22 hour like rainy, bushwhacking, epic and tagged Four Peaks that day and just had a great time out the mountains with Jason, we really connected. I felt like we shared a lot of the same sort of motivations for being in the mountains and yeah, so long story short, he basically expressed an open invitation for me to join on as many of them as I wanted.
00:20:20:00 - 00:20:46:12
Unknown
And the next day I phoned into my job and quit my job and just started crying. That's about it. So Jason told us. So it just turned into this awesome, awesome partnership and awesome summer where we were able to work together a lot and support each other. He ended up finishing the list in a really impressive 50 days, just smashing it out.
00:20:46:14 - 00:21:07:15
Unknown
I had some, you know, some schedule things and I'm also just clearly not not not as gnarly as Jason. And so I ended up finishing it a few weeks after he did the I became the first and second people to do that lesson and the season ends and you were the youngest person to ever do that just a few weeks ago.
00:21:07:23 - 00:21:30:03
Unknown
wow. What's the pastor, The guru, What's his name? Yeah, I just I don't know his exact this exact it his younger than 21 because that's all that was. And I finished it. So good for him. That's awesome. So I have a quick question. So you previously you had mentioned that you climb like what, 513 sport climbing, Is that correct?
00:21:30:05 - 00:21:51:05
Unknown
Okay. So, you know, you know, humbly that's a that's a hard fucking grade to climb. You know, most people climb there, you know, try their entire lives to climb that. So it seems like lately you've spent a lot of your time focusing on these, like big, you know, peak bagging objectives and you quit your job to go do this.
00:21:51:07 - 00:22:16:12
Unknown
Bulger's list. Why did that call to you more than maybe chasing grades as a sport climber or switching to trad climbing like there's all these different roads that we can take as a climber? You know, why did you choose that path with the skill set that you had? You know, did you see yourself giving something up in terms of progressing in the grades and becoming a better sport climber?
00:22:16:14 - 00:22:46:10
Unknown
Do you still chase that? Like talk to us a little bit about the choices we have as a climber and what you you know, why you dove so deeply into this peak bagging experience? Yeah. So personally, I love all disciplines of climbing. I think that's maybe some of the things that I've done in the alpine climbing realm has sort of caught some more folks attention and maybe inspired more folks, which is great and fantastic.
00:22:46:10 - 00:23:20:18
Unknown
But I absolutely love sport climbing, I love track climbing, I even love bouldering, even though I'm absolutely for a lot of it. And to me, like one of the most beautiful things about climbing is is how how diverse it is and how very dense. And so that ability to sort of cycle through the different disciplines depending on, you know, where my psych is and what the season is and where I am to me is super important because if I if I tried to do any one type of climbing for honestly, more than a few months at a time, I would just get sick and I would quit.
00:23:20:20 - 00:23:41:17
Unknown
So yeah I so I absolutely sport climb and boulder pretty regularly probably more often than I do big things the mountains honestly. You're just getting more attention now for these bigger peaks and these more documented objectives and stuff. Yeah. Because I mean if, if we're being honest like 513 is cool, but it's also fairly routine, you know.
00:23:41:17 - 00:24:03:18
Unknown
Yeah, Yeah. It's, it's a drop in the water compared to see people from 513 all the time. But then yeah, maybe doing one of these big peaks that's a little bit more unusual. Yeah. Interesting. Very cool. yeah. So, so after this boulders list, you know, two progresses here. The next thing was the Sierra Peak section. Is that correct?
00:24:03:18 - 00:24:31:19
Unknown
Is that. That's like the next big thing. And I poked through this a little bit and my fucking God, dude, a lot of peaks, huge amount of geographical location to cover permit logistics. Like what was the spark for this this adventure? Whose idea was it? And talk to us a little bit about, you know, this this accomplishment that you made and how that all looked out from the beginning.
00:24:31:21 - 00:25:04:09
Unknown
So the specialist was just a wonderful adventure. I had spent the previous late winter and early spring in the Sierra before I did the Boulders doing some ski mountaineering and just instantly fell in love with the eastern Sierra. They're just such incredible mountains. Huge, huge vertical, really, from the tops. These mountains down to the Owens Valley desert and yeah, incredible skiing, incredible weather, incredible rock.
00:25:04:09 - 00:25:38:13
Unknown
It's just like the I mean, it's the Disneyland of the Alpine world, in my opinion. So then after doing the the boulders list completely out of the blue, this gentleman from California, he lives down in New Zealand now. His name's Dan, and he reached out to me after hearing about my mobile, my border list, and he offered to sponsor a big project, a similar project.
00:25:38:15 - 00:26:06:02
Unknown
And he put out this list as a as a possible suggestion. And I looked into it some more thought about the logistics of what, you know, applying that same approach that Jason I had done on populist transferring that over to something like the specialist, thinking about what that would look like for me, how to make it, you know, the most enjoyable and sustainable mentally and emotionally while still pushing for an efficient time.
00:26:06:04 - 00:26:33:09
Unknown
And yeah, just kind of over that winter spent a lot of hours planning routes and scheming, and I realized that I thought it was a pretty reasonable objective. And, you know, obviously the financial support was huge. And yeah, starting early spring of 2022, I just drove in on that. Wow. Where did you start Mount Rose? I think it was up in the Reno area, Yeah.
00:26:33:09 - 00:26:55:20
Unknown
So it ended up being kind of a big a loop. Well, more of like a corkscrew maybe around the Sierra Nevada mountains. So, yeah, I started up in the Tahoe area and started on ski and ski, a bunch of peaks up there, and then worked my way down the east side, basically skiing everything that made for a reasonable ski objective.
00:26:55:21 - 00:27:29:11
Unknown
Because personally, I absolutely love ski mountaineering. I think it's one of the most fun and most efficient ways to travel in the mountains. So skied all the peaks. It made sense to ski loops around the kind of south end. And let's see, that was maybe early May moved around, came up the West Side, started doing peaks on foot, and then came through a cemetery and then finished back on the east side again with some big midsummer or high alpine link ups and ridge traverses and things like that.
00:27:29:13 - 00:27:47:20
Unknown
So are you doing this all like you're bringing a tent, you're bringing, you know, food, you're you're tackling multiday objectives, or are you like driving your car to a spot, tagging some peaks, coming back to your car, driving to an area, and then doing it again. Like what's the logistics of covering so many peaks over a certain amount of time?
00:27:47:22 - 00:28:07:19
Unknown
There is a mix of both. And honestly, one of my favorite parts of that whole project, beyond obviously just getting to spend so much time in the mountains and beautiful mountains that I love. One of my favorite parts was the planning, because it was like this huge puzzle. I mean, basically I started with a map with 247 dots on it, marking each of the peaks on the list.
00:28:07:21 - 00:28:32:07
Unknown
And obviously in some of the more central locations of the range, like the Palisades or the Evolution zone, the peaks are just super close together and there's a bunch of them really, really densely concentrated peaks. And so figuring out the most efficient way to separate these into groups and, you know, to to link up multiple days in the backcountry versus going in and doing single day operations, there's just this big puzzle.
00:28:32:07 - 00:28:59:20
Unknown
And it took me months to untangle this jumble of routes. And honestly, like I'm I'm super, super proud and stoked about how the logistics ended up working out. And I feel like I came up with a way that was like really esthetic and really efficient to do all these peaks and yet end up being a mix of single day outings and several multi-day, including the longest was it was almost two weeks in the backcountry, kind of through the heart of the High Sierra.
00:28:59:22 - 00:29:19:17
Unknown
You said it was 240 peaks. 247. Yep. And what it was a 128 days or something like that. 138 And then my my partner, my buddy Travis, we kind of overlapped a little bit, so I started early. He's not much of a skier, so I started early. We overlapped for kind of the middle, middle third, middle half maybe.
00:29:19:17 - 00:29:38:08
Unknown
And then he finished after me and he ended up with a faster time because he's also an absolute world. So he did it with you? Yeah. So we did the kind of kind of the middle section together and then he finished. He finished later than me, but with a faster overall time. wow. It's quite literally a lifetime of mountain experience.
00:29:38:11 - 00:30:01:04
Unknown
No 100%, 200 days. Like it's really just this it's unbelievable. I cannot like that the Boulders is like this is just it's unbelievable the amount of time but something I'd like to just linger on for a sec here, because you've really highlighted this with the logistics of it. You know, there's some common trope that, you know, mountaineering is 90% of logistics, 10% climbing or something.
00:30:01:04 - 00:30:30:11
Unknown
And obviously what you're doing is ski mountaineering and a lot of other things. But I just like to kind of highlight this component because obviously so much of media and so much of what we show is just people climbing these static areas and these beautiful things and racing to finish lines and all these amazing things. But you know that route finding, planning, the logistics, these are really complex, very hard skills that require a lot of time and energy.
00:30:30:15 - 00:30:49:19
Unknown
And I'm wondering if maybe you could just like highlight that a little bit more elaborate on that just because it is something that's so overlooked, especially in conversations and in the media. You know, like I just I just think of that even if I had the fitness to do that task, I have nowhere near the skill set to plan what you have planned.
00:30:49:19 - 00:31:11:04
Unknown
It just it would just be this monumental task to even just plan that out. And I'd obviously fuck it up in a million ways. So yeah. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? The first thing the first thing there is to not have a job and not be going to school. That's not exactly running ultras. I mean, few things, but yeah, yeah.
00:31:11:04 - 00:31:38:19
Unknown
Just operate on that. Like how did you gain the skill set? Yeah. And real quick, in tandem with this question, Nathan, I think the permitting system, because I read that to do this successfully and to do it legitimately, you also have to have all the permits to be in those areas when you're in there. And so like while you're answering Max's question, keep the permit system in in your mind's eye when you're when you're describing this logistical nightmare.
00:31:38:20 - 00:32:05:13
Unknown
Yeah. So I think a part of it is just kind of the way my brain works. Ever since I was a kid, I was really into like different brain teasers and puzzles and Rubik's cubes and various little mind games like that shout out to my mom. I think it's genetic because she's absolutely good and things like that. You thank you for your mitochondria too.
00:32:05:13 - 00:32:30:23
Unknown
Yeah, I guess. Yes. Loki Loki. She's got the Rubik's Cube record of the world for so yeah. And then just a lot of time. Another shout out to Mr. RJC Kar, who wrote the most classic guide book of all time for the High Sierra. It's just this, like, Bible. It's like three inches thick with just pages and pages of descriptions of different passes.
00:32:30:23 - 00:32:49:06
Unknown
And, you know, you can find some, like, insane the obscure past, like 40 miles deep in the backcountry That seems like no human has probably been over ever. But he has a description for it. He's like, yeah, It's like, is it close to on the north side? But then like Chaucer, you terrible fourth class on the south side, it's like, I don't know how you know that, Mr. Secord, but thank you.
00:32:49:08 - 00:33:21:11
Unknown
There's like things that you're like, you could never find on the internet, but you'll just find, find deep in the, in this, this guidebook to the High Sierra. So I spent a lot of time in that, spent a lot of time going through other people's trip reports. I mean, the Internet is an amazing to see a lot of time researching and then honestly, just a lot of time looking at a topo map and looking at, you know, like the slope angle, shading and knowing like, unless something is like really, really steep, like I can figure out a way to get through it.
00:33:21:13 - 00:33:46:09
Unknown
Do you have a preferred a preferred website? Do you use Guy Cal Topo like, do you close up? You like cut up? Okay. Yeah. The slope angle shading feature on there is really good. And then like the map plotting, I don't know, it just works best for me. And so, yeah, I just spent a lot of time going through that and then thinking about efficient link ups.
00:33:46:10 - 00:34:19:11
Unknown
I suppose I will not stoop my own horn too much, but I will mention one part of it that I was pretty proud of is I intentionally incorporated a lot of the classic rock climbing routes and scrambles, and so there were quite a few instances where maybe I'd go up and over a peak or climb peak in a way that wasn't necessarily the most efficient, but I found to be the most esthetic because there are so many of these these peaks in the Sierra that chop like gorgeous, gorgeous climbing routes on them, but then are just like flat, you know, first class scrambling on the backside, second class scrambling.
00:34:19:13 - 00:34:46:00
Unknown
So I definitely went out of my way a little bit to incorporate some of the more classic technical routes. And as far as the permits go, a lot of that was just planning ahead of time, lots of hours on recreation, dot gov. Gov at 659 and like hitting refresh over and over again. As far as the witness angles, if you go early enough, I think it's before May 1st.
00:34:46:03 - 00:35:02:05
Unknown
Don't quote me on that. But if you go early enough there's not a required four days. You're basically just trying to get permits like what day before or two days before? You're you're going up to these areas and you're banking on the fact that, one, you have cell reception or Internet reception and two, that you get one or so.
00:35:02:10 - 00:35:25:16
Unknown
So one of the funny byproducts of COVID is most of the national forests in the Sierra made us like implemented a system where you could get walk up permits or whatever category two weeks in advance. So a lot of it was two weeks out. And so we were actually a couple of instances where I had to like, switch things around by a day or two because I couldn't get a permit for this day and then got in for the next day.
00:35:25:18 - 00:35:43:03
Unknown
But I am proud to say the National Forest can't come for me because I got all of them. I was fully legal the whole time and I think when I was reading the fact report, it's like that's a legitimate requirement for the objective to claim you have done the USPS. And so it was it was no small part of it.
00:35:43:03 - 00:36:03:04
Unknown
Like it was definitely a big mostly just like a mental fatigue kind of task and like a constant little stress kind of task. But one big part of that, I think part of the motivation for that was just because I was being relatively public with the effort, knows, you know, how to website. I was publishing lots of trip reports and obviously putting it up on the fastest no time website.
00:36:03:06 - 00:36:32:23
Unknown
And so I just to me it felt important to just sort of set a good example for, you know, how to be a good proper wilderness user when I'm being so public about it. Yeah, and that's and I think that it's just as a lot and I think that's just needs to be, you know conveyed is just like it's not easy you know to to access that many ranges in a short amount of time is no easy feat and you've got to be on it to to make that happen.
00:36:32:23 - 00:36:51:01
Unknown
So or you can just do everything car to car because then for the most part, you don't need to get permits. So. All right, there you go. Good reason to be fast. Six, Six Peaks car card. Exactly. So it was a Yeah. So what's technically car to car? What? not overnight. I mean, yeah, it's a it's a what happens if you get knighted?
00:36:51:01 - 00:37:09:03
Unknown
You're like, man, there's a storm tech stock. If someone did want to come for me, I'm going to pull you out myself. I had my first ever unplanned bevvy on the second to last day of the specialist, so I had to I had to totally clean record. Up until then, I'd never spent an unplanned night out, which I was so proud of.
00:37:09:09 - 00:37:26:23
Unknown
But then, yeah, the second, second to last is kind of a fun story in this bigger southern Palisades Traverse like and that being super gnarly, just hours and hours of technical ridgelines and like super intense rock, but also some really good rock and some really fun climbing. So we got to the end of this traverse just like totally worked.
00:37:26:23 - 00:37:54:09
Unknown
And you know, it's 10 p.m. or whatever, and our intended exit to get back down the drainage to our car. According to Seacor, this is one of the very few times that you led me wrong. According to score, a South South Fork pass it's called was supposed to be third class and like relatively straightforward, but we were like poking down it, trying to descend it in the dark onsite and like, you just kept getting like, not clipped out, but it just like it was like really steep, like frozen, petrified dirt.
00:37:54:11 - 00:38:24:01
Unknown
And it just kept getting a little bit too steep. We'd be like 45 degrees new, be okay. And then it rolled over to like 48 degrees and you just get like way too sketchy. So we climbed up and out and David, Travis and Maria, we spooned under an emergency blanket that like 13,000 feet and froze all night. So something had to like go kind of a roundabout way up and over another peak that we were just on the night before and then bushwhacked out to a birch lake and yeah, yeah.
00:38:24:01 - 00:38:42:20
Unknown
I mean, remarkable achievement. Do you know how many people have done the space? Like, is there like there's a birders list, you know, how many people have done the species? It's not as well documented as the bald list, but I want to say that it's somewhere in like the low hundreds. And you hold the record for the fastest time right?
00:38:42:22 - 00:39:02:09
Unknown
No travesties. he beat you by, like, what, a couple of days or what? A couple of weeks? Yeah, but I think. A couple weeks. Travis All right, get Travis on the show. Nathan Thanks for having you. It's been a pleasure to talk to a great guy. You guys have it? Yeah. Conversation. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, wow, it's really amazing.
00:39:02:09 - 00:39:25:08
Unknown
It's just like. Like you said, this. This just this lifetime of climbing, just packed. And, I mean, either of those you could pick and you could do that. And the experience, it's it's really, really unbelievable and really amazing. And so, you know, like, from this experience, like, you know what, like after accomplishing. Okay, actually, let me let me jump into one thing here.
00:39:25:10 - 00:39:54:06
Unknown
Do you ever experience depression after accomplishing these kind of like massive, prolific goals for yourself? Yeah, it's a really weird mental space to be in specifically after those two, after the bachelor's and the specialist. It's a weird mental space to go from having your life so planned out and so regimented and being like every morning you wake up and you know what you're doing.
00:39:54:08 - 00:40:06:19
Unknown
I wake up first thing in the morning and I know that I need to go on this peak, this this peak. I'm going to be on my feet for 17 and a half hours. And then as soon as I get done, I'm going to eat as many calories I can. I'm going to go to bed. And I was going to repeat.
00:40:06:21 - 00:40:28:13
Unknown
So it's you know, you're so like mentally invested. It's like the only thing that exists in the entire universe is this list. And these mountains that you're climbing, which is a really cool and exciting place to be in and super rewarding. And I was like, Definitely. I feel so, so fortunate to have been able to experience that and to have the capacity to stay in that mode for months at a time.
00:40:28:14 - 00:40:55:12
Unknown
But then making that transition back to a relaxed, normal life, especially because, you know, you finish one of these things and you're you're always excited to like push extra hard for the last couple weeks. So, you know, by the time I finished, I was just like completely spent, just like totally mentally and physically worked. And so for the next week after, it's just like you're, you just want to like, sit and do nothing, which after the bulge, this is what I did.
00:40:55:14 - 00:41:25:15
Unknown
And it was kind of off. I definitely went into a little bit of a hole after that. So I'm fortunate I was able to learn from that a little bit. And after the specialist, it just conveniently worked out that I had some friends that were going on a, you know, sort of very fun oriented, week long backpacking trip is actually a pack animal, a mule supported backpacking trip that was starting a day after I finished and I was like, All right, sign me up, I'm coming.
00:41:25:20 - 00:41:46:14
Unknown
So I finished. I had one rest day and then I just went straight back into that country for another week. But it was mellow time in the backcountry and it was sort of the perfect way to kind of ease myself out of it. Wow. Yeah. Just like somebody, like, large aspiring hiking plan is you're like, Yeah, this is my relaxing vacation away from my trip that it was trip to.
00:41:46:16 - 00:42:08:10
Unknown
Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Just once I got to your car. The reason I ask you because I feel that something really not talked about in the climbing slash and turns community. And obviously it's like you this kind of trope I've heard from I think it's ATV's tour we talked about, you know, it's a speech where it's like everybody has their their Annapurna, you know, like their ultimate climber, their ultimate goals are working towards, which is subjectively different for individuals.
00:42:08:10 - 00:42:29:19
Unknown
So I'm not as fit or as remotely capable or as accomplished as you in the mountains. But I've had goals for me that have just been such a straight arrow. Northstar My entire life has been consumed by this. I'm working towards it and then once you kind of accomplish it, there's kind of this depression or you're kind of lost for a bit, or you don't have this purpose in life, that's the same thing.
00:42:29:19 - 00:42:49:07
Unknown
And, and it's kind of almost like the dog chasing its tail, right? It's like once you get the tail, you don't really know what to do with yourself. So and I just think that's not really something that's talked about in this community that much is that it's amazing to accomplish these goals and stuff, but it's also can be, I don't know, people can feel kind of lost once they do accomplish the goals.
00:42:49:07 - 00:43:22:10
Unknown
And it's this bizarre phenomenon. You know, I think that my you know, if I've learned anything about that type of thing, it's the importance of, you know, like I don't have anything against setting big goals and being super focused on them. I think that's really important and really valuable. But I also think that you just need to be realistic about the fact that like, no, no, no single goal is going to, you know, complete you as a person and like you're not going to finish anything and be like, All right, this is it.
00:43:22:10 - 00:43:47:10
Unknown
I have arrived. I've reached enlightenment and or, you know, unadulterated happiness or like, like you're never going to find that and a goal in the mountains. Sure, you can like, improve yourself as a person and have powerful experiences. But I think just having realistic expectations about what you're going to get out of an experience like that can help minimize that crash after the fact.
00:43:47:12 - 00:44:09:18
Unknown
So so one question I have here is before the bolger's last you said you quit your job. What job did you quit? nothing glamorous. I was like working home construction. What, you was painting? What, like contracting? Just. Yeah, Yeah, just blue collar labor. Blue collar labor. Working for a contractor doing is a concrete form for house foundations.
00:44:09:22 - 00:44:33:18
Unknown
Okay. And then after the work list, you got sponsored to do the space right? And after the space that financing is gone. Like, what did that look like? You know, because this is just I feel like this is a question that most people have. Like most of us work 9 to 5 jobs, you know, going to school. We have student loans, like finances is just the way we run our life, especially with how things are getting more expensive.
00:44:33:18 - 00:44:53:07
Unknown
Gas prices are expensive. I mean, hell, I go to the grocery store and I try to shop for a week and it's like 120 bucks is crazy. And so like when we try to live our our lives in the mountains, there's always this like we come back to reality and we're like, What am I doing? Like my what am I doing with my life?
00:44:53:07 - 00:45:12:12
Unknown
Like in my building, some sort of career? Like, how am I supposed to make money to support myself? Like there's all these questions that come into our minds. And so, like, is that part of that kind of depression that you might set into and how are you how are you thinking about finances and how you're going to support your dreams and goals in the mountains?
00:45:12:14 - 00:45:35:04
Unknown
Like talk to us a little bit about that aspect to this, this whole puzzle. Yeah. So to be completely honest, that's I feel like I'm at a little bit of a tricky point personally that right now it's definitely not something that I have like figured out. I have the system that works perfectly that can fund all of my adventures.
00:45:35:06 - 00:46:10:13
Unknown
So I am fortunate to not have any existing debts, partially as a result of I only went to college for a year and then decided to pursue a life of climbing mountains instead. So I spent a lot of years living in a van, living, you know, as frugally as possible. I work a lot of odd jobs in between mountain adventures, lots of very unglamorous things, lots of manual labor, for example, for this for my Denali trip, I funded it by shoveling snow in Mammoth.
00:46:10:13 - 00:46:41:08
Unknown
We had a really big winter and lots of people needed snow. So. Luther So I did a month of that. Yeah. I've done a lot of random, just like blue collar work. I did this this past summer. I spent doing trail run, guiding with a company called the Spider Adventure Running, which I'm super excited about. I'm going to be back with them this coming summer, and that's sort of the first job that I've had that felt more like a part of something bigger, part of like a continuum of a career that I might want to work towards.
00:46:41:10 - 00:47:05:13
Unknown
So it's definitely something that's new to me. This this concept of looking forward to more of a long term career. Yeah, I am really excited about delving more into the gaming industry. But yeah, I mean short answer. Like I definitely stress about finances a lot too, but it's a little bit easier for me just because I've structured my life in such a way that my overhead cost of living is quite low.
00:47:05:15 - 00:47:28:13
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, there's the dark side of like pooping in a grocery bag in a Walmart parking lot, you know? Yeah, there you go. You know, as the sacrifices for sure. man. Do you have like a go to, like, frugal meal? Do you have any kind of like specific dietary concerns that you adhere to? Do you mind just like talking about that for Zach?
00:47:28:14 - 00:47:54:14
Unknown
You know, I think most people I know and anybody who knows me well wouldn't be surprised to hear this, but I think some people might be surprised to hear the specifics. The specifics of my diet. I definitely fortunate to have the metabolism of a, you know, mid-twenties. But I like crap. My my diet is awful junk food I eat like oatmeal for breakfast is my healthy meal.
00:47:54:14 - 00:48:24:13
Unknown
And then I have lots of P.B. and James and like Pop-Tarts and Oreos and really just whatever cheap calories. I can get fast food a lot. I go to like, you know, McDonald's or and then yeah, I mean, my I guess one thing that I will share, my my staple lightweight backcountry dinner that's like the best calories to taste to weight ratio is a packet of instant potato potatoes, a pack of ramen and a packet of tuna all mixed together.
00:48:25:06 - 00:48:53:19
Unknown
man. Wow. I thought you were going to say tortillas, peanut butter and Oreos. See, that's not dinner, though. That's the. That's the lunchtime snack. Okay. Okay. Yeah, It's something kind of it's kind of funny just for anybody listing. Like, I don't know if you're familiar with, like, evoke interns, but like, Scott Johnson has a load alluded to this where if you if you have a high enough training volume and you are very fit person, you will be very fat adapted and you can almost get away with eating with anything.
00:48:53:19 - 00:49:16:03
Unknown
So I would say to anybody listening to who's training 10 hours a week, do not copy Nathan's diet, because you probably won't yield the same results. Okay, But but in general, that is, if the boss works really well. Exactly. There you go. Perfect. Then you can do whatever you want. Yeah. Have you ever considered that? You know, maybe if you did clean up your diet, you'd be able to, you know, improve your performance even more?
00:49:16:03 - 00:49:35:09
Unknown
Or do you think that obviously like something in the future, you know, like metabolism start to change, joints start to get affected that like that's something you've thought about or you know, you're just livin large and having a good time. I've definitely thought about it, honestly. It's less about quote unquote, having a good time and more of just an extension of the frugality.
00:49:35:09 - 00:49:55:13
Unknown
Like it just happens to be that like the the best like dollars to calorie ratio is fat essentially. Yeah. Fat and sugar. Yeah. I mean, when I'm when I'm spending time with my family, I definitely eat better. Or like when I was when I was working for Aspire at the summer, I eat better and I feel like a little bit better.
00:49:55:13 - 00:50:13:02
Unknown
But it's not like this monumental shift. I was kind of get a kick out of like when you hear, you know, on whatever, you know, athletic podcast, you hear someone talking about this like diet shift they made like, it's like completely changed my life. It's like I've tried eating all different kinds of ways and it's never been anything like that.
00:50:13:02 - 00:50:32:11
Unknown
There's like, maybe like mind shifts in one direction or another. Just, just to be the devil's advocate here, I'm going to like, I'm finding it funny. I'm like envisioning myself, like 20 years from now, like interviewing again after you this illustrious career and you're like, Yeah, you know that the tuna robin caught up with me and see, I'm now vegan.
00:50:32:15 - 00:50:56:18
Unknown
My knees feel like ten times better. I'm like, my. All right, we'll see. Talking to you when you're 40, bro. You know, I'm not there yet, but I'm sorry to cut you off. I truly hope that my diet will get better as I get older and more financially stable. That's definitely a long term goal of mine. Well, I think there's also not only not only the frugality of it, but also the efficiency and the time constraints that you put yourself in in the mountains, too.
00:50:56:18 - 00:51:09:18
Unknown
It's like that's a huge aspect to it, too. It's like, All right, how can I consume the amount of calories the quickest and the easiest? It's like, that's a big factor. You know, you want to have to sit there and cook yourself a fucking meal every night when you're trying to do 17 hours of working in a single day.
00:51:09:19 - 00:51:31:23
Unknown
No, when I was doing this, yeah, when I was like in the depths of that of the list and doing that, it was like back to back like 16 hour days, one after the other after the other. Any time that I wasn't moving, I was either eating or sleeping and eating. Lost all pleasure voyage became a chore. It's like, yeah, throughout the course of the day I need to get 7000 calories down my throat and it's going to be a lot of work.
00:51:31:23 - 00:51:50:09
Unknown
And it's not going to be fun. Yeah, that's wild, man. That's crazy. Yeah. Do you do you, out of curiosity, have any, like, proclivity to process gels, any kind of stuff like that or too expensive? You just like things, right? I mean, the end of the day, like a packet of sugar is a packet of cigarets. My go to is fruit snacks instead.
00:51:50:13 - 00:52:09:23
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Totally makes sense, man. You can get a giant box fruit snacks. It costs you do you consume dehydrated meals like those like packets that you have to put water into. Well, normally, what are you eating? Do you said it Cheetos. You had your potatoes and rice. Yeah, it's just cheaper. Same, but cheaper. And it's delicious.
00:52:09:23 - 00:52:27:07
Unknown
Yeah. All right. All right. The beef seasoning or what? What's your favorite seasoning? Chicken, for sure. Chicken. Okay. All right. Do you have, like, a ramen brand or are you, like, itchy buy like this? You know, what are we going with? Your top diamond's too expensive, bro. If you think it. The name brand in the brand. The grocery store.
00:52:27:07 - 00:52:51:13
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. I thought I smelled off brand on you, but, yeah, you know, I didn't want grocery right off. Yeah, this guy's not going to Albertsons. He's going to save Mart and he's buying Noodles R us gross out Shout out to any off noodle brand Nathan is very willing to take on new to sponsorships. Yeah. So you've kind of already alluded to this I think it's a perfect segue way.
00:52:51:13 - 00:53:23:01
Unknown
And obviously, you know, I briefly met you on Denali, man. You said, you know, you're shoveling driveways in Marmot. I think that's badass and awesome. You're living out of your van. You've had this unbelievable, you know, series of mound adventures and experience. It's just mind blowing for someone your age. Truly a monumental accomplishment. And, you know, for someone mere mortals such as myself, you know, like a life goal of mine would be to climb the Carson Ridge roped up that that would be a life accomplishment, a life goal of mine.
00:53:23:06 - 00:53:30:00
Unknown
And so, you know, you went to Denali and you climbed this. And not only did you climb it, you climbed it solo. Correct.
00:53:30:00 - 00:53:43:00
Unknown
This is just it's really just it's really amazing. And I think I think something we try and emphasize here on this show, because, you know, you already alluded to it with it like people 530 climb, 513 whatever.
00:53:43:00 - 00:54:04:05
Unknown
Yeah. People solo the Carson Ridge. But I just think as an individual, I don't really diminish that. I don't care that Adam Ondra is climbing silence at 515 D or you know well Gad climbs y 15 and helmet and falls like to me someone soloing the Carson Ridge is just this is just this like unbelievable thing to do.
00:54:04:10 - 00:54:21:11
Unknown
And at a certain point things just get so specialized and hard. I think that the idea that, like, you just have to keep pushing the bar in the bar and bar and you can't like look back at like what, 15 years ago would have just been like the pinnacle of the sport is like, it just seems outlandish and stupid to me.
00:54:21:16 - 00:54:34:00
Unknown
So like, long story short, like, can you run us through this a little bit? Like, run us through, you know, you going in and who did you team up with? How did you get to the mountain? Like Like, take us through it, man.
00:54:35:15 - 00:54:42:16
Unknown
Hey everyone, please like subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is the best way to support the show.
00:54:42:16 - 00:54:53:15
Unknown
Yeah. So I suppose my story with Denali starts early. Last winter when I was in Bozeman.
00:54:53:17 - 00:55:18:12
Unknown
I've spent several years of my life in Bozeman, and that's where I went to school for a year. I love it There. I love the skiing, I love the mountains. And Bozeman is home to Highlight Canyon, which is arguably the best naturalized climbing venue in the lower 48. Just, you know, hundreds and hundreds of beautiful ice floes lining the walls of this Alpine canyon.
00:55:18:14 - 00:55:39:17
Unknown
And so I was up there. I was, you know, skiing a lot, but also getting pretty psyched about ice climbing. You know, I'd I'd been I've been climbing ice for several seasons before living up there in Bozeman, but I'd never really gotten serious about it. But for whatever reason, last winter, you know, I was just excited about climbing.
00:55:39:17 - 00:56:05:13
Unknown
There's not a lot of great wintertime rock climbing around Bozeman, so that's the outdoor climbing that's available in the winter. So I started just getting a lot of mileage on, you know, the classics, starting to do some of the harder routes. Did you really excited about that? And then, you know, there's Bozeman is definitely kind of a hotspot for serious alpine climbers and Alaskan climbers.
00:56:05:15 - 00:56:26:02
Unknown
You know, Conrad Conrad Anker lives in Bozeman, along with, you know, several other very accomplished alpinist. And so, you know, just being around that community and talking to people, sort of getting really excited about the idea of taking a trip to Alaska. And I'd never been to the Alaska range before. And just, you know, looking at photos, hearing people's stories, just started getting really, really excited about it.
00:56:26:04 - 00:57:13:14
Unknown
So, you know, kind of had the the casino as a potential goal. You know, it seems attainable, but challenging and more importantly, just like a super, super esthetic and beautiful out. But, you know, kind of just had that on the on the back burners. I was putting in all this mileage on ice and highlight later in the winter went from Montana down to the Sierra because the Sierra was having this Absolutely, you know, record breaking snow year, did a ton of ski mountaineering, rescued some, you know, truly, truly bucket list like once in a lifetime kind of lands in the Sierra and just got a bunch of fitness doing that and then the whole like
00:57:13:17 - 00:57:39:12
Unknown
roof shoveling thing definitely played a role just having the funding available. It's all this kind of came together. True. I found myself in a really good position, both with my fitness and my technical skills, just feeling really good about going to Alaska and trying to climb something technical. The one sort of hitch in my plan was that I, I was having a little bit of hard time finding a partner to climb on.
00:57:39:12 - 00:58:08:07
Unknown
The consumer, you know, contacted a few different friends who, you know, for various reasons, came in and out as partners and then eventually got connected with this guy named Emmanuel who based on in L.A., but climbs up in the Sierra quite a bit. And so he was also on the scene. And so we did a couple of shorter sort of them trial climbs together in the Sierra, and those went well.
00:58:08:09 - 00:58:32:23
Unknown
We got along, we clicked as partners. And so we yeah, we decided that we would come team up and that we got to Alaska together. We actually kind of ended up as a team of four that was sort of like two separate groups of two. But under one expedition, because my good friend Jack Kuenzle and his buddies Zach were coming up as well.
00:58:33:01 - 00:59:01:02
Unknown
Jack's objective, so anyone who's listening and has, you know, any kind of finger on I'm current state of mountains. Jack is an absolute crusher and he ended up going for it and breaking the speed record. And that's great in Denali. So yeah, the four of us went up. Emmanuel and I got there just a couple of days before Jack inspected, but eventually we all got out on to the glacier, you know, landed with our massive sleds.
00:59:01:02 - 00:59:35:04
Unknown
I think I landed with £140 of gear, which is pretty pretty standard for a, you know, three week Denali Expedition. Just as an aside, landing for the first time on the on the killed in the glacier in the Alaska range is just like the most mind melting or inspiring like jaw dropping moment of I think any aspiring alpinist life just yeah stepping out stepping out of the plane looking at this insanely steep and icy and jagged mountains on every side of you.
00:59:35:04 - 01:00:18:02
Unknown
It's just like absolutely mind blowing. So that was definitely a sort of a standout moment from from the trip for sure. Yeah. So, you know, I'm going out onto the glacier and spend the next several days or a week or whatever. Just doing the doing the Denali slog, shuttling your gear and your sled up the glacier. It's just kind of standard practice because of where the airstrip is that you just can drag a sled full of gear until the route starts to get steep and then you shuttle it back and forth until eventually, I think after maybe five days on the mountain, we were all established at sort of the main high camp at 14,000
01:00:18:02 - 01:00:44:10
Unknown
feet, got all dug in there and then basically proceeded to get snowed on for like two weeks straight. The weather in the Alaska range, obviously, this is my first time up there. So my first experience, I didn't have really anything compare it to, which is maybe for the better, because talking to several Alaska Range veterans, they were bemoaning the terrible conditions apparently was one of the worst weather seasons.
01:00:44:10 - 01:01:05:15
Unknown
And so your first attempt on Denali is the Cassian Rich Yeah, it was my first time on the range, so but, but, but I did summits, yeah. After I'd been up at 14 camp for maybe five or six days, I went to the summit via the the standard out the West buttress and just sort of cruised up that I was really happy with how that went.
01:01:05:15 - 01:01:35:10
Unknown
I felt that it went fast. I think I did it maybe like 8 hours roundtrip from 14 camp. So that was nice. That was definitely Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. Let's back this up. so you're. I thought you did Cassian solo. You're telling me that you were at 14 camp and you just nonchalantly tacked the summit on Denali on your own just for the shifts of it while you're waiting for weather to clear for Cassian Like acclimation, baby.
01:01:35:12 - 01:01:54:07
Unknown
Yeah, that's pretty standard. It is forecasted, I think for something like that. Yeah, but what's not standard is doing it from 14 and in 8 hours. That's what's not standard. I would say it's very fast. And so okay, you take the summit and I'll see you're back at 14 and what you're prepping to do the Cassian at this point.
01:01:54:09 - 01:02:11:18
Unknown
Well so actually yeah, the yeah. That first time when I went up to the summit so just via the West buttress it was fantastic. Like I got to the summit and I was the first one up there that day and the weather was great. It was like this one little like weird weather window in the middle of these constant snowstorms.
01:02:11:20 - 01:02:25:14
Unknown
And I was the only person on the summit for like 40 minutes. And it was warm enough I could just hang out up there because it's the middle of the day and it was so special. I just like sat there, like on the summit of Denali, just like looking at the view for like an hour. It was great.
01:02:25:16 - 01:02:49:08
Unknown
Wow. So that was really special. Then Cruise back down, spent a lot of time at 14, just like skiing laps on the glacier. I'm so glad that I had my skis with me. I like a manual. My my buddy was up there with me. He didn't have skis. And I don't know how he didn't just lose his mind because that's like the only way I was able to keep myself busy was skiing short little laps on the glacier right above or didn't camp.
01:02:49:10 - 01:03:15:17
Unknown
And I actually, as a funny side, had some fantastic powder skiing. There's one two in particular that Jack and I were skiing like waist deep powder on our little like too thick, you know, like 70 millimeter underfoot skimmer skis. It was like blasting through like shoulder deep powder. It was ridiculous. So that was a lot of fun. So, you know, you're there, you're you're there, you're acclimated.
01:03:15:17 - 01:03:36:13
Unknown
You know, you're ready to go. Pretty much you're waiting for a weather window. I'm assuming obviously, a nice weather window arises and you're ready to pull the trigger man. Mike, why don't you take us through? That is kind of what I would call this amazing, you know, mythical objective for for a lot of people in their lives and in their climbing aspirations.
01:03:36:15 - 01:04:06:06
Unknown
Okay. So I think I would say nice with an asterisk. It was a nice, nice weather window, basically. Yes. So as anybody who's been in the Alaska range or really any of the greater ranges knows the forecasts are good, they're quite accurate, like a couple of days out, further out than that, they can be pretty sporadic. So we kept having, you know, on the mike on the five day forecast would have like what looked like a really good weather window then as it would get closer, look worse and worse.
01:04:06:08 - 01:04:24:02
Unknown
And so that was kind of like mentally exhausting, like being like, this might be it. no, it's not. this might be it. no, it's not it. And so, you know, eventually we had one of these that looked really good, like out on the five day forecast and so Amanda and I were like, you know, totally psyched for like, all right, we're going to go for it.
01:04:24:02 - 01:04:40:12
Unknown
You know, we had this whole plan. We're going to do it, you know, 3 to 4 days, whatever. It's going to get us. Great, great window. But we were both kind of in the same boat like, if this doesn't work out, like, you know, we've been wasting away on this glacier for, like, three weeks, Like, we're ready to get out of here if this if this doesn't pan out.
01:04:40:14 - 01:04:59:22
Unknown
So then, you know, as that weather window got closer, it looked shorter and shorter. And so by the time it was actually, like, really close, it looked like it was only actually gonna be like a day to maybe a day and a half of good weather. And so, you know, we had definitely had some really long and kind of challenging discussions about it.
01:05:00:00 - 01:05:24:21
Unknown
But ultimately, Emmanuel decided that he wasn't comfortable with the length of the weather window he wanted and Buffer to reasonably do it. And good weather the whole time, which is like super reasonable for a rock like that. So he was like, Yeah, this isn't it for me. And he bowed out. I spent like a pretty agonizing and very introspective night in the tent, thinking about what I wanted to do.
01:05:25:01 - 01:06:14:23
Unknown
And eventually it came to the conclusion that I felt ready, both physically, mentally and technically, that I felt like I could go solid and push safely. And so, yeah, just shared that that decision with the team and they were all supportive. And so starting the next day at about 4 p.m., let's get out of camp. And yeah, so I started out it's getting from 14 camp to the base of the kitchen is a little bit challenging no matter how you go about it, particularly if you're solo that was the part that I was honestly the most concerned about as far as just from like a risk and objective hazard point of view.
01:06:15:01 - 01:06:37:17
Unknown
Essentially the base of the route lies in a little zone called the Valley of Death, which is aptly named because, as you know, it's quite narrow with steep walls on either side that, you know, the walls routinely avalanche all the way across the floor of the valley. So you could potentially get from avalanche from either side. not to mention the fact that it's a big valley glacier that's kind of riddled with crevasses.
01:06:37:19 - 01:07:04:03
Unknown
So the standard approach, if you're a team, is to come up this valley and to rope up and travel up these glaciers efficiently again. But one approach that's become more popular specifically for first soloist, but for for for most people doing the scene, I think just about everyone who did it this past season took this approach is called the Seattle ramp.
01:07:04:05 - 01:07:27:07
Unknown
And essentially that constitutes climbing actually up from 14 camp up several thousand feet to a point on the west rib where you can transition over to this steep sort of icefall ramp, which is really complex terrain, but it deposits you right at the base of the route. And so you can really minimize the amount of time and distance you have to travel in the valley of death.
01:07:27:09 - 01:08:07:01
Unknown
So was it just a large series of panels? No. So I was actually able to ski. The whole thing barely skied the Seattle ramp. So it was okay? Yeah. Yeah. Which isn't the first time it's been done. It's been seen by several people before, including Shantel, who saw it a couple of seasons ago. But yeah, essentially what that looks like was sort of this rolling icefall with mostly moderate skiing, but several sections that were quite steep, several sections that had pretty poor snow conditions where it's just thin snow coverage on top of rotten ice.
01:08:07:03 - 01:08:46:22
Unknown
But fortunately, I'd been doing some like pretty absurd steep skiing lines in the Sierra that spring. And so I felt very confident with my ski edges. Maybe maybe little too confident, but it worked out go down. It ended up at at the very bottom to to exit out onto the out onto the lower glacier had to do a little double bird front hop which felt very ski movie and very cool and see wow that just is it's fun to be able to incorporate like so many different different mountain skills into one big thing.
01:08:47:02 - 01:09:07:05
Unknown
Yeah well I mean we haven't even gotten to the root and I feel this now already just absolutely insane. So. So you've done this out around you popped out, you're out the base, you're, you know, ready to take on the Japanese couloir like, did you deposit your skis there and you left your skis or did you climb with your skis?
01:09:07:07 - 01:09:28:17
Unknown
No. So I climb throughout and ski bits of mesquite on my back. shit. Which fucking wasn't ideal, but just logistically it was what was going to work. my God. Did you put can you put crampons on your ski boots? Like, what are we fucking. Yeah, for sure. You're a ski most set up. Those boots are really.
01:09:28:17 - 01:09:48:03
Unknown
They're totally capable for this. But yeah, you know, the funny thing is, I mean, they're definitely like boots. That's They're scarred from a straw is which are light, but they're. They're far from the lightest. So I tried to spend the winter experimenting, and I tried several other lighter, more like ski boots, like scarper aliens and things like that.
01:09:48:05 - 01:10:07:09
Unknown
And I just didn't like any of them. Like they felt weird on my foot. I didn't like the ski performance. And so the same pair of skirt from a straw is like my favorite piece that I own. I've like, I've Ski had probably like five seasons on them, including like hundreds of resort days, like hiking cliffs in powder and the resort and the same boots that I ended up selling because in it.
01:10:07:11 - 01:10:29:07
Unknown
So do you have a scar from the strapless mistral? These one throw flax. It's a white boobies. It the orange version is the white, right? Yeah. It's the way they're stiff and they're definitely a to boot, but they're definitely a barely touring boot. So yeah, not the ideal piece of gear for the situation, but one of those things where you just, like, have this connection to a piece of gear that works really well for you.
01:10:29:07 - 01:10:46:13
Unknown
And this is like what I know what I'm comfortable with and like I've climbed so much like janky bullshit in these boots, like I knew they would work. So how much of I just want to get. Sorry, sorry. Got just one second. I just want to make the comparison here. People listening like maybe some people will get this and maybe I'm off.
01:10:46:13 - 01:11:17:19
Unknown
But my, my, this is analogous to climbing, you know, like five trad in, in like a Scarpa Mont Blanc or something. You know what I mean? Like, there are much more precise technical boots out there to be doing this kind of climbing and that would edge better and stuff. And I'm not saying it's like not doable. You're obviously such an accomplished climber, but like, it's like it's a beefy, you know, it's like you're climbing 513 sport in two sizes too large.
01:11:17:19 - 01:11:44:13
Unknown
TC Pros socks on, you know what I mean? It's like, that's like, like, that's what this is, you know, like, you know, I would say yes and no. You're not totally wrong. But also the Cassini's icy enough that like, there's definitely some rock, but it's ice and snow enough that you climb the whole thing with crampons on. It's never technical enough dry rock to necessitate taking your crampons off at the end of the day, like any stiff.
01:11:44:13 - 01:12:10:01
Unknown
So boot with a cramp on on it is going to feel like kind of similar like yeah you get a little bit more you definitely get more like ankle articulation and like a dedicated alpine climbing boot. But honestly, for a lot of the Cassini, I was actually pretty happy to be in ski boots because you can lock because like so much of it is just like sustained moderate ice where you have to climb like a thousand feet of like 60 degree ice.
01:12:10:06 - 01:12:25:00
Unknown
It's actually really nice to be able to walk in your boots into ski mode. It takes a lot of pressure off your calves because you can just lean into the boot. You're way more stiffness and you just kind of like make from point your way up. Whereas if you're in an alpine climbing, you like engaging your capsule time, you can like totally relax into it and ski.
01:12:25:02 - 01:12:48:01
Unknown
It's nice. Yeah. So, so take us through the route here. You know, like you're you're saying you're climbing lot of this kind of, you know, 60 degree ice. You're you're moving over the terrain. Obviously, you're solo. You're not having to deal with anchors, the rope, you're lightweight, you're moving. What are some of kind of the the memorable points of your climb, the memorable landmarks and the crux of the route.
01:12:48:01 - 01:13:12:15
Unknown
Like, can you take us through that? Yeah. So, you know, got down. So it's like I mentioned, the the Seattle ramp was one of the things that I was most stressed about. And so skiing at the bottom of that felt awesome. And I was like seeing at the bottom, like in the afternoon sun, I think it was, I don't know, maybe like 8 p.m. at this point, but, you know, it was nice as warm and the sun was shining straight into the Japanese cooler.
01:13:12:17 - 01:13:30:15
Unknown
So I start up, the Japanese crew are which is, you know, a thousand foot roughly goalie of steep ice with several vertical steps up to water ice for four plus whatever, depending on the conditions. And I start up in my base layer because it was like the sun was just beaming straight into it was great and the ice was perf.
01:13:30:17 - 01:13:59:09
Unknown
It was like it was blissful clattering, just like one swing sticks the whole way up, just feeling like a superhero. Just so that was great. That was probably like the most the most type one fun of the entire experience was the Japanese cooler. So which is it's, it's labeled the crux of the root, right. depends on the conditions like if it's heinous rotten ice and you're getting hammered by Spindrift the entire time, then it definitely could be.
01:13:59:14 - 01:14:24:03
Unknown
For me, it definitely was not. Okay, okay. You're like, yeah, the crux of the real type one fun. Yeah. There's so there's one step in the middle in particular that's pretty sustained vertical ice for, you know, a decent weight, several body lengths at least. But the ice was just like such perfect, like sticker conditions. And just to reiterate this, you are solo, no ropes.
01:14:24:05 - 01:15:00:06
Unknown
You're soloing this entire route. Yeah, that's that's pretty sick. That's okay. Okay. Again, you're soloing no ropes. Were there anybody around you, like, hundreds of feet below you where there's a team that was trying to, you know, were you passing people? Like, how alone were you on this route? So there's there's one team that was at the base and I can't remember whether they're diving at the base or maybe they started climbing just after me, but went back down, something happened with them where they didn't get up super fast behind me.
01:15:00:08 - 01:15:22:20
Unknown
So I passed them at the base and then just went off the cooler. And then there's one team ahead of me, a team from Montana. So but I didn't pass them for Lola. So I, one of the one of the Japanese crew are at the top of that is definitely a little bit of a kind of a decision point because I like down climbing ice.
01:15:22:22 - 01:15:43:16
Unknown
It's not fun and it's tedious, but it's doable. Down climbing like the crux is with like the mixed ice and rock would be definitely a little bit more challenging. And so I sort of decided going into it, like at the top, the Japanese crew are I'm going to have like a very like real analysis of my position and make the decision.
01:15:43:21 - 01:15:59:16
Unknown
And if I make the decision to go up like I'm going to be like pretty committed to going to the top. But you know, I got to the top. The Japanese go like fully on top of cloud nine because the climbing events are good. So I barely even debated like I had I had I had the analysis, but I was like, yeah, like I got this run to the top.
01:15:59:18 - 01:16:33:11
Unknown
So right about the Japanese crew are is what's considered the rock crux fairly short sections of rock climbing, but relatively technically technically difficult. It's graded five eight and it's hard to grade things when you're climbing with, you know, crampons and covered in snow and ice. But yeah, bit mid fifth class rock, a little bit tedious, but it's honestly the thing that made that hard was the fact that I had skis on my back because it's kind of like a corner deck.
01:16:33:11 - 01:16:58:03
Unknown
You drill and the skis like poking into the rocks and figure out some funky body positions to work the skis around, but got through that. And then you get up on to what's called the cowboy or rat, which is wild. It's this snow and ice thin that's essentially a knife edge ridge that drops off like 60 degrees on each side.
01:16:58:05 - 01:17:30:04
Unknown
But it's also tipped up. So you're climbing up. It's a very steep vertically knife edge. So you're climbing up at like a 45 degree angle, but then it's dropping away on both sides. You know, it feels like it's dropping off vertically on both sides. Absolutely insane position. It's interesting. You're you know, you're still fairly low on the route, but that feels like the most exposed in the most wild position of the entire route just because, you know, you just drop there's a steep snow to cliffs off either side to the glaciers, like thousands of feet below on either side.
01:17:30:05 - 01:17:53:13
Unknown
So that was pretty wild. But fortunately, I was still behind. Let's see, Austin and Chris, this team from Montana, they're ahead of me. And so I had their their boot pack to follow up the cover, which was super helpful and definitely made it a little bit less full on than it would have been otherwise. So worked my way up that did the whole straddle the ridge thing.
01:17:53:13 - 01:18:12:15
Unknown
You work on one side, work on the side. Definitely the most, like exposed and full on and wild snow climbing I've ever done. But yeah, I got to the top of that. And then you kind of get to this little sort of the one nice flat area on the entire technical section of the route called the hanging glacier.
01:18:12:17 - 01:18:33:00
Unknown
And that's where that's where those guys, the Montana team work camps. So I had a little I got there middle of the night by midnight and had a little mini bevvy, just kind of sat and brewed up. I had a stove with me and so I made some soup and sat for a little while and had a nice little mental break and assessed things.
01:18:33:00 - 01:18:50:13
Unknown
Is a little bit of weather coming in at that point. Nothing, nothing gnarly, but it's kind of lightly snowing. And the the upper part of the that was a little bit socked in so I couldn't see more than maybe a thousand feet above me. So it felt a little bit ominous but kind of cool at the same time.
01:18:50:15 - 01:19:17:20
Unknown
So I, I passed those guys. They were still awake, surprisingly so I sort of exchanged a few brief words with them and then kept on climbing halfway up the hanging glacier. There's this, this, this burg trend, and it's sort of morphed and changed quite a bit throughout the the seasons that people have been climbing on the Caspian. seems like it, you know, at one point maybe in there that was first climbed, it was pretty challenging.
01:19:18:01 - 01:19:41:11
Unknown
And then for a long time there was some sort of a notch that you could through that made it pretty easy. But then more recently that notches fallen off or the glaciers shifted and it's now pretty challenging again. Basically, the conditions that I was like 20 to 25 feet of slightly overhanging glacier ice. So that was definitely the technical crux of the road.
01:19:41:13 - 01:20:00:00
Unknown
And that involved that. That's the one thing that in hindsight, you know, maybe I could have done differently with my gear is having a tagline to pull my pack up that could have been useful but difficult. Six If I did have a tagline, maybe I would have tried to implement it on some other spots higher up and then got my pack stuck or something like that.
01:20:00:00 - 01:20:32:08
Unknown
So maybe it's for the better that I didn't have one. But yes, that involved doing several moves, getting a really solid stick clipping in direct, you know, managing my pack, shaking out the pump a little bit, and then doing the rest of the top. That's that was that was definitely like water S5 plus but but but maybe like an ice boulder problem because you're just above sort of mid angle snow probably not guaranteed death if you were to blow it, but definitely some physical climbing.
01:20:32:10 - 01:20:52:01
Unknown
God bless you. So, you know, you pass. That's kind of a technical crux of the route. I'm sure maybe at the time you didn't realize that was it because you obviously don't know 100% what's in your environment and what's going to come on, you know? Yeah. Like how what's going on? How are you continuing the route? How are you feeling after that?
01:20:52:03 - 01:21:18:11
Unknown
Yeah. So really everything up until and even beyond that hanging glacier section I thought went really well. I was pretty much right on the, the timeline that I'd set for myself, hitting my time goals. Physically, I felt really well. I'd taking the short break, I'd gotten lots of calories and fluid and but as I started working up above that bridge runs and up the upper part of the hanging glacier.
01:21:18:13 - 01:21:41:04
Unknown
The rock conditions really started to kind of play a lot more specifically, the fact that I was the first person on the road in like I think two weeks. To my knowledge, only one party had been on the route, the upper section, the route before me that whole season. And I'd been, you know, several, several days of of snow and wind before me.
01:21:41:05 - 01:22:21:22
Unknown
So yeah, got into the proper just gravelly blue collar Alaskan work of breaking trail a big technical out which on the lower angle sections you know obviously it's less technical, but that means there's more snow in there. There's definitely some wallowing first, rolling all that good stuff. And then on the steeper bits is where honestly it came into play, even more so the hanging glacier, you have sort of the most sustained technical climbing in the form of two rock bands, which are each about a thousand feet, which are very named the first rock band and the second rock band.
01:22:22:00 - 01:22:40:01
Unknown
And they're each 1000 feet. Yeah, I mean, fuck. Like we're we're talking I mean, the route itself is 9000 feet, right? Yeah. From base to top. Like, I mean, that's just a staggering amount of vertical relief. And you know, you're talking to like, it's a rock band. We're like, okay, you don't throw feet or we're talking to a thousand feet of rock band.
01:22:40:01 - 01:23:30:04
Unknown
It's just like the proportions of mind blowing three laps this climbs the the surface of Denali is kind of the one of the very few places in North America that's basically scale. Like there's other stuff in the Alaska range that's big. But the south face of Denali is like properly huge on a global scale. And so, yeah, it's, yes, I worked up into these two rock bands and essentially the climbing, it's really high quality climb, like it's beautiful, beautiful climbing, but it follows all these kind of narrow runnels of ice and rock corners sort of weaving in between these steeper features.
01:23:30:05 - 01:23:53:15
Unknown
It's really cool in the sense that it's never super technically challenging, but you're weaving through these really steep and improbable features. So it seems like it's like looking up at the sections above, you're like, it's going to be like super gnarly. Then there's all these improbable weaknesses that are going it, you know, water is three quarters, four and four type of things.
01:23:53:15 - 01:24:12:05
Unknown
You know, I'll pun grids are all weird, but, you know, relatively moderate difficulty. But the thing that made it tricky was the fact that all these narrow runnels were just packed with snow. And so I was kind of having, like tunnel upwards, digging it out. You know, you have to carefully sand the snow like between your legs or around the sides.
01:24:12:05 - 01:24:32:02
Unknown
It doesn't knock you down as you're pulling chunks of snow off above you. So that slow me down a lot. And honestly, I enjoyed it because it felt like I was climbing something new and something raw. You know, if you're just following a boot pack up a mountain, it can still be great climbing, but it sort of just feels like you're, you know, part of an assembly line or whatever.
01:24:32:04 - 01:25:06:14
Unknown
Whereas having these, you know fresh air conditions, it really felt like I was having a more intimate experience with the mountain, but it definitely made it hard work. So it took me several hours through the first rock band, got to the top of that one at about sunrise. So I guess not really Sunrise because it's Alaska. But when the sun actually starts to do things and make things light and warm, which is probably be about 8 a.m. and I had another little break there, brewed up again, found a little edge to sit on and just enjoyed this gorgeous, gorgeous morning of the sun coming up.
01:25:06:14 - 01:25:35:00
Unknown
And you know, with the weather that I'd been in kind of throughout that night, sort of dissipated and just turned to this beautiful bluebird Alaskan bear. And so I had a really special moment there, just enjoying the sunshine and then dove into the second rock band. And now overall, I wouldn't say that anything really went wrong per se throughout the climb, but if anything went maybe differently than I anticipated.
01:25:35:00 - 01:26:13:07
Unknown
It was the second rock band because at that point, you know, I'd been moving for, you know, 20 hours or something like that. And so the fatigue started to set in. And again, the conditions were challenging with the snow on the road and just start to get maybe a little bit mentally fatigued or just overall was climbing slowly because of, you know, a mix of a lot of different factors had a couple of points where I made maybe not necessarily a route finding Eric because there's a lot of different variations but went one way and then didn't necessarily like it.
01:26:13:09 - 01:26:30:14
Unknown
One spot in particular right near the top of that rock band. I didn't like it because the way that my skis were getting me stuck in this corner again. So I did down climb and go up and go a different way. But anyways, also done this second rock band basically took me all day, didn't top it out until like 5 p.m..
01:26:30:16 - 01:27:09:09
Unknown
So that was kind of mentally brutal. It's just, yeah, you never really get much of a break. The easiest sections that rock band were like front pointing on 60 plus degree ice. So it's never super hard, but it's never easy. Like you can't ever take like relax and take your pack off or anything like that. So I got to the top of the rock bands like Pretty mentally fatigued and much later than I was hoping to, but along with that came like definitely a bit of a feeling of, I hate to say relief because that was definitely still in it, but the feeling of a little bit of pressure coming off because top of the
01:27:09:09 - 01:27:31:20
Unknown
second rock band is the end of like the that the technical portion of the route from there to the summit is is fairly non-technical. Did you have any moments where like a tool popped or a foot popped and you had these like moments of like, fuck, like, you know, like, you know, shit's, you know, my death is as near but you pull it back together again and you keep staying focused.
01:27:31:20 - 01:28:00:17
Unknown
Or were you just like a robot? You're just like every pic is good, every movement was solid. Like, you know, Did you have these moments where, you know, you were tasting the edge? I felt very, very locked in the entire time, which I was super happy with because that's exactly how I wanted it to feel. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I'd been earlier in that winter, I'd been doing a lot of soloing on pretty unfairly hard ice ruts and highlight ends.
01:28:00:19 - 01:28:27:09
Unknown
So going into it, you know, when you're soloing on ice is a pretty slow and tedious game. But if you do it, then what I would say is maybe the the correct or certainly the safest way to do it. You're climbing very slowly, but never insecure, you know, because you can if you you hunt around in the rock and the ice for long enough, you can always find somewhere solid to put a tool.
01:28:27:11 - 01:28:51:16
Unknown
And like both feet below, you're good still, as long as you can hold. Like a solid ice tool is like such a jug. And sometimes it can take a long time, especially when you're in that terrain. It can take a long time. And that was definitely a contributing factor in me. Spending so much time on that second rock band was taking the time to find that tool placement that you're really, really 100% like will commit my life to every single time.
01:28:51:16 - 01:29:13:17
Unknown
Because making thousands and thousands of placements, I was really happy with the way that took the time throughout the entire out to make sure that every single move was totally solid and honest. That's part of my proudest, proudest part of the entire accomplishment is the fact that I can say not only did I sell it, but I sold it in a way that I never felt in danger at all.
01:29:13:19 - 01:29:38:04
Unknown
How much of that would you attribute to the conditions in terms of allowing you to have the correct ICE tool placement and the proper ice formations or, you know, like you said, there was snow covering and that was like a barrier that you had to run into. But like, how much of that did you contribute to the conditions and how much of that do you contribute to the training and the preparation you made this for this trip?
01:29:38:06 - 01:30:05:02
Unknown
You know, it's a little bit hard for me to speak to the conditions since it was my first time on the route and my first time climbing any technical route in Alaska. I like that. Yeah, I gotcha. So much climbing on it was unlike anything I'd ever done before. Like it's a different rock type than because really I'd only climbed ice and highlight and I'd climbed a lot of ice and how it but I'd never really climbed ice anywhere else unless you can't like frozen snow in steep quarries in the Sierra.
01:30:05:02 - 01:30:30:03
Unknown
But it's not the same. So, you know, it was different rock types. There's definitely a new style of climbing to me, but it it did seem, relatively speaking, looking at other people's photos and stuff, it did seem like the route was pretty icy, comparatively speaking, which is good. You know, there's lots of snow on top of it. Once it dug the snow out, a lot of the tunnels had good veins of ice in the back.
01:30:30:05 - 01:30:48:02
Unknown
Were you climbing with your gloves or with your hands at all, or were you always using your tools in your front points? It was a mix on some rock. I was definitely using my hands. There are actually a few sections that I took my gloves off as well, and just bare hands on the rock. Are you always tethered to your ice tools or are you just free soloing them or on your shoulder?
01:30:48:04 - 01:31:10:12
Unknown
No, I'm not. I'm not that brave. Yeah. No, if you if you drop an ice halfway up the cutscene and you're soloing like, you're just so royally unbelievably screwed. Yeah, I just wanted to know how far, far on the edge you are. Yeah, but not eyepieces. Wow. Okay, so you're past the second rock band. Bring us to the top.
01:31:10:14 - 01:31:40:22
Unknown
Yep. So top notes are going off and feeling good, feeling tired. That's about, you know, four or 5 p.m., 24 hours into my effort and sticking out a little break there and then just start it up. So basically the last 3000 feet of the route is steep snow, just a big slog to the summit. It's like it's certainly not turn your brain off territory because you're like on the top of Denali and 20,000 feet.
01:31:40:22 - 01:32:06:11
Unknown
So you have to be alert regardless. But it's like it's Steven it's low enough angle that if you have any experience cramp on and you shouldn't fall, but it's steep enough. If you did fall, it could be consequential, especially with fatigue and things like that. So start working my way up. It was kind of a mixed bag of conditions, some personal things, some firm, one board, none of it super terrible, but none of it super great either.
01:32:06:11 - 01:32:31:05
Unknown
Just kind of slogging on up. I definitely started to feel the fatigue set in more at that point. But like, that's, you know, being on that section of the casino is sort of like the epitome of commitment. It's like you have 6000 feet of technical terrain below you versus just a couple of thousand feet of non-technical to go up and over the summit and down the easy way.
01:32:31:05 - 01:32:59:15
Unknown
So you basically have to go up and over the top at that point. Like it'd be completely ridiculous to try anything else. So I just kept slogging away and then eventually the guys from Montana, Austin Chris actually caught up to me, which I was psyched about because I was like totally worked out. Normally, I love being alone in the mountains and my ideal day in the mountains is to like, never see another person.
01:32:59:17 - 01:33:22:05
Unknown
But at that point, when I saw those guys coming at me, I was just totally psyched because I was definitely starting to get like pretty worked and just mentally tired of all the post holing because it's just personal and hard work. And so they came up behind me. At that point it was getting late into the night and it started to get pretty windy and cold.
01:33:22:05 - 01:33:40:02
Unknown
So I was honestly, I was starting to get a little bit dehydrated because I hadn't brewed up in a little while. So I was trying to like, weigh my options, like, like, can I get my stove out here or do I need to like, go down a little bit to dig a cave? I had seen a spot a few hundred feet below me where I could have like maybe dug out a little bit of a cave and not vivid.
01:33:40:02 - 01:33:58:21
Unknown
So I didn't have any gear, but I could have at least, like, brewed up and gotten rehydrated and stuff. So definitely had a little bit of like a mental waver there. Rose That's kind of the only time on the entire outing that I like questioned myself. I'm like, like, I'm not sure, like, should I go try to brew up stage, push onto the top, Like, I don't know what to do?
01:33:58:23 - 01:34:22:22
Unknown
Then These guys come up behind me and they said, Thanks for the pack. They're just feeling psyched and strong is super inspiring to watch them go via. So I happily aside and let them take the lead, hung out with them for probably like an hour or so. And then eventually, you know, they were switching off trail and they pulled the low is little ways above me.
01:34:22:22 - 01:34:46:06
Unknown
And then I just followed up to the top. So where does where does the snow, where does it pop you out? You know, like I'm assuming. So you have like the zebra rocks, You have the the field and everything, like proximity wise, Like where does the ridge pop you out there on that plateau? So it actually connects with the top of kilton the horn.
01:34:46:07 - 01:35:17:10
Unknown
So above the football field on like 200 feet from the summit. Wow. So you pop out some it's like, boom, right there. Yes. But full disclosure, so many of us would be so disappointed with me right now. I didn't go for the summit. man. my God. Basically by the top. And by the time I got to the top, it was like 2 a.m. and, like, dripping wind and I was freezing.
01:35:17:10 - 01:35:37:17
Unknown
And I was pretty concerned about my toes at that point. And so I didn't even know it. I got to I got to kilton hard. I looked over. I was like, I've already been there. Clicked into my skin. Yeah, totally fair, man. That's I think that's a really admirable call to make. The fact that you'd already been there was is to me is fascinating.
01:35:37:17 - 01:35:56:09
Unknown
Like your art. You're like, okay, going in an alley, I'm going for the casting ridge, you know, like, maybe this is just ignorance talking, but, you know, to go, I'm going to go climb the West Buttress and then come back down and then go do the Carson Ridge is it's like fucking hell. It's like just a monumental task.
01:35:56:09 - 01:36:21:16
Unknown
And you're doing multiple objectives. It's like just there. And doing the Cassin Ridge alone is as a lifetime accomplishment to just to have already summited the castle and be like, Yeah, I was there, you know, fucking a couple of days ago. It's just is nuts. It's, it's really, really cool. I was definitely glad that I'd gotten that acclimation climb then because it would have been tough to go to the summit either way with how cold it was and how worked I was.
01:36:21:18 - 01:36:43:21
Unknown
So yeah, I got So how was, how was what were the conditions like for your ski descent? Because, you know, like descending the West buttress is no joke on skis, let alone no joke after, you know, 30 hours of climbing and being fucking frozen, going up the chasm, ridge What was that like for you in there is the best ski to set up my life.
01:36:43:23 - 01:37:12:15
Unknown
It was just perfect lower part. I was like throwing backflips off of rocks like this, like with the helicopter info section of it, just like I would expect. That was huge for my life of diving. Yeah. Yeah. No lower power. I had a great time there. It was. It was awful. I'm being fully sarcastic. yeah, I believe you.
01:37:12:15 - 01:37:35:19
Unknown
Yeah. I was like, I don't think there ever has been or ever will be proper powder on the football field. It's up there. Well, you got me at this point. You look like Jesus, and you're just doing these, like, inhuman spins. You know, I'm. I'm ready to buy whatever you're selling. You know, you to get me a wet blanket in a house fire, I'd be good to go.
01:37:35:21 - 01:38:03:10
Unknown
So the skier said it was him. His conditions for it is a pretty fun story. So I pop up onto Kelton hard and up until then, like my shirt for, you know, 30 hours straight. I had been laser focused, like clear headed, dialed in, like absolute, like alpine machine mode, just, you know, cruising up this route as soon as I got to the top of the horn and I was like, in familiar and non-technical terrain and not working hard.
01:38:03:10 - 01:38:26:23
Unknown
So skiing down like my brain just went out the window. I went straight to La la land and it's like, you know, it's two M in Alaska, so the sun is like on the horizon. It's like glowing red. Everything around me is all like lit up in a weird, surreal way, and I'm completely sleep deprived at work. So I just start, like, hallucinating the snow moving around me and like, seeing all these weird patterns and stuff.
01:38:27:04 - 01:38:58:06
Unknown
I basically skied off the top of Denali on acid. Y was so yeah. Wow. I skewed super slow. Just kind of survival. Ski hop turn scraped my way. It wow was never really scared because it's not super technical. I mean, the autobahn was like kind of icy. But again, I'd been doing a lot steep skiing in the Sierra leading up to it, so I was feeling pretty solid on that type of stuff.
01:38:58:07 - 01:39:19:06
Unknown
Eventually, you know, you get on the autobahn, you go down, I ski down the rescue gully. It's a little bit of options there. Nothing crazy. Eventually I got down on to just like the low the lower slopes above 14 camp and lost like a thousand feet because it had been good sunny weather the day before, which is why I picked to go for the casino that day.
01:39:19:08 - 01:39:40:03
Unknown
Those last thousand feet had turned into like the worst, like sun crust on top of powder. And it was such heinous ski conditions because it was like, you know, ice isn't fun to ski, but it's easier to ski physically because you can just scrape down it. But this crust on top of powder is so physically demanding on your legs to get your skis turned around in it.
01:39:40:05 - 01:39:57:15
Unknown
So it's like three turns at a time and then just flop down on my back and just look at it and just wish that I was in my time and then stand back up and like option for turns and flop back down. And it probably took me like, I don't know, 20 minutes to ski. This last thousand feet about 14, Kev.
01:39:57:17 - 01:40:21:12
Unknown
And eventually I got low enough that I was like, All right, I'm just doing and just like straight line to this crust back seat just to and then just slid right out to the door by ten. Wow. Yeah. wow. Wow. Well, it was it was the most memorable ski descent of my life. And probably, like, conditions was objectively the worst.
01:40:21:14 - 01:40:57:02
Unknown
Wow. Yeah. Just unreal, man. What a what a crazy story, man. Wow. So it's unbelievable on a lot of levels. Like one one accomplishment, man. Yeah, that's a real. Wow. Yeah. What's what's. I mean, what. What's next for you, man? What what do you have on your horizons? Ooh, Well, right now I'm in a very exciting and potentially dangerous new phase of enjoying and exploring mountains, which is paragliding.
01:40:58:01 - 01:41:33:19
Unknown
shit. Yeah, I've been at it for about a month now, and I'm just completely addicted. It's so fun. It's absolutely blissful. I mean, the feeling of literally stepping off the ground and into the air. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced. Wow. So I'm pretty pretty obsessed with that right now, doing my best to keep it reasonable. The flights, it's so much more than any any other type of mountain pursuit, like skiing or climbing.
01:41:33:19 - 01:41:57:15
Unknown
Like everyone that you talk to in. Flying has a story about either injuring themselves or seeing someone get injured, right? Yeah. It's like, yeah, almost everyone has a firsthand experience. Anyone who does not definitely has a second hand experience with injury. So I got a funny way reasonable. Yeah, I, I worked at Mountain Equipment Co-op. It's like the RTI of Canada essentially.
01:41:57:15 - 01:42:18:22
Unknown
And like one time this guy came in and he's, yeah, man, I really need a PLB. I didn't have one. And you know, last I was like paragliding or whatever. And I got off course and like, landed in this tree and like, snapped my arm in half. And he's like, describing how he doesn't have a PLB and he had to like, drag himself out for kilometers.
01:42:18:22 - 01:42:39:16
Unknown
And I was like, Yeah, man, I'll help you with that. It sounds like you should definitely have an ID reach me. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, see, but the really wild thing is that that's not an unusual story. It seems like almost everyone has a story like that. No Told. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's, it's a tricky balance because I've always kind of prided myself.
01:42:39:18 - 01:42:59:15
Unknown
This might seem a little bit ridiculous because of the things that I like to do. I've always prided myself on someone who takes a very calculated approach to risk in the mountains, like, I'll do risky things, but I like to really evaluate them beforehand and do the things that I want to do in the most reasonable way possible.
01:42:59:17 - 01:43:22:14
Unknown
Yeah, and I think you'd be dead ten times over if you were taking a very calculated approach with the things you're doing. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Yes, but, but then one of the things that's a little bit challenging for me mentally around paragliding is it just seems like there's so many uncontrollable factors. You know, you can't see the air and sometimes it does unpredictable things.
01:43:22:16 - 01:43:48:06
Unknown
So doing my best to enjoy it in a reasonable way, it seems like the best thing to do is to stay away from speed. Fine. Yeah, like those guys at that. But barrel roll that is. Looks so great. Yeah. Yeah, I got you there. I got you. All right. You know, we're coming to. We're coming to a close here.
01:43:48:08 - 01:44:15:05
Unknown
I've got some questions here from your good buddy, Jason Harder. ATH We have the answer. All right, you ready for this? So this is this is a question from a viewer or an audience member as, as it were. you know, Nathan's good friend. Jason the question here is, is there any been any greater perspective on how engaging with your project of the bulgars has shaped your mountaineering life?
01:44:16:13 - 01:44:53:19
Unknown
so like, did that, did that mission shape your life more than the ESPs or than Cassian did? Like, was that the most memorable kind of like finisher that you've done in your in your career up to this point? I think the big thing about the Bolger list was that it kind of reframed my approach to spending time in the mountains because I think, I mean, obviously having the ability to spend so much in, you know, just the schedule that enables spending so much time in the mountains is a privilege.
01:44:53:19 - 01:45:18:01
Unknown
But I do think that a lot of people like, you know, you you get back from a long three day trip and you think that you just need like time away and time to reset. And for a long time I thought the same thing until I just like threw myself into this thing where I was going every day and I came to realize you almost like it's hard for a couple of weeks.
01:45:18:03 - 01:45:40:17
Unknown
You kind of just like settle into it, you know, through hikers it getting your trail legs. And I think it totally, totally translates. And you kind of just settle into this really cool place where, you know, you feel fit and you feel connected to the mountains and you really feel like in tune with the terrain that you're moving through because you're basically living there.
01:45:40:19 - 01:46:11:03
Unknown
And so that was sort of my first time being introduced to that feeling of spending so much time day after day in the mountains. And obviously it's not totally sustainable to to be doing something like that all the time. But it has sort of informed my approach to my various mountain pursuits. Then it's like I go out of my way to spend as much time in the mountains as I can, even on days where I wake up and I'm not excited to go into mountains because it definitely does happen.
01:46:11:03 - 01:46:45:02
Unknown
Like you wake up the morning after a long day and you kind of just feel like you want to sit around, do nothing. But I found that without fail, every single time, if I convinced myself to just go start moving somewhere and get out and get out somewhere remote every time, I'm glad to be there and just so and so I think that's what I gained from the Bulgars experience the most is just realizing, you know, how much I love and how much it is not to get to to maybe happy with it, but it's the way that it feeds my soul to be in the mountains all the time.
01:46:45:06 - 01:47:14:11
Unknown
So basically since then I've just done everything I can to spend as much time as I can. I do. Yeah, it sounds impactful for sure. the next question here is do you have any particular emotions about Andrew Okerlund taking your youngest title from from you this year? I'm totally psyched about it. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the North Cascades are just amazing mountains.
01:47:14:11 - 01:47:34:11
Unknown
And to me, like, the more people who get to experience them and to experience them in such a personal way as doing a list like that, the better. Yeah, it's a super special place to me. And so I'm psyched to see more people getting excited about it. And yes, especially young guys. And yeah, I'm super happy for Andrew for sure.
01:47:34:13 - 01:48:07:01
Unknown
Nice fan. So this is more about the Infinity Loop film that came out. Jason's question here is, ask him about having his first film come out and feelings he experienced as he watched it for the first time with friends. Yeah. So just a little bit of context. Jason and I took a trip together with a couple of friends down to Mexico to pick a day, or Tsavo, which is a 18,000 foot volcano.
01:48:07:05 - 01:48:34:01
Unknown
Third highest peak in North America. And we did a little project there, which was an infinity loop, just kind of a combination mountaineering, ultrarunning type of endeavor. And we made a movie about it that just came out a few weeks ago. yeah, watching it for the first time was it was a little bit nerve wracking because Jason and I had some tension on that one.
01:48:34:03 - 01:49:11:16
Unknown
There is some emotions in flight for sure, and I was really happy with the way that the the movie stayed true to that story and really portrayed what we went through and, yeah, I thought it was cool to be able to share some of that more like raw, emotional side of, of doing things. The mountains with, with friends and with partners that you're close to and sharing those experiences and being able to show that to my friends specifically, to show that to people who maybe don't spend as much time in the mountains or who haven't been in the mountains with me before, to be able to show that to them and be like,
01:49:11:18 - 01:49:38:11
Unknown
yeah, like this is, you know, it's not just about like slogging on my own all the time, that there is more of a human connection side of things sometimes. And, you know, this is what that can look like. Nice dude. Yeah, well, we'll definitely put a link to the film so people can check it out. Yeah. And I think we're, we're playing with the idea of getting Jason on the show as well to talk about the infinity loop in the film as well and to try to see what his his perspective on it all is because it's quite the accomplishment.
01:49:38:11 - 01:50:07:15
Unknown
So yeah, we didn't even cover it and there's so much more to talk about. So we'll move on there because there's so much there. The next question here related to that question is will he ever make good on beating the Rainier Infinity loop t like he talks about in the film dropping bombs? You know, I feel like I'm at a point right now where I can't make any promises about anything climbing related because I'm so addicted to paraglider.
01:50:07:17 - 01:50:39:08
Unknown
Fair enough. I will say last summer with that that trail running guide job I was working the underground trail for several weeks and it was too late to do the right near infinity loop because, you know, it was a pretty heinously hot, dry summer up in Washington. And so throughout Sun Rain, you were in really rough shape. But I will say I put in a lot of miles on the Wonderland and I was definitely looking up at the mountain then looking at those routes and thinking about the infinity loop.
01:50:39:08 - 01:51:07:23
Unknown
So it's certainly not out of the question. And I'll be back up in Washington next summer. So you got it. You got to evolve infinity loop. Maybe you hike up to the top and paraglide down and then hike around the base and then paraglide on the other side. The other paraglide infinity loop. You know, that's you know, I will say I'm pretty convinced that paragliding is probably the future of like, RoundTrip Mountain Honestly records.
01:51:07:23 - 01:51:34:17
Unknown
I've always said this since I started climbing. The fucking goal and the pinnacle of climbing is to climb up and paraglide. Yeah, like what's better than that? Yeah, I, I There's nothing better. Well, I can't. Well, what's better than that is to do what? You know, Cedar Right? And some other folks have been doing in the karakorum where you start down in the valley, you thermal up, you paraglide up to an alpine valley, climb an alpine route, and then fly back out.
01:51:34:22 - 01:51:57:09
Unknown
Wow. Okay, You beat me. All right? You got me there. I mean, I've seen videos of guys skiing powder and then using their paragliders, you know, in spring conditions, skiing down, then using their full size paragliders to fly back up to get free refills by flying up and then skiing back down. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I just saw an Instagram video of a guy who used Thermals to to just circle upward.
01:51:57:10 - 01:52:27:12
Unknown
It is like in a different world of possibility. Wow. Okay, last question. We're coming here to the closing. This seems like more of a comical question. Jason Hart, EFF would like to know if you're going to hock that fat back on the powerboats that you owe him. Jason just needs to ski. I think you've been on skis like, four times in his life.
01:52:27:13 - 01:52:47:23
Unknown
Tell Jason that I'll do the back as soon as he comes and skis with me so he can watch it firsthand. All right, Don. Jason, you heard that, right? That was it. That was your answer. That's the last question, man. I appreciate you entertaining that. I think that, you know, to have someone so close to you have those personal questions was just a fun way to end the episode.
01:52:48:01 - 01:53:12:16
Unknown
But, you know, hell, man, I appreciate you coming on the show. It's been a whirlwind of technical difficulties. Such an amazing story. You've accomplished so much so far, and it just seems like there's a world of possibilities on the horizon for you. And we just really you know, I speak for both of us here. We appreciate you being on the show and taking your time and, you know, sharing your stories with us.
01:53:12:16 - 01:53:34:15
Unknown
It's just it's been a pleasure sitting down with you. Yeah. Thanks for your time, guys. Great. Yeah, absolutely. You know, obviously just. Man, Thank you so much. Blood on my heart. I'm so happy we we made this happen. And, you know, looking forward to hearing your continued success in the mountains and stuff, It's it's really just mind blowing that you are 24 years old and the things you have accomplished already.
01:53:34:15 - 01:53:44:14
Unknown
It's it's really inspirational and really amazing and Yemen, you know, get out there, keep having fun, go fly off some peaks and hopefully we'll have you on the show again in the future.