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Tragedy on the Haute Route- A Conversation with Steve House
17.6k Plays1 year ago
In April 2018 Steve House and another mountain guide were the first to discover a massive tragedy that ultimately took the lives of seven skiers. Swiss National Television recently released a documentary on the incident, Todesfalle (Death trap) Haute Route, a film directed by Frank Senn. Steve recounts his experience of the catastrophe and digs into what it means to be a first responder, guide and most of all a human, when faced with the loss of human life. Alyssa and Steve grapple with the questions of luck, human error, preparedness and individual responsibility. They dissect the judgment often associated with accidents and attempt to reconcile how to learning from these tragedies and supporting a community often faced with devastating losses.
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Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBbtfX16UFE&t=125s
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Transcript
Introduction to 'House with Steve House'
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome, friends. My name is Steve House and you are into House with Steve House tonight. And this is episode number one of this little podcast series where the spirit of this is going to be cracking open a beer and sitting around and having some real talk about mountains and the mountain community and the things that affect our lives. So tonight I'm joined by Alyssa Clark for the inaugural episode. Welcome, Alyssa. Thanks for everything you do to make this happen.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really excited about this series, Steve. You and I have a lot of conversations kind of off the podcast and you certainly know just a few people in the mountain world. And we really just wanted to bring these conversations to others and just share a lot of your experiences, other people's experiences and just have the chance to have a fun conversation.
00:01:05
Speaker
on the air, off the air, in the house, out the house. So I apologize in advance my voice. I'm coming back from a case of laryngitis. My voice is a little different than usual, but we're just going to go with it. So Steve, what are we talking about today?
00:01:23
Speaker
Well, I'm going to start a little tradition right now. And I know that it's more coffee time where you are and more beer time where I am. But that's going to probably be the case most of the time. I'm in Austria. I'm going to open a different beer every time we do this.
Responsibility in the Mountains
00:01:39
Speaker
And tonight, it is a beer called, and I just got to try to say this because this word has like 57 letters in it. Fürtein Heiligener beer.
00:01:51
Speaker
So I think it's like the four-toothed holy place beer or something like that. Somebody can help me translate that out there. So that's going to be my companion for this journey. And what we are going to talk about is, well, it's actually, I think what we're actually going to talk about is responsibility for ourselves out in the mountains. And the conversation tonight is
00:02:19
Speaker
is brought about by the recent release a few days ago of a film that I was involved in called Todisfalle Haltrut.
00:02:31
Speaker
which translates to Death Trap Hope Route, which was a film that was made by a gentleman named Frank Sen. And it was produced by the national television of Switzerland. And it's aired in Switzerland and the German speaking areas, Germany and Austria. Right now, it's only available in German, but they're working on English translations and plan to roll it out to other
00:03:01
Speaker
other countries and all of the film festivals and stuff the rest of this year. And I know this, I sent you a link to the YouTube version. It's a 90 minute film and you can watch it using the settings and auto generated subtitles. And that's what, what you did. And yeah, what, what were your just top line impressions of the film and what, what I know it brought up a bunch of questions. We're going to get into those, but what was your overall impression?
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, it's pretty easy to watch honestly, even with, um, it being in a different language. If you, if you speak English, um, it was funny seeing you dubbed over. I was like, no, but I understand Steve don't dub him over. Um, but I would say it's a, it's a really well put together film because it does a great job of weaving interviews with, uh, kind of reenact reenactments and then, um,
00:04:02
Speaker
like visuals of the area, etc. So it does a great job of telling the story but also bringing in perspectives through the interviews. So I was really captivated the whole time. I think that it shows a lot about how complex it is to be a human and especially to be a human
00:04:32
Speaker
in a setting that is challenging to exist and also how we trust each other. And I actually think that the final piece of the movie, which I think we can use as somewhat of a framing mechanism, is asking these three questions. Was it bad luck, human error, or carelessness? And I think those three questions really tie the whole movie together and also
00:05:03
Speaker
frame a lot of what we do in the mountains and how, how we navigate that. Um, but before we've kind of jumped a little bit, but Steve, do you want to give us a little bit of background about what was the death trap? What is the hot route? Um, so that we can frame it for those who haven't seen the movie.
Steve's Guiding Philosophy and Experience
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I want to do that. I want to, and I want to explain my involvement too. So just goes back to
00:05:29
Speaker
2018 and many of you will know that I have been a mountain guide in a former life. I started mountain guiding as an apprentice mountain guide in 1991 as a 20-year-old working in the North Cascades, mostly on Mount Baker. I want to tell some stories about that someday, but that's for another time. And
00:05:57
Speaker
I have, you know, considered mountain guiding my profession for most of my adult life. And I have really retired from guiding, um, particularly, you know, let's say around 2016, 2017, I really phased out of guiding and uh,
00:06:24
Speaker
I have some very close and deep relationships with some of the people that I have guided many times over the years, and two of these individuals, Rowan and OJ,
00:06:40
Speaker
I had been hounding me to go do the Haute Route with them. In my guiding career, I had always avoided guiding routes like the Haute Route, not because it's not a beautiful tour. It is, in fact, a beautiful tour. It is that I have, in my career, been in so many situations on these
00:07:01
Speaker
climbing routes and skiing routes around the world that are popular that I've ended up having to be in situations where I was, you know, in the role of the rescuer and not that I was unwilling to be the role of the rescuer, but I also have been around in the mountains enough throughout the world to know that there's a lot of places out there to ski and climb that aren't crowded and don't have lots of people in them. Nevertheless, I want to
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, I think it's important to frame that up for a couple of reasons. One, it was my first time guiding the haute route or skiing the haute route. I'd never been on in my life at this point. You know, I'm 48 years old, 47 years old. I'm mostly retired from mountain guiding, but when I do guide, I take it very seriously. And I've survived a lot of adventures in the mountains due to that approach, I feel like. And
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, so the haute route is, for those that don't know or aren't familiar, the haute route is a ski traverse that starts in Chamonix and ends in Zermatt. Typically takes roughly a week. Some people do it. It's been done multiple times in under 24 hours, but most people do it in a week and you stay in a series of huts. There's a variety of huts. There's different ways to break code up. There's different little variations and all kinds of things that you can
00:08:27
Speaker
do. But that's basically the frame. And Rowan and OJ and I scheduled ourselves, the three of us, to do this the classic way in March of 2018. So we met in Chamonix. We did all the classic things, which is the first day you go up the Guillemot D and you ski the Valet Blanche, which is a very wise thing to do because it gets you up at altitude a little bit.
00:08:55
Speaker
I get the just like it's kind of a gear check and all those saying. You stay in Chamonix another night and the next day you go up the Grand Montay and you you ski very short section down from the Grand Montay up the glacier a little bit to the Argentiere hut. You know the next day you. This is where I this is where I have to pull up my map so I remember all the the name place names.
00:09:26
Speaker
It must've been in April. I think it was, was it in April? You said March. Um, I think it was. Let me check. Yeah. Yep. It was in April. Yeah. All good. It's not like you've never, you know, just, just a few trips that you've got it. Yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
Right. So we did it in April and actually it looks like I can tell you that we started on April 24th. So it was actually late April. So we did the classic roof and the Arjan Tierra hut.
00:10:04
Speaker
to the Caban de Trill. Then the next day you ski down to Champex and you usually get a taxi there, go over to Verbier and go up to ski area a little bit. We stayed at the Caban de Montfort. From there we skied to the Caban de Praflerie.
00:10:29
Speaker
And I'm sketching these out because these names are important in the story. The next day we went from the Cabanda Tlafari to the Cabanda Dith. And then the next stage from there is to the Vignette hut, Cabanda Vignette, and from there to Zermatt.
00:10:53
Speaker
I want to back up a little bit and just sort of lay out the story.
Preparing for the Storm on Haute Route
00:10:57
Speaker
What happened for us is the day that we arrived at Caban de Prafflerie, we met an old friend of mine who was a French mountain guide. And he was with three guests who were two French woman, her Spanish boyfriend,
00:11:19
Speaker
And now husband may have a child together and his friend of his. So the three or four of them were skiing together. And my friend Simone was guiding these guys and I had climbed with Simone in the past and we hadn't seen each other in a while. Just kind of one of those, we weren't close friends, but one of those random like bump into an old friend thing in the mountains. It's always fun, right?
00:11:45
Speaker
So this is important this day because two important things happen. One is that there is a really big storm forecast for about roughly two days from this time. And two, we met Simon, who is a friend of mine, who's a very accomplished mountain guide. He's a professional mountain rescue crew on a Mont Blanc Massif, incredible climber.
00:12:13
Speaker
So the next, then we skied that day from the Cabanda Proffleri to the Cabandis. And this is an important day because it's mostly just a, I would call it a transit day. You don't do a whole lot of skiing. You do quite a bit of flat skinning and you have to traverse around this huge lake, this huge reservoir. And we got to the Cabandis and
00:12:42
Speaker
It's also important to realize that there's no internet service, there's no cell service of any kind. It's actually quite a bit of the root is no cell service, which is part of the story as well. And from the Caban Dís, there is cell service there, and there was a weather forecast. And so we were all aware that there was this bad weather forecast.
00:13:04
Speaker
and we checked and confirmed that at the hut. It was still forecast. We didn't really know that. They seemed to be really off all over the place with the timing. When you checked the different forecasts, the timing wasn't too good. And so without kind of going into the story, I think that just kind of sets up the scene of how we kind of came to be the Kaban, these,
00:13:32
Speaker
So once I checked the, you know, we checked the forecast of the Caban D so we had lunch and Simone and I were pretty concerned because the weather forecast was really bad for the next day. Like this storm with massive, massive winds, like, you know, literally they're forecasting hurricane force winds, like, you know, 200 kilometer plus an hour. So 120, 125 mile an hour winds.
00:13:58
Speaker
And, you know, this is the whole group. Like you're at a high elevation the whole time. You're up on big glaciers. And the next day is literally the high point of the whole tour. You go over the Pina da Orla, which, you know, is about 12,400 feet, a little less than 4,000 meters, if I remember right. And so it's also one of the most exposed sections of the tour.
00:14:23
Speaker
of the tour. So we're very concerned about this storm that is forecast. It's been forecast basically for a week at this point. We were out of data for a night. Now we've got confirmation. The forecast as we get closer to the storm are of course a little more accurate, but the timing is when you look at the different models. It's still a little bit all over the place. And
00:14:51
Speaker
I talked in my conversations with Simone. He tells me that two weeks earlier, he had done a heli ski trip that he guided, where they flew a helicopter to the top of the Pinion de Rola, and then skied down back to the town on that side, on the Swiss side of the Pinion de Rola, which is called Arola, not surprisingly enough.
00:15:18
Speaker
And so I said to him like, okay, you, and he, this is really important. He had a GPS track on his GPS device and on his phone from that descent to just two weeks before. So I said to him, okay, I'm going to skin up to the top right now. And it was, you know, it was lunch. It was like noon. Like we got, you know, it was a pretty easy sort of stage of the tour to get there.
00:15:47
Speaker
Not a lot of elevation gain. I felt good. I was fit. And I said, I'm just going to skin up there. It's good visibility now. There's good weather. I'm going to go up there. I'll go there by myself. That's a good track. I'll be back in like three hours. So I did that. I took my, uh, self up there and just, and just went super light. Took a thermos.
00:16:10
Speaker
Actually, I took a can of Coke. I remember that. Took a can of Coke and a chocolate bar or something. And I skinned up to the top of the Pina de Rola. I actually found the stakes that Simon had told me about that were the landing stakes with little flags for the helicopter pilots. And he said that's where his GPS track began from. And I saw that. I looked down the other side of the Pina de Rola.
00:16:36
Speaker
drank my Coke and skied back down. I was back relatively quickly, three hours later or something. And the whole point of that was to, first of all, familiarize myself with it, but mostly to get the GPS track in. So I had that. And this is essentially how I came into this film project, because the next day,
00:17:06
Speaker
And the next following night turned out to be very dramatic and tragic for a lot of people. So that was, I believe, April 28. It could have been April 29. And then the next day, the forecast hadn't really been updated. I didn't really
00:17:34
Speaker
you know, now we're like basically less than 24 hours out from the storm. And we, everyone in the hut and the Caban D's knows the storm is coming. The, it's, everyone's talking about it, but as is typical in these, um,
00:17:51
Speaker
and these huts on the haute route, there's a lot of people. I don't remember. I couldn't tell you how many people. The hut was full, so it was in excess of 100 people. Might have been 150 people. The area where people sit and eat and drink and stuff in the evenings was full of people. There was a lot of energy. Everybody was very nervous. You could feel it.
00:18:21
Speaker
The, our goal was really, really simple. Simone and I decided we were going to join forces and move our teams over the Piña Darola to the vignette. And because the storm, while it was forecast to be very fierce, it was forecast for the next, mostly the next afternoon and night. And we thought we could beat the storm to the Caban vignette.
00:18:45
Speaker
vignette hut and then it was supposed to be over. It was only going to last like, you know, 12 hours and then we could complete our tour to Sarmat. You know, we didn't really talk to anyone else in the hut. And, uh, not, not really. We literally didn't talk to anyone else in the hut. We were just our own little group. We, you know, together were whatever seven people, we kind of had our own table. We kind of hung out together.
00:19:15
Speaker
We were a group whose common language was English. We were probably, at least as far as I recall, the only kind of English language group there. There was, obviously, there's a lot of Swiss, so they're speaking Germans and speaking French and all these different languages. So this is really important because the next morning we woke up
00:19:41
Speaker
And we were, we briefed our group very strictly on what was going to happen, like all the responsibilities. Like we took them through our old thought process and I was, I was, uh, and Simone and I were very prepared. I had a GPS on my phone or, you know, the GPS app on my phone.
00:20:01
Speaker
I had a big backup battery that could charge my phone two or three times. I had a Garmin GPS, a handheld Garmin GPS with two brand new lithium batteries. I had two more brand new lithium batteries to back those up. I had a paper map, I had a compass, I had a GPS watch, and the only thing I didn't have was an analog altimeter, but I had backups for the backups for the backups, basically.
00:20:30
Speaker
And everybody thought we proposed this plan to the group as guides and said, this is what we think we need to do. This is how we're going to succeed. This is how we're prepared. And what do you guys think? What do you want to do? Because we gave them the option to. We said we could also go out over the, I think that it's called the Shevwa or the Pada Shevwa and Skiautarola.
00:20:59
Speaker
And then we can like, you know, make it, it's like a variation to the tour and we avoid the high peak, but it's the safer thing. And we decided as a team, as a group to, to do the, to stick to the classic itinerary. And that's, that's what we did. So, you know, we were the first out of the hut. Um, there was a bunch of people kind of leaving at the same time.
00:21:28
Speaker
And we were the first to the top of the Piña de Rola. There were some other people that were a little bit behind us, like 30 minutes behind us, but we never talked to them. And everyone was kind of, we were just in our zone and Simone and I were really focused on our group and keeping our group.
00:21:49
Speaker
together and moving and being efficient and making we minimize transitions. It was really serious. We were kind of strict with them. This is a big deal. We can do this, but we have to be really tight here. There's no room for error. But everyone in the group was very experienced as a ski tour, and there was nothing particularly challenging about the skiing or anything that was challenging for any of these people.
00:22:18
Speaker
That's what we did. I believe, if I remember right, that we got to the piña darola. We got to the vignette hut from the cabandice in
00:22:45
Speaker
four hours and 48 minutes to be exact. Cause I'm looking it up here and we, we left at 6 45 AM. So we were back at the height of like whatever five hours, roughly five hours later. So we were, we were at the hut. That's what I recall. What I wanted to say is we were at the hut before noon and we, as we, when we were on top of the Pina, the visibility was shutting down.
00:23:15
Speaker
It was getting a little windy, but it wasn't uncomfortable by any means. It was actually warm, typical for these kinds of storms. It was warm. And we skied down. We skied down. It was pretty, pretty bad visibility. We actually just all snow plowed and side slipped in a tight group, like literally like one right behind another because it wasn't about skiing and whipping it up and having fun turns. It was about efficiently making sure everybody got down safely. And, uh,
00:23:42
Speaker
we couldn't see well and just for the visibility it's a lot easier if there's someone right in front of you you have some depth perception right and Simone was in I was in front on the way up to the top and then I took the back on the way down and Simone was in the opposite position and yeah we arrived and yeah go ahead and he used you used obviously your GPS on the way up and then he uses on the way down
00:24:07
Speaker
Exactly. He used his GPS on the way down. I tracked as well. I had written tour plans. Before I left in the States, I consulted with other guides that were friends of mine in the area and had built actual tour plans with all the waypoints and all the things so I could navigate in any situation. So I had that as well.
00:24:36
Speaker
So yeah, we got to the hut at noon and we didn't really see anyone. We got to the hut, we had lunch, the storm got worse and worse. A couple of other people sort of trickled in, particularly I remember like maybe two or three other people. We were speaking with the hut guardian, there were other people
00:25:04
Speaker
that had reservations at that hut that night. But as is common in these huts, there's no cell service here. And most of this section doesn't have any cell service.
00:25:20
Speaker
And this is something that I think is surprising to people on the root because you're relatively close to civilization, but you have no outside data connection or phone connection. And so a lot of people just didn't call in and didn't cancel. He didn't really know who was coming or who wasn't, that kind of thing.
00:25:42
Speaker
So what this film is about, I will say, just to kind of skip ahead, is there was the next morning
Aftermath of the Storm and Rescue Efforts
00:25:52
Speaker
It was calm and clear. And we left the vignette at 6 a.m. on our way to Zermatt. And we were about 100 yards out of the hut when we heard somebody yelling and saw some people up above. And what we ended up happening next, you know, I think that people should watch the film. Frankly, I don't want to recount it for my own protection.
00:26:22
Speaker
my own psychological protection. We found one person that had fallen or been blown off and had been killed, and that was the first person we found. And then I took all the clients back to the HUD, our guests, and Simone and I went back up together. There was bad avalanche risk.
00:26:43
Speaker
we navigated some avalanches to get up to where we had heard this guy yelling. And there was another nine people up there in various states of, you know, life. Some were dead, some were on their way out, and some were, some were, one of them was actually seemed to be doing sort of okay. And we, I returned to the hut because there was no cell service. And
00:27:10
Speaker
whatnot, and initiated a rescue and let the hut guardian, because the hut guardian is the one who's supposed to coordinate in these emergencies in the mountains, in the Alps, and he did that. I returned to Simon and started helping him. We were basically triage in a triage situation, trying to decide who we thought could survive.
00:27:35
Speaker
the Swiss did an incredible job organizing the rescue. We had Eric Glacier.
00:27:41
Speaker
And there's Vermont, and I think we had like four helicopters there at one point. A professional rescue came in. Pascal from Herr Glacier was on the ground, was there within about 20 minutes. And then he kind of took over because Simone and I were in shock. And he started helping. They got people to the HUD. They had then, by then, a medical doctor in the HUD
00:28:09
Speaker
And then the medical doctors were doing further triage and then sending people out to various hospitals around Switzerland. There were so many casualties that they couldn't send them all to the same hospital. And this is what the film was about, is how this happened. And my role in it, I think, was to
00:28:32
Speaker
you know, help guide Frank with my story, my side of the story. And I did a number of interviews about my experiences with this. And this is where we wanted to talk about this. And I think that people will understand. I don't want to focus on the grim nature of the tragedy. I want to, as Frank has masterfully done with the film, I think it's a really important conversation for us to have as a community.
00:29:02
Speaker
And it strikes at the core of what mountaineering is, which is this concept of both freedom and the responsibility that comes with that freedom.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's a big, big topic, but I think that we as a community can both honor those that lost their lives and those that survived and ourselves, our community by, you know, talking about these things in an open, honest way. And I especially would emphasize in a nonjudgmental way, I don't think that there's really any, I think that as a community when we
00:29:40
Speaker
talk about accidents, I think we really need to get past this idea of fault and move towards this idea of what can, you know, this happened. We're fallible. When people make mistakes, things happen. Bad things happen to good people. And how can we, you know,
00:30:03
Speaker
as a community, hopefully learn and grow from that. The only real mistake at this point is to not learn from our mistakes. And yeah, so I know that that's a bit of a heavy monologue here, but maybe you have some thoughts on that and can help guide us from here. Yeah, well, first off, I really appreciate you sharing that. I can't imagine.
00:30:32
Speaker
the challenge of that whole situation to say the least. But I think your point is that the worst thing we can do is not learn from it. So I think we're all really grateful that you're willing to speak on what we can learn from it. I think that's pretty evident in the film is that really the questions that are left is how do we take this and be safer, be
00:30:59
Speaker
more responsible in the mountains. And I think that goes to this really fundamental question that I have, and I've used guides in the past, um, before for adventures. And also my husband and I have taken out people not in a guiding situation, but in a situation where we're helping learn or helping people to learn. And which is a different situation. That's not a paid relationship, but I guess, how do you see
00:31:29
Speaker
the the responsibilities break down because it's really tricky like Cody and I tend to my husband I tend to take the perspective of we should be we shouldn't just be so reliant upon the guide that we don't
00:31:45
Speaker
have skill sets or have some kind of way of contributing. But I know that's not necessarily the case with all clients and guides. And so I guess I'm curious from a guide's perspective, what do you see as the role of a client? And also as situations become more dire, how does that relationship shift?
00:32:11
Speaker
where you were saying, okay, when things got really bad, we were very firm, you know, okay, we're dictating the transitions, etc. But how do you find that balance with a client? And what do you see as the client's role?
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the true answer to that is there are a number of different possibilities for the guide-guest relationship. And they can vary on the same trip. And they can certainly do vary from guide-guest to guide-guest. And so in this scenario, OJ and Rowan, OJ,
00:32:53
Speaker
And both of them I had known for years and been guiding for years, and we had a lot of experiences together.
00:33:01
Speaker
and climbing and mountaineering, skiing, ski mountaineering, every possible way. And we were actually, and still are, very close friends, two of my closest friends. And I think that Simon had a similar relation with his team. These were people that he'd clearly been on a lot of trips with. They knew him, they loved him, they joked with him, they were like brothers and sisters almost, right? At the end of the day,
00:33:31
Speaker
I think that becoming a guide is going through what is most often now a somewhat formalized process of training that is extremely rigorous. And that training is supposed to be extremely rigorous because you are supposed to come out as a different
00:33:55
Speaker
person on the other end. You're supposed to come out as a person who knows how to do all of these preparations and so on. And I'll be honest, like if I go out for a ski tour with you, Alyssa, like I'm not going to do all this preparation, but if I'm going out and my role is mountain guide and I'm putting the pin on and I'm doing that as and I'm assuming that responsibility, then yeah, for me, I am doing all that preparation. I am
00:34:25
Speaker
building route plans. I'm talking to people who've been there before. I'm doing all these things. Different guides take that differently. Some people take it more seriously than others. I think that the risk with a lot of these, what I would call normal routes, whether it's the disappointment cleaver of Mount Rainier or the Haute Route,
00:34:48
Speaker
people assume that there's just going to be a lot of other people around and that there's going to be a trail and they'll just be able to kind of follow. And for me, that is disrespecting what is the freedom of the hills. The freedom of the hills is founded on
00:35:09
Speaker
taking responsibility for yourself. And if you're not able to do that, you arguably don't deserve that freedom because you haven't earned it.
00:35:19
Speaker
guides play a really important role in our culture and in our community because I think that they should be the standard bearers for this rigorous preparation and they should be the ones that have the backup plan, have the navigation plan, have the extra bivisac, have the extra first aid kit, have the extra satellite phone, whatever it is to take care of, a huge variety of situations. And I think that
00:35:49
Speaker
Most guests, I think that one of the juxtapositions here is that the people that got lost and spent the night out because they didn't have a navigation plan, as I understand it, there was a guide
00:36:12
Speaker
And he kind of sort of merged with some other people who were doing the traverse without a guide. And he didn't have a GPS. He maybe didn't have other navigation equipment, but he had done this tour a bunch of times. And
00:36:31
Speaker
I think that this is some of the, I would leave it to the film to explain kind of how some of that unfolded and what some of those questions might have been.
Guide-Client Dynamics and Communication
00:36:39
Speaker
But I think to your question, it's like any human relationship, it's best if you're really explicit with it from the beginning and you talk about it. You know, I coming as your guest, I'm expecting
00:36:56
Speaker
X I, as your guide, I'm expecting Y and then it's, then it's all out on the table and you can have that conversation. And, you know, in, in the case of Rowan and OJ and I, that conversation was largely implicit because when I, you know, that was exact, that is exactly our agreement. When, when we go out at the mountains is, and I still go on the mountains with them and I don't accept money for guiding anymore. I've hung up my pin.
00:37:24
Speaker
and I still go out with them, but I tell them when we're out together, I'm going to be in guide mode because I have the most experience in that. When we go to the wine bar, then it's OJ's turn. He's in charge. He's a sommelier. I have no business guiding in that scenario or making any recommendations, but when we're in the mountains, I'm going to assume.
00:37:45
Speaker
that role because of my experience base. And we're explicit about that, and I think that's the best thing that you can do. The film brings up this concept of the expert halo and trusting experts out there in the field, and I think that that brought up some really interesting. I'd like to hear what your thoughts about that were.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that one of the heuristic traps, and this is more in a situation where you don't necessarily have a guide, but you have someone who's supposedly the expert who goes out and there's to break it down this halo around them. And so people are unwilling to speak up if they feel uncomfortable or feel that they don't have
00:38:35
Speaker
Or that they might have insight into the situation because such and such knows what they're doing. We don't question them. And so in the film, it brings up one of the guests who who did survive had a GPS
00:38:51
Speaker
Um, he offered it and Mario said no, or initially, and they were very lost. Unfortunately, he had the GPX track of the summer route, not the winter route, which did end up causing issues. Um, and so I guess, um, you know, in a situation, and I think one of the other challenges of.
00:39:14
Speaker
The group is that it was a very big group. Um, it ended up, it was 10 to begin with, and then they, they linked up with two other or four other skiers, um, who were doing it unguided. And so when you have that many people and that, that causes a lot of tension and friction. Um, and so I guess I'm thinking about like, at what point in such a dire situation does a guide.
00:39:43
Speaker
stay a guide or does it become more of a collaborative, okay, we're kind of outside, beyond the scope of, of, of what one person can handle. And it sounds like from what you're saying is that you, A, would never have put yourself in the situation, that situation if possible, and B, that as a guide,
00:40:07
Speaker
your responsibility is to be able to handle that situation. And, but I guess, so say you needed a GP, like your GPS, somehow your 5,000 batteries died and your client comes up and says, Hey, I actually have a GPS track. Like, how is a guide? Do you handle that? And how is a client? Do you handle like, I actually don't trust my guide right now. What do I do?
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's so hard. And this goes back to, you know, people are fallible. There's lots of ways to make mistakes in these situations. I think one of the things that
00:40:50
Speaker
I personally credit to my having been able to survive all the things that I did in my career as a guide and as a climber was preparation. I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I spend a lot, I over, I'm over prepared. Like I've, you know, and, and this is,
00:41:19
Speaker
I think for me it's very important to, and this conversation comes up a lot around more in the avalanche safety realm where people talk about group dynamics and this kind of thing and this expert halo and that kind of, all these things.
00:41:43
Speaker
you know, we have to realize and everybody involved has to realize that for the most part, there is no right answer. There's potentially a lot of right answers and there's potentially a lot of wrong answers and there's no one right, no one wrong. But I think it's, you know,
00:42:05
Speaker
this concept where you have to, it's almost like hyper-realism. When I'm in the mountains, it's hyper-real. I need to deal with the reality that I'm observing. I'm kind of annoying as a climbing partner when the conditions are marginal because I'm constantly asking questions, I'm constantly saying, and I
00:42:33
Speaker
And I tell my partners when I'm out, I don't mean to be creating pressure and bringing us down. Let's reset. I'm going to ask this question again if we should go down in another 15 minutes or another hour. That doesn't mean that you should feel like I'm saying constantly that we need to go down. I'm just saying that we need to ask the question again.
00:42:56
Speaker
And let's be real about what the situation is and not like magical thinking doesn't work in the mountains. Like you cannot wish the storm away. You cannot wish that GPS track onto your device. You have to deal with reality. And this also goes to another thing that I think can be used. I think honestly that if a client, if you're in a client role with a guide,
00:43:25
Speaker
You absolutely have every right to ask them, he or her, what they know. And it's not enough for them to just say, I know the way. For somebody to know something, I think that this is a standard sort of truth, if you will, that I'd like to use in lots of realms. It's like, OK, how do you know that? That's the next question. Show me you know that. You know the root. OK, where?
00:43:53
Speaker
How do you know that? And rather than somebody saying like, oh, I know this about XYZ. Okay, great. I believe you. Now tell me how you know that. Show me your evidence, show me your data, show me your reference, whatever it is. And frankly, I think that, you know, this is where we got to let go of the ego and the guides particularly have to be willing to be questioned.
00:44:20
Speaker
And I know when I was a young guide, I would have been triggered and offended if somebody questioned me because I was the guide. Gosh darn it. And I didn't, nobody should question me because I knew I'd already figured it out. How dare you question me. You know, actually.
00:44:39
Speaker
They have every right to question you and you owe them an answer. And if we let our guard down and just say like, oh, okay, yeah, you're right. I owe you an answer. Let me show you. And if you really know it, it won't be a problem.
00:44:55
Speaker
to explain it. It's the same as coaching. It's the person that can't explain it, right? It's the person that can explain it. That's when you know you're on thin ice. When they're so defensive and they can't explain it, that's the thin ice. And that's when they probably don't actually know. And it's sort of like doing due diligence in a way. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that in my book. I think that's a great, that's such a great point because I think
00:45:24
Speaker
I mean, when we use guides, we ask them tons of questions just because we want to learn. Um, it's probably annoying. It's not because we're necessarily questioning their authority or anything like that. It's like, Hey, I just want to know why are, why are we going this way? Or what, what led you to this? Exactly. Yeah. Cause it's like, I mean, if you're invested in it, and I think that probably goes to, I think there's a lot that clients can learn about or guests can learn about being guests.
00:45:53
Speaker
where it's like being curious, being interested. Are you there for a passive ski or are you there to learn and grow and better yourself?
00:46:03
Speaker
And I think that that probably goes to the point of that initial conversation you were talking about where you get a sense of, okay, this is a person who's just always heard of the hot route. That would be fun. Let's do it versus someone who hires a guy because they want to learn from them or grow from them. And both are legitimate reasons. Both are okay. Yeah.
00:46:25
Speaker
And I know, I mean, sorry that some of my, I apologize to the audience that some of my recollections of the numbers of people and timing stuff are off. I've honestly had to kind of wall some of that off from my memory because it was an extremely traumatic experience for me.
00:46:46
Speaker
I know there were a lot of people there. I couldn't even tell you exactly, honestly, how many people died. I didn't know any of these people. Apparently, I'd been close to them in a hut the night before, but I didn't know. I never talked to them. I had no. I never met Mario, the guide. He was the one who died, the first one we found, actually.
00:47:08
Speaker
And you know I touched and lifted and hugged and cried and did all the things with these people but I never saw them. I've never seen them. The survivors I've never seen again either. I never had any contact with. So it was this very intense like
00:47:26
Speaker
This all happened in basically three hours that my whole interaction with this with this tragedy Spanned three hours where from the time we found Mario it probably like, you know ten after six in the morning until everybody was
00:47:43
Speaker
you know, either, you know, we, we, they flew us, they flew us off the, we were in, we were also like completely devastated, right? Like they actually flew us out to their leisure base and they, they had like psychologists there waiting for us and they started treating us for our, you know, trauma that we'd just been through. And, um,
00:48:07
Speaker
Which was which was fantastic by the way it took really good care of us they organized everything for us that next the rest of that day and so on.
00:48:18
Speaker
But nevertheless, that a lot of the details of what happened are a bit of a blur because it was just like all of a sudden, we were going to Zermatt. And then all of the sudden, there were bodies and dying people and people in cardiac arrest and all these horrible things happening. And then it was over really fast, too, because once the professional rescuers and helicopters came on scene.
00:48:47
Speaker
you know, I think it kind of goes to, for me, a lot of, you know, when I think back on my experience with this, and I think back, like, what would I do differently? Would I have done anything differently? And I can say that I wouldn't. And that's really
00:49:13
Speaker
That's really good for me to be able to say that because I did my preparation. I took care of my group. I had no idea these people were out there. None of us did. You know, it was a shock for us to find them in the morning and we did the best we could. We really, the main thing we did
00:49:39
Speaker
if anything, was to get the helicopters coming up there and to get the professional rescuer. Because these people needed to go into a hospital and have very, very specific care. And there wasn't much you could do in the field in that situation. And that's kind of one of my
00:49:58
Speaker
big takeaways as I think we didn't end up finishing the tour because obviously after this experience, like I said, they flew us out and we were done and that wasn't exactly how
00:50:15
Speaker
We expected that day. It wasn't at all how we expected that day to go. The storm was over. We had good visibility. It was kind of funky snow, that kind of thing. We were just thinking about Zermatt. And it was incredibly tragic. And as you said, was it bad luck? Was it human error? Was it carelessness? Well, you also said something really good. I thought that it
00:50:45
Speaker
It illustrates the complexity of being human, all of those things. There was bad luck, there was carelessness, there was human error. There was also things that were done really well by everyone involved.
00:50:59
Speaker
You know, as you watch the movie and you'll see that there's people who went through that experience and have nothing but good things to say about Mario and a lot of gratitude and there's other people who are on the same there and went through more or less precisely the same thing and have nothing good to say about Mario.
00:51:19
Speaker
And that's also really interesting. I think that that also encapsulates the complexity of being a human and moving through a scenario like this.
Cultural Conversations and Learning in Mountaineering
00:51:28
Speaker
And I think this is exactly what
00:51:35
Speaker
I know Frank wanted people to get out of this film was not to make judgments not to point fingers but to have us as a community have this discussion as to how we want to show up as clients how we want to show up as guides how we want to show up as
00:51:52
Speaker
you know, general public doing a ski tour, what level of preparation and when, you know, there's, there's not every whole route that you need to have that level of preparation. Like I prepared a month beforehand because it's not like I lived there that I didn't live in Europe at that time. I was just going to like get on a jet, be dropped into Chamonix, like do this tour in seven days, get on a jet and fly home. Like, so I had to prepare for the widest possible scenario because I had no idea what was going on. It's not like some of these, you know, guides and the Alps.
00:52:22
Speaker
maybe do the whole route three times, four times in a year in one season. And they've maybe done it 30 times in their lives. Of course, they're going to have a different sense of what that preparation is than what I would have when I'd never been there before, never done other than a couple tiny segments.
00:52:42
Speaker
and I basically not done any of that route. So, you know, everyone's variables are going to be different and they're going to bring a lot of different expectations, a lot of different experiences to the table.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think I guess there's kind of three points that came to my mind first just a small thing but in the movie and I think this is we've seen a couple of people email or question is that in the movie it makes it seem like you might have interacted with him or known he was there or known something was happening and so I think it's very
00:53:14
Speaker
good to make it clear it's like no and those huts and I can attest to this like they're crazy like of course you wouldn't know random x person you know you don't have a relationship with them and so I think it's really good to hear where you're like no I never seen the guy I'd never interacted with him and
00:53:30
Speaker
And so I think that's a very good distinction to make. I also didn't know where they were going. And I think that, especially in a situation like that, because of the weather forecast, everyone was changing their plans. Like some people were going to another hut on the Italian side. Some people were going to Arrolo. Some people, you know, we were, to my knowledge, the only group that decided to go over the pinha and down to the vignette. I didn't know of anyone else doing that.
00:53:58
Speaker
That's what we told the head guardian when we got there too. And you know, like three other people came that day. So it was more or less true. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also just language barriers and all of that, like there's a lot that goes into it. Um, that may not be quite as clear from the movie, not that the movie didn't do a good job, but just like the way that it's framed, et cetera. Um, second, I think.
00:54:23
Speaker
the point that that totally Frank makes because he starts it out and he has all these interviews of like Mario is such a great guy, he's super well known, he's super knowledgeable.
00:54:37
Speaker
You know, we thought really highly of him. We were good friends. And so I think it's such a, it's so easy to see a news article about this and go, Oh, he's a negligent guide. Like he shouldn't have been doing that and didn't know what he was doing. That's not at all. I think that, you know, it's so much more gray than that. And so I think that,
00:54:56
Speaker
Frank does an amazing job of showing like that he wasn't, you know, I think that you can see some red flags now where maybe the group was too big that I guess they didn't bring helmets. There's a few things that were just like, you know, it wasn't as prepared, but also we probably had done it a bunch of times. And so, and he did have a really good relationship, it seems like with several of the clients. And so I think it just,
00:55:23
Speaker
does a great job to show that issues like this, especially from the outside public that seem so black and white are not, you know, it's really, it's really complex. And, and that these people who obviously there was human error, and there were lapses in judgment at times,
00:55:45
Speaker
That's not to say he was just a bad person that wanted things to happen badly in the mountain. No one wants that. And that he didn't have a tremendous skill set. I mean, you don't become a pain to guide without knowing a whole lot.
00:56:00
Speaker
Um, so that's, that's another part of it, but, um, I'm curious cause you, you discussed this a little bit or I've brought this up, but, um, and partially the reason why you didn't want to do something like the hot route is that you become the rescuer.
00:56:16
Speaker
in these situations, which, wow, you called that from a long ways away. But what is your responsibility as a guide in the mountains to help people? Is there a written protocol or what does that look like? I'm curious.
00:56:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure there is a written protocol in the guys manuals and so on and in the guiding world, but I'm so far outside of that now. I just don't know what is current. I took my first guide exam in 1992 and I earned my pin in 1999 and everything around that has changed since then.
00:57:02
Speaker
I would say that the way I would understand it is everyone needs to act to the best of their abilities. I think that Mario did that given the scenario that he had.
00:57:19
Speaker
Did he prepare adequately? Again, I don't want to look for blame, but I'm sure that he was trying to keep everybody alive and get them out of that situation. I'm sure that he actually died trying to do exactly that, and that's super tragic.
00:57:39
Speaker
For me, it is often a gray area. For example, maybe the last time or the second to last time I climbed Denali, I was doing it in a fast manner from the 14,000-foot camp to the top and on the way
00:58:02
Speaker
way down met this guy who just seemed really out of it. I was just like, I mean, I just had like an ice axe and like a backpack with a thermos and a park in it. And the weather was not perfect. And this guy was kind of out of it, really needed help. And I helped him right up to the point in which I felt like he was really endangering my life.
00:58:29
Speaker
And I was like, you know, I'm willing to help you, but I'm not honestly willing to die helping you. Like you got yourself into this and now you're in danger. You're putting me in danger. Cause I was, I got this little piece of rope and I was trying to short rope him back down from Denali pass down to the 17,000 foot.
00:58:49
Speaker
Camp and it's really pretty steep there and the conditions were not good It was a little bit icy and this guy was like totally a tactic. He couldn't walk and You know, I thought he was just gonna pull me down and he's a big guy I didn't know that I could hold him and in those in those kind of hard icy conditions and You know
00:59:10
Speaker
I mean it was really hard because I felt really guilty about like this guy and then he got himself down. He survived but until I knew that he had gotten himself down and survived I was just wrecked for like you know those two days because I didn't know like you know and I'm like doubting myself maybe I shouldn't have left him up there.
00:59:31
Speaker
but like I kept coming back to this idea. Like, yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like if he had really pitched over hard, like I would not have been able to hold that guy. And I know that because I'm a mountain guide and I'm short roped a ton in my life. And I know this mountain super well and I know my abilities and my limits. And I wish I could have, you know, transported him out of that situation. But also I didn't put him in that situation. He put himself in that situation.
00:59:58
Speaker
And yeah, and that's it's hard. It's really hard. Yeah, it is and that's a bit of a different situation because it's not you didn't guide him to that point and then say I can't do you know, it's like right that was yeah, he put himself there, you know, it's I think we're gonna come across this question a lot.
01:00:21
Speaker
But it's the question of to what do we owe others? And to what do we owe ourselves and our families? There's a whole philosophy book with that title. And I think, I mean, just a small anecdote. I'm wilderness first responder certified. And one of the things they say is that there are times where people go into the mountains and they're not expecting to be rescued.
01:00:49
Speaker
that they go into the mountains to put themselves in the situation where if something happens they're okay with that and it's not
01:00:58
Speaker
your responsibility to die for them. Because to a certain extent, you are an autonomous human being. You make your choices. And yes, we need to help as much as we can. I don't think there's a single one of us who doesn't want to out there. But I do also like that.
01:01:21
Speaker
in a sense, I think was truly one of the most important things I took away from that training is that there are some people who don't want to nor ask for that help. And we have to know that too. Yeah, that's a great point. And this is one of the things I think that sort of the
01:01:45
Speaker
you know, we have to remember that these places are wilderness in the truest sense of the word. And it doesn't always feel like it, frankly. When you're up high on the west buttress of Denali on a really nice day, it's pretty nice, you know? But a lot of times it just isn't like that. And same on the whole route, like there's a lot of days
01:02:10
Speaker
like where you know that place where those people died and perished in that exposed spot trying to bivvy and we're trying to survive through a really bad storm and overnight like there's probably a lot of nights where they could just like sat down and
01:02:27
Speaker
And we'll get up the next morning and walk down and totally fine. This just wasn't one of those nights. And we have to respect that this is truly wilderness. And you're really making that decision when you go out into those places.
01:02:44
Speaker
you know, of course, we're humans and so if we find somebody that's in trouble, we want to help them. But, you know, it is, I think, a difference between the guide
01:02:58
Speaker
client relationship and just sort of like a good Samaritan, if you will, kind of relationship where you're just trying to help people out. But again, I think that with great freedom comes great responsibility. And the first person you're responsible to is yourself and treating these places with the respect that they frankly deserve. And if you ignore,
01:03:24
Speaker
you ignore that at your peril. It's your own peril. And that's a lot of times, you know, people ignore that at their peril and get away with it. You know, that's also a tricky part. And that's a tricky part, right? So then it just sort of breeds this complacency. And, you know, that's where I think that we, that's the gray. And that's where we have to, you know, be careful. And that's why these conversations are so important. We need to remind ourselves and remind the community of this, that this
01:03:55
Speaker
this is gray, and we have to be vigilant if we want to truly be, you know, survive and thrive through these experiences, which is really what they're for. And I think that that's how, you know, part of what I want to do with this series, and we've talked about this, Elisa, is I really want to be a part of the conversation that reframes the
01:04:18
Speaker
I'd say purpose of mountaineering and I use that term the broadest possible sense of going into the mountains on foot on ski on crampons and running shoes all of the things that that that is that going into the mountains and is a
01:04:43
Speaker
is a great gift and a great responsibility and we do it as part of our journey as humans and we need to, in my opinion, move well past this sort of success or failure
01:05:02
Speaker
viewpoint, this conquering of the mountain. That is so last century. And we really need to let go of that and move past that as a community and not... I don't want to speak about this in terms of negatives. I want to speak about it in terms of positives, which is what it can be. I think the mountains can be an incredible source.
01:05:29
Speaker
of human inspiration, of human experience, of human beauty, a stage for human love, and of course a stage for human sorrow and tragedy.
01:05:44
Speaker
This is what makes it also interesting and this is why I'm so passionate about our project that we share in with a Pell athlete and with others and just continuing to be part of this mountain community and keep talking about all the good that there is out there.
01:06:05
Speaker
in the sense of a practice, in the sense of a process that it's never over. There is no like this whole kind of summit or death or like, you know, win or lose or right or wrong. It's just this binary viewpoint of mountaineering is just we're done with it. Let's move on. Let's let's completely change the conversation into one where it's about what we're experiencing, what we're sharing, what we're learning, how we're showing up.
01:06:35
Speaker
how we're feeling, how we're inspired, how we're triggered, how we're all of these things and growing, because that's what this is about. And I hope that we can create and perpetuate
01:06:55
Speaker
and contribute to this conversation across the whole community that we can all do this and make it actually part of our culture. I think that for me is the linchpin. We make it part of our
01:07:13
Speaker
culture as friends, as families, as community. And the goal is to be out and doing and enjoying to the best of our abilities for as long as possible for as many good days in the mountains as we possibly can.
01:07:29
Speaker
And that is success. That is what we're striving for. Not just like how many 8,000 meter peaks did you climb or whatever the metric is. This is not running around a track. Let's stop treating it. I like it. Let's start engaging the process.
01:07:49
Speaker
So, you know, my little, that was my little, no, that's yeah. That was, I mean, that's that among other things is exactly why we're talking. I mean, I think it's why, why a pull athlete exists. And it's why, I mean, I have so much respect for you is, is because of that perspective. And yeah, I think.
01:08:14
Speaker
I think that we're getting there. But especially as we see more and more people entering these spaces, I think we just have to keep being more aware and keep supporting each other and knowing that this is not weakness. It shouldn't even be associated with that at all. It's a means of becoming. It's like everything we do is
01:08:44
Speaker
How do we move through the mountains in the safest, most responsible,
01:08:51
Speaker
And like the most storytelling way that we can, I guess, in a way. And so I think this all goes to that. I will say, and I don't, I don't know where this fits, but I feel like it needs to be said is that I think part of the why we do go to the mountains is because there is an element of danger, because there is an element of uncertainty in a way that we don't get from our daily lives that
01:09:20
Speaker
We seek that unknown because so much of our lives is really regimented and it's not that every one of these tragedies is truly a tragedy.
01:09:37
Speaker
But I also think that that element of curiosity and unknown is part of what draws us. And there isn't a danger element. And I think that that is a really important aspect for good or for bad. I mean, it kind of goes to that gray area of like that comes with the package.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's a couple points you said that I thought were really good. And one is that all of what you said was really good. But I just want to reiterate on a couple. And one was that there's a lot of new people coming into the sport. And it's
01:10:15
Speaker
our responsibility now, but at some point in the not too distant future, it's gonna be their responsibility to keep beating this drum and keep talking about this and keep setting. That's what culture is. This is having this conversation over and over and over again. And we're gonna do that. We're gonna play our role. And to the risk piece, I think we should have some other conversations about risk. And I think it's important to understand that
01:10:44
Speaker
you know, skiing the whole route is not the same thing as camping in the middle of a freeway. You know, it's yes, exactly. I object risk there. Or if you want to commit suicide, like, you know, there, there are ways to do that. And unfortunately, you know, and tragically many
01:11:03
Speaker
people have done so. And what we are, the risk component in the mountains is a parameter, but it's not the defining aspect. And I think that, you know, this goes back to my kind of concept or not my kind of concept, but this goes back to the concept of sort of dealing with reality, like hyper reality, like
01:11:32
Speaker
risk is part of that reality. And we don't need to overinflate it, but we also certainly don't want to, you know, diminish it or ignore it. And, you know, it's that is part of the dance. And that is part of the value, frankly, of moving through the mountains is that you have this as one of your dance partners. That's a great way of putting it.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we're gonna link to the movie. Yeah. Well, I think we're not neither of us is sure how to conclude here, but or how to wrap this up. But I'll let you go first. I was just gonna say, I mean, the kind of the final question I put is, what are your biggest takeaways, but I think we've
01:12:28
Speaker
We've kind of said that without having to explicitly ask that question. I mean, I guess from what I take away from this conversation and, wow, do I feel privileged to get to have this conversation with you, Steve. I do feel really lucky. I often forget that I'm talking to Steve House. I just think of you as, oh, Steve, my friend. But I think that,
01:12:57
Speaker
you know these things are that you can never stop learning, that judgment is not nearly as useful as or not at all useful in comparison to learning and understanding and that many of these things are very gray and that we shouldn't think of it as success or failure or right or wrong. We should think of it as growth and
01:13:26
Speaker
And passing that along to the generations to come and that humans are humans were complex and that's what makes it beautiful. And that's what makes it dangerous and challenging. And it's why we want to go to the mountains. So, well said.
01:13:46
Speaker
Hmm. You know, I don't know technically yet if this is possible, we'll do our best to embed the film and in the post on the website on the uphill athlete website with this podcast.
01:13:59
Speaker
Depends on the settings that they have on their YouTube channel. And if not, we'll make sure that there's a way people can find the film. And it's going to be available in English later on this summer or this fall. It's going to make the round, I'm sure, at film festivals. And we'll probably see some other distribution.
01:14:18
Speaker
and it's a beautiful film about a tragic event and I hope that you know all the best that I feel like we can do is to try to encourage people to watch the film and have these conversations among themselves and you know hopefully what we
01:14:37
Speaker
we're able to say to one another tonight can be woven into those conversations. And yeah, we can all be in a little better place because of it. That's the best thing that can come out of this tragedy.
01:14:50
Speaker
Evidently. Well, thank you, Steve. I think it's time to call it good. Maybe grab another cup of tea or beer. The beer is empty. That's how I know. The beer is empty. The bottle is empty. That's when the podcast is over.
01:15:11
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks, Steve, for all this. And this is just the beginning. I think this was a good start. Indeed. So we're signing off from the house.