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Voice of the Mountains: The Hunger for Redemption with Mark Twight (part one)
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In this first installment of a two-part conversation, Steve House sits down with legendary alpinist Mark Twight for one of Voice of the Mountains' most anticipated episodes. This deeply personal dialogue - the show's first in-person recording - reunites two climbers whose friendship spans more than three decades.
The conversation opens with Twight's 2019 book Refuge and his struggle to redefine himself after stepping away from elite climbing. As the 25th anniversary of their landmark Slovak Direct climb approaches, they examine what that 60-hour nonstop ascent of Denali meant then and what it reveals now about ambition, limits, and the courage to walk away.
Twight shares candidly about the costs of single-minded pursuit: failed relationships, financial instability, and the brutal honesty required to assess one's own decline. He traces his evolution from uncompromising soloist to gym owner and trainer, including his work preparing actors for films like 300and Man of Steel.
Most powerfully, Twight reflects on the deaths of friends and mentors - Mugs Stump, Jeff Lowe, Scott Backes - and the weight of survivor's guilt. He and Steve explore what it means to remain open to relationships despite knowing the potential for loss.
Part 1 ends on a cliffhanger: the setup for Twight's harrowing survival story on Nanga Parbat's Rupal Face, where four climbers hung from a single ice screw while buried by avalanche. That story continues in Part 2.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
There are certain names that echo in the mountains long after the wind has died down. Names that come with stories, with sharp edges, and with shadows. Mark Twight is one of those names, and he's one of the most requested guests that we've ever had on this podcast. And if you've been waiting for this, this is for you.
00:00:18
Speaker
Mark and I go back more than three decades. We've roped up together, we've failed together, we've grown apart, we've come back together. We've watched each other change. Sometimes those changes are by choice and sometimes by necessity.
00:00:33
Speaker
You probably know the legend of Mark Twight, his solos in the Alps, the cutting, brutally honest essays, his refusal compromise on anything, the fire.
00:00:46
Speaker
But what you might not know is the Mark that I know. At his core, to me, Mark is an artist. He's a builder and a breaker.
00:00:58
Speaker
A man who's remade himself over and over through a different medium, through photography, through writing, through climbing, and of course, through training, and always through the lens of honesty.
00:01:14
Speaker
And that's what's rare, this brutal, unflinching honesty that he brings. And it's what lasts.
Themes Beyond Climbing
00:01:21
Speaker
This is not a short conversation. It's four hours and we're going split it into two episodes.
00:01:26
Speaker
And it's not polite and it's not simple, but it's one of the most important conversations that we've recorded for Voice of the Mountains because it's not about climbing. It's about what happens when the summit stops being the point.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's about ambition. aging and service and shame. It's about letting go of performance and doing the work anyway. It's about how we become and who we keep becoming when people stop watching.
00:01:57
Speaker
My name is Steve Howes and this is Voice of the Mountains with a long, rich conversation with my very dear friend, mr Mark Twight. Please enjoy.
Personal Identity and Transition
00:02:18
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.
00:02:35
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out uphillathlete.com slash let's go. That's uphillathlete.com slash L E T S G O.
00:02:49
Speaker
First of all, just welcome to Voice of the Mountains. umm happy to that I'm happy that we are both here. Yes. In person. The first ever live in person, which thanks to you.
00:03:01
Speaker
i was stubborn. and I do apologize, but also not. Never apologize. Never apologize for being yourself. Rule number one. To be learned much later in life for most. Yes. Yes.
00:03:17
Speaker
So i'm going to so i want to start us off by maybe going a little bit backwards, but you published a beautiful book called Refuge, which tell me what that book was about.
00:03:30
Speaker
had been, I had,
00:03:38
Speaker
it was Refuge is a book of ah basically self-therapy and it is that is how I would describe it now. And um published in February of 2019, I was trying to first understand and then document and then become comfortable with my own loss of identity or changing identity of quitting climbing,
00:04:05
Speaker
coming down to the valley, so to speak, and ah trying to um find purpose, beauty, ah meaning in the valley without climbing.
00:04:19
Speaker
And it because I was there's a period I mean i started working on it in sort of 2015 2016 I rehearsed pretty much the entire book on Instagram by pairing words and so-called lessons with particular images watching how people responded that sort of thing I didn't really change much based on response because I'm stubborn that way but um of I was struggling with this loss of identity of how to, um who am I if I no longer do the thing that made me who I am?
00:04:56
Speaker
and And how do I live with in a a world where climbing is no longer a thing you know for me, it is not the dominant driving force.
00:05:08
Speaker
um i And to to recognize that I was on a particular path for a particular period of time and then it ended. don't know. i i ah we had We spoke before we, um ri you know, greeting each other again after many, many years last night about the the limits of imagination.
00:05:33
Speaker
And i had ah had reached the ceiling that I had imagined and could not reorient due to a variety of reasons. um Life circumstances, my way of describing it was, you know, i so I had too much holding me to the ground.
00:05:50
Speaker
like anchoring me where previously there was the opportunity to, i mean, are um cut everything away to complete to be completely free in the mountains. yeah And then at a certain point, you know i don't and I don't put you know blame or weight or anything on that, of just like recognition of life ah in a certain era yeah of you know basically being 39, 40 years old and realizing like I'm i'm i'm timed out.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. Almost. And one of the reasons I wanted to just start with that is because in a few short months, it's going to be 25 years since we climbed the Slovak Direct. That is correct. Yeah. when With Scott Paki, of course, who that's another conversation for another time.
00:06:37
Speaker
However, you know now we're we're we're sitting here together 25 years later. Yeah. And that was really the climb that was the bookend.
00:06:48
Speaker
as I see it, to your to your climbing and at a high level. and the What was it about that route that made you want to step back? Or was it not the route? Was it the other outside circumstances?
00:07:05
Speaker
I mean, part of it it's the root because, i mean, it's- Because imagination? a little bit of it is like like conceiving of doing a thing, you know, and what is you know, what is next and and you're- a on this similar journey, Scott and I maybe started it down that road a little bit earlier, but it's, you know, the idea of moving in the Alaska range in a single push and and figuring out like, okay, how, to what happens if you move nonstop for 24 hours, for 36 hours, for, and and so the there was the the that progression ah towards less and less,
00:07:50
Speaker
technology more and more personal responsibility, learning all of the things about physical fitness and you know what I'll call Alpine hygiene, basically feeding and hydrating yourself so you can keep going.
00:08:03
Speaker
and And for me, the the next step was the one that you took, but I could no longer take it. i was not in a position in life where I could, you know okay, I can't go away for two months. I can't go to Pakistan for two and a half months.
00:08:21
Speaker
or someplace in the Himalaya to try and apply the same sort of tactics. Obviously it had been done, um you know, in a previous era with Wojtek and Alex McIntyre and... Kurtika. Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
And Erhard Lortan and Jean Traillet.
Climbing Philosophy and Strategy
00:08:42
Speaker
And that, that idea and... but taking that idea and you know applying it to more technical routes.
00:08:53
Speaker
And so I think the next logical step was to move out of the Alaska range because we had done what was pretty much at the time the hardest, biggest route there. So if you want to progress on the same path, then well, the mountains need to be bigger. They need to maybe be more remote. They need to be, and obviously to go, um to to climb in that style, the route that you choose has to stack up in a particular way so that you reach the points where it has to be light when it's light.
00:09:30
Speaker
And you arrive at the points on the route um where it's you know less technical, so you don't need a headlamp could be enough and the navigation is easy, the route finding. And that has to arrive when it's dark And all of those things, Alaska is a gift in that way because you just have a lot more latitude for error in your timing. And so by the point to, just use say the by the time you arrive that, you're more latitude for error.
00:09:59
Speaker
by the time you arrive at that Like, you're the the accuracy with which you can predict how long certain sections will take, how when you would arrive at a certain point, and then initiating based on this schedule, i mean, this is – um You had the experience to be able to do that. And I think this is, yeah, you get unlucky sometimes. The basis of the experience. And to your point, there were seven attempts to be successful on K7. And on the sixth, I got through the crux at about 6,750 meters. The peak is 69, 42. And was getting
00:10:43
Speaker
and it was getting dark Yeah. And I, it was like, well, I either, if I summit, I'm going to lose all my toes or I could just go, all I have to turn around and I'm going to have to come back.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah. And, and, and then to your point, like that was purely a timing question. If I had started four hours earlier, and no yeah Or things had gone a little faster where, they you know, so yeah, you you maybe had the i maybe had the groundwork for figuring that out. and One of the things that I think is super interesting with alpinism as opposed to something like, you know, ultra running, whether it's an organized race or just like running it across the Wind River Range or through the sort whatever. Yeah. um
00:11:27
Speaker
you know In most of these other ultra endurance-ish sports, the the way you raise the bar is just by going faster. And your your yardstick is the other people that you're running with or against. I mean, with, I think, in the ultra running community.
00:11:42
Speaker
as As competitive as they are, they're also very supportive and open and in that way, in a really cool way. Yeah.
00:11:51
Speaker
And like to your point, like you have to literally change geography, which changes the calculus of the entire thing. like going to alaska The calculus of going to Alaska, paying for the trip, organizing the trip, the amount of time it takes to do the trip is completely different than the calculus of going to the Karakoram range.
00:12:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, every in every way. And so it's not as simple as just going back to the Alaska Range with different partners that you could climb faster than. Wouldn't that be nice? In a way, I'm like sort of jealous. Like, man, I wish we could just keep running around Mont Blanc and improving. But and actually, we like have to find like a different like Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc isn't big enough now. We have to like go to the the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And there's always the bigger thing.
00:12:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And that, I mean, that's an unbelievable development in and of itself within the ultra running community that there are races that are 250 miles. Right. You know, now we're like, you know, and when ah it i watched the the documentary about the 2010 Western States, you know, and when in they're interviewing the guy who did it originally on foot and, you know, it was, that hundred miles was impossible at that time. And now people are, and I don't want to say routinely, but Coca-Dona, 250 mile race, it sells out. Like if you're not, yeah you know, if you don't have the alarm set and you're not waiting and, you know, charged up, you are not getting in.
Influences and Writing Style
00:13:11
Speaker
And so there are, there are,
00:13:15
Speaker
And I think there's a parallel in climbing in in that, you know, and and we could use the Alaska Range for example, because, and I can't, it was a 2008 when Jumbo and his crew did the Isis, dropped off the South Buttress and then did the Slovak. You know, that is something, that okay, my that was well beyond the ceiling of my imagination. yeah And it was amazing.
00:13:41
Speaker
I think it was 08. Yeah, sounds right. um Because Rolo and I were guiding military clients up the West Buttress. Okay. And those guys came down. you know We said, oh, wow, there's there are, ah you know and I think there was three of them, um ah three dudes tied together with leashless tools Total thousand yard stare zombie marching ah um ah somewhere around 17.
00:14:13
Speaker
I think, yeah. and And we're just like, whoa. Where did you come from? Yeah. what was what was What did we just see? You know, was this a high altitude hallucination?
00:14:25
Speaker
And then later learned. Yeah. And so I think the there is a, um but then again, you know, after those guys did that, they had to look at other ranges as well. Like that we needed to, they needed to go But they were more creative than we were. They linked the ISIS face and the Slovak, which ah now had never occurred to me. But as soon as they did I was like, oh, that's cool. That makes total sense. do one 8,000-foot route and then drop down a little bit and then do a 9,000-foot route. I mean, it's – yeah, they were more creative. And and I think thing we were –
00:15:00
Speaker
um there was an era there where like, I think there was this slow, a bit methodical progression of, you know, 24 hours, 40 hours, you know, eventually 60, whatever. um and And then all of a sudden it accelerated,
00:15:18
Speaker
you know, as soon as it was demonstrated to be possible, let's say, then the idea accelerated to an extent that I was also not in a position to match the speed of that development for whatever, you know, again.
00:15:35
Speaker
And it was important to match the speed of the development and not just keep, I mean, you could also continue climbing without being at the forefront of that. It's true.
00:15:45
Speaker
um And then what am I learning? You know, how am I, there has been a um a characteristic in my life is that I don't want to repeat myself for whatever reason. And I don't know where, how that developed, but like, man, I can, yeah, I can keep doing the same thing over and over again, marginally more difficult by whatever self-imposed decisions that I make.
00:16:12
Speaker
um But, what would it mean to go back and do this, you know, okay, after the Slovak and then figure out like, oh man, we, we could improve here. You know, now we know the route.
00:16:26
Speaker
Now we could, you know, do this. And if we go back within the next week, not possible, obviously, you know, the, the ledges will still be there. You know, like the thing that, the ledges that Kevin and Ben got that we profited from, but like,
00:16:41
Speaker
Going back and doing it faster, I don't think there's anything to be learned there. It's a demonstration of future possibility. It's so like an opening a door to other potential, but I'm not,
00:16:56
Speaker
um but it's not, that's a door for others that's being opened. It's not necessarily opening a ah ah door to new or expanded potential for myself.
00:17:10
Speaker
I want to come back to that, but first I want you to take me back to kind of the the origin story. in In some of your writing, you described yourself as a skinny, intense kid who moved easily between rage and humor, contempt, and the need to be recognized as superior.
00:17:28
Speaker
It's pretty remarkable and honest self analysis. And it also is completely in character with how you write. But I'll come back to that later, but when did you first recognize this intensity in yourself? When did you um yeah recognize in a conscious way? Is it like, oh, I'm a really intense guy or kid or whatever? Wow. Wow.
00:18:00
Speaker
I don't, I mean, I have to say in the context of climbing, it was,
00:18:08
Speaker
I think it was my relationship with climbing, which made compelled me to recognize my all or nothing tendencies, which I also don't know where that, um, came from. You know, there were many gifts, um, that were passed on to me by my parents.
00:18:29
Speaker
One of them was, you know, uh,
00:18:36
Speaker
my rebellious nature, that they that wasn't a gift that they wanted to give me. But that came from, I mean, they had that too? But they, no, not at all. Oh.
00:18:49
Speaker
but My rebellious nature was against them. And there, you know, and and so my dad was a law enforcement ranger in the national parks.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so I was born in Yosemite. and But, you know, you think, okay, Smokey the Bear hat, um and it's the guy who takes you on the nature hike. And no, my I think my dad, you know, he liked and making cases and, you know, every now and then getting in a confrontation with people and knowing that he was on the right side. And so all of, ah you know, a lot of um what I was doing and the way I was doing it was anti authoritarian in nature, still an issue for me.
00:19:32
Speaker
And,
00:19:34
Speaker
and But i didn't I didn't see my obsession with climbing, even when I just started, ah as a... um
00:19:52
Speaker
I didn't recognize it for what it was and how it would change me or but ah shape me. Oh, that's interesting. I only knew that this is like i only i knew that this is what I wanted to do and this is all I wanted to do. And to um
00:20:13
Speaker
and to be, ah i'd you know it i'd read a lot of books when I was younger and it was always about you know, essentially the man on horseback. It was always about great men, the heroes of our time. It's, it you know, it's the arthur Arthurian legends and um and any of the um sort of sword and sorcery books is what you might call them now where there's, you know, there's a quest for the thing. You gotta, you know, get the thing and then it'll be an enlightenment or you'll be rich or you'll get the girl or, you know, whatever. And so I was trying to organize to, I was like, that's the life I wanna live.
00:20:51
Speaker
Somehow I, you know, discovered climbing. I mean, obviously I should have discovered it younger because I grew up and I was in Yosemite and then Mount Rainier. And then weekends after we moved to Seattle, you know, weekends either backpacking or skiing.
00:21:09
Speaker
getner You know, pretty much 52 weeks, 52 weekends out of the year, but close. And so I should have discovered climbing a lot sooner. But my father was not a climber. I mean, he knew he was in the military with Royal Robins. He knew Wayne Mary. He knew all that whole, you know, crew in Yosemite at the time. and But he wasn't a climber and he was quite risk averse.
00:21:31
Speaker
Oh, interesting. and so for perhaps my rebellious nature is you know is somewhat responsible for the relationship with risk and danger that I had or that I cultivated.
00:21:45
Speaker
But so much of your writing and I think your public persona as well is this, what,
00:21:56
Speaker
almost, what's the right adjective? Painfully self-reflective or or um just over the top, like honest, like naked, honest. Like like like there's a lot of self self-criticism.
00:22:21
Speaker
There's a lot of... inner critic in that voice. yeah and And a lot of us identify with that, including myself and millions of other people read your stuff. so But that was completely against anything that had come before in mountaineering literature, which has a huge tradition, but it was always about, it was more the Arthurian legend you know, sort of a progression. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking of Chris Bonington and his books or or Doug Scott's early books or something where it's more like, oh, and then we bought like 100 kilos of rice and then we packed it up and then we found these porters and then we gave them number 10. I mean, like this very more journalistic thing.
00:23:12
Speaker
style And I think there was also, i mean, and so what we're also exposed to um because of where we're born is we're reading almost all of the writing about mountaineering or alpinism in English by English speakers. And so that's largely influenced by the romantic era of climbing in the eighteen hundreds and that translated you know, are transferred easily into later literature, even though the routes that were being done were much more difficult. Yeah. um and
00:23:47
Speaker
And then, you know, I would say due to ah almost a lack of imagination, i mean, going to the south face of Annapurna in 1970, I think, is the Austin.
00:24:02
Speaker
yeah i think of seventy ian clo I think it was 1970, going there, that took and it took a ah pretty serious leap in imagination. So i accept that now. At the time, I didn't think, I just thought, okay, this is this is an engineering problem.
00:24:19
Speaker
And all those early expeditions, to me, that was what they were. But at the same time, you know, we're reading that literature being formed by it. But at the same time, there was the more pessimistic, um and I'll just say almost death wish nature of, you know,
00:24:39
Speaker
more of Eastern European climbers and, you know, to get in which I include Germany, I guess. um But that, that mean, that if this look at Paul Preuss or Winkler and these guys, you know, who had very, very strict ethics, died young for, you know, adhering to them you know,
00:25:02
Speaker
I kind of went down that road. And when I first read The White Spider, um and my mother gave it to me and I can't remember what year it was, but in the set you know drewburg quite close after it was published in English, I just loved this image of the the two guys front pointing past the dudes who were cutting steps in their 10 point And because it illustrated to me that like, okay, this is the past and human expression of the, you know, like these traditions being overrun by a future crashing into this sport and ethos.
00:25:47
Speaker
And so I was, for some reason, that appealed to me in a the stronger way than any of the more romantic ideas of the mountains are lovely and we go there to relax and it's almost, you know,
00:26:06
Speaker
I'm going to sun myself in the, you know, looking at the north face of the Eiger while I'm recovering from my tuberculosis or something, know, whatever the you know the the Swiss Alpine sanatoriums or sanatorium things.
00:26:19
Speaker
But I i ah somehow got drawn down that road partially. And it's influenced by a number of things, um some of it being related to fear in the mountains and and some of it being influenced by the, let's say, the no future attitude of the punk music scene that I was also involved in. And if there's no future, you can lay it, you can...
00:26:54
Speaker
floor it now. Cut to the song, no. Yeah. I won't try to sing it. and i And I didn't, you know, the ah this piece that I transcribed um recently, you know, that I don't think I found my writing voice you know or even a voice of any kind. I was trying to mimic or something like copy shit that I'd read.
00:27:26
Speaker
um Some of those the very early, you know there was a piece that I wrote probably in 1981 something. eighty one very documentary type, you know, we went to Mount Stewart, we did this, we got in trouble, this happened, we hiked, we hitchhiked, we ran out of food, you know, um in that tradition of almost a journalistic thing, terrible piece of writing.
00:27:57
Speaker
A lot of the early stuff was, but at somewhere in there of, I began practicing and then it's really 1986 when I wrote Kiss or Kill.
00:28:12
Speaker
And ah I don't know if this is exactly accurate, but from my notes in the, I mean, I wrote it on a yellow legal pad.
00:28:24
Speaker
And sent it to Climbing Magazine. And I am pretty sure that this is accurate, that Michael basically changed one word and published it.
00:28:36
Speaker
And you know later, when I looked back on that and realized what he had it was...
00:28:45
Speaker
I wanted to drive a stake into the heart of the mountaineering tome. And if, if it was possible for me to describe Himalayan expedition where there's, you know, a new route on Lobache, a new route on Kangtega and, you know, an Alpine style attempt on a route that wouldn't finally get climbed for,
00:29:06
Speaker
18 years, I think. I'm trying to think if it's... think was longer, but... it Yeah, it could have been longer. But if I could distill that into, you know, 1,800 to 2,000 words, that was the perfect punk sort of statement of almost time compressing everything to the extent that the that emotion that had been spread out over 300 pages...
00:29:36
Speaker
in one of the big books could just be condensed and distilled and a punch in the guts to anybody reading it.
00:29:48
Speaker
And I also, you know, Barry had described me as a really good propagandist and I preferred provocateur, but um ah something at some point and maybe it was the influence of the,
00:30:03
Speaker
you know let's just say the Arthurian legends are or you know things similar where it's a man on a quest of some kind. um I wanted that ah to be less flowery in some way because that was the experience that I had in the mountains. I i don't know if I've ever had a flowery experience or a romantic um sort of.
00:30:31
Speaker
so it's just natural to be honest.
00:30:36
Speaker
yeah Climbing forced that upon me because I was not an honest kid. and i you know the wouldn' My parents split up and my dad left when I was 10.
00:30:53
Speaker
And I started acting out in ways that didn involved you know maybe a little bit of kleptomania, maybe some forgery, maybe some arson.
00:31:05
Speaker
and And, you know, lying to get away with it. But then suddenly I'm involved in an activity where lies you know, if you lie to yourself, you're dead.
00:31:18
Speaker
And and it took some time for those ideas and lessons to coalesce and become part of character, but it did.
00:31:32
Speaker
and And I would say that there, you know, by 1986 when Kiss or Kill came out, I mean, I was, I mean, even 84, I was ruthlessly honest about ah what I had.
00:31:45
Speaker
um
00:31:49
Speaker
Because when you're, you know, if you're going soloing, you can't, I mean, people do lie about what they did. um But for me, it was absolutely important not to be questioned.
00:32:05
Speaker
And so, yeah, I did not, when I soloed the North Face of the Grand Charmeaux in November of 84, yeah, I did not get to the top, mostly because I fucked up and and you know thought the rid you thought the ridge crest that I had reached was the summit.
00:32:22
Speaker
But I think it was you know really important, I mean, to the point where I have Um, not for the, the Haston route on the monk and the munch. Um, but basically I have photographs of my feet and tools and maybe the trail rope or whatever on every route that I sold in the Alps that year, because I did not want to be questioned.
00:32:47
Speaker
It partially because i was going to go home to people, it um, you know, ah who maybe didn't have experience in the Alps, um who hadn't ever done a route with me in the mountains to see that I could do some, you know, was okay climber.
00:33:08
Speaker
ah And I wanted that documentation. um
00:33:18
Speaker
Proof. Proof. I mean, really yeah it's proof, but it's also like, if I am, do I need to reinforce my own self-honesty? um Also.
00:33:30
Speaker
And, you know, okay, if I'm a kid who grows up lying and stealing, well then, and I've discovered this new concept of honesty.
00:33:42
Speaker
it all of my behavior is influenced
Growth through Climbing Challenges
00:33:45
Speaker
by my past. Like I would maybe say shit in the past and no one would believe it because it's just Mark making stuff up. yeah And so now I'm in a situation where, okay, if I lie to myself, I fall off um or I get in over my head or something bad happens. um but So I need to be honest with my myself and I also wanna project my newfound honesty or um ah or a change in character into the it into the world so that i can basically redefine myself to anybody who knew especially you know some of it family but also you know friends or people who had known me oh yeah that makes a lot of sense you said or you wrote that quote no matter what i did the suffering i experienced did not satisfy me i had to have more
00:34:40
Speaker
this I bring this question up now because it connects directly to this era of climbing that you were doing in the 80s and doing a lot of soloing, technical routes.
00:34:55
Speaker
ah It was an era where, you know, very different media landscape than it is today. yeah And what were you actually hungry for?
00:35:12
Speaker
I, well, I was hungry for transformative experiences. Like I wanted to do things that would um would change me or compel me to change ah to and learn and grow, but the only, but I didn't have a lex ah you know a very diverse lexicon um I didn't know that you you know one could be changed by
00:35:43
Speaker
of of you know a feeling of love or a relationship with another person or be changed and reshaped by profound beauty.
00:35:56
Speaker
Now I'm getting you know ah romantic in an explanation about something that um you know,
00:36:08
Speaker
I felt like you know um that I needed to put my back against the wall in order to improve.
00:36:19
Speaker
Like if I set up the consequences to make sure that, um to to ensure that ah I overcame
00:36:35
Speaker
my condition of yesterday.
00:36:39
Speaker
and And that was the kind of the only way I knew how to do it. And it didn't, you know, when I first started climbing, I mean, I was terrified of heights and like ah these guys took me up at um outer space on the Snow Creek wall and i would not face out.
00:36:59
Speaker
I would not look down. I'd spent the entire time up to the and up to the bucket seat belay between, don't know, it's the sixth and seventh pitch or something like that. It's in the middle of the fucking beautiful hand crack pitch.
00:37:12
Speaker
And I finally got there and we had a huge anchor and the two guys i was with forced me to turn around and look down. But I did not want to do it. i So I did not start soloing. I mean, the first route really that i soloed in the mountains of any significant um was that route that the Laysan Kular that Dougal Haston and Ole Eystrup had done 1976 on the North Face of the Monk.
00:37:46
Speaker
and I mean, somehow I got it in my head that day that I was gonna go out there and do it and managed to get away with it. o
00:37:58
Speaker
And that was almost that and then the um a little, you know, a month later or whatever, five significant roots in Chamonix utterly changed.
00:38:10
Speaker
me I mean, I was 22 years old, I was ripe for becoming and the circumstances of John Krakauer inviting me to go to the North Face of the Iger my first time out of, you know, out of the US.
00:38:27
Speaker
with the exception of Canada, but, um and and that was you know related to school sports. So I'd never traveled, never been exposed to other cultures, never seen mountains like that in my life and realized,
00:38:41
Speaker
um Well, I'm here and ah and i have I had accidentally somehow proven to myself that I had the talent to do the things. and Talent or capacity? Capacity.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. it and Yeah, for sure. Let's just thank you. um Because... if I would use, you know, some of the language of Mr. Scott Backey's, I was a pretty talent free climber and that's talent hyphen free, not talented free climber, you know, um, in terms of technical ability,
00:39:21
Speaker
i
00:39:24
Speaker
man, i did not, um,
00:39:29
Speaker
I was nowhere near the cutting edge at any time ever in any discipline. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I like to say that alpinists are the decathletes of climbing. yeah You're pretty good at everything and you're not going to be the best at any one thing. That's the nature of alpinism.
00:39:45
Speaker
And maybe also why, like, I i i put myself on the same level. category in sense of it was never like the best at any one of these sub-disciplines of alpinism under ice climbing rock climbing or whatever. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
But I was pretty good at all of them. Yeah. And that's, it's different than just, you know, I don't know what, um, you know, climbers who focus on, ah like like our friend Rolo, for example, who's done incredible things in places like Patagonia, and he's really focused on his rock climbing and stuff, and not so much on some of these other aspects, like high altitude or mixed climbing and stuff. I think that's normal. So when you,
00:40:29
Speaker
you you i want to go back to something you said, where you had you said you had to put your back against the wall
00:40:37
Speaker
And have consequences. And that what you're hungry for was transformation.
00:40:45
Speaker
And i hear also, and I think it's a great point, that your lexicon was somewhat limited in terms of how you could achieve that. I think of these things as a little bit like, you know, whether like the the wind moves from the high pressure to the low pressure and the intensity of the wind depends on the difference in those pressures. Like the high is either really high or the low is really low and you get a really strong wind or maybe sometimes it's not that high and it's just a little breeze.
00:41:14
Speaker
What was that vacuum pulling you forward, pulling you to transformation? transformation
00:41:25
Speaker
there is a, um, so I've been reading, you know, reading books as I said, and also turns out a lot of, I would, I would, a lot of whatever.
00:41:37
Speaker
Um, ah I was familiar with the tenets of Eastern philosophy and, ah fascinated by the book of five rings.
00:41:50
Speaker
Um,
00:41:52
Speaker
Zen and the Art of Archery was another book, Hagakur, another. These were books that I was reading as a young man um and realizing that I was not who I was reading about, but I wanted to be who I was reading about.
00:42:11
Speaker
How does, you know, Yes, in samurai legend, obviously, the they're training with wooden swords at some point. um But you know as the water rises, so rises the boat. If I want better performance out of myself, then I need to put my circumstance myself in circumstances that are more demanding. And somehow this martial theory got woven in you know
00:42:43
Speaker
woven in I'm not gonna, and I had spent, I mean, there was a point that is written ah that I wrote about in Extreme Alpinism when i was climbing the Cascades, climbing lot with this guy, Andy Nock, who was someone sort of with a great imagination and without much self-limitation.
00:43:06
Speaker
And we had gotten on a a route in the in the Cascades. We had done the North, there's the the Twin Sisters, which are sort of between Mount Baker and the coast. And we went up there in the winter on our telemark skis and um climbed the North Face of the North Sister and then descended climbed descended and ah the conditions were perfect. I mean, it was absolutely ideal. And were, you know, wanted to go do the, you know, also to enchain it, so to speak, to the north face of the South Twin Sister. And i for some reason, I got scared, I got freaked out, and we had this big confrontation with each other, shouting, you know, because... I was, I had this guy, Michael Reinberger, he's an Australian dude who came through, gave me some pictures at the early winter store where I was working um of when they were in Gangotri. And he said, oh, this is pis peak 6046, I think, or something like that. And AKA the Fang, which is up the Changabang Glacier.
00:44:13
Speaker
and he said, the granite is so perfect. It's so white. You can't tell when you know snow changes to rock. It's absolutely amazing. This face was fucking beautiful. And I was imagining myself in 1981 having been a climber for about a year.
00:44:26
Speaker
you thought I was going to go and do a new route on the, you know. The fang. yeah on the fang. um and And so i had and I had said these things out loud to Andy, and he's like, well, we're in the Cascades, dude. And you're scared out of your mind on the South North face of the South twin sister, you know, or, um, you're just, you're so full of shit.
00:44:49
Speaker
Like you have these dreams and you're unwilling to even try to fulfill them because your fear is holding you back. And I took a some, I mean, I took to heart. It was super painful to hear, like to have another man or young man be a ah mirror that was more accurate than I was willing to look into myself.
00:45:13
Speaker
And that was when I started studying at the Seattle Kung Fu Club because ah one of an early mentor had directed me there. And somehow over time, my relationship to fear and risk changed partially because of that. But then being involved in martial arts school and I'm starting to read those books and eventually the Tao Te Kondo and realizing like, oh wait, there is...
00:45:44
Speaker
As a climber, there is a at the time, there was a very traditional path that you walked to get into climbing and mean, ah and and very traditional, all of the martial arts were traditional with the exception of Bruce Lee taking a little bit from here and a little bit from there and and and and creating something entirely new.
00:46:09
Speaker
And there was a blueprint for climbing. There's a blueprint right there for, you know, going into the mountains in a way that, um, was was not restricted by the left and right limits of that traditional path as denoted in all of the English climbing literature that we read or the book Freedom of the Hills.
00:46:33
Speaker
um And somehow that spoke to the rebel who was, you know, busy still um ah trying to prove myself to my father.
00:46:48
Speaker
Hmm.
00:46:50
Speaker
What point did you realize that that's what you were doing? Much later than I'm talking about right now. and like a you know A lot of it was was not coincident right you know in 1982, 83, 84. you know nineteen eighty two eighty three eighty four you know but this is Benefit of hindsight. And yeah and and to and to try to try and examine what was happening. And happily, I did write these things.
Psychological and Spiritual Exploration
00:47:15
Speaker
So I can sit with those now and understand it a bit better, knowing myself better um and recognizing things in myself then that were not, um that were the the things that I was,
00:47:34
Speaker
and that the self-criticism was aimed at. Yeah. Okay.
00:47:44
Speaker
who You wrote a little phrase, punish your body to perfect your soul. i don't think you're the first person to write that approximate sentence. I think that's, a ah I'm pretty sure that is actually a quote that um came out of of the novel that was written about Musashi. Yeah.
00:48:11
Speaker
Oh, okay. And his development as a swordsman um and I can't remember the author's name, big fat book, but it really comes down to the you know the battle in the end between him and Kojiro where you know he mic legend has it you know that he showed up with no sword for a duel and you know cut the oar down to make himself a wooden sword and still ah came out on the good end. Prevailed.
00:48:41
Speaker
Prevailed, Yeah. um I'm pretty sure that that Punish Your Body to Protect Your Soul came from that book. And it had to do with um standing under a cold, like icy waterfall.
00:48:59
Speaker
was the situation in the book. um Cold plunging. Yeah. That's like all the rage now. It's true. And you can buy a product that will help you do so. Yes. Follow a bunch of influencers that will.
00:49:12
Speaker
Anyway. Help you. Yes. so So do you still believe that?
00:49:19
Speaker
What part of it is true?
00:49:23
Speaker
Well, the part that, ah you know, obviously had done all kinds of wrong things that I needed to be punished for at the time, right? Like this is, because I read it now and i've and i've i've I wrote an essay a couple of years ago about it. I was like, what have I fight done, you know, that is requiring me to punish myself?
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah. you know, in in this way. um So what it really is, you know, so punish the body to perfect the soul, it's it's it's really the most distilled version of using physical experience to influence spiritual and psychological conditions.
00:50:10
Speaker
And but that spoke to me because I was again down the more negative route or viewpoint um vis-a-vis my relationship to the mountains.
00:50:24
Speaker
so it's not So now I'm like, well, you know part of the lack of development, lack of confidence, you know maybe the the limitations of my imagination at a time you know in the mountains, even even later, part of that was the self-criticism that was going. Like I had somehow still had that belief I needed to be punished for something and no one could do it better to me than me. Yeah.
00:50:52
Speaker
But that was, it was many years later when ah I got out of my way. I was able to step back from it and see it for sort of what it was that it was, okay, this is shorthand for something else. And then it becomes a clever phrase.
00:51:12
Speaker
What's a shorthand for? I mean, it is shorthand there for what I just just mentioned is using physical experience to inform psychology and and one's ah nature and So I want to digress for a second because I've been wanting to run this by you for a while.
00:51:32
Speaker
So you asked you asked this question, like, you know, what what had I done? And I've asked myself that same question. Like, where did this like what was i what was I trying to prove anyway? like Yeah.
00:51:45
Speaker
And, you know, I think we, you know, yeah the approval of your father or, like, I thought, like, was it the approval of my father? or What was it? and And I actually have kind of come to the conclusion that it's the the Christians had it figured out.
00:52:02
Speaker
It was original sin. It's that very idea that mankind, and and I think it's just that built into our makeup somehow. And we invented you know thousands of years ago a story around...
00:52:21
Speaker
you know, the story of Adam and Eve and original sin. and yeah And now we have to do everything to repent from that original sin. To atone. To atone. And it's this, and now that we don't have, you know, at least I don't, and and I don't think you do, have religion in our lives in that way, especially that, you know, religious tradition that we, but the but that human basic like,
00:52:53
Speaker
need is somehow still there and that we we need and and I don't think we need to actually explain it. It's what I've kind of let myself off the Maybe maybe wrongly, I've sort of let myself off the hook be like, you know, I'm done trying to explain that because I think that's just an inherent part of the human experience and it has been for thousands of years and it will continue to be for thousands of years.
00:53:19
Speaker
I don't think that's inaccurate, ah um but by any stretch, I i didn't examine too, okay.
00:53:31
Speaker
Am warm, hot, cold? ah i
00:53:36
Speaker
and i i yeah It's really hard to know how we are, you know, how we have been influenced in our yeah in our lives by things that maybe we didn't even participate in, but it is in the general consciousness of the environment that we are nurtured by. yeah And, you know, my parents, they were supposed they were religious, they were Unitarians, which I think is the...
00:54:05
Speaker
It's one of the best religions you can be on. I mean, if if God is baseball, i okay. you knowd if the if the higher power, that you know whatever it can be whatever you want it to be, it's hard that's okay.
00:54:20
Speaker
And so I was exposed in that way, but i you know the only but I don't remember any of those experiences in the Unitarian Church. I know where it looked what it looked like, I know where it was in Seattle. I remember the pastor,
00:54:35
Speaker
that I mean, a fucking really cool looking dude named Peter Rabel. um But the only sermon I ever remember him giving as ah you know before I didn't go anymore was about the World Series and you know and and the higher you know ideal being expressed by these gentlemen playing sports ball.
00:55:02
Speaker
I was like, okay, well, if it can be anything, then I'm gonna make it anything. Make it what I wanna make it. Yeah, but I don't, it you know, and and whether I'm, you know, trying to atone for something that was transmitted to me by that particular religion unconsciously or unconsciously received by me or by other concepts of that original sin idea, i I don't know because i had i'm pretty I was fairly aware of the sins, the actual sins that I had ah well committed in terms of some of those behaviors that I mentioned before. Yeah, but you also equated atonement with suffering.
00:55:54
Speaker
Yeah. And where does that come from, if not from that, call it an origin story? Yeah, yeah. you know you know that's a good I think that's a good name for it. Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
So let's talk about Doctor Doom. Ah, shit. ah Let's. Yeah. So yeah that was your your nickname.
00:56:20
Speaker
And I think it was you know given to you by one of your editors, if I remember. The term was coined by Mariah Cranor. Oh, was Mariah. Okay. I thought it was Allison. Oh, yes. No. Okay. Mariah Kramer being the marketing director of the time for Black Diamond. For Black Diamond. Yeah. But it was in relation to my writing. course. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, and the image of you, that writing created yeah for those of you, those people who had not actually met you and gotten to know you. Yeah. Found out Mark has a soft, tender, chewy inside. Yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker
Stop it. Stop it. All that years of PR. Exactly. Which is, which all went away a few years ago when there was a photograph that Blair took of me walking our cat on a leash. Yeah. I'm there in Birkenstocks. I got a ponytail. I am walking cat. He's a 22-year-old cat, so that's pretty cool. it's still walking a cat. And then our friend Kelly Halpin saw that and drew it. She loved that, I bet. Oh, yeah.
00:57:29
Speaker
And, you know... she loved that about and oh yeah and and you know It was just like, well, there it is, the final nail in the coffin of dr Doom. Good riddance.
00:57:42
Speaker
Maybe. Yeah, but sorry. I mean, no longer useful. So Dr. Doom had to move, you know, it and
00:57:51
Speaker
and and I'll just sort of interrupt there. is like when i I secretly kind of enjoyed it when Mariah gave me the nickname. Oh, yeah. And obviously to and it was obvious to me at the time that there's no once it's out in the wild, it's not going away.
Personal Costs and Fulfillment
00:58:07
Speaker
So I probably just should turn it into a jacket and wear it all the time. Yeah. And so maybe, so it is entirely possible um that once that happened, i doubled down.
00:58:23
Speaker
o You know, I went, I was like, oh, now you've just given me permission. You've characterized me as X, so I'm going to write az as X.
00:58:36
Speaker
And in that time, you wrote that alpinism destroyed my relationships, drove me into depression, and changed me from a happy, future, hopeful young man into an embittered cynic.
00:58:50
Speaker
I did write that. And now I'm trying to think how far back do I have to go to find a happy future, hopefully young man in my life? Yeah, that's a fair question.
00:59:03
Speaker
And, you know, I guess what that calls out to me is just like kind of the price. Yeah. And is, did you understand what you were paying for at the time?
00:59:19
Speaker
Or did you did you only see this in hindsight?
00:59:26
Speaker
Well, at the time of that that writing, I was pretty clear on it. Mm-hmm.
00:59:37
Speaker
Actually, you know, i don't know if ah I would have to to look back and see exactly what that's from to find the year that it was written because I feel like that's pure, that is pre-Doctor Doom. Oh, could be, yeah. I don't have the reference here.
00:59:52
Speaker
And and and i don't you know if I'm like, okay, half future hopeful, happy, and bitter cynic, man, it could have been it it could have predated, it could be Glitter and Despair, which would predate Dr. Doom by four or five years. Okay.
01:00:08
Speaker
It's a warm-up for Doom. Yeah, or something. but but i don't But I'm not totally sure. um you know and And whether you know that's me doubling down on the on the nickname or me finding myself. mike i My guess is actually if I think it that predates Dr. Doom um and and if that is the case I wasn't completely certain yet what I was buying. what i was um But only that I knew that I had to give up certain things in order to
01:00:47
Speaker
have the experiences that I sought in this sense of like, okay, how do I how do i back myself up against the wall? And how do I make myself completely free of anything that might keep me from doing what it was that I wanted to do or couldn't not do? Mm-hmm.
01:01:12
Speaker
Was it worth it? And I know i'm not i don't mean words was the were the climbs worth it. Was it worth it to become the person that you became as a result?
01:01:24
Speaker
Ultimately, yes. in the moment yeah of the great losses and cuttings away, maybe not.
01:01:37
Speaker
um Because I do, you know, some, you know, I will do look back and I and i take us you know great care in this period of life to when I am scanning images or working with things that I want to write about. I might want to write around the image as we sort of talked about. And I'm really careful about a particular person in my life because ah
01:02:04
Speaker
how hurt she is to look back at that time or to have that put in her face. um You know, I can't.
01:02:13
Speaker
love and care for this woman enough that like, there's no reason for me to do that. you know and and and And as of you know a few, five or six years ago, i i can't remember exactly when it is, but I shared some images with someone who then posted them and then they were seen.
01:02:33
Speaker
And, you know, word got around to me that like, oh, that that really hurt her. And I decided, wow, I don't need to, you know, back then i wouldn't have cared.
01:02:44
Speaker
um Probably. And, but now I'm like, I don't need to, I don't need to do that. i don't need to you know. stack you know pain on top of pain on top of pain for another for another person. So in that regard, looking back, I'm like, man, could have behaved. you know it it would have been,
01:03:05
Speaker
ah
01:03:08
Speaker
more caring as a human being to behave in a different way, I hadn't gotten to the point of caring enough. in and ah But I also wouldn't be without all of those decisions, consequences, experiences,
01:03:28
Speaker
I would, you know whether it's in the mountains or it's in personal relationships or in you know choices about living circumstances, um I wouldn't be where I am right now with the woman that I'm deeply in love with right now without having had all of those experiences. I mean, if I didn't live that, we never would have met.
01:03:58
Speaker
And so because of how fulfilling life is in this time, how happy i am and we are together and that, I mean, I have to say, yeah, it was everything that came before was worth it to arrive at this point of almost, you know, of of fulfillment.
01:04:21
Speaker
me go off script here for a minute because i want to ask you about partnership. And I didn't write any questions about this coming into today, but this also touches on a theme that has come up a lot.
01:04:35
Speaker
This voice of the mountain scene season, which is, you know, that idea of get the right people in the room or get the right people on the bus or whatever allegory you want to use about building businesses and having the right people around you. And, know, In climbing, we have partnerships. i mean, you and I have our partnership, but like there's millions of iterations of that within climbing. It's a key and then core tenet of even when you're arguably climbing by yourself, I think it's still there's still a partnership some with with an other. Yeah. um
01:05:11
Speaker
but
01:05:15
Speaker
People, i think, and I think we all i want people to know they're not alone in this, that it's almost universal. They struggle with finding the right partners and in ah and a really deep way. And I think that that's true in climbing and it's also certainly true in business. And you know i know like in my experience with you know some of the business partnerships that I've had,
01:05:41
Speaker
And I'm specifically thinking about Scott Johnson in this case, but, you know, it ended really uncomfortably yeah and really, i mean, honestly, kind of for me, at least horribly as in terms of my experience of it.
01:06:00
Speaker
And I'm now, that a few years have gone by, I'm so grateful for what I learned and who I became as a result of having to go through that. And it kind of is that old saying, you know I asked God for wisdom and he gave me problems to solve.
01:06:18
Speaker
yeah you know and you You think you could just like go to the outcome which I wanna be better at running a small business, or I wanna be better at alpinism, or I wanna just be a better, like, wanna be closer to the truth of what it means to be a good human.
01:06:34
Speaker
it's You can't just go to the outcome. You have to go through the thing, the the turmoil, the the breakup, the the business the business divorce, the marriage the you know divorce with your partner, whatever it is, to like go to those. and and then so It's sort of an intractable question. You can't say...
01:06:55
Speaker
You're not grateful for those things because they made you and brought you to who you are and who you're with and this this experience that you're having in this part of your life. And without all that, without anyone anyone, even maybe potentially minor piece of what came before would be different, mu you wouldn't we wouldn't be sitting here.
01:07:19
Speaker
I'm gonna give you a non-answer. Okay. could Because there's not, the what i have concluded about partnership is the reason that so many climbers get involved in businesses that then blow up and end up with acrimonious, you know, relationships and that sort of thing is because our experience with partnership I know exactly what you're going to say. our experience is you pressure test the relationship immediately and you know almost immediately nothing is can be hidden if the pressure is great enough
01:08:01
Speaker
you see yourself clearly you see the other person clearly you see the third person that is the two of you together very clearly and um And so, we have this almost childlike relationship with trust and partnership. I mean, out um I want to say naive yeah is is what I'm trying to say with with childlike. And then you get involved in a business and the same pressure isn't there. It will eventually come.
01:08:32
Speaker
But you might be so far down the road at that point that that you, and and maybe you're also, you know maybe yeah maybe we aren't in the business honestly with that other person. Maybe they're not in it honestly in a way that's true to their own character. Maybe.
01:08:51
Speaker
I'm not capable of communicating in a way so that the my business partners in this situation understand who I am and how important certain you know particular behaviors, ideals, ethics, outcomes are to me.
01:09:10
Speaker
And by the time then the pressure gets, you know, to to the point of true character being revealed on regardless of which side or which, you know, in which partner, um there it can only end up.
01:09:30
Speaker
badly oh and that's also part of that you know maybe a little bit of the uh black and white either or nature of you know the characteristics that are developed by our experiences in the mountains and you know it's just like I mean, I've thought some about this, about like the symbolism of the rope in ah in the relationship.
01:09:57
Speaker
is like, oh, I can count pretty much these days on – well, I'll say two hands, being an optimist that I am, um who I would hand the rope to and trust them implicitly to do what was necessary when it was necessary.
01:10:16
Speaker
um It's probably one hand. ah But... um Business isn't like that. There's less pressure. It's a bit more forgiving because of the potential benefits. I think we are more prone to self-delusion about the nature of the business that we're in and the relationship with our business partner.
01:10:41
Speaker
hope I absolutely think you're right about the naivete. And I also believe that you know climbing an expedition lasts two months.
01:10:53
Speaker
Yeah. Business takes, I mean, sometimes, you know, years or if not decades that you're in these in these businesses together. And that's a much longer time frame for much more to just accrue.
01:11:09
Speaker
But also in those two, you're with your partner on that expedition 24 seven, which you never are with the business, you know, which and that extends the timeline for the things in a way.
01:11:24
Speaker
um But also yes, things to accrue and external circumstances, you know, it allows a lot longer period of time for external circumstances and outcomes to influence people's character and the behavior and what they- And people just change. And people change. Yeah. yeah And I mean, I've seen recently, it you know, whether it's miscommunication or change in, you know, whatever, it's like, man, this is, this business partnership, you know, we are no longer compatible together. And I don't have the requisite
01:12:05
Speaker
um You know, again, lexicons limited in how this will end. Yeah, yeah. And success, I think, changes people more than failure does.
Success, Failure, and Relationships
01:12:23
Speaker
I think failure changes people in a good way. Success can change people in a bad way.
01:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean... it in In the sense of like, oh, there are certain character you know human nature you know characteristics of our human of our nature as human beings. And um you know often failure leads to striving.
01:12:48
Speaker
Yeah. Not always. so ah Yeah, it's a cycle of self-reflection, improvement, striving to fulfill that yeah by filling in the gap that you identified.
01:13:00
Speaker
And then sometimes, you know, success, well, man, I- I'm the shit. I'm the shit, exactly. You know, yeah, maybe I am an influencer. Maybe I am a leader. These people are all listening to me. That makes me, you know, they wanna follow. That makes me a leader. Not necessarily true. um Or, wow, I can make, if I just, I can make my slice of the pie bigger by doing x Right. can, I can, um
01:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, i I don't know that, um I think success comes as a equal blessing and curse in a way because it's super easy to, you know, even in the climbing context is like, did you know, were you really that good or did you just get lucky? yeah You know, there would be the qui thing, you know, in business. am Are we, you know.
01:13:54
Speaker
am I really this good or is it an accident of circumstances, timing, et cetera, where the thing that I said and did happen to ring the bell in the moment. Yeah. And more than one thing could be true at once.
01:14:09
Speaker
Tis true. Yeah. And so, and I, and I think too, like one of the things that I think with, for me with having like learned about partnership through climbing, as you said, in a very simplistic way. And in in in business, the rope isn't actually really there.
01:14:30
Speaker
Like you can actually cut the rope and nobody dies. yeah In climbing, like it would be morally unconscious, un unconsciousscable unconscionable, unconscionable? Unconscionable. Unconscionable. would be morally unconscionable to cut the rope. And it never happens. Nobody ever did that.
01:14:45
Speaker
Except in the other direction. There was the one time. That was in the book and then the movie. Yeah. But I don't think... Oh, no, there was two times because it happened in the Iger sanction. The Iger sanction. What was the other time? Touching the void. Oh, touching the Yeah. Right.
01:15:01
Speaker
One was fiction. One actually fucking happened. One happened, yeah. And so... Like, I think I thought that that metaphorical rope was the same as the physical rope. Like, you could just never, you could just never do that. Yeah. Nobody would ever do that.
01:15:18
Speaker
ah just I just literally couldn't imagine that anybody would, like, just reach out, like, slice that rope, metaphorical or physical, because my experience was only with the physical. Yeah. And in all fairness, like, life, i get it. Like...
01:15:34
Speaker
Shit ain't like that. I mean, and and just think of, you know, how the the, you know, after Joe Simpson survived, you know, and, and that sort of thing. And everybody's like, I can't believe so Simon. if yeah's Yeah. I can't believe you fucking, you know, you do that or whatever. He's like, dude, I couldn't pass, you know, there's no way to pass the knot. I'd, you know, that I would, it,
01:16:00
Speaker
I mean, I have a decent amount of forgiveness. I mean, just imagine sitting in that situation. Well, I can sit here and freeze to death. Hopefully, um i freeze in place, I guess, and he freezes in place.
01:16:13
Speaker
Just hanging there? Just hanging there, and I'm just in this fucking bucket seat in the snow. because that's all we got and it's like man what a horrible moral dilemma to be confronted by and yeah again a lot of forgiveness for that situation because i am about to do the unconscionable This is me seeing me doing the unconscionable right now. I am flipping open the Swiss Army knife. I i am just got all I got to do. It's a rope under tension. I just got to tap it and it is fucking gone. Yeah. one
01:16:55
Speaker
Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
01:17:01
Speaker
Hard to imagine. And that's also why the story is so fascinating, right? Like, I mean, because we we all just want to know what that was actually like to have actually done that. And you, yeah. And all of the weight associated with that severing of the rope that then we carry into a business relationship where the the weight, and as you said, the consequences do do not exist and people are just willing to ah Yeah, just cut the rope, walk away, fine.
01:17:33
Speaker
Take my ball, go home.
01:17:37
Speaker
Without consequence.
01:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, and i and i and I think also to play devil's advocate and not just give everyone like carte blanche to go cutting metaphorical ropes, I think that there's a the person who cuts the rope has a large moral responsibility to do it well.
01:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. And we've we've all cut the ropes. And I'm not going to let myself off the hook and I'm not going to blame anyone else. Like it's not, ah again, it's not a blame thing here.
01:18:09
Speaker
it's It's just that that's one of the lessons. Yeah. That it's really hard to do that well. Yeah. I mean, Simon, and i mean, I think that's not the best. I mean, Yates, I don't think that's the best analogy here because and he's like, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. like yeah Oh, yeah. there's no there's no There's no right in either choice. Yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
And there never would be. And so it's really black and white. But when we're talking about relationships and human beings that are going to continue to... move forward with their lives one way or another. yeah um and in assuming that that's, you know, we usually get into these relationships with people we deeply care about, deeply respect, in many cases, deeply love.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. if you if you don't If you don't do that well, like then who are you? like what what like What are you? And you know maybe you're just the core of original sin. Maybe you're maybe we are just at our core evil.
01:19:15
Speaker
I don't know. I don't think so.
01:19:21
Speaker
Do you want to just end the podcast on that? We're just getting warmed up. Okay. Okay, good. Because, wow. Yeah. the yeah and said Yeah.
01:19:35
Speaker
While we're going down rabbit holes, because you brought it up, and I think it's really interesting what you said, like just because people are following me means I'm a leader now. But it as you said, it doesn't necessarily. And this is this is something that we've talked about the last 24 hours in hour our little side conversations. And I find it super interesting that we're coming to similar conclusions as both having moved past the climbing parts of our lives and also both realizing, putting words in your mouth here, but I think we're both realizing a similar responsibility or feeling of maybe agency and
01:20:17
Speaker
and responsibility, I think is a good word to continue to
01:20:25
Speaker
Lead. And i don't think that that's the only reason that we can lead is because we've been on the path and we know it. And we know like what happens at all the various pitfalls.
01:20:39
Speaker
And the the job of the leader is to not like, you know, keep the followers out of the pitfalls because the followers have to, you know, as as Vince Anderson loves to say, the burnt hand teaches best.
01:20:53
Speaker
And to a large extent, that's that's generally true for yeah humans. i I do believe that. as a father, I maybe rely on that too much sometimes. But I do think that you know knowing where the pitfalls are, knowing how to, again, it comes to coaching, like coach people through those things and and be a resource and make ourselves available and not just like crawl off into the desert and disappear.
01:21:19
Speaker
Yeah. Is it, you know, I think it's it's a really interesting challenge. Oh, you i I think so. And, you know, it's something that I've realized in the last few hours is, you know, when we were talking about Beyond the Mountain.
01:21:39
Speaker
And then I'm thinking now of Alpine Mentors. And I'm kind of wondering if ah not to turn a question back around or anything, but wondering if in both of those circumstances, you know almost an attempt at formalizing um your relationship, first your relationship with climbing and then formalizing the leadership and educational aspect of it, if um those were
01:22:13
Speaker
both of them were too far ahead of their time. Yeah. And, um
01:22:21
Speaker
maybe we'd talk about that at some point, and but I'm, uh, and when we talk about, you know, the the responsibility of passing on knowledge, I, I think almost now, um,
01:22:36
Speaker
I would use the word, the term duty as opposed to, I mean, they're kind of a similar thing. Yeah, I love But a little stronger, yeah. Two syllables, you know.
01:22:48
Speaker
and And it's something, and and this idea of sort of, you know stewardship, not only of the act of the resource, but of the activities, but I think it's, i yeah, crawling off, disappearing into the desert or whatever and not sharing anything is an absolute abdication of responsibility and and a disregard for duty. Like not every, um you know, not everyone survived the things that we did for injury you know for whatever reason.
01:23:28
Speaker
Being survivors confers duty two two to educate, to lead, to inform, to make oneself available to people who are, ah and and I wanna, I'm gonna use following in the footsteps, but I'm just saying, no, it's following a path that we also walked, but you know we didn't make the path, we were just on it. Now other people are on it. And that is a i i mean, the,
01:24:01
Speaker
It's pretty easy. It would be pretty easy to sort of, you know, Ted Kaczynski style, just peace out, disappear. um Thought about it. it's just Oh, yeah. yeah what I And, but then to ah have one conversation with one person that shows you um that that that informs you like oh i can make a difference i can you know in inform i mean i'm i am absolutely you know when i
01:24:39
Speaker
ah kind of, you know, was out of the climbing community for a long time, disregarding it, et cetera, somehow found my way back in. And then, you know, meeting Baylen Miller at a presentation that i was given here in Bozeman in 2022. And, you know, so at that point he's 20 years old, you know, and I signed his copy of Kiss or Kill for him with,
01:25:08
Speaker
the old Roger Baxter Jones
01:25:12
Speaker
ah council, which was, you know, come back alive, come back friends, get to the top in that order. and And when his brother posted, you know, after Baylen died, um and his brother shared that information,
01:25:33
Speaker
that title page in that book was, you know, my admonition to him because apparently in 2022 I saw something of myself in him. And when Roger said those words to me before he died,
01:25:48
Speaker
ah um they affected me forever. And i think it's, in you know, I thought it was important to like maybe try and put something in proper perspective for someone who is thirsty beyond our capacity to understand thirst. Because we don't remember how we were necessarily, how hungry when we were 20, 21, 22 years old and just like.
01:26:12
Speaker
I kind of do. It was a little, it was pretty visceral. i I don't know how accurate my my own memory of that. of that it Sure, sure. I don't mean to take us off on a side quest here, but. But I did you know write this you know something recently because you know when I came back from the first trip to the Alps in 84, the time was,
01:26:36
Speaker
ah you know by the time i was had been over there for two months, I had fucking long hair and I had a mustache and a beard, you know, because i would, et cetera. I get on the Swiss Air flight in Zurich and one of the flight attendants, you know, i just so I just sold these routes and, you know, I'd seen my potential.
01:26:55
Speaker
I absolutely saw my life laid out before me and I knew where it was gonna happen. And i then I'd get on the plane in Zurich and one of the flight attendants mistakes me for Reinhold Messner.
01:27:09
Speaker
which is super weird because that i like this a bit older than I am, yeah but, you know, i've probably had that, that look of, you know, with him with the sort of plaid or tartan headband, um you know, at the wildey and wild eyed and, and that sort of thing. And, and all of that, like,
01:27:33
Speaker
I can feel that the culmination in that moment of like, holy shit, I am gonna be that guy. m I do, you know and I was absolutely thirsty for it. um but i And I think you know helping,
01:27:52
Speaker
we do have a duty and a responsibility to ah help people manage their thirst if they're coming, if they're on that same path.
01:28:05
Speaker
So, yeah, I had written this question, which was which is, um you know, when the theoretical, not so theoretical in this story, Clymer, who hands you a copy of Kiss or Kill, and by the way, i just, for anyone who hasn't read it, most listeners have, must read. And I think like any great work of art, I think it gets better with time.
01:28:35
Speaker
And I know you may disagree with that or or maybe not. I do not. but um But I think that that is certainly the case here. and But they have, as you said, you called it thirst, but a willingness to sacrifice yeah a lot.
01:28:53
Speaker
Do you warn them off or do you recognize that a warning will matter at least it will very rarely work?
01:29:04
Speaker
um Yeah, I've thought of since... Speaking of duty. Speaking of duty. And, and and ah you know, since October when Balin was killed, I have thought about this a lot and wrote a little bit about it. and just I had to sort of personalize it because...
01:29:23
Speaker
Anybody, I know that at that point in my own trajectory and life, anybody who tried to restrain me, I would respond by going harder. Yeah. You know, if anybody had said, hey, whoa, kill your jets, young man, you know, this ends in the you know you with you hitting the fucking ground. You know, I'm like, yeah, I'll show you. Which is also my relationship with my father. You know, it's like, ah I'm gonna prove you wrong.
01:29:47
Speaker
Or your relationship with original sin. Yes. Yeah. I am i shall... In big inner quotes, I was just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, so how do we have this, how do you have the conversation where, you know, I mean, and ah at some point,
01:30:07
Speaker
You know, when I was in relationship, you know, and I consider that I've had three great mentors and in climbing, which is John Krakauer, Jeff Lowe, and John Bouchard.
01:30:20
Speaker
And at a certain point, you know, when Bouchard was watching my trajectory, you know, he he and And he was familiar with Yuki Omashima's book, Sun and Steel. And he you know, there was a moment he made a decision not to share that book with me because he said it would have been like throwing gasoline on the fire. Mm-hmm.
01:30:43
Speaker
15 years later, we were having the conversation about that, you know, his moment there. and I said, dude, I'd already read it at that point. The gas had already hit the fire. So, um but you know, it it that had already happened, but it was, but there was him making a conscious choice of how he was going to communicate, what he was going to share, what he was going to say in order that I could continue on my trajectory, but not have it end in death.
01:31:13
Speaker
and this and And maybe it's it's individual in, um because after you know Balin had done the reality baths, And we met and we sat down and we talked about it. And then I'm, you know, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going through my head like, how do i is there a way, is there a place for me you know,
01:31:39
Speaker
assist on this path without putting up barriers of some kind? Like how how would I talk to younger me in a way that helped me, ah you know, helped younger me achieve my potential and do what I wanted to do, but also be fucking paranoid enough and lucky enough, which that's a part maybe we don't get to control. um Like, how what are the words? How are how do how do they say? what do you you What's your answer? I don't have that. Yeah, no, I know. I mean, there is no answer to this. Exactly. And and and I don't know, you know, given like right now, okay, I'd sit down with, you know, Balin as as an example and have a conversation right now.
01:32:30
Speaker
You know, what would I say in this moment? and i' gotten had a time machine and you could have gone back to, you know, a year and a half ago before when he was alive and talked to him for 15 minutes, what would you
Vulnerability and Relationships
01:32:41
Speaker
say? Yeah.
01:32:42
Speaker
And I think, you know, we're maybe overthinking it because you can, so you don't know the words until you put yourself there and the words have to come.
01:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. You know, we've we've talked, you and I have had side conversations about writing and, you know, how you sometimes have to put yourself in a certain situation. And you were talking about writing around an image earlier today with me and and sharing that story. And, you know, that's a way of putting yourself in a frame of mind, in a place, in a time. And the memories come, right? Like you think you don't remember.
01:33:23
Speaker
and I think it's the same is true with some things like this. and The words will will come, but we have to put ourselves in a position, make ourselves available, and show up.
01:33:34
Speaker
Yeah. And not like, you know, walk off into the whiteout or crawl off into the desert or whatever. would Yes. Insert disengagement metaphor here. Yeah. Right, right, right.
01:33:49
Speaker
I think it's it's it's true. it's it's basic It's just saying yes to to a conversation yeah each time or or making it you know known that, hey, I'm willing to have a conversation. yeah Or you know need all of the talks that I've done recently, you know the best, all I'm trying to get to with the presentation is the question and answer part.
01:34:09
Speaker
Because this is the best aspect of it. It can't start there. You got to get those people in a particular emotional condition or whatever. Set the stage. Set the stage so that you can have the Q&A. And...
01:34:23
Speaker
the the q and a and ah and i you know and And it's hard. I mean, I remember when I was you know very young, my uncle took me to see slideshow that John Rosgalli gave at ah REI in Seattle. Nice. And it was Uli Biaho and Garishankar. And and and you know i was like i was shaking, thinking about asking a question you know as ah as a young man. And then my uncle took me up to like meet the man.
01:34:56
Speaker
and I was like, I can transport my, I know how that old original ah a REI store smells. I know where the fucking whole thing went down. I remember distinctly some of these images. i remember Roskelly sitting there or standing there and, um And i think ive ah I think we've had this conversation. I guess I had informed him about that I had seen that and that was like basically one of the things that was responsible for launching me.
01:35:29
Speaker
um But just like, but he there was not a, um I didn't, i did I couldn't hear him giving me permission to ask the question.
01:35:48
Speaker
right nice um it so i think that's the important you know ah it an important aspect yeah 100 of it is like okay set the table set stage say that like i'm here opening conversation yeah yeah yeah yeah and to and accept all questions yeah ah You know, always, you know because you like it some of the very, you know, best ah
01:36:20
Speaker
engagements with a ah person come from, you know, wrapping your head around the question that you didn't want to answer. Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, and I think that this goes to one of the things that I wanted to kind of bring out when we you' were talking about your writing. and And it's a theme that has come up a lot in this Voice the Mountains exploration in the last couple of years is this whole understanding or idea of vulnerability as a strength, as requiring a lot of strength, as
01:36:56
Speaker
as a muscle that gets stronger as well. And I think that that's, you know, this is another thing we've talked about inside conversations, but one of the things that I've had to, that's been most difficult for me to overcome has been the pain of losing people that I've become close with.
01:37:18
Speaker
yeah And opening myself up to new relationships with people who are engaged is in alpinism, Yeah, there's a long time I couldn't do that, especially after Hayden died.
01:37:29
Speaker
Like I was completely shut down for that for a ah really long time because i just i just couldn't suffer that again. Like I was just, it was so so raw.
01:37:39
Speaker
And so I protected myself by withdrawing, you know, and and that's been a really hard thing to be like, okay, I can't. you know the person i want to become is through this discomfort and to be just uncomfortable i have to be vulnerable and i have to put myself out there as you said take all the questions that was really nice and know you're by being that open you are potentially setting yourself up to have an experience that you don't that you wouldn't volunteer for if you knew that it was you know gonna happen yeah
01:38:10
Speaker
And i think, I mean, i done one of the essays in Kiss or Kill, A Lifetime Before Death, was about me avoiding a relationship with Fred Vimal because, you know, when I met him and I knew what he'd done, I was like, dude, you're going, you're going to burn in and I don't want to like feel too much when that happens.
01:38:28
Speaker
And the potential for a wonderful relationship was there. I rejected it. It, happened anyway sometime later. And then he, then he was killed in the mountains and, and I had to sit down and recognize like, Oh, I have, I made a choice not to have a relationship with this young man because I was afraid of feeling too strongly some form of loss. Yeah.
01:38:59
Speaker
And Well, you know, God damn it, we it turns out we we can survive that. That feeling. Experiencing that thing. And I'm not saying willy-nilly open yourself to all relationships with all you know people or whatever, but that was when it became very apparent to me that...
01:39:27
Speaker
I was essentially self-censoring you know life experience. and um And that I needed in order to become who I wanna become and to you know experience all of you know the the potential of what a human being can experience in the context of my existence.
01:39:49
Speaker
um I need to be open. I need to, i need to you know. have those be willing to have those relationships without forecasting ah or becoming dependent on it an outcome. Oh, editing.
01:40:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Life-Changing Experience
01:40:10
Speaker
I wanna pivot to, it be I feel like would be remiss if we didn't touch on Nangar Parbat because it's a place where we both had, I would say life-changing experiences.
01:40:25
Speaker
There's a particular moment I would like you to take us and you've written about it and told me about the story. I've heard it from Barry as well, but tell Barry Blanchard, but take me to four guys hanging on one ice crew the middle of a descent of the RuPaul face.
01:40:47
Speaker
hit by an avalanche. There's, I mean, what, four guys? That's, let's say, 800 pounds of static force plus the weight of the snow pummeling on you for half an hour.
01:41:01
Speaker
take Take us to that experience.
01:41:08
Speaker
Man, we fucked up.
01:41:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to part one of the Voice of the Mountains episode with Mr. Mark Twight. Part two is gonna drop seven days later, and we are going to pick right up with Mark's incredible story of survival on the root ball face.
01:41:35
Speaker
But stay tuned for the end where we really get deep about what matters in our lives today.
Conclusion and Promotions
01:41:44
Speaker
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01:42:01
Speaker
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01:42:12
Speaker
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