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Voice of the Mountains: What We Do in the Mountains with guest Will Gadd
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Voices of the Mountains welcomes all-round action hero Will Gadd who is legendary in the climbing world. Year after year, Will has continually pushed the boundaries of ice and mixed climbing. He leaned into competition climbing and with other visionaries like Jeff Lowe, pushed mixed climbing forward. Will is a veteran of mountain sports, and not only does he continue to seek new adventures but he seems to have boundless energy.
Will tells the listeners how just ten short years ago, he was quick to call out younger climbers for their inexperience, and the dumb risks they took—only to be met with dismissal as an outdated voice from a previous generation. Today, Will no longer calls people out. He calls them in. And in making that shift discovers how this profound change opened the floodgates to learning; learning which now flows freely in both directions.
Will and Steve discuss the culture of ex-communication of older, wiser athletes in the mountain community. How we all need a new model for aging athletes where we value the elder wisdom, insights, and experiences and not just an athlete’s mere physical prowess.
Join Will and Steve as they challenge one another to unpack a lifetime of lessons from the peaks, and help one another to embrace the wisdom that there is far more to life than facing the external challenges of ice, rock, and gravity, and together they level up to be able to navigate the internal terrain that defines us as human.
Visit us at https://uphillathlete.com/voiceofthemountains/ or write to us at [email protected]
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Transcript
The Allure of Mountains and Personal Discovery
00:00:05
Speaker
What do we do in the mountains? And what draws us there? It's not performance. We each discover our own spark. And that spark can lead us down a lifelong path of incremental progress towards something better.
00:00:27
Speaker
As we each write history with the ink of trails run and pitches climbed, new opportunities can drown out the spark, while paradoxically giving birth to new meaning.
Why Take Risks in Mountain Sports?
00:00:41
Speaker
Training, winning, being seen. The process of improvement and achievement eventually feels Sisyphean. And when you finally pause long enough to ask yourself why,
00:00:57
Speaker
Why take the risk? Why do the work? You come up empty. We all have the same questions. Why can't I be brave like other people? Why did I trade that beautiful spark for the weight of these accomplishments? What exactly allows fear its power over me?
00:01:25
Speaker
These questions cut to the core of not only our mountain experience, but of being human.
Evolution of Will Gadd: From Extreme Sports to Mentorship
00:01:35
Speaker
Today we are lucky to have the chance to tackle some of these important questions with climber Will Gadd. Although Will is quick to describe himself as an average climber, but exceptional poser, he is not average, and he is certainly not a poser. In fact, he is one of the most important thought leaders in extreme sports. But growing into that was a journey.
00:02:04
Speaker
Will tells us how just 10 short years ago, he was quick to call out younger climbers for their inexperience and the dumb risks they took, only to be met with dismissal as an outdated voice from a previous generation. But time has a way of reforming our approaches, making us more effective as we learn to be more reflective.
00:02:31
Speaker
Will also shares a story about climbing the hardest pitch he has on-sided in three decades while his 16-year-old daughter belays him. And back on the ground, he confronts a hard realization. When he had struggled to improve the climber for decades, it was never about his equipment or his training.
00:02:57
Speaker
The killer of joy and the barrier to his own betterment had been the hard limits to his own self-awareness as a younger man.
00:03:09
Speaker
We discuss the culture of excommunication of the older, wiser athletes from the mountain community, and how we all need a new model for aging athletes where we value the wisdom, insights, and experiences, and not just an athlete's physical prowess.
00:03:31
Speaker
Today, Will no longer calls people out. He calls them in. And in making that shift, he discovers how this profound change opens the floodgates to learning. Learning which now flows freely in both directions.
00:03:51
Speaker
Join Will and I as we challenge one another to unpack a lifetime of lessons from the peaks and help one another to embrace the wisdom that there is far more to life than facing the external challenges of ice, rock, and gravity. And together we level up to be able to navigate internal terrain that defines us as humans.
Introduction to the 'Voice of the Mountains' Podcast
00:04:20
Speaker
From uphill athlete, I am founder and CEO, Steve House, and this is Voice of the Mountains, where we explore the philosophy and humanity of mountain sports. This is where we will ask ourselves who we are, what we learn, and who we become from our adventures.
00:04:40
Speaker
Our guest today is Will Gad, a Canadian ice climber, mixed climber, and paraglider. As a Red Bull athlete and the host of the TV series Fearless Planet, Will has been an incredible part of the growth of extreme and endurance sports for the better part of three decades. As a climber and as a man, he has done just as much to help us shape better ways of thinking about risks within our mountain pursuits.
00:05:12
Speaker
Will and I first met back in the late 90s sometime. I couldn't actually put my finger on it. Will, exactly when or where.
Will Gadd's Early Influences and Climbing Beginnings
00:05:20
Speaker
We both were sponsored by Black Diamond at the time and we were working on, I believe, the first carbon fiber black profits. It would have been 97, 98, somewhere in there. And yeah, it's great to have you. Will, thank you and thanks for joining us today.
00:05:39
Speaker
Thanks for having me. It's been impressive to see what you've built. Think about 97 to now, that's a lot of water under the bridge. That's a long time. But here we are. It's great that we're both still here. It's kind of a miracle. It's cool to connect with you this way again.
00:05:56
Speaker
It is. It's very cool. I really appreciate you. Likewise. I'm going to go back in time since we went back to the late 90s. I want to go back to your childhood. You grew up with what you once described as anti-establishment backcountry people as your parents. I know your dad is a really well-known naturalist and has written a bunch of books about the natural history of the Canadian Rockies.
00:06:24
Speaker
And you grew up in that environment, in the greater Rocky Mountain ecosystem, out in the rivers, in the snow, in the environment from a very young age. Tell us about that. Yeah, I think, boy, that's a big question. But every weekend when I was a kid, we'd go to the mountains. So we'd load into our Econoline van, which was a complete POS, and roll into the mountains and then do something.
00:06:54
Speaker
And often, I would be left alone while my parents did whatever it was that they were doing. So I would be sort of this feral, you know, free range, small human in some kind of Rocky Mountain environment for hours. And today I look at that and I'm like, what were they thinking? I don't think I could do that. It's like bears, they're like,
00:07:18
Speaker
But at that time, either alone or with my brother or with other, you know, kids, friends, kids and stuff, just roaming around in the mountains, you know, and climbing up and scrambling up things and falling off things and falling into rivers and cry. I just, we were out there giving it. And that time out in the mountains as a young child gave me an incredible base, just being really comfortable. And I see this a lot with people today. You can walk out in the mountains with somebody
00:07:47
Speaker
and the people who have put the time in there or really love it, they're good on their feet. They're just comfortable. They're at home. And I think that's what those early years with my parents did is just make me feel really at home in the mountains. That's where I feel like I'm often at my best is just being outside. And I got a lot of that as a kid. It was really, really important. And I did learn some hard skills too. I learned how to dig a snow cave
00:08:14
Speaker
When I was 12, my parents ran the youth hostel on the Columbia Icefields Parkway. It's like five cars a day go on this road, and I'm 12 years old out there with no power or anything living in this youth hostel.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I decided that I was going to live in snow caves for most of that winter. So it's like minus 30. I'm digging snow caves. I'm by myself, you know, and this was just life. And I look back on that and I'm like, what kind of madness was this? But it, you know, if I have to dig a snow cave to this day, it gets done, man. Like it just, just a comfort. Like you could drop me off pretty much anywhere. And if I've got some okay gear, I'm going to be all right. You know, and it's a,
00:08:56
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Yeah, it was kind of a weird childhood, but it gave me skills that are really important to me today and have been my home.
00:09:03
Speaker
Interesting. That's super interesting. So I think I first came across your name actually in print in the early 90s. And I don't think that this was the first piece of yours that I'd read. But at some point in the early 90s, you got yourself down to Boulder, Colorado. And I don't know if you were going to school there or if you were just rock climbing down there or what. And you kind of enmeshed yourself.
00:09:32
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with this really early sport climbing scene that was engaged there. And for people who are climbers today that aren't as old as Will and I, you have to understand that in the early 90s, sport climbing was
00:09:47
Speaker
brand new. Like, there was only a couple of places in North America where it was kind of even allowed to practice. And then we sort of, a few people had sort of imported what we now know as sport climbing to North America, of course.
Impact of Competition on Climbing Culture
00:10:01
Speaker
In Boulder, though, it was its own scene. And it was, I think, very much, and in still many ways perhaps is, kind of one of the, you know, touch points, the heart, part of the heartbeat of American, North American climbing.
00:10:15
Speaker
How did you get there and then how did you end up starting to write about and you started writing for Rock and Ice and doing interviews and how did that happen? Well, I went to I went to school in Colorado Springs. I wanted whatever it was, paddling, whatever it was, I wanted it to be as hard and technically challenging. And at that point in my life, I'd already made the decision that I wanted to spend less time
00:10:40
Speaker
And I didn't think about it super formally, but I made this decision quite consciously that I didn't want to spend a lot of time in highly complex environments. Everybody that taught me to climb growing up is dead, basically. And so I'd already made the decision that I wanted to focus more on technical difficulty. And Boulder and sport climbing at that time offered it unlimited Buff A of
00:11:01
Speaker
savagery. We were so driven and so stoked to get better. People hated us. Mark Wilford had a bumper sticker that said, sport climbing is neither. We were mocked. Christian used to wear these ridiculous outfits. These little G-string, red G-strings we went climbing. The sole reason for that was to piss people off because they really dissed us. Everything they would say to us drove us harder. It was like,
00:11:31
Speaker
they would call us all kinds of sexual slurs and stuff. And so we would dress in more sexually provocative ways. I think at that point, most of us were straight, but they would call us like slurs, like you're a fag for doing this. And we'd be like, you want to see that? We're going to wear large red hoop earrings and clump circles around you, man. Fuck you. And it was awesome. And it was twisted and mentally insane and wonderful. And I loved it.
00:11:59
Speaker
I never drove that scene, you know, I was just, I just loved being part of it and going climbing with these people. And I was not the most talented climber by a long shot of, of those people, but it was a scene, man. And it created something really cool and I loved it. You were embracing who you were and how that was different. And you were just like, you just didn't care. I mean, I think that that's a key part of being a healthy human is just,
00:12:26
Speaker
Accepting who you are and not having to feel like you owe anyone an apology for it and you're like, yeah, I like to climb This kind I like to do this kind of climbing and I don't owe you any apology or explanation frankly And if you want to make fun of me, I'm just gonna throw it back at you and I'm just gonna use that to drive me forward so, you know talk about Christian Griffith because one of the things I
00:12:52
Speaker
came upon in my research for today was an interview you did with Christian that was published in Rock and Ice in 1993. I'm going to try to put it in the show notes. I'm not sure if we'll be able to with copyright and all, but one of the questions you asked in this interview is you asked him how he felt about competitive climbing and whether or not he thought it was good for the sport. And this was a question I think that
00:13:18
Speaker
that was, you know, in its infancy. And, you know, you guys had a little discussion about that, you know, how would you answer that question now? And, you know, with this is the benefit of 30, whatever, 35 years of 30 years, I guess, let's not oversell it 30 years of hindsight and, and experience and, you know, how, how you've seen it, seen it go.
00:13:45
Speaker
At that point, competition climbing was a new thing, right? The Russians have done some of it with speed ascents in Russia and things like that. But the idea of actually competing to see what you could do is new. And a lot of people didn't like that. They're like climbing is a soul sport, man. You don't compete in soul sport. For me, competition is like the acid test. It's where the bullshit stops. It's like you walk up and you do your best and either you suck or you don't. And I love that.
00:14:11
Speaker
I have always loved that experience is just walking out there, whether I'm playing volleyball or paragliding or whatever. It's like, it is game time. Let's see what we've got. And I, and I love that. So for me personally, it's been really rewarding and really damaging and really fast and is it awesome. And for the sport, any sport that has a competition, that competition be defines the sport, whether it's F1 racing or.
00:14:36
Speaker
Whatever it is, that's where the innovation comes from in that sport, ultimately. And it can be overt competition and that there's an organized venue and stuff, or it can be kind of underground competition, which is, I think, what a lot of alpine climbing becomes. There's definitely competition there, but there's not the, it's a different form of it. And things like FKTs and things like that have made sports that were harder to compete in previously easier to compete in.
00:15:04
Speaker
So to answer that question, I think it's been good for the performance levels of the sport. I think, I don't know whether it's been good for the sport as a whole, like for the soul of the sport. I kind of suspect it has, but I've also seen the damage done by, by competition to individuals and especially, yeah, I've just seen the damage done. And so it's not always a positive thing, but it is always intense and meaningful. And, uh, I competed again.
00:15:30
Speaker
two weeks ago for the first time in like five years. And it's like, you'd think I'd mellow out, I'm 57 years old, you know, show up and mellow out already. And I'm not, I'm there, I'm like, oh my God, you can see my eyes in the photos. I'm like, I'm going as hard as I can. And I love that. But yeah, I don't know, it's a good question. I don't have a good answer, but it was sure a cool thing to be part of.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the things that we can all agree on is when you, climbing was, rock climbing specifically was so young at that time, and then you introduce something like competition, and of course it's had, it's one of the outcomes of that, I think, has been climbing gyms.
00:16:12
Speaker
Right.
Climbing Gyms and Community Building
00:16:13
Speaker
And then I don't think anybody can argue against the value of climbing gems. I mean, they've just brought climbing to so many people and they continue to explode. I mean, I think I read that they're opening something like
00:16:27
Speaker
between three and four hundred climbing gyms in North America this year alone. Just new ones just this year. So it's just the growth rate of this is just unbelievable. You know, I mean, we both remember when there was only
00:16:43
Speaker
you know, a couple of climbing gyms in the whole country. There's one in Seattle, there's one in Boulder, and then, you know, solely they started to metastasize, so to speak. But yeah, that certainly, I think, has been an outcome of competition because the need to train consistently
00:17:02
Speaker
in a predictable way, whether it's whether it's lapping the 512 C's in your underwear or, you know, doing the weighted pull ups, you know, whatever ended that spectrum you're on, at least you need a place to go to do that. I wonder, too, which is driven which because I love that I like you. I do love the gyms like every I travel a lot like you do, I'm sure for business and you come into a new city and, you know, my main questions are like,
00:17:29
Speaker
do, where do I go to do whatever I have to do there? But then like, where's the climbing gym? And I go there and there's this ready born community, whether I'm in like Frankfurt or, or wherever I go in, and there's a bunch of psyched people, and I find some like 18 year old kid or 14 year old kid or 55 year old fellow gray hair, and we like, give her together for those two hours. And it's that, that's really driven this odd sense of community that I love. And it's, I'm not sure where the competition to be get
00:17:54
Speaker
Gyms or gyms beget competition but they sure go together and it's been a it's been a cool symbiotic thing you know I remember those early days and
00:18:02
Speaker
cats in Boulder, Colorado, where we were like, we didn't even know you were supposed to use t-nuts. We're like bolting the holds onto the wall with lag bolts because we didn't know the thing. I competed in one of the very earliest competitions in Boulder, you know, and there's like Jason Karn and all these awesome climbers that are from Boulder and competing in the dark outside. And there's like 300 people coming to that parking lot at night. It's lit up and we're just
00:18:29
Speaker
In that moment, I was like, damn, this is something cool. Yeah. Wow. We're going back to our memory late here. I like it. Now it's in the Olympics. I stayed in the competition climbing for a couple of years because I was like, this could be an Olympic sport and how cool would that be? It didn't happen for another 25 years and it's cool to see it there now in its forms.
Commercialization vs. Philosophical Aspects of Climbing
00:18:51
Speaker
Everything's got problems, man, but just the basic focus is pretty good.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, so Christian I think is such an interesting character to kind of touch point for us because he's of course the creator of Verve and he I would argue brought this kind of artists approach to building
00:19:13
Speaker
Gear and clothing for climbing and I feel like a lot of the big climbing grants today I mean climbing has got so mainstream and you know if you go to the climbing shop and you look at Patagonia clothing or black diamond clothing or archer x clothing I mean
00:19:28
Speaker
You know, these are big companies. They seem to sort of set the trends. They're all the same colors every year because they're also prescribed to the color forecasts. They all get the same color forecasts. And they're sort of the trends are set by just the sheer weight of their dominance in the industry.
00:19:48
Speaker
There's not a whole lot of this creativity that used to be so prevalent. I mean, I think about one of the first sport climbing harness that I ever had was built by Jean Bouchard, Wild Things, and it was a tie-in harness. It didn't have a buckle, and it was like rainbow colors.
00:20:09
Speaker
rarely uncomfortable, really ugly, but like, you know, you wore it with Lycra, and you know, climb it with rocks, and it was a cool thing. And you don't, I feel like there are not as much
00:20:25
Speaker
The playing field is not as level anymore when you have these, the climbing has grown to the point where you do have these big companies. And I really cheer for the people like Christian and Wild Things, which doesn't really exist in the same form anymore, and other brands like that. Because we need that creativity, right? We need that. We need those artists. We need those kind of punks.
00:20:49
Speaker
I love the way you brought that up, and that's what Christian's clothing was. It wasn't meant to be functional for hard rock climbing. He did a lot of cool stuff that was really groundbreaking, but it was an expression of individuality, of difference. He did that, and I really admired him for that. I did not have the guts to do that, man.
00:21:09
Speaker
somebody like Christian just did. And I was like, man, that is so cool. And I remember the first X Games, everybody's wearing like, you know, high altitude, technical clothing. And I competed in a pair of verve pants, just because I was like, this is ridiculous. This is like a climbing competition on an artificial wall. And I'm going to wear the red clothing for it. I wore a pair of Christian's ridiculous, like, pants that were all blue, diluted, but they stopped it, like my shin. So my crampons didn't catch out of it. Yeah, but that era and that individuality and that
00:21:38
Speaker
His clothing was functional. It was driven by necessity. It worked really well for what he wanted it to do. And I think that necessity is important in design and product development. You've worked a lot for Patagonia. I've done a lot with Arterix, but the best stuff comes from
00:21:57
Speaker
the things that you need to do that. Yeah. Christian's like, nobody's making clothing. I'm not going to wear gaiters up my 13 D. We need stuff that moves, you know. Yeah, that was the, I mean, before that, it was like painter pants. I mean, you know, and I mean, even today, like if you're going to dress to go trad climbing Yosemite, it's going to be different than what you're going to dress to wear, you know,
00:22:23
Speaker
sport climbing in Boulder Canyon. And those are just, those are just different assignments, right? And you have to solve those problems differently. We forget that a lot of this stuff is expressions of like the time in the era. You know, I learned to climb on a two inch red Swami belt, painter's pants and a rugby shirt, man. I was fashionable.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then, and then Christian Cableog, and he's like, are you a rugby player? Are you a climber? I'm like, I'm a climber, man. So at least I wanted to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different, different clothing for different eras. And it's still a battle, you know, it's design. I'm sure you've been in design meetings where we're talking about these things, what people want. It's not the same. It's a huge spectrum.
00:23:03
Speaker
Do you think that this commercialization, I'll just kind of blanket statement that's a generalization, but I'll just kind of use it. Do you think that this commercialization has changed climbing? Specifically, does it discourage the more emotional, philosophical journeys that there are to be had in the mountains?
00:23:24
Speaker
by giving us all the same uniform and the same colors to choose from and the same, we all look the same. We all dress the same. You know, does that, does that quash the creativity? Actually, you know, something you said about Christian, like the bravery that it takes to, to do something different. That's a complicated question. It might be above my pay grade, but I love that. Things like this, there's so many answers to it, I guess, but for me,
00:23:55
Speaker
in my career, I don't know, the commercialization, I've benefited from it, let's be honest, and it's really hard to talk sense to a man when his living depends on not having sense made of it, you know? It's like, without that commercialization, I would have had a much less interesting career. I don't know about that, actually. I would have had a very different career. Yeah, different, but... Different, yeah. And, you know... Me too, like, I mean, I lived off of climbing for 23 years, like...
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, me too. I get it. But I'm not trying to dis-sponsorship or dis-commercialization. I'm just asking the question if it changes our experience. Sure, it does. And just the number of climbers changes things too. We're not a band of misfits hunkered down in the woods under a rock anymore. It's like we're on TV, we're climbing in the Olympics and
00:24:47
Speaker
know, we're so far from that. And it's driven the sport to insanely cool new levels of performance and outcomes and so on. So I love all of that. I guess every time I go out and do something outdoors with a new group of climbers, I'm always amazed at how much has changed and how little has changed. You know, they might have a nice van and stuff, but they're like out there
00:25:10
Speaker
bleeding on the same holes that, you know, generations of climate like the weirdly the experience of climbing hasn't changed that much, even though the everything else has. Like you still go out there and you fall off and you get upset and you hurt yourself and you try hard and you bleed and you get obsessive and you blow off other areas of your life. And that is awesome. That is the soul of climbing. And I don't think that's changed much at all. Whether you're climbing in a gym or, you know, whatever you're into it, man, you're focused. That's where it's going. And I think that's
00:25:40
Speaker
what's so rad about climbing. And now it has, with the commercialization, people do make livings off of it. There's gyms everywhere. I don't know, maybe I've just sold out massively and that could totally be the case, but I love it. Fuck it. I love it. I think it's been good for it. It's over anyway. I don't know.
00:25:58
Speaker
It's not a question of good or bad. It's just that is there still space for what's different? Is there still space for creativity? Is there still space for Christian? Who's the Christian Griffith of 2004, 2024? Maybe we don't even know. I'm sure that there is somebody who is taking on a Christian. We just don't know them. I'm just drawing a blank on the guy with the doll's heads in his van. He's still out there making holds and setting up. Jason Keel, yeah.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that guy's awesome. So many people like that out there. And you do like you look at some people who've had like their careers have taken some setbacks from not following the norm or doing things that were somewhat, you know, didn't work out. There's they're still out there climbing. And I guess the downside of like, if I were to look at like the downside of commercialization, it's just pressure on resources. When I was younger, I sort of like the world is infinite. And it's pretty clear now it's not.
00:26:53
Speaker
And you get so much more pressure on crags. And fortunately, things like the Access Fund and other organizations have stepped up. I remember it just being a sea of toilet paper at every crag that I went to. And now there's like bathrooms and some things like that. So managing that commercialization and explosion in the number of people that are going out there. And these relatively finite resources. The world's just not an infinite place. But I bet we just don't know that.
00:27:22
Speaker
person, maybe, you know, Kai Leitner is somebody that like, seems to be doing things quite differently right now and has been through an evolution and is climbing. There's all these people out there that I just find so inspirational and not in the same way, maybe because it's mainstream, they're not rebelling as hard against anything because today you can sort of, well, you can make some interesting arguments on that one, but it feels like you could do and say anything within some some reason.
00:27:50
Speaker
I think that that is so interesting when you think about the who, you know, whether it's Kai or any of these other younger climbers, you know, what any discipline, right?
Balancing Sponsorship and Authenticity
00:28:04
Speaker
Like, yeah, when when we were
00:28:08
Speaker
My, you know, when we were, uh, I don't mean to sound like, I'm going to sound like the old guy. Back when we were long. Back when we were just little kids to walk uphill to the snow, um, both ways, uh,
00:28:24
Speaker
We, like, there was no commercialization. No one was sponsored. There was no money. Like, you know, I remember when, when the North Face first, you know, had, you know, it was Alex Lowe and Greg Child did Conrad Anchor and they were the dream team. And that was, that was like 1997 or so. Like, I mean, you were 30. I was 27. Like,
00:28:47
Speaker
You know, that's, that's relatively old for like, uh, say a sport climber, a hard boulder kind of kid now. Right. I didn't, my first pieces of my first quote unquote sponsorship was a free pair of ice tools that I got in probably 19. It was winter, 99, 2000. So I don't remember which side of the new year it was on, but right around, you know, I was 29, 30 years old. Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
And I didn't see any money of any kind of a check from just being sponsored. I'm not talking about selling a photo or writing an article. I'm talking about like you're on the team and here's your stipend until I was 34 and it was $1,500.
00:29:31
Speaker
for a year. That was great. Now you're like $1,500. This is the best. That's two tickets to Europe, you know what I mean? Totally. For doing what I was going to do anyway is the way I felt, too, right? It's just like I was going to do all the stuff I was going to do anyway. It just gave me more fuel for the fire. And obviously, both of us built that into larger sums, and we were able to live on them. We were able to do things like buy homes and live a middle class lifestyle.
00:30:01
Speaker
But that you know that kind of came about relatively recently within climbing and I wonder if the if the youngsters searching for that
00:30:11
Speaker
I would have hated to have been 1921 in the social media era. I wouldn't have been able to handle it. What a nightmare for me. I would have been terrible at it. And now it's obviously completely expected what you say and how you post and everything is scrutinized by other people. It has to kind of
00:30:35
Speaker
constrain the creativity, I would think, of these younger kids because they have to be out there, they have to be putting out content, and their overlords are the people writing the check. Like, you know, if you want to know who's in control of you, look where you get your paycheck from. I mean, that's kind of the old quip, right?
00:30:57
Speaker
I worry about that. I worry about the young kids, and I hope that they can draw interest. Because one of my questions for you, Will, is this is totally out of order, but is the history of climbing important? Cool. Well, that's... Okay, back it up. You just said something really important that I think hasn't changed in some ways, but it's really, really important to me, and that is that you would do those things anyhow. You would go and do your thing anyhow.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I think that's super, that's incredibly important. Not only to like be authentic and honest to yourself, but also I don't think it's changed that part of it. To get really good at something, you have to want to get good at it. Or you have to at least want to wake up in the morning and go, how do I get better? And that drive, whether you're, you know,
00:31:50
Speaker
The people that I see long-term who long-term succeed in this sport, it's not because they're genetic mutants. It's because they, I mean, you got to have a threshold level of physical. I'm never going to play in the NBA, right? Never going to make that. It's just not going to happen. I'm not tall. But if you've got that threshold level, then the people who are like, I'm going to do this, whether I'm sponsored or not, I'm going to go climbing, running, skiing, whatever it is, they are going to do that thing obsessively and with intent and with meaning.
00:32:18
Speaker
structure their lives around it, and they're going to get good at it. That is the single most critical thing to get good at something is to be like, I love this so much that I will sacrifice just about anything on its altar. And you certainly did that in your life. And for better or worse, there's no balance in that. It's not about balance. It's about how do I get better at what I'm doing? And eventually,
00:32:45
Speaker
a way to do that if you get good enough out of his sponsorship, but you do it because you just love it so much, or you hate it so much, but you're going to do it to get better at it. It's just two things aren't very far apart, actually, a lot of the time, you know, and so you do it anyhow. So I just love that. And no sponsor has ever asked me to do something. People is like, Oh, Red Bull must tell you to do this shit. It's like, No, I do this. They're enablers. They like their enablers, you know, it's like having a very rich uncle.
00:33:14
Speaker
that'll allow you to do things. So there's so many sides to this, but I just thought what you said there was really a port, so I wanted to circle back on that.
Influence of History and Fatherhood on Climbing Approach
00:33:22
Speaker
And then I think your question was about, is the history of climbing
00:33:25
Speaker
Well, before you answer, because this is an interesting topic, I want to second what you said, like no sponsor ever told me what to do. Interesting. And one of the things I've been in this position, and I'm sure you're in a similar position with the brands you work for, one of the things as you become one of the sort of senior athletes on a team is you're frequently, hopefully,
00:33:50
Speaker
involved in the decisions about who's brought in as the young young because we're always, you know, we're always sort of some of this aging out or moving on to do things or the or the brand is just growing and they need more ambassadors for the brand. And, you know, that's one of the things I always looked for. I wanted to know, like, are they doing this anyway? That was kind of the litmus test for me. It wasn't how many Instagram followers I have. I didn't care about.
00:34:19
Speaker
And I think that's, unfortunately, had to change a little bit as social media is impacted. Your work is not just what you do. It is also how you do it in social media and so on. It's really changed. That is, in some ways, a negative. And in some ways, not. I don't know. But that's what I look for, too. It's the same as you. Would this person be out there in their van or whatever form their sport takes, surfing, whatever it is, do it. Is that what fires them up?
00:34:48
Speaker
And it's hard for people on the outside to understand that. They think often that the sponsors are the ones calling the shots. And maybe that's true for the odd trip or something. Like, we're going to go make content here. I love that expression. Like, I loathe it actually is this idea of making content. It's like, I've done, yeah, I could go rant on that.
00:35:06
Speaker
I want to go do stuff that's meaningful and out of that comes content. But there is this weird circle where it's like we make content, we make 15 seconds of coolness. We never actually climbed anything. We never actually flew off anything. We never did anything really actually very cool. We made some great content. And to me, that dissonance drives me nuts sometimes. But anyhow, most of the time, that's not doing my sport. That's my job. That's my sport I do and I love, but my job is
00:35:35
Speaker
to pose and make content sometimes. In some ways, I joke about that. I'm an average climber, but I'm an exceptional poser. That's the truth to that. That's going in your bio for this episode, Will.
00:35:53
Speaker
It's the truth, man. I got these. I could be the fire hydrant. This stuff is like patented. That is what we love to do. And if we're doing what we love, then it rings true and it's good. But when it gets, it can get a little bit weird for sure.
00:36:12
Speaker
So back to creativity and creation and rebellion and being punks. And is the history of climbing important? Do people need to know what has been done before them to create from that? Or is it a hindrance? This is probably a question. I do believe that people should know some history about whatever they're doing just to see where they came from and why. I think that's important.
00:36:41
Speaker
whatever sport or aspect of life you're involved in. If you're a politician, you should definitely know some political history. If you're a climber, a little bit of climbing history is good. But there's different stages to life, right? Like we in Boulder in the early 90s, we were, I think by and large, maybe Christian, he thought about this at a higher level than the rest of us did. I just wanted to climb as hard as I could, and history was pretty irrelevant to that point. We were there to write it. That's the stage in life where you're writing this.
00:37:10
Speaker
And that's, that's what you do at that stage. And then you get a lot of other and you see it in the, in the scope, you know, like, what did I do and where does that fit in? And then you start caring about it more, but the people who are actually writing it, I don't think they should care about it very much. They should do what they're doing and it'll be rad.
00:37:26
Speaker
Um, and then let the old guys like not, you know, you're a young, bad three years ago to be, but you know, guys, yeah, that's what we can say. We can just do podcasts about it. I'll go climbing bike. I was climbing up my wall last night in the dark and by yard. And I was laughing at myself. It's like, I've been doing this for over 30 years now and I'm still fired up to do this, but it's not writing history. It's just, I climbed in my wall. So what, but I loved it. And, uh,
00:37:56
Speaker
And, yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I've always enjoyed the history and it resonates with me and it's important. But you can take inspiration from history. You look at what Reinhold Messner did and, you know, to me that's where the bar would be.
00:38:10
Speaker
you know, if I were to become a high altitude climber, I'd be like, and I think you did that. You're like, I need to take this further. I'm not going to use oxygen. I'm going to try to do it in the best possible style. And you built on that history because you knew it. It can be a little bit hard if you don't know it, then it's harder to build on it. Um, but it's, you also got to write it, man. If you're writing history, then you kind of have to not really worry about it. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
00:38:37
Speaker
Just shifting gears a little bit, you and I are both fathers now, and we've both spent a good bit of our lives pursuing these dangerous pursuits. You sort of specified non-complex environments very early in the conversation. I knew what you were talking about.
00:38:57
Speaker
Do you want to expand on that a little bit and then maybe just, you know, how have you reconciled that or how has that changed for you being a father from pre-fatherhood? I mean, this is a conversation we could have over a beer for like four hours, I'm sure, because there's so many layers to it.
00:39:16
Speaker
And I've broken my own rules a lot. Paragliding is an inherently really complex environment, so I didn't do a very good job of avoiding that, honestly. And then I find myself out-plugged climbing with a great deal of regularity. But what I mean by complex environments are the more variables you put into an environment, the more they interact in unforeseen ways and you get outcomes that you can't predict.
00:39:38
Speaker
So climbing in a gym is the lowest variable form of climbing, because you don't have weather to worry about. You do have some other factors. But generally, the gear is good. And relatively few people die climbing in gyms. So it's on the very simple side of the complicated environment. The climbing gym is on the simple side of the simple to complex environment. And then high altitude mountaineering with relatively
00:40:07
Speaker
Just not a lot of knowledge about that area. And a lot of variables is on the high end of that complexity, for example. And each sport has multiple different ways to look at this. But I made a decision fairly early in my career to generally focus on the technical lower complexity environments, generally speaking. And that was because I just saw so many people die. And as a kid growing up here, I would go climbing with people like a car grassman. I'm a Swiss guide who
00:40:38
Speaker
Took me up this ridge when I was a kid, friend of my family, awesome guy. He's gone, John Laughlin, Dave Cheeseman. So many of these people that I grew up with in my community, and they generally tended to die in complicated environments. So I just saw the carnage there as a young kid. I would go to wakes monthly, it seemed like, at my parents' house, and there were great parties. I always looked forward to them. As a kid, you just accept it.
00:41:07
Speaker
everybody's dying, but I got to go to school and there's a party Friday. Um, so for me, I made a decision pretty early that I just, I just saw that it wasn't really hyper conscious, but it was very aware. And then I broke those rules and I've done a lot of guided, but to me, I went that way just cause they were so, so I'd already made a choice well before kids to generally focus on the less complex environments.
00:41:37
Speaker
just because it's harder to predict the outcomes in those super complex environments. And I haven't always done that. I've played a lot in very complicated environments. But as I got to be 40 and made the decision to have kids with my partner, I had already kind of moved out of those environments more and more. And the flip side of this is that you and I both have to face this. We can look normal for a little bit,
00:42:07
Speaker
But the cracks of show, we are not normal, man. And I know that we need, at various points in our lives, higher stimulus activities coming at us, things that absorb us that are wildly fascinating. And if we don't do that, then we become surly individuals. And getting back to the start of our conversation, if the goal is to become the best version of yourself, whatever that looks like,
00:42:30
Speaker
then maybe people like us need to go to those places in some format to get that. And so it's what worked for us or for me. It's not going to work for other people. We needed that. Other people don't. And people who don't need that shouldn't do it.
00:42:46
Speaker
You know, if you're, if you're like, don't go do it. It's not a, it's not a more, for us, it was incredibly profound, but it does not mean it is for everybody else. Like my version of profound and meaningful is not somebody else's. Absolutely. It's, you know, we would climb and fly and do these things where like what we have found nirvana, we tend to become almost religious about it.
00:43:08
Speaker
We're like, do this, man. It is, it is the best thing ever. You know, then it's like, well, actually, this other thing's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm getting back to it though. It's like, yeah, kids also had an impact on
The Essential Nature of Risk in Fulfillment
00:43:20
Speaker
that. I think I'd always tried to go out my sports with an eye to surviving them, but I definitely in my forties, I took a little bit different tact again, but I don't live a safe lifestyle and I could absolutely have a bad outcome pretty much any day of the week out there. And I know.
00:43:40
Speaker
You've been a really great voice on the whole topic around risk and risk management, particularly at least in climbing, I don't...
00:43:47
Speaker
follow flying and kayaking these other sports that you're doing. And as an aside, I want to encourage the listeners to seek Will out on social media and YouTube and stuff. He's got some great content out there and on his blog around this topic. And you've really written beautifully about this journey that mountains can take us on. And you've also written at length about the journey, how this journey can become tainted when we do encounter the tragedy.
00:44:16
Speaker
And we do face a tragedy where you just talked about how some of that even became normalized for you as a kid to a certain extent. And is it necessary, I guess is my question. You can't control the risk other people take. You can't control, for example, the risk I take and vice versa, right?
00:44:43
Speaker
And we both find inspiration in, I don't know, some amazing, like the recent climb on Yannu that these guys did. I could give you lots of examples. But we don't need to take that risk anymore. But they do. And they're doing it. And I'm kind of inspired by it. And I respect it. And I can give it its space. But at the same time, I'm holding, at least for myself, I have to hold back.
00:45:10
Speaker
a little bit like i don't want to get too close to them because i'm like uh yeah like your guys are cool like respect hats off but like i don't really know if i can like become great friends with you because i
00:45:26
Speaker
I've been through this so many times in the past and it hurts so much. Can people find these, as you said, nirvana, whatever that is for you, without taking these huge risks? Why is that such a necessary part of the equation for some people?
00:45:50
Speaker
Well, what you just said, I think that's super important, and the way you expressed it personally means a lot to me, because it just rings very, very true. I've very seldom heard anybody say what you just said, but I do the same thing.
00:46:08
Speaker
It's a sound very weird to people who haven't maybe been through some of the same things that we have, but it's like, I edit my friends list. It's like, I'm like, I really like this person and I hope they survive. I really do. And, and it's, it's a, it sounds like a horrible thing to say on some level, but when you've had enough of those incidents, it sort of gets you to that point. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a fairly, you know,
00:46:35
Speaker
There's a tremendous amount of emotion and just mental gymnastics in all of that. And so respect for putting that out there, first off, I really think that's important.
00:46:48
Speaker
And just digging into that, yeah, again, we could talk about this for hours, but it's, the other thing you said on that, I think it's important is that it's necessary for them at this point in their lives. You and I couldn't do that. We would get out of that face. Maybe you could, I certainly could not even get out of that face. There's way too much stuff over my head here. And I just don't think I can, with a high enough probability of success, you know,
00:47:14
Speaker
I don't know what the number would be for me, but I'd sort of feel like if I got under that face, it'd be one in 10, whether I pulled over the top or not. I don't know. I could probably do it nine times and the 10th would get me. I don't know. I don't know what the number would be, but for me it'd be.
00:47:27
Speaker
But you know, like you said something earlier about how at a certain point you just, you just had to do the thing. It didn't, it didn't matter. Like external factors that could have been all kinds of other chaos in the world. And you would have been like out there, like bouldering and flagstaff, right? Like you would have just been or whatever you would have been at that time doing your thing. And you were completely focused on that.
00:47:52
Speaker
And that was what you needed to do right and so I think that you know for for these guys that are at that point now like if you and I were transported to these locations. We wouldn't need to do that thing we just don't need to anymore.
00:48:10
Speaker
We've done it or we've done enough of it. We found out what we need to know or whatever that is. I don't think either of us has quite the right words for it. That's what I'm trying to figure out in conversation with you. But what is that that we don't need anymore?
00:48:28
Speaker
I've been thinking about this a lot lately too. I'm writing this book right now about surviving and thriving in high hazard environments. So I'm interviewing a lot of people. It's been really fascinating. I should actually probably talk to you about this at some point. You're on the list to be honest.
Evolving Understanding of Risk with Age
00:48:44
Speaker
So what do we need? And I've been talking to everybody from the guy who has more base jumps in the world than anybody and is still alive. What has he done differently? And then a person who led more tours in Afghanistan.
00:48:57
Speaker
what they did. And then the head of ExxonMobil, OHS, occupational health and safety guy. So I'm really thinking about all of these topics. And I think what happens when you're young, you need to do these things because they hit right. For whatever reason in your brain, they hit right. And the people who are honest about that, that it works for them, whether it's Christian or the guys on Janu or some of the other things that have gone on, that's awesome. That's hitting for you and awesome.
00:49:27
Speaker
get older, your understanding of that changes. You see how many people die. And at some point, you're like, I don't really want to play that anymore because you know it well enough. Now, there's a reason that soldiers are like 18-year-old guys. They are willing to go out there and get shot at. It's like, guy my age would be like, are you kidding me? Like, if somebody's invading my house, yeah, okay, I'm there. I'm down with it. But in an abstract intellectual,
00:49:57
Speaker
Level it's I'm just not anymore man. I know what goes on my look. Can we come up with another solution here? Like let's figure this out some other way and It's just not right as it is So you get to a certain point in life and you understand the game well enough and I've often wondered if you could sort of download that knowledge into the 22 or 32 year old guy's mind whether they would still want to go or not like if you knew it if I knew at You know
00:50:25
Speaker
26 or whatever, and I was pulling my paraglider up in one of the most insane places to fly on Earth. That's why I was there. I'm pulling my glider up with a huge line of thunderstorms 10 miles away. I'm going to fly the edge of that thunderstorm all day, and that is what I'm into.
00:50:44
Speaker
Now I'm like, you're nuts. You know what goes down. But I don't know if like, would that change yet? You're like, that's just the progression. And at a certain point, your understanding of the risks of the sports probably makes you quit. You don't have a high enough level of testosterone and you have a deep enough understanding that you're like, I don't want to play anymore. And, uh, and so that's, that's great too, but it's, uh,
00:51:11
Speaker
I often wonder that. When you're 25 and you haven't lost that many friends yet and you haven't seen it go bad and you haven't done CPR on a perfect, golden, beautiful evening, you're like, this is all good. We're good here. And I think that's what I want to try and do now is just, I would like to help people make more educated decisions about risk in whatever way they're working with risk.
00:51:34
Speaker
It's more honest. Whether you're making financial decisions or putting your life on the line, it's like, are you being honest about it? Do you have enough of an understanding? How do we help people get that understanding or look at these environments? What are some tools for that? This is what's fascinating to me. But everybody thinks they're being honest because they don't have another perspective.
00:51:59
Speaker
One of the questions I wrote out here is exactly what we're talking about, ironically, and I didn't intend to come into it this way, but I want to go back exactly this question you just asked, and if we go back 20 years to 2004, for me that was the year that I sold the new route on K7 in the Himalaya, and I was
00:52:27
Speaker
It was one of my core tenants of my thesis that sort of helped me build myself into the climber that could do that was that I was constantly engaging in risky climbing and purposely avoiding climbing that didn't have consequence like both protected sport climbing of any kind, rock, mix, whatever. Interesting. And because I didn't want my mind to use the idea that if I fell, it would be okay.
00:52:56
Speaker
I didn't want to ever allow that in. And from my perspective, you know,
00:53:05
Speaker
When the focus is on not the risk, but actually the difficulty, because as Vince likes to joke, when we were going and doing these big routes in the Himalayas, we were doing easy climbs in dangerous places. And technically, they were easy, let's say. They were tactical, but easy.
00:53:29
Speaker
but they were at extremely complex environments, as you were explaining very well earlier. So, the risk part was such a big piece of that, and I wanted to... The thought experiment I've been asking myself is if I could go back and deliver a message to that 20-year-younger self, what I would say?
00:53:54
Speaker
Now it's so much of what you just said, like the final question there, I want to circle back to that, but something you just said is really, really important to me and I think is overlooked a lot. And that is you trained for what you were going to do in the same way you were going to do it. And you demanded of your mind particularly and also your body operate in that area so you got better at it. And it's really interesting to me. I've talked to very few people that have done
00:54:23
Speaker
what you did. You went, this is what it will define. I'm making an assumption here, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but what you did is really important. This is what's going to kill me, and I'm going to get really good at not letting that happen, and I'm going to train in that environment, and I'm going to be doomed to operate in that way. And then you went out and executed.
00:54:45
Speaker
And that is so important. A lot of people, their training is not focused on their performance. It's focused on, in my view, somewhat irrelevant metrics. And you went, this is the metric, and you did that. And I think that's really fascinating. So that's just an aside for people listening. Make a note of this, because this is unusual and cool on my view.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, as you said, like within alpinism, that is the dangerous thing is not the I mean, of course, you don't want to fall on the hard move when you have two pieces in on the whole pitch. But yeah, you know, that has to sort of be
00:55:22
Speaker
I didn't get scared in those situations because it was a foregone conclusion. I'd already made the decision when I walked up to the objective that those kinds of things were going to happen. And that's one of the things, back to the kind of question, I can't do that anymore. I can't go in the mountains with these younger climbers around here because
00:55:48
Speaker
I don't even want to see them in that situation, let alone put myself on lead in a situation like that. I'm not interested in being there anymore in that space. And I don't know quite what I would tell that 20 year younger self that would help.
00:56:05
Speaker
And maybe there's nothing I could tell. Maybe it was just right for me at that time, as you were alluding to earlier, and I needed to go through that. And that was my gauntlet that I created, or my threshold, whatever we want to call it, my self-created test. Well, I'd ask the same question to you. Maybe we could do that. I can give you my answer to that, because I've had these conversations.
00:56:33
Speaker
I couldn't have had these conversations when I would say 40, because I would have done it really poorly. And I did do it poorly. At 40, I would have a conversation with an alpinist to his 25, call it like 22 to 35 is kind of that hot zone there for most males anyhow. And I'd have this conversation with them, and I would say I wouldn't do it well. I'd basically call them out. I'd be like, you got no idea what you're actually doing, and you're going to expletive die.
00:57:00
Speaker
And do you want to do that? And they would just look at me and be like, yeah, you're already old. And I really don't have anything to talk with you about. And so it didn't work. And now I have these conversations with across multiple different sports, alpine climbing. And I had a really interesting one with one of the younger guys in the architect team who's also a very accomplished guide and just a great human. We have these great conversations where we've talked about these things. And now it's a conversation. And I just say, hey, how are you looking at this? And try to understand.
00:57:30
Speaker
where they're at. It's the same thing we're trying to do in other areas of our lives, calling people in versus calling them out. I'm not really there to tell them anything. I'm just there to ask some questions and maybe say, well, here's a perspective. I can't tell somebody who's 25 to 35. I can make suggestions, but it's a conversation and just giving them some of what I've seen. And I learned from them too.
00:58:00
Speaker
whether it's the Janu guys or two sets of Janu guys. And the story of what happened to the other set of Janu guys during that time is really interesting. And that is a story that hasn't been told. You should let those guys on. They have something to say. Very interesting people. Anyhow, you can have this conversation where you can offer some information and some perspective that's relevant to them.
00:58:26
Speaker
How do you call people in? You said, you said, I love that. You're not calling them out. You're calling them in. Can you give me an example of how you would call someone in? If imagine you're talking to this young Arturics athlete, what do you say to him? I'd ask questions, be like, Hey, what's it like up there? When you're doing this stuff, how does your brain work? Like what's fired you up about it?
00:58:49
Speaker
I just go into it and then I get where they're coming from. And I don't always succeed in this, but I want to find that common ground with them. Be like, Oh yeah, I get that. Okay. We're doing the same thing. And then, you know, maybe bring it into how you, are you thinking about, um, you know, sort of longevity or, or are you, is just like, this is it. You're just so into it. You're going for it no matter what. And, you know, how do you think about snow? And, um, some of them are very highly trained. Some of them aren't. And,
00:59:17
Speaker
Have you thought about maybe, you know, for example, Arcterix, we have a fund for education
Professional Training and Mountain Safety
00:59:21
Speaker
now. So I can say, hey, you can go and take, you know, a course or you can go out with somebody who's really good in these Alpine environments. Arcterix will pay for that.
00:59:31
Speaker
I could offer things like that that I think might help them, but they have to want those things. I'm no different than somebody in the comment section after a rescue or something saying, they're all idiots. I can't tell this person that they're like an idiot for what they're doing. That would be massively hypocritical and completely missed the point that they want to do that. They need that. How can we maybe shape it?
00:59:56
Speaker
The best example of this is just really quick story, but we have this local cliff you've climbed on at Mount Yamniska. A few years ago, all of a sudden, the media lights up because these guys are going up on the cliff and they're putting bolts into the most established classic lines and using gear they bought off of Amazon. The climbing world is like, you are horrible people.
01:00:17
Speaker
You're taking way too much risk. We watched you climbing. You didn't do it right. You know nothing. You're idiots. You're morons. And you're messing our cliffs up. And I looked at these guys, and I'm like, man, you guys are the same as me when I was 25. You just never even read a climbing book. You invented it with the drill you borrowed from work and the bolts he bought at the hardware store. And it's a gear yard. And so I was like, hey, I'm a guy. I'll take you out. And we got out with these guys.
01:00:47
Speaker
I got out with them for the day and they were just so psyched. They didn't even read the history of climbing. They just went for it. They invented it on the spot with the shit they had in the garage. And so by calling them in and saying, hey, let's work together. Maybe I can teach you something. And they're both climbing. They're put up new routes. They're great guys. I love that. I love that. What a great story and way to see yourself in them, right? Because we were all that. We were all those kids, all of us.
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And who are we to judge their motivations anyway? Yeah. And so at the same time, what can we do to maybe provide like, you know, one of the things I think for operating in complex and they're all professional, what I would call professional environments. And I think you've used that term as well. I'm not sure, but this idea that, you know, we can't get on the floor of the NBA with like LeBron James, but when we walk into the mountains, we're on the floor of the NBA.
01:01:38
Speaker
like, we're all of a sudden in the same arena as anybody else. And it's like, we need to get that training. So one of the things I wish I'd done when I was younger is what you did. And I was actually signed up to do the ACMG stuff when I was like 26, I think. And a good friend of mine died on an exam. And I was so mad about that. I was like, these people are idiots, and I want nothing to do with them.
01:02:02
Speaker
And I really wish I'd done that training at that age. And instead of doing it when I was in my late thirties and early forties, because having that, that is professional level knowledge about the mountains. And I wish I'd done it. I think that's, if I were to look at it, it's easier to do when you're young.
01:02:18
Speaker
Honestly, I'm sorry. ACMG, for those that aren't familiar with it, is Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, which is a professional organization that trains and certifies mountain guides in Canada. And yeah, I went through that process in my 20s, and it was really important for me.
01:02:37
Speaker
It did give me frameworks through the experiences. I wouldn't say, I think it's much more and better developed now how they teach people to think about risk and stuff as mountain guides and as mountain professionals than it was then. But at least it gave me a starting point and some sort of, you know, there was something on the paper. It wasn't just totally blank. And that was a huge gift.
01:03:03
Speaker
But I remember, I think it's really important to hike things like snow safety. One of the days, you may not even remember this, but for me, it was quite influential at the time. You and Barry and I were going up some snow slope to go climb something new together. It was a really fun day.
01:03:19
Speaker
And I remember I was starting to think about the snow a little bit at that point in my career than I had been previously. I was like, okay, this is starting to feel... At that point in my career, I'd spent a lot of time in snow, but I'd had very old training, long story. But both you and Barry... I was starting to twig to it, but then you and Barry had this conversation. You're like, oh, I think your exact words were, this mid-pack is getting weird.
01:03:45
Speaker
And I remember thinking, okay, these guys know a way to talk about snow that I don't. And that was important.
01:03:53
Speaker
I guess what I would say to a lot of younger people in any of these sports that I do is to try to get that professional training so that you can understand things as best you can. For things like snow, get that professional training. It's not an AST one. You need to get out there with people who live and breathe snow. Having gone through the snow parts of
01:04:16
Speaker
the ACMG program, I'm massively better at looking at snow than I was, and I make better decisions. And I sure wish I'd had that knowledge in my 20s when I'm on the south face of Robson going for it. I was pretty good at avoiding avalanche train, but didn't have that professional level of training. So that is one thing I would say. It's like, do what you did and train,
01:04:45
Speaker
at a train for what you're going to encounter, but also get the professional skills if you can somehow, because you're in a professional environment. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. I think that one of the things that I would link this back to is
01:05:01
Speaker
one of the objections I hear from people is like, oh, it's so expensive and so on and so forth. And my response is like, yeah, but you're going to do it anyway. You have to do it anyway. It's like, it's like what we were saying. You're going to go do those climbs anyway. You need this information and there's professionals are provided and that costs, that is a fee and figure it out. Like if you got to go to the job and pick apples for six weeks to get the money to take the course, then that's what you're going to do. Like, you know, just get it done. And I think it is super important to do.
01:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that you say that, and I would also say especially when you live in the Canadian Rockies, or in the Rockies, or the American Rockies. But I mean, that band has the trickiest snowpack and the most dangerous snowpack of anywhere, literally anywhere I've ever been.
01:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was a good, you know, when I was that 12-year-old kid living at Hilda Creek Hostel, I did three avalanche courses that winter. And I also watched two fatalities go down on Parker's Ridge. And those two things together, those courses definitely saved my life. But I wish I'd gone to a much deeper level and learned a lot more. And it's not just, you know, when you get out with somebody who, as I went through the guiding program here, I would get out with people
01:06:21
Speaker
like Cullen Zacharias or people like that. And they would just say something that was so smart, that would change my thinking about the mountains. They'd be like, just some little thing about, oh, yeah, you know, and here comes the sun and I just heard the first rock. And I'd be like, why do we hear rocks in the north facing thing while the rib that faces east, they knew they understood this environment. And that is like, if I were to like to find one value,
01:06:48
Speaker
that matters the most or the thing that I'm seeking the most in life, both in the mountains and everywhere, it's to understand what's happening. If you could understand what was happening all the time, then there wouldn't be accidents, right? So at 25, my depth of understanding, I was very, very strong, but my depth of understanding about a lot of things in the mountains wasn't very good. And I'm still surprised regularly. I don't have it figured out today, but I'm better at it.
01:07:18
Speaker
I'm getting better at it. Every day I go out, I'm getting a little bit better. You could go easy on yourself. I mean, there's an element of chaos and inject it in all of it too. Like it's not all knowable. It just isn't. Well, what he just says really important again, because I think when I was 25, I was like, if I just have like some mentors and pay attention, this is all knowable. And then, you know, I had some bad outcomes and saw some other ones and
01:07:43
Speaker
I remember writing, the first piece I ever wrote about this was about, I was in the Italian Dolomites, which is an area you've spent a lot of time in, and I was hiking in the fog, because the paragliding cop had been fogged out, it was raining, it was shitty, and I hiked onto this mountain, and I knew that if I just kept the slope to my left, and I could end up on the summit of this thing, that's all I needed to do, is keep the slope on the left, but I didn't realize I'd gone through a call, and switched aspects in the fog. I just didn't catch it.
01:08:10
Speaker
And so I wound up in this train that was really messy and I fell down on a grass slope and went sliding down this grass slope that had like cows walked across this thing and stopped on the edge of this cliff in the fog. And I picked up this rock and chucked it off, which in retrospect was not a brilliant decision, but I couldn't see how far down it was and it went like 10 seconds. And I was like, I went home and I wrote this piece where I was like, when I looked at accident reports before, I was always like, well, I wouldn't do that.
01:08:37
Speaker
I'm safe. I wouldn't do that. I'm safe. And that day taught me that accidents happen and there's no limit of chaos. And it changed my approach to the mountains. I was like, wow, you know, like, how do I have to eat? How do I operate in these mountains with the acceptance of that chaos? Because once you really feel that it takes a lot more downright bravery or understanding to walk out the door.
01:09:02
Speaker
And you know what's going to happen. At some point, maybe you don't have enough of that bravery anymore. You just had enough. You're like, I don't want to go there anymore. But what you just said about the chaos to me is just critical.
01:09:13
Speaker
One of the things I've learned about myself, like I'd say more recently in the last 10 years, is that I'm actually a pretty anxious person, which you wouldn't think because I did some very risky things. But one of the results of that is I've always been super over-prepared in those ways.
01:09:35
Speaker
maps and GPS and backup batteries for the GPS and everything written out on paper and like backups to the backups to the backups. And, you know, so many times I've used that. I remember like one time, you know, Jeff Holmbaugh and I climbed, we did the second ascent of the big of the Southwest Pillar of Mount Dickey. You know, we got to the top, same thing. It was like, of course it's a storm. And but
01:10:00
Speaker
like Jeff didn't know it but I had like all these things like stowed away in a ziplock in my pack and I just got out the map and the compass and the altimeter and like navigated it took us once we got back down to the Ruth Gorge or we had just a little bibbler El Dorado tent in the middle of the Ruth Gorge it took us it took us like eight hours to do the descent to the glacier it took us four more hours to find the tent because it was covered in snow and it was foggy and we just couldn't we just didn't know exactly where the tent was and all we had was this is pre GPS so
01:10:30
Speaker
You know, like those things that kind of it's not paranoia. I mean, when is it? When is it preparation? When is it paranoia? I mean, that's always a thing. And I think the times when I felt most at risk is when I've gotten out into situations and I'm underprepared and I'm like, first of all, I should have known better. But like you like, but this happens. I know this happens. It's the element of chaos. And
01:10:58
Speaker
Damn it. I did not over prepare this time I did not like especially these days when I have a phone and a GPS You know app on my phone. I always and here in this part of the Alps I almost always have a cell receptor, you know good data reception from biz I 5g from the summits of most of these peaks around here, you know, and so I get lazy right and then you only have to be in one little dead spot and the bet on the wrong day and about and I
01:11:27
Speaker
It's like, damn it. Well, two things you just said that are really interesting. The first is the anxiety. You may be slightly underrating the importance of that in your career, I would say.
01:11:41
Speaker
Mine art isn't quite as productive as yours is in terms of preparation. We don't know that. I dislike that anxiety because like, why can't I just be brave like other people? Why do I worry about the scenarios that I see? And why do I think about all the things that can go wrong? And why can't I just remember being like 12 years old with my BMX bike and like contemplating, you know, like if I went off the jump sideways and being worried about it, like how would I land it? Or if I got out of control in the air, what was I going to do?
01:12:09
Speaker
And all the other kids would just hit it. And I'd be like, I'd have to sit there for like five minutes and figure it all out in my brain. I really hated that. I wanted to be like the brave kid that just sent it. And it was that anxiety. And as I've gotten older, I'm like, that's probably at least to a good part.
01:12:27
Speaker
Anxiety and fear are actually really, really powerful tools. I used to load them. I used to sit in my kayak at the top of drops and throw up because I was so wound up about what I was doing. In retrospect, that was not a good state to be paddling class six in or whatever. That's not the way forward.
01:12:45
Speaker
And I didn't understand that at the time, but now I would respond to that differently. So I think that anxiety thing is actually really critical. And then your story about the map and compass, man, I love that because I bet that to a certain extent came straight out of your guiding. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And that's one reason, like I was thinking about your career somewhat before this
01:13:06
Speaker
this conversation with you. And that is one of the things that I think made both you and some of the other people that are doing really interesting things in the mountains more successful is you do have that professional level of training. And I think that's actually really important to succeed both in terms of knowing how to, you know, little things like it doesn't matter what it is technically, but having that extra depth that you have to do as a guide because it's on you, man.
01:13:32
Speaker
And you figure it out. Um, but, but also just having that outlook and, and that helps quite a lot. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jeff and I had a lot of talks about that because, you know, when we got down and hit him that like he would have been completely. Yeah. No idea how to get down off of that. And it's a super complex mountain. It's a big, super complex mountain. That wall is 5,000 feet and you've got to get down that thing. And.
01:14:02
Speaker
he didn't have a clue what to do. And it was, you know, I think so many of those
01:14:13
Speaker
instances like these are the things that, you know, we could tell ourselves and I think that this is in part what the purpose of all of these discussions for me is, is to share these, you know, is for the younger, you know, the 20-something Steve or this 20-something Will that's out there to hopefully get a hold of this and listen to it and see these perspectives and hopefully be called in as you so brilliantly put it. I really like that.
01:14:42
Speaker
I want to go back to something we talked about, actually just via email, when we were setting this up. And there's sort of this typical cycle that I think that I find, and I think we've both found ourselves in, where you find, in our case, it was climbing, but it could be running or skiing. And you get a little good at it. And then you want to get better at it. And then you've discovered training, either because you're just logically thinking, how can I get better at it, or somebody else's training.
01:15:11
Speaker
or you pick up a book or now you go to Instagram or wherever you find it, you get that works, because lo and behold, training works. You get better, you get stronger, you get better, and that cycle can progress for a long time. I think one of the things for me that happened, Will, and I'm curious if this happened for you, is eventually I realized that that cycle didn't actually bring me happiness.
01:15:37
Speaker
And I got better, but there was always a harder route. There was always a bigger, like, my goals, it's a little bit like, you know, capitalist consumption, right? Like, there's always a faster car to buy or something, you know, whatever your vice is, right? It was like,
01:15:56
Speaker
There's, you know, first I wanted to climb the Rupal Face of Dangar Parbat, but then I did that and I was like, well, I also want to climb the West Face of K2, the West Face of Makalu. But before I climbed Dangar Parbat, I never, I mean, I was vaguely aware of those objectives, but they weren't on my list. And all of a sudden they were on my list, so I spent, you know, years trying to do them. I didn't ever do them.
01:16:19
Speaker
you know, in that process of not doing them, I realized like, this isn't actually making me happy. And I can just chase this for more or less ever. And then that, you know, did you experience something like that? And where did you have, have you had any, I mean, and as you got older, did that, did that happen to you? Did you have something like that?
01:16:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I used to really dislike it. And I hear a little bit of an undertow to your voice where you're like, maybe you weren't comfortable with that. You're like, the same solution isn't working and super uncomfortable with it because it's your identity. Yeah, it is uncomfortable to have that realization. And I've had it a few times.
Transitioning Interests: From Climbing to Paragliding
01:17:00
Speaker
The first time, oddly enough, we started this conversation talking about sport climbing, but I realized at a certain point that, um, for me, sport climbing wasn't giving me anything new. And unless I won the competition.
01:17:13
Speaker
that it didn't resonate anymore. Either one, or in my brain at that point, I had failed in my training. I've never gone into a competition with the idea that I'm there to beat other people. I'm there to perform at my highest level. And so if I do that and my training is good, then I often win. But it's never been about beating other people. It's been about performing at a high level. And if I didn't win, obviously something in my training, quote, sucked.
01:17:43
Speaker
and there's a whole lot of stuff at all of that. So I was like, okay, how do I fix that? And at a certain point, I just realized that for me, it wasn't as interesting as it had been, and it was also kind of psychologically damaging on a couple of different fronts. And so I actually started paragliding. And that's when I started paragliding. Yeah, well, I was spending all my time in my mid-20s inside climbing gyms or performing at a high level outside.
01:18:12
Speaker
just trying to onsite harder and harder. And that's what I wanted to do. And then I was spending all my time in the climbing gym trying to get better at this thing. And I went by random. I was working as a journalist because that was sort of pre-big sponsorship and I started to have a job. So I was working as a journalist and I covered the US paragliding
01:18:31
Speaker
Nationals a couple friends of mine were in and I took this tandem flight with one of my buddies I did this tip and I was like this is the dead opposite of like sucking chalk in a gym I'm up above the mountains and I'm seeing the rivers and the rock faces and How it all works together and all this stuff about rockfall and where I need to be in the day. That's where the thermals are It's just inverted and spatial variability the snowpack and all these things were in my brain. I was just like wow
01:18:56
Speaker
This is the coolest shit ever. I think that was my last sport climbing competition that I did for 10 years because I went and flew my paraglider because I loved it so much. Then one day in paragliding, I was like, wow, if I fly another 100 kilometers further and get a world record and almost dies, that really what I want to do. So I had another, I didn't quit paragliding
01:19:22
Speaker
But I've been through that in three different, kayaking the same thing. I worked on a fatality in a river one day and I was like, I don't want to die this way. I'm out. And I didn't paddle for a couple more years after that until I could wrap my head around it. And then the weird thing, dude, is you can get sucked back in. Be careful. This year I had my best rock climbing year. It literally
01:19:44
Speaker
pretty close to 30 years. And I on-site it again at a level that I haven't done since I was literally 26 and I was 56. And I on-site it at the same level that I did what I was in. And I was like, but it was a much healthier process. So you can get sucked back in, be careful, man. And it was cool to go at it in a healthy psychological state. My daughter belayed me on that on-site. I got my 60-year-old daughter holding the rope and I am going for it with everything I've got up there.
01:20:14
Speaker
And I hope for her too, to see that. Yeah. And just, and I think it was, it was a beautiful moment and healthy psychological and it's nowhere near what everybody's doing today. But for me, it meant a lot. Yeah. And it was, it was, there's beauty in that. And it was a different way to approach it, but yeah. You said like, be careful, don't you get sucked back in, but that doesn't sound like the same thing. Well,
01:20:38
Speaker
Well, I'm kind of joking, you know, it is it is like that old gangster film. It's like you can never get out. Like this stuff. We're lifers, for sure. Yeah, we're lifers. But I know what you mean when you stop. And for me, it was like I was stopped. I wasn't learning as much. And and it wasn't as interesting. And it wasn't as necessary. And I was like, at the time, I was like, I thought the problem was with the sport, but it wasn't with the sport. It was with me.
01:21:04
Speaker
And in retrospect, like a lot of relationships ending, maybe, maybe it wasn't about the other person. Maybe it was about me. And at that time, if I had been more self-aware, maybe I could have done something different with it, but my solution was, was not super great. You know, it's just to, anyhow, it's deep question, but yeah, I'm with you. But I think that that's exactly the process that I'm talking about where, you know, you,
01:21:26
Speaker
the mountain sports, whatever they are, seem to have this, and maybe other sports too, have this metamorphosis effect on people. And they sort of, I'm not super comfortable with this word, but I feel like people evolve.
01:21:46
Speaker
and become better versions of themselves and more healthier versions of themselves.
Personal Evolution Through Sports
01:21:52
Speaker
And it's sort of, you know, I, others in the uphill audience has heard me talk about this before, but I'm a big fan of that model that Joseph Campbell came up with, with the hero's journey. It's sort of this archetypical journey that is so present across so many myths and cultures. And, you know,
01:22:15
Speaker
I think it goes back to what do we do in the mountains and what is the value of it, like the original question that, you know, we wanted to kind of contemplate. If I go back to read it again, it is, you know, at least the punchline of it is, are we interested in an incremental progress towards something better? But it's just something. It's not like
01:22:40
Speaker
It's a vague word, right? Like it's something better. It's hopefully, is it a better us? Is it a harder grade? I don't, it's not meant to be a harder grade. It's not meant to be like a harder onsite. That's purposely not the, in the statement. I think that's again, it's like, there's this continuum and I think at 25, I didn't need to have an answer for that. I knew what it was like climbing that harder grade or whatever. That was the answer. And that's, that's the evolution. And I didn't need it. And then we get older and we look back and we're like,
01:23:11
Speaker
How does this make sense? And it's like history. It's like when you're writing it, it doesn't need to make sense, man. You just do it. As you look back, you're like, we want a narrative. We want a story about what it meant to us. But when you put people under stress a little bit, they do evolve. And it does bring out both some people thrive under that load and some people don't. But I think competition is a form of that stress. It drives things forward. And being out in the mountains or whatever,
01:23:41
Speaker
floats your boat is stressed that if you listen to it and use it, it makes you stronger. It's just like training. You know, you respond to stress and then you get better and it's psychological too. You're training mentally to operate in that zone like you responded to and you got better at it. And so I think that evolution and stress, I really like that about these sports and anything that people are
01:24:10
Speaker
It's like all in in life, um, tends to do that. And I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. I love everything you, you said. And you know, there's frankly, a lot of wisdom in and everything that you've, you've just said. I'll ask you a super direct question. Are you aware or do you feel, are you realizing implementing the biggest impact you can have with everything you've learned?
01:24:42
Speaker
Oh, I don't think I have the self-confidence to say that I might get to implement all of this, but I do think this mountain life and experience, it has taught me some things. And I hope to share those with other people in ways that works for them. And I love
01:25:08
Speaker
I love sharing those things and seeing that light go on in people's brains. Whether it's teaching somebody how to ice climb, they figure it out and you see the light go on or talking about risk engagement and the light goes on. And it's like, okay. So I do love that two-way process. I get a lot out of it. It's not like I'm just throwing, I really, really enjoy that. And for me being able to share these things
01:25:36
Speaker
I didn't learn how to really ice climb until I had to teach it. And I don't think I've really started to understand risk engagement or management until I had to teach it and talk about it. And so for me, it's not super altruistic, I'll be honest. It's like, I think this stuff is fascinating and I get a lot out of sharing and learning with people. And so I am trying to do that now.
01:26:04
Speaker
And then it's also the process of figuring it out. Like this book I'm writing, I'm learning a lot. I talked to the guy who's got like more base jumps. And he says, at 25, his main program was to hone his reflexes. So he reacted well when things went wrong. And at 45, his main game right now is to stop things from going on.
01:26:27
Speaker
I'm going, that's brilliant, man. That is such a cool realization. It's not about how well you deal with the problems. It's about how well you prevent the problems. That's genius to me, so I'm learning something from it. Like you, you learned all of what you know about training, and now you're trying to share that with people and move everybody forward. I think you put that down as your mission statement, to help other people.
01:26:53
Speaker
And I think you got a little more confidence, honestly, with that, that I do. I want to understand it and just maybe help people think about things a little bit differently and help them answer that question you asked me. What would you tell somebody who's 25? It's like, I'd share these stories and try to engage a bit. Well, for what it's worth, Will, if I could,
01:27:16
Speaker
offer or give you that confidence. My wish for you is that you can own more of that because you deserve it, because you've done all these amazing things. You think about this really deeply. You speak about it really well. You've written about it really well. I think you're
01:27:32
Speaker
one of the most important voices in our world in that way. And so I hope you can own it. And it's never easy, but, you know, we all feel like we're, you know, or at least I can say for myself, I've always felt like an imposter for most of the time until I've been done something a hundred times. And then I'm like, okay, I've got this.
01:27:58
Speaker
I think that was honestly even part of the drive for me to go get professional guide training and avalanche training and stuff.
01:28:07
Speaker
I don't know what, you know, just again, anxiety, like I don't really know all there is to know or as much as I can know. Like what, you know, there's, there's still so many blank spaces in our, in, in the, in the memory bank. And, you know, and one of the things that I'm taking out of this is I'll be honest, like I, you know, I've sort of purposely retired from professional climbing three, uh, four years ago now.
01:28:31
Speaker
And especially as I got into my 40s and I felt all of these changes happening that we've been talking about, I felt more and more like an imposter. Like when I was 34 and I was like, you know, doing all my biggest, having all my biggest successes and climbing, I owned it. Like I was like, yes, this is like, I should be here and with these sponsorships and I'm glad they're here. And I sort of felt like I deserved it, if you will.
01:29:02
Speaker
not quite entitled to it, but I felt like I earned it and deserved it. And then when I got, after 10 years had gone by and I hadn't done anything, I felt like a fake. I felt like I didn't have value. Mark Twight and I used to just between us have this thing that we, when we did slideshows and went around and talked about stuff, that we had a pact that we couldn't talk about anything that had happened more than 24 months ago.
01:29:28
Speaker
I'm with you. I get it. Right. And so like that's this. And then of course, then all of a sudden I was like, man, I haven't done anything like eight years, like 24 months. Like I'm still talking about a climb I did like 15 years ago now. Like this feels awkward. So I felt inauthentic to me, but I think that, you know, there are other ways. And this is why I, you know, I realized I was kind of a little bit in apologize if it was too,
01:29:56
Speaker
to your face, but I know you're good for it, that to kind of challenge you around that, because I think it's I challenge you because I want to challenge others that not only are in this space that we're in right now, but you know, are coming up, you know, if you're
01:30:15
Speaker
53 or 43 or 33 like you're going to be one of these other ages things being equal soon enough and you will be faced with these challenges and I think we need to develop just like we didn't have a Model for sponsorship and being professional climber when you and I were in our 20s we don't have at least a good model for for how to age as a
01:30:41
Speaker
Sponsored or professional athlete within these sports and that's something that you know, I certainly have regrets about certain things of how I did dumb but I also give myself a break because I Didn't didn't have a better. I didn't have a better example. I didn't know better you're right in history, you know No, maybe I love that
01:31:05
Speaker
And I, I would encourage you to go back to that space a little bit, even though it break the 24 month rule. And I love that. That's very much like of that time. And that's how we thought. And it's like, 24 months is a long time when you're like 25 or 35. You're like, that's endless. But I did, I did five shows this winter at different festivals and so on. And the title of the show was roughly get stoked and stay alive. So a lot of it was like stoke for climbing. I love climbing and I love mountain sports. I'm still all in in a lot of ways and, and, and going at it.
01:31:35
Speaker
But a quarter of that show probably is about some tactics to try and keep the stoke and stay alive. And it just answers. I've got really specific tools that I gave in those shows. And I was really worried about that. Because I've never gone to a slideshow presentation before at a climbing festival where the guy gets up and says, all right, the mortality rate is really high here. And here's the best stats. And how do we think about this? And do we want to play these games?
01:32:04
Speaker
Just ask, I ask questions and show some,
Challenging Misconceptions About Mountain Safety
01:32:07
Speaker
you know, like I love it. I love it. The one that I love that drives me nuts and I do this in all the shows right now is a lot of people say, well, driving to the mountains is the most dangerous part of our day. And I asked the audience, you know, who thinks that? And like half the hands go up and I'm like, you're all full of shit. All right, here's the drill. And I go through the stats and the numbers. And I was worried before I did that, that how that would fly, whether it would resonate or people would be like, the old guy's just up there frothing at the mouth because, you know, but it worked.
01:32:34
Speaker
And I think most of the people who are at those shows, and probably some of your audience was, I think they walked out of there both stoked and feeling like maybe they'd gotten some better tools, or at least were thinking about these things differently. And so I think you do have a lot just from the evolution of what you've talked about to share there. And maybe this podcast is part of it.
01:32:58
Speaker
I don't know. Don't be afraid to do that. You're still really valuable. There's my, there's my lift up. And you too. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I, and I think that that's the model, right? Like when, when you're in your twenties or thirties, what you did 24 months ago is the thing. And the value you have is like, I'm writing history and the value of that is witnessing history being written.
01:33:22
Speaker
And for our community, that's amazing, right? Like, I mean, we've both been on both sides of that, and that's incredible to be a part of. And now our value is like, hey,
01:33:34
Speaker
I'm
01:33:54
Speaker
have taken those lessons and gone through some other process and hopefully can just give pure value back to the community. And that's where we need more. More of you will. And I'll give more of me too. I mean, that's exactly what we're doing here. So I appreciate it. Yeah, likewise. I think that's a great thing.
01:34:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we've come quite a ways from 1993 to late 90s all the way up till today and where we're both at now. I just want to end with a short something I don't think I ever told you and I want to
01:34:42
Speaker
say that, I don't know if you remember, but in 2010 when I had my accident in Canada, you were one of the first people that came up to the ICU in Calgary and visited me, that at least I remember. I was so glad you were there man, I was so glad you left. And that came through and I was
01:35:03
Speaker
I was obviously deeply in shock, right? Like as anybody would be at that stage right after a near fatal accident like that. But I've just carried that love that you brought that day for years. And I've never told you how much I appreciated that and how much that meant to me and how much that helped me come back. And I just wanted to thank you for that. And I hope that I never get to do that for you.
01:35:33
Speaker
We do it for each other. That's the great thing about this sport and the people in it. I've never seen you there and it was so hard because I knew the road ahead of you. At the same time, you had your brain and your spine and
01:35:49
Speaker
And I really, really admired what you've done and how you'd approached it. I was just, I was just so, I felt almost bad because I was just happy that you were there, man. I was like, so many people haven't been and you were there and you were, you know, look what you've done since then. Like none of that would have happened. Just your family and your business. And it's just, it's rad to see what you've done. So I'm even more glad now. Well, thank you.
01:36:18
Speaker
Big shout out to Will Gad for joining me today. I appreciate you so much, Will. It was a great conversation and I'm sure that everyone listening got a lot out of it. One of the things that stood out for me today was how Will called us all in to think about risk in a more honest and balanced way.
01:36:39
Speaker
We'll be back on the first of next month. My name is Steve House with uphill athlete and this is Voice of the Mountains.