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Guy Cotter: On Everest
6.9k Plays8 months ago
Steve House welcomes guest Guy Cotter to the Uphill Athlete podcast in the latest episode. Guy is a New Zealand based IMGA guide, the owner of Adventure Consultants guiding company and has multiple Everest and other 8000m peak summits. Steve and Guy begin the conversation around Guy’s foundations as a mountain athlete and his newly released book, Everest Mountain Guide. The two continue with a discussion on the evolution of Everest climbing and Guy’s personal experiences on the mountain. They share stories of experiences with clients in their heydays of guiding and their personal evolution as climbers, parents and mountain lovers. Steve and Guy bring years of wisdom and knowledge of high altitude climbing to the Uphill Athlete podcast.
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Transcript
Introduction to Uphill Athlete Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. My name is Steve House. I'll be your host today. And I'm super excited to welcome a new guest, a new name and face to the uphill athlete community, but certainly not a new name or face to the big mountains of the world. Guy Cotter, welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Good to see you again.
00:00:30
Speaker
Good to see you. We've known each other for quite some time. You know, how, tell, tell us a little bit about, you know, who is
Guy Cotter's Mountaineering Background
00:00:39
Speaker
Guy Carter? Where are you coming from? How do you describe yourself? How do I describe myself? Well, my name's Guy Carter. I come from New Zealand. I'm a mountain guide based there and I run a mountain gardening company called Adventure Consultants. Many people would have heard of that because of, uh,
00:01:00
Speaker
the events, probably back in 1996, Rob Ball was my friend and mentor, ran the business. From 1992, I was involved with adventure consultants along with Rob Ball and his partner Gary Ball in running some of the very first guided expeditions to Mount Everest. So I was there in 1992, 1993, 1995, and I was guiding
00:01:29
Speaker
Maury in 96 when things went down on Everest with Rob and the party and Scott Fisher and Co. Then I went on and purchased the company. I'd already had a small gardening company in New Zealand. I'm an IF and GA guide. And I grew adventure consultants to operate expeditions all over the world. When Rob or Gary Waldo owned it, they were doing like four expeditions a year.
00:02:00
Speaker
10 years or so after that, we were doing more than 35 expeditions a year as well as having a guiding school in New Zealand and in Cheminy in the Alps. So we got kind of busy. So through that period, I climbed Everest
00:02:16
Speaker
I need to I need to just interject here for a moment if I may, because before we go, you know, through the whole history here, I just want to step back a moment. And I think that
00:02:33
Speaker
Everyone listening, of course, has heard about, you know, the tragedy of Mount Everest in 1996, and of course, heard about adventure consultants. And I think, you know, many of our uphill athlete climbers and athletes have climbed with you both on Everest and on other mountains across the globe.
Early Influences and Family Legacy
00:02:53
Speaker
And, you know, I was a little bit tongue in cheek. I think that, you know, your exploits are well known.
00:03:02
Speaker
in much of the mountaineering community and certainly in the big mountain guiding community, I think that you are truly a pioneer of big mountain guiding and expeditionary guiding, not just you, but your whole company and the way the standards that you have been setting for a long time over there.
00:03:18
Speaker
So let's just back up a little bit and I want to talk about, you know, you as a climber, like, take me back to, you know, we're, we're, you're, you're, I don't know, half a generation or so older than me. So we have a lot of mutual friends, Barry Blanchard, most notably, perhaps, who we're both close with. Tell me a bit about what it was like for you when you started off with, with climbing and what got you into climbing and
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanna hear in your own words a little bit about what that experience was like for you back in the late 80s or early 90s. And even earlier. And even earlier, okay. Thanks for asking. I was born into a climbing family. I feel like my father was a mountaineer. He climbed in the Himalayas and made on a scent of earth.
00:04:15
Speaker
7,200 metre peak in the Garwall region called Muckett Parbat along with Earl Riddeford and George Lowe and Ed Hillary and from that two of them got invited to the Everest Reconnaissance back in 1951. So there's been a long history of mountaineering and when I was young I was living in southern New Zealand and there wasn't really a whole lot
00:04:42
Speaker
to do back in those days. It was before Facebook and TikTok and all of that. So, of course, you kind of read books or you could play rugby or you could, you know, I was lucky I, my family was going to the outdoors. So I got experience going to the outdoors from when I was quite young and, and I resonated with me.
Impact of Missed Opportunities
00:05:02
Speaker
I wasn't really into the instruction sports. I enjoyed being in the outdoors. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me. And from,
00:05:11
Speaker
You know, when I was 12, 13 years old, I was going to the mountains by myself and meeting up with other people and going climbing sometimes to solo trips. It was reasonably easy to train. Let me pause there for you for there for a moment, because I probably know I am remiss in one fact that the impetus for us having this conversation was actually you publishing a book called Everest Guide.
00:05:41
Speaker
and you, of course, gave me a copy and I read it. It's a great, great read, great story. It's published in New Zealand currently and hopefully everywhere else soon. And this is one of the parts that I'm going to read a little quote from the book that I think connects to something because you talked about your father
00:06:04
Speaker
He talked about this reconnaissance expedition. Obviously New Zealand mountaineers were very involved in the first ascent of Mount Everest. And you wrote, you talked about your father and you said, whether all of this had an impact on me as a young climber, I will never know. But I suspect that some of what transpired in my father's subsequent feelings of having been usurped by people who are no more deserving than he did filter into my subconsciousness.
00:06:32
Speaker
Now, that's a really interesting, I wrote that down and highlighted that section of your book because I thought it was a really interesting self-reflection as to how, you know, our father's feelings, you know, sort of generationally affect the shapes of our lives, you know,
00:06:53
Speaker
How did that, how did that, tell me, talk to me about that. Like, how did that feel?
Guiding Philosophy and Decision-Making
00:06:59
Speaker
How did that, am I onto something there or am I just grasping at straws? How do you see that now? No, I think you're definitely onto something there. And the, you know, the long story in a very short version is that Artik, my father, and Earl Riddeford, and Sherpa Passan, climbed look at Parbat. They got an invite from
00:07:23
Speaker
the British Everest expedition, reconnaissance expedition for two of them to bring them on Everest. And that was difficult because you had four people who all felt that they deserved to be on this expedition. And my father quickly stepped backward from that, basically the argument that ensued overnight in a town in remote India, seeing that the whole ambiance and
00:07:53
Speaker
friendship had all fallen apart in this expedition because of the competition to be involved. And it was a bit of a bad call from whoever it was and the reconnaissance expedition who invited the Kiwis, if they'd have just invited all four of them, then it wouldn't have been a problem. So my father went on and saw Ed Hillary becoming the first person to climb Everest and rightfully so, he deserved it and there was no
00:08:22
Speaker
about that, but he'd been very close and missed that opportunity. Personally, I feel that maybe my father might not have even been the one to climb Everest if he'd been given the opportunity because he would have passed it on to somebody else to give the opportunity to. He was that sort of guy. And he wasn't out there just grabbing it for himself. But I think that was probably always there in the background.
00:08:52
Speaker
early family life and the way that I suppose that affects me when we're talking about our dads is it made me realise that you should take opportunities when they present themselves. And that's probably something that I've done in my life differently than maybe what my father had done.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would feel like I'm actually would say something similar for me. And I think that, you know, with my father, with his relationship with mountaineering and climbing, you know, I think that, you know, he
00:09:26
Speaker
He always reminisced very fondly on the years where he was able to climb in Mountaineer a lot, but then once he had a family, it was just financially and logistically really difficult for him to continue that path.
00:09:42
Speaker
You know, I just suppose that some part of his regret filtered into me wanting to You know, it's probably a pretty normal thing. You see this all the time in sports, right? He never pressured me by any means but I definitely think that it affected My passion for mountaineering and climbing and being like, okay, like, you know, he didn't he wished he had done more of this that's something I'm gonna learn from and I'm gonna make sure I don't
00:10:09
Speaker
make that, I don't know, mistake is maybe too strong of a word, but have that regret maybe. And I sense that in your well-written book. And so I thought that that was interesting because we also kind of came as I was kind of talking about like,
00:10:26
Speaker
we came up both in a similar way that we're both really passionate about climbing. We both came into climbing from a young age, so our fathers. And we both found guiding at a relatively young age. And we found mentors who were mountain guides who exposed us to things.
00:10:46
Speaker
And, uh, you know, talk to me a little bit and you wrote about it in your book really well, but I would like to hear from you in this context, how guiding kind of shaped your climbing and your, I don't know, even survival or survivability as a climber. And I know this is something we've talked about with Barry and other conversations as well, one on one, but I'd like to hear more about that.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yes, well, following on from your question before about where I came from as a young mountaineer after being exposed to the outdoors, I got into mountaineering in New Zealand and rock climbing was kind of just beginning at that stage. I mean, do you remember EVs? Yeah, really old rock shoes made of solid rubber that kind of slipped on everything.
00:11:33
Speaker
We were very lucky to have British climber John Allen come over to New Zealand and lived in Christchurch where I was living at the time and introduced a bunch of us to more high-end rock climbing and then people like Tobin Sorensen turned up when we were getting into the alpine. But our mindset was formulated by, I suppose, the British background of Mountain Magazine and
00:12:01
Speaker
that was our access to what was going on in the rest of the world of mountaineering. And so I was climbing Mount Cook when I was 17 and then went on to basically just commit myself to climbing. And I was really interested in getting into the greater ranges. I would be in Australia in the summers rock climbing at Mount Arapalese and
00:12:30
Speaker
in my early 20s, just sort of starting to think about getting further around the world. I went to America for a couple of years living at Lake Tahoe and climbing in Yosemite. My first wall climb with a buddy was a two day ascent of El Cap back in 1982.
00:12:50
Speaker
by the nose and then we went into the salifae and it was like, oh yep, this is good. Being onto rock was amazing. The reason we did the nose quickly is because we only had three cams and 20 carabiners and a set of hexes minus 10.
00:13:09
Speaker
So we didn't really have time to stop around for a year. Yeah, but you could also say with only three cams and hexes that that would really slow a person down.
Evolution of Guiding and Safety
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, now people go up there with, I don't know, like 30 or 40 cams, and they take more than two days most of the time. So it's really impressive. I don't think people understand the context of what climbing was like in 1982. I mean, even just what harnesses were like and what ropes were like.
00:13:36
Speaker
you know, what the carabiners were like, it's just not nothing that we have now worked nearly as well. As it, you know, as it back then, things just didn't work. I mean, you're probably belaying with a stitch plate or something, you know, you know, just just totally different. Yeah, yeah, totally different and very rudimentary and Fira rock shoes, which certainly don't fit a Kiwi foot. And so on, but
00:14:05
Speaker
So then, you know, I was back climbing New Zealand and, you know, started to solo some reasonable sort of climbs and there's alpine climbing there. And then I'd come back from from the US and got into pally ski guiding initially. I'd actually resisted getting into mountain guiding because I saw a lot of friends get into guiding, give up their own personal climbing. And I was aware that I didn't want to do that.
00:14:34
Speaker
still very focused on my own climbing, but I kind of got into it through heli ski guiding and then started to do my qualifications and over a few years became an IFMGA guide. And when I went into that, I was talking to friends saying, well, I don't know, getting into this guiding stuff, whether I'll learn very much. And I was very taken aback.
00:15:01
Speaker
by recognizing how little I actually knew as an amateur climber, even a strong amateur climber. I see that being an amateur climber, a good amateur climber is being an expert in the art of selfishness. And what I mean by that is that you look after yourself and your climbing partner looks after themselves. And if you have to, you help each other, but you're actually both in equal footing and you're doing your very best to get up and climb. And that independence is really, really important for both of you.
00:15:31
Speaker
achieve that and then you come together for those parts where you're helping each other. But what I recognised when I got into guiding was having to make rational decisions about the wellbeing of the people that I'm taking and making decisions that I can reflect on later and go, yes, that was right, it seemed to make for this particular situation scenario.
00:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, you wrote a really nice passage I want to read quickly. You wrote, even though I was virtually destitute, I was cognizant that I was drinking deeply from the vessel of life, aware that the mountains were constantly changing and moving with every temperature shift or wind change.
00:16:08
Speaker
I learned that decision making had to be fluid and in keeping with the moment in an arena where the slightest complacency could lead to bad outcomes, I knew intuitively that it was imperative to retain the highest degree of vigilance. My guiding gave me a platform from which to extend myself.
00:16:25
Speaker
And then you talked about going on an expedition to, I think, one of the most beautiful mountains in the world, Uli Biaho, which I've always just loved, that mountain. And I think those of us that know you in the community, especially from Guiding, frankly, I didn't know that you'd been to Uli Biaho. I didn't know that you'd climbed that incredible mountain.
00:16:54
Speaker
hardly is, I don't know how many ascents that thing has had, but a handful, three, four in all of history, right? So like a really rare thing. So it's really, I think, interesting. And today there is certainly far more information available to amateur climbers in terms of what's safe. And I mean, there's all kinds of books and Instagram videos and everything else about how to build safe anchors or
00:17:24
Speaker
all the things.
00:17:26
Speaker
that go into making climbing decisions. But one of the things that I've really enjoyed, one of the things about guiding that I think really augmented my climbing was the structure of the guide training I went through in the US in the 90s was, how do I say this? It was such that it was set up as a learning opportunity and a refinement and it was not
00:17:55
Speaker
so much of like, Hey, we're going to teach you this thing and this is all there is to know. It's just like, it was more about, Hey, these situations are extremely dynamic. These are the tools. These are sort of the, where you shift from this tool to that tool, but it's not a hard black and white line. It's a, it's a gray zone and you know what some people will short rope. Other people may need to pitch. And of course it's going to depend on other factors like conditions or your gear or the weight difference or the
00:18:25
Speaker
between the client and the guide are all kinds of other factors. Right. And so, um, that gave me like a really good framework for which to sort of analyze and problem solve in my own climbing within the context of, you know, staying, staying safe, which is, you know, a relative term, of course, in the mountains. But yeah, that's interesting that you say that. And if I can ask you a question, so did you think that in your mountaineering and your high altitude mountaineering that, that, uh,
00:18:54
Speaker
Process of mindset, I guess that you're talking about held you in good stead for what you achieve Absolutely did.
Balancing Guiding with Personal Climbing
00:19:01
Speaker
Absolutely didn't I had a similar experience with you in that I Didn't know for sure that I wanted to become a mountain guide and I went into it, you know kind of
00:19:16
Speaker
I was on a part-time basis as a summer job, basically. I had a really great mentor immediately and a guy named Matt Culberson, who is still around in the climbing community in the Utah area. Matt told me something that was really important and left a huge impression on me, which was to keep my guiding and my climbing separate.
00:19:43
Speaker
That was something that was really, I took to heart and I think that also helped me a lot in developing both as a climber and a guide. The guiding was one thing and as you were saying, the focus isn't on you. It's on the guests and helping them. Your focus is outward always and with climbing, as you say, it's like
00:20:09
Speaker
The focus is inwards. It's on like, what can I do? How can I evolve? How can I challenge myself in a new way? Those kinds of things. But there are obviously many parallels and share a lot of the same terrain and features and aspects. And for me, going to high altitude a bunch of times as a mountain guide gave me a lot of the confidence to do that in my personal climb and be like, yeah, I've been to 6,000 meters. I don't know.
00:20:33
Speaker
20 times. I'm not going to, I'm going to be fine when I go up there. It's going to be slow. You know, you know what to expect, right? Whereas, so I think that there was a good intersection of the two for me personally. Absolutely. And I, I think, you know, you and I both agree that, uh, in some ways it might've saved our lives becoming a mountain guard. I certainly feel that the pathway that I was on, and I think you and others are really, um,
00:21:00
Speaker
you know, making statements about this and bring this before is that, you know, how far do you go as a mountaineer before something happens? And, you know, what's the, you know, how do we avoid this occurring so frequently in our community of, you know, of losing people, you know, through the, if you like, the competition with mountaineering or the drive or whatever it is that
00:21:27
Speaker
that is what gets us out there doing harder and harder things. And I recognize that at one point that by following a guiding pathway, I could still get my mountaineering satisfaction, especially once I got into high altitude guiding, where there were very, very different challenges from, say, guiding at lower altitudes that kind of fulfilled me in a way that
00:21:56
Speaker
fill that gap that I might have otherwise had by pursuing more and more difficult technical objectives. And whilst I don't aspire anymore to go and climb as hard as I wanted to at one stage, I still want to go away and do trips of my own, but I think I can reflect on what I've learned from guiding to understand how to keep that on the right side of the
00:22:24
Speaker
or relatively correct side of the safety barrier. And I think I was very lucky because I came in an era when high altitude guiding was just starting. We were right at the fore of it. We were learning as we went. And obviously 96 was a very big learning opportunity as tragic as it was. And what I saw there was a whole guiding community, high altitude guiding community, all of a sudden, you know, grow up.
00:22:53
Speaker
we all were involved in the events, whether it was our team or somebody else's team that was there. But we all realized that we had to come together and help each other on the mountain. And on the whole, certainly with a lot of the operators, we connect with their slight competitions over when you get to the mountain and then you're kind of helping each other out where you can. And that's one of the things I've
00:23:19
Speaker
I love about guiding and mountaineering in general is that feeling of community and sharing the challenge if you happen to be on the mouse with other people. And now that things are a little bit more crowded, as far as more operators coming in from all over the world and different nationalities involved, it does appear that it might have gone back to a little bit of
00:23:46
Speaker
being competitive to try and get a point of difference. But that's not a game I really like to play and even though others are playing it, you know, my passion was still to be in the mountains, take people into the mountains and have a good time. I mean, really, at the end of the day, what are you doing it for? It's for personal growth, it's for enjoyment, it's for challenge, satisfaction. And as soon as that
00:24:12
Speaker
is lost. To me, there's no point in doing it. It's not just about standing on the summit like a lot of people think it is. Yeah. One thing that struck me when reading your book is you mentioned that on the first time you climbed Mount Everest in 1992, I believe, you didn't have harnesses on. There were no fixed ropes above the Geneva Spur, I assume. That's obviously changed tremendously.
00:24:43
Speaker
You know, is there some part of that that you I don't know if this is the right word. Is there some part of that those days that you wish would come back that you could, you know, I don't know if you romanticize these things, if that's the right word. But what aspect if you could if you could bring back certain parts of that pre 96 era on Everest, would there be something that you would would reinstall?
00:25:11
Speaker
On Everest, not really. Apart from the numbers of people, really, I think a lot of what has transpired over the years, fixed ropes on Everest and Sherpa support, being stronger and so on, so on, I think was part of a natural progression. It's better management than what they used to be around. As you know, and as you always focused on your own climbing career, there are thousands of other mountains and routes out there with nobody on them.
00:25:39
Speaker
if that's actually what you want, then you can go there and do that. But I think, as Reinhold Messner put it, Everest has now just hailed true tourism and to a degree, that's what it is and it's been managed. But I see that as being part of the positive. When we first were there in the early 90s, the Sherpas that we worked with
00:26:04
Speaker
were really there just to try and make some money. They weren't really focused on mountaineering and I've personally been really involved in trying to evolve that. And now I look around and I see these professionals in the mountains getting well compensated for what they do and getting recognised for what they do. And I've always admired them for their strength and
00:26:28
Speaker
to be working alongside them in the mountains, but to actually then have that structure, management structure, whether it's a Western leader or a Nepalese leader or whatever, working in with professionals at every level, in every role on the mountain with proper fixed ropes, proper anchors, and good comms, good rescue systems and so on. I see it as
00:26:54
Speaker
is something that is an evolution and a natural evolution. People want to climb Everest. If people want to climb Everest away from the crowds, well, there's still plenty of routes to go and do. I don't think anyone's climbed the West Ridge for many, many years. If you want that, please go and do it. So, you know, I think there's not really much that I look back at and say,
00:27:23
Speaker
I wish it was like those days because I've been really happy to see the improvements that are going on. There's still a long way to go in some areas, but I think over time we might get there.
00:27:37
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. I've really appreciated, you know, your perspective on, on Everest over the years, because you have been there, I don't know, as long or longer than probably anyone else guiding on that mountain. And you've seen everything from let's say 1992, where you're up there with, with clients, but there, you don't, you know, there's no harnesses, there's no fixed ropes, you know,
00:28:03
Speaker
to what the way it is today. And I've never been there, obviously. So I can't say exactly what that's like. And I agree with you that this is a progression that's very natural. It's very human. And at the same time, I think it's important. And this is why I think your book is so important. I think it is important. And we do have a responsibility as people who have
00:28:33
Speaker
survived this long in our careers in the mountains, if I may be blunt, to remind people of the history and where this has come from. And that this moment in 2024 is
00:28:49
Speaker
again, just another moment. It's not the apogee. It's going to continue to evolve and to change.
Everest as a Tourist Destination
00:28:56
Speaker
And that's also normal and natural as, you know, people are always going to climb Everest because it's the highest mountain in the world. And why shouldn't they? And, you know, the work you do supports people. The work that I possibly do does support a lot of people to fulfill those dreams. And as you said, people have different motivations. Some it's personal development, some it's personal challenge. Someone to get famous. Some don't care about that at all.
00:29:19
Speaker
and everything in between. And then, of course, there's always the multitude of mountains beyond Everest that offer unlimited opportunity for expression of whatever that is people want to express out there. And so I think that it's really important for people to hear these stories. And in your book, obviously, I think as everyone expected, you do recount your version of
00:29:49
Speaker
In your your experience with the 1996 tragedy You were obviously in base camp when all that was was sort of going down on the upper mountain that fateful Night and day and were instrumental in organizing a lot of the rescue efforts that followed and You know now we're almost 20 years on Her I mean no, sorry almost is it
00:30:18
Speaker
almost 30? Wow, almost 30 years on. Wow, that doesn't seem like that long ago. I'm getting old, almost 30 years on from that. And, you know, we haven't had probably another tragedy quite like that, though it does feel like things are arcing a little bit more in that direction recently. Is that just my perception or is that
00:30:43
Speaker
as an outsider, or what's your perspective? I think you're absolutely correct there, Steve, as far as that specific type of event. I mean, obviously the 2014 Avalanche, which unfortunately took 16, Sherpa was the most dramatic. And then the earthquake in Avalanche and the base camp in 2015, somewhere between 18 and 22 lives were lost.
00:31:13
Speaker
as far as an event high on the mountain, 96 still stands out. And I think the reason that it stands out is because that was at the very outset of the internet being available, I mean, around the world and also at base camp. And so satellite communications was new prior to that. Any of these big events that ever happened, there was a time lag before they ever got reported.
00:31:48
Speaker
out. So 96 was dramatic in that respect. I think what you're referring to with what's happened now, like there was something like 18 people died on Everest last year and 10 or 11 of them were completely avoidable.
Modern Challenges on Everest
00:32:06
Speaker
And what we're seeing is, I suppose it's a reflection of the modern age. You've got some
00:32:15
Speaker
people out there telling everybody to go hard, give it everything you've got, never give up. So some people are taking that literally, even though they don't have the experience to know when they should give up or when they've actually drained their own tank and that they're exposed to it and what it takes to get down off a mountain and how difficult that is. So that's happening at the same time as you're getting a lot of, especially Nepalese operators,
00:32:45
Speaker
doing the one-to-one guiding up on Mount Everest where a person has a personal sherpa, they get up high on Mount Everest on Summit Day, they might make it in Summit, they might not be in their resources, they fall over, the sherpa's looking after them, can't rescue them by themselves and so they get left behind. And that happened like 10 or 11 times this last season on Everest.
00:33:12
Speaker
which is very different from the approach of climbing with a team where you have the strength of a team and you care somebody's having issues then you can as a team you can resolve that issue and we build in strategies into our approach for our summit days to deal specifically with that. So you know you've got a combination of things going on there which is a lot of it is about how to
00:33:40
Speaker
sell tickets on your Everest expedition. You make it cheap and you make it sound attractive and it looks like good weather in the brochure until things go wrong. People who are very experienced in the mountains, who have never had that day where they've had to dig deep just to get themselves back from the mountain or known when to turn around
00:34:05
Speaker
this summit focused and when they get to the summit, they say to the guides or the Sherpas or whatever, stuff get me down. It just doesn't work like that. And I think there needs to be more education for people about what is required to go on to one of those expeditions. And unfortunately, and fortunately, Everest is so accessible these days that anybody can join without actually having the experience in the background to actually
00:34:35
Speaker
be able to look after themselves in that environment. They kind of get sold this idea that you don't need any experience, you just come along and you'll get looked after, which I've always thought is completely wrong. My approach is that everybody who's there should be a mountaineer. They should have done the requisite steps to gain the skills and the experience so that when they get to Everest, they can really appreciate it. They've earned it for themselves. It's not just something they've bought off the shelf.
00:35:05
Speaker
I'm just going to read one short sentence that you wrote in the book which calls out this idea really well. It says, you wrote, when properly prepared, a climber's response to challenges will become instinctive, particularly when poised on the extreme edge of their physical capacity to survive.
00:35:26
Speaker
I mean, that just kind of in a nutshell sums it up, right? Like that's what becoming a mountaineer is, is finding what those edge of physical capacities to survive are like and where they are for you and how
00:35:43
Speaker
Altitude affects you as an individual because we're all a little different in our responses and so on and so forth. When you coach someone, if we're talking and I say guy, I've done some mountaineering and I control you and I'm ready to tackle Everest and I need to select a team, a selected guide, select an outfitter. What do you tell people?
00:36:13
Speaker
Well, it really depends on what their prerequisites are. If somebody had climbed to a U in good style, then I would certainly be wanting to welcome them onto one of our teams. But we're also seeing people who haven't had the opportunity to go to very, very high altitude, but based upon what their duration of the world
00:36:41
Speaker
length of time they've been going into the mountains, what climbing that they've managed to do, what level of climbing they've achieved. We make assessments. We're often talking to guides who have worked with climbers to get feedback on how they've been because it's not just about their climbing ability. It's also for us, it's actually about their ability to operate in a team.
00:37:08
Speaker
And we want to work with people who are going to be nice to be around for a couple of months. I mean, you've got to realise that we're putting people under the most stressful environment that they've ever been in their whole lives. And if they've not been exposed to that before, they may not recognise that a lot of their insecurities or fears or whatever might come out and they might not be a great team member.
00:37:34
Speaker
And again, coming back to my reasons for wanting to be in the mountains, which is to be with people, share an experience, you know, have a great time, obviously, you know, come home. You know, those are all part of the factor. It's not just about climbing ability.
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's so interesting to hear your perspective on this because you have been doing this so long.
Selecting the Right Climbers
00:38:03
Speaker
And one of the things that I've observed whenever I talk to guides that have been in this as long as you and I have
00:38:13
Speaker
we pretty much all come to the same conclusion. I really have yet to meet anyone who's been doing this for the amount of time that you have or I'm not as long as don't have the years that you do in it and I've never guided on Everest or at extreme altitudes like you have. But the conclusions like these kind of
00:38:40
Speaker
prerequisites you look for and people are ultimately the same. Because one of the things when I talk to people about, you know, we sometimes get people who come to us for the physical training, the physical preparation, and they don't sometimes know yet who they're going to climb with.
00:39:00
Speaker
And I always encourage people to focus on their relationships and, you know, just to find a company, whether it's a Sherpa or a West based outfitter or a West, quote unquote, Western outfitter that they develop a relationship with the guides there and who they're going to be climbing with. And they don't. And I think once you kind of put it to them like that, like, yeah, you don't want to just be a random assignment to some
00:39:29
Speaker
person that you've never met before on the day you're going to go to the highest point in the world. That may work out okay, but if the chips are down, you want somebody there who is invested in you as a human and as a friend and as a peer and will be there for you when you may need them.
00:39:50
Speaker
that all kind of factors into this. And you guys at Adventure Consultants have certainly kind of made a reputation for yourselves of taking this approach with your teams over the year, I mean, for decades now, and you're well known for that. And I always really appreciate that and always feel comfortable sending people your way and introduce, they might not be the right fit, right? You may talk to these people and be like, nah,
00:40:20
Speaker
we would like you to come and, you know, I don't know, do another trip with us. So we get to know you a bit first. And not everybody's willing to do that. Some people have this like imposed timeline as we both know. And, you know, there's other people that will take, pick them on that timeline and that's okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There is. I mean, it's okay. Uh, unless you meet them on the mountain and have to rescue me and then have to
00:40:47
Speaker
be involved in assisting them when things fall apart and the operator that they've gone with doesn't have the backup to support them. But that's part of it. But we're talking about maybe some of the challenges there, but I'd also like to really point out that I've met some of the most amazing people in the world on these expeditions. And that's one of the joys I get out of being a guide is meeting
00:41:14
Speaker
people from different walks of life and some really, really incredible people that have become great friends. We're sometimes probably guilty of maybe not being able to carry on some of those relationships as much as we'd like to because we're off on another trip with a new group of guests and off on another continent or whatever and hardly even have time to reflect on
00:41:43
Speaker
what was a person's trip of a lifetime for them, but yet it was just part of the pathway for us. And I think that's something that I've tried to balance out in my guiding is to try and just measure that and pig it back a little bit so that, you know, I can still continue some of those relationships. And it also enjoyed the process of guiding because it was super satisfying to get a group of people, bring them together,
00:42:11
Speaker
and have a lot of fun and get up the mountain in the best style possible and then all go back home friends. And that is really what we're trying to achieve on every expedition and trek that we run. And I'd say that most of the time we're really successful at that. And that's what keeps us in the game because there are a lot of challenges to being a guide. There's a lot of, like I mentioned, a lot of people are under a lot of pressure and so on.
00:42:40
Speaker
uh, you know, people don't always, uh, perform the way that they would hope that they do or have an idea of their minds. And you know, there, there, there are challenges for sure. Uh, but what I like about it is you learn a lot about yourself in these situations. You learn a lot about yourself in the mountains in general. I always say that it's like holding up a mirror up to yourself where you get to see all of your strengths and all of your weaknesses and you can
00:43:07
Speaker
then just be rational about
Self-Awareness and Personal Growth
00:43:09
Speaker
it. Yes, those are my strengths. Oh, these are the areas I've still got to work on. So I'll work on those. And if you're open to evolving as a person and learning, and then I think the fact that we've gone through all of these challenges, we learn how we perform when faced with challenge. So we learn a lot about ourselves that maybe a lot of other people who don't test themselves never learn.
00:43:36
Speaker
about themselves. I think that's one of the great things about mountaineering in general. Yeah, that's so interesting. As you're talking, my mind was going in a hundred different directions, but if you think about some of these incredible people that you've been able to climb with over the years,
00:44:00
Speaker
And you think back on that, well, first of all, I think I have to ask this question. Part of me personally doesn't want to, but how many times have you climbed Mount Everest now at this point? And how many times have you climbed the seven summits? It must have been a couple of times for all of these. Well, I've climbed Everest five times. I've had a couple of other times where I've turned back once just a place of the Hillary step that was actually in 95, which I write about in my book.
00:44:31
Speaker
I've turned back a couple of hundred metres from the summit one other time to bring somebody else down again. I've done seven of the 8,000 metre peaks. I've done some of the seven summits multiple times. I wouldn't have no idea how many times, maybe 15. I'm not really somebody who counts too much with the numbers and I'm not chasing the numbers, but I've been on
00:44:59
Speaker
a couple of expeditions every year for probably about 25 of the last 30 years, and sometimes more. Back in 97, I did 3,000-8,000-meter peaks in a year and just about four, and that was back when it was very unusual to do that sort of thing. Steve, you have mentioned quite a few times that I've been doing this a very, very long time,
00:45:29
Speaker
I still don't feel that old yet. I still feel like I've got a lot of life ahead of me. And whilst a lot of it won't focus on lots of 8,000 metre peaks in the future, I'm still excited about opportunities in the mountains and what mountains have to offer. And there are still a lot on my bucket list, if you like, that I would like to do, for example, being
00:45:55
Speaker
skiing in various parts of the world and ski touring and moulding catch rock climbing and so on. But through all of that, it's still just again having that love of being in the mountains.
00:46:09
Speaker
that provides us. Yeah, and please don't take my emphasis on the decades of your experience as a, you know, as a slight in any way. You know, I think that both you and I have probably talked, used to speaking with people who are new to mountaineering, both as guides and, you know, without pilasti, you know, talking to people who have maybe even not yet taken a mountaineering course, let alone
00:46:35
Speaker
you know, climb 70,000 meter peaks and Everest five times and all these other things that you've done in your career. So I think it's all relative. And I think one of the things that I love about the perspective of a lot of mountain guides that I know that especially those that are also climbers in their own right is that, you know, they have this
00:46:59
Speaker
kind of perspective like what you just expressed where you know you're just at a point in your journey and this is by no means just the end you still have as you say a lot of life left you have a lot of things a lot of routes you'd like to climb a lot of ski tours you'd like to do and you know i think as guides one of the things that i see i've seen time and time again is you know the the sort of heroism of
00:47:27
Speaker
the average climber. And I feel like one of the things that I was always really uncomfortable with in my career as a professional alpinist was that my achievements were somehow better than others. Yeah, my achievements were maybe more extreme and accepted. But I don't think that they were really any different for me than someone else who was
00:47:53
Speaker
not dedicated their entire life and structured their entire life for a couple of decades around this one narrow pursuit. That allowed me to kind of go really far in this one really narrow pursuit, but there's other people who had a
00:48:10
Speaker
Arguably much richer lives with careers and families and who knows what all other possible things are so much richness in life to experience so many things but Experience and then they may have gone, you know in a completely other
00:48:26
Speaker
other direction and just had an incredible experience. Maybe it's climbing Everest, maybe it's Amadablam or any one of a number of other mountains and what they experienced, what they learned in that process wasn't necessarily for me any better or worse.
00:48:44
Speaker
than what i experienced and vice versa and i think that that gives us this perspective on our on our climbing careers as it as it were maybe that's not the right term for this context but our our trajectory our our you know our wherever we are in our in our relationship with the mountains at any given time and allowing that to
00:49:05
Speaker
Kind of change and be different and i know for me like you know i mean i'm in a place where i like i enjoy easy safe climbing and you know skiing on days when the conditions are good like the other day i turned around because it was like really windy and cold and the scheme wasn't that good i was just like you know what
00:49:25
Speaker
like after an hour I was like you know what I you know I can like exist out here and keep going and like accomplish the tour but I actually don't want to experience today like that I've done this and I'd actually like if given the choice I would rather like go home make a good lunch
00:49:44
Speaker
take a nap and go to the sauna in the evening. And that's what we did. And it was great. It was a perfect Saturday. This is just literally three days ago. And we have that awareness of ourselves. And we can say, yeah, this is what I want to experience today. And we don't have to push it through. And I like to try to share that perspective with people I see out there, whether it's as a guide or whatever, where they may be like, no, this is the one day I have
00:50:13
Speaker
If that's the one day you have and you have to go and accomplish that tour, that's one thing, but just understand that there are other days, there are other potential experiences. Absolutely. I think you've obviously had a stellar career and I think at the time for you when you were climbing at your peak, you were doing what felt good to you at the time and what you wanted to achieve and you're looking at the benchmark
00:50:43
Speaker
was one of the things I felt in my earlier years as a climber is not to think about what today's standards are, but to think about what the standards have given me in five years' time and kind of use that as your benchmark because it's just about mindset. That is an interesting place to go. I'm not sure we don't have time to delve deeply into that at the moment, but
00:51:07
Speaker
I think it's the same. We can apply that to other things in our lives as well. And I think that is probably the benefit you've got from where you've gone. You know you've been there. You know you could do it. So you don't need to prove that to yourself anymore. And I don't think you can actually achieve anything really at the highest level unless you're actually passionate about it yourself and that there's something in it for you. It's not just about
00:51:32
Speaker
what other people might think about or might just not just be about because it's harder than what other people have done. It's actually what it does for you. And that's why we have pushed ourselves in various ways to achieve what we have. Long may people want to do that. I mean, it's part of being human is that evolution.
00:51:56
Speaker
Yeah, and you wrote about that in your book really well. And I think that I read a little bit about this. You wrote that you were drinking deeply from the vessel of life, and it's a nice
00:52:11
Speaker
visual and I think especially a lot of people have this feeling when they're young and then they somehow often give up on that for a few years because they're starting a family or a career and then they come back and we often interface with them when they're 40 or 50 or 60 and they're like, well, yeah, I still
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:52:29
Speaker
have that. I still want to keep drinking from that, that vessel of life. And, uh, you know, and I have a different mindset now.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yes, and I have in mind tempering it. I go skiing with my son over here and he's pulling backflips of cliffs. I don't feel that I need to do that. Isn't it nice to feel that way? But great to see the youth expressing itself in a way that is very impressive to watch.
00:53:04
Speaker
Guy, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your decades of experience and earned wisdom with us. And where can our listeners find you if they want to learn more about adventure consultants or, you know, all the usual socials and websites and things, I suppose. And where can we find your book? Is it available as an ebook or what are the options there? I'd love to point people in the right direction.
00:53:31
Speaker
Okay, well, thanks for the opportunity, Steve. Yes, you can find us at ventureconsultants.com through the usual socials. Looking around for us, easy to find. And also getting a hold of my book. It's only published in New Zealand at the moment. I'm going to be working on an audio book this year and hopefully an e-book as well once I get home. And maybe
00:53:58
Speaker
might even find a way to get it published in the US and UK too, if possible. I'm sure, yeah. It's a really great read. If you really are desperate to get a hold of a copy, you can always contact us, info at adventure.co.nz, and we can organize to send you one from New Zealand. So it's a possibility as well. I just want to say thanks, Steve. It's a pleasure and honor to
00:54:28
Speaker
talk to you. You know, it was looked on at your pathway and the pathway of some of the friends you mentioned like Barry and Barry Blanchard and Co who, you know, are people who have been exponents of the sport of the industry for a long time and have got a mature head and a great approach. So David was talking to you. Thanks so much. Yeah. And next time I promise I'm going to bring up the
00:54:57
Speaker
2002, I think it was the, uh, butane stove and an oxygen cylinder, perhaps. I think that's, uh, that's the experience. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll keep people hanging. Thanks so much guy. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks for joining us guy. It's not just one, but a community together. We are a Pell athlete. Thanks for listening.