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The Life Between Climbs with Scott Backes
0 Playsin 5 days
Steve sits down with longtime climbing partner Scott Backes for a conversation that moves far beyond typical adventure storytelling. Scott traces his path from rebellious Minnesota teenager to respected amateur alpinist, describing his 1980 baptism in the Canadian Rockies—soloing the West Shoulder Direct on Andromeda, climbing new routes on Mount Temple, and surviving desperate bivouacs on Kitchener's North Face. Rather than move west like most ambitious climbers, he deliberately stayed in Minneapolis, unwilling to surrender his identity to climbing's tribal pressures.
The conversation takes an unflinching turn when Scott discusses growing up with a narcissistic father whose contempt taught him to hate himself. He credits climbing's hero's journey—and discovering he could trust and love his partners—with his path toward self-acceptance. This leads to what he considers his greatest contribution: normalizing emotional vulnerability among male alpinists. He was the first man outside Steve's family to tell him "I love you," helping transform the culture of their tight-knit circle.
Both reflect on the challenge of returning from transcendent mountain experiences to ordinary life, and on their 2000 ascent of the Slovak Direct on Denali. Steve recalls a pivotal granite pitch climbed in darkness where he felt, for the first time, genuinely connected to others in something "almost religious." When asked how he wants to be remembered, Scott's answer is direct: as the person who brought the word love to hard-ass alpinists, and as an imperfect person who tried to understand himself.
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Transcript
Alyssa Clark's Departure
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. Before we get started today, I want to take a moment to thank Alyssa Clark. As many of you know, for the last three years, Alyssa has been the face and voice of the Uphill Athlete Podcast.
00:00:16
Speaker
Alyssa is stepping away from the mic to focus on her professional running career, which has been on an incredible track lately, no pun intended. And I just want you to join me in thanking her for the warmth, the deep connections she brought to the mountain athlete community, and all of the ideas and passions she brought to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. We wish her fast splits, strong legs, and a tailwind wherever she runs. So thank you, Alyssa, and happy trails.
Steve House Takes the Helm
00:00:48
Speaker
And now you're stuck with me. My name is Steve House, and I'm the founder of Uphill Athlete. And we are going to continue to build on what the Uphill Athlete Podcast has always been, which is a source for proven training knowledge.
00:01:03
Speaker
And those of you that know me know that we'll continue to dig into the art of training and coaching for endurance sports. And we're gonna go deep into all the rabbit holes around the science of how to train endurance sports.
00:01:20
Speaker
trail running, mountaineering, alpinism, skiing, and all these mountain sports that we love so well. So I hope you're excited. 2026 is going to be ah a brand new year with a brand new evolution of the Uppetal Athlete Podcast. And today's episode is, although it's December 2025, a great place to start.
Friendship and Climbing with Scott Mackeys
00:01:42
Speaker
Scott, Mackeys, and I are going to talk about our friendship, our climbing, history together, but it's really important to understand that Scott is one of these climbers who had a career, had a family, he climbed part-time as an amateur, and he did that at a very high level. We shared storms, we shared heartbreak, we shared summits.
00:02:07
Speaker
We shared a lot of life together and for sure we're going to retell some of these stories and relive some of these memories, I suspect. But more importantly, we're going to talk about how Scott, through his life, managed to keep climbing a part of it, living and raising his family and having his career in the Midwest and climbing with folks like myself Mark Twight and many others. And I'm sure we're also going to get into that interesting, secretive, elusive path that climbing takes that always leads you back to yourself.
00:02:44
Speaker
I hope you enjoy it today. My name is Steve House and this is the Uphill Athlete Podcast.
00:03:01
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four-week sample training plan. Head on over to UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go, and once you sign up, you'll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training
Uphill Athlete Newsletter
00:03:18
Speaker
plans.
00:03:18
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go. UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
00:03:35
Speaker
So to get us started off, Scott, like tell me about the Spark. what What got you started with climbing? How did you how did it find you?
Scott's Early Climbing Experiences
00:03:43
Speaker
So um when I was in high school, i the very first day of high school, um we were supposed to get up and do the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:03:53
Speaker
And ah I didn't get up. The Nam War was going on. This would have been 1972. They hadn't ended the war yet. And i didn't get up and neither did another classmate of mine.
00:04:06
Speaker
And everyone else did. And the teacher who was a shop teacher, so he was, you know, salt of the earth guy, demanded we get up and do the pledge. And we said, we're not going to do it.
00:04:18
Speaker
And they sent us down to the principal's office. And the principal or assistant principal, probably in those days, took us in the office separately, of course, not together, and tried to browbeat us into submission. And both of us said, no, we're not going to do it. You can suspend me. My parents are going to support me on this, you know, and, uh, we became friends cause of that.
00:04:41
Speaker
And then he actually quit high school, uh, after his junior year to go to college. He's, he's a brilliant guy and is to this day, you know, working in water filtration and for a while was in charge of the tar sands cleanup in Canada.
00:04:59
Speaker
So that's the kind of person that he turned out to be. And so, ah I was with a friend of mine going to a grocery store to get some munchies. Cause I don't, I know you know this, but you know, i was a chronic pot smoker for a bunch of parts of my life. And that was definitely one of those parts.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I saw him and he said, uh, you know, we talked and I was like, dude, it's really good to see you. Why aren't you in school? And he was like, Oh, I'm at Carlton.
00:05:26
Speaker
Right. Which, you know, like, you know, Oh, okay. And i don't know how it came about, but he said, uh, have you ever gone rock climbing?
00:05:37
Speaker
And I'm like, and I said, no. And he said, you should come rock climbing with me. And I, I thought we were going to go to this place in Minnesota, Taylor's falls and, you know, go scramble around.
00:05:49
Speaker
And we got there and he had these beautiful ropes, like, you know, one of the early Kermantles that was in the country and we went rock climbing and it scared the hell out of me And the first route that we did a, like a almost no hands section where he to kind of step across and I couldn't do it.
00:06:07
Speaker
And then he set up another climb that was actually harder, but it was continuous climbing and i was able to do it. And then he was packing up to go. and I said, can I try that one again? And I could see in his face, he was like, oh dude, I don't want to go set this up again. i kind of, you know, asked him again he relented and moved the setup back to the first climb and I got to the same spot and I was just as scared, but I stepped across.
00:06:34
Speaker
And I feel like I stepped into a different life. And then like a year went by with me, mostly smoking pot and ah not getting in so much trouble, but becoming really unhappy.
00:06:47
Speaker
And then i ended up finding a group of climbers and started climbing with them. And that's all I wanted to do. And a year later, I went to Devil's Tower for the first time and my first time there, and this would have been 78.
00:07:04
Speaker
I led a 5-9, which in at the time with chalks, you know, with hexes and Tetons, very few of you will remember those and ah stoppers. That's what, that's what I had to lead this 5-9 roof and it, you know, pushed me right to the limit, but I was able to do it without falling.
00:07:22
Speaker
And then a year later, I went to Rainier and I remember the last thousand feet of elevation gain taking like 50 steps and then just throwing myself down in the snow and having my helmet against the snow and just, but but we made it.
00:07:42
Speaker
And classic Mount Rainier memory. Right? Yeah. Got second degree ah sunburn on my face on the way down because I was too fucked up to put on sunscreen.
00:07:54
Speaker
yeah and ah But I made it. And so Like I was like, wow. And then then a year later, this friend said, hey, Kurt and I are going to go to climb Denali. You want to come with?
00:08:07
Speaker
And that winter, he taught me how to ice climb. And I remember my tools were bamboo laminated, zero and north wall.
00:08:18
Speaker
And then I also had a pterodactyl. And ah the first year that I ice climbed, I had soloed. And so it just felt really natural for me to do that. And these were really small ice balls. They were 35 feet tall. Okay.
00:08:35
Speaker
But, you know. And the climbing historians listening will know that a laminated bamboo shaft, chenard equipment, probably hand forged by Yvonne himself because he probably only made, I don't know,
00:08:49
Speaker
50 or 100 of those in a year, maybe. yeah And ah that they were also very problematic because obviously the bamboo would sometimes break. So you had to really watch that, right? I never climbed on one. I only got to. They were they were actually, so they were stronger than the wooden shafted ones. Okay. Yeah. They were stronger than, oh ah and they, cause it's, cause the bamboo has that real fibery.
00:09:11
Speaker
Right. put down And so they didn't shatter. Yeah. They were actually like, I mean, you know, they weren't recurve tools. They were, you know, courses right. But the curve pick had just been invented a few years before that. So yes let alone recurved. Right. And so they climbed beautifully. I mean, for the time, for the time. Yeah.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. And they were 55 centimeters. So they were not short. Yeah. And then we went to ah reni im sorry went to Denali and both my partners, I'm going to just say this out loud, chickened out.
00:09:46
Speaker
yeah One at 16-4 at the balcony, because we climbed the rib. We did not climb the the regular route. yep We got to the balcony and and the guy who asked me to go said he was sick, which, you know. Yeah.
00:10:01
Speaker
We were all feeling the altitude, but he was afraid. And then we got to ah hundred feet below the plateau that leads up to the football field. And my other partner, same thing. Like it's too late. We're, you know, we're taking too long. This is going too slow.
00:10:17
Speaker
and I'm like, the lights forever, dude, we got a stove, you know, we can make this. And no. So we went down, broke my heart.
00:10:29
Speaker
And then we went to, so we went back to Seattle and climbed index and a few other places for a while. And then we were, our, our deal, the three of us was, we were going to go
Canadian Rockies Adventures
00:10:40
Speaker
up to the Rockies Canadian Rockies after that.
00:10:42
Speaker
And they were done. And so we got to Coeur d'Alene and i literally got out of the car with a low pack and a small haul bag and hitchhiked up to Canada.
00:10:56
Speaker
And while I was up there, What year? 80. was uh, the,
00:11:03
Speaker
and so ah the the friend of the guy who taught me how to climb, Dave Austin, the guy who I didn't stand up and say the pledge with, uh, had another friend who was an alpinist who had been up to Alaska a few times and, you know, he climbed, uh, almost all of the Colton Leach on the, uh, rooster's comb. And, you know, he's yeah really, really good climber. It was cutting edge climbing at the time for sure. Yes. Yes. And so by accident, we met up and, ah
00:11:35
Speaker
he and I went and climbed the north vice of Mont Temple. So that was my first alpine climb. Let's do that. But before we did that, he said he had, he was with a woman and he's like, I got a you know, I've got like four days.
00:11:50
Speaker
um And, you know, p prove to me you're really a climber, go up and, you know, solo something. He said, how about the West shoulder direct on Andromeda? So I went up and my first route in the Canadian Rockies was to solo the West shoulder direct on Andromeda.
00:12:05
Speaker
And that was epic at the top, like spent an hour and a half, two hours chopping through corners to get through. ah And then we then I came back down and he and I climbed the north face of Mount Temple by a new route, actually, half the bottom half, the um Dolphin was running with you know raining rocks. And so we climbed rock up to where the low root comes into the dolphin.
00:12:31
Speaker
Did some hard rock climbing pitches. Yeah, nice. Did an unplanned bivy right below the overhanging surat climbing. Checking all the like you know boxes of the the the fire of, you know what is the word I'm looking for, Scott? The fire of like... um ah I want to say not ordination, baptism.
00:12:57
Speaker
Baptism, yeah. Like all the baptisms. The first the first open bivvy, digging through cornices. Have you fallen into a crevasse yet? You're missing that one. man. Long time for me to fall completely in a crevasse. Yeah, it does take a while. more than so And it was actually, i'll I'll fast forward to tell you what it is because it's this beautiful time.
00:13:18
Speaker
Mark and I are on the descent right before we get to the 60 degree face on the west ridge of Mount Hunter. You and Mark Twyatt, yeah. Yeah. And so we're we're cruising down rope together and um I just disappear.
00:13:36
Speaker
And we've been on the go for like 35 hours, 40 hours at this time. And Mark said it was like, you know, the angels came and took you. Like you were just gone.
00:13:51
Speaker
Just instantly. Yeah, and just gone. And I ended up bridging the crevasse only a few feet down and was able to climb right back out.
00:14:02
Speaker
But anyway, so last thing for that Canadian trip, and this is the this is the important piece to this. The first two were really important also. But the second was um climbing the North Face of Kitchener.
00:14:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And so David had to
Climbing Challenges and Growth
00:14:19
Speaker
go back and he hooked me up with a Colorado climber named John Tuckey. And John and I went to climb the North Face Kitchener and we got up to the ice face and it ah did it started snowing a little bit, but but you know all of a sudden there were spin drift and avalanches coming down. And so we ended up down climbing a crevasse, way off to the side so that we could get away from the avalanches.
00:14:49
Speaker
And then we took a day or two off and weather cleared in the beautiful Canadian Rockies way it did not in the 1980s. And we went back up and ah soloed from the bottom up until where the ramp pitches began. So the first two thirds of the route, we just climbed that rope at all.
00:15:09
Speaker
We didn't have harnesses, we had swamis. And he had a Zard ski, which is, i know you know what that is, but a Zard ski is a two man bivy sack that's coated with breather holes for each person on each side.
00:15:23
Speaker
And the bottom is open with a drawstring. So you put it over your head and pull the drawstring tight. And that was it. No stove. We had one liter of water each for the entire route. And i i don't I don't know what food we had, but it was like almost no food.
00:15:38
Speaker
And we were going to do it a day. And it would have been the first time that Kitchener had gotten done in a day. And we got to within like a pitch and a half at the top and it was pitch dark. And we, you know, the pitches were, last two pitches were quite hard. And so we spent the night out again, much colder in the snowstorm. Woke up in the morning, you know, frozen leather, single boots, the whole thing, and climbed those last two pitches and then had to Dolph or Sitz the one rappel into the notch on Kitchener.
00:16:14
Speaker
oof Dolph or Sitz, tell them what it does. Yeah, so Dolph or Sitz is a way to rappel where the rope literally goes over your shoulder and up through your legs and you're using your body as friction.
00:16:25
Speaker
And it was the very first way that anyone, i can't remember Dolphar's first name, I want to say Franz, but I don't think that's right. Hans Delfer. Hans Delfer, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was the guy that invented that. So we got to do that.
00:16:40
Speaker
And i was talking with Mark about this, you know, the last time we hung out. And I said, you know, when I got done with that bivouac and that whole situation in Kitchener where it pushed me past my limits for sure. Like I was so afraid on some of the pitches of the ramp roots, a notoriously bad pro.
00:16:59
Speaker
And if you were lucky, you'd get a slinger on an icicle and a knife blade for like a whole rope length of ah climbing. And ah and so we got done with that. And um instead of saying, I'm never going to do this again.
00:17:18
Speaker
What I said was, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
00:17:23
Speaker
Why did you say that?
00:17:28
Speaker
I can tell you now why I said it. i could It was a different reason you know back then. So the reason back then was that I'd never experienced anything like that in my life.
00:17:40
Speaker
And that I for the you know i felt like after done that.
00:17:46
Speaker
felt like superhu after i'd done that And ah the reason, you know, today that I look at it and, you know, my my loving joke to my past is, you know, it was a meaningful conversation with my dad.
00:18:05
Speaker
and and And equally as important, perhaps more important, was that my personality, my soul required the hero's journey.
00:18:18
Speaker
And not everyone needs that. And not everyone is built for that. And some people think they are and try to, and they can't. And some people that could do it never find the, the, uh, uh, venue for themselves.
00:18:35
Speaker
And, um, and I feel like that's what that was about. so You know, one of the things that, you know, i heard, for example, in the pet podcast I did with Peter Metcalf, you know, he talked about going up to Alaska. I think it was in 1978. And he talked a lot about how they pulled it off, like what they went through just to do the trip. Right. like And you've talked a lot about the climbing, but what did you do to be able to spend the summer in the in the Canadian Rockies as a young man?
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, so what I did was work my ass off at a a warehouse and live with the parents that I didn't like, and ah you know which meant moving back home for that.
00:19:23
Speaker
and ah I hadn't filed taxes for three years. And so I filed the taxes for the three years and they owed me an immense, for me at the time, an immense amount of money.
00:19:35
Speaker
And so that was my first five month climbing trip. So, you know, I left in April and I came back in September.
00:19:45
Speaker
And you know Devil's Tower, the Needles of South Dakota, like I said, the Climbing Index, Baker, Rainier, another time on Rainier, Denali, then up to the Canadian Rockies.
00:19:58
Speaker
o um Where were you the first time you met one of your climbing heroes? Oh, this is a heartbreaking one for me.
00:20:09
Speaker
o i ah was in Minneapolis. And ah Jeff Lowe gave a slideshow. And well, I shouldn't say that. One of my climbing heroes was my friend Dave Austin.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I had lost touch with him. And he was doing a slideshow at our local climbing shop, Midwest Mountaineering, about his climbing Yosemite.
Meeting Climbing Legends
00:20:35
Speaker
And he was an early valley boy. in fact, there's a picture of him in that George Myers book, Walking Slack. And he, that summer, we'd done hollow of Mirrors up to the eighth pitch and he had done the South Seas.
00:20:55
Speaker
And- These are hard aid routes that dar that are very dangerous and don't get climbed very often. Right. And then had done the sixth Ascend of the Shield.
00:21:06
Speaker
and um And something else. I can't remember what it was. But I remember going to that slideshow, and this would have been 78, going to that slideshow and just being like, I couldn't believe it. Like, I couldn't believe those pictures from El Capitan.
00:21:22
Speaker
And Hall of Mirrors, like, being, you know, eight pictures up and looking up a slab with absolutely no holds. It's 511 or 512 rock climbing with the potential of 100-foot fall.
00:21:34
Speaker
In 1978. Yeah. yeah When the top of the climbing grade is 512. Right. Yes. Yeah. right Yeah. So, you know, it was, it was, you know, it was mind blowing. I'll just say for me and gave me something to aspire to. And then after that summer 80, Jeff Lowe came to give a slideshow and I tried to talk to him afterwards and, you know, he was having none of it.
00:22:03
Speaker
And, you know, completely dismissed me. And I just remember feeling ah crushed that he wasn't at all friendly and that he didn't want to hear about the fact that I, you know, soloed one of the roots. Because he was the first one that climbed the West Shoulder Direct and he had done it on-site solo.
00:22:22
Speaker
And so I just wanted to, you know, like have that connection. And, you know, he wasn't having any of it. So that was hard. That is one of the great things about climbing is you do feel that connection with the pioneers when you do these routes. I've also sold the West shoulder drag button and I didn't go through the cornice though. I did the huge traverse.
00:22:45
Speaker
well yeah. Right. Right. But, but nevertheless, like, I mean, one of the reasons I did it is because it's like a Jeff Lowe group, right? That was what it was like. Oh, to the master, like, let's go. Let's go Let's go follow in his footsteps and commune with the master. And that's part of climbing.
00:23:04
Speaker
Ramproot was also his. And the ramproot and kitchener was also his. That's right. Yeah. And that had been just a couple of years before, was it 75 or 78 or something? He climbed that route. So, I mean, these were some of the hardest Alpine routes in the world at that time. i mean, and and Jeff was doing them and you were repeating them just a few years later and he didn't have the time of day for you. Right.
00:23:24
Speaker
um And could I just say, Jeff, please forgive me, wherever you, you know rest in peace. That tracks. Yeah.
00:23:35
Speaker
yeah I think Jeff became very kind and gentle and open in his later years. But when he was younger, he was, that's, that's, that, that was, right that is his reputation. That is how people experienced him. So, yeah, yeah for better or worse. yeah so Yeah. And so, and, and good lesson for me, like, you know, I, I, what I really wanted as a climber in terms of notoriety was the 40 people in the world.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I thought for a while I did, you know, probably till like 82 or something like that. I cared what other people thought and would try and, you know, talk to you know people about that stuff. But after I actually started getting good at it, um I really just wanted to be part of the cadre.
00:24:26
Speaker
and How do you engineer that living in Minneapolis? Did you move west like so many other climbers or? no I ended up, you know, there's only those few places.
00:24:38
Speaker
And so you end up slowly running into those people in those few places. And, you know, the places were Yosemite.
00:24:48
Speaker
Right. and So, you know, I got to hang out with Baccar and Kauk and Ed Berry and Urien and Dimitri Barton and, you know, a bunch of those guys. Right. go masters And I was not into them.
00:25:01
Speaker
they were They were like a locker room group to me. Like there was a hierarchy and it wasn't very free. It was ah kind of the opposite of free at that time.
00:25:12
Speaker
And so that that sort of bummed me out. But then the Rockies, different story, you know winter climbing and alpine climbing. You know, I ran into Barry early on and Peter Erbeck and Ward Robinson ah And then some Americans too, you know, that, that I met up there, Michael Gilbert, you know, my friend, Michael Gilbert, I met up there. A mutual friend, i should say. Yeah.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, you know, it's like those few places that, you know, have that kind of really cool climbing, uh, you, you end up meeting your, your, you know, those people. Cause that's, you know, that's where we congregate.
00:25:51
Speaker
And, um, And then you see, you know, same with Europe, like where I met Mark in Europe in 1989. And, uh,
00:26:01
Speaker
you know, so, but I still, by living where I do and by climbing the way I do, I never was part of the cadre in terms of, um, being friends with a larger group until I was part of the North Face team in 95. Hmm.
00:26:21
Speaker
um And I want to just, For those listeners that aren't familiar, say that Mark is Mark Twyatt, Barry is Barry Blanchard. And they both, you know, Barry has been on this podcast. Mark hopefully will be shortly.
00:26:35
Speaker
And a lot of these these names like Peter Arbic, Ward Robinson, I mean, unless you're a real historian of alpinism, you're not going to know those guys, you know. Kevin Doyle probably would have been another one in that. Yeah, Kevin. Right. right um But ah like these guys were, you know, cutting edge of, you know, they they were close to the top of the sport at that time. You know, granted the sport was only, you know, 2000 people or whatever it was worldwide at that time. But but nevertheless, these roots that they established in and 80s were,
00:27:12
Speaker
you know, are, are still, still hard. The ramp route is still hard. Like the West face, West shoulder didn't get any less steep or any less treacherous or, you know, and the rocks don't fall any less quickly when the, when the sun hits the upper face. So, you know, you got those, those things all still exist. Gravity still, you know, science always wins. Gravity, you know, gravity is still the same. So those guys were real pioneers and doing things with, you know,
00:27:39
Speaker
equipment that is completely different than the equipment now and all other things. So we have to pay homage to them. So I still don't get like, and I think, you know, well, let me just ask you this. Do you, do you remember the first time we met? I'll put you on the spot. I think gathering, wasn't it? Yeah.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Do you remember the first time we were in Canmore together?
00:28:10
Speaker
Was the first time we were in Canwar together when we did M16? Yeah, I'm pretty yeah yeah. That was 1999. And
00:28:20
Speaker
one of the things that I was, i was a regular up there at ah throughout that era. ah you know I was there two, three months out of every year. yeah And then I was climbing with Barry a lot and some of the other, you know Joe Josephson and you know just whoever would would rope up with me basically. And, uh, and then you show up and we go off and do one of the hardest routes in the range. And everybody's like, who is this? Who is this guy? You know, and you've been, but you know, you're on the North face team, you know, with all, you know, the other professional climbers of that era, but you never quite fit that mold. And you never really, like, i would say, i don't know if you hesitated to and to step into that, like,
00:29:09
Speaker
I'm Scott Bacchies and you know, like I'm bad-ass alpinist. Or if you, if you really didn't identify with that in yourself and you wanted to keep something because at that time you also had two, your two young kids, you know, you were that time, what were you? 44, think. 42 and 42. And we did the, the, the we did the s slowva okay so you know My contrast, I was 28.
00:29:41
Speaker
when he eighte yeah So very different eras of life. And, you know, the other, but who else was on the team that time? Well, I mean, it was like probably largely at that time on the Northeast team, people, of the same generation as you are, it was. you know, Kitty Calhoun at that time.
00:29:59
Speaker
i can go through and tell you. It was Lynn Hill. It was Lisa Gennady. Jay Smith. It was Jay Smith. It was Greg Child. It was Alex Lowe. It was Conrad Anchor. Jay Smith. Steve Gerberding. Yep. Steve.
00:30:12
Speaker
And, uh, And for those who don't know what Steve Gerberding is, he would have easily um got the record for El Cap Roots, which he shares with Hans, but he didn't care, whereas Hans did. Right. And Steve had this whole deal of doing the hardest roots in El Cap ah in a continuous push.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah. Not always 24 hours, but always in a continuous push. He and Scott Stowe and... a fuck. I'm sorry. I can't remember the other guy's name, but the three of them would go up on these routes that would take people... you know like Someone like me would take 12 days. Someone that was good at it would take five or six. And they would climb it in 18, 20, 24, 32 hours. Yeah. So he was an amazing guy that was even more reticent than me.
00:31:03
Speaker
and And I guess what I'll say about that is...
00:31:08
Speaker
That's what I was trying to say when all I really wanted to to have was the respect of the 20. m And that it felt to me like ah this isn't exactly superstition, um but it felt like it would be pushing my luck to ah become noted.
00:31:33
Speaker
Or to oversell yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Right. and And so for me, like the whole deal of like, I wanted your respect. I wanted Mark Wilford's respect. I wanted Pete Metcalfe's respect. I wanted Mark's respect. I i wanted Barry's respect. I wanted JoJo's respect. and And I had it.
00:31:53
Speaker
You know, like I have to respect of all those people and some of the French Alpinists because of what Mark and I, those new routes that we had done, you know, the people... The 20 to 40 people in the world, not everyone liked me because I wasn't always that likable, um but they knew who I was and they knew what I did.
00:32:12
Speaker
but But, you know, when you say you're not likable, that's also what makes you likable because you're you're ah you're a guy that says what he thinks. Yeah. and And that's, you know, that's rare, even, you know, maybe even more so today, but
00:32:30
Speaker
So take me, make the connection between guy from Minneapolis and climbing with Gerbeding, who lived in Yosemite, worked all year in Yosemite as a mountain guide and in Yosemite, like knew the ins and outs of Yosemite like the back of his better than the back of his hand, probably. You know, Greg Childs, who had climbed all kinds of new routes in the Karakorum. Alex Lowe, who was just this superhero figure for all of us.
00:32:59
Speaker
and And they were all, one thing they ah one thing they all had in common is they were all put themselves in the place where the thing was happening all the time. Right.
Yosemite and Climbing Culture
00:33:09
Speaker
Mark Twight, another example, you know, Mark was Mark moved himself to Chamonix. Like that's where I got to be if I want do this at the highest level. You never did that. Connect that for me or explain like I want to dig into that.
00:33:20
Speaker
I went out to the Yosemite and was going to move out there and become ah you know, see if I get on the rescue squad. And then I found that the whole thing was this top down, very locker room feel to me with backer being at the top.
00:33:33
Speaker
Sometimes Kauk, you know, him and him. It was before they were arguing. And then there was a hierarchy. and ah And if you, you know, like if they caught you hangdogging on something, they would surround you in camp four and jeer at you. And I really hated that.
00:33:48
Speaker
And then I went to move out to Boulder and i had friends out there. And so I would, you know, i climbed out there a lot. Like I, back in the early 80s, 82 and 83 and 84, I climbed all of the 511s. So all of the really scary ones, Jules Verne, Naked Edge, XM to Outer Space, Love Minus Zero, like a bunch of these routes that um were calling cards. And then I'm also like one of the few people that can say that they let all the 10 pins in the needle is in one. day So I was a, you know, I was a strong rock climber. People don't know me as that because I, you know, come from Minnesota and that was never my focus. I just loved doing it and part of how I got strong for the mountains. But so I went out there and I was hanging out ah and I went to this party and Chris, Skip Gurin and Bob Horan were there.
00:34:42
Speaker
And ah this guy that I was staying with, Clean Dan, who ran a window cleaning business, like the first of the propel down, clean your windows guys, right? Which is a thing now, right? it's That's actually OSHA, you know, rules for doing that, right? So, i but back then it was, you know.
00:35:02
Speaker
Just a guy with rope. Yeah, and so, well, and there were climbers, you know, so they knew how to do it, right? So no one ever got hurt, but, you know, it was, you know, bizarre. And he introduced me to Skip and Bob and ah Dan said, yeah, you know, these guys have been really crushing. You know, they've been really, you know, climbing lot of hard routes for, you know, their first couple times here.
00:35:26
Speaker
And I remember Skip kind of looked at me and he maybe he was nicer. and he's like, oh, really cool. And Bob said, what routes? And clean Dan, I didn't even say anything clean Dan said, Oh, you know, they did Jules Verne and teach you an excellent other space. And they climbed love by zero and the naked edge.
00:35:45
Speaker
And Bob looked at me and then looked away and looked at clean Dan and said, Oh, the old five 11s. And then he turned and walked away.
00:35:58
Speaker
And I was like, i don't want this. Yeah. Like I have a really nice climbing community in Minneapolis and I know what I have to do to be, to keep up with you or Mark, which is impossible nearly, but as close as I can with the, with the engine that I have.
00:36:18
Speaker
And, and i know, and I spend five months a year traveling, climbing. And I, you know, I did that for 20, 25 years. And I love the arts in Minneapolis. Like I'm a music guy, like, and we have one of the best venues in the world for music, which is first Avenue.
00:36:37
Speaker
And i also like art and there's tons of art. There's tons of dance. And there's really great museums here. And I know that, you know, it seems weird, like people that don't know me may seem that, you know, believe that it's impossible that that would be a thing for me, but that's a huge thing for me. Yeah. yeah and And you don't have that in Boulder.
00:36:57
Speaker
And you certainly don't have that Merced. You do now with Red Rocks maybe, but it's yeah maybe bigger acts. It's not like – It is bigger acts. it is not like It's not like what you have in Minneapolis on First Avenue there where you're you're seeing – and and um and but know my calling card to this is always that you know I went to, as you know, college in Olympia, Washington. Right. And I saw Nirvana way but you know years before they published an album in the first – playing in somebody's, you know, apartment at a college party, right? Like, so, so I get that. I mean, they were terrible. They're obviously weren't as, I don't know if you can ever use the word polished with their sound, but, you know, they were, they weren't tight, uh, the way they became later, of course, but it was like, you know, they they, two years later, they were, they, they were on, you know, this big breakouts hit, but,
00:37:49
Speaker
And I just got to say, last night i booked tickets to see The Cure. They're playing outside of Vienna next summer. Right. So I saw them three times at First Avenue. Yeah. In that little venue. Amazing.
Balancing Arts and Climbing
00:38:00
Speaker
And I saw you two there for their very first concert tour.
00:38:04
Speaker
They were too young to be in the bar after they did their set because one of them wasn't even 18. Yeah. And so they had to clear out. They got to walk in, do the show, and then they had to clear out because they weren't in the back door.
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah, right. Literally, because because the one guy, I think the drummer was 17 still. no it's So great. Right. but That's so great. ah and And I'll also say that. um I know both you and Mark, I always felt like my training was chaos and, and to you guys it was.
00:38:39
Speaker
but I'm one of the first people that I know that was a climber that got a pulse monitor, like chest strap and learned about it. yeah And you know, I never had a notebook and I've never, you know, written down any of my training, but I also knew that there were, there were these minimums that I needed to be able to go into the mountains. Hmm. Hmm.
00:39:01
Speaker
And, uh, and so I did that, you know, like I ran with the pulse monitor and, you know, would go out for four hour runs with a camelback so that I could get LSD so that I could teach my body to eat it's fat.
00:39:14
Speaker
ha And, uh, you know, so I did all these weird things and I had all these, um, like Messner, I had all these stone walls and in Minneapolis that I would traverse.
00:39:25
Speaker
ahhuh And some of them were long, some of them were 600 feet. um And, you know, and hard, like, you know, the easiest way that you could do it would be 510. Yeah.
00:39:36
Speaker
And, you know, and so. Zone two training for the fingertips. Yeah. And the other thing that I did was after Kitchener.
00:39:49
Speaker
came home and I'm pretty self-reflective. I think you know that about me. And. ah I was like, what happened? And I'm like, I got away with it.
00:40:01
Speaker
I got away with it on ah Temple. I got away with it on the West shoulder direct and I got away with it on Kitchener especially. And so what do I need?
00:40:12
Speaker
And so the very next year I went to Yosemite and spent four months and climbed El Cap twice and half dome by the direct. That was my first route in the Yosemite was the half was direct on half dome.
00:40:25
Speaker
with my friend Dave Austin. Then he left and then I spent the next month and a half free climbing and, you know, didn't quite get, uh, a bunch of the 11s, but got all of the 10 C's and D's and then was able to do hollow mirrors up to the eighth pitch. So, you know, five 11 D 12 a, whatever it was, uh, cause I was a good face climber and the cracks, you know, took me a little bit longer.
00:40:49
Speaker
And so then the next winter i went up with this friend of mine who was, uh, you know, God rest his soul, uh, who's an alcoholic, but he was a good ice climber.
00:41:00
Speaker
And we spent a month, uh, up in the Canadian Rockies and we were only indoors two nights. So you could stay at the cook shelters in those days for free at and in the winter.
00:41:12
Speaker
And, uh, we climbed, you know, white men's, we climbed Pilsner pillar. We climbed, uh, the beer walls. We were done in, in, um, climate experts choice and alignment waterfall. And then we've been on, I'm sure. Well, the, the final thing was the weeping wall, but I'd already climbed that in 1980, the winter 80, 81, barely with a, with a friend of mine.
00:41:43
Speaker
But this time we got to the base and my friend was really hung over And it was kind of warm and his glasses were fogging up, but he's like, I'm fucking not climbing it. This is shit. I'm not doing it.
00:41:55
Speaker
And so in the winter of 82, 83, or 80, yeah, 82, 83, I soloed the Whipping Wall, which I don't know if it, you know. I don't know if that had been done by that time. And that's pretty early. Maybe, maybe. Maybe someone had done it, but you know, I did.
00:42:17
Speaker
ah Yeah. I've done that. It's scary. Yeah. Even with modern tools. It's like, right yeah, it's it' just, yeah, it's little scary. Yeah. It's your way up, your way off the ground.
00:42:28
Speaker
Right. ah So I guess what I'm saying is that I knew that I needed to have these skills so that a single pitch wouldn't ever defeat me.
00:42:40
Speaker
I didn't mind if the gods came and you know kicked us down the mountain. that that wasn't I knew that that was just the way it was. The alpinism, you know there's stuff that you're not in charge of and you know getting stormed off a mountain or conditioned off a mountain or whatever, you know to me feels really acceptable, like part of the game.
00:43:02
Speaker
But to be the guy up on the lead, not being able to do the lead, ah that wasn't acceptable to me. o And so I got those skills so that when I went back to the mountains, that stuff couldn't couldn't defeat me.
00:43:18
Speaker
Well, and it's not just that. You still owe me a slipstream.
00:43:24
Speaker
Total blank stare. No. Remember going up to the base of slipstream? well Yeah, yeah. With my, with my bad feet from M16. You do, I do, I, I, not slipstream. I owe you a triple crown.
00:43:40
Speaker
Triple crown. That's what we were doing. Oh, that's true. We were doing the, yeah, we were doing the triple crown. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which did get done, you know, Bruno and, and Rolo. But we would, I know we would have done it if my feet weren't fucked. Yeah.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, that was a big season. Yeah. We were good. We were
00:44:03
Speaker
good to be done. Yeah. remember me standing on ropes and knife plates to get across to the trip? Yeah.
00:44:13
Speaker
Yes, I do. so Yes, I do. That was ice had come down at you know five feet or sooner. you know We had to climb that that day.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, we would have. anyway so So that was the deal My deal was that I really never wanted to be the guy who turned us back because I wasn't good enough.
00:44:36
Speaker
You always used to talk about how your favorite gods were the Greek gods. I always loved that. We got a lot of laughs out of that. I tell my kids that now. Yeah. I've done picture of that.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it really is, you know, the the the way that I, you know, joked about it.
Greek Gods and Climbing
00:44:55
Speaker
but the capriciousness of the universe and you know, how it's fun for me. It was fun for me then. And still is to, you know, imagine them up there like, Oh, look at the humorous here, man, these are perfect guys to fuck with.
00:45:12
Speaker
And they're not going to get it either. They're going to like cheap banging their heads against it. So this is even better sport. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's throw, let's sort of storm down on them, our lightning bolt and, yeah right Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:26
Speaker
yeah I mean, for me, that, that, that comes to the head like the best way that that ever came about was, uh, the, uh, North face of Alberta.
00:45:39
Speaker
I went in there three times before I finally climbed it.
00:45:44
Speaker
And the first time I went in, we got in and it was, uh, my, the weather was perfect. And my partner, By the time we got in, it ah succumbed to a viral infection of some kind. It was, you know, puking and right. And then he got better and the weather still stayed. And we went up and got up to the low bivvy and he's like, I'm too weak. I can't, we can't do this.
00:46:09
Speaker
So we repelled down that face and then had to climb out of the hole, which I, you know, it's really terrible. And then we went in the next winter uh,
00:46:22
Speaker
Second we got in there, it stormed for like literally a week and you know, we had to ski out and halfway out, one of my bindings pulled out of my ski and I had to one foot it like halfway.
00:46:35
Speaker
you know, the gods were laughing. They were laughing. Yeah. And then the third time we got up on the face and, uh, really like did the crux pitch.
00:46:51
Speaker
i let I led the crux pitch and then Bill led the pitch afterwards. The one that Barry talks about having the brand new coflax and the 510 face climb and Bill did that after I'd done the A3 knife blade traverse. Explain the brand new coflax.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, so the Koflax were so terrible for rock climbing, unless they were brand new, because they were stiff as boards. and so so Stiff as a steel girder. As a steel girder, and there was no rubber rand around them, so the plastic would slide off everything.
00:47:22
Speaker
So like if you tipped your foot in just a little bit, it would pop right off the hole. But... This section on Alberta had these ah like diamond shaped edges where the limestone had broken off into these perfect little flat tops.
00:47:38
Speaker
And you know because the coflax were brand new, You could just stand on them like they were. Yeah, to have that 90 degree edge on the rubber. Yeah. Rounded off. There was no chance. Yeah. You were done. Yeah. we're Absolutely done. So and and so Bill led that and we got up to the that bivvy and it started raining on us and we're like, oh, fuck. And then, you know, lightning storm. We lowered our rack and our cookware 100 feet below us. It was like that bad bees in the helmet.
00:48:10
Speaker
and got up in the morning, we're ready to retreat. Sun comes out, gets beautiful, climb all the way to the last bivvy, because it was, you know, we couldn't even start until one or maybe 11 we started.
00:48:22
Speaker
So we only got like a half a day climbing. Same thing the next night. We're really high now. Terrible ah thunderstorm comes in, even more afraid that night of the lightning strikes. And, you know, they're just like lightning strike, thunder, lightning strike, thunder, like one second,
00:48:39
Speaker
And we're like, this is going to be a terrible retreat because we're up really high right now. And, you know, this is going to be awful. Woke up, sun comes out, dries the face out. We summit.
00:48:53
Speaker
And then while we're on the way down, we hear voices and we're like, are we hallucinating? And I'm like, I don't feel that wasted. This isn't like that.
00:49:03
Speaker
Turns out that Tim Auger, who is a warden, We call park ranger, but they're different in Canada. He was a climbing ranger, had brought six other wardens up the Japanese route as a training exercise.
00:49:19
Speaker
And so we ended up, you know, meeting almost at the summit. And then they knew the way down on the Japanese route. Amazing. we just You know. As someone who has been lost going down the Japanese route and down the North Face. Yes. Yeah. It's like, which, you know, which of these, where do I, right. Exactly. It is really super tricky. And I, I mean, we didn't, i mean, it was Vince and we did not do it right.
00:49:45
Speaker
I mean, we got down, but we did not do it right. Anyway. Right. Yeah. So, you know, weirdest thing for to like, probably no one has met on like the, the, the, the peak probably hadn't been summited for five years.
00:49:58
Speaker
And then on the same day, two parties meeting on the summit is like, you know, so that's my Greek God story. Right. Both nights, just the terrible thunderstorms and, you know, absolute despair. We're going to give up. This is our third try. I'm never coming back here, no matter what happens.
00:50:19
Speaker
And we get to climb it. I've heard you say that alpinism creates environmental hubris. How did you put it? Alpinism creates environmental hubris and rock climbing creates human hubris. Is that how you said it?
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. maybe Maybe slight different phrase, but but the the the difference between the two of those for me is that...
Alpinism vs. Rock Climbing
00:50:46
Speaker
um Even when you're doing X rock climbing routes, like So You Could Die, for those who don't know what X stands for, they probably have a different name for it now. um But even when you're doing that or soloing third classing,
00:51:01
Speaker
ah
00:51:04
Speaker
there isn't any other factors involved. And ah the alpinism, if you get the right set of circumstances and you know, you get to the top of something, you definitely have a different like gratitude for your hubris. Like there's a way that you may feel like you're really yeah yeah you may feel like you're a great climber for getting up a hard alpine route, but you also know that it could have gone completely the other way.
00:51:40
Speaker
Whereas I feel like rock climbers oftentimes don't ever feel that way. and that they that there's a way that they um
00:51:51
Speaker
get to think highly of themselves without having to be tempered by those other factors. And when you're doing the hard alpine routes, you're tempered. every Every human that I know that was a good alpinist had a bunch of times when they went up strong, fit, motivated, spiritually ready, great partnerships, and just gotten in their asses kicked.
00:52:19
Speaker
And there's a ah little anecdote, or maybe even shorter than an anecdote. We were, um I can't even remember what we were doing, but Mark and i just fucked up over and over again on this route, and we did not make it And we're walking back to the car and I i cannot, for the I don't remember which one of us said it, but um one of us looked at the other one and said, how have we ever gotten up a hard route?
00:52:54
Speaker
And because you have those days when, you know, the the the the those Greek gods conspire against you. Sometimes they just like to see you suffer. Yeah, maybe nobody was conspiring. you can There's unforced errors too, right? Yeah, yeah, right. so And maybe it was both of those.
00:53:14
Speaker
You know, what is the – if alpinism kind of gives you this humility and rock climbing sort of gives you this hubris, what where does life fit into those models?
Life Lessons and Climbing
00:53:28
Speaker
Because you're also, we haven't talked about this, i mean, you're also the father of two amazing grown children, which I mean is the ultimate, that's the ultimate badge of honor as as far as human achievement to me is like that you you raise kids and your kids are amazing. That's that's not, you know, there's lots of ways there's lots of ways to mess that up.
00:53:48
Speaker
And lots of people do, but your kids are are both incredible humans You know, you you're you're, you know, successfully retired. You had a great career. You built your, you know, up your company for last 20, however long, 20 years and have have just recently retired. Congratulations, by the way. thanks And i had to wait for you to retire and get your damn shoulder surgery before I could get you on here. It was worth it. So.
00:54:18
Speaker
you know how does How do those lessons tie together with these other aspects of life where you've been so successful? so
00:54:29
Speaker
and i Here's what I'll say. the the um There's a line from an old Somerset Maugham book called The Razor's Edge where the the line is, it's easy to be a holy man in the mountain.
00:54:45
Speaker
And so, you know, you get to be like a monk as a alpinist and lot of the training you do if you're successful at as an alpinist is by yourself because you need to have the training that you need to have and groupthink isn't part of that. And those who do groupthink are never, I shouldn't say never, but mostly never going to be as good an alpinist as those who are willing to go and do it by themselves because they know what they need that day.
00:55:14
Speaker
and ah And so I think um that kind of monastic ideal and then the fact that you really do get to be a holy man in the mountain means that you have a place to start from.
00:55:34
Speaker
in terms of some humility. And then I think that um all the climbers that I know have a really, all the alpinists that I know have have a really hard time when they're in their 30s especially, bringing it to the city.
00:55:54
Speaker
and and then and they And then they have another really hard time like I did when they quit alpinism, if they do. m So those two periods of time, I think, are really critical in people that are albinists in that.
00:56:11
Speaker
um
00:56:14
Speaker
um i what makes won't care Mark won't care if i say this. Even someone like Mark becomes a humanist. Hmm. And that's amazing transformation from if you read his first articles that he wrote.
00:56:31
Speaker
And he's kind and humanist and he still does not suffer the fool gladly, right nor do i And I think that that kind of humility and finding a way after being up high, down low, so that you can put some of those lessons into play are really important for development of
00:57:01
Speaker
the rest of our lives. And I know that you've struggled, you know, I know that i know with the exact same things. And um and i think that When I'm a great rock climber, the success that I would see in my life is, ah you know, maybe a little bit more ruthless business person and, uh, the, you know, the,
00:57:30
Speaker
just like, I've seen so many big fish in small pond rock climbers and I've never seen a big fish in a small pond alpinist.
00:57:45
Speaker
I guess is what I'll say about that. And there's lots of nice floorro rock climbers. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. That's what we're not throwing. We don't need to throw everybody under the bus here. Not at all. I want to go back to, cause I love what you said that, you know, it's easy to be a holy man in the mountains and it gives us a place to start. Cause that it totally rings true for me. yeah And then tell me about this transition in your thirties and then I'll tell you something about mine.
00:58:12
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So when i started coming home and you know, before I quit, um, And for me, a big part of it was finally realizing that my dad was wrong.
Family Influences on Self-Image
00:58:29
Speaker
You know, like it took me 10 years to like myself enough to be able to come back in into the into the city and a good, kind person.
00:58:42
Speaker
How was your dad wrong? What did he tell you that was wrong? ah Not going to let you off the hook. No, no, I don't want to. I'm not, and I'm not at all afraid of that. Like I, you know, that's like a big chunk of my life. So my dad was like a lot of ah greatest generation dads.
00:59:00
Speaker
And um he was, but he also was a narcissist. And so he was um brilliant. He was a Shakespeare scholar. And he was really precise.
00:59:14
Speaker
And i was an ADD kid with a really big heart and all he could see was my flaws. And he taught me in an immensely effective way to hate myself.
00:59:30
Speaker
And he hardly ever yelled. And he had been an actor. And so he had this voice and his cold contempt for all the mistakes that I made made me feel less than human.
00:59:46
Speaker
And ah so there's a baseline of of self-hatred. And I often say that if I hadn't started smoking pot at 15, I would have killed myself in my teenage years because I really hated myself that much.
01:00:03
Speaker
I remember one time walking by a plate glass in a mall and looking at myself. And I mean, I don't think I said it out loud, but I might as well have looking at my reflection and saying, you're hideous.
01:00:19
Speaker
And I didn't just mean my looks. I didn't mean, you know, my, my physical representation, that too, but it was much deeper than that. And then I'll also say that one of the great things that happened because my dad was a Shakespeare scholar is that there was endless books. Yeah.
01:00:39
Speaker
And so I realized by the time I was 16, after, you know, reading the classics for two or three years, that they were all hypocrites and that they were all fucking wrong.
01:00:53
Speaker
How was it wrong? ah Just the whole middle class morality and, you know, your your word is your bond. And like, I just saw how it wasn't that, you know, the Nixon Watergate and the whole, you know, way that the older people reacted to the hippies and their hate for them. And those were the opposite things that they said that they lived by and espoused to.
01:01:24
Speaker
And so I just saw that that that way of living, of being two-faced like that, and um' and I decided that that would never be my path.
01:01:34
Speaker
And how did that connect to this self-hatred that you carried around? Yeah, so so there was a way that I was able to say that um I may hate myself, but they're wrong too.
01:01:50
Speaker
and And there was also more than ray, there was a... There was a bright sky that I found through reading the classics and and ah in a way through life where I realized that you know I was right and that you know those corporate fucks. There's a great line from a modern group. and It's actually a breakup song, but the first line of the song is one of my favorites, which is, the businessmen drink my blood like the kids in art school said they would.
01:02:31
Speaker
And, ah and so I knew that from the age of, you know, 15. And I knew that all those people that, you know, ah pretended to be noble and, but, but were mean to their kids. And, you know, the people that were religious that, you know, didn't live according to that. And, you know, my joke when, people would be religious when I was in my twenties try and convert me or something.
01:02:59
Speaker
I would say, so you consider yourself a practicing Christian? And they would say, of course. And I'd say, well, it sounds to me like you need a lot more fucking practice. And what did you mean by that?
01:03:12
Speaker
I mean, that you aren't living the life that you're saying you are. You're trying to proselytize, like figure your own shit out first. and And so I went on that journey from those books till today to find myself and to find out who I was.
01:03:28
Speaker
And climbing certainly helped, but the books helped and some therapy helped and, you know, getting sober helped. And, and, you know, that's something that I don't mind talking about either. I'm almost 25 years since I last had the pipe between my teeth.
01:03:43
Speaker
And, you know, as you know, I never really liked drinking. So I I'm grateful for that, that, you know, drinking just usually made me sick. And, uh, but smoking pot didn't. And, you know, I think of all the drugs that you could take, you know, three or four times a day, like I would do so for, you know, not always, but you know, cause I would go on and off. Right.
01:04:03
Speaker
Uh, But I feel like that was probably the least harmful thing that I could have done to myself. So I'm grateful that that was the one that i preferred. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to get in trouble for this, but not a lot of domestic violence is committed on on marijuana.
01:04:20
Speaker
You know, it's... For real. Yeah. And so, ah yeah, that's... that that's And i think that when you're ADD, That makes more sense, right? Because it defocuses you a little bit, which which, you know, you probably needed a release from your own and intensity. I mean, yeah you're so intense that you could look into that plate glass window. I mean, I guess I would ask you that question. Like, you know, you knew me when I was a little bit older, but I don't think there was a single person that met me that wouldn't have said, Bacchies, oh, fucking Bacchies is super intense.
01:04:57
Speaker
I mean, but is that your, or maybe not, don't
01:05:03
Speaker
I mean, we were all intense, right? I mean, you have to be intense. You have to be intense to like be even interested in these things, I think. For me, I think like that thirty s struggle was, you know,
01:05:24
Speaker
sort of trying to figure out how my climbing mattered. Like, you know, i had, I had from a pretty early age been, you know, my since, you know, I went to the Himalaya the first time when I was 19 years old. Right. Right. And so i was on this track. I was completely bought in.
01:05:47
Speaker
and then after Nanga Parbat, you know, I had, I had to write this book, you know, the beyond the mountain book.
Writing 'Beyond the Mountain'
01:05:55
Speaker
And the reason is, is cause I thought I might not live very much longer.
01:05:58
Speaker
That's the odd, awful truth. That was one of my main motivations for, for, I was like, I've got to do this because if I keep, you know, i mean, I'm not dumb, right? Like, you know, how many of us are laughing? I'm laughing because it's true.
01:06:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. i know I know. I know. Yeah. And, and, and, and it's also like, kind of like sounds, morbid and crazy and all these like why would you keep doing it then like i mean there's all kind like any normal person and be and it's you know well because that's my that was my that was my purpose that was what i was here to do and that was what i was doing and i was it was like uh and i really identify with your idea you know it being a holy man in the mountains because that's where i could go and i could i could really connect to that part that holy part of myself that part of myself that could be quiet, that part of myself that could live according to all the, you know, morality and rules that you wanted to come up with without needing any of the morality and rules, because it was so stripped down that you don't need rules about, I don't know, not killing your neighbor or not coveting his wife, or I don't know, whatever rules there that people come up with, because it was, it was just, you know, me few friends and
01:07:17
Speaker
maybe a cook and some mountains and that was, that was it. And sometimes just yourself, like both you and i have, you know, and Mark, you know, have have had a number of days in the mountains by ourselves and big objectives. Yeah.
01:07:32
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you bigger than Mark or I, but still, you know, for the time, you know, the stuff that, you know, I did yu when I was young and Mark did when he was young, you know, those were,
01:07:43
Speaker
ah ah Yeah. So what was your motivation for going soloing the mountains? Do you think, and then I'm going to remind you of something you told me once, so be careful.
01:07:56
Speaker
Good. I, when i look back on, you know, when I would go solo in the mountains as opposed to rock climbing, cause you know, I did it. Yeah. yeah I'm specifically,
01:08:09
Speaker
ah
01:08:13
Speaker
Well, partly partly it was um because I felt like I had to. Like there was this part of me that, you know, as part of my, you know, and I hate to you know, use the Joseph Campbell hero's journey, but I love that model.
01:08:27
Speaker
Yeah. And so I feel like that for me was part of the, um was part of the deal was that like, what is it like to be there by myself? And you know what what will I garner from those experiences?
01:08:43
Speaker
and And then partly it was um because I felt like it was bad ass to do that. And so there was a part of it that um wasn't as pure as the other part, if that makes any sense.
01:08:58
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and I think that people need to realize that are listening to this as younger climbers, that the culture of climbing has changed immensely, right? Like it used to be the thing to do.
01:09:13
Speaker
Right. And it's, yeah and everybody did it to some, yeah some level. And that was just part of the thing. Like you'd had certain days and it didn't matter if you're, you know, Ron Kalk or you're John Baccar, of course, or,
01:09:27
Speaker
you know, very famous for that. They're famous for all the hard protective ropes climb they did too. Peter Kroft. But all those guys did a ton of free soloing. And
01:09:41
Speaker
we did, and you know, if you look at the history of alpinism, you know, whether it's Walter Bonatti on the north face of the Matterhorn is his crowning achievement at age 40. And then he walked away from alpinism forever or you know,
01:09:54
Speaker
Paul Prus or- Paul Prus, yeah. Paul's, Paul Prus is actually the best archetype of that. Yeah. Right. Cause he was so pure, he had to free climb up and down everything. Right. Not even use a rope to descend. Yeah. so that, and be by himself. So, you know, we started with, we start, that was almost the starting point. That was pre-World War one when- Yeah. And we knew about that. You and i and and those of our ilk,
01:10:20
Speaker
knew about that shit in those days. The kids don't know what we're talking about right now. Yeah. And so climbing now with its culture coming mostly out of the climbing gym and social media and these other forces that shape our culture, it doesn't it's not anchored to Paul Preuss. It's just thought. Right. And so that was a big, big part of what we did. And so when I...
01:10:45
Speaker
I wanted to continue talking about my experience writing Beyond the Mountain because one of the things that I really struggled with during those years was what you said, the city. And I was living in, you know, outside of Bend, Oregon, and I set myself this schedule of writing a chapter a week.
01:11:03
Speaker
for 12 weeks. Yeah. And so, and, you know, I would find myself some nights like three in the morning, either like on my motorcycle on some dirt trail out in the middle of central Oregon, all by myself, just because I had to like, ah I just needed a way to like, I don't know get my mind straight again and didn't know what to do. Or I'd be at the you know, topless bar down, down the road. Right. Like, and, and those were kind of the, and I really struggled with like how to manage that, you know, and in, in those environments, whether it's a bar but or, and of course this is in Oregon, right? So all the bars oregon are going to basically strip clubs to some degree or it's, ah which is true. More, more strip clubs happen in Portland, Oregon than any other city in the world. And,
01:11:59
Speaker
The reason that that is relevant is that it it's like the this idea of temptation of self-control of boundaries of what is what is appropriate? What is inappropriate?
01:12:15
Speaker
What, what do I allow myself to do? What do I, what do i not allow myself to do in, in the human environment? All of that stuff is kind of there all the time, whether it's on a billboard with a, with a beautiful model smoking a cigarette, I guess they don't allow that anymore, but, or whether it's, uh, you know,
01:12:34
Speaker
seeing some Red Bull scountt stunt ah with a guy backflipping off a sand dune over whatever, you know, there's there's just always, always, always these, these,
01:12:51
Speaker
these, these I don't know. The word boundary isn't quite the right word. These lines, these lines that you have to decide whether you're going to cross or not.
01:13:01
Speaker
And in the mountains, when it's simple, you don't have any of those lines. it's just and so that's what and And so I think that this is exactly what you were talking about and how I identified with that as a 35-year-old.
01:13:13
Speaker
and And by the time, remember, I was 35, I was like, quote unquote, world famous, right? Like I was a big show. And so like i had i had this – that kind of poisoned my expectations, right? because and and And you're part of it because of the nickname you gave me and then I had to – That messed with me too. And i you owe popicle or something for that too. But but but that was that was really hard. Before I knew you. before i knew you
01:13:47
Speaker
Okay, you got to tell the story now. so So before I knew you, and it was at the after the gathering, I think, right? No, it was a little after that. was later, I think. Yeah, it was later.
01:13:59
Speaker
I think it was after you'd done the fathers and sons. I think that was the deal. And we were, i can't even remember where we were, but, um you know, people were talking about ah some of the Polish and the Slovaks and the, and the Russians and, you know, the way that they were climbing in the Himalaya, cool routes they did, but how they did them and how much, you know, all of our ilk hated that.
01:14:29
Speaker
And, and then I, you know, said, well, you know, at least we have Steve House and they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, dude, he's the great white hope for alpinism. And that's based off of a play, that a very you know famous play and and quite a great movie also about that, about a actually about a black boxer who gets destroyed because he wasn't supposed to be the best boxer and they wanted a great white hope to... But in your case, I you know i coined that phrase because
01:15:05
Speaker
I mean, you guys used to you know talk about me being somewhat mystical, but like I saw your future. more than I think anyone else at the time did. And then when you started living up to it, then it became your moniker and that wasn't, totally wasn't fair to you. And it was before I knew you as a human, you know, I just knew what you did and knew what you were like, you know, at least that part of you, you're like, I'm not saying that I knew, you know, I saw that part of me. Yeah. Yeah. yes yeah And I, and I saw where it would go and it felt to me like you weren't going to get killed.
01:15:37
Speaker
And that's ah so interesting because I think that this is something I talked to Greg Penner, the chairman of the board Walmart, and a couple episodes ago. And he talked about how he's gotten to this point where he's done so many, he called it reps, I think, how he's just been through things. He's he's been through so many relationships with people in life that he could spot it really fast. Like yeah he he really has, he's like, I don't know, you know, I can't remember how he explained it, but I think that this is sort of a thing that you were doing. You know, you've you've seen a lot of climbers, you know what it takes, you know, and then you see somebody kind of
01:16:16
Speaker
and And remember, in these days, it was climbing magazine. And like every month you'd read or every other month, you'd read something. And when you started to see a pattern, like, oh this guy's like every two, three months, he's doing another route. They're always a little bigger. and then, you know, that you start to you start to you you saw a pattern and you recognize it. And I think you're also responding to me being American and these other climbers being right Polish and Russian and Slovenian. And not doing it right.
01:16:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They weren't doing it right. They weren't at that time. you know, they weren't doing it right. They did some great, uh, no oxygen, you know, Himalayan climbing the poles, especially the checks. Like those guys did some of that, but they didn't do the hard Alpine stuff in the Himalaya in good style.
01:17:01
Speaker
And I hated that. And, uh, And so, you know, the, but I want to go back to the thirties because there was something that I wonder um about you, but that I know is a truth for me.
01:17:18
Speaker
And that's that when I would come back from trips, I would like, how can I have meaning in the city after um being part of god which is how it felt to me. Like, how can I be here in this mechanized hum when I actually got to be attached to a power greater than me? And, you know, Mark used to call it the Alpine vacuum cleaner.
01:17:46
Speaker
And, you know, if your heart was right, if you're, if you'd done the training, if your partnership was good, you start at the bottom and the Alpine vacuum cleaner pulls you to the fucking summit. Yeah.
01:17:57
Speaker
and And then you come back and there's cars and and electric bills and girlfriends and it's shit.
01:18:08
Speaker
It all seems like shit compared to being, you know, Transcendent in the universe, I guess is the best way that I can. So it was those two things for me. It was not only just the like trying to take the lessons that I'd learned there in terms of like, uh,
01:18:31
Speaker
what being a good human is and, you know, like what is important in the world, you know, partnership and, you know, doing things with good style and, you know, trying to, you know, be the stronger person when the other person wasn't the stronger person and all those lessons that, you know, we learned, uh,
01:18:52
Speaker
But then, so that was one part and trying to put that out into the world when I was in the city. But then the other part, especially the first couple months when I was home was this feeling of like, you know, this shit's for plebiscites only. This ain't for me.
01:19:09
Speaker
And, ah and, you know, I'm a, I'm a plebiscite. Yeah.
01:19:17
Speaker
And, and I mean, we did feel superior. yeah like oh Yeah. Oh, yeah yeah. And we weren't too shy about it either. no. know and And we made and I think we left a lot of bad taste, a lot of people's balance by that. And here's what I wish I could say to my 30 whatever year old self, especially like 30. I'm thinking especially about like after the Slovak.
01:19:40
Speaker
yeah We could talk about that in a moment, but what I wish I could tell myself about that now is that that whole experience that you described as being transcendent and experiencing this feeling of connection to a higher power, being able to like summon the best in ourselves and in each other and to become this kind of super organism and climb these mountains was incredible.
01:20:06
Speaker
And when I would come back to the
01:20:10
Speaker
I don't wanna call it real world, because both are very real, but ah the the home culture world the home culture world and be back in town and be back home and be faced with the electric bills and the relationships and all those things. So what i wish I could tell myself is that that that part was just as important as the first part. Yes. Because at that part, at that time, I thought the only part that was important was the, was the part that happened in the climbing and that, and I would, I've somehow almost felt sorry for myself that I had to deal with these, mundane things like electric bills and and and and listening to people talk that I didn't really want to talk to. And I don't know, like, I just had such a chip on my shoulder after those trips. And I wish I could have, somebody could have said like, hey, this part is just as important as the other part.
01:21:00
Speaker
And it's actually required to, that insight is required before you can integrate these experiences, all of these experiences together into a new you.
Personal Growth and Reflection
01:21:12
Speaker
which is really what we're after. Yeah, it I mean, it really was. And and i i also think that um
01:21:25
Speaker
doing that period of that kind of in-town arrogance and lack of understanding ah were an absolute requirement for me, and i and I wonder about you and about Mark, to get to where we are today.
01:21:45
Speaker
Like, I really feel like the intensity of those experiences were um be beyond sort of the realm of humanness in in really like, you know, and to, and and to there isn't a way there isn't a way for our you know our young minds to be able to understand that at that point. I just think that I could tell myself that at 30, but I don't know that I could have listened.
01:22:13
Speaker
o um And I had to break some things first and be like, I don't like breaking shit anymore. You know, I'm sick of breaking shit and let's not break shit anymore.
01:22:25
Speaker
Let's find another way through this.
Dangerous Lifestyle Choices
01:22:27
Speaker
And then the other piece for me that I consider once in a while, but maybe even especially more for you is how grateful I am that we didn't live in Europe.
01:22:40
Speaker
ah Cause we'd be dead. Cause we would have just kept climbing. cause They would have given us money to go climbing and we wouldn't have had to deal with the electric bills. And we would have just kept doing it until we died.
01:22:53
Speaker
And, you know. Would we, though? Because I was very aware of that. not not that the Not that the, like. ah If it was just, like, your did have the opportunity to just climb all the time and and didn't. And actually, this is partially related to the training because i also realized, like,
01:23:16
Speaker
mentally and emotionally and spiritually, it took so much out of me to go that far out on my abilities spec curve. Yeah. a month of ice cream and movies for me. Yeah. Then when I came back, like I needed, i needed, like I could only do that a couple of times a year. That's how I was. And I remember, you know, having this conversation with Marco Prezel and one year he did three Himalayan expeditions.
Overcommitting to Expeditions
01:23:42
Speaker
Yeah. And that he was like, even he admitted that was too much. Like, and yeah like, while he was still on the third expedition, he was like, Oh, this was a mistake. Like, I should not have yeah tried to do so much. Like, i can't, like, I just,
01:23:56
Speaker
ah You know, and so you you need this, right you need this, this other time to, you know, yeah. But I think that's why I had, and and you've been like this too. I mean, that's why, you know, during that phase of my life, like I rode motorcycles a lot. I had a, I had a woodworking shop.
01:24:13
Speaker
I built like. I mean, I just built, I built a greenhouse. I started raising cattle.
Pursuing Non-Climbing Interests
01:24:19
Speaker
I mean, I just, i like came up with hobbies cause I, you know, I'm an inner, you know, and even, even today it's like working on other completely non climbing related things. Cause you know, I'm Randy Levin and I talked about this because he's a, he's been a pilot now for about 10 years and I'm close to being done with my pilot license if I ever finish it. And he was just talking about like,
01:24:42
Speaker
He just needs that in his life. Like he needs something to study and learn. And you've done that with like, whether it's mountain biking or tennis or trail running. um But you've also done it with gravel racing or um also with the arts, you know, like that's one of the things like I've really appreciated and been trying to really dig into living in Europe is, you know, ah A few weeks ago, maybe it was two months ago now, I went to Paris and
Cultural Appreciation in Europe
01:25:10
Speaker
went to the Louvre. I mean, like, I'd never done that. You know, like, well, I want like, and I really appreciate those things now.
01:25:17
Speaker
been going to operas, been going to metal concerts, like all the things, just because that that that is something about my soul that needs that too. and Those things help me strive.
01:25:29
Speaker
Like that was, I think I was lucky because, From a little kid, you know, I have that those those influences in my life. And then especially teenager and in the 20s, those things that I would see, i understood. i think I told you that story about my friend's dad who built muscle cars.
01:25:50
Speaker
And I only knew him as a welder. He was a guy who taught me how to climb and ah ah taught me how to train for climbing. Right. Different, different guys than David Austin, Kurt Johnson.
01:26:02
Speaker
But his dad like built the cars that were on the cover of Rod. Wow. wow And he only worked on Pontiacs and I had this old Pontiac. He'd work on it for me basically for free because it was a Pontiac.
01:26:15
Speaker
And one time. And it was like in he could do it in his sleep because he was like. Yes. And so one time he needed my help because he was dropping the tranny and putting a new one in. And then I watched him that day, what he did.
01:26:29
Speaker
And he probably said 11 words to me in the entire six hours that he you know dropped the old and put the new one in. But I remember him seemingly to me at the time throwing tools around the car.
01:26:41
Speaker
But now when I look back on it, he was you know placing them. And he got on the creeper once he got the car up and he never looked, he just would grab the tool and and like this thing just happened and it was like magic.
01:26:56
Speaker
And then it was done and the car was back down to the ground and i drove home and I felt so fucking weird.
Mechanic's Work as Art
01:27:05
Speaker
And the next day I was like hanging out. I might've even been like on a run or something. Cause I used to have good, i you know, roomative time there.
01:27:16
Speaker
Um, and I was like, he's an artist.
01:27:21
Speaker
And like from then on, from like the age of 21, from or maybe 20 I was at that time, I realized every time I saw someone doing something like that, ah that what they were doing and it and it always inspired me and made me feel like I have this inside of me because I can see these others doing it. And for me, for so many years, it was climbing.
01:27:48
Speaker
And if you talk to ah a real car guy, a real mechanic, they think to them, those machines have souls and spirits. Yes. Yes. They're not just like, I don't know, an odometer number and a year make or whatever. However, we reduce these things too. They're like, the car has ah a personality. It has like a, it's like a, it's a sentient being to them yeah and they're tuned into that and they connect with that and they get that experience.
01:28:16
Speaker
We're engine on cars that we get on on big mountains. And you know when I was in my 20s and I would go to the state fair and see the seed art, because that's a thing in Minnesota where they take you know corn and other seeds and make art out of it.
Respect for Unconventional Art
01:28:31
Speaker
And you know we would you know usually we were high, but maybe even if it was one of my sober periods, yeah know we would revile that, you know make fun of it. like you know Now when I go, i have this deep reverence when I see the seed art.
01:28:45
Speaker
And I think about that person and like, you know, what they were experiencing while they were in their perfect bliss. And one of my climbing early on climbing friends was a was ended up being one of the head engineers for Boeing.
01:29:02
Speaker
making the planes. And ah he retired because he hated the shortcuts they'd started taking whenever it was, 15 years ago. And which now has caught up with them, right? But he saw back then. But when he retired, he started doing beading, the tiny little glass beads.
01:29:23
Speaker
And he has these projects that take two years. And they're magnificent. What are they? Give me a picture like my mind picture. Yeah, pictures like he's a he's a canoeist, so he'll have, you know, pictures of you know, I think he lives out east now, like in Chesapeake or that area.
01:29:44
Speaker
And so there are these beads, you know, from like this big to like, you know. and they're like paintings, but with colored beads? Colored beads, yeah. Like the Indians. That are like sort of.
01:29:57
Speaker
like yeah Like a, like a Macaula kind of, but with instead of sand, it's beads and their colors. Yes. and And they make pictures. Wow. Right. And it's so, so all I'm saying about that is that, um, I got lucky with Kurt Johnson's dad teaching me that without teaching me that back when I was 21. Right. And, and it was exactly the opposite of what I was taught by my Shakespeare scholar dad.
01:30:26
Speaker
Hmm.
01:30:29
Speaker
You know, there was only fine art and it was only these four things. And, you know, modernist artists were shit and like that. And and so, you know, to have this other alternative reality given to me, like literally just given to me, changed my life.
01:30:47
Speaker
Yeah. yeah so Yeah. And you saw this sort of hypocrisy of.
Reverence for Live Performances
01:30:51
Speaker
Art is expression, but it can only follow these four sets of rules. Yes. they're Yeah. Right.
01:30:58
Speaker
Yeah. And so, you know, I love humanities. i still think that kind of art is amazing. Like you said, opera, classical music, you know, yeah fine fine art, um you know, but but all the other things that people put the same kind of soul and intention into and discipline into. Yeah.
01:31:21
Speaker
ah you know. Yeah, challenge anyone to watch a skilled orchestra live and not just feel like completely moved, right? It's just just just the human coordination and all the, you know, centuries of collective practice and everything that goes into being able to do something like that is like as a group of 50 or 80 people is, it's just and unbelievable, you know, and and it's the same feeling I get watching The Cure too, you know, it's like what they're able to conjure out of thin air and yes and create live in front of you you, know, it is magic, you know, and and it's hard not to feel reverence for that. One of the topics that we've kind of been dancing around that I want to drill in on with you, and because it's always kind of, guess I've always wanted to ask you about this, is identity.
Identity Struggles as a Climber
01:32:22
Speaker
And, you know, you were able to walk this line with your identity as a climber, but not, that wasn't ever all you were. And I felt,
01:32:39
Speaker
Like i often had to give up all other aspects of my identity because that's what the world wanted me to be. You know, they didn't want me to be anything other than alpinist.
01:32:51
Speaker
And i felt a lot of pressure with that. And
01:32:58
Speaker
One of the things that I i went to Evergreen State College in Olympia, and those people who know it will know that it's a school known for having a lot of kind of hippies, let's say. Hippies! and one of the one of the things I realized there, I had a roommate for several years of college, and ah he was a a Republican, he wore a a suit, like a sport coat at least, and a red tie and a white shirt to class.
01:33:25
Speaker
Everyone else's, including me, hair down to their shoulders, Birkenstocks, flip flops, or if you had shoes at all. And I realized like this guy was the only actual rebel.
01:33:37
Speaker
Like the rest of us were all saying the same thing. Yeah, my my roommate, Chris. ah We're all saying the same thing. We're all thinking the same thing. and it and it was And it became our identity. And if if somebody else said it, like this group thing would sort of take over and all of a sudden everybody said it. And I watched that happen. And I always have struggled with this.
01:34:00
Speaker
Identity so often sort of becomes a surrender of ourselves. Yeah. And how it took me a long time after looking back, I didn't have a lot of hindsight before I started to see that. I mean, I felt it kind of in my gut, like what is off like with this? This is weird. Like he's the, he's the only one who's actually got anything in like independent of his own mind to say here.
Balancing Multiple Identities
01:34:28
Speaker
And everybody's of course completely against him.
01:34:32
Speaker
yeah but they're also professing to be super open-minded and liberal and open to everything. and I just found those, and I think we all experienced that in some way, like it could be totally different circumstances for somebody else. So where where do you place, how did you manage your identity, both as a climber, but also as a husband, as as a businessman?
01:34:58
Speaker
how did you How did you do that? How did you have all these different identities? um I tried, you know, I think that um the older I got, the less of a chameleon I i was because I wanted people to like me because I didn't like myself. And then I started liking myself in my 30s and then I didn't need that anymore. Yeah. Like literally, i will say that that was part of my journey. Right. For sure.
01:35:23
Speaker
But but even in my 20s, my especially my like when that summer in 1980, I brought a ghetto blaster, little one, with me in 40, 50 cassettes.
01:35:38
Speaker
And when I was hanging out in the Rockies campground with Dave Myers, the guy who I did Temple with, there were six of his friends and they were evergreenites, right?
01:35:50
Speaker
And... I listened to jazz and classical. you know I didn't have a huge amount of cassettes for that, but I had Miles Davis Blue and Keith Jarrett clone concerts and Beethoven's seventh, which is at
Independence in Music Preferences
01:36:06
Speaker
the time was one of my favorites and something else, one of the concertos.
01:36:12
Speaker
And every time I would turn that on, those guys would all be like, turn that shit off. They wanted to listen to all the punk rock and Rocky music and Brian Eno and all those cool cassettes that I had.
01:36:25
Speaker
o And ah I'm like, fuck that. Like, I don't have to just be a punk rocker. I'm a fucking punk rocker. Look at my cassettes.
01:36:36
Speaker
Like, I don't have to get a haircut to be a punk rocker. I'm not going to get a mohawk. I'm not going to dress a certain way other than maybe black T-shirts because it's simple. Um, but that isn't, I don't want to be one dimensional. Like I want to listen to the music that I want to listen to. And I don't give a fuck if you don't like jazz or classical music. Cause I do.
01:36:59
Speaker
And guess who's ghetto blaster it is. Mine. Did you bring one? No, you did not. So fuck off. And, uh, and i always had that, that ability to like, if my mind told me that it was the right answer,
01:37:15
Speaker
I tried to listen to that. and And so, you know, as a parent, i had a really terrible... ah
01:37:27
Speaker
instruction manual from my parents. And, you know, my mom was prescription pill was sick from when I was four years old to when she died when I was 22, at least a couple of months a year.
01:37:41
Speaker
And i don't think, um I guess I'm just going to say this out loud, came from a family of sexual abuse, which didn't happen in my family, thank God. You know, like both she and my dad had weird,
01:37:53
Speaker
Things like that. My dad was covert and she was over and all our sisters and maybe her brothers anyway. So I didn't have an instruction manual for my kids. So I made a lot of errors.
01:38:05
Speaker
um But I also had this, these, this way that, that having my own personality really helped me as a father. So like one of the things that I believe was that um my parents said no to me all the time and I just did whatever the fuck I wanted.
01:38:24
Speaker
if all they say is no and I'm independent, you know I'll take the consequences. I'm just going to do what I want. Because there isn't any right answer and they're going hate on me no matter what I do.
Parenting Insights
01:38:34
Speaker
So with my kids, i i really worked with them to say, i can't say yes to this. You have to change the question.
01:38:43
Speaker
Or to tell them, this is my least favorite part of being a parent. I hate this. I hate doing this. you know, come up with another alternative for me because I don't want to be, you know, saying no to you.
01:38:53
Speaker
And their parents drink. I can't let you stay over overnight. If you want to be there till nine, I'll pick you up. She can always stay over here. If you want to stay with your third friend whose parents I know are cool, we can do that. But I, you know, I can't say yes to this thing.
01:39:08
Speaker
and And I think with both my kids, that was really helpful o because it was a way that I saw the world that I wasn't going to ah go either extreme with, like I wasn't going to be the super fun dad.
01:39:24
Speaker
Uh, and I wasn't going to be what my parents were, you know? So, um, and then, I think the being in the film business, you know, when I, what for the 15 years that I did that work, whether it was, you know, lighting technician or when I was rigging or when I was shooting adventure film, um, there's a way that you have to, uh,
01:39:50
Speaker
you have to, after a while at least, know where your strengths and weaknesses are. And so, you know, trying to do the thing that you're not good at isn't going to help the group. You know, it's, it's you know, like I was never good at really technical dolly pushing. Like I could push the dolly at the right speed, but part of the deal is lifting and lowering the pedestal with the camera on it at certain marks at certain spots so that they could have the camera in the perfect spot for them to be able to do that. And I was never that great at that. I was okay. You know, I got better, but like, I was always like, no, maybe, maybe what I need to do is be the best boy where I'm making sure that we have every single thing that we need, or maybe I need to be the pre-rigger who comes in and does all the rigging work at, you know, up in the catwalk or even in the steel. And so I think there was a way that, um,
01:40:46
Speaker
I learned from film and from climbing that I don't care what you want, this is what you actually have.
01:40:57
Speaker
and and and i you know And if so if the pitch breaking trail in you know deep snow, Mark's doing that doing those two pitches. And if the pitch is you know really hard mixed climbing and you're not there, that's my job.
01:41:14
Speaker
no I was better at Mark than that. o and And so it's cool to want to be things, but, you know, if you really want to be successful and have your, the people that you're with be successful, you have to know what that is.
01:41:30
Speaker
And I think that goes along with the same kind of thing of saying, um
01:41:38
Speaker
you know, I don't give a shit if you don't like, you know, classical music. You know, I'm not going to I'm not going to go along with you and be like, fuck all other music is punk rock. Right. I don't care about
Mainstream Climbing Culture Discomfort
01:41:49
Speaker
that. That isn't important.
01:41:50
Speaker
And because I didn't have the kind of cadre that you guys did living out west, I didn't I wasn't subject to that as much.
01:42:01
Speaker
So it was easier for me to develop that way ah because I wasn't part of it. That's a great point. And I think that, you know, for example, whenever I'm in Chamonix, um, which isn't very often, and part of the reason it's not very often is because it's like, there's too much energy there for me and too many, too much loss and too many, lots of other things, lots of trauma related experiences there.
01:42:32
Speaker
But it's also like, even i remember being there, um I remember one day, when was this? i was, it was before my accident. i think it was 2009 Uli Steck and I were climbing together and yeah we were just going and it was kind of bad conditions. It was good skiing and we did some, you know, it was kind of one of those scenes and we'd like go down afterwards we'd would be three or four o'clock and we'd want to go to the, you know, to the, to the bar and have a,
01:43:07
Speaker
you know, for him, it was a coffee for me, it was ah a beer, but, and like, you know, there'd be, there'd be literally paparazzi, you know, like, and i was just like, wow, like, I don't, I don't appreciate this. Like, I don't, I just want to sit here and talk to my friend, like about things that I talked with my friends about. And it can be okay if we're not planning the next great, like climb, that we're thinking about doing or attempting to do.
01:43:38
Speaker
We could just also talk about, I don't know, politics or or or an ex-girlfriend or or yeah somebody's, some other mutual friend, what they're doing. even little bit of boy gossip. Or just some boy gossip or music or like. you know, a book we're reading or a million other, I mean, julia and I had lots of amazing conversations yeah like there were also philosophical and, you know, about sports and training and all kinds of different topics. And you, and you, you couldn't, it didn't feel like that was allowed um because everybody had to know, what did you do?
Authenticity Through Friendship
01:44:14
Speaker
What do you what did you just do? Because we must've done something amazing, right? Cause we're sitting house in early stack. And what are you doing tomorrow? and It was just like it was like, it's really exhausting, right? Like it's really tiring. And so I understand.
01:44:29
Speaker
And one of the things I want to tell you this, that i I think one of your superpowers as a friend, and I consider you a truly great friend of mine, is that because you bring that self-love and you are able to, as you just said a minute ago, if your if your heart tells you something, you're willing to speak it.
01:44:51
Speaker
And a lot of people aren't. But when when people, as a rule, I think, are hesitant, and myself included, to always do that because we're afraid of being judged or being ostracized or included in a group that maybe we don't think we belong with or whatever the thing is. but being around you, I always feel more empowered to just be me.
01:45:17
Speaker
And that's that's a pretty cool thing. superpower that I think you have as a friend is you're you, you empower your friends to be more of their true selves just by being you, not It's no trick. It's no one. It's nothing you do. You just be Scott and you have your, you know, and you tell your stories and you, and you say what's on your mind and you have your opinion and you maybe change it.
01:45:43
Speaker
You know, all those things that you do just being you, it's, it's incredibly uplifting for me. That's my experience of you. So just thank you for that. That's amazing. I'm going to say that's one of the sweetest compliments I've ever had in my life.
01:45:58
Speaker
Oh, Thank you. You're welcome. And another thing that you've done is you are the first man that wasn't my father who ever told me that you love me.
01:46:11
Speaker
And you don't say it just sometimes. You say it all the time. and yeah And you, I think, it's a perfect example of this because I think we're all thinking it. Right? We, like, mean, it's part of...
01:46:27
Speaker
ah We haven't talked about this idea of the brotherhood, as you called it, and in alpinism and how we had, we had these like, you know, I mean, you know there's other more derisive terms that people would use. Like we had, yeah, makeup great. Good for them. Yeah. I'm for it though. You know that, right? Yeah, completely. And yeah that's a perfect example where you just said it.
01:46:51
Speaker
And it was almost like to hear that it was such a relief. Like, oh man, i I thought I was the only one. Right. And like, like, you're like man, I know, i i know I feel this love for these these so these guys. And to have you just like tell me that you love me, was like, oh, thank God, because I love you too. And to have that be normalized within our community,
01:47:15
Speaker
our peer group was something that was pretty amazing. It really like helped me a lot in understanding that I have a lot of value as a human, even if it's only to like a few people, that's enough for me. It doesn't have to be for the whole, to the whole world. It just has to be like you said, to a few people that I actually care about. Yes.
01:47:36
Speaker
So I was talking ah with Mark again, Mark Twight, um, when I was out there and ah a year and a half ago a year and ago a year ago or so. And I said, you know, when I look back on my climbing career, I believe that the most important thing that I did for climbing was to bring the word love.
01:48:03
Speaker
And so when you when you just spoke that, um that that is exactly what I believe my value in the climbing community was. And I think that the kids that, um like Kyle Dempster had this article at one time about, you know, kind of thinking that the brotherhood was all serious, because he didn't know us.
01:48:28
Speaker
And he didn't know how, you know, we, I gave birth to a two pound guaranteed outcome climber. and we don't have We don't have to go into anything other than that, but,
01:48:42
Speaker
But i i feel like they get that because it came down through us even though
Expressing Love in Climbing
01:48:48
Speaker
they don't know it. Does that make sense? Like I think some of the, those guys really came normalized.
01:48:54
Speaker
Yes. culture. Yes. In that culture, in that small chunk of, of culture, it became normalized to like have those feelings and say those feelings. You know, someone as, um, tech turn is, as like Conrad, you know, when I would say that to him and like kind of watch him melt a little bit. Yeah.
01:49:17
Speaker
And you know, that to me, um, I said that because I felt like it was super, super important to have that be part of ah a normalized relationship with these people that i I loved like so deeply. And was, and you know, my, I know you've heard me say this before, but you know, my, um my deal when I was climbing, when I wasn't climbing it by myself was that,
01:49:50
Speaker
I couldn't let my partners down.
01:49:54
Speaker
And those pitches that I led in the mountains that were, you know, for sure life-threatening, I did those because I i couldn't let you down, I couldn't let Mark down, I couldn't let Bill Bancroft down.
01:50:08
Speaker
You know, I couldn't let JoJo down, I couldn't let bill ah Bruce Hendricks down, I couldn't let those people down. Has it become about other values now? Has it become about money or status or awards? ah What it became about for 20 years was, and this was hard for me, and i you know and I know that I, how do I put this exactly?
Building an Ethical Business
01:50:36
Speaker
I chose to ah walk on some of my values to be able to have um a financially verdant reality for my kids.
01:50:54
Speaker
um And so, you know, I started the business, became really successful at a business that if done in the normal way, I find really distasteful. But the way that I did it was I had to figure out a different way to do it. So what did you do?
01:51:10
Speaker
So what I did was looked never at the short term and always looked at building relationships by helping people. And um God, I just hate even saying in this, but most of the time when I was in room with in a room with a dealer, i was the smartest guy in the room.
01:51:28
Speaker
And i have a really great mind for big picture. I have a really unique math trick where I can do large sums in my head and I'm a humanist.
01:51:39
Speaker
And so I was able to take those three things and come up with ways for businesses to be more effective. So these dealers that, you know, were started their business in the 1980s and barely had a computer, we came in and gave them numbers and told them exactly when to order, what to order, how to order, why to order.
01:51:59
Speaker
And we would come in and like, help them set up ah shooting videos, you know, right when that first started so that they would have an online presence that would drive people to their store and make them really successful.
01:52:15
Speaker
And like for one example, I probably shouldn't say their name out loud, but I'm going to. um Bartlett Manufacturing is in Marlette, Michigan. And when I took over that company, it like $12,000 in sales a year in Petzl.
01:52:32
Speaker
And when I left, it was 650 to $800,000 a year. And part of it was that I sat down with the owner and said, i have a little bit of money.
01:52:44
Speaker
And ah this company just went out of business or was bought by another company. And the reason that they were successful was videos. And I want you guys to start making videos. And they did. They hired a really handsome young Mexican-American who spoke two languages. And so every time he made an arborist video, it was um dual you know English and then Spanish or Spanish and then English. and and I'm just saying that because being a reptile wasn't in my blood. Like I tried to do that with Black Diamond and I hated it
01:53:20
Speaker
But when I started doing it for myself and as and as my own company, I was able to do it in a way that still felt ethical. And I did a shit ton of demos and workshops and training, which a lot of agencies didn't do.
Balancing Business and Personal Values
01:53:37
Speaker
So I guess what I'm saying is that I was the businessman that was drinking your blood like the kids in art school said they would. And ah in a way, you know, like i I made an immense amount of money over a 20 year period so that I could, you know, put my kids through college so that they didn't have any debt and have a you know good retirement egg and have a house that's paid off. and And, you know, I did that by being smart, but I also paid my employees really well and gave them absolute freedom.
01:54:07
Speaker
Yeah. yeah So, so I did that, you know, and I used the principles that I learned as an alpinist um and as an artist to do it in a way that, you know, I could do it so that it didn't destroy my soul completely. And every night in a hotel room after 10 years was pretty much terrible.
01:54:27
Speaker
And I did it for my kids and for my future.
01:54:32
Speaker
That you're living now. That you're retiring. That I'm now. And for a long time to come, right? And for a long time to come. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah And 20 years isn't much to give the world, you know, to let the world have their hands on you. as i That's how I would put it. is that By the way, that's my... ah How it feels to me is like, you know, people coming over and just being able to put their hands on me.
01:54:58
Speaker
that's That's the the spiritual... feeling that it is to, you know, work in business for me. Just trying to think how to, how to pull these things together, because I i think that they're, you know, the, the, one thing that I'm aware of with this season of Voice of the Mountains is that I'm cherry picking, right? Like you've been successful. Randy Levitt was successful. Greg Penner was successful. right you know
01:55:35
Speaker
Peter Metcalf was successful. And i'm I'm not talking to any of the people that tried really hard. and weren't successful for in many, for, and in many cases could be just because of the gods felt like, yes. with them Right. yeah And it was nothing about their aptitude or their personalities or their intelligence or their time or their place or their resources or their connections.
01:56:01
Speaker
It was just the Greek gods. So, so the, yeah so so the
01:56:10
Speaker
Going back to the hero's journey, if you look at almost all of the mythic Greek heroes, they all had shit second acts.
01:56:22
Speaker
I mean, Oedipus pulled his eyes out. Jason was poisoned by his wife. Heracles was poisoned by his wife. um Theseus ended up dissolute and and you know absolutely unhappy and in Thrace. and If you get to do what we did, if you get to do the hero's journey,
01:56:46
Speaker
out of every successful second act, there's, you know, eight or nine that aren't because it's really, really hard to come back from that and to find a way in the city that, you know, makes sense that has some resonance that, uh, you know, doesn't make you just want to drink your the rest of your life away or whatever, disillusioned in some way.
01:57:09
Speaker
And so I think that, um,
01:57:14
Speaker
innatetly what we did set us up for failure in our forties and fifties because what's ever going to compare to that.
01:57:27
Speaker
And, and I think that we have to find out what it is that compares to that.
Finding Joy in Life and Climbing
01:57:32
Speaker
And I'm going to say that having kids isn't that, but it can be.
01:57:41
Speaker
Like there's no guarantee that having kids is gonna, you know, bring you joy and it's gonna help you transcend, you know, that sorrow and grief that we all feel leaving behind something so magical and there isn't words for it. Like what it really is. There aren't any words to describe what it really is that you leave behind. Yeah.
01:58:09
Speaker
Yeah. And so, you know, For me, i really love my kids and um i wanted to make that true.
01:58:20
Speaker
And for me, i loved winter climbing still. And so for the past 20 years, I've worked really hard at winter climbing and kept my skills to a level that, yeah, I mean, you know, what I've done in the past 20 years is Nothing short of extraordinary for some of my age. And I don't mean to cheat my own, but you know you were there for you know when I was 50, whatever it was, 54 at URA and took sixth place. I mean, that kept my interest, but I could do it in a way that I knew I would come home to my kids. Mm-hmm.
01:58:57
Speaker
and And I tried not to do any of the X routes anymore. But like I said, this winter I did that one and it's like, that was fucked. That was bullshit. i' never i really believe I'm never going to do that again.
01:59:09
Speaker
if
01:59:11
Speaker
I have had that experience you know with my climbing last years where you know obviously I've dialed it way down, but even then, with the little climbing I've done, especially when I'm out and I'm taking care of someone, whether it's my wife or my kids or or whatever, and i'm and I'm up and I'm just, I know, too it's like I know too much.
01:59:33
Speaker
but you know I know all the things that could go wrong. all the things that could go right and and then usually do, but I also know all the things that could could go wrong and just like, i just get up there and i'm like, it's not worth it.
01:59:48
Speaker
Like, I don't want to deal, like, i you know, I don't want to be in those situations anymore. Yeah. Yeah. and And we, we diverged on that for sure. Because, you know, like I said, I, you know, big roots in Norway and, you know, going to Icefall Brook and the yeah big trips in Quebec on, you know, those are, you know, serious For many people, they would be the culmination of a career, I guess. you know Yeah, yeah. Those are big, hard, remote ice climbs and mixed climbs. i mean, that doesn't ice climbs won't get bigger than those, honestly. They just don't. So, i mean, that's the pinnacle of the sport. And you've always been great at ice climbing and mixed climbing. That's always been something you've been really good at. So, yeah you know, there's part of me that is jealous of you. And there's also, like, I've also...
02:00:40
Speaker
You know, tried and got out been like, meh. Right. know, I did have really a lot of fun one time a couple of years ago going out and like it was a route that had only been climbed once in a local guide and I just had to follow. Yeah.
02:00:56
Speaker
That was, that was actually, i like I liked that. I like to be guided up. It was like zero risk, but I still got to have all the fun of the climbing. And it was a safe, you know, safe and safe day and all the other things. But so,
02:01:11
Speaker
How do you, you know, I think it's so interesting this whole, i know,
02:01:20
Speaker
this whole idea that we kind of started with was... I mean, that you hated yourself and that you had to find a way to love yourself, to respect yourself, to care about yourself, to think that you have something to contribute, to think that you have a future, to think that you, before you even can get to like a purpose, right? Like a lot of times people just jump straight to the purpose. And i'm like, well, do you even like yourself? You have to like yourself first. Then you can work on those things. But, and then going from that and,
02:01:56
Speaker
and then And then, you know, the reason that you recognize that the way to build a good business was to help people first and to to take that long-term viewpoint is that you, because you learned that already the hard way in working on yourself.
02:02:16
Speaker
Because that had taken... whatever, 20 plus years. 20 plus years. Yeah. and i mean And present continuous, right? It's never really, we're all works in progress, right? But that that is going to continue.
02:02:31
Speaker
And one of the things that I think that I think about And I was just telling you before we started recording how I went this last weekend. I went to the American Alpine Club annual dinner. And even though there were small interactions, just like keeping those little sparks of relationships alive with friends that I've known for 20, 30 years. i just, you know, it's it's like i that's that's where I'm like mining now for that inspiration and connecting with you through you know this project, which which is entirely a selfish project. It's my own experience.
02:03:06
Speaker
sort of creative interest and, and, and, and also somehow I'm hoping that by talking to you and all these other people that have been through this, that we can, we can,
02:03:18
Speaker
maybe look back all of it and and come up with some threads and say like, okay, these are these are some themes that went through all of these conversations. There's some lessons that we can all become a little more aware of. That's my i hope. And you've certainly contributed so much to our community in bringing the love and just, yeah, I think.
02:03:39
Speaker
And for me, the other thing that I brought was um levity. Like i was I was always able to have ah humor when no matter how bad things were.
02:03:53
Speaker
And because to me,
02:03:58
Speaker
that love... that I felt for my partners, and and I hope this doesn't sound too weird, but that love that I felt for my partners allowed my the inner child that got so beat up when I was a kid to feel safe.
02:04:14
Speaker
So even when I was in a place that physically wasn't safe, you know on a tiny ledge, in a bibbler tent, whatever it was, I felt safe spiritually with the people that I loved.
02:04:29
Speaker
And because I felt safe, my inner kid always liked having fun and laughing. And so I really believe that that was a huge part of how I was able to ah be a good team member in any group that I was climbing in.
02:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and this is guys.
02:04:51
Speaker
I mean, I'm no developmental psychologist, but, you know, first you have to love your parents and have a secure connection. Then come your friends and then comes you. I think that's kind of the way it it works, at least in my experience. And so you being able to to do that and like –
02:05:15
Speaker
Pay it forward, pay it backwards, however you want to look at it. Pay it forwards to your own kids and to me and the rest of the community. It's been amazing. Yeah. and And like I said, it doesn't happen unless that like i unless I feel safe.
02:05:32
Speaker
And I think that is another last little piece for me now that i we're talking is that that is part of why I kept my group so small.
02:05:43
Speaker
is because my experiences in Yosemite and in Boulder were like, I don't want to give my heart to these people. These people are going to trash me, you know, just like happened you know to me when I was in junior high and just like happened to me with my parents. and I want to have community with these fewer people where I can feel safe and I can feel love so that my, that kid can come out and have a really great time, even in terrible circumstances.
02:06:12
Speaker
Hmm.
02:06:15
Speaker
And I think being in the small arena, like no arena, because like, you know, I mostly climbed by myself, right? And certainly did all my training by myself.
02:06:25
Speaker
And so there was this way that I, have these, you know, 10, 15 friends that I could trust. And i wasn't interested in anything other than that.
02:06:39
Speaker
And I think most people are willing to compromise because they think they're supposed to. And I think that this is where I feel like it's become too much about status and money and ah you think an Instagram likes. ah and Because that's an external validation. like The first thing you're talking about is also a form of external validation. It's the validation of your friends. yup
02:07:11
Speaker
yeah On the next on the the next level of that is feeling safe with them. And that used to be all there was. And at some point, and I just didn't figure out yet. what if i First of all, if i'm if this is true.
02:07:27
Speaker
And second of all, if if there is a tipping point there where as a culture, and at least climbing has has shifted too far to being about lakes and money and status and fame and we're not about respect and these these original kind of virtues that that we aspire to because the way I grew up with alpinism especially after I've been in Slovenia was like the ultimate thing was to go off and do the hardest route in the world with one other person and come back and tell no one
02:08:06
Speaker
Yeah. That was perfection. That's what everybody was like. Right. You know, and but that's not part of the conversation. That's not the zeitgeist now. And so i just, I don't know how we get back there. I don't know if we should either. i mean, um who am I to put my values on, on, on, and on the younger generation?
02:08:25
Speaker
The, the kids that, um, both sets that did the Slovak, uh, and their kids being in their thirties, like we were right. yeah ah Rob Smith and Michael Gardner. Yeah, all those guys, right? and And I've met a couple of them and um I feel like they
02:08:50
Speaker
know they have to do a minimum of that. Does that make sense? ah But that that isn't their main thing.
02:09:00
Speaker
But I think that they're in the vast minority. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think you're right. I think i'm I'm probably unfairly judging them and and and I'm casting the net too wide. I mean – And I think that if Balin had lived and had gotten to hang out with – because I think Mark would have hung out with them and hung out with Mark more, think he would have found something different. Mm-hmm.
02:09:24
Speaker
And because Mark wouldn't hung out with him if he didn't have some didn't have heart. Right. Mark would have just been like, I mean, I'm seen right through that. But if you didn't have heart, you wouldn't soloing.
02:09:36
Speaker
those Yes. Right. Yeah. Right. And and, you know, the ultimate dismissive human is Mark Twight. So, you know, if he's going to hang with you, you know, You may not be, you know, evolved fully, but he sees some potential in you.
02:09:50
Speaker
Yeah. You know, yeah so and I felt sad about that. You know, that whole thing, you know, ah was like um something out of a dystopian future.
02:10:03
Speaker
Yeah. And what, for the audience that doesn't know, Balin Miller was a incredible young climber who soloed a ah route that had never been repeated that Mark Twyatt and Randy Ratcliffe did in, what year was that, 88? Yeah, 88.
02:10:19
Speaker
yeah eighty um And then went on to do a bunch of other incredible climbs,
Impact of Tragic Climbing Events
02:10:29
Speaker
and he rappelled off the end of his rope trying to free a a jammed piece of gear on the top of El Cap, and it was sort of live-streamed on...
02:10:42
Speaker
on the internet because people were had the the lens on him when he was doing that. And he felt it was, I think he was doing it too though. I think he was live streaming. Oh, he was too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
02:10:53
Speaker
Uh, and so, yeah, that's, I mean, when I, I, I couldn't, I made sure I didn't see that. Me neither.
02:11:05
Speaker
Because I just didn't, I couldn't have that mark on my soul. It just, no, no. Uh, so you know's so tragic you and i have both seen mayhem and i you know i i when i when i stumble upon it and i can be of help i'm more than happy to do that and i you know i i hated it every time that i had to you know help some injured climber like it was always shit for me yeah and certainly the you know the recoveries that mark and i had to do when we were on patrol you know it's it's awful. And I don't want to share that with anyone or have that part of, be part of the, the dialogue about anything other than to say,
02:11:42
Speaker
um
02:11:45
Speaker
it's cool to, you know, die climbing, everyone dies, but it's better if you live.
02:11:55
Speaker
And, you know, climbing is worth it if you live and maybe it's worth it if you die too. How would I know? I, you know, it hasn't been my experience and, We can't talk to those who died climbing, but, um, you know, when he, when it happened, it was the first time I ever thought to myself, this is shit, fuck climbing. I hate it I really felt that for like a half a day. And then I was like, Oh my God, Scott, are you kidding me? You know, your time with Mark, your time with Bill Bancroft, your time with Jojo, your time with Steve.
02:12:25
Speaker
you know, your time with all these friends that you had and all those amazing things. No, fuck that. That's not true. And then I was like, yeah, it's it's all cool if you live. Hmm.
02:12:36
Speaker
Yeah. you know Yeah. You know, that's what, you know, Barry and I were talking about this a few years ago and saying like success is dying of old age in bed, surrounded by your family and loved ones, you know. As an openist. Yeah. As an openist. Yeah. As an openist. That is definitely the, you know.
02:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah. What would you tell the 20 year old Scott if you were here?
02:13:12
Speaker
I would say that um
02:13:17
Speaker
the path that you're on isn't knowable and it's worth staying on.
Embracing Life's Uncertainty
02:13:28
Speaker
and the lessons that you are going to learn are going to be so long and hard fought that if you knew about them now, you wouldn't go on.
02:13:40
Speaker
And the desserts are going to be so rich that, um, you can't, you can't imagine it now. And I would say that every chance you get to be kind to someone and to tell someone that you care about them or that you love them, take the time to do that.
02:14:07
Speaker
Hmm.
02:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. The old adage that, uh, I asked God for wisdom and he gave me problems to solve.
02:14:19
Speaker
I have this thing that I like to say, which is um I've never heard someone that's 80 years old say that they wish they traveled less, wish they spent less time with their kids, wish that they had less sex or wish they hadn't been as kind.
02:14:39
Speaker
I've never an 80 year old person say that. So I think that we can be safe in assuming that those things are all, you know. Wish they'd planted less trees proverbially. Yes. Right. Yes. All of that. All of that. Yeah. Yeah.
02:14:56
Speaker
Well, thank you, Scott. It's been incredible as always, you know, it's just been such a good friend and such ah such a, such You know, the best friends are also our mentors. And you've certainly been that for me. I've learned so much from you, not the least of which that it's okay to express my love for my friends and just as I do for my family and and how these relationships that...
02:15:25
Speaker
we built through shared struggle. I mean, here we talked for over two hours and we didn't really talk about climbing very much at all. We certainly didn't at least talk about any of the climbing that we did together. i mean, maybe that's a, that's another conversation for another time. Um, if anyone, and, and, and no one's probably interested in it except us.
02:15:47
Speaker
And that's why we have this relationship. Yeah. And, and I, I know that, um, It may not have seemed so at the time, but you were definitely a mentor to me.
02:16:00
Speaker
And, you know, the same way that Mark was. And, you know, you guys um
02:16:07
Speaker
were not just my friends, but watching you particularly ah strive was... and And I always take it out of the climbing arena, just like that.
02:16:21
Speaker
passion to strive that you have was always incredibly inspiring to me. And so, I really appreciate that. And the fact that you um were willing to hang with both Mark and I who are, you know, we're not, we're so insular as friends that breaking into that trio isn't isn't easy for anyone and you did it seamlessly.
02:16:47
Speaker
so i just let I was able to let you be you. and i was like able to yeah like You guys didn't feel threatened by me, neither of you, right? like or Nor did your friendship feel threatened by my friendship with you and my friendship with you.
02:17:00
Speaker
And we were all, I think that was a big part of it. I do have to do this one thing. on the Slovak, after the
02:17:10
Speaker
so on the slovak after the repentance remission pitches. yeah And we, and we did this little, we we followed the original, we're the only ones to have actually followed the original route on the Slovak direct. Everyone else did the Mahoney variation that Kevin and, and Ben pioneered straight off of the top of that first repentance remission, strip.
02:17:35
Speaker
And we did a little repel kind of two, two diagonals repels. Yeah. And then you had to help Mark because, you know, you and I had done some Yosemite big wall climbing. You had to do that. he had no idea down there. But then remember that pitch off of the ledge that I led.
02:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a picture that Mark took. I'll have to put it in the in the show notes. I think Mark took it. I think, Mark, did you have a camera? I can't remember. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I took a bunch of pictures. Yeah. So one of the, I don't know, don't remember who took it ah because it's all in one folder now. and Yeah, the right.
02:18:19
Speaker
but But that moment, like that climb, remember I was like, it was, we're just,
02:18:25
Speaker
We're on this granite ramp and there was this little overhang. It wasn't huge, but it was, you know, maybe chest high and had to get up and get into these kind of flaring cracks.
02:18:37
Speaker
And it was dark. It was, I mean, as it gets in Alaska, middlegg all the night it was cold. We'd already, we'd been climbing for a while and we were, and I especially was like,
02:18:54
Speaker
I something that moment for me just carries this immense weight in my if I like weigh all the moments of my life, that moment has a lot more mass than almost any other moment. And the reason is because I climbed up through this little roof and I got finally got the first real piece of gear in above us.
02:19:23
Speaker
And I just remember looking at you. And I think that's when the picture was taken because there's this picture in my mind, but I don't know what's my memory anymore. What's the picture? Cause it was so long ago. But ah
02:19:39
Speaker
there was just this like, real feeling that for me that we were all somehow one and that sounds crazy it sounds and I can't even experienced it I can't even really describe it but and I felt like this immense responsibility because I rightly or wrongly i thought that I was the only one that could lead that pitch and ah it was the only one and that we had to decline that to survive
02:20:11
Speaker
Yeah. It was right before we got to that ice field. Yeah. Where we got, you know. Where we got lost. Yeah. Yeah. Another story. But like it was the pitch getting up to that ice field.
02:20:22
Speaker
And it got easier as I got into it and it. But it was quite hard there for the first, i don't know, 40 or 50 feet off of the belay. And my feet cut out at one point. And I kind of caught myself. Yeah. We all remember that.
02:20:38
Speaker
It's more than just a moment. It was, I don't know, half an hour or an hour. I don't have no idea how much time went on. But
02:20:48
Speaker
that experience, particularly that little bit of climbing, of all the climbing on that 8,000-foot base or whatever it is, that 25 meters of climbing really profoundly changed me and how I felt about other people.
02:21:04
Speaker
and Because for the first time, i felt really connected to other people oh in ah in a profound way that I would just describe as almost like religious or mystical or or something. And I'd never felt that before.
02:21:17
Speaker
So that's I think what I was trying to say to you when I said. i always felt like I had to do the pitch. because I had to uphold from my partners. yeah Because I felt like there was this connection and sacredness that um like I couldn't, it wasn't about right or wrong, or it was about the partnership.
02:21:47
Speaker
and And I know that you felt that you know at that pitch, because i you know that was that was the spiritual and physical crux of the root for us.
02:21:59
Speaker
And, you know, if I had done it, which I would have gone in the groove to the left, that that weird chimney ice thing and i felt like i could climb that ah but the way you took it where you went straight do you remember that to the left there was like a groove i felt like i could have gotten into that groove and like chimney climbed it but there's another piece that i want you to know which i don't know if you know this uh but mark does um i was in afib
02:22:30
Speaker
So when I finally realized that I had AFib. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, that sleep that we did at sixteen four knocked the AFib out.
02:22:42
Speaker
And i I believe I still would have made it, but I wouldn't have been able to keep up with you guys. And I would have told you to keep going. I wouldn't have made you wait. We wouldn't have waited. Yeah. Or wouldn't have not waited.
02:22:54
Speaker
i know. I know. But, you know... So that for me, um my remembrance of that is in a way being up there with you.
02:23:04
Speaker
Does that make sense? I felt that you were up there with me. I mean, both of you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was an amazing experience.
02:23:16
Speaker
And it's, we still, fell into the trap of trying to describe it with numbers and and pictures.
02:23:29
Speaker
ah And nothing wrong with that because there's a way that doing our very best is is good effort. right Yeah. Right. And each one of us wrote about it really differently. Yeah.
02:23:43
Speaker
You know, which is very interesting. Like, you know, the pieces that were important to us and whatever, you know, like, and And so, you know, it's a cool thing to have those three, each of us in a different, you know, venue, writing our version of what happened up there. And I like Mark's statement that it's really, ah it was a really hard route to live with.
02:24:07
Speaker
You know, so. yeah Yeah, but that was the coming back to reality piece. Yeah. The, the what was a scene from the,
02:24:20
Speaker
movie about the Iraq war where the guy comes back from deployment and he's in the cereal aisle. Yes. what What was that film? Was it Hurt Locker? Hurt Locker could have been. yeah And there's just, he that's the experience.
02:24:35
Speaker
Right. Right. Like he's been super intense, life or death, super focused, brotherhood, responsibility, love, all of those things. Touching God. Yeah. You know, right. Hey, we're out of Cheerios.
02:24:52
Speaker
and you know when you're You know what moment it was for me? It was um after that, just after that, there's a moment that the two of us were on that, like two pitches up that ice face and we were hanging off one screw and you had one tool and we were leaning into each other.
02:25:20
Speaker
while Mark was climbing and I don't remember if I was belaying or you were belaying, but we were both, you know, and it felt like, like it felt like, you know, there was one person there.
02:25:35
Speaker
Like the way that, you know, the way that, I don't know how to describe it, but you know I just remember being hanging off my our tethers. I remember we you know had our daisy chains or whatever they were, passes, whatever they were, hanging off of single screw while Mark was up there.
02:25:51
Speaker
And the two of us in this see at this circle ice, of black ice with a tiny little, whatever strength we had to be able to, you know, titch a little crampon place for one of our feet and, but just leaning and like being one person. or we other Yeah, I know you remember that.
02:26:13
Speaker
Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a prolonged hug. yeah our Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but Right. Like we're just, and, and I feel that I w at that point was where we got lost, of course, but I, I remember feeling super calm at that moment with you, you know, just like the two of us there and, you know, like this is where we're supposed to be and this is what's happening right now. And I don't need it to be any different than it is right now.
02:26:44
Speaker
Hmm.
02:26:46
Speaker
What is it about, and I'm going to say men though, it's not always men that they have to be put or put themselves in these extreme positions to access that?
02:27:00
Speaker
so So my belief is is um is genetics and the short history of humankind.
02:27:13
Speaker
So, yeah, we we were still buffalo hunters. We're still we're still with with sharp sticks poking mastodons to get him to run off the cliffs. And that's our job.
02:27:26
Speaker
And guys die all the time doing that. And the job of women in those times was to cooperate. Yeah. To care for the young ones and to love each other because even if they had fights, they still had to cooperate to find the berries and seeds.
02:27:44
Speaker
And when someone was sick or when someone wasn't producing milk and you were, you know, your job was to, you know, nurse the baby. Yeah. And there's just like this way of cooperation. Men cooperate, but they do it in this way where it's Marshall.
02:28:02
Speaker
And, um, I think that that was 32,000 years ago. Yeah. Right. long no really yeah I mean, that's if if we think about the, you know, the history of the earth, like that, that's, that's a day, you know, that's an hour, that's a minute, a second, whatever. And, and so I think that having to go to those extreme places gives us the excuse we need to let go of societal bounds
02:28:36
Speaker
And to transcend genetics, if that makes any sense. And I think that,
02:28:50
Speaker
I don't think the industrial revolution did us any favors. but I mean, in terms of like, you know, what men, what men are to each other. Yeah.
02:29:02
Speaker
You know.
02:29:06
Speaker
It's been a been an honor. Well, I'm gonna say it differently. I'm gonna say what a sweet conversation to have with my friend, Steve.
02:29:17
Speaker
Last question I may ask this to everyone. How does Scott Bacchies want to be remembered?
02:29:27
Speaker
In the climbing community, I would wanna be remembered as the one who brought the word love to the hard ass albinists. And in the other communities, i would want to be remembered as
02:29:43
Speaker
the imperfect person who tried to understand himself.
02:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you can take some credit for your amazing kids too. Yeah.
02:29:58
Speaker
That's a big contribution. ah Yeah, they get to do, they get to, you know, their their deal is their deal. I will say that one of the best things that as a parent, I believe can happen to you is that when your kids are over 21, they still say, I love you and still want to hang out with you.
02:30:16
Speaker
Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, the only real test that matters is getting what you want to have out of life.
02:30:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I feel as I'm sure you do, incredibly grateful yeah for the path that who would have ever thought for either of us in a way, right? Like, you know, yeah, it seems impossible.
02:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, here we are. Thanks so much, Scott. I love you, Steve. I love you, Scott.
02:30:59
Speaker
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