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Our 24-Week Mountaineering Training Plan used by Damon T to climb both Everest and Lhotse!
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In the episode, Scott Johnston talks with Damon Tedford who recently returned from successful climbs of both Mt Everest and Lhotse. While Damon and Scott have been in sporadic communication over the past couple of years using our phone consultation service he has been completely self-coached, using first our book Training for the New Alpinism to create his own training plan for the first couple of training cycles. For this final training build up prior to the Everest-Lhotse trip he bought and used our 24 week expeditionary mountaineering plan and slightly modified it because we consider those plans to be the bare minimum needed to succeed.
Show Notes:
Mountaineers on Mount Everest: Effects of age, sex, experience, and crowding on rates of success and death.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236919
Wilderness Medical Society Clinical Practice Update for Prevention and Treatment of Acute Altitude Illness: 2019 Update
https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(19)30090-0/fulltext
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Transcript
Introduction and Resources for Mountain Athletes
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Uphill Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Johnston, co-founder of Uphill Athlete. These podcasts are just one of several free services we provide to the mountain athlete community. We have a prodigious amount of free information and videos on our website, uphillathlete.com, covering mountaineering, alpinism, ski mountaineering, ski-mo, and mountain running. So please check it out.
Damon Tedford's Climbing Background
00:00:26
Speaker
Today I'm going to be talking with Damon Tedford, who recently returned from successful climbs of both Mount Everest and Lhotse. While Damon and I have had sporadic communications over the past couple of years using our phone consultation service, he's been completely self-coached, using first our book, Training for the New Alpinism, to create his own training plan for their first couple of training cycles.
00:00:49
Speaker
But then for his final training buildup prior to the Everest loci trip, he bought and used our 24 week expeditionary mountaineering plan and slightly modified it because we consider those plans to be the bare minimum needed to succeed. And Damon's fitness was high enough that he needed some additional training load. This is where our phone consultation service came into play.
00:01:12
Speaker
Damon is a former member of the Canadian Light Infantry and has been through the US Army's grueling Ranger School. He's an emergency room medical doctor in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he lives with his wife, who's also an avid climber and ski mountaineer.
00:01:27
Speaker
His four-man Everest Lhotse team spent a considerable amount of time and thought developing a team philosophy, training together, and being ready for the demands that the climbs were going to impose upon them. They also did something that was somewhat unique in that they developed a set of standard operating procedures to help them streamline their decision-making processes on the mountain.
00:01:50
Speaker
During this discussion, I think you'll see that Damon is very open and very humble about the style in which he climbed the mountain. And he conveys his terrific respect and the debt that he owes to the people who helped him along the way, from his wife to the Sherpa. We hope that you'll gain some useful insights that help you in your personal mountain journey. They'll be included in the show notes, a couple of links that Damon makes reference to during our talk. So I hope you enjoy this one.
Ranger School Challenges and Mountaineering Preparation
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, before we started recording this, you mentioned something about ranger school. So does the Canadian Army have a ranger school as well, or did you go to the US? Yeah, so basically, I'm like, just to give a quick of who I am.
00:02:37
Speaker
I used to be in the, um, an infantry officer, uh, the princess Patricia's Canadian light infantry. And one of the opportunities that we had with the Americans was we would send down a few soldiers to do, to do ranger school. So I actually, um, had the opportunity to do that. Um, so that's why I've why I've just, I just mentioned it.
00:02:59
Speaker
Well, after Ranger School, Everest probably feels like a bit of a vacation. Everybody I've talked to that's been through Ranger School has said it's pretty damn challenging. Yeah, definitely. It certainly is. I mean, without basically what you're doing is you're doing like heavy loads, hiking, patrolling, and then
00:03:18
Speaker
that they're trying to replicate as close as possible stressors of war and one of those things is they just don't give you much food. So I literally can remember how tuned in my senses were when I could smell a colleague opening up a peanut butter package from you know 50 meters away. Yeah it was a fantastic experience, really lucky to get down there and and do it.
Mental and Physical Endurance in Mountaineering
00:03:43
Speaker
I would, I mean, we're going to get into the whole Everest story, of course, but I would suspect that from a both, obviously from a physical standpoint, but also from a psychological standpoint, that's a pretty damn good preparation for, you know, any kind of big mountaineering trip, because, you know, as you well know, and I think most of our listeners know,
00:04:05
Speaker
mountaineering and alpinism or whatever you want to call it, is primarily about suffering. And the better you are at suffering, the less it's going to take, less mental toll it will take on you. And clearly from, again, from everything I've heard about ranger school, there's no shortage of suffering during ranger school.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And to be fair to the other branches of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, there's always some stress inoculation that you're trying to place on.
00:04:36
Speaker
on any like soldier, sailor, or airman that is beneficial because what you end up doing by exposing yourself to that, that stress is you really do inoculate yourself to it. The next time you're at fate, you face something stressful. You can think back on that training that you did and remember how you, you overcame it and just makes you more resilient as, as a person and as a climber. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:05:01
Speaker
And then it's one of the things I counsel folks that I speak with frequently who are relatively new to this whole mountaineering and climbing type experience is that you need that exposure, and especially you need that exposure in this specific terrain, you need that stress
00:05:22
Speaker
stressors to be like walking on uneven terrain, rough ground and crampons or being sleep deprived in the mountains, having a really a night where you just don't sleep and because it's too uncomfortable. And until you've had those experiences, you can't go to the gym and simulate any of that kind of experience. Yes, you can increase your strength or your aerobic capacity in the gym.
00:05:46
Speaker
but you just don't get that same kind of stress. And so, and I think that inoculation is a great term. I've been actually searching for a term to use for this. So now thank you for letting me copy your word there. I like it. It sounds impressive too, but you're, you get to use that word like words like that because you're a doctor too, right?
00:06:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, there's not a lot of stress inoculation. Patients are usually coming to see me for alleviating stress and that kind of thing. But it was a big thing about creating training whenever you're doing live fire exercises in the
00:06:22
Speaker
when I was doing workup training for deployments overseas, you want to replicate as close as possible. Much like this theory is very similar to uphill athlete, you want to create training that replicates what you're going to do. So that's what spoke to me about uphill athlete as well as having succeeded in the infantry, like seeing how it worked when our battalion was getting ready to go overseas with realistic training, like throwing grenades, like getting comfortable with
00:06:52
Speaker
Um, some of these weapons systems that are dangerous and can be, can be scary. There's a lot of similarities to that realism, um, in the training that, uh, that uphill athlete, um, well has within it's, uh, within the ball. Yeah.
00:07:08
Speaker
And it's interesting because that's, and I know we've touched on this a little bit off camera here, but I'd like to bring it up. Traditionally, that's the way climbers learned their craft was to go out and dip their toe into a stressful situation in the mountains and hopefully come back alive, but wiser, stronger,
00:07:32
Speaker
with some of that stress inoculation you're talking about. And it was often years and years to develop as it probably should be in order to do it safely. And I think that that's sort of what Steve and I brought to our concept of training with uphill athlete is
00:07:50
Speaker
Yes, you have to expose yourself to these kinds of situations in order to get comfortable with them.
Benefits and Strategies of Guided Climbing
00:07:56
Speaker
I mean, if you've never had to hack out a ledge on an icy slope and spend the night there, then the first time you do that, it's going to be an incredibly stressful situation. But after you've done it a few times and you realize, oh yeah, it's going to be kind of a crappy night tonight,
00:08:11
Speaker
But, you know, tomorrow will be okay. Then you do get to handle it. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I've begun to learn with the popularity of guided climbing being what it is today is a lot of people get tossed into situations that they really aren't physically or psychologically very well prepared for. And then it, as you know, it not only can be uncomfortable, it can be downright dangerous when that happens.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. So I still advocate very strongly for people when they come to me or generally we do this as a business, that people come to us with a goal that when after we've talked to the person and realized, you know, that's a pretty darn big goal for anybody. And the fact that you have never climbed a mountain and you want to go do X, Y, or Z, maybe you should consider, we often will try to encourage people to set up intermediate type goals.
00:09:06
Speaker
Okay. You want to go climb Everest? Great. How about two or three years from now? And in between, there's going to be all these intermediate climbs that you will do during which you will learn things that you didn't even know existed, let alone that you didn't know them. And that's proven to be quite successful for people. And it allows them to go do these things and actually enjoy it, come back as opposed to having to be just a death march and survive.
00:09:36
Speaker
You know, and Scott, you bring up a good point of just about, I can't remember where I heard this, but you don't get good negative, well, if you get negative feedback from the mountain, it could be catastrophic.
00:09:48
Speaker
So, I mean, if you don't have somebody that you can ask questions of or you can go out and learn the basics and learn what is safe, you can get into this false sense of security. Like maybe you don't rope up and cross this glacier and you do it 15 times without any problems. That doesn't mean that what you did was safe. It just means you were lucky. So what I'm getting at with that is, yeah, it's great to get out with people that are,
00:10:18
Speaker
that are trained and can point out some of the stuff that you can't even, you don't even notice as a recreationist or a beginner in any sort of alpinism.
Importance of Training and Safe Climbing Practices
00:10:29
Speaker
Well, it's like you mentioned earlier that, you know, working with professionals, working with experts is always helpful. I mean, and that, that I think is one of the, with the more, more common use of guides these days, people can accelerate their learning curves dramatically compared to, you know, when I was a kid and learning to climb and, you know, we didn't know what we were doing. We read a few books and went out and almost killed ourselves a number of times. And I was lucky to do it all. But I mean, we didn't, we did not really,
00:10:57
Speaker
We didn't have, there was no structure, no organization. We didn't have, the only person, you just went out with somebody who knew like 5% more than you did. That was the way we learned. And we learned by making a lot of mistakes, but I think it is possible now by especially hiring a good guide. Often people will ask me about going to some sort of mountaineering school or a course with
00:11:22
Speaker
10 other students and I'll say you know if you really want to learn this hire a private guide you can learn more in like two days with a private guide than you can within a week with a group because the guide's going to be focused on you and your needs and you know going to be able to adjust the program to fit what it is you know where you're weak and where you're strong. Absolutely yeah and that's exactly and you just get and you can ask questions of them and the other thing too is if
00:11:51
Speaker
you could be limited by the people that are in your group, depending on what you're doing. I've always been lucky. I've been able to grab some old military buddies or just colleagues that are enthusiasts to get out there and do things. And we're all kind of in the same fitness level. And we don't even, we kind of like every now and then having a bit of an epic. And I mean,
00:12:15
Speaker
I don't mean that like we go looking for danger, but some of those climbs I've been on are that we had a problem and we had to use our mountaineering skills and think about things and overcome them have been some of the most rewarding experiences that we've had. Like we just tried, my buddy and I, we tried to do Mount Slessie here, which is a mountain just in Chilliwack.
00:12:38
Speaker
And my buddy's an optimist. He's like, we can do this. Um, so we had started off to go up the, um, are you, you're familiar with the climb? I take the Northeast buttress. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly the one. So, uh, we are a reasonable climbers. We read the, um, the, the route description, but we, we got off route. We started climbing before we got actually onto the proper buttress and then it started to rain.
00:13:03
Speaker
And so we're halfway up this, um, this mountain and then we have to turn around and rappel down. And it turned out to be like a 24 hour, um, send mission just to get back to base camp. And, um, it was, it's going to be one of the, the climbs that I'll remember, you know, it'd be definitely a top five climb just cause we over overcame that. And that's why the mountains are great. Even if you don't achieve the objective, you're out in the hills. You're usually hanging out with somebody you enjoy.
00:13:34
Speaker
And you're just, it's just, and that's what I love about it is just being out there and working with a team and being in the wilderness.
00:13:45
Speaker
And learning. I mean, I had actually had a similar experience on Slessie one time where we were, the first time I went there, we were going to climb the entire route from the bottom instead of doing that ramp traverse coming in from the left. Okay. Yeah. So we started at the bottom, which I don't recommend. The bottom is like five or six pitches of, you know,
00:14:07
Speaker
you know, vertical bushwhacking, um, so heavily vegetated. And then we got high on the buttress and just like with you and started to pour rain on us. Um, but it's learning to deal with those kinds of circumstances that are beyond your control and being and getting developed in the confidence to be able to get your ass out of the fire when you need to. And you come away with that. And not only is it something you remember, like I just said, I remember that climb forever and you will too. Um,
00:14:36
Speaker
But you come away much wiser and more skills, perhaps. Absolutely, yeah. And I think one of the biggest things in the mountains is the skill to know when to turn around. And it's really hard to teach that skill. And I've always been an advocate of, like Steve, too, going light. I'd rather go too light.
00:15:03
Speaker
so that I'm more forced to turn around and thinking, Oh, I've got enough stuff in my pack to bivouac. And, and then it turns out to be a four day storm instead of just a little sprinkle overnight. Whereas in my case, I would just rather, you know, turn tail and run and come back another day, you know, rather than try to just forge ahead because I've got enough stuff in my rucksack.
00:15:26
Speaker
I'd say maybe I'll deal with my buddy James. I'll just take out some of the stuff out of his pack and he'll be he'll be less of the optimist. He's always like, no, no, David, we got this. We can do this.
00:15:36
Speaker
So we're a good team. I tend to be a little bit more cautious, but maybe I'll just do that. I'll either put rocks in his climbing bag or take out some of his essential beer next time. So are you from Vancouver? Did you start climbing or did you start climbing after you got there? Or how did you get into climbing? I am actually from Prince Edward Island. That's where I grew up. So way on the East Coast of Canada. And I moved out here with my wife back in
00:16:03
Speaker
after we finished our medical training in 2013. And that's really when we started to get into the mountains. We took a basic mountaineering course and saw what BC had to offer and just tried to get out as often as we could and took up skiing and other alpine pursuits. Yeah, and that's how we got into it. And then Lauren, actually, my wife, wanted to do a concagua.
00:16:29
Speaker
And we'd already done Kilimanjaro just after we'd graduated and enjoyed it. And then she wanted to go do a Concago, which we did with a guided group and really enjoyed it. And then from there, we've been doing other trips with friends. We went to Everest Base Camp in 2015, and then we've done some trips to Rainier and the local mountains.
00:16:52
Speaker
Was it the trip to Everest Base Camp that suddenly inspired the desire to climb the mountain or had that been something that you'd been thinking about for longer? Yeah, I think that with Everest is once you start hanging out with the people that are going up there, it's kind of this intoxicating, I don't want to call it group thing, but you start to meet people and you see that the energy and the passion you hear about how excited they are,
00:17:22
Speaker
Of course, the mountains got a lure of its own. But in 2015, I went up there with a friend and we climbed Lobashek. So he was doing that as an acclimatization climb. He said, hey, Damon, why don't you come along on this climb? It was Larry Dordry, who's also our team lead for the Everest Expedition this year. And I did that with my wife again. And we were like, this was great. And so unfortunately, that year, Larry had to turn around at the South Summit.
00:17:50
Speaker
And when he was looking at going back again, I thought this was a perfect opportunity. It was never really like something I like. I'm not a guy that's been thinking about this for multiple years, but I saw an opportunity to do something that yes, what seemed after being there like it'd be a great expedition and being able to go with some friends.
00:18:12
Speaker
and knowing that you really enjoy the time with them and you've worked with them on a team before, the opportunity was just too much to resist. Yeah. Did anybody besides Larry have that 8,000 meter experience or received kind of the only
Everest Expedition Logistics and Team Dynamics
00:18:30
Speaker
one? He was the only one that had it. Before we did this expedition, I had only been up to
00:18:37
Speaker
I'd done Ama DuBlom with Larry, actually just in the last October here. And I'd done a Concago. So that was the highest I had been, was up to 69,000-ish meters. Yeah. Well, 69 is pretty high. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. It's not comfortable being above 7,000 meters. Yeah. No, it isn't.
00:19:05
Speaker
And so when the this this germ of the idea took place, how many was it mostly friends, all friends that that ended up going on the trip? Yeah, it was. So Larry and I were the and another fellow named named Brent were were sort of the core of the group.
00:19:22
Speaker
And then we had a few, because we got delayed, it started off back in 2019, trying to get ready for this expedition. We had another gentleman join us that was a friend of a friend. And Larry had climbed with him on Orzaba, so he knew a little bit about him. And Larry told us a little bit about this fella, seemed like a great guy. And he was a great fella to join the team. And yeah, and we're now since good friends. But it was a small group.
00:19:52
Speaker
four guys. That was, that was it. So that means having, sorry, go ahead, Scott. No, I was going to say then. So just the four of you, did you, you must have contracted with a tracking agent to use their base camp facility or did you use a guide service? Did you, how did you, I think people will be interested in like the logistics and just how you set all that up. Yeah, for sure. So, um, back, I,
00:20:20
Speaker
back in in 2017 or 2015 correction 2017 Larry had had gone over there with seven summits and so we were using them again for their their logistics and organizing our our sherpa support so Larry was the the team leader and we went over as so we didn't use a north american guide service we just went directly to seven summits which
00:20:48
Speaker
ends up being, this was one of the things that I didn't realize about all these guiding services that are over there. Really Seven Summits does a large majority of the logistics, even for some of the major climbing organizations from North America. So we went directly to them and asked them to help us out. And we had met some sherpas that, and in fact, Temba Bote, who's our lead sherpa, just a fantastic and skilled individual,
00:21:18
Speaker
He, we ended up climbing Ahmed Oblan with him and asked him to come with us on Everest. So the way Larry was the expedition lead, and that gave him a little bit more control over making decisions on when we could go and when we wouldn't go. And we also had a bit more of a constrained timeline than some of the other traditional climbers that were there.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how much you want to go into that Scott, but I'll just a quick sideline, like seven, seven summits as I said, their organization called 14, I think it's called 14 Peaks. In any case, there was a lot, if you're an individual that wants to go and use seven summits, you can get placed in this international group, which was a very nice group of people, but it was a bunch of individuals sort of, my understanding was they met on the mountain.
00:22:14
Speaker
And then went up where it was different with us as we we came as a team to to the mountain. Yeah And so they but they organized all the the the porters and the base camp facilities for you and that sort of stuff and then supplied high altitude sherpas I assume yeah, well, yeah, yeah, basically so my colleague larry has a organization called radiating hope and what they do is in they supply
00:22:42
Speaker
training and radiation oncology equipment, um, to, um, to organizations. I think they're in, um, they're in Nepal. They're in, uh, I think they're in and around Kilimanjaro as well. Um, in any case. So one of the things he does in order to raise money for these organizations and awareness is to do treks, um, to an adverse base camp. So we used, um,
00:23:07
Speaker
the organization that he has to get us to Everest Base Camp. And then from there, it was seven summits with their Sherpas that were assisting us above Base Camp. Yeah. Sounds like you had a really good system dial. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, it was.
00:23:24
Speaker
And so that perhaps we should talk a little bit. I know you, you'd mentioned some, uh, that like your team had, it's a philosophy that I assume everybody was kind of aligned on. And can you give us a little background on that? Yeah. I mean, there's so many things and I hope to get into definitely some of the key things that made this such a successful operation. But one of them was definitely team dynamics and team leadership. So Larry had been there before he was our, our leader,
00:23:53
Speaker
And early on, we, we really created a philosophy like we want it. We want to get this done. Larry had been there before and had been to the south summit, had to turn around for weather and was like, guys, I just, I want to get to the top. Um, let's, let's make this happen. So we sought out to, to control the variables that were mostly under our control and certainly personal fitness, nutrition, sleep, that sort of thing, but also with the team philosophy and what worked out really well, especially cause we had sort of three years to prepare with COVID canceling our, um, expedition.
00:24:24
Speaker
in that in 2020. To really like get granular about some things. Like we could talk about, I mean, the Army uses the term standard operating procedures. I like that term just because what it allows you to do in times of crisis or urgency is to take out some of the critical thinking that might need to happen in a
00:24:48
Speaker
a life threatening event. Um, we took that a little, we certainly discussed those, those things, but we also talked about some of the moral issues that I was a bit troubled by. Like one of those things is as a physician is this mountain, there's, there's some people that, um, depending on who you talk to shouldn't, shouldn't be on the mountain or, and maybe get into a nasty situation just from circumstance, um, like overcrowding, running out of oxygen.
00:25:13
Speaker
that sort of thing. And it was going to be, you know, what do we do as a team when those things, those things happen? What do we do as a team when you see a team member who is clearly in distress? You know, for instance, we had all agreed that if it gets to a point where a team member says you need to turn around, we would just agree and turn around ourselves. And that can be hard whenever you invested a bunch of time and money.
00:25:40
Speaker
So we had standardized some of those things to take off the cognitive load of complex situations, the thinking that'd be required to answer those when you're tired, maybe you're mildly hypoxic and not thinking straight. So we really got into the granular things and I was worried about this thing like meeting somebody that we would have to
00:26:04
Speaker
to help and so you come up with some things that help you. I carried some decks, some IM decks in my pocket. It just made me feel better that if I was going up there, I could do something. Now let's be honest, the Sherpas are going to be solving the majority of the problems but that was just something with our team and the way Larry had sort of set it up. We were very open and communicating about things and things we were anxious about and that was one of mine.
00:26:32
Speaker
and we were able to work that out as a team. And we were all over the place. Larry's up in Alaska, Brent and my other colleague Jeremy were down in Utah. So we'd be chatting on WhatsApp or even sending little like Marco videos to each other, just to kind of stay in contact. And we really had, I thought a solid team when we finally arrived.
00:26:57
Speaker
I think team dynamics play such a huge role in these stressful situations. You're probably familiar with this being a backcountry skier, but with all the studies that have been done on avalanche accidents, the most important factor in avalanche, more important than predicting snowpack,
00:27:19
Speaker
is what are the team dynamics? And if you've got somebody who is not really, you need to, like you said, you need to be on this sort of standard operating procedure and all in agreement on what those standing operating procedures are so that when the weather is like this, we don't cross that glacier or we don't go out onto that slope when we have a sense that the conditions are such and such. And I've just, I mean, having been in this mountain world now since, gosh, 50 some years,
00:27:49
Speaker
I have seen so many accidents and even been part of them, frankly, I kept to confess. I've made mistakes and had friends killed. And there's definitely been times where the problem was the team dynamics. The communications weren't as clear and open as what you guys established. I think it's phenomenally wise to have established that before you even got on the mountain.
00:28:15
Speaker
rather than get on the mountain and find it you've got I mean my experience on k2 was one of uh terrific discord and you know it's it's amazing more people didn't die um and I think that that's so common in mountaineering and climbing in particular because it's it's really such an individual sport so people are you know it's not it's not a team event
00:28:40
Speaker
And so you can get all these strong individual personalities pulled together for this climb. And they're all thinking about it in a different way. They're coming to it with different motivations, different risk tolerances. Obviously risk tolerance is a huge part of all this.
00:28:57
Speaker
And if you're not aligned, then boy, I just have seen it go bad really quickly on a number of occasions. And so I commend you for having done that. And I hope people hear this and strive toward them. And this may be as important and certainly in terms of safety as the physical preparation even to ensure that you're going to have a chance of coming back. Yeah, absolutely. And that was, again,
00:29:25
Speaker
just another factor and I think what made this so successful is we had a great team and some smart guys able to kind of work through these difficult situations to figure out a way to, you can't get rid of every risk, but you can certainly think critically about it and figure, yeah, and develop either a plan for it or adjust your tolerance to the risk for sure, yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, and being open about it, you know, and also it usually those kind of things involve burying your soul a little bit and maybe putting your ego aside. And again, climbers have no shortage of big egos. People who want to climb these big mountains typically want to, you know, they're, they're
00:30:07
Speaker
Type a hard-charging super achievers who tend to have you know I'm not telling not saying anything. I think people don't agree with here I have a pretty high opinion of themselves and their abilities and that's because that's what's gotten them to where they are in life whether it's in the mountains or in the rest of their lives and
00:30:25
Speaker
And so it's, that has been a really successful tool for them to be able to rely on themselves. And now all of a sudden you're telling them, no, no, you don't get to, you know, you don't get to be that person. You've got to put those kinds of thoughts secondary to the wellbeing of the team. And that can be a real challenge. You know, I've been involved in some rather heated debates in the mountains with team members and other people. So yeah, I really like your approach.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, thanks. And it's I mean, it wasn't just mine. Again, this was an entire team, an environment that really Larry had created being on other expeditions that really allowed for that openness and honesty and for us to kind of confess fears and things that we're anxious about so we could address them as a team. So it was it was great. And to be to get even more to one of my colleagues ended up unfortunately getting high altitude pulmonary edema and
00:31:23
Speaker
you had to turn around. And we were able to have a conversation about that and, you know, kind of like strategize about, you know, is this something that you can, you can deal with? What resources do we have in Basecamp to actually get a diagnosis? I mean, when you have like, I guess even if you have COVID, it wouldn't matter. You're still probably going to need to do the same thing, which is go down. But we just developed a strategy to kind of, to manage that and work together. So,
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was very successful to have that relationship with and to be in a small team too. Obviously there's a number of other advantages to that. You can move faster and that sort of thing, but that was definitely one was people being great communicators.
Training Regimen and Enjoyment in Preparation
00:32:05
Speaker
And I know you've said that you felt like your fitness was good on the mountain. And let's talk a little bit about the steps you took. Obviously, you live in a place where there's no shortage of training opportunities, both from developing your skills, but also developing your fitness. And a lot of people, of course, won't have quite the access that you have right out your back door in Vancouver.
00:32:31
Speaker
But what were you using for your training? I mean, I know originally before we spoke the first time, I think you had been just using training for the new alpinism. Right. Yeah. So again, just to maybe chart the course a little bit, because I was able to go through this training program a few times. But initially I bought the book back before probably in early 2019, went through it.
00:32:57
Speaker
and develop my own training plan. And we had talked a few times just about tweaking things. But initially, just because I work as an emergency physician, it'd be easier to go, especially when you're doing the longer hours, it'd be easier just to go to the Stairmaster and do like, I mean, this is torture now, I can't even think I did this, but three hours on the Stairmaster. And I remember talking to you when I was getting, I'd gone through it a second time for Denali and again, COVID had,
00:33:27
Speaker
uh, it's named that. And then the third time when I came to you and I was like, sky, I think I need some, some coaching here or maybe a training plan. I need something new because I'm, I've burnt myself out on these treadmills and, um, and the, and the stair masters and you were good about it. You're like, and you'd said it in the book as well, which is you got to get outside more, Damon, get out, um, you know, get out in your local mountains, get out in, in the local Hills and turn,
00:33:57
Speaker
something that could be, that sounds like drudgery into something that's enjoyable. So that was a big, a big shift for me. There's a nice mountain. The Grouse grind is about 800 meters in elevation. And what's great about it has a tram. So you could, you could do hikes up that. When I started to do loaded climbs, it was nice not to have to dump and find water. I could just carry a sandbag and sort of tram down whenever the legs weren't feeling into going down. So
00:34:25
Speaker
And then just getting up to Whistler, there's some great slack country up there, and doing some ski mountaineering, and getting out with friends, at least for part of that workout, really was a game changer. I mean, I would think most of us are, while we have an objective, if the push in the training is 24 weeks, you got to make it fun, especially if you're going to do it more than once. And it was those climbs, those
00:34:55
Speaker
time in the backcountry doing things and trying to make a training while having fun was a real sort of motivating and re-energizing thing I've done.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think you have to be able to embrace the process for a couple of reasons. One is it's going to be a long and rather unglamorous, unromantic process. And so you better figure out a way to enjoy it. And the other is that the outcome at the other end is far from assured. For sure. And so if you don't enjoy the process, then you're entering into this
00:35:34
Speaker
training program with this thing at the end of the tunnel, which in your case with Everest or any other, especially 8,000 meter peak, there's so much beyond your control when you get over there that I don't know what the odds are, but they're not great. And especially because you can't control a good deal of what's going to happen.
00:35:54
Speaker
So I think it's a wise approach for people to take is make this something that you enjoy doing. And I've actually dealt with folks before who have, they've come to us with sort of the bucket list idea of I want to climb Everest. And then when we get them involved in the training process, and especially when we can convince them, this actually might be a multi-year thing to get you prepared for this because you don't have this kind of experience.
00:36:19
Speaker
Eventually, they find out, oh, I love climbing mountains. It's no longer just about Everest. It's about developing this love of being in the mountains and climbing. Obviously, not obviously, but at some point, many of them will want to climb something like Everest. But along the way, I've often found they become mountaineers in this process. They actually start to develop this real sense of what the mountains do for people. It no longer is just something to tick off a list.
00:36:49
Speaker
And so I think that process is an important component of this whole thing.
Odds and Strategies for Climbing Everest
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And Scott, you just triggered me on something because we had talked a little bit about some of the documents that I wanted to kind of share and like we were doing. Absolutely. So our team was trying to do some, and I especially wanted to do this was get some evidence on some things that would allow us to kind of separate the snake oil from what actually has some evidence or has been tried and there's
00:37:18
Speaker
And I'll send you these documents and you can include it in the show notes. But one of the things you talked about was odds. There's actually a paper out there. I didn't realize this. I'll track it down. But it talks about the odds of success based on age, experience, and the time you're actually climbing Everest. And they morbidly or not, they kind of break it down to summiting. And summiting
00:37:40
Speaker
with success, I think, which is like you summit, but you die versus you summit and actually get down safely. Um, so I was actually able to figure out the percentage likelihood of success, which I based on my age is like 55% with their data, which, you know, it's, yeah, Damon, that's more of a like flipping a coin. Sure. Um, but when you at least, you can at least look at the, the, the data set of people that were included in this and maybe weigh yourself against your, your odds,
00:38:08
Speaker
And if you're a kind of guy like me who really was going in more or less, well, first 8,000, I wanted as much information as I could get. So I could, I'll send you that if people are interested. I think people would be, I would like to see that. Yeah. Where was that study done or who did that? I can't, honestly, I don't want to talk in too much detail about it, but I'll send it to you. But they had broken it down basically from, I think,
00:38:33
Speaker
I think until 2000, up until 2009 and then 2009 beyond, because they recognize that there's been a major change in how people are climbing the mountain. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so going back to the mountain again, what was your experience? I mean, how many rotations did you do? Were there, I mean, adverse weather this year for you? I know you bumped into my friend David Kotler when you were there.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, I saw him running the house. Yeah, so our itinerary is a little bit compressed and we can dive into that a little bit more, but we basically used some like helicopters to, we used hypoxic tents at home and we flew directly to Namchae. It's been a couple of days at Namchae and we flew up to, and Namchae is 3,500 meters. And then we flew up to Dingbuche,
00:39:30
Speaker
which is around, I think, where did I put on that? That was 4,400 meters. Spent another two days there. And we did some, we went up to Chukung and there's a little ridge there called Chukungri that's about 5,500 meters we climbed for acclimatization. And then after that, we headed over to, to Lobache and then it was Lobache directly to Everest Base Camp. We stayed there one night and then we came back to,
00:40:00
Speaker
Um, low Bush a high camp and then submitted low Bush a and then what that does, it seems to be a more common thing now, but it just avoids one rotation through the ice fall and that's 60, about 6,100 meters. And then after, after that, we just helicopter back to, uh, to base camp. Um, and then get ready for our next rotation through the ice fall, which was, uh, ice fall to camp one.
00:40:25
Speaker
Um, that's 600 meters and then stayed the night there, then went up to and touch camp two and stayed a few nights there. So that's 6,500 meters. And then we did one other trip up to the, the Berkshire of the, the low sea face, which is roughly 6,800 meters. And then we came down and we did a, um, a touch grass in, in Namche again, helicopter assisted, stayed there for three days and then came back.
00:40:51
Speaker
Um, and then did our, our, um, our push on the, I think it started on the 12th. That was direct to camp to camp two to camp three, uh, camp three to four. And then four, we summited Everest came back down and then we went to low C high camp, summited load say, and, and, um, and then came back. Um, and just to be transparent here, we use oxygen from camp to, um, uh, flow rates were lower, obviously lower down, but max flow rates when we were summoning were like maybe two to three. So.
00:41:21
Speaker
Um, that was, that was encapsulating like our, that's all right. That was our plan. And it worked out well. Um, we had planned for oxygen. We had planned for like a Sherpa assist. It was, it was one to one. And whenever we lost one of our colleagues due to hate, we, we kept that Sherpa on board with us just to, um, not to tax the other Sherpas as much who were carrying, carrying loads. Um, and then the weather window. I mean, it was fantastic.
00:41:49
Speaker
I think it was I think the first summit was maybe on the 10th and then there was a number of windows so We really lucked out in terms of of congestion. There was just not the same amount of congestion There were there was nobody during when we were summoning anyway coming over from the the Chinese side or the Tibetan side So that made things easier and we had left early in the morning on
00:42:17
Speaker
on the 14th at about eight o'clock. And we got to the summit by, I think, 3.30 that night. It was a little disappointing, I'm going to say, just because we didn't have those epic cues that a lot of my colleagues didn't have. The sun wasn't up. We had a full moon, which was nice. So you could see it was fantastic. You could see into Tibet.
00:42:38
Speaker
great views from Makalu, lightning storm over top of it. And then of course when we were descending down, we had the, uh, the sun coming up and got some, some great views and didn't have a problem with congestion on that, that Hillary step. It was pretty slow moving. I think we were like the third and fourth people up there, um, at Temba, Bota and I. So it was, it was nice. We just got up there, got our, our photos to prove to family that we did it and, um, and got back down.
00:43:05
Speaker
But the entire time it was, especially after we have the oxygen on, it really is a game changer. You're just, you know, it takes a little bit of the suffering off. I remember when we redid that first pitch up to Camp 3, which arguably is the most difficult because traditionally most people don't use oxygen to that push. We were just enjoying it. Larry and I were like, this is, this is fantastic. Look at these views. You know, you got UMC off to,
00:43:29
Speaker
to the right and like the low safe face. And, uh, yeah, it was just, uh, it was an incredible, and we all felt very strong because of, uh, the, the training program that we had went through. And obviously the, uh, the oxygen helps too. And so did you choose to climb at night just to avoid the crowds or, uh, because obviously it's much colder then. Yeah. Well that, you know, Scott, that was the other thing. So there was no, there was no jet stream or at least not during the typical time.
00:43:59
Speaker
Um, and there were some wind. I think most people summit around 18 to 23. I think that's when the majority of the summits happen, but the summit window was so long because the winds were low and, and it was, it was, I mean, pretty warm. I think it was like maybe minus minus 10. I'd have to double check that, but it was lovely weather. I had gloves on like, um, the entire time I didn't have to put any mittens on. Um, so again, really lucked out with that, that weather window and.
00:44:28
Speaker
And, and certainly somebody on a full moon was, was nice as well. Wow. Yeah. Sounds, sounds ideal. Yeah. Well, there's, that's what we were just talking about. There's a lot beyond your control. In this case, the weather was on your side. So yeah, totally different experience than good. But yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't really answer your question. Why do we leave at that time? I think our, um, uh, Tembo was a little bit worried about some of the other colleagues that we had that might not be able to, to get up and wanting to start out, uh, earlier to allow for more time on the mountain.
00:44:58
Speaker
Um, and so that, that was, that was part of it. Um, and I, I, I, I, well, I know one of the biggest risks or one of the, certainly one of the risk factors you need to consider on this climb is that it's.
00:45:13
Speaker
is that Hillary step and the congestion that can happen there. So he was very much aware of that and it was minimally congested when we came, well it wasn't at all when we came up, but certainly when we came down to it was very easy to negotiate and get around people.
00:45:29
Speaker
Good. Yeah, I know that has in the past been a big problem for a lot of folks. I'm sure this has had a significant effect on your life. It's a goal that you've accomplished and I'm sure you've learned things about yourself and then things you want to take forward. What are some of the lessons you think you brought home with you from this?
Lessons Learned and Future Climbing Goals
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean,
00:45:57
Speaker
It was a great experience. Well, just how much I love the mountains, right? What's great about this is, especially when you're well-trained and you've covered all the variables or addressed them all and you show up prepared and something goes as well, you get an incredible sense of achievement from that and gratitude, of course, because it takes a lot of people to get you up there. But in terms of
00:46:26
Speaker
you know, lessons learned for me. I think there's a couple of things. One of them is the oxygen, the oxygen issue. So with that, I carried one oxygen tank and our Sherpa's carried spares. I think that was an error on my part. Certainly felt strong enough to carry it. And what
00:46:48
Speaker
kind of gets at me is seeing, there's some unfortunate souls who have lost their lives up there and their remains are still there and are a somber reminder of how challenging this can be when things go wrong. And that was something I've reflected on. Things had gone exceedingly well for us, giving like a false sense that, you know, this is easier than it is. And
00:47:14
Speaker
I should have had a spare auction tank. I should have just carried it myself because that's mission essential equipment for me alone. I don't think that should be on my Sherpa's back. So that was something that I learned. And I think, yeah, I'll just have to do that in the future is mission essential equipment should be if it's mission essential to you alone, then you should have it on your body.
00:47:38
Speaker
So that was one thing. Um, the other thing, um, and I chatted with Rebecca and so I showed up to her, she was very helpful kind of dialing in the nutrition piece, but we had talked a little bit about, um, muscle wasting, uh, when you're in the mountain, there's, uh, you know, the food, especially at the Everest base camp track is not necessarily the best. So usual load of protein is, it can be a bit challenging to get. Um, so what I brought was a bunch of big bag of protein, which ended up being useless.
00:48:07
Speaker
because I think what you need is you need individual serving sizes. Unfortunately, that means more garbage, but if you just got a big bag of protein, you need to have stuff in individual pouches, less so for maybe the recovery drinks, but certainly for snacks. Those things need to be easily to get into you, like O'Henry bars. Those mini O'Henry bars you get on Halloween I found were really good.
00:48:36
Speaker
So that was, that was something is just a nutrition piece. I dialing that in a little bit more. When you said you took a big bag, I assume it's something like, like protein powder or Yeah, it was protein powder, like protein powder. Well, this is something to be fair. I'm Rebecca Dent recommended it as it has worked. Yeah, it's protein powder. And it worked well at home. It even worked well when I was doing like an out and out and back kind of like shorter, shorter hikes, but it just doesn't work when you're
00:49:05
Speaker
when you're moving up the mountain. And I mean, certainly it's another thing to carry. Do you even need to carry it? I just need to think more critically about that. Because what ended up happening was
00:49:16
Speaker
I don't know, Scott, maybe you've had similar experiences. If you don't want to think about something and you don't know how much you need, you just throw it all in the bag and you take it all. And then you realize like, I didn't even need half of the stuff. So certainly an indicator for me that some more thinking could have went into to dial that in. And just seeing some of the more accomplished professional climbers up there, they've got a system. They've got a recovery drink. They've got a protein shake they make or something. Everybody's got some kind of, um, uh,
00:49:45
Speaker
dietary regimen they follow. Those are probably the biggest things I think for lessons learned for me that sort of stand out. And then of course the other thing I would like to do on future trips because I do want to get back up into the mountains is
00:50:03
Speaker
is being more of a contributing team member. The way it is on the Sherpas on this, I don't wanna sugar coat this or falsely sell myself as a better mountaineer than I am. I'm a fit guy that has some mountaineering skills. We went up fixed lines. The Sherpas are leading this and helping us with decisions. Even certain things like kit selection, streamlining, like techniques.
00:50:32
Speaker
and carrying weight, like to be brutally honest. So I'd like to contribute more in, um, in, in that sense with the team. So it sounds like you've got some other plans, anything for you right now? Well, Scott, I mean, to be fair, I'm still following your advice, but I'm still taking the, the month and I'm just chilling out. Um, there is an incredible amount of,
00:51:00
Speaker
I guess you could call it like, I'll call it future summit fever when you're hanging out with some of these other people that are going up. Somebody, people are sort of biting into this, trying to get the 14 done as fast as they can. And what's the next climb? And I think it's important to take a pause, especially after our sort of smash and grab, if you will, of this mountaineering expedition. So I'm trying to slow down. One of the things I do want to do is try to be a better,
00:51:30
Speaker
uh, like a team climber with my wife, I've taken her on more send missions that have ended in less than ideal situation. So I want to go back and do, and do that. Um, um, just cause I think that'll be most more enjoyable for, for both of us. And so being a better, a better team member that way, rather than just, uh, making Broughton the, uh, the solution to any problem that we encounter in the mountains. And I think Denali would be a good one when, uh,
00:51:58
Speaker
One of my colleagues suggested that that's a great one to maybe lead yourself and you have to do all the things yourself, the food, the schlepping of loads, the cooking, water preparation, that kind of thing. And with you and I assume your wife is also an accomplished skier.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah, we're good enough to safely get down the mountain, I'll say. Yeah, because that's the way to climb Denali. I mean, if you're doing the west buttress, you really should be on skis. But if you're going with a guided group, they don't allow that anymore. So if you go with a guided group, they had too many people who couldn't ski well and ended up getting rescued. So they've made it so that the guided groups have to use snowshoes.
00:52:42
Speaker
So if you want to, if you're a skier, you can't do it on your own anyway. But I think, yeah, with your experience and the fact that you're a skier, it makes that mountain a completely different experience to be able to ski when you're there. Because you can move so much faster with so much less effort. And if you're doing, you're shuttling loads between those lower camps, you drop your load,
00:53:06
Speaker
have a drink of water and a candy bar and like 15 minutes later back in the camp that you have. Yeah, that's a feeling. Well, let me ask you this. So with the footwear, I know like, for instance, there's some of these mountaineering boots that are coming out, these 8,000 meter boots that are coming out with the, the toe.
00:53:21
Speaker
binding that would allow for like a pin binding to work. Were you still climbing this with a ski boot or would that be? I've done it a few times in ski boots. Yeah. I once a long time ago, gosh, I don't remember how long it was. The first of those lace up, you know, it looks like a regular, you know, plastic double boot. This is before all of these modern boots with the built-in super gators and all that.
00:53:46
Speaker
But somebody, I forgot which company it was, made like look like a normal plastic mountaineering double boot with the DeenaFit binding system built into the boot. But they skied terribly. They were just terrible for skiing because they didn't have the, you know, they didn't have the support you needed in a ski boot. So what I've done on subsequent trips is I just use my ski boots and they're plenty warm enough.
00:54:14
Speaker
And then, you know, I'll leave the top buckle loose works just great. Yeah. Okay. All right. And I think a lot of people do that now, um, climbing ski boots and, you know, with these modern boot liners, they're every bit as warm as a double boot in my experience. I mean, I know, I'm sure, well, I know people use them on Everest. People climb Everest with those exact same boots. So I think it can be done. And, um, that would be my recommendation is just take your normal ski boots.
00:54:43
Speaker
Okay. Um, and maybe I want to ask you about pick your, um, mind on this as well. So there, we encountered an avalanche when we were on, on the mountain. Um, we were coming up the, um, it's from camp one to camp two. So you're just in, in the coom. It's, it's pretty flat and you got just off, off to your right. And we were with our Sherpa and he's like, Hey, check it out. There's some stuff coming off. Well, he didn't say that. He just pointed out to, um, what was an avalanche coming off of, of Numsen. There was no sound from it.
00:55:13
Speaker
And my initial assessment was, okay, this is a pretty flat area. Um, we could just run to the, to the right or left of this thing. And he was like, no, no, just stay here. He just grabbed me and he's like, just stay here. And we were clipped into the fixed line at the time. And I was like, okay. Um, and then this thing just kind of, it was quiet the whole time. Um, and it just, this cloud just kind of came over us and in about 15 seconds, it was, it was gone. Um,
00:55:42
Speaker
And so here's my question. Can you use sound as a way to avoid an avalanche? I can't seem to find anything on there that rules on it definitively. If there is something, if it's making a nasty sound, it indicates it's got more rocks or something. I've certainly been in rockfall before whenever I've been climbing, and I can hear that coming. But with this, it ended up being the right decision.
00:56:12
Speaker
I don't know if it was the right decision, but maybe for the wrong reason, or we just got lucky. I'm afraid I don't have any good answer for that, but I think it has something to do with the size and the terrain. I mean, that thing was probably a half mile away when you first saw it. Well, certainly up, yeah. Yeah, it was about 300 meters away, probably from, and then we could never make a sound, and then it didn't make a sound when it went over us either. It was just wind.
00:56:37
Speaker
Just the powder. Yeah. Well, maybe I knew it was going to be a powder, you know, just a powder cloud that was going to hit you. And, you know, I don't know. But my experience is when you can't hear them. Yeah, it's not a good sign. It's not a good sign. Fast. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:56:58
Speaker
All right. Well, that's, uh, I'll have to do a deeper dive on that one. I'm not trying to make any judgment on the decision that he or you made. Um, I, I probably would have been, I'd have been afraid, wanted to run. Um, well, yeah, that's what we did. I was like, I can book it. I'm going to be fine. Um, and then Khadji, if he knew it, he was, he's been on the mountain a number of times. He just was like, yeah, just stay here. And it kind of, yeah, just washed over us and we were fine. And it was just dust. So.
00:57:27
Speaker
And I know that Western Coombe does have significant avalanche hazard. There's been some accidents there in the past where avalanches have come down both off the West shoulder of Everest and off of Newpsy. So I think it's a dangerous place. I mean, you'll see the same thing when you're in Alaska. It's huge terrain, lots of snow. And I've seen avalanches there coming off of Hunter.
00:57:52
Speaker
that come down off the north face of Hunter, cross the southeast fork of the Kehelna and go almost a thousand meters up the other side and shoot over into the next valley. I mean, it's just phenomenal when you see that and you just, I mean, there would have been no way to run. If you were in the path of something like that, there's no running away from it.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, it's until you have been in that type of terrain and seen that, you just can't even imagine the magnitude and the power. And I think for me, and I would think for a lot of people, that's part of being in an environment like that, where maybe there's no predators there, but you're a long way from the top of the food chain in a situation like that. And you're really at the mercy of the mountain.
00:58:45
Speaker
And I find that we as a species, and I think especially Westerners, humility isn't something we have an excess amount of. And I think being in those situations, and I think it's humbling to be in mountain terrain like that, and realize just how puny you really are. I think that's, for me, has been one of the things that's always drawn me back to the mountains, is to face that kind of,
00:59:14
Speaker
eat some humble pie so to speak. Yeah no absolutely and that was one of the things that we had talked about too as a group was just you know trust your Sherpa we had even we had had some experiences where we saw people arguing with their Sherpa on the mountain and we know these guys have done this multiple times and I'm aware of the the halo effect
00:59:38
Speaker
And I don't, I'm not, I'm, I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about just like trusting these guys. It doesn't mean you'd hand over everything to them, but they've been in the mountain and they they've seen these things before. And you know, you got to rely on them for these. You just got to trust them. Yeah.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that all the guides I know that work on 8,000-meter peaks have a tremendous amount of respect for those, the Sherpa, and rely on them heavily. They spend more time there than any Westerner. Yeah, exactly.
01:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, indeed. Well, maybe this is just a good point for time just to thank a few of these guys. Our team, Sherpa Scott, was fantastic. Like I said, I climbed with Temba Bota. He was our lead guide. He's from Poakole. I climbed with him on Amadablam. And again, he led us on Everest and Lhotse. And I mean, here's a guy, right, that's carrying loads for us. We get down from the South Pole, we get down to High Camp for Lhotse.
01:00:43
Speaker
and there's no tents. And he's like, where the heck are the tents are supposed to be set up? This guy put us in it, Larry and I in a tent, went and carved a tent platform for himself and the other Sherpa that we had, Kaji Sherpa, and just got things done. So just incredible stamina and
01:01:04
Speaker
Very impressed with this fella. And then Kaji Sherpa from Nurbu Gown, another Sherpa with us. Mingma Wangchu Sherpa from Tashi Gown and Gelgin Sherpa from Nabin Gown. We really lucked out, Scott. I can't say it enough. These guys were skilled, strong mountaineers and we were very, very fortunate to have them with us. Yeah. They're wonderful people too. Just my experience has been great dealing with those guys. I like them. Yeah.
01:01:32
Speaker
And so when you went to, did you go right to Lotte the next day or how did you? Yeah, we just got down from Everest. We took a, I think maybe a one to two hour break just to get some fluids in and a bit of food. And then we headed down to High Camp. And then we left at 11.30 that night. And again, got to the summit just around 6.30, which was lovely looking back on Everest. You could see the headlamps of people going up.
01:02:01
Speaker
um yeah it was a it was another another great successful car were there many folks on let's say that they yeah there was um we were the the first um i think we were the more or less the first crew crew up there we ran into to nim's die coming down he was going up without oxygen just looking like a machine and his his group of people um and some other mountaineers from from all over so yeah it was uh but it was it was definitely quieter than uh
01:02:29
Speaker
than ever switch was, which was nice. Yeah. And so how much would you say, how much fatigue do you feel like you were, were caring? Was it really noticeable for you on the second day that day on Lutze? I know it wasn't really that, that bad actually. I, I, again, and I, I think one of the things was, is Temba was, was leading the charge most of, of the time. I take the lead sometimes, but what I liked about having him in front is he just knows how to pace. I wonder if I would have just,
01:02:59
Speaker
gone too fast and maybe burnt out and needed to rest more if I was up in front. Um, but yeah, he just said a nice consistent, uh, consistent pace and it made for quite a, quite an enjoyable climb. Yeah. But in terms of like burning in the legs or, or fatigue, I mean, you're, you're breathing heavily obviously just because there's no oxygen, but certainly felt, felt great. Yeah. I was able to, because of my fitness, enjoy the client, which, uh,
01:03:25
Speaker
and the oxygen of course, um, to enjoy the, um, to enjoy the climb up there, which is, I would argue that's why you want to be, be fit. And so you can, I mean, we all go up to suffer a little bit, but it's certainly nice and you can kind of have your head up looking around at what you're, uh, what you've been working so hard to, to get to. How much weight did you lose? I think about 15 pounds probably. Yeah. Um,
01:03:54
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, it's back to that point I was talking about with, uh, with being able to like sort of do the new, the nutrition, um, back on since you got, I started back into, I do like a strength workout, um, twice a week and maybe a little bit of like running some mild cardio and it's coming back. The muscle memory is pretty,
01:04:16
Speaker
I mean, the actual functional, like if you were asking me to go back to lifting what I was lifting before I left, no, I'd be nowhere near there, but definitely feel better than I did. Yeah. I hope this gets people fired up because it sort of sounds like, you know, you could be a good salesman for both Seven Summits and the Nepalese Tourist Department.
01:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, those guys are our quality I mean there is I think an arms race going on in the end in base camp and what I mean by that is it this is this this camp to be clear with everybody is about about probably three kilometers long you get a good view of it when you get up into the icefall and there are a number of different organizations there like beautiful tents tents that you're you're one to to a tent the food on base camp was better than it was like along the
01:05:14
Speaker
I mean, from Namché and beyond. There was a bakery at seven summits. They had a bakery. They made us a cake when we summited. We got down, they had this cake. Hey, congratulations on your loads the average summit. I was like, oh man, this is incredible. There was also a 10 on camp two. This is something I didn't know, which I thought was interesting. Before you couldn't have a helicopter go beyond base camp, but what they were finding was they were trying to reduce the risk of the Sherpas carrying loads through the icefall.
01:05:43
Speaker
namely oxygen and food and whatnot. So they allowed helicopter transport up to Camp 1 and 2. And so at Camp 2, again, there's a lovely tent there. I think I might have had, and this is again why I love being in the mountains, a little bit of suffering. It kind of resets the barometer on what is good. And you're a lot more thankful when you get home. But I had the best pizza cooked on a frying pan that I think I've ever had.
01:06:10
Speaker
By uh, this cook sangay. I he was anyway guy was very talented at camp too at camp too. I I so I had 20 what 21 000 feet or yeah, you're you're killing me or this is the other problem with the american team that I was with these guys americans using the feet Yeah, it's 6 6 500 meters. That's whatever that works out to but yeah, certainly um Certainly were it's it's not the the climate it used to be it's important to make that when comparing any sort of uh
01:06:40
Speaker
Summit now versus summits. I don't know any 10 years or even five years ago, I would guess. Yeah, seven summits puts on a pretty good. A pretty good base camp and I would suspect that the other organizations are do similar.
01:06:57
Speaker
Brings to mind, I'm actually doing a book, I'm reading a book right now that's written by one of our coaches, Leif Whitaker, whose father was the first American to summit Everest in 1963. Oh, nice. Yeah, okay.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm going to do a podcast with Leaf in a week or so. And I think people, I'm going to recommend the book. I'm actually really enjoying it. I don't normally read climbing books, but I do. This is a great one. It's really fun because, and he does exactly what you're talking about. He draws the comparison between, the book is called My Old Man and the Mountain.
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And it's, and he draws the comparison between his experience, every leaf has, he's been coaching with us for a while, but he's, he's climbed Everest twice. And he draws the comparison with his own experiences on Everest versus what his dad, what it was in 1963. And it is such a stark,
01:08:00
Speaker
comparison. I mean, it's, yeah, you can really see the difference. He's a good writer. So it's, you know, it's entertaining. But it's also, again, sort of humbling. You think, Oh, my God, he talks about what his dad wore on the summit day. And, you know, he was carrying a 50 pound pack and wool trousers and things like that. So but yeah, that you're right. I mean, if it's different than it was five or 10 years ago, it's really different than it was. Yeah, absolutely.
01:08:30
Speaker
He's actually, Whitaker's, there's a book, Life on the Edge, I think, is what his, is that what his dad wrote? I've got that on my reading list too, I wanted to check that one out. So yeah, I'll definitely tune in to that podcast, I'll be interested to hear him talk about that. His father's book is that, yeah. Yeah, so people can look forward to that podcast and that book review.
01:08:53
Speaker
Well, Damon, this has been really fun. And I really appreciate your taking the willing to take the time to do this. I'm sure you got some other things that they're pulling at you in life and you've been gone for as long as you have. But is there anything else that you know, we haven't really touched on that you feel like you'd like to, to, uh, Scott, just, um, you know, there's, there's a number, no, I think art, um, your, when I was listening to you chat with him, he did a really nice,
01:09:20
Speaker
I had a way of saying it was there's a, you know, one person kind of gets to summit, but you don't do it by yourself. And like you depend on a lot of people and people have to sacrifice for you to get there. Um, my wife being, being one of those.
01:09:31
Speaker
just incredibly supportive and even came out on some training with me, which was lovely. My workgroup, kind of, this is during COVID. We've got a group of doctors at Surrey Memorial Hospital that, you know, allowed me to leave for six weeks while people are burnt out from COVID. We're short-staffed, so thanks to them. Again, thanks to you and Rebecca. It's nice to kind of have
01:10:01
Speaker
to be able to go to you guys. And we weren't doing the day-to-day stuff, but we had a number of talks that really kind of were either reassuring or allowed me to kind of refocus from things to, you know, cognitive offloading of this, knowing that you've done this before, this plan will work, the comfort from that so I could focus on other things going on in my life. Even, you know, I remember one time you told me, Damon, you do too much.
01:10:29
Speaker
This is too much training. You got to back it off. Or one thing that I particularly remember was, Damon, you just walk around the block for 30 minutes for three days and then get back into it. You're wearing out here. You're not respecting the recovery time. And then Rebecca too, just being able to chat with her both about just
01:10:53
Speaker
dieting, I would call dieting, nutrition for training as well as some ideas about how to
01:11:00
Speaker
deal with nutrition on the mountain when the food resources are just different. That is definitely our mission is to be that resource for people whether it's hiring one of us as a coach or talking to us on the telephone and hopefully the website provides that information. We really do have a feel that we know there's a need for solid information in all these areas about
01:11:30
Speaker
climbing these mountains and other mountain pursuits. So I'm glad to hear that it's worked well for you. And I know it has, you and I had enough talks back and forth. And I think that, you know, the fact that you could hear some of those candid comments by me saying, hey, wait a minute, Noah, you shouldn't be doing that and do this and realize that it's coming from a place of, you know, concern and also the fact that, oh yeah, this is not my first rodeo. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
01:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it, right? You don't, you know, you're going to make mistakes and certainly you can learn from them, but if you can avoid making those mistakes, it's going to maybe save you injury and a lot of wasted effort and time. So that was greatly appreciated.
01:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, people can learn from my mistakes this way. Yeah, exactly. Someone was asking me about that not too long ago. Maybe you should write a book about how not to train. And I'm sure I could probably write a book that would be almost as long as the book we've written. Because I've made, I think, every mistake in the book over the course of my athletic career. So I'm hoping to save people a little bit of misery from that. Yeah, well, definitely.
01:12:43
Speaker
And you know what, sometimes people need that reminder, you know, of what didn't work. And the fact that you're able to tell them is, I mean, I even see it at work. You know, we've got like some kind of process or flow problem. And, you know, if you've got people that have been there for a few years, they make some recommendations that you know you've already tried that don't work. So having that, you know, maybe it'd be a successful book. You just have to, I don't know, would it be thicker than the training for the new alchemism?
01:13:12
Speaker
I don't think it would probably sell as well how not to do something. Well, Hey Damon, this is I, again, I really enjoyed our talk. It's been fun. I hope people can take away a few things from it. Um, and you're going to send me some links to a little, some resource material. Yeah. Yeah. I'll send you some links. Yeah. Just some documents show notes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's great. Well, well, thanks again. And you take care.
01:13:39
Speaker
Thanks, Scott. It was an honor and privilege to chat with you today, buddy. Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website, uphillathlete.com.