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Voice of the Mountains: Success is Not the Summit with Peter Metcalf (Director's Cut)
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This is the full, unedited version of Steve House's conversation with Peter Metcalf — extended and running longer than the standard episode release.
Before Black Diamond Equipment became the most trusted name in mountain sports, there was Peter Metcalf: a teenager from Long Island hitchhiking to the Gunks every weekend, a dogeared copy of Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills on his nightstand, and a conviction that the mountains were where he belonged.
In this conversation, Steve and Peter trace the full arc of that conviction — from his early apprenticeship years through a harrowing 13-day first ascent on Mount Hunter, where hallucinations, extreme cold, and frostbite tested everything he had. That experience forged a lesson Peter would call on again in 1989, when he organized a team of fellow climbers to buy bankrupt Chouinard Equipment out of collapse — using retirement savings, high-interest loans, and a shared sense of purpose — and rebuild it into Black Diamond.
What emerges is a portrait of someone who applied the logic of alpinism to every domain of his life: patient apprenticeship, commitment without a visible outcome, and the willingness to keep moving when the only way to live is forward. This is a story about climbing — and about becoming.
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Transcript
Peter Metcalf's Climbing Roots and Early Adventures
00:00:00
Speaker
You might not know the name Peter Metcalf, but you absolutely know his legacy. If you've ever clipped a Black Diamond carabiner, buckled one of their helmets, or gripped an ice tool that made you feel just a little braver than you really are, then you've touched something that Peter helped build.
00:00:18
Speaker
Long before our Black Diamond Equipment became one of the most influential brands in mountain sports, and long before Peter became its CEO, he was an obsessed climber.
00:00:29
Speaker
A dirtbag with a dog-eared copy of Freedom of the Hills, sleeping in a little tent up in the Bugaboos, hitchhiking to the gunks, and working his way through his apprenticeship as an alpinist by tirelessly climbing rock all summer and ice all winter.
00:00:48
Speaker
In 1980, he and two partners set out to climb a new route on the formidable Mount Hunter in Alaska. They launched up this massive wall with nothing more than a rope, a rack, and packs on their back.
00:01:00
Speaker
They expected their climb to take six days, and it took 13. On the descent, they experienced full-on out-of-body hallucinations, and one of them sadly lost all his fingers to frostbite.
00:01:15
Speaker
The story of that c climb is raw and real, and it's a lesson in leadership under pressure and in trusting your partners. There's a story about choosing unknown transformation over the status quo.
00:01:32
Speaker
And it's a story about choosing to climb until they crossed over onto Sun Tzu's death's ground, where the only way to live is to continue to fight.
00:01:45
Speaker
A few short years later, Peter found himself facing a very different life or death situation. Chouinard Equipment, the legendary climbing company started by Yvon Chouinard, was bankrupt.
00:01:58
Speaker
Most people would have walked away, but Peter did not. As the general manager and against all outside advice, he organized a group of fellow climbers, not venture capitalists or bankers, climbers.
00:02:12
Speaker
Together they scraped together the money and he convinced his workforce to roll all their retirement savings into the collateral that they used for the loans, loans with frighteningly high interest rates and loans they needed to survive.
00:02:29
Speaker
Peter will tell us what he learned in climbing his mountains and how those lessons shaped everything that came after for him. How risk in the Alpine prepared him for risk in business and how humility, honesty, and a shared purpose can build something that truly endures.
00:02:54
Speaker
This is a story about climbing, yes. But more than that, the true spirit of uphill athlete, it is a story about becoming. My name is Steve House, and this is Voice of the Mountains.
00:03:14
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 plans.
00:03:32
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go. UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
Climbing Community and Cultural Influences
00:03:46
Speaker
Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you. Thank you, Steve. i appreciate the opportunity. So why don't you start us off just by telling us a little bit about how you got started in climbing? Because as you know, and I know, and our audience knows, when you started, climbing was not the more mainstream sport that it is today.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, I was very fortunate. Life is more serendipitous than most of us give it credit. And I did what most kids did in the mid 1960s in America.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I was just outside of the city. I'd been born in New York City and it was just outside of the city. And I joined Boy Scouts. And serendipitously, the scout troop that I joined, we heard it was a good troop and I liked doing things outside, happened to have two co-troop leaders who had and were doing some backpacking, skiing, canoeing, and one of them had done some rock climbing.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so my introduction to really, i mean, not hiking because I could hike around in the woods, but my first overnight backpacking trip, I was 11, was up in the Catskills camping on the summit of Slide Mountain.
00:05:02
Speaker
And the scouts, just with my enthusiasm for it and what the scout leaders saw and did, learned how to, went backpacking numerous times and then got into skiing with them. And then Torkerman's Ravine as a young kid.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then one of the scout masters who had done some climbing invited me and one other, one of the kids when I was 14 to join him on an Appalachian Mountain Club, begin a rock climbing weekend in Schwangonks because he just saw me scrambling all over the place.
00:05:37
Speaker
And i went up there for the weekend. went through the intro program. And this was the spring of 1970. I was 14 at the time. And it just hit me, that this unique activity. i loved being outside and I saw it as...
00:05:55
Speaker
a skill to learn because I love being in the mountains, but there was something about this Artvarkian, Bohemian, outsider, eclectic group of people. And it was a small group of white collar, blue collar people that just, it just spoke to me. Like it suddenly dawned on me, these are my people. And I was a kid at this time who was being raised on a diary on TV of the little rascals. And I thought,
00:06:22
Speaker
Okay, I've discovered Spanky and the Gang, John Standard and Rich Goldstone and Dick Williams and all. There they are. That's my gang. That's your people. Yeah. that's So it's as much about...
00:06:36
Speaker
the people that were climbing and having not started climbing that earlier, but I mean, climbing has homogenized so in some ways, right? In terms of the the participation and the people that I see doing it. And not that that's a bad thing. I think that's a good thing and a natural thing. But I think people who don't,
00:06:56
Speaker
didn't climb in the 70s don't remember just how out there of a, how fringe of an activity rock climbing was. I mean, there was there was basically no technology around it, right? there was There were no cams, there were like, the the ropes were very rudimentary. and You probably didn't even have a harness to start with. You were probably just tying in with a bullen on a coil, i would I would guess. And so very, very different than now. And then rapidly learned that, hey, a bullen on a coil is a heck of a lot more comfortable when you fold than a bullen.
00:07:30
Speaker
Than just a straight bullen. Yes, you nailed it. i mean, it was very unusual. And when I came back to Long Island, just that outside of the city, and told people what I did, nobody understood it. Like, oh, you're rock collecting. You're You're what?
00:07:43
Speaker
And, yeah but it was okay. I mean, and and to the point you made about it was the people who attracted me, but there was also, i loved being outside. i had done some fishing, a little bit of hunting and many different things, but I didn't have a vehicle to channel that love of the outdoors in a, in a, I needed, i needed something that could soak up my thinking, my,
00:08:10
Speaker
need for activity in some focused, skillful way. And I tried many different things. and And at the end of that weekend, it just hit me that I think it's climbing. I think this is my vehicle to love, to enjoy and just just enjoy and cultivate my love for the outdoors and the mountains and the wild places.
00:08:33
Speaker
Well, as as someone who I believe we both know, Kyle Lefkoff once told me, like, if His theory is that if you have the climbing gene and you get exposed to climbing, your life has changed.
00:08:44
Speaker
And it's just like you you're you're on that path now and there's nothing you can really do about it. It's taken over your fate and and directed you in that direction. that That gene lays dormant in many, many people.
00:08:59
Speaker
maybe sometimes for their whole lives because they never get that serendipitous exposure that that you had through the Boy Scouts. I was also in the Boy Scouts Troop 514 in La Grande, Oregon and was a big part of my childhood as well. So that I really love hearing hearing that story.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's I had not heard that from Kyle, but I love that. description. I think it's very apropos. I think at the time, as I got serious about it, I think some people would have been less gracious and said, it's ah it's a terrible addiction and it's ruining your life and all your friends. going to end up to nothing.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yes. Yes. that's That's the flip side of obsession, right? Because it can also be addiction. so To the point where you say that as I tried to introduce some of my good friends,
00:09:45
Speaker
In Garden City, i became in some households with parents, the son and I'm grown. I was the kid who was ruined, attempting to turn their kids into delinquents, taking them to the gongs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know,
00:10:01
Speaker
I was so lucky in that way, like with my upbringing personally, that my parents supported it and loaned me a car when I was 16 so I could go, in my case, to Smith Rocks in 1986 and things like that. And ah not everyone has that ah that support. And so that's that's really, really great that you were allowed to express that and follow that.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, I fully agree with that. You know, when I saw the, i had accepted and taking my parents' support of this for granted until I saw the reactions of other parents. And I think I've reflected upon this. I think it was the fact that my parents were two immigrants to the US s who came here.
00:10:44
Speaker
My mother was a survivor of the German Holocaust survivor and came in her 20s to America after the war. And my father, though, American, was born and raised in China and exited when the bombing got too intense.
00:10:57
Speaker
At the beginning of World War II, when the Japanese were bombing, what was Canton or Guangzhou, and came back with his mother alone with nothing. And life for those two people, my parents, was an adventure, not by choice, but they were born into adventure.
00:11:13
Speaker
And I think what they saw was they provided me with a safe home and a good basis, but wanted me to have enough independence to experience the world in the way that they had.
00:11:25
Speaker
And though I didn't have the benefit of a car, they were very willing, if this is the 60s, late 60s and early 70s, you could hitchhike, you could take the, just jump on the train, take it into new York City,
00:11:37
Speaker
which we would do, take the subway up to George Washington Bridge, walk across the George Washington Bridge and start hitchhiking on the Palisades every weekend. And that was the weekend routine. And they were very supportive of that.
00:11:50
Speaker
yeah Yeah, we don't encourage our teenagers to like hitchhike across the state these days, despite all the additional connectivity we have, right? like I mean, there was pay phones and things like that with the technology. So i I know you, or when I think of your climbing personally, and you know I've known you for a while,
00:12:12
Speaker
decades now, I think of you as as an alpinist. So how does, how did, what was your journey like from going to the Shuangunks to, you know, going to to big mountains um in Alaska and elsewhere?
00:12:27
Speaker
You know, how did how did that, what was that path like at that time?
Transition from Rock Climbing to Alpinism
00:12:32
Speaker
You know, I would, ah first let me respond and say, Yes, I guess at the end of the day, I would have a point my life definitely called myself first and foremost an alpinist over a rock climber.
00:12:44
Speaker
But I will say throughout that period of time, I was incredibly passionate about rock climbing. I just wasn't at the highest levels, but I so enjoyed it. And it was what i did the majority of my climbing along with the winter ice climbing and mountains. But when the weather was warm, I loved to rock climb.
00:13:04
Speaker
And so to then to answer your question, the journey to that was the diet of books that most of us who got addicted to this sport in the late 60s and early 70s had.
00:13:18
Speaker
It was, i Chose to Climb by Chris Bonington. It was The Hard Years by Joe Brown. It was One Man in the Mountains by Tom Patey. I mean, and what I saw in all these And all these biographies or autobiographies that i was reading and the people who introduced me to climbing at the shuanghams, the AMC, they were all mountaineers.
00:13:41
Speaker
You alpinist wasn't used so much at that point in time in America. it was in Europe. um But all of them were quickly telling me like something to the extent of you got to get these skills. And in the summer here at the Gunks, it is so hot and so humid. You got to get the hell out of here.
00:13:57
Speaker
So what you do in the summer is we go to the Tetons and we go to the Wind River Ranges and we go to Canada and things like that. at Oh, wow. This sounds pretty cool. And And but in reading those those biographies and hearing this, you realize, oh, there's a huge apprenticeship here. How do you become a mountaineer or an alpinist? Like, what do I need to do to go climb Mount Rotson or go to Canada or Alaska?
00:14:23
Speaker
And, you know again, fortunately, this community of people I was surrounded with were including people who had done first ascents already in Alaska. i mean, that was the AMC at this time. And i got a hold of the Boyd Everett Expedition Planner. you know, Boyd Everett was on that American Annapurna trip.
00:14:38
Speaker
um But I guess my point was, what was really interesting about this only being 14 was that I had never done in my life at that point in time anything big. You know, at that age, you're you're carefree, you're running around, you're doing whatever.
00:14:54
Speaker
And climbing combined with reading these stories and go, yeah, I want to do those things. I want to go to Alaska. I want to go to Europe. I want to go to Mont Blanc. I want to do the Fray Pillar. i want I think someday, but whoa, those that's a big deal.
00:15:08
Speaker
um But you're hanging out with people who say, yeah, it's a big deal, but is there's an apprenticeship you go through. So going to go, going to rock climb here. to learn to lead.
00:15:19
Speaker
going to learn how to do winter camping. And then you're going to learn step by step by step. And um it was really... I think that has affected the rest of my life in that you can look at a goal and you immediately know how to break it down into all of its components. Okay, it's a step-by-step set of components. It's just like, it's not, you know, think about the cover of Outside Magazine a few years back or 10 years ago and think of how much the mentality has changed from 1969, 1970, 71, Siobhan Gungsev.
00:15:55
Speaker
Here's the apprenticeship in the years that you're going to invest in this if you want to get to this goal, but you can do it. To seven days to greatness, how you can become a great alpinist in seven days or a great alligator wrestler or a great or whatever.
00:16:09
Speaker
And it was much more that step by step. But it was the fact that, number one, i love the mountains. I love the wild places. I love challenges.
00:16:21
Speaker
And reading these stories of Bonington and Pades and um Don Willans and then Annapurna South Face of Haston and Bonington wrote it, but that is sent by Don Willans and Haston, who were the people who submitted. It's like, I got to do this. I don't know. It's just part of the part of that gene that Kyle talks about.
00:16:42
Speaker
And it was, OK, what are the steps and how am I going to do this step by step? Yeah, I feel like Boy Scouts itself taught me that because you would have these lists like, you know, here's the next, like you know, and it it was, it was, you know, the Boy Scout handbook in many ways for me was sort of this, it was a path and i was like, do you do this? do You do this, you qualify for this, you got to wait this many months, you have to assume this level of leadership within your team.
00:17:10
Speaker
and And it's like, okay, I could follow this list. i you know And then, yeah, you look back four or five years later and you're like, you've learned all of these things. You've become. And I think that that's so interesting because i there is, and you what you said with outside, there is absolutely this tension between you know this mentality that you're describing where you are working for a long term goal to to become something that is going to take years versus
00:17:43
Speaker
I want to be that. it's Those are the different different, you can be an alpinist perhaps in seven days by some definition, but you're not, you haven't become a new person through that process. And those are very different things. Right, it's up in a metamorphosis. And you know, I had never before thought about what you just said about the Boy Scout, the handbook.
00:18:05
Speaker
But as I think about it, i when I was done with my copy, It was so dog-eared. And I think like you, I read that thing. It sat by my bed every night before going, before, it was what read until I fell asleep.
00:18:21
Speaker
And kept reading it and using it when i got serious enough about the climbing a year or two after I started and that book was replaced by something else that became very dog-eared but had hardcover. It was called Mountaineering Freedom of the Hills, which showed you everything from how to do Tyrolean traverses to tension traverses to crevasse rescue. And I would read that every night you go, okay, what am I going to practice this season?
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's it's I did did the same. I still have my Boy Scout handbook somewhere and it's it's it's literally like just disintegrated and it's just ah ah just just a bunch of pages, you know, you like ah like an ancient text or something. but um so So you still haven't answered my question though. Like you heard about becoming a mountaineer, going to big mountains, going to the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies and Alaska. And of course, yeah, you're 14. So, you know, you've got ah you've got some growing up to do as we all do.
00:19:25
Speaker
But at some point you made your way up to to Alaska. And what was that what was that path like? Who did you meet along the way? Who did you bring with you along the way?
00:19:38
Speaker
So, you know, again, life is serendipitous, starting with the gunks. One's very fortunate, a lot of serendipitous acts. But so I started in the spring of 1970 and climbed again in the fall.
00:19:53
Speaker
and that fall, just by fluke, you know, when there was no internet and we would have three channels on TV, that fall was a TV show A one hour documentary, and i I don't recall what it was called exactly, but it was a documentary on Knowles, National Outdoor Leadership School in the Wind Rivers, and Paul Petzl leading a 35 day wilderness mountaineering course.
00:20:20
Speaker
really well filmed, showing people self-resting on snow, rock climbing, climbing peaks. And i watched this, and halfway through it it was in the evening, I'm yelling, we were in a small little house on the outsides of Queens in NASA, I'm yelling to my parents, Mom, Dad, come in here, you gotta see this, gotta do this, check this out. My parents caught a little bit of it and go, well, if you can figure out how to get there and do it, you know whatever, do that. So anyway, and I had, yeah that wasn't cheap. I mean, I think cost nothing in hindsight, but it still was a lot of money to save up. But I had with my brother, a little lawn business. And they said, hey, you can save up and do it. And I sent out for the course material, got the materials applied for their Alpine guide course.
00:21:05
Speaker
Got accepted in early June of 1971, went west for the first time, flew out to Denver. i I had a lie on my age because it required you for that course to be 16 and a half and I was 15.
00:21:17
Speaker
So I lied. and figured that, no, no, no, no. I was pretty rabid and did that five week course. But that course was pretty incredible at that time. Pet Salt, yeah who's a legend, was on it for the first 10 days and then he
00:21:35
Speaker
walks out bidding everybody a fair far what farewell, and you head off up north towards Gannett Peak and that whole area, which, you know, climate change has unfortunately affected it, not for the better.
00:21:48
Speaker
But back then it was one heck of a wild, glaciated pet place. And because it was the Alpine Guide Course, they wanted to teach you more about leading and real technical climbing in the mountains.
00:22:01
Speaker
They had hired and he walked in there. We met him for five days in and around Gannett Peak. Somebody who just before I went out there, I had read about because at that time, the coolest publication that you could read about climbing was called Ascent.
00:22:18
Speaker
And it was the annual sublime, beautiful long form journalism magazine once a year of the Sierra Club. And there was an article in there written by Royal Robbins on the first ascent of Tissa Act, in which he wrote both his part and a guy named Don Peterson's, talking about Don Peterson as the young Turk up and coming and constantly challenging him on the route and not listening to his paternalistic
00:22:49
Speaker
wisdom and experience and they fought all the way up that route. It was just an amazing article and I had read it probably five times. i was like fascinated by it. So who walks in to the Gannett Peak base camp?
00:23:01
Speaker
Don Peterson, looking every bit as tough, hard as Rob has made out to be. And I was like, oh my God, this I am going to be rabid and just like do anything he says and be with him.
00:23:15
Speaker
And fortunately in this course, you have five weeks in the wilderness, that's a long time. yeah um a lot of people were kind of burned out and since it was voluntary, Only two or three of us said like, yeah, yeah, I want to do this. I want to do this.
00:23:29
Speaker
So we did a bunch of climbing with him. We actually did a new technical route in Gannett Peak together. But I mean, just hearing his stories and climbing with that guy. and By the time I left Knowles, I really felt like I had definitely come up a level.
00:23:45
Speaker
And one of the young guys who I really hit it off with, whose name escapes me at the moment, but doesn't matter. And I said, like, as the course was ending, have you ever climbed the Grand Teton?
00:23:56
Speaker
And he said, nope. And everybody would love to, and I go, well, so would I. I think we we know enough, let's go up there. And so the two of us, soon as the course ended, I had no deadline to get home um until school started after the Labor Day.
00:24:10
Speaker
So as soon as the course ended, we grabbed our gear and said, man, we're Mountaineers now. And hitchhiked up to the Tetons, got to Jenny Lake, camped out there, and then started like investigating, okay, what's the route and this and that.
00:24:25
Speaker
And just somehow in the process, Realized in talking to people there like, you know, you kids, I mean, we're 15. Before you might want to do the Exum Ridge, you might want to get a little bit more instruction.
00:24:38
Speaker
So we walked into the Exum office and talked to Exum about it. And he said, yeah, know, we have this advanced rock climbing class that teaches more about leading, more about placing pro with a guy named Herb Swedeland, who as it turned out did the first Ascend of the Black Eyes Kouar.
00:24:56
Speaker
And so we hired, we we signed up for that class and got another day of leading instruction with Herb who would have you then jump off his stuff on traverses and evaluate you.
00:25:11
Speaker
And then Herb said, you know, what more suggestion, No, no, nevermind. We finished that thing. Sorry. It was the one day, but we finished it with also a climb of Baxter's. And at the end of that, Herb said, you know, I think you kids could do it.
00:25:25
Speaker
And so we went up and yeah, climbed the Exum. We're lucky to have lived through it because we didn't start at 3 We weren't the fastest kids in the world.
00:25:37
Speaker
And i learned a lot about afternoon thunderstorms. So we got up near the summit in a raging thunderstorm with, I had long hair, frizzy hair standing out, sparks flying between the few carabiners we had.
00:25:50
Speaker
And I should add that I think we did that route with but three or four runners, five or six carabiners, like three pitons and one Moac nut. um And or or i had Peter Lindner's black beauties. But anyway, we did that, came down, did a little bit more stuff. And then I hitchhiked back east to get home.
00:26:14
Speaker
But that fall, the next great thing was I got back and I'm not in doing anything with the AMC anymore. But those people I had met through the AMC were people I was doing some climbing with.
00:26:26
Speaker
And one of those people was a wonderful guy who has since passed, Guy Waterman. who had been one of the instructors and he had two sons, Scooter, we had three, one i had passed, Scooter and Johnny Waterman.
00:26:43
Speaker
And he said that Johnny was a really good climber and he and know another climbing partner of his, he was out west, a guy named Leif Patterson, were the following summer, summer of 72, putting together two week long mountaineering courses And they had this two week course they were putting together to climb Mount Ropson by the cane face.
00:27:10
Speaker
And it was gal glaciated, you learned a lot about more about glacier travel, this sort of thing. So I convinced three my climbing buddies from the Gunks who were my age, like we should go do this.
00:27:23
Speaker
got connected with them, signed up, did it, and then hitchhiked up to in the summer of 72. i mean, and that I should add that winter, we're doing a little bit of, um mountaineering and in the White Mountains, but not ice climbing or anything. um Snowshoeing, over overnight camping, or rock climbing, and this kind of thing.
00:27:44
Speaker
But anyway, in the um summer of 72, hitchhiked out New York City up to Montreal, because at that time for 35 bucks, you could go all the way out to the West Coast on the Trans-Canada train.
00:27:59
Speaker
And we did research, and they actually had a whistle stop at Mount Robeson Station. So in the middle of the night after three days of travel, the train guy, the conductor agrees to tell the the the engineer to stop the train.
00:28:13
Speaker
We pile off at Mount Robeson station. Next morning, run into Johnny and Leif and go packing into Berg Lake at the base of Mount Robeson.
00:28:24
Speaker
And when we get there, we run into a guy named warren blesser who was well known at the time had just done new route east ridge of mckinley or something but definitely i've read and heard of him and leif knew of him and his partner had just twisted his ankle and was walking out and leif was there left with his dog his alaskan malamut looking for a climbing partner so hey can i join you guys and life said well i got these three kids who i'm teaching to climb but if you want to join us you're welcome to and
00:28:58
Speaker
Warren said, sure, let's do it. So anyway, the next two weeks we spent doing, working our way up first climbing Resplendent in the helmet, working our way up across onto the dome, climbed the cane face. I should add someday these photos I got to publish.
00:29:17
Speaker
a lot Warren kept saying his dog will turn around at some point and not follow us. And it kept following us. So we had to keep feeding it. But when we crossed the Shrund onto the cane face, it leaked across the Shrund onto the ice and then it couldn't reverse it.
00:29:35
Speaker
So we climbed the cane face, leading it and placing screws. And this is 1972. And this is part of what we're learning about ice climbing. I got to do my leading at all. But this dog is like front pointing with these long claws And every time tries to turn around, it can't.
00:29:51
Speaker
And by the way, we, I'm digressing a little bit, this is a phenomenal journey. We make it to the summit of Rotson, which is really cool, like Alaskan Peak with its ice flutings and stuff. You know, you did that emperor face route.
00:30:09
Speaker
But at this point now, the clouds are blowing in and it's, visibility is getting low, and in and out of the clouds, we keep hearing that, well, before we can see it, we're hearing these whistles blowing.
00:30:23
Speaker
One whistle, then two, one whistle, then two. And then as the clouds blow clear for a moment, we see down below a team that turns out to be four Japanese climbers who had come up the other side, the ledges route or wherever the the standard route is And they had just made it to the base of the pyramid and they're slowly working their way up.
00:30:47
Speaker
Anyway, that section, as you know, is not that steep. It's probably only 30 degrees or so. The door goes through the clouds moving very quickly gets ahead of us as we descend down to that team.
00:30:59
Speaker
And suddenly you hear the whistles just go nuts. And you realize when we use the theme, they thought it was an apparition a wolf coming down to eat them. That was pretty phenomenal. You know, at this point time, it's getting late, and the only way down with us is going to wrap the cane face.
00:31:17
Speaker
and But the dog can't repel. So we take turns putting the goddamn Malamut in slings and repelling the Malamut hanging around. A huge dog. huge dog.
00:31:29
Speaker
and Well, that's amazing that it was calm enough to let you do that to him. Yeah. Phenomenal adventure. But what was very cool about just what learning was that the the north face, not the emperor face, the north face of Rogeson had only been climbed once under snow conditions by Pat Callis and ah forgot whom.
00:31:50
Speaker
And Johnny and Warren and Leif had all wanted to do it under ice conditions. Leif, unfortunately, that morning was not feeling well and said, I'm going to stick around in the dome.
00:32:05
Speaker
But he he said to Johnny, if you and Warren wanted to try it, go do it. And said to us guys, you guys have learned enough. You can follow them over there. I mean, you're not going to do it, obviously, but you want to follow them.
00:32:19
Speaker
So anyway, we did that and got to witness the first ascent of and ice real ice conditions of that climb. Then we all came down and actually then afterwards still had enough time over two weeks and did a new route on Whitehorn in a day. um Well,
00:32:35
Speaker
Beautiful mountain, by the way. It could been day, but all of us, and it was coming down in the dark. We didn't have headlights, just little flashlights. and the three of us who had never done an unprepared bivouac before kept saying the to to Johnny and Leif, let's do bivouac. We've got to learn how to bivouac.
00:32:52
Speaker
And finally they capitulated and all right, you want to be miserable i understand what it is to do an unprepared bivouac up high, let's do it. And shivered through the night, never slept a moment, put every stitch on, lay on the ropes and learned what it was like to bivouac and got down, walked out.
00:33:12
Speaker
And then after that, it was a great trip and decided, all right, we still got two weeks left, hitchhiked down to the bugaboos. and had a great eight or nine days in the bugs.
00:33:26
Speaker
and got to do everything from the standard routes and Bugaboo and Snowpatch to the Kraus McCarthy and Snowpatch. Pretty good routes for the day. Yeah, yeah, very good, yeah. And also messed around with some Canadian climbers we met who were trying to do an aid route on Snowpatch.
00:33:42
Speaker
We got to belay and actually try to do a ah few moves with them. But anyway, it was it was phenomenal. And then ultimately hitchhiked home at the end of the summer. And at that point,
00:33:54
Speaker
With that experience, I realized, as did some of my other climbing buddies from the Gunks who had had similar experiences, we we need to do something bigger now. We need to go to Alaska. We're ready. And my AMC buddies that fall said, yeah, you guys are ready.
00:34:11
Speaker
So what are you going to do? I go, hmm, not sure. And did the reading, did the research. and determine that what we should do is not ah not the highest peak. something maybe we shouldn't Let's not do something on Logan or St. Elias McKinley, but let's do a new route somewhere and let's do it on a peak that's 15, 16, 17,000 feet somewhere.
00:34:37
Speaker
And we just started reading, finding books, and we came across a book by called The Cloudwalkers by Patty somebody or another.
Epic Expeditions and Climbing Philosophy
00:34:46
Speaker
And in it, he talked about doing the second descent or the first descent of a beautiful peak called Mount Fairweather in Glacier Bay National Monument.
00:34:57
Speaker
And when we read about it and then went to the Alpine Club, we're in New York, so it's easier to get into the American Alpine Club's headquarters at the time of their library, realized, that thing had only had, i think, one other ascent at this point in time.
00:35:13
Speaker
And it looked like there was multiple ridges that had not been climbed that were technical. We wanted to do something technical. And so... you know, doing the research, he found out, oh, Brad Washburn up in the Museum of Science had this amazing archive of, from his aerial photography days, photographing every Alaskan peak. And that he would allow you to come up there and go through his books if you made an appointment.
00:35:38
Speaker
So early in the winter or late in the fall, we contacted the office and asked if we could come up there and look at photos of Mount Fairweather.
00:35:49
Speaker
And they said, sure, made the appointment. So we're in there, a bunch of, at this time, yeah, 17-year-olds looking through this stuff. And who walks through the door? Brad Washburn.
00:36:01
Speaker
And Brad says, hey, I heard you guys were coming up here and were interested Fairweather. Let me tell you about Fairweather. Have you seen my book, Bradford and I'm Fairweather? And I said, what? And he goes, here's a copy.
00:36:11
Speaker
And as it turned out, Brad had actually, when he was at the Harvard Mountaineering Club, um had tried to do the second, I guess at that time, it would have been the first descent, yeah, before Carpe, of Mount Fairweather.
00:36:24
Speaker
And what they did was they took the train cross-country, took a boat up to Juno or into Lituya Bay and started and were on the mountain for 30 or 40 days and failed to do it, weather conditions, all this sort of thing.
00:36:40
Speaker
But i share that only because
00:36:46
Speaker
I'll jump back to that. um And then Brad looked at the photos with us and helped us and they said, well, there's that Ridges Undone, that Ridges Undone, that one looks really cool. And he goes, I'll go do that one. You guys can do it. I mean, you're going to be college kids in end another the year. i mean, yeah, go do it.
00:37:02
Speaker
Amazing. So anyway, with that inspiration and those photos and the Boyd Everett Expedition Planner, we began planning the trip. How much gear would fix ropes? How much rope did we need?
00:37:14
Speaker
How many pickets did we need? And fortunately, one of my climbing buddies, I think it's safe to tell the stories. Dad was a head janitor at one of the schools and he lived in Brooklyn.
00:37:26
Speaker
And Brooklyn was able to put a requisition in for whole bunch of 6061 T6 aluminum T-bar for something at the school just happened to get cut up and drilled by us into pickets. Um,
00:37:39
Speaker
But you know what's interesting is here reading Brad's book and how he got there and the gear he had, it was just shocking how between 1930 something and 1973, the methodologies, the gear, the stoves, the leather boots,
00:37:59
Speaker
the coated nylon oil cotton had not changed. I mean, it was almost the same. walkie talkies, walkietaies no i mean I mean, it was really so similar, the trip. And it turned out to be pretty phenomenal. we and Instead of training it, we packed up. One of the buddies had a Volkswagen, the typical camper van. 1973, left high school early.
00:38:21
Speaker
and in nineteen seventy three left high school early in mid-May, drove cross-country, the four of us, with 30 days worth of food, all the ropes, gear, everything we needed so we didn't have to buy a single thing.
00:38:34
Speaker
And then drove up, drove to Prince Rupert, got on the ferry boat, and then total people, I'm kind of joking, but on the boat, we just slept on the deck.
00:38:47
Speaker
And people would see you us with the gear or tying, making are wands, cutting nylon, sealing it, taping it, gluing it to bamboo sticks.
00:38:58
Speaker
And people want to know what we're doing. We finally realized, because we didn't have much money, like, we'll tell you about it, but if if if you could bring us a hamburger or a or some food, it would be really helpful. And everybody was happy to feed us these boring tourists on the boat.
00:39:13
Speaker
Um, and then we got, so we got to Juneau, pulled off there, pulled into Ken Loken. He was the pilot's office, walked in I think we called our, I forgot what we called our expedition. We came up with a name. Everybody had a name for their expedition. Right. And we walked in and said, we're their so-and-so expedition.
00:39:32
Speaker
And Ken Loken's administrative assistant secretary, et cetera, office manager looked at us and said, do your parents know you're here? you see You are the expedition? Yeah. yeah We were expecting actual full-grown adults.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. A bunch of teenagers. So anyway, Ken flew us into Latuya Bay, and we spent 28 days on the mountain um and had a phenomenal time. But you know what? I skipped a most amazing component of this story, which I got to tell you.
00:40:14
Speaker
So at this point in time, the American Alpine Club, it still has it now, but back then i think it was more significant was there were these Boyd Everett Mountaineering grants for young people to do new routes up in Alaska.
00:40:31
Speaker
So we applied for those grants to the AAC and we got it. I think it was 150 bucks each, which was very meaningful at that point in time. But because of that, of course, everybody at the AAC knew that.
00:40:45
Speaker
um So people there knew that. And another part of the story that I forgot to tell you earlier was, so the previous year, I told you we went to the Bugaboos.
00:40:56
Speaker
it During those eight or nine days were at the Bugaboos, the last day or two we were there, down, this was before the big hut was there, down into that camp area where ah the igloos were, come walk in this old guy.
00:41:13
Speaker
And we look at him and and think, I've seen photos of that guy before. And we walk up to him just start talking to him. And just asked him, like, hey, where are you coming from?
00:41:26
Speaker
And he goes, ah, someplace in the vowels. And you go, where? Anyway, it's Fred Becki. And Fred at this time was a whopping 48 years old. and I just thought, like, there's a old guy here.
00:41:38
Speaker
And anyway, so we chatted to him for a while and this and that and told him a little bit what we had done. Okay, so done. So now fast forward. So we're working on this trip to Fairweather, picked out the route, applied for the grants, we're told we got it.
00:41:54
Speaker
I'm at home one night. ah home, it's my parents' home, phone rings. And my mother yells to me, goes, Hey, Peter, it's phone calls for you. somebody named Fred Becky.
00:42:06
Speaker
And like, huh? And I grabbed the phone and go, hello? And it's Becky. And I go, yeah. And he goes, this is Peter Metcalfe? I go, yeah. And he goes, oh, good. I'm glad I got you. And he goes,
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, we heard about we heard about you got you you and some of the kids trying to do this new and fair weather. It's way above you. Like what? And he goes, oh yeah, like it's it's it's way above you.
00:42:31
Speaker
And I go, well, well, thanks for the advice, but we're keen to try it anyway. And he goes, well, you guys were trying to do a first ascent, right? And he got it and we said, yeah, yeah like well that's what we're trying to do. And he goes, well, it won't be a first ascent. I said, what?
00:42:45
Speaker
And he goes, because we're goingnna beat you to it. I'm going in there with Greg Markov, Jim Wickwire, D. Sunda Gursky. And we're hotshot climbers, and we're going to have done it by the time you get there.
00:42:58
Speaker
And so I said to him, Well, that's okay um because we won't know you've done it. And if we have heard you've done it, we won't have read anything about it. Oh, feel like a first descent to us.
00:43:09
Speaker
And that's all that matters. We're looking for an adventure. And he argues for a while and then end the story. And so oh when we get there, fred who's in Tim Loken's hangar?
00:43:24
Speaker
Jim Rickwire, Dusan Jagorski, and Greg Markrod. But who's missing? Who were truly like the big muscle of the mountaineering world. They were the big dogs. and yeah No, shit. They were the big dogs. Yeah. Like, whoa. But who's missing? Fred Becky.
00:43:40
Speaker
And he's like, where's Fred? And we just start talking to Where's Fred? And he goes, he's late. He got stuck on some peak in the Bella Coola range, and we're waiting for him to show up here. ah And he said, oh, wow, I guess we're going get in before you.
00:43:53
Speaker
And they said, hey, look, you don't need to worry, but it's no competition between us and you kids. And if for that matter, you shamed us into deciding that if you thought you could do this, we looked at it hard.
00:44:08
Speaker
we we we are experienced, we're gonna do something much bigger. So we're gonna go do the first traverse of Quincy Adams, just a group of peaks there, do a harder route, et cetera, et cetera. Which i was like, all right, touche, good.
00:44:21
Speaker
But I mean it was great. So we did get flown in first and right there, but and initially, you we're ferrying loads. We got 30 days worth of food, ropes, et cetera. And we ran into them on day one, day two down there, and then they disappeared and we didn't see them.
00:44:38
Speaker
And we summited, and during our climb, there was a massive earthquake. And thank God, we were on the ridge because every face in that surf of every peak fully avalanced. And we're wondering, where are those guys? I hope they're okay.
00:44:55
Speaker
Anyway, you come down, and I think we came down towards the landing site, working on our way through the gal glacier on day 26 day And God, amazing enough, there they are. we can see them in the distance, working their way down through their loads.
00:45:13
Speaker
And they got out a day before us and they succeeded. We succeeded. But it was an incredible experience. And that, I guess, is the the journey to alpinism in Alaska. And then, of course, my appetite for Alaska was now turned on.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah. And, so you know, i mean, I think any alpinist that you talk to has threads of this story in common, whether it's, you know, the people they met, you know, the the the things that happened.
00:45:46
Speaker
yeah just just so many, I think, about my own... trip My first trip to Alaska, we went up there. We thought we were going to climb Mount Hunter, Mount Foraker and Denali all on the same trip. We went in with like, we didn't have much money. So we we we only we went to Costco.
00:46:06
Speaker
would have been 1991 or two. and we bought macaroni and cheese and Top Ramen. Those were our two meals. We had food for 45 days. um but It goes without saying we climbed nothing, right? like like but we had but we But we tried a bunch of stuff. We got our butts kicked ah by weather, by conditions, by our own lack of skills, and you know met people who I ended up knowing for my entire life, just both both climbers and some of the characters that reside around Taukeetna and you know run their flight services and all of the other infrastructure up there, the the climbing rangers.
00:46:47
Speaker
I mean, everyone's got these these stories and you you don't realize as a young person, when you step into these theaters, you really do step into history. Like you step into live history that's being written by your being there and these other people being there. And and I mean, these are our shared it's our shared history and culture. and and there's so much that's familiar with with with your story that me not not having known any of this from you personally, but so much of these threads are familiar.
00:47:21
Speaker
Steve, that is so well well said. And i've I've thought about that myself in that perhaps that's why for our generation, this history was so powerful and why we read all these books and biographies because it was tangible. We met these people, the we the legends we got to actually hang with and be around and it wasn't elitist. You just, it just, what you learned from their presence and seeing them was just so powerful. Yeah, yeah. So you you, I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong, but two years later,
00:48:01
Speaker
went to climb Mount Hunter by a new route with, was that 1974? No, it wasn't, yeah. But you got a good part of this down. so two years later, i go to do a new route in 1975 on Mount McKinley.
00:48:23
Speaker
We call it Reality Ridge, the Southeast Ridge of the South Spur. And it was with several the same people who I had done fair weather with, three the same. Two of the same and one new partner, a partner that I had met in the fall. I i spent the fall of 74 and the spring of 75 living in the valley, Yosemite Valley.
00:48:45
Speaker
So yes, I was a rock climber. um And one of my valley partners from the fall of 74, who then we went back and spen lived there in the spring of 75. But yeah, we got hooked on Alaska and began looking at, let's do something on McKinley and Logan and St. Elias.
00:49:02
Speaker
and came across this, the reality, what we call in reality, where it's Southeast spur the South Ridge and decided like, okay, let's go do this guy and let's do a capsule style instead of leaving a bunch of roads. You know, this is still before things have been done Alpine style up there.
00:49:18
Speaker
The gear was still not that good. It was better then than it was two years earlier. um And so what we ended up doing was driving the Alcan that time up to Alaska, but first I spent the,
00:49:31
Speaker
the spring living in the valley, and my buddies picked me up in California at the valley with my other climbing partner. And we drove up there with all our gear again. This is one hell of a story too.
00:49:45
Speaker
In my buddy's 1966 black full-size Dodge Coronet, we ripped the back seat out, put it on top of it, he had found through Army surplus,
00:50:00
Speaker
some old US Army Antarctic sled that could be airdropped down into Antarctica. And his dad, who is the janitor handyman, was able to do some welding and turn it into a giant roof rack.
00:50:15
Speaker
in a roof container that we could, this is before tooling and all these things, put gear there, but ripped the back seats out, loaded up food and gear in the back of the car, laid evazotes on it so two people could always be sleeping in the back as people drove, yeah loaded up the trunk.
00:50:32
Speaker
And the photos of this car is just amazing. And then like a tugboat lashed extra tires onto the front of the car like bumper guards and drove the owl candle, was still dirt, up,
00:50:45
Speaker
to talk heat now got flown in and did this new route on McKinley and did kind of a circumnavigation because what we did was we had 10,000 feet of rope that would pull the poly pro on reality regional until we got to the top of the South Ridge.
00:51:03
Speaker
Then we buried it in a crevasse deep down. And then from there, I think we had a fair run to more loads went into fair basin and then out of Thayer Basin up into what's really, I guess, the West, they the, the Muldrow route and over to Denali Pass.
00:51:22
Speaker
and And then the weather wasn't so good. So down to the high camp at 1702, did the summit and came down to Kahiltner route, down to base camp. that was 45 days. It's long time to be in room without a shower or anything else.
00:51:35
Speaker
Amazing experience. Completely self-supported too. It's not like you had, i mean, that that's that's a that's a pretty significant achievement, just keeping yourself supplied with food and fuel and everything you need to survive in Alaskan conditions for, for for what six weeks?
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. 45 days is a long time. Yeah, ferrying our own gear and loads and food. and pulling ropes out, refixing them, pulling ropes out, refixing them, and all of that.
00:52:04
Speaker
And i think our theme song at about the 30 day mark became Paul McCartney's, If I Ever Get Out of Here. um and But a great experience. and But well, in Tauquitna, both waiting to get flowing in, I think we had to wait that time, five days, even though at times it looked really clear.
00:52:28
Speaker
and I think it was, but I think um Cliff Hudson was backed up. And they would always say like, I can't get you into that part of the roof right now. I can't get you in.
00:52:39
Speaker
And, but on those clear days, as you know, having been spent a lot of time in Tolkeetna, on a clear day, when you walk down to the Sitna River that runs through town and you look over at the range, there's the range and it's just, it makes you slap drawer.
00:52:55
Speaker
And there are the the big peaks, you know, the obvious ones are obviously Foraker, Hunter and McKinley. And I kept looking at Hunter and from Toquitna, the central river, the south face is like a gigantic Walker spur.
00:53:10
Speaker
And I looked at that thing, that is one of the most aesthetic lines i have ever seen. and asking around, nobody knew if it had been, nobody thought it had been climbed.
00:53:21
Speaker
And I just thought, well if it hasn't been climbed, that's my next objective i mean even before i got home and when we had gotten back to new york i um you know obviously did quick research like no i hadn't been climbed so immediately i began scheming on okay that's the next objective we're going to go do and we'll do it in 77 i have to go to college for a year or two at least i did the uh seven and half year college program year on
00:53:51
Speaker
you're are youre year or year and a half off year on year and year half off and started scheming on that trip and um planning on that trip to do that. And by 77 in the spring of 77 went off to do that.
00:54:08
Speaker
However, this was now a totally new one person from my previous to Alaskan climbs and then two new people, people I had climbed with not in Alaska,
00:54:20
Speaker
No real alpinism, cragging in Aldo, Colorado, a few other places, but they had each done ice climbing and some Alpine routes here and there.
00:54:32
Speaker
They seemed like good, super fit people, and they seemed game. And it was up to me. I organized it and figured out, okay, things are starting to be done. The first routes have been done, Alpine style in Alaska.
00:54:45
Speaker
I think the way to do this route, and it's you know, there's a lot of technical climbing to load down in that route, hard rock climbing and aid climbing. What we'll do is on the lower part, we'll bring some loads up, fix the lower part, leave the ropes, and then we'll cut loose and then go Alpine style. First, get to a certain point, then go Alpine style.
00:55:07
Speaker
We drove all the way up there again. And the first signs of problems began on the drive, as you know, That's a long drive in a little vehicle packed to the gills.
00:55:18
Speaker
And you can already begin to s sense this group of people, unlike my other two climbs where we had spent so much time training together, like doing a winter traverse of the White Mountains together, camping together.
00:55:31
Speaker
i mean we had done a lot together and suddenly realizing, wow, there's something called group dynamics here. And began just sort of learning more about everybody's skill.
00:55:44
Speaker
And we get flown in and you know, when you get flown into the base of a big peak like that, especially if you've never been to Alaska before, it can be soul searching moment as you start up one of these big routes.
00:56:00
Speaker
And as it turned out, what one, my partner from the two previous Alaskan trips, who was a really good climber, amazing root finding ability and all, had been in school working on his, he's already,
00:56:15
Speaker
I think I already graduated at this point, but working on his PhD now and just doing a lot of studying and not climbing a lot. And was not what I'd call so super fit, though very capable.
00:56:28
Speaker
His insights and wisdom un impeccable, um but his fitness was not great. And he seemed hesitant to really commit.
00:56:40
Speaker
Another partner who had never been to Alaska before, the only one who had never been to Alaska before, um was looking at all this and being pretty overwhelmed by the whole scene and starting to think like maybe this isn't for him.
00:56:53
Speaker
The third person who had never been done any serious alpine climbing was this cragian who had done one route in Alaska before, um was rabid about, let's just do it, let's just do it. and seemed to lack some judgment in my opinion.
00:57:09
Speaker
And the chemistry is we were on this route for five days between the people was not working. So I had one one partner who's like, I'm done, you guys do it, this is not for me.
00:57:23
Speaker
My partner who was very experienced, I've done these other two routes with, but not super fit at this point in time and very concerned about decision-making, saw the other person's very rabid ah enthusiasm is almost, and I have to agree with him, a little bit irrational in some of the things you were saying.
00:57:45
Speaker
and Like, this is a good way to get killed. And then thirdly, just this idea of when are we gonna cut free of these ropes? Once you start climbing with fixed ropes and say we're gonna go for it, you look at your kit and all, it's like just questionable.
00:58:03
Speaker
And i guess I'll make a long story short, it was It was clear this wasn't meant to be. The approach of trying to do it in a mixed style, a team that had not climbed significantly together, the human dynamics of that team, um it just wasn't going to It wasn't going to come together. And I also realized then at that point in time that not a single one of us there had the experience to do that route alpine style. It was too big, too technical.
00:58:34
Speaker
And though I had done two routes in Alaska, it was in that style. And though I had done plenty of alpine climbing, I'd never done what I'd call a big alpine route in the Alps or Canada, you know, a multi-day route.
00:58:48
Speaker
And so we flew out and there was a lot of disharmony, as you can imagine, after all the effort and money sacrificed and time. But even as we're driving back down to Alcan, not talking to one another,
00:59:00
Speaker
um You know, luckily I got dropped off in the Canadian Rockies and still had a pretty good summer of climbing in the Canadian Rockies with number of people. um But I realize I'm going to go back.
00:59:14
Speaker
It's probably won't be a year, might be two years, but I need to spend at least one full season in the Alps to do some of the great North faces, you know. Matterhorn, Walker Spur, Bonatti Pillar, just bigger routes, multi-day routes, and just feel really good about climbing multi-day routes with my partners.
00:59:33
Speaker
And so the next two years, I ended up climbing in Europe for two summers with a host of different partners doing those great routes and really getting great experience.
00:59:45
Speaker
and decided, okay, 1980, we're gonna go. And picked, it was gonna be a team of four. um No, it was gonna be team of three, sorry. It was Charlie Fowler who I'd been climbing with in the Alps.
00:59:59
Speaker
Glenn Randall who I'd done a ton of climbing with and had just done a new route a year earlier in Mount Huntington. and me. And then Charlie fell in love and decided he's not going.
01:00:14
Speaker
So somebody else who I had not climbed in the Alps with, but I had done a lot of rock climbing and ice climbing with, I said Glenn was Pete Athens. So talked to Glenn and said, I'd like to invite Pete, did some more climbing together and game on.
01:00:28
Speaker
And it was up to me to sort of organize, okay, what's the style? How long is it gonna take? Cause I'd been there before. and planned the trip out and anyway, did that. And that's what ultimate got us to in the May of 1980 to Tarkitna and the Tokasitna at the base Mount Hunter to try it again.
01:00:55
Speaker
And with a totally different, what was the group dynamic on that trip? It was phenomenal because i had yes I think sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you know it.
01:01:10
Speaker
What I mean by that is you sometimes take things for granted. So my first two Alaskan trips, dynamics were great. We had spent time together and just and I just thought like, yeah, you climb some with people, like we get along, we get along, we with it's it's all good. And then on that first hunter adventure,
01:01:31
Speaker
I realized among some of the other reasons we failed that no, it's not a given that people are going to in these very stressful, very challenging situations that they're going to mesh and bring out the best in each other and support one another.
01:01:49
Speaker
So that was something i was highly cognizant of with this team um you know what we needed to do this. I also recognized at this point, having been there once, been on it and backed off of it, that this was going to be the most, up until that point, without question, a serious climb of my life.
01:02:09
Speaker
And it was a climb that i also realized and explained to Glenn and Pete, is this something we might not come back from? And it's not that we had a death wish. It was just that this was important enough to me, and I wanted to communicate that to them.
01:02:24
Speaker
That this was going to take everything we had, we had to be our best. And even with that, the outcome is not guaranteed, nor is are coming back.
01:02:37
Speaker
And I remember at this point, because I had I won't go into details. i had already had now several partners killed climbing and people I knew well. And so I had to go through that experience, actually the previous summit in Chamonix, when my climbing partner from Fairweather was killed and went through that experience of having to tell his wife, call his dad, meet them at the airport and go through that trauma.
01:03:07
Speaker
And I think my realization at this point in time was also that not only do we have to accept our own risk factors in this, but we have to understand that there may be other people who are going to be affected if we get killed.
01:03:24
Speaker
And we need to make sure those people know what we're doing and why we're doing it. And we accept the risk and understand that so they can accept that.
01:03:35
Speaker
And I actually wrote a letter to my parents and said, do not open this letter. My brother saved it. Explaining that to them, i said, open in case of problems or something like that. I think I gave it to my brother and explained it to him because he had it. So I just share that because want to be sure they and all of us understood what we're getting into and why it was such a the dynamics happening.
01:03:59
Speaker
was so important and the training and thinking through every piece of gear we had um and testing it beforehand and making sure that this was right. ha ha Yeah. And and you you chose Glenn and Pete rather, i don't know what the right term is, deliberately.
01:04:22
Speaker
almost surgically, like, you know, i mean, obviously, Charlie, i I snickered a little bit when you said Charlie fell in love, having known Charlie as well. Like, sounds sounds like a typical Charlie story. Charlie fell in love. And rest in peace, Charlie. But, you know, with Glenn and Pete,
01:04:42
Speaker
Also, you know, just some of the some of the best, both some, you know, the best climbers in in in the game at that time. And you you chose them. you set the table with these intentions and awareness. That takes a lot of...
01:05:01
Speaker
So yeah, that takes a lot of self-awareness and you have to be, I think, pretty vulnerable with what that means, right? Like you have to be honest about what what what you're actually talking about. You're actually talking about life and death. And as you said, affecting how that affects other people, what you're choosing to do and why you're choosing to do it.
01:05:22
Speaker
Those are a lot, that's a lot to lay out. Yes, it's really well said, Steve. And I would also add that You know, actually at that point in time, Pete was not the climber he became. i think Hunter really was a giant stepping stone to his becoming the great climber he became because up until that time he came up in Alaska.
01:05:47
Speaker
And both Glenn and I recognized, I had climbed with him by the way, the previous summer in the Alps. We had done the American Direct on the Drew in three or four days and several other longer multi-day routes.
01:06:01
Speaker
And so at this point I was definitely much more experienced than Pete, but he was strong. And to the point you just made is that it's not only experience, I mean, technical ability is really, really important experience.
01:06:17
Speaker
But i I would add that if I'm having to choose choose between experience and thoughtfulness and awareness and chemistry the team, i would choose the latter.
01:06:35
Speaker
And what I knew with Pete, having been through some challenges on on the climbs we did, the guy is very thoughtful, he has humility, He knows what he's willing to admit when he can't do a lead and he's willing to tell you when he can. um And to your point you were saying earlier is that in the team dynamics,
01:07:00
Speaker
you have to you have to have 100% confidence in the competency of your partner. And you have to have 100% confidence that that there's enough absolute brutal honesty with your partners that they're not going to take the lead in a in a situation like this where you can't fall if they're not up to it.
01:07:26
Speaker
That they have to say, I'm just not up to this. Or like, hey, I'm up to this. day I'll do it. And they just have they have to be able to say anything and everything that's on their mind that's going to perfect affect their performance.
01:07:43
Speaker
And a realization that, you know, this is really a cliche, that but it's so true. It's like, you're only as strong as you're weak as a member. And if somebody's not healthy and well, you're not taking care of your team or your partner, you're screwing yourself.
01:07:59
Speaker
um So there's all those are such important dynamics in working with a team of people to get things done. And you're looking for humility and a lack of hubris in people so that they're so honest and acknowledging their fears, their concerns, and that you can talk through things and find a calm ah a solution and everybody can agree with it and not fight over it
01:08:30
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah.
Transforming Chouinard Equipment into Black Diamond
01:08:34
Speaker
And around this same time, I'm not exactly sure on the on the timeline here, you got involved with a young company called Chouinard Equipment.
01:08:44
Speaker
You want to tell us how that came to be? Because, you know, you're best known to many as I don't know what the right title of it for you was if you're the founder of Black Diamond because you did reincarnation art equipment as Black Diamond Equipment. And then you led that company for decades until its eventual sale and then remain involved to this day with that company. You've been an incredibly influential, you know,
01:09:17
Speaker
company doesn't do it justice, but it's, you know, Black Diamond itself through in part through you and and all the others that worked on it, that you were, you shaped our culture, you shaped our conversation, you you shaped our vocabulary in many cases, and you've absolutely shaped the technology that we all used. So I want to get into that, but I wouldn't want to hear how you got into that and how that came about.
01:09:43
Speaker
Thank you for those very gracious comments, Steve. I appreciate them. So, know, America is a place to be a professional climber in the 1970s into the early 80s is very, was very different than it is today.
01:10:00
Speaker
And so I continued after Hunter climbing as full time as I could. i mean, I ultimately did finally get a degree.
01:10:11
Speaker
from CU. did like my academics. um I didn't know I wanted to do other than wanted to climb. And I wanted to work as little as I could and climb as much as I could.
01:10:22
Speaker
So I lived this frugally. didn't own a car. um until i went to work for Yvonne and it was 1982. I finally got bought a car. I think I need one.
01:10:33
Speaker
um But the goal was climbing. And I survived doing what climbers in that period of time did was I worked out rebound often. I did a little illegal guiding. i worked as helping out at the climbers ranch some at the Alpine Club.
01:10:50
Speaker
I spent two winters throwing chain with Mike Munger and Angus Thurmer. on drilling rigs in Wyoming in the winter. was a chain hand on wallcat rigs.
01:11:01
Speaker
And was reasonable money, and but not great work. And I realized, and also i should add that in the, um I went back, spent some time in the valley again, and some of the weekends, Fred Becky would come up and I would do some climbing with Fred.
01:11:18
Speaker
But I share all this because i realized that by 81, and by eighty one I was starting to think like, this is not a good long-term sustainable model. And I was looking at Fred candidly and going, I want to have more of a career than Fred. i got i need something besides just climbing and working on rigs, working outward bound, picking up work. that's It's not a future there.
01:11:42
Speaker
um I need something more. And so this 1981 and traveling, climbing with yes what I call the more serious climbers of America at the time.
01:11:55
Speaker
And a few of them are starting to get this this new job, which I'd never heard of, is called sales repping. And it seemed like they could keep climbing and they had own cars and they would just stop by all the retailers I knew. i knew Bob Culp, knew Gary Neptune.
01:12:12
Speaker
I could go talk to those guys and then just show them product, talk about product and get orders, go to the next shop, go climbing for a couple of days. And I thought that might be an interesting way to break into a career and I got a degree in poli sci and an economics minor, but that looks pretty good to me and I could keep climbing.
01:12:30
Speaker
So I just started sending out letters to people I knew at companies that I had hustled free gear from for expeditions that I was aware of this. you know Here's who I am. you Well, you know who I am.
01:12:43
Speaker
And um I'm ready to start getting more serious about working. And I think it would be a great rep and corresponded with all of them and whatnot. And one of the companies I sent a letter to was, I didn't know Yvonne, but I had met him, but he didn't know me.
01:12:59
Speaker
I knew people who knew him and I knew that two of the people I'd run into Henry Barber and another guy climbing, Howard Sloan, who were ah reps. And I just said, okay, I'll mention those guys.
01:13:11
Speaker
And sent the letter off. Sorry to interrupt, but we're talking about Yvonne Chouinard, who founded Chouinard Equipment and Patagonia. Yes. And so started corresponding about a rep job and I got a, and Patagonia, Chris McDivitt, who was the, at the time, general manager of Patagonia, replied and said, um, Yvonne says he's interested. We're interested. We'll talk to you. Why don't you come to Chicago? There's a trade show in Chicago at this date and interview.
01:13:39
Speaker
And I just wrote back a letter at the time. I didn't tell I didn't have a car, but I didn't have a car and they didn't have any money. And I'm like, I'm not going to Chicago with, to the interview for this job.
01:13:52
Speaker
And then another opportunity came up somewhere, but at this point, climate was working really well and it was going to be a sacrifice to go somewhere to interview for the job. And I just blew it off. I didn't even respond.
01:14:04
Speaker
And I just, at this point, so now we're at the spring of 1982 and I got contracts that somewhere with Outward Bound. I fly up to Alaska in May with Glen Randall.
01:14:15
Speaker
We do a bunch of good climbs on Farrowka and McKinley. And I'm like riding high, like I'm not even at this point thinking about repping right now. I just but delayed my future.
01:14:28
Speaker
and But when I get back from Alaska in late May or early June, there's a letter waiting for me. And it's from Chris McDivitt. And she begins with, this is the last letter you will ever receive from me.
01:14:41
Speaker
That's quite a beginning. well yeah And she says that Yvonne last year split his companies up. And it is up until 1981, there was one company and it was the maker of, was Chinard Equipment and it had Patagonia Clothing, it had Chinard Equipment, cleaning hardware and GPIW, which was a retail store and a malware operation.
01:15:06
Speaker
And what the letter said was we split the companies up. I'm running Patagonia. um Somebody else is running GPIW retail. Ivan thought he was running short equipment, but it's become clear to me and him that somebody needs to run it.
01:15:23
Speaker
And at this point, the company is sub million dollars and it's declining. And You cannot tell the history of global climbing without telling the history of short equipment, whether you're talking about big wall climbing and pitons or free climbing hexentrics and stoppers or ice climbing with the the rigid crampons and curve pick tools. But Yvonne had begun really focusing by the late 70s in Patagonia And by 1982, that company hadn't even done a catalog in a couple of years while our country was crushing it with its rocks and now a friends.
01:16:01
Speaker
And Shurn Equipment was going backwards very quickly. But the reputation was strong. You don't ruin a reputation like that um very easily. And I should add that to me and many people of my generation, when received the 1972 Schoenard Equipment Catalog, which was not a catalog.
01:16:28
Speaker
It was to us, in my generation of climbers, what Mao's Little Red Book was, The Cultural Revolution. This was something that, yeah, it sold some gear, but it told you how you use the gear.
01:16:42
Speaker
It told you how you dress. It told you what your ethos were, what your ethics were, what your morality should be. it It showed you how to dress, how to act, how to behave.
01:16:53
Speaker
i mean, this was a template. I mean, it was like, Yvonne was the angel Moroni bringing the golden tablets to the Mormons. I mean, it was yeah this powerful. And I share that because i had become yeah just to I was a full-time climbing bum. I had reduced my worldly possessions down to literally a single haul bag.
01:17:16
Speaker
I didn't own a car. And I had that catalog in there, that catalog I had. I still have it today, 50 years later. um So to me when this letter comes and I'm told that Yvonne is looking for a general manager and that he looked at my resume again and said,
01:17:36
Speaker
give that guy a call and let's interview him. I thought, all right, stop everything. this is This isn't a rep job. This is to go work for the guy who wrote the little red book.
01:17:51
Speaker
yeah And so I immediately called Chris as soon as i got that letter. I just stopped, reading read it and get on the phone. call the phone number. Chris picks up, you know, Patagonia is a million dollar company. It's a tiny place.
01:18:05
Speaker
Chris, this is Peter Metcalf. I just got your letter. She goes, who? go, Peter Metcalf. She goes, Peter who? I go, Hey, this is the letter just got. She goes, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm expecting have nice conversation.
01:18:17
Speaker
And so he goes, you gotta talk to Yvonne, not me, but he's not here. He'll be here in five or six days and, on this date, call at this date, between these hours and on this date and talk to him.
01:18:30
Speaker
And I go, okay, I'll do it. And immediately my brain really gets into, gets focused. I want a shot at this job. This this is like the chance of a lifetime.
01:18:43
Speaker
And so I hop on my bike, and start riding out to all the retail stores. I know Gary Neptune, I know Bob Colt. Bob, tell me about Chinat Equipment.
01:18:55
Speaker
What's good about it? What do you see? I mean I knew as a climber, where I was perceiving what was happening, but tell me about their service. I want to know everything you can. And then I went it to Low Pro, Low, because a friend of mine, Buck Tilly, who I climbed with, was the sales manager of Low Pro line there and talked to him.
01:19:13
Speaker
i went around, anybody who was in the industry, getting as much info and knowledge as I could about what that company was up to and what was doing. And then of course I had my own ideas on gear, or having used Shurnard gear for a long time and where was at.
01:19:26
Speaker
And then I sat down and put together a two page letter to Yvonne saying, this is why i want this job and why I think, um, even though i have never run a business in in and whatnot, I think you could train me. I think I'm the your guy.
01:19:41
Speaker
And for the first time in my life, threw down, rode my bike over to the FedEx office, threw down what was a lot of money, 25 bucks to mail somebody a letter. So he would have it when I called.
01:19:53
Speaker
And so then this prescribed date called him up and said, um hey Yvonne, it's me, Peter MacDuff. And he goes, and knew immediately i'm off to a good start when he said, yeah, I got your letter. That's a great letter. Let's talk about it.
01:20:09
Speaker
Had a long conversation with him. And then he drops the bombshell. But he goes, I can't hire you off of a letter or a phone call. He goes, we got to meet and spend some time together. I go, oh, where?
01:20:23
Speaker
I go, coming out to Ventura is not easy for me. And he said, well, I'm in the Tetons. I go, well, I got these three contracts with Outward Bound this summer. I'm leaving shortly. got to start working.
01:20:34
Speaker
And he goes, what are the dates? And I tell him, he goes, you got a break in between those. i go, yeah. And he goes, well, I'm teaching an ice climbing course for three and a half days on the Teton Glacier through Exum.
01:20:47
Speaker
on these dates, you're free then. And I look at it and go, you're right. And he goes, get up here and you tell you teach help me teach this course. And then we'll spend the day with Melinda at the house and that's gonna be your interview.
01:21:01
Speaker
So anyway, get that rebound and talk one of my buddies into who has a car. And said, hey, I'll pay all the gas to Jackson on our break. And you get to meet Yvonne Chouinard. All we gotta to do is walk up to Surprise Lake and you can join in on this ice climbing course if you want.
01:21:16
Speaker
And so we do that and I do the course with him and get down to the house, spend an evening and a day with Melinda and my buddy's waiting. We got to get back to tell you to Silverton, to Outward Bound.
01:21:29
Speaker
And I just tell him finally like, hey man, Yvonne, this has been great. And we talked about, by the way, i should say in the interview, he's been talking about what would i do what What gear ideas do I have? I mean, it was a very intense interview.
01:21:42
Speaker
And I finally just said to him, i got to run, man. um where What do we do from here? And Yvonne pauses a moment, grabs a little piece of scrap paper, writes something on it and hands it to me.
01:21:56
Speaker
And it's ah an address in German. And i said, what is this? He goes, that's an address in Germany of my of the sales, the guy we just hired. He's a climber.
01:22:10
Speaker
And we just hired, we're going to set up business in in Europe. And there's a trade show in Munich, Germany called ISPO in September, mid September. And this guy's going to be there.
01:22:22
Speaker
and that's how you're going to start. Just find your way to that address on that date. And you'll meet this guy and you'll start at the trade show. And that's going to be how you start.
01:22:34
Speaker
And I get up and go, thank you very much. Well, I'll figure it out. you know, it's been two the past two seasons climbing over there. I'll figure it out and go there. And then I stop a minute and go, oh, what question?
01:22:47
Speaker
You will pay for this flight, right? And he goes, you get there, I'll refund you. And oh, one other question. Why am I getting paid? and he thinks of it and $15,000 a year.
01:23:00
Speaker
I'm like, done. I'll see you there. ah
01:23:06
Speaker
And there there is a a great addition to this story that you gotta hear we have time this interview. Of course we have all the time. Okay, so I get that. And having, good I just gotta to say, having no having known Yvonne for myself, I mean, for those of you that are listening that haven't seen Yvonne or interacted with him, you know, you're just playing him to the letter with, with just the mannerisms and and how he thinks and and how he you know how resourceful he is. It's a scrap piece of paper. It's not like he doesn't have a you know it's not prepared. It's in his head, but he's making all the right decisions. So please, please go on.
01:23:48
Speaker
Well said. That is so, so true. His intuition is unbelievable. is. So I jump in the car with my buddy and we had had head south to to Silverton.
01:24:02
Speaker
And as soon as we get to Silverton, our base camp there had a pay phone. I jump on the pay phone and I call one of my good climbing buddies who I knew had just spent the previous six months climbing in Europe and had done a bunch of great routes, picking up partners there, climbing with some really good European climbers, had done a new route on the troll wall, blah, blah, blah.
01:24:25
Speaker
But one of the reasons called him was he also has money, he's from a good family. And he always had time to take off and money. So I call him up and go, Billy, gotta believe this. I just got hired by Yvonne Chouinard to become the new general manager Chouinard Equipment.
01:24:41
Speaker
And I just got to be at this address in Munich on this date. I have almost three weeks to climb in Europe between my last Outward Bound course and when I got to be there, let's go.
01:24:52
Speaker
And he goes, I'm in. He goes, let's do it. So we fly, of course, fly over to Munich, rent a car. I think it was Munich we flew to.
01:25:03
Speaker
I can't recall. Anyway, rent a car. And i said, let's go to Sham. And because I was most familiar with have the two seasons in Sham. and knew bunch of routes I wanted to do We get to start off well, doing a couple of really good routes and then the weather turns to shit.
01:25:18
Speaker
And after a couple of days in the rain, buy ride bikes, ride over to Martinet in the rain and this and that. And Billy goes, you know what? Let's get the hell out of here. We don't have that much time.
01:25:28
Speaker
And he goes, last year I spent a bunch of time over in the Dolomites over by Sella, the Sella Pass area. Let's go there. are good that the weather will be better. That's a freaking eight hour drive across the Alps.
01:25:41
Speaker
Don't even check forecasts. get there, pitch my, what was the predecessor to my first product idea for Yvonne, my MegaMaid, which was the old Alpsport design McKinley tent from Fairweather McKinley, and pitch that and we get under it and it rains for two days, but then we get a forecast, next morning it's gonna be clearing.
01:26:04
Speaker
So we think about what route to get look in the guidebook and come across this route, ah, this middle Luchi route with the Buell direct variant right out cell. It's like an eight pitch cool looking line, not a long approach.
01:26:20
Speaker
Let's go do that. So we got up really early. It's not raining, but socked in. Let's just go do it. So we go off to the route and the weather's definitely breaking now.
01:26:31
Speaker
So I get on the first lead and I'm just getting to the, I just got to the belay and I'm just putting in my anchors. And suddenly here below me, there's a commotion below me. And the next thing I hear is my partner, Billy, Billy Fiegas saying, oh my God,
01:26:49
Speaker
You're not gonna believe this, but the dude you just hired to be your new general manager is at the top of this league. And then he turns his head and says, and Hans Martin, what are you doing here?
01:27:02
Speaker
so you're not gonna believe, I mean, so this is like out of the twilight zone. You think the size and scale of the Alps, just the Dolomites, how many tens of thousands of routes there are.
01:27:15
Speaker
Who's there? Yvonne Chouinard. And Hans Martin Goetz, which is the guy whose address I have, who's the new German distributor, Patagonian Chinard Equipment.
01:27:27
Speaker
And Billy, in his six months of climbing, had run into him the year earlier, climbed with him for a couple of weeks and ended up staying at his house where my address is. And so- I mean, it's just so bizarre and serendipitous. It's such small world. was so great about it was then we spent the next two weeks climbing all together. We climbed into Dolomites.
01:27:49
Speaker
um then We went up to the Faults. i mean, it was amazing. And, you know for me, since I'm going to be now running short equipment and working with Yvonne, to have had these weeks of climbing together, crashing on people's floors. Sharon Beals. It was just an incredible experience.
01:28:07
Speaker
os so incredible Entree into getting introduced to Chouinard Equipment and Yvonne Chouinard and Hans Martin and the people Yvonne knew and the trade shows. was pretty incredible start.
01:28:24
Speaker
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01:28:41
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at uphillathlete.com slash let's go. That's uphillathlete.com slash L E T S G O.
01:28:58
Speaker
One of the things that I think is really interesting about this, having you know myself worked at Patagonia for many years as an ambassador for that brand, and you know there was ah there was a time where people's work identities and personal identities were highly separated for the most part, right like traditionally. like That's how my parents grew up. that's how like Culturally, that's how we were. One of the things that was always different at Patagonia is that was not the case.
01:29:28
Speaker
Because even when I got hired on as an ambassador in the late 90s, we went to Yosemite with Yvonne and Melinda and a couple and Ron Kauk and you know Dean Potter and Steph Davis. And we rented a cabin and we went walk for walks in the woods and talked about the philosophy of climbing. and and and cooked meals together and slept you know we all slept were sleeping on the floor in the living room. And and you know that's very, very atypical, especially at that time. of and And now, if you fast forward to the current day, i mean, maybe because of remote work, it's shifted, but that has become much more common culturally for people to integrate.
01:30:11
Speaker
more of themselves and do things. Now we call it team building, right? And I know there's a whole industry around like getting people together in the outdoors to like sleep on the dirt sleep in the dirt and and and create a better work environment. But Yvonne, I think was, again, as you said, his instincts were always so good.
01:30:29
Speaker
you know, he would always say like, I'd rather hire, I at least heard him say many times, that he'd rather hire a climber and teach them how to fill in the blank, then the other way around, because then he had a common ground and cultural cultural fit. And you really carried that that through as you you know created the culture at Black Diamond. I mean, I was around Black Diamond many times over the decades and all those people that were there were climbers. I think every great climber, and at least in the United States, worked for you at some some point. Was that a conscious thing that you engineered after that came out of your experience with with working, starting with Chouinard?
01:31:15
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And i just want to say that you're absolutely right about the Chouinards. And because it was the first real business I ever worked at, to me, what was among so many things that were so compelling about it were just those attributes that there wasn't a bifurcation between business.
01:31:34
Speaker
your workday, your friends, your social life, your your passions. It was all one. It was seamless, right? And so the desire to follow that, that's what I knew in creating BD, but there's a lot more to the BD than just that, um was was just a very natural thing to do. And I should add that it was years later.
01:32:00
Speaker
I read that Warren Buffett quote that I thought captured this, what you just said so well from a business person, which is culture eats strategy for lunch every day.
01:32:13
Speaker
And that was something Yvonne understood so early on in starting his businesses is that, and I think it was something that, we talked about earlier, just what I learned on my failure on Mount Hunter and through climbing was that the culture, the human dynamics, how people get along and that you're a team, you're three people sharing a single body, a single spirit, a single soul. And that's how you succeed and find joy and success and happiness.
01:32:46
Speaker
oh Yeah, that's so true. And one of the things that I think that in my experience carries through is when you're in the mountains doing these things, i it's very vulnerable many times, right? Like as you said, you have to you have to you have to speak up when you can't lead the pitch.
01:33:08
Speaker
You have to speak up when you don't feel well. You have to ask your partner how they're feeling. You maybe have to step up and take the lead when you didn't really want to. um And there's a certain intimacy to that.
01:33:22
Speaker
And being able to that that translates very well to the, in my experience, the work environment to being able to say like, hey, ah this is going on for me, you know?
01:33:34
Speaker
so if I feel a little, i don't know, edgy today, then it's just because, it's not because I don't like your ah idea about, I don't know, the catalog, it's because maybe, you know, my dog's sick or whatever it is. And and that that seems to like reveal or reduce a lot of the friction for people.
01:33:56
Speaker
Yes, if you can be that open and not feel like there's being any retribution or recrimination because of that, that's really healthy. Yeah. You talked a little bit about how, you know, this moment of when, you know, and this is, I think, unique to the time that you were climbing where we were transitioning away from like lot fixing the entire route to pure Alpine style ascents. And that was very common. even Even when I was younger, we used to fix the first two pitches and and so on. That was kind of a very common practice then.
01:34:32
Speaker
and you know And then you talked about that cutting the cutting that tether and and heading up on the route. Can you describe a similar experience that you had at Black Diamond that you that felt similar? yeah Because i think there's some really good parallels in business and in and in climbing and in life.
01:34:56
Speaker
I fully agree with you. And I would say with 100% confidence if it wasn't for my experiences on Mount Hunter, there'd be no Black Diamond today because in creation of Black Diamond was the business version of something as out there as Mount Hunter, where the chances of success were very small in the end. because We didn't talk that much about Mount Hunter, but that was quite the epic in the end to to succeed in that route and alive and get off of it.
01:35:29
Speaker
um And I would say that to your point that, you know, two things. First is and alpinism as in business entrepreneurship, if it's not um
01:35:48
Speaker
something like with a bunch of venture capital and whatnot, it puts you in situations of serious consequence. Both put you in situations of serious consequence.
Navigating Legal and Financial Challenges
01:36:00
Speaker
And secondly, there is an incredible tension between the need to prepare, organize, strategize,
01:36:14
Speaker
um and the need to just cut loose and go for it. Or as Patton once said, yeah the minute the the door, the the land the landing craft opens on the beach and of being fired upon,
01:36:27
Speaker
ah everything you know has just fallen by the wayside. And that's not quite true, but it's you, you do everything you can to prepare. And then you got to start being agile and improvisize and whatnot, cause you're gonna have to deal with the situation in front of you.
01:36:44
Speaker
um And, and I'm sorry, I, and now forgot the specifics your question.
01:36:57
Speaker
Oh, and yeah, no worries. um So did i to be honest. I was just following along with um the... trying to connect the... the kind of commitment of of launching, leaving your fixed ropes behind, leaving your so safety behind? And is there like a story from the history of Black Diamond that is sort of analogous to to that? And you started to talk about how you know Black Diamond wouldn't exist without the hunter climb. So um yeah, is there, you know i know that there are a lot of, there were a lot of um yeah high stakes moments in the history of Black Diamond that you
01:37:41
Speaker
move through Yeah, i mean, I think to your point, it's what people have to realize is that
01:37:50
Speaker
the transition from Chernin equipment to Black Diamond was not quite as seamless as people think it is. i mean, what happened, and to tell that story, you really have to understand that there was a big bang, it's what I call the big bang. There was a big bang that hit America's outdoor industry in the latter part of the 1980s. And it also hit the sports um of climbing, backcountry skiing, mountaineering.
01:38:17
Speaker
And when I say the Big Bang, it was the confluence of several big social demographic and legal trends. One was the creation and birth of what we call tort law.
01:38:29
Speaker
And up until the mid-1980s, tort law, i.e., the ability to sue a landowner, whether it's the government or a private individual, for the fact that you got hurt on their property and you can claim attractive nuisance, that they didn't block you, they didn't warn you, um whatever didn't exist. The fact that you could sue a playground manufacturer for putting a jungle gym in that, you know what, that was just too much of a hard surface. You should know that a kid could fall off that and get hurt.
01:39:00
Speaker
the fact that you could sue the manufacturer of a ladder. And if you stood in the very top thing that's made out of cheap shit aluminum and looks like you can't support a mouse and you stand on it. But nobody warned me I couldn't stand on it.
01:39:14
Speaker
um So you had the revolution total law and short equipment went, and I mean, many companies were being sued out of existence, football helmet manufacturers, playground manufacturers,
01:39:25
Speaker
um and the list is is endless and that's where we see all these warning light stickers on things. When it comes down to the the outdoor industry, Chinon Equipment received in rapid succession a series of very serious failure to warn lawsuits.
01:39:42
Speaker
They never claimed that the product failed, but they claimed that the product failed to perform in the situation it was being put to, that the user wasn't properly educated, that the user wasn't properly warned about the limitations of the product.
01:39:57
Speaker
And that's because up until that point in time, we all assumed that the person buying this gear or equipment would only be buying it because they had gone through the apprenticeships that you or I and everybody else up until that point in time had.
01:40:11
Speaker
And so as a result, insurance premiums went through the roof. Companies are receiving lawsuits and losing them that are causing them to file for bankruptcy. Concurrently,
01:40:22
Speaker
You've got land managers changing situations, beginning to ban things like climbing. um You have ski areas that if you remember nineteen eighty s Colorado or Utah, there's that your left ticket said, do not, if you ski out of bound, it is illegal to ski out of bounds of any area.
01:40:41
Speaker
And if you do, you'll lose your ticket. You will spend one night in jail and you will be fined $500. And that was when $500 was probably like
01:40:51
Speaker
um So we had a serious, and then we had an explosion in the numbers of people beginning to do these activities. There was a lot happening. And at this point in time, there were no user advocacy groups. There was no winter wildlands. The Access Fund was not even created at this point in time.
01:41:10
Speaker
There was no, I think, American whitewater. um These groups didn't exist. And there wasn't even an OIA at this point. I mean, the the industry hadn't even organized a trade group at this point in time.
01:41:23
Speaker
And so this was a huge wake up call. And so 1989 was the year the Access Fund was formed, was being formed out of the American Alpine Club. Some of these other groups came later. But as a result of all this, and I should add, there's one other thing that was going on here.
01:41:40
Speaker
that is parallel to but discrete from. So, you know, if you want to put the the birth date of Black Diamond legally, its birth, its creation, its founding, 1989, is correct.
01:41:54
Speaker
that is correct But if you want to talk about when it was it really founded, when was the ethos and the values in the beginning of it, it was 1982 when I was hired. Because Chinard Equipment had been going backwards for a couple of years. No catalog, no new products.
01:42:10
Speaker
It was a becoming an also run. And I don't say that with any disrespect for Yvonne. He was just now focused on Patagonia and not climbing very actively anymore. Um, so what I was tasked with was first graciously being exposed to how Chris McDivitt was learning, building Patagonia and being able to be part of that management team through Yvonne's guys, the guys running the shop, learning from him. He was so gracious and open. He and Melinda being there, but it was up to me to, as Yvonne said on day one, okay, we haven't done a catalog in years. You better to do a catalog.
01:42:46
Speaker
We don't have any new products. You had a bunch of new product ideas, figure out how to get them made. Yeah, this is Yvonne's approach. She's like, these are the things that have to be done. them. And here are some resources for you and people to talk to. That's how I met my wife, too. She was the art director of Patagonia and had to do a catalog.
01:43:03
Speaker
um So, but in that process, it was like, okay, I'm intuitive, too, but I'm also analytical. And so I looked at like, okay, why was the 1972 Chinat catalog where I described earlier?
01:43:20
Speaker
What did it do? And I described it for you what it did. Okay, we need to start doing catalogs that once again, both affirm and celebrate your decision to become a climber or an alpinist because there is some sacrifice involved.
01:43:39
Speaker
It's a Zen kind of activity. that we do. we This is our life. It's not just a sport. It's our lives. And how do we celebrate that? How do we affirm that? And how do we before ah there was a lot of fancy magazines on internet, et cetera, how do we make it a yearbook so everybody will want it?
01:43:56
Speaker
And so it will have the same value to the climbers moving forward that the 1972 catalog had for me. um How do we bring strong equipment forward with new gear innovations um that made it the company it was in the, from the sixties and seventies through the innovations.
01:44:20
Speaker
And i saw it is for me, it was, and those who are hiring, I started, I began to, as I could start growing the company, I had permission then, okay, you can start hiring people.
01:44:33
Speaker
And so who was it I want to hire? I wanted to hire my friends, meaning, Climbers, people that I had climbed with or knew of would interview and talk through and start building a community of climbers because that we didn't really exist over at Patagonia so much anymore.
01:44:47
Speaker
um and And so that started there. um And it was also a realization that we had to really move the forward with the sport.
01:45:01
Speaker
To me and those who I was hiring, The future, the golden years, because i was 27 when Yvonne hired me. The golden years were still at the windshield.
01:45:12
Speaker
They weren't in the rear view mirror. And at the moment, a little bit for Yvonne, with all due respect, the golden years were a little bit more in the rear view mirror. And he had a high set of ethos.
01:45:25
Speaker
His values and so such were that didn't really believe in sticky rubber, bolts, chalk, camming devices, at the time, and he moved forward with it over time.
01:45:37
Speaker
But a lot of what was starting to happen, and then the, in the mid-80s and late 80s, as sport climbing took place, and if you certainly remember those debates, the hang-dogging and the great debate that the Alpine Club had, we all went to, Yvonne, Melinda, myself, people from Chouinard.
01:45:56
Speaker
um But as a result, and Yvonne gave me and the people I hired and my the marketing director I hired, Mariah Cranor, was absolutely brilliant at capturing these ideas that I had and had manifest. and I did the first couple of catalogs and then I hired her. um But as a result of this, it was also something that was not overly pal palatable for Yvonne. He wasn't happy with it.
01:46:24
Speaker
Because as he said, gosh, this company is moving in a direction visually, image-wise, gear-wise, product-wise, ethic-wise, embracing sport climbing, the clothing, this gear.
01:46:37
Speaker
I don't really believe in it. And so it's challenging for me Yvonne Chouinard. It's my name on this company. So this was a ah source of great strife between myself, mark mariah me and Mariah with Yvonne.
01:46:52
Speaker
which I respected but and knew it was a real problem. But then you add to this, what I call the big bang that hit the industry, all the challenges, and then the lawsuits hitting, and suddenly our insurance premiums went through the roof beyond what this company could afford.
01:47:06
Speaker
And it also was the fact that Chanel Equipment was part of this corporation of Patagonia now, which was become a much, much bigger company. um And Lost Arrow, the Great Pacific Eye Works, was now the mail order and retail operation was much, much bigger.
01:47:22
Speaker
And it was clear to any good attorney that somebody might be able to pierce the corporate veil and attack Patagonia, let alone little share on equipment now, which I had grown into to $5 million dollars in revenue.
01:47:35
Speaker
and I think it was a leading company for its period and once again. um But between that, Yvonne's sort of own beliefs about where the sport was and what I was doing with Mariah too capture that that leadership position, and then, gosh, the risk, and then the lawsuits, and now it was not profitable because of the size of the insurance premiums.
01:48:00
Speaker
He had it, and he wrote finally decided in the spring, or late, early, early spring, or the end of the winter, or it was early March of 1982, he filed it for bankruptcy.
01:48:14
Speaker
And they said, we got to, it's over. It's not worth it anymore. And he said, I want you to put together a plan to liquidate the assets as quickly as possible with the least cost to the company.
01:48:28
Speaker
But you can spend a couple of weeks first trying to find a buyer, if you can find a buyer. Otherwise, we'll just liquidate it as quickly as possible. So I got working on that, met with a few different people and entities, and people looked at it and laughed. Why would anybody want to buy this?
01:48:44
Speaker
This thing is losing money. You can't get insurance for it. There's all these lawsuits. There's no future here. And thought about it and had an epiphany and realized,
01:48:59
Speaker
wait a minute here.
01:49:03
Speaker
I'm not about to just surrender and and make a mockery of my last, what was eight years worth of effort in rebuilding this company into the leading climbing equipment company again.
01:49:16
Speaker
I hired so many of my community at this company. Now we have a good number of people. The community is depending on us and what we're doing as far as innovative gear, the catalog.
01:49:28
Speaker
And I said, i don't want to make a um I don't want the legacy of that I and in my generation have been raised on of shared equipment to go to nothing.
01:49:40
Speaker
More importantly, if this company disappears, who, what is going to champion the issues of great importance to a fellow community of mountain sports and throughs, climbers, alpinists, and off-piece skiers. Because I've gotten the company into off-piece skiing and telemarketing.
01:49:58
Speaker
And not a European company, all the, any, um the distribution companies in America for the European companies, they're just distribution companies.
01:50:10
Speaker
The European company wouldn't give a shit about what's happening in America. they can sell their gear, fine. If they can't, well, it's not that big of a market. And since there was no access fund at the moment, and there was no real industry organization, that was just being created.
01:50:24
Speaker
To me, it was, this wasn't about looking at a group of consumer, potential consumers and saying, what can we sell to these people? It was looking at a my community and saying, what needs do they have?
01:50:39
Speaker
What services do they need to have provided? and we're gonna provide them. And because then in creating a business, so to me, the epiphany was, we got I gotta create with my team, I'll lead it, a brand new business.
01:50:56
Speaker
And we'll will be the buyers, we'll buy the assets out of bankruptcy. And this business will be created to champion the issues of great importance to a fellow community of technical mountain sports enthusiasts, and then champion the issues of great importance, which I defined as good, safe, innovative, high-performance gear.
01:51:18
Speaker
It was to continue to affirm and and celebrate your decision to be a climber and to champion the access to and preservation of the mountain, canyon, crag environment that we also love and our sports and activities are absolutely dependent upon.
01:51:36
Speaker
So that was the vision. And I shared that with employees and I just said to them, look, I don't have any money, very little. I'm not paid that much.
01:51:47
Speaker
You guys, I know don't have a lot of money, but don't leave. i mean, we're I'm going to go to the Chouinards and ask them if they will give me time to figure out how to create this new business with this vision and we can refine it together if you want to stay. And I bring this up because already Patagonia was starting to recruit some of the better people out of the company to work for Patagonia because they didn't think there was any future. Right. And it stayed. Come on, guys, stay. I want to start a new business. It's going to take some time. I'll figure it out. Give me some time to do this.
01:52:23
Speaker
And so one, the Chouinards agreed to give me some time. I said three months. It turned out to be about eight months of hell. um And it almost didn't happen.
01:52:34
Speaker
And a number of employees left because they didn't, they lost faith. But over that time,
01:52:42
Speaker
i also realized that what we learned in climbing that, you know, at the end of the day, achieving a summit is meaningless if we don't do it in a way that matters.
01:52:55
Speaker
And so that what I said to everybody was the style in which we do this is every bit as important as whether we achieve it or not. If we fail, but we're doing it our way, it's okay. And I had to share with them that I began talking to investment bankers and realized that's not gonna work because they all want control.
01:53:13
Speaker
began talking to rich, well-to-do investors and they all wanted control or a small group of people and they wanted a liquidity moment. And so one by one opportunities were going by the wayside but the one thing that inspired me at the time was that if you have to remember this is the nineteen eighty s We go back a little bit in history. This was the era of that famed leveraged buyout artist, Michael Milliken and Ivan Boski.
01:53:43
Speaker
And I was reading these stories at this time. i'm learning about business. I was, i didn't add, I was going to night school, going to get an MBA at night and weekends at the Drucker Center in Pasadena.
01:53:54
Speaker
Okay. So I'm reading these stories about these guys who've got millions of dollars, but are doing billion dollar buyouts, leveraged deals. So I thought, if guys with a few million can buy billion dollar entities, why can't a group of us come together with a couple of tens of thousands and buy a few million dollars worth of assets, which is what we needed.
Building Black Diamond's Business Model
01:54:18
Speaker
And I, anyway, and that was the the theory I had. I was trying to figure out how do you do that? And then I read about, what was it? The Samuel Adams Beer Company doing the first stock offering to the public, not going through the Wall Street way.
01:54:39
Speaker
And so it was a matter of trying to figure out all these components. And this is where the, I think the apprenticeship of climbing really weighed into the approach I took, which was the understanding was, hey, you can be a beginner climber and ultimately figure out how to do big new routes in the great ranges. You just got to break it down into components, right?
01:55:08
Speaker
And master that. I had to figure out because Shona Equipment was an independent business. It was a part of Lost Arrow. We were not responsible for finance, accounting, credit, real estate, computer systems, any of these things.
01:55:24
Speaker
We were responsible for it new product development, design, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and shipping. So I had a master of these other things, but it was first figuring that out. And fortunately because of climbing,
01:55:39
Speaker
our climbing community consists of such a eclectic and broad range of people and people loved sharing equipment. And so i took upon me to call all my friends and acquaintances who are investment bankers, attorneys, and private equity, just picking everybody's brain about how I need to know about this area, I need to know about that area.
01:56:06
Speaker
And it was amazing to me how gracious so many people were with unlimited amounts of time at no charge because they wanted to help us. They wanted to see us succeed.
01:56:17
Speaker
I had just read a book by guy named Jack Stack, The Great Game of Business, and where he did something similar. mean, he was my inspiration. It's Springfield Re-Manufacturing. was part of International Harvest that they filed put into bankruptcy, rebuilding engines to diesel vehicles.
01:56:35
Speaker
and he did a leveraged buyout with employees and and resurrected this thing. I called him out of the blue. The amount of time that guy gave me, there'd be no, without him, there would be no Black Diamond.
01:56:47
Speaker
I called the defense counsel. Not a climber, not someone not someone in you already in your Rolodex. You just cold called. Cold called and just said, hey, this is what I'm trying to do, but it's related to what your book says. I wanna do this here.
01:57:03
Speaker
And that's your connectivity. Like, wow, I did this. You can do it. Or calling somebody at bell helmets, motorcycle helmets and that kind of thing.
01:57:14
Speaker
So here's what's going on. You guys are still in business. How did you do it? And the guy on his own nickel coming out to visit me and talk to me. i mean, it was one by one. and so not only did we have to create brand new company to buy these assets,
01:57:29
Speaker
But there was no point telling people like, hey, invest your life savings, your $1,000, we're gonna be sued out of existence. So I also had to organize the industry.
01:57:40
Speaker
So I call up Dan Dusich at REI, I call up all my competitors, at Misty Mountain, at Petzl, at Omega Pacific, at SMC, at Bluewater and say, you guys are all gonna disappear.
01:57:53
Speaker
Just like Shadon Equipment got put into into bankruptcy. It's just a matter of time, but we can organize. And this is how we're gonna do it. I've talked to the guys at Bell. I've talked to these insurance guys. Come to Ventura and let's meet.
01:58:05
Speaker
And I can get REI there and then we gotta organize. and i And everybody came together and, you know One of the things I loved about the industry then especially was that if you ever saw the film, Chariots of Fire, about two British, at the early 1900s, roommates, best friends, who are competing for and a spot on the Olympic track team or something like that in Britain.
01:58:31
Speaker
They're the best friends, but they can compete like no tomorrow, but they're friends. And I really felt like the industry back then, because of our common love and passion for the sports of climbing and the places we do this, that we would compete like we're trying to kill the other guy, but we'd do it with sportsmanship and respect.
01:58:54
Speaker
And we could come together in issues like, we gotta we gotta create standards, we gotta pool insurance. So it was working with bringing all these people together and then finding an insurance agency that could come join us and ensure this industry. So I did that. I organized the industry to create the first climbing standards. We organized under the ASTM.
01:59:15
Speaker
And when I saw that coming together, well, I was concurrently trying to raise money and figure out how do I raise the money to create a black diamond and then keep the employees involved. All of that was going on and keep the chenards at bay so that it could keep operating um before I had the financing in place.
01:59:33
Speaker
So all these things were going concurrently. and yeah There's absolutely no guarantee of success. As a matter of fact, the 90 days I kept having to extend and right when they they were getting ready to pull the plug and the press releases were already all written because I got hold of them, people leaked them to me.
01:59:51
Speaker
Paddle down i with the CEO at the time, just saying like, hey, we gave these with all due sadness, we've had to pull the plug in these guys. We've burned through enough cash. We gave them as much support as we could. They couldn't do it.
02:00:04
Speaker
And so we are liquidating, blah, blah, blah. But at the at the, literally the 13th hour, the deal came together by figuring out a way to create what was, i I had never seen it done before, but an attorney helped me figure it out after i kept,
02:00:21
Speaker
what do you call Spitballing one idea I thought of ah after another. And he goes, that one could work. A KSOP. You couldn't do an ESOP, which I don't think we have time to get into why. You can't do it.
02:00:34
Speaker
ESOPs don't work in the leverage form because your investors keep getting deluded. if you've got outside people who take all the risks, they're not going to end up in a good place. But a lot of the people that Shannard had 401ks, not a lot of money, but we could roll all their 401k money into an opening equity position within the new company with no tax ramifications.
02:00:57
Speaker
And I just told all the employees, you want to be hired in the new company. i'm not saying you have to do this, but there's not going be any new company if you don't. I'll roll in what I have. It's probably more than you guys. 100% I'll put into this.
02:01:08
Speaker
I'll put in all my savings into this, um but you guys got to do it too. So we had that. Um, i approached Michelle Bial who was the supplier of our ropes and said, we're you're not going to have us anymore unless we exist. You want to invest.
02:01:24
Speaker
And I hit a lot of suppliers, but Michelle did. he said, oh I'm in, if you can, you can pull this off. Now we saw Kishida our Japanese distributor and one of Japan's most famous climbers and one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life.
02:01:38
Speaker
So I'm in. And then we had a little mailer operation. And you I'm doing all this after realized we can't go private equity. We can't go investment banking.
02:01:49
Speaker
We can't go with a deep pocketed person. So I go to Jordy Margod who ended up running our ski line and our Scarpa business, but he was running Mailer at the time, a tiny business, you know? But this is back in the day where you had like big computer printouts and all.
02:02:03
Speaker
I said, Jordy, you talk to every customer. This is before the internet too. Let me go back that far. And I said, you talk to people. I go, print out everybody who has bought from the company more than two to three times in the past year, go through that and highlight the people that you've talked to, have a relationship with, and you think they got some money.
02:02:25
Speaker
And want at least a dozen names. I'm going to start call calling. And that's what I did. i just started call calling people going, Hey, this is Peter Metcalf. I'm the general manager of Sean Equipment.
02:02:37
Speaker
I'm sure you heard it went dah, dah, dah. But hey, I have an opportunity for you. You're a climber. You believe in the company. dah, dah, dah. And three of them went for it, including one, Phil Duff, who was the CFO of Morgan Stanley.
02:02:55
Speaker
He became our senior board member, a lifetime board member, dear friend, such a great board member and influencer. And he went in, he was one of the larger small minority investors, but I'll just digress a moment. And we had a great talk. Several of them finally said, okay, i gotta meet you. i can't I can't put money into this if I don't meet you.
02:03:17
Speaker
So he said, fly to New York. I'll do it. And then I realized, better have a suit. don't want a suit. Lucky my brother lives in New York City and said, Mike, lend me one of your suits. And I put that suit on, go to the private conference room at Morgan Stanley, where you got a waiter with white gloves serving you coffee. And I sit down and Phil looks at me and goes, know, I really wondered if you're gonna wear a suit or not. Because I didn't know you were just a climbing bum or you knew something, you were a little bit more.
02:03:48
Speaker
Good thing borrowed that suit. well But there's so many- You didn't tell him that it was your brother's suit? No, no. I did yeah i did years later, actually, when we had really good friends.
02:04:02
Speaker
um But it all came together. yeah I should say the 12th hour, I got the employees to commit, putting it together. And then the debt financing, which I thought because of all the leveraged deals I could get if we had at least a certain amount of equity.
02:04:18
Speaker
But because all the deals now and the time this took from March of 1989 to now we're in November 1989, all the leveraged deals now are going bankrupt.
02:04:27
Speaker
all the big lever deals now are going bankrupt And so the window of opportunity, I started, i hired a a financial advisor just to introduce me to banks and help me put the numbers together in a way that bankers could understand, because I'd never done that before.
02:04:46
Speaker
So a guy named Jim Segalski, just an amazing individual who really believed in what we're doing. And an amazing attorney who serendipitously found, Jim Topinka. These two guys, there'd be no black diamond without him.
02:05:00
Speaker
they just fell in love with the the Quixotic, and it was Quixotic, dream and vision, and just said, this is crazy, but you're too compelling not to get involved.
02:05:11
Speaker
And Jim in the end actually became an investor too. um But um the window was closing on this, and finally it looked like it was just shut and there was nothing.
02:05:23
Speaker
And so on my own, I went down to LA, started hitting just commercial finance companies. Had one meeting, believe it not, this company was truly called, private commercial finance company.
02:05:38
Speaker
Oh, Scrooge.
02:05:41
Speaker
It was from Dickens, something, Scrooge and something. And, um
02:05:48
Speaker
oh, Jacob Marley or something. It's like, oh my God. mean i I said, what are your interest rates? And they said, 21%. And my jaw dropped. They go, isn't that illegal? And they said, no, we're licensed in North Dakota like a credit card company. It's totally legal.
02:06:03
Speaker
And I said, that ain't working for me. Anyway, finally found a commercial finance company who agreed to do the deal in LA at interest rate of
02:06:20
Speaker
12 and a half or 13% with a point to originate. And I said, no, but i' not giving it a personal guarantee. I said, I'm not even going to be a 10% owner.
02:06:31
Speaker
I have 38 employees who will be owners. I have a dozen outside people who are going to be owners. I'm not giving, i can't give it a personal guarantee. And they finally said, okay, we'll do the deal ah do right So everything's set.
02:06:48
Speaker
Oh, and on the equity side, ah the outside guys, I said to them, for you to invest in, because I wanted to control the remain internally, is you have to buy two units of subordinated debenture for every unit of equity. Everybody bought the same price. Outside, employees, me. Nobody got free stock. Nobody got a lower price than anyone.
02:07:09
Speaker
We were all equal. in God's eyes here. Nobody had an advantage. But the outside guys said no to the two to one, but agreed to one to one, even though I was paying interest rates, if you remember in 1989, very high.
02:07:26
Speaker
The bench would be 15% interest, interest only twice a year and money redeemed at five years. And when it came down to liquidity, ah people asked me, is this philanthropy or is this investment?
02:07:39
Speaker
It's totally investment. but I'm not gonna commit to it a liquidity day. Could be 10 years, could be longer, but it is an investment. That's what employees are putting in. I'm putting in, i can't, this is not philanthropy.
02:07:52
Speaker
And so got the deal done. So the last night in November, early November, i go down LA to sign all the papers. And these guys at the commercial finance company with their gold chains hanging around their neck with their open shirts say, sign all the papers and then go, oh yeah,
02:08:10
Speaker
Forgot two things. The success fee. It's a point. A point of what you're borrowing. And I said, oh, no we got it. It's it's the origination fee.
02:08:21
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, no. That's the origination fee. This is success fee for the team here. It's a split. and i mean You got to be kidding me. There's no deal if you don't sign that.
02:08:32
Speaker
So I sign it. And then they go, oh, yeah. one other thing. yeah We were really torn over this personal guarantee. We got to have it. I said, you gotta to be fucking kidding me.
02:08:44
Speaker
And they said, no, we gotta have it. And at that point, you know, was so much at stake and I thought about it and thought about all the commitments people made, I realized, what the hell? I mean, i'm still young. don't have that much equity in my house.
02:09:01
Speaker
I had talked this through with my wife and she was willing, as I said, if we have to just leave town in my old Volkswagen, we still select can start over, right? And she goes, we could. So I signed it.
02:09:13
Speaker
Wow. But talk about, i mean, just like Mount Hunter when you, we didn't talk about it fully, but that moment where you realize on day three, you can't go down anymore. The only way to live, to do the route and live is up, upward bound.
02:09:31
Speaker
And my attitude at that point was the only way to not give up everything I have, including my house, and to realize this vision with all the employees is move forward and succeed. Yeah. And I mean, if you're willing and have time, i would love to go back to the the Hunter story because they're you know it feels incomplete to not hear that.
02:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm willing if you want to do that. Yeah, yeah. because so you know there's there's There's really these, so there's so many things going through my head listening to you and and and I have so many questions, but I would like to hear the the Hunter story and and connect connect that.
02:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, okay. So yeah the two are really, really related. I mean, I kept falling back to that in so many ways. on So in Hunter, one of the decisions we made, suggested and others agreed with, was that, look, this route is big. It's going to have hard climbing on it. We're doing it Alpine style.
02:10:44
Speaker
I don't think, you you have to remember, so the gear today was different than it is today. um let's I think we can do it in six to seven days. And in my mathematics was like, look, I did the Walker Spur in a day and a half with Charlie.
02:10:58
Speaker
This thing's twice as big, but it's Alaska, da, da, da, da. That's why i think we can do it. And not taking into account the type of climbing and some of the horizontal movements on the spur, weather and this and that. And I also said, like, look, there were,
02:11:15
Speaker
At that time, the quality of tents and the weights didn't work. It was just too much. And so my suggestion was, we just do open biffies. We did them in the Alps. um Everything was open. We have a bivouac sack.
02:11:27
Speaker
There are these bivouac sacks now with little wands. We call them the hoop coops. And I said, but hopefully can dig a snow cave. And if we can dig a note and if if you can't dig a snow cave, then you couldn't have probably put a tent up.
02:11:42
Speaker
And if you can't dig a snow cave, there wouldn't be no tents. So it's just going to be an open bivvy. So we we we're not having tents. So this is the gear. And we start the route and we get flown in quickly. In the morning we wake up, it's not totally clear, but it's adequate. And we start off on the route and the sun comes up.
02:12:03
Speaker
And to that point, we start up the entrance gully and I'm feeling pretty cocky, so cocky. i was ah I had a little bit more hubris maybe back then. Not a lot, but little bit. I just say to the guys as I'm leading, you know what, we're going to nail this in six days, no problem.
02:12:19
Speaker
And I take a package of wasserweibro and throw it in the Bergstrom and go, off we go. it was more like like breaking a bottle of champagne, kind It's like, well, go in.
02:12:30
Speaker
And um anyway, by that first evening in our bivouac, it's already starting to snow lightly. It's this kind of precarious spot. And um anyway, the first couple of days, we're not making as quick progress as we hoped. It's just the nature of the climbing.
02:12:48
Speaker
And then we get to this rock head wall with this aid climbing or whatnot and have some bivvies on it, but that's okay. But yeah, it's clear this is going to take probably more than six days. So let's cut our rations back a little bit.
02:13:00
Speaker
We get over it and weather looks okay. Again, early May. And then start climbing onto these fluted, this is for the audience, hard to explain. I mean, you know what I'm talking about, climbers who've been to Alaska.
02:13:15
Speaker
But this spur has these amazing, just about almost vertical flutings. And so you traverse the ridge a bit, but then you just have to get into the flutings and go up them a ways, get as high as you could, and then traverse again as far as you could, you maybe 80, 70 degrees.
02:13:36
Speaker
And they're all aerated and, um
02:13:41
Speaker
you know, you couldn't get anchors in them. it would Nothing would hold a screw. So you're just climbing very, very carefully. And then at the top, you often find something to to get a good belay in.
02:13:53
Speaker
But it became clear, and that's probably day four or five that we're doing that. But then the weather turns to shit. I mean, it's just horrific, bad weather.
02:14:04
Speaker
And we keep climbing these flutings in the worst weather I've been climbing in. And we keep going. and we finally, in the dark, and we're climbing until like two or three in the morning. And in early May, it just gets dark as you Alaska.
02:14:18
Speaker
And finally get to a place where we can dig a cave. um And we dig in and finally crash. And in the morning wake up and i said, guys, we just got to start talking about this right now we're at.
02:14:31
Speaker
And I said, does anybody here believe that we can descend this? And go, I don't believe we can descend this. Let's, but we got to talk about it. i mean, is what we've climbed over the last 20 hours.
02:14:42
Speaker
I think we'll kill ourselves trying to descend this. and everything else that we've been up. And I said, I think at this moment, let's look at the photo we had. We had one of Washburn's photos in our pack.
02:14:53
Speaker
Look at where we're at and look at this route. And I just said, look, mean I know we've been going slower than we have thought we would. We're cutting our rations. We can keep cutting them. We look good in fuel.
02:15:04
Speaker
We're comfortable here in this cave, but I think the only way gonna succeed in in and get out of this place, it's it's we're we're going up. And we had a good talk about it and it was pretty sobering.
02:15:17
Speaker
But and as a team, we all looked at each other and said, yep, it's we got to do it. And, you that moment, it was also...
02:15:30
Speaker
but but it was a a tough decision to come to, but it was suddenly liberating because as you know, and a route like that, you're always spending a certain percentage of your mental mental energy, which is also physical energy, constantly thinking about, okay, to get down, where's the line? What's the line?
02:15:49
Speaker
Looking at your gear, what are we leaving? What do we have? How do we do this? And the moment you decide like, there's only one route here, it's up. you're suddenly like no energy whatsoever will ever be expelled now on anything but succeeding and going upward.
02:16:07
Speaker
So that was a really important epiphany. And then the other revelation- And that was day which six? Day- i should have reread Glenn's book on this to now, but I think it was about, no, it's not quite day six. It was probably about, it was probably day five.
02:16:27
Speaker
Yeah. fine And how many more days to finish the climb and get down? yeah other that is The six or seven day route took 13 and a half days. Yeah. Yeah.
02:16:39
Speaker
And so it's so, know, at this point it also became clear that, you know, Pete had brought up the point. I realized earlier on Glenn and I, he goes,
02:16:54
Speaker
something about, hey, we're not moving as quick as we thought we would. How do you how do you and Glenn feel about that? And Glenn and I looked at him and said, like, we're strong climbers.
02:17:05
Speaker
We're fit. You think anybody who could do this faster than us? And Pete said, no. I go, there you go. we're We're climbing competently and well, so no reason to to do anything but move forward. And you realize at high school, like that's a very stupid bit of logic. And just because nobody could do it faster than you um doesn't mean you're gonna succeed.
02:17:27
Speaker
yeah But yeah yeah it was one of this the the erroneous decisions made at the time. I don't regret it in hindsight. um But I guess the point was making next was It was a realization at that point when we looked at how much of the root was left, there was still a lot of the root left.
02:17:47
Speaker
And yeah know the conclusion we came I came to was after that one long day in the cave, and we just talked about it, just said, you know, this pack the last 20 hours was really horrific. Think about the climbing we did.
02:18:03
Speaker
and weather we were in And look, we're here. we We've got some food, we've got water, we're dry, we're talking, we're actually making some jokes.
02:18:14
Speaker
how could to tomorrow how How could today, once we start out of here, or tomorrow be any worse than yesterday? Impossible. And it reminded me of a quote I read later of Galen Rowles.
02:18:28
Speaker
that was at the heart of the Alpinist experience life's optimistic expectation, the belief that to- tomorrow has got to be a better day than today. And that was sort of the attitude was that, and a little bit in reverse, it was like, hey, even if tomorrow's as bad as, it can't be worse than yesterday. we got through yesterday. So let's get that out of our minds.
02:18:50
Speaker
After what we've been through, we can go. Number two is we just take this a day at a time. We can't lose sight of the bigger picture, but let's look at this photo and let's get an idea of where do we think we should be and what's the climbing, and then let's focus on today, that and then we'll worry about the rest when it comes. And let's just get the rations down.
02:19:13
Speaker
And I share that because that was certainly the attitude with where this I was doing Black Diamond was just one huge challenge after another. Well, let's just, what's the big picture? What are the components?
02:19:25
Speaker
Let's just deal with this one right now, and then we can come to the next one. And how can tomorrow be any worse than today? um And then the next one was that, you know, what we talked about earlier was on this route, as you can imagine, there were days here now where certainly there were times when somebody didn't feel like leading or didn't feel...
02:19:50
Speaker
strong enough to get out in front or was moving really slow and you just had to say, you're doing fine, Pete, but you know what? Let Glenn or I lead right now because you're just not going fast enough or vice versa.
02:20:04
Speaker
And let's have that, no hard feelings, nothing bad about that. um And then checking in on one another, your feet cold in the, who's who can dig the cave right now? Who's gonna do this?
02:20:15
Speaker
Or your feet are freezing, put them in my chest right now and and somebody else can melt the snow for the water. Who's got an old tea bag that we can share? And it was just things like that that we're sharing.
02:20:29
Speaker
But um there was a, It was experiences like that. And then there were these moments that of just and absolute elation. Like there's a section near the end of the spur that was called the Happy Cowboys, which was this double cornice long, like 165 foot pitch.
02:20:50
Speaker
And I remember getting up there i said, I'll take the lead. um and got up there and I looked at the thing and go, oh my God, this knife edge double cornice thing.
02:21:00
Speaker
The only way to climb this thing is to jump up on it and straddle it like a ah ah horse and just take your tools and keep smashing away the cornices and hope you don't go with them.
02:21:11
Speaker
And you can get an anchor good and work your way across it and if you can clear it and clear it then the other guy should be able to get across. And I remember getting across it and just letting out the biggest organic yell and hoop of elation which was, I can't believe it I'm alive!
02:21:33
Speaker
yeah And anyway, the weather got increasingly worse. And if at this time, as it turned out, nobody was getting up to anything. Everybody that we met when we got down to the Cahillton, including Chouinard had been on the glacier at the time with Ridgway.
02:21:52
Speaker
Charlie was down there with his girlfriend. um Tackle was there. Nobody was getting up anything. And of course, we wouldn't be on this route if we could have gotten down. But it really was the worst weather I'd ever been in, let alone climbing in.
02:22:07
Speaker
And um on the final day to get to the summit plateau Hunter was one of those days. It was just beyond the pale of triumph of weather.
02:22:18
Speaker
Glenn was on this final lead that I thought would take us, we knew we'd get us to the um to the plateau. We just had to get through the cornices at the top. And halfway through it, we'd been rock climbing our gear and this and that, his crampon breaks.
02:22:35
Speaker
And he gets a screw in and he's hanging from the screw, trying to somehow fuck with the cramp on and strap it on or this or that.
02:22:46
Speaker
And I am literally at this point in time, freezing to death. And I just look at Pete and I say, Pete, keep him on belay. I'm soloing. Don't worry about me. um' I feel good about my climbing, which I did.
02:23:00
Speaker
And I'll take off, but you keep, I'll check on Glenn and see what I can do for him. And then I'll keep going. So I get up to Glenn and see Glenn messing with this cramp. I go, Glenn, how you doing? And he's hanging from the screw. He goes, I'm almost there. I'm just gotta get this.
02:23:14
Speaker
cramp unstrapped on, it's hard, my hands are like numb. And I'm looking at him and like, fuck man, get get get the gloves back on, let me help you a little bit. And he does, but man, his fingers look white.
02:23:25
Speaker
But I didn't think much of it. And get him on, warm him up. And then i lead on and um i think I screamed something down to Pete about trying to get me on belay if you can.
02:23:36
Speaker
And i get up to the top and I'm just trying to move. And these overhanging cornices, I'm just, I thought I was gonna just lose all my strength. That last move and I had this epiphany suddenly dies on the final move onto the summit plateau. His arms give out trying to smash this cornice. But again, over, we get her on top, we dig in, you know go for an hour or two to a point where we could dig in, dig the cave, get in there again. It must be like three in the morning.
02:24:08
Speaker
And I think we're okay. and Glenn is mumbling about his frostbite, but doesn't say anything more, it's gonna be okay. Wake up in the morning in the cave, Glenn goes, we got a problem here. We're on the solar plateau, it pulls his glove off and it's, oh my God.
02:24:25
Speaker
the black and blue blisters around all his fingers are gigantic and he can't manipulate them at all, at all. So it's like, guys, you're gonna have to help me get my harness on get my gear on and this and that. And at that point realized, okay, it's up to the two of us.
02:24:43
Speaker
Pete and I, and we're down now to a couple of ice, two ice screws um or something like that. And anyway, the weather's still terrible. And I think you've you've been a hunter, but so you gotta to go finish getting across the plateau. You gotta find the West Ridge, which we've never been down.
02:25:00
Speaker
And the West Ridge, you know, it's it's not trivial to down climb that thing, especially haven't been up it and you're weak and haven't had any food for days. And, you know, we had a first aid kit and we popped a Dexedrine hoping for something to kick in and almost nothing kicks in. It's like, this is not good.
02:25:22
Speaker
And, you know, our sleeping bags are down to nothing more at this point than two pieces of nylon with two frozen ice blocks are down. um And it's just, I got frostbite in my feet for sure. And so does Pete.
02:25:35
Speaker
And so we we head down and, you know, fortunately, there's just enough clearing at times to find our way down and we're lucky. And then we um get to that head roll on the West Ridge where you've got like six pitches of real ice climbing, like, don't know, 65 or 70 degrees.
02:25:53
Speaker
And so what we do on these things, it's like, okay, number one is a lower peak down to the end of it. You put a good screw in, anchor,
02:26:05
Speaker
Then I'll lower Glen to you from this anchor. i got one screw in my tools in I'll just solo it down, but you got to have at least one screw at each anchor.
02:26:16
Speaker
So I'd solo climb each pitch. But I remember as I'm doing this, this is where like I had this amazing, like you this point we're out a long time without food.
02:26:29
Speaker
i'm just wasted. And I suddenly have this out of body experience. Like there's another me outside of me, like a spirit watching me, talking to me, literally like it's crazy. Like there's somebody there talking me through each pitch that hang in there. Don't worry about it. You're going to do it.
02:26:46
Speaker
It was really bizarre. um Anyway, full hallucinations at that point. Yes. And so it took, Then it was another bivvy down below that.
02:27:03
Speaker
is it two? And finally on day 14, we were down on the, finally get down to the glacier.
02:27:13
Speaker
Just crawl. our way back up to the Cahillton at the landing site. We're walking, we're just looking like shit. I didn't know how bad we looked. Get to the site and as it turned out, you know, Charlie was there with his girlfriend, Jack Tackle, Mark Udall. I mean, a bunch of people who knew us and people look at us and go, oh my God, everybody thought you guys were dead.
02:27:39
Speaker
because everybody knew were up there. you know The community was still small and the hilt there is like the guys weren't hunting, no sign of them for, they were a week overdue. And they'd pop us a beer and give us something to drink.
02:27:52
Speaker
and we're And we look bad. And no plane, because of the weather, has gotten in there for four days. and But the word is, hey, there's a clearing, two planes are coming in and tackles one of the guys, I'm giving up my seat for you.
02:28:07
Speaker
And everybody agreed, he was like, you guys, you're first out. We're giving up the seats. And so in two separate planes, you got I got on one, Pete and Glenn got in the other. what was amazing was on the way out, you know if the ceiling drops, there's only certain ways out for the the pilots.
02:28:25
Speaker
And the the first, and I forgot the names of this, it's been too many years, but the first pass, as as Hudson's getting to it, it shuts. and He goes, okay, next pass.
02:28:35
Speaker
And then veers the plane around and he's heading to the next one and it's it's closing quickly. And the other guys in the plane are like, oh my God, are we gonna make it? And I'm like, at just point I don't give a shit anymore. Like whatever happens, happens. And he just gets through it.
02:28:51
Speaker
We get down there and... um get into town, say hi to a few people, and then hire somebody to take us immediately down to Providence, to Anchorage, to the Providence Hospital to check in for first bite and spend some time there.
02:29:07
Speaker
Start getting treatment. Yeah, i get the treatment. First one shot and second shot are the names of those passes. Yes, yeah, exactly. And they're named that because the first option is first shot, second one is second.
02:29:22
Speaker
So that was Hunter, but you know, from that, we've talked about many of the lessons learned about humility and compassion for the individual, breaking any big climb or goal down into its components, keeping sight of the big picture, but focusing on only what you can do each day so you don't get overwhelmed by the situation and don't freak out. Stay calm and work on what you can do. Stay positive, look after your partners,
02:29:52
Speaker
have them look after you um seemingly simple things, but things that most people don't, I think
Leadership, Vision, and Community Building
02:29:59
Speaker
today consider. When you told the story about, you know, taking Chouinard equipment and and leading it for number, what was it? Seven years and then transitioning it into black diamond. I mean, you at least told some of that story, know,
02:30:16
Speaker
you know When you're a Mount Hunter, you've got the Washburn photo and you know where you are. You can identify the features on the ridge and you know we're halfway up, we have this much food, we have this much fuel.
02:30:30
Speaker
in in this trying to trying and to take Channard equipment and and turn it into Black Diamond and do a leveraged buyout of the assets and retain talent and all of these things, you had no you had no map, you had no photo. So how did you navigate that level of and uncertainty?
02:30:55
Speaker
It was more of a
02:31:01
Speaker
braille method, but there was a photo, meaning i had to paint the painting, meaning i knew there were components, right? Just like you you have a photo. if you get the photo, then you can zero in on, okay, what are the segments of it?
02:31:17
Speaker
So, I mean, I recognize that unless I understood what are the components, I wouldn't know how to approach it. And so goal number one was look look at at this book, Springfield, Rudy, Matt, Jack Stack's book, The Great Game of Business. I'd read that and talked to him like, what did you do? How did you do it? What are those components?
02:31:39
Speaker
um I've been in business school and you believe it or not, the business plan was serendipitous. I was just taking a strategic planning class at the Drucker Center when this all happened. So you know what? Let's make my my strategic paper for the term, the business fan plan for Black Diamond.
02:31:59
Speaker
And it got the help of a professor. And these people I could call and talk to who knew various components of this, talking to um the insurance guys or the Bell Helmets or um like I said, Jack Stack or others.
02:32:19
Speaker
And it was one by one, I could get the components, finding a good attorney. who could tell me where I was missing and go, yeah, I've helped people form businesses. it These are some of the legal elements you gotta be aware of.
02:32:32
Speaker
um Getting a financial advisor goes, oh, let me walk you through what the process is. It's recognizing just like you do in climbing. Hey, I've never wall climbed before.
02:32:44
Speaker
You read about it and then you I gotta find a really good wall climber to tell me Walk me through what ah the components are. And then you can start teaching yourself or getting the help for each component.
02:32:55
Speaker
And when you think you've put together, i was putting together, this is again, before computers are big at all. I still have them now. The biggest binders that you could have gotten at Staples that were like six inch backs i just had like all the um dividers it kept making sections like okay new section new section putting in the information getting okay my picture keeps getting bigger and bigger or if it was a a tapestry it's getting richer and richer of what the components are And I finally, i think, had enough to go, okay, we're ready to move forward and we're going to keep adding color and details to the photo as we go. And then we're going to have to improvise because we're going to be hit by things that don't work.
02:33:39
Speaker
Yeah. And one of the things that I think people that I'm hearing is, you don't see the whole thing at once. You you build it piece by little piece because i think it's still quite remarkable that you were able to...
02:33:59
Speaker
That you were able... I mean, you had enough of this vision in your head like it's not paint by numbers. i can I'm not thinking of the right analogy, but you knew we need to get from here to an independent, profitable business over there.
02:34:16
Speaker
And it's going to look somewhat like like this. And then you're you're discovering the pieces you needed as as you went along, but you were still able to have that full vision. And when people...
02:34:30
Speaker
especially maybe maybe I'm biased, but today people are so focused on the moment here, the now, the news cycle, the the drama of the day. and you're able to,
02:34:43
Speaker
I don't know what the right word is, elevate perhaps your your time horizon to look at a plan that, you know, I mean, optimistically, you said it was going to be 90 days and it was eight months. Optimistically, you said it was going to be seven days and it was 13 and a half. I mean, this this is ah this is one of the enduring traits of alpinists, right? that they That they're optimistic, and they go for it, and it actually is probably half as their estimates are are off by 100% oftentimes, but you still got out there and and put that all together. So how did you bring people along for that? Like you had, I don't know, 34 people or something involved, or you know you had your employees, you had investors, you had all these different constituencies,
02:35:32
Speaker
you have a vision, but it's not completely painted even for you. And you're asking people for their money, for their life savings, for their for their for their retirement funds, and asking for their trust, asking them to follow you into this into this whiteout, for lack of a better word. how do you How do you paint that for them? How do you do that?
02:35:56
Speaker
it's It's a very good question. And I think that where you begin,
02:36:04
Speaker
Let me backtrack a moment and just say that, you know, think what is so crucial is if you're a starting something, are you doing it because you're trying to make make money or, which is not very compelling to anybody unless it's a bunch of people in tech, like, let's see how quickly we can do this and go public and get the hell out and make a buck.
02:36:28
Speaker
You know, that's not very compelling. And to me, is I shared, creating Black Diamond wasn't about getting rich. I mean creating Black Diamond was, my thinking was if we could get to 5 million and break even and make a difference, right? It was make a difference for a fellow community of users through gear, champion the issues of great importance, access, preservation, hath affirmation, celebration of your this success.
02:37:01
Speaker
And this was the, why are we doing this? This is why we're doing it. This is what we're gonna sacrifice. This is why we're gonna take risk. And I don't want anybody to lose the money, but there is some risk here and how to say that.
02:37:12
Speaker
But if we all believe in this vision, other people gotta to believe in it and we'll figure out, a just need to figure out how to get there. And we will make, or figure out a way to make it at least self-sustaining and we'll figure it out. But for that group of people, depending on what level they were at,
02:37:32
Speaker
that is what they needed to know was why. And so, as I said, I'm reasonably analytical on some of these things. So to me, the time that I put in was on the vision. Why are we doing this vision, mission, and what I call the 10 commitments of this company, which is the style in which we accomplish this goal is every business importance what we accomplish.
02:37:58
Speaker
And what I mean by that, it was like, what the 10 commitments, We will share the success of the company with all employees. We will be a truly global business. And there's a reason behind each one of these things.
02:38:13
Speaker
We will be a fierce, but highly ethical competitor. um we We will champion access to and preservation of mountain canyon crag environments, things like that.
02:38:23
Speaker
And was putting that together and sharing that with everybody and go, this ah if this is if this has resonance to you, then I ask you join. And i will, myself and the management team will figure out the the other components.
02:38:38
Speaker
And depending on who the people on the team had to be involved in more and more. And then some aspects when nobody else had to be involved in me because i think the role a leader is not to shield people from the overall risk factors and concepts, but they do need to shield from every from some of this and I didn't want to hide.
02:39:09
Speaker
trying to say this. Yes, I was not fully transparent with everything, but I did not, when people put their money in before could access that money, it's put into a escrow account until we had everything there.
02:39:27
Speaker
And then we're ready to push the button, sign the papers, doors open. And I, I had everybody aware of what we had to do to succeed. I we don't have cashflow to go more than two weeks in the negative.
02:39:41
Speaker
And day one, this is how we're going to do it. And this is where your salaries are going to be. And this is why I mean I gave classes with, on on how we even finance. I had the commercial finance guys come in because the way we borrowed was we could borrow against inventory.
02:40:02
Speaker
We could borrow against raw materials. We could borrow against accounts receivable, and we could get a fixed line on some of our assets which were minimal, but we had zero barring capability on WIP, work in process. We're manufacturer.
02:40:20
Speaker
So explained to people, the minute that we were putting product into work that day, it's like, figure you're on a 50 mile run across the desert and you got one liter water.
02:40:33
Speaker
make it last and get across that desert. Cause when that leader's gone, you're gonna be dead. And so, cause we can't, we can't have more than this amount of money in there. So everybody learned basic accounting.
02:40:43
Speaker
And that was not my idea. That was Jack Stack's idea, the great game of business. Make sure that people understand the dynamics of your business and what it's gonna take to be successful and stay in business so they don't lose their job and they don't lose their money.
02:40:57
Speaker
um it was It was tiered is what they knew, but the most important part for them to know was There risk, and this this is why we're all doing this, and we're in it together as a team.
02:41:08
Speaker
I don't get anything better than you do, and I'm with you 100% of the way. um Yeah, and I have to say, from my observations, I mean, that was certainly felt, you know, over the over the years. I mean, you were you were always there in the in the office, always working. And that leads me to a question I want to ask you. You know, I don't know if you know this, but, you know,
02:41:36
Speaker
Well, probably you do. Your work ethic was legendary. How much work, how many hours you you put in, how hard you worked. And, you know, at least in the in the I saw you in the Salt Lake offices, not prior to that and and but when you were in Ventura, but, you know, your office was ah glass wall. Like everybody could see what you were doing at any... The fish tank is more I called it. Yeah, what did you call it?
02:42:00
Speaker
The fish tank? I called it the fish tank. Yeah, you guys worked worked in the fish tank. And so, and you were always in there. You were always working. At what point did you, and perhaps Mariah and others, realize that sheer force of effort alone couldn't scale Black Diamond to fulfill the goals that you had set out for it? or
02:42:27
Speaker
a I think I knew that. the moment I started. Yeah. I think Mariah knew that too, that it's...
02:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, I would call it, I mean, I think I recognize that Black Diamond was going to be the ultimate enchantment, the climb without end, that we would never arrive. You know, my vision for the company, separate from the mission and separate from the why was to be one with the sports we serve, absolutely indistinguishable from it, that we were going to continue to be or to be an integral part of the community that when you thought of climbing up and backcountry skiing, you thought black diamond. And when you said black diamond, you're obviously talking about climbing, alpinism and off-piece skiing.
02:43:14
Speaker
And that we would never arrive at that, we'd never arrive anywhere. It would be a process of constant climbing and it would take huge efforts. And at the moment, one was tired of that huge effort was the moment it was time for you to leave.
02:43:34
Speaker
And I share that because one of the initial debates here was that the management team that I put together, who is my management team at Chouinard, separate from above us was Mariah Cranor, director of marketing, VP of marketing and image and design look, Meredith Sarnon of production, logistics, and Hunky Quack, who ran manufacturing.
02:44:00
Speaker
And the first idea was like, let's make make this a partnership. So no, we're not going to do a partnership. One thing Yvonne taught me early on, because Yvonne had a partnership with Tom Frost and at some point that fell apart. i just leave it that way.
02:44:14
Speaker
I said, partnerships don't work. I know that for a fact and that this is not going to be a partnership. This is going to be a company, a corporation. And we'll have a board of directors made up of investors and you but you serve at my pleasure and I will serve at the pleasure of the board. You will be both below me and you'll be part of the group above me.
02:44:39
Speaker
But that way, if I determine it's time for you to go, i can make that decision. And likewise, when the board determines this company is no longer moving forward in the right way, they can determine that and have me leave.
02:44:56
Speaker
And i bring that up because to your point, I knew it was going to take big effort. And i think in this role, in the roles, especially the senior team, you got to give it everything.
02:45:09
Speaker
i don't mean it it, you can't have a family, you can't have a life, but it's not, it's not 40 hours. It is, and I say for me and Mariah too, especially, it it was our lives. I mean, but it was also our community. So it didn't make it hard.
02:45:27
Speaker
Climbing had defined who we were, this community. So was I, There was a period of time there were Clark Kawakami, who was the CFO. And the i got i brought in about four months after we started. i didn't have a finance guy when we started.
02:45:42
Speaker
Couldn't find one. But Clark was a climber and he was my climbing partner. But I didn't get out a lot for a number of years because I had to be at the office. But Clark once said, when somebody said, so you've been climbing with Metcalf?
02:45:55
Speaker
He goes, yeah, I have. But I'll tell you this, sightings of Metcalf at the Crag currently are rarer than Elvis sightings. ah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a myth about balance, right? Like when you, and i I think the same thing about, you know, when I was climbing full time, had no balance in my life. I was only focused on that. And now at this phase of my life, I'm only focused on what I'm doing now. and
02:46:27
Speaker
You know, I think that there is ah myth about, you know, being able to do three or four things at a time, and at one time period in your life well. And for me, but doesn't doesn't work.
02:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, to your point, just to reinforce that, back in that period around Hunter, I came back to New York at some point for my invited Christmas or something. and just between where it's focused on planning a trip and training.
02:47:01
Speaker
ah brother said to me at some point, we're pretty close. and We talked frankly, he was there and he goes, you this climbing thing has turned you into such a fucking asshole to the family. mean, you, because, you know, you're here for the holidays and all you're focused on is not the family, but your stuff.
02:47:19
Speaker
And I, it stopped me in my tracks and I said, Hmm. I don't mean to be, it's this, this is, this, this is my life and I don't mean to be this way.
02:47:29
Speaker
i guess it's who I am, but I will try to do better right now since I'm here. And yes, starting the company. i mean, even when I got to Charnard, it wasn't initially, but as I saw what the opportunities were and what that company could become, it rapidly within a few years started to become a modern maniacal part of my life.
02:47:49
Speaker
And I think, you know, if you ask my three kids and my wife, How many kids did I have? They tell you four and without question, Black Diamond was the favorite child.
02:48:00
Speaker
And it's true. you know it's just It was. it was And I love my kids and they know that. yeah Yeah. Yeah.
02:48:11
Speaker
So much about alpinism and business is about making really the hard decisions with incomplete information. And in climbing, we talk about having intuition, having a sense of things.
02:48:24
Speaker
you know, those good old, should I go up or down signals that we share with our partners in running Black Diamond. you have similar intuition or is is it all analytics for you?
02:48:38
Speaker
No, no, it's very much intuition um because
02:48:45
Speaker
I shared, you're creating Black Diamond was such a quixotic dream and many people just said, you can't do it. I mean, in this community, you guys have no money.
02:48:57
Speaker
you know, some of the banks I went to looked at the the thing and just said, yeah know, I can deal, I can understand getting behind a deal with warts, but son, this is the artichoke of warts. Every time you peel back a layer, you get a bigger and bigger wart.
02:49:13
Speaker
There's nothing here that's worthwhile. And so, but you have to go with there, this idea that, no, i my intuition tells me, This is doable. I just feel it and know it can be done. It's just figuring it out and we're going to do it.
02:49:29
Speaker
um And then, you know, a big hard climbs, you know, you often come across, it' you know better than i some challenge or some sort of, route finding of technical climbing or some mixed thing you first thought thought is like, this is impossible.
02:49:52
Speaker
And then you look at it a moment and go, no, this is impossible. This is, I just need to figure this out. And I'm going to turn the impossible into the possible or to say differently that happened in Hunter.
02:50:05
Speaker
And when I got to black diamond, I'll just have to say both in start trying to start it, but then after the doors open, there was three, what you'd call existential moments that look like and game over, you know,
02:50:22
Speaker
disaster hits. And each time we were able to metamorphose that disaster, that existential moment to be taken down into a moment of absolute opportunity that actually made us much, much stronger and better because we flipped it You know, i so my cliche BD after the first year was like, you know what?
02:50:47
Speaker
Disasters are nothing but situate opportunities and drag. We just have to figure out where the opportunity is. And we did that so many times that those disasters made us so much stronger. And I think like in climbing, every time you you are challenged to your very limit, you come out of that and go, you that was the best climb of my life.
02:51:08
Speaker
I made that, I became a better climber because of that. And that's why I'm climbing is to discover what I'm capable of and what I wanna do and to get to that edge and just feel so fucking alive.
02:51:20
Speaker
And in business, in, in, in, so that's, I know I'm digressing from your point about intuition, but it's to look at something and go, you they use another cliche is I think we, I initially, and my team grew with me to so look at things that aren't.
02:51:40
Speaker
And instead of saying, how come looking at things that aren't and saying, why not? Okay. There was no, like, business like Black Diamond that was committed to this being public service, so to speak, but was a for profit business that we're going to champion this issues.
02:51:57
Speaker
you know, my attitude before anybody had talked about mission-driven companies was not that, Hey, if we do good as a business, we can do, if we do well as a business, we can do good for the community. My attitude from the day one was like, look guys, if we do good for the community, we will,
02:52:16
Speaker
be rewarded by doing well as a business. And that's, that's intuition, right? Sometimes the people you hire is intuition. The decision to, to move to Salt Lake when no other business was here. And everybody I said, we're moving to Salt Lake looked at me and go, it's not outdoor businesses there.
02:52:35
Speaker
That place, you don't want to move to Salt Lake. Yeah. at that time, Salt Lake had a very rough reputation as being quite industrial and it was not. me And now they'll it's the center of the outdoor industry and in the US. There wasn't one outdoor company here and people, you know businesses do better when there's an ecosystem of other like-minded companies.
02:52:56
Speaker
And even, you know, the climate community, when I told Johnny Woodward, Johnny was Mariah's husband and Mariah like, Hey, you know, I, I'm, serious, I think this Salt Lake city area is actually pretty good.
02:53:10
Speaker
And the question, and I explained why, and John, but there's no climbing. And I said, Johnny, i know you're getting into sport climbing, but there's AF. And Johnny looked at me and goes, that pile of choss.
02:53:25
Speaker
And you know, that people don't realize how much this, this place, both as a place to live and reside, to all have businesses, that was transformed to for the outdoor industry, in which I, all humility aside, would take full credit for because I worked that so hard. Because i realized that was important for our brand to be associated with a place. I said, I want to relocate this business out of Ventura to a place where location will reside on the asset side of the balance sheet and be accretive with our vision to be one with the sports we serve, absolutely indistinguishable from them.
02:53:59
Speaker
And I said, we're not a surf company, so we're not staying here in Ventura. Yeah. Because I saw what that did too really Patagonia is mate is the, how much effort it took to be also relevant to climbing and that Yvonne slowly got into other activities versus climbing. Cause he was in Ventura and he explained this all to me. I mean we've had so many discussions even then, I first came there. Yeah. So was like, and we were so leveraged and had so little money and so a few resources.
02:54:30
Speaker
And I wanted to hire only climbers and skiers. So i saw this place as a place that they could afford, that they would love, and that we wouldn't have to bifurcate our lives. You know, in a place like Ventura, is you have to make a decision every day. Do i stick around and work?
02:54:45
Speaker
Do I spend the weekend with my family, if they're not climbers or my kids? Or do I get to climb? And in Salt Lake, I saw Innsbruck. It was like, hey, we can all do this. We can do a dawn patrol and be at work at eight.
02:54:59
Speaker
We can do something after work and be home with our family at 7 p.m. We can be out Saturday morning and be back with the kids in the afternoon. And this would be part of our lives, our community, our friendships. And I saw this with the in businesses in Italy and in Europe too, this integration of community, life, activities, friendships.
02:55:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I like that, that it resides on the positive side of the balance sheet, is as I think you put it. That makes, you know, people don't think about it that way. And you were, what, 20, 25 years ahead of, I don't know, Tom's Shoes or some of these other kind of very...
02:55:39
Speaker
ah very buzzy, mission-driven, mission-first companies. I mean, this is again where, you know, the Shinar's intuition, and I want to always ah credit both Yvonne and Melinda in the in this, that they were way ahead of their time in their understanding of how how valuable that could be.
02:56:02
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. They weren't always super analytical in breaking it down components, or talking about it, they did it. They let the walk speak for them.
02:56:14
Speaker
And then because I was starting a business and didn't have the wherewithal to do it on my own and and needed the employees to buy in on this, I realized that you had to analyze it, break it into its components, and then explain it and articulate it and and communicate that to everyone so they would get behind it. Yeah.
02:56:39
Speaker
And probably more than once. Yeah. yeah I think that these things have to be living and that, you know some of the things I talked about, um not only were they living, but to give you an example, like we did strategic planning every year and I wouldn't bring all employees into the strategic planning, but I would bring a huge amount in every year for the beginnings to talk about it, review ourselves.
02:57:07
Speaker
And I'd always, create a a a report card and say, how we doing? And hold up the mission statement, the vision statement, the 10 commitments. Are we being true to these? And then those were posted all over and any strategic plan, actions, you could look at that and go, are we being true to that?
02:57:25
Speaker
Are we living those things versus you know companies that bring some consultant in for week, do all that, write all that shit, And then they'd file it away in a filing cabinet, never to be looked at again until somebody asked for it and they'd dig eye the out it out I think it's here.
02:57:41
Speaker
ah You sound exactly like Yvonne Chouinard when you say that. Which is the highest form of compliment. Thank you.
02:57:51
Speaker
I do take it aside. ah Good, good. If you could sit across from your younger self cap you know in El Cap Meadow or the Patagonia offices in 1982, what would you what would you tell him about you know about self-worth, about your identity, about career,
02:58:13
Speaker
about climbing about life
02:58:21
Speaker
Let me answer that with a preface at first, which was, is because I had a lot of friends from school and, and um yeah, college, who many of them were caught climbers who, climbing didn't define their lives. It was a big part of it And then they got their careers going.
02:58:42
Speaker
Many of them, prior to me getting to show on equipment and finally doing something with it, would express concerns like, God, you know, we really like you and just hope you do okay. And we don't hope we don't have to support you. And I think a lot of people looked at myself and people like Athens and Glenn Randall and, you know, that whole tribe of us.
02:59:09
Speaker
You guys are awesome and iconoclastic and doing what you do but I hope you do okay. And I think the advice I would give to people as I look at how we've all done, we've all done great and have had wonderful, joyous lives, is that be true to yourself, believe in yourself, follow your vision. And and more exotic it is, that's fine.
02:59:35
Speaker
Understand that there isn't magic that is out there. And that, but if you have something, every human being is is is at the right place at the right time.
02:59:47
Speaker
They just either don't know it or they don't seize it. So be aware and when, know it, follow your heart. And when an opportunity comes to be aware enough to take advantage of it. And that, for example, for me, that was when Yvonne,
03:00:04
Speaker
when Chris sent me that letter, last letter you're getting from me. It's like, that's it, I got it. And then you have to seize it. And so many opportunities come, like the opportunity to start Black Diamond came out of a disaster, right? It talk about turning disaster into opportunity.
03:00:21
Speaker
It liquidates these assets. I don't have a job. What are we gonna do? It's like, no, and what's my community gonna do? This is a wonderful opportunity, but you gotta seize it. And I should say that moment,
03:00:34
Speaker
I just had a kid born. My third kid was just born at that time. It's like, I mean, the shit that was going on in my life at that time was like, this is not the time to leverage everything and try to start something.
03:00:48
Speaker
But my heart said it is, right? And it was being aware enough and having the support of people around you that are going to at least sign off on it or support you.
03:01:00
Speaker
So it's be true to yourself, know who you are, don't capitulate to others just because, but be aware enough of what you what you're looking for so when it comes, you can really seize it and opportunities don't come at great times.
03:01:20
Speaker
And then you have to apply yourself 100%. Right? i mean, you have to p apply yourself.
03:01:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a story you've written, I have to say, with with all ah all of this. And, you know, I was really drawn, having known a lot of your story, i was really drawn to bringing you on here because ah I, first of all, you know, you and there's your generation clients, I sort of think of you know the Chouinards as being you know one or two generations ahead of you, and then there's there's you and guys like John Windsor and and Russ Kloon. I mean, there's so many of you who like you said, had amazing lives and also
03:02:12
Speaker
were climbers and you know and and and had careers and did incredible things. And I just i just look up to you guys and as a group and um and you really inspire me to try to find, seize those opportunities that I have at this time and in my life and and say, okay, those guys did it. They figured it out. I don't see the whole picture yet, but ideas aren't born fully formed. I know that. That's how they did it. That's the lesson of,
03:02:42
Speaker
Patagonia is a lesson of black time so many others. And, you know, but just I just have to follow my intuition and and try to put it together and and look at this in a big enough time scale that it actually can work. It's not a matter of of months. And, you know, you said it so beautifully when you were talking about the feeling you have after having done a great climb that pushed you to your limits and made you feel alive and and expanded who you are, expanded who you knew yourself to be. And if you look back at you know the early days of transitioning Chouinard equipment into Black Diamond, you said yourself earlier, it was eight months of hell, but
03:03:33
Speaker
That eight months of hell, just like those 13 and a half days on Mount Hunter, change you, right? And that's that's the same. i it's the same i just heard this over and over again in your story, the story of in applying yourself and having a vision, having pulling all these pieces together, which is very difficult to see and do. and coming out someone better and someone new and someone expanded. And now you're doing incredible work in other areas with conservation. And we didn't even, we'll have to we'll have to save that for another conversation a another day.
03:04:14
Speaker
But I just think that there's so many threads here that you pull together that inspire me and the story will truly inspire the the community when they get a chance to listen to it.
03:04:26
Speaker
Thank you, Steve. That's really beautifully well summarized and I really appreciate it. i just want to add one element to what you said, which is both in creating, both is for me as a climber and in getting to Chouinard and trying to reinvigorate Chouinard and creating Black Diamond,
03:04:46
Speaker
There was never, um it didn't begin with like, as I shared with BD, we're gonna be a great company. It's just like, we just need to make a difference if it's 5 million. But you go through these steps, both as a climber and in creating a business that at the end of and say five years, gathering everybody together and wow, look at what we've achieved.
03:05:09
Speaker
And now we can stand on what we've achieved and go, but look at all the other needs. look at all these things that we should be, we could do the community needs us to do, and we should do.
03:05:20
Speaker
And you do that. And then three years later, if you get there, you, you, you just, it's a constant rebirth. I always said like our strategic planning was three years of evolution, three to five years of evolution and a one year of revolution.
03:05:36
Speaker
And every, And there are these chapters where you just sort of look at what you've done and you go, wow, if we want to keep this exciting and bold, we need to look at where we're at and go, wow, what are the needs? And if there's a recreation process goes on.
03:05:53
Speaker
And then when you're all done, you can look at back at it and go, Wow, you sort of connect the dots. All this led to this. And wow, there is something kind of special there that wasn't I didn't start there, but you look back at it and you can reflect upon it. and go That was really pretty cool. Yeah.
03:06:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You could never imagine being there in the beginning. But when you sort of go through step by step, you're there. Yeah, as often as you have, I'm sure, had that feeling at the top of a big route.
03:06:23
Speaker
You know, like, wow, look where we came from. was i can't believe that we just climbed, you know, all the way up from the valley and here we are. Yeah, and you've done some amazing climbs. But the the i guess but the the similarities are so powerful. I like to call it alpinism and entrepreneurship.
03:06:44
Speaker
the qualities, the humility needed, that the everything about it, the approaches are so parallel and akin to one another. It's uncanny. Interesting.
03:06:55
Speaker
Yeah. I want to follow up with you ah on that. One last question, Peter. yeah How do you want to be remembered?
03:07:05
Speaker
earth because not ah Not an easy question. and I would like to be remembered as somebody who
03:07:19
Speaker
did his best to make a difference for ah community of technical outdoor enthusiasts and those who love the wireplaces and was a good friend.
03:07:39
Speaker
Well, it's been a real pleasure to have you. on and to be able to to talk to you I've not known you well, but I've known you for a long time and always been a big admirer. And thank you so much for being here. So thanks, Peter. Well, thank you, Steve, for the opportunity. I mean that um it's a real honor. And I will now flip that on you and say, i have followed your career and just been slacter and in awe reading the accounts of your clients. So you're one of my heroes.
03:08:11
Speaker
So to do this with you is just such a treat. Great. Well, that was that was another chapter in my life now. I'm on the i'm on the the game of business chapter now and and trying to learn from learn from the grades here.
03:08:28
Speaker
So thanks for your time. Thanks for that. A pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks so much, Peter.
03:08:47
Speaker
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