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Through Trauma and Grief with Barry Blanchard
1.3k Plays4 years ago
In this episode, Steve House is joined by his longtime friend and climbing parter Barry Blanchard. As they exchange stories about coping with the aftermath of tragedies amongst the peaks they reflect on the ways specific events have shaped their experiences moving forward, and how they, and others they know, have worked through these events as individuals.
For more information on Mountain MuskOx, please visit:
https://www.mountainmuskox.com/
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Transcript
Introduction and Resources
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. These programs are just one of several free services we provide to disseminate information about training for mountain sports.
00:00:10
Speaker
If you like what you hear and want more, please check out our website, uphillathlete.com, where you'll find many articles and our extensive video library on all aspects of training for and accomplishing a variety of mountain goals. You'll also find our forum where you can ask questions of our experts and the community at large. Our email is coach at uphillathlete.com, and we'd love to hear from you.
Introducing Barry Blanchard and Trauma in Mountain Sports
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. My name is Steve House, and I'm very excited this evening to be welcoming my old and dear friend, Barry Blanchard. How are you doing, Barry? Not too bad, I think, sitting here in sunny Canmore, Alberta, where we had a rain crust put down two nights ago in a wind event yesterday. So things are sporty on the avalanche front. Yeah, that sounds sporty. Anything coming in the forecast that's going to layer on top of that?
00:01:06
Speaker
I, not that I've seen. I think it's a little bit of high practice here. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll break it up a little bit.
00:01:15
Speaker
So what I brought Barry on tonight was to talk about was part of this series that I've been doing on trauma in the mountains and working through it and the kind of effects that has on us as individuals and as a community. And I was speaking with Barry a couple of weeks ago about something else and this topic came up and he had a lot of great things to say about it.
00:01:44
Speaker
I invited him to come here and dive into this subject a little more deeply. Barry, you want to maybe start us off by telling us how, you know, you're kind of telling us your story about coming into experiencing trauma
Personal Stories of Trauma
00:02:03
Speaker
and through tragedy in the mountains and then some of your healing process and journey around that. You have a story that you could start us with because I think that story is always a powerful place to start. Yeah, yeah.
00:02:21
Speaker
I was amazingly kind of insulated in my young life from death. I didn't, you know, I didn't go to any funerals. I hadn't seen any deceased people in my life into my 20s. And one of the first kind of
00:02:44
Speaker
Brushes with death and tragedy and loss in the mountains was the death of one of my heroes, John Loughlin from Calgary, who was the first kind of superstar climber, if you will, from Calgary. And a guy who was seven years older than me,
00:03:09
Speaker
and really pushing his alpinism into the world stage and doing some amazing climbs. And unfortunately, John probably fell victim to his ambition and went to do a solo ascent of a polar circus, a very famous ice climb here in Canada.
00:03:35
Speaker
and while on a slope you know an unsupported slope for the avalanche people out there turning a feature called the pencil the slope released and in February 1982 John you know fell with the avalanche over a cliff and
00:03:57
Speaker
was lost his gloves. I think he fractured his femur, you know, had some fractures at the base of that. And then he crawled down the slopes and tried to plant his ice axes as best he could in the next pitch that he had to retreat over and tried to repel off. And his ice axes pulled and he was killed at the bottom of that pitch. And that was
00:04:24
Speaker
a really immediate and tragic and heavy, heavy thing to come up against as a young, just passionate ice climber and alpinist who wanted so much to do a lot of the things that John had done. And I looked so much up to John and the way that I found out about it was Kevin Doyle and I,
00:04:54
Speaker
were driving up to go ice climbing and we saw by the side of the road by underneath polar circus Jim Elzinga and Albie Soule standing by the side of the road and taking off gear in the dark hours of the morning. So we stopped and they told us that they'd just gone up and found John's body and it was
00:05:20
Speaker
It was a really heavy, weighty scene. You know, it was dark out, but a deeper darkness fell over that side of the road and descended on all of us and kind of took your breath away and made time
00:05:41
Speaker
Just stand still. It just made time stop. And time became different for a number of minutes, trying to take in the gravity of this passing, of this spirit. And yeah, Kevin and I got back in the truck and didn't go ice climbing that day.
00:06:05
Speaker
And on the way back to Calgary, we put in Led Zeppelin, which was John's favorite band and we fucking cranked it. And that helped. And yeah, so that was my first kind of, like I say, I would have been 23 years old and somehow and the rest of my life really hadn't been that close to death.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, that blackness that descended, I'm sure was death. And yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's a story. Yeah, and I think it's important to start with that. My story is not so different. I was 25 when I was guiding. And while I was repelling with two clients,
00:06:59
Speaker
due to the pulling of the rope, a rock fell and hit one of my clients in the back just behind the center of the skull. Long story short, he died several days later in the hospital. He never regained consciousness from that initial impact.
00:07:23
Speaker
And I was also, I think, maybe I was 24, something like that, right around that same age. So I can remember very, very similar feelings. And I don't know about you, but I can say that that event that has really, it has really deeply affected me throughout my life. It's never really goes away, if you will. Do you have a similar experience or is it different for you?
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, it is very, very similar for me. Four years after the passing of John Lockland, yeah, I had a tragic guiding accident where myself and four of my clients were just sending, you know, a steep snow face in the Rockies in the summertime.
00:08:16
Speaker
And we had an anchor failure and the five of us went for a slide down this 45 to 40 degree snow mountain face and
00:08:32
Speaker
We landed in the bird's front at the bottom and the snow that we had scoured from the slope came in and partially buried three of us and fully buried two of us and the two who were fully buried did not survive. They asphyxiated in that moist, heavy, bonded summer snow. And yeah, you know,
00:09:01
Speaker
There's not probably a week or a month, maybe at the most, in my life that I don't think of that accident and the two people who were killed in that accident. It doesn't go away.
00:09:24
Speaker
you know, serendipitously for me at that time, one of my dear friends put me in contact with a really good psychiatrist in Calgary who was a middle-aged man at that point and just, you know, just so good at his profession. And he had been a climber as a young man and had been involved in a fatal accident. So there was a bit of a connection there.
00:09:52
Speaker
And he was just so good at guiding me through what I've often described as a tsunami that just hammered down on my life. And I was pretty lost in an ocean of grief and confusion and regret and despair and depression.
00:10:20
Speaker
I can honestly say, I don't know if I would have made it without the grace of being guided by that guide. Now, that was over 30 years ago.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I still carry that, but now when I think about it and the sadness of that event comes, it's more like watching waves roll onto a beach shore, like on a lake. It's no longer the monstrous waves that the ocean can produce. It's a lot smaller and it probably has more frequency
00:11:07
Speaker
But when the waves are coming in, they're not as big and they're not as dark and crushing.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, I like that analogy. I would say my experience has been the same in terms of the waves getting smaller over time. And also thinking about, in my case, his name was Carol. I
Dealing with Trauma and Seeking Help
00:11:34
Speaker
think about him all the time. I remember the anniversary of his death every year. I've been back to the place, which I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not.
00:11:48
Speaker
But what I want to, you said something that was really interesting that I want to unpack a little bit because it's also parallel to my experience is that you found a psychiatrist and worked with that person. Before we get into that, I think it's, I just want to stop and pause because those people listening may have
00:12:09
Speaker
unbeknownst to them gotten pulled into this very deep and dark conversation. And I mean, probably not, you know, knew what they were getting into by the by the summary of the podcast, so to speak. But the point is, I want to say that
00:12:27
Speaker
This is a lot more common in our communities as climbers and skiers, back country skiers particularly, than I think people have talked about in the past. And one of the things that I've learned over, as I've aged, is just how common this is. And it's actually, you know, within my immediate friend circle, it's
00:12:56
Speaker
there's nobody, I don't know anyone that hasn't gone through this. And I think that that's shocking to me that we don't talk about it more and share this stories more. So I really want to hear more about your work and your sounds like the help that you found in working with this therapist, because I also had a similar experience.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think back to the guides who, you know, trained me in the career and some of the senior guides that I know and, you know, a number of whom had were involved with fatal accidents and one gentleman actually lost his wife while skiing. And, you know, I don't know
00:13:53
Speaker
that a lot of those folks from a generation or two before me in guiding in Western Canada actually got any help with that. And I just, I can't imagine trying to, you know, to use a Western terminology, cowboy up and bear that. I think it's unbearable. And it was,
00:14:23
Speaker
kind of nice for me to see one of these gentlemen, a gentleman who lost his wife, you know, in one of our professional development sessions where I was sharing the story of my guiding accident to see how deeply touched and moved this guy is originally from Switzerland.
00:14:49
Speaker
you know, a really different era, you know, came out of the war basically and really a structured hard outlook on a lot of life, very regimented outlook on a lot of life. You know, it was just so visible in that moment. And this was, you know, eight years ago, something like that, six, eight years ago.
00:15:14
Speaker
that he'd been carrying that. And I don't know how much help he'd got with that. And yeah, speaking of the need within the community,
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, just to backtrack, anyone who is listening and is trying to go through this by themselves or if it comes in the future, my advice to anyone and it's kind of a professional response now within guiding.
00:15:47
Speaker
that if there is, you know, especially with the tragedy of loss and fatality, you know, people are in to see trauma counselors the next day that, you know, there's a number of people out there to help with this. And yeah, yeah, I think you need help with it.
00:16:08
Speaker
I just want to pause to second that, Barry, and we'll put resources and links and so forth in the show notes to this podcast for people too if they need that. But I absolutely agree. Don't try to cowboy up, as you said.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you know, and just even teaching the avalanche awareness courses that I teach now, you know, a certain number of the people that I'm teaching avalanche safety to are going to, may have had some of them, you know, have had involvements with avalanches and maybe know or been around someone who's passed away in an avalanche. And I just, you know, encourage them not to try to like lock it in a box and put it in the back of their mind because it will get out
00:16:56
Speaker
in the future and it will do you harm and it will become a big black scary ogre that it doesn't have to be. If you can get it out in the table and shine light on it and talk about it with whoever your support system is and I you know as I've said professional support I think is definitely part of that. To shine a light on it and keep it the size that it is and you know just be so much more healthy for you in the future.
00:17:23
Speaker
Let's talk about that support network. As you allude, it's more than just a therapist. What are some of the other things that have helped people and assets that have helped you personally?
00:17:38
Speaker
I can think of a few, particularly my immediate intimate relationship with my wife and so forth, and even my parents, very close family, people I can share those kinds of deep feelings with.
Support Systems and Networks
00:17:54
Speaker
I'm sure that you have some others. Yeah, yeah, and I had the support of a loving
00:18:05
Speaker
wife at the time. And yeah, it was also invaluable to me. And then the support of the guides within my company, many of us were kind of about the same age within a decade. So there wasn't a lot of us didn't know what to do, you know, we were there to support me. But
00:18:34
Speaker
You know, I was down in this another metaphor is a black pit. And I just felt I was alone down there. And, you know, it's been really rewarding for me at this point in my life with people who are going through this to be able to go down in the pit and be with them. And, you know, I've used the analogy of holding someone's hand, which is,
00:19:04
Speaker
you know, also, you know, sometimes a physical act, but metaphorically, descending into this dark pit and holding someone's hand. And when you do that, there's communication, energy, whatever you want to call it, healing that goes two ways. I'm definitely, you know, helping someone say you're not alone in this.
00:19:27
Speaker
You know, other people are where you're at. Other people have been where you're at. I've been where you're at, where you're at. I'm here with you. And yeah, there's return from that stuff that comes into me that, wow, you know.
00:19:44
Speaker
I can help with this. And yeah. That brings up a great point that for people who are watching someone go through this, whether to be aware of that. Then when you're the person in the pit, as you put it, the black pit, and I've been down there too.
00:20:03
Speaker
You don't feel seen. And you're not capable, or at least I am not in those situations, capable of asking for help. It's just too much effort. And the slightest risk of rejection is just more than I can bear to think about. So I just stay quiet and try to
00:20:27
Speaker
you know, disappear, be invisible. And I think that that's what that act does. It makes, makes someone see, it makes, it's the opposite of being invisible. It's like not allowing them to be invisible. And it can be simply just holding a hand. I think that's, that's really beautiful, Barry, the whole analogy, I mean, both the physical and the spiritual analogy of that is really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, I see what you say being seen that, you know, what you're going through is valid and it's real and it's part of life. And I see you, man. I'm here with your brother. One of the other kind of cartoons that I've seen that illustrates this is
00:21:20
Speaker
You know, the person who stands above the pit and looks down and says, oh man, I'm so sorry, so sorry that you're going through this, which is great. It's supportive and it's empathetic, but real compassion is to go and hold someone's hand and just be with them.
00:21:42
Speaker
And maybe that's just sitting with them and just not going away and just being there. And to back step here back to the history of all this, I think for a lot of, you know, it's really encouraging in my lifetime to see what's happening with our mountain culture because thinking back to when I got into it,
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, the young people, when I had my accident and perhaps when John passed, we didn't maybe know what to do so much. Although at John's wake, man, did we dance. Holy crap. We danced, brother. Yeah, it was tribal. You know, we danced for hours and just celebrated his life, which was beautiful.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we don't sweep it under the rug anymore and kind of, we don't avert our gaze from the person who is invisible in that pit. At least I don't avert my gaze. I go and I, you know, appropriate, I look into someone's eyes and
00:23:04
Speaker
If they need to look down, that's fine. I'll look down too, but I'm not turning away and not being there to be there and be witness. So it's encouraging right now to see that come out from under the rug and start to be talked about a lot more and initiatives like the grief fund with the American Alpine Club,
00:23:32
Speaker
where people who are going through this can apply to the grief fund and have a couple sessions of professional, I'll call it trauma counseling, paid for by the grief fund. I think that's a great asset for people in the mountain community.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the first step. I think, you know, as I've said, going and seeking out trauma counseling and, you know, within my own world up here, even three years ago, I had a, you know, what could have been a fatal accident, but ended up being
00:24:16
Speaker
you know, pretty serious traumatic injury where, you know, a friend of mine had his ankle badly broken and had a huge flap of flesh taken off of his thigh. And, you know, we were rescued, of course, on the long line rescue. But it was
00:24:37
Speaker
That was another traumatic event that was kind of heavy to bear. And, you know, the next day I was into trauma counseling and it was provided by my company and my guides association. So, you know, they stepped up and, you know, like 10 sessions with the therapist. If I wanted, I think I didn't use all 10. We kind of got to where we needed to get to.
00:25:03
Speaker
But yeah, that kind of acknowledgement and support I think is really encouraging in the culture right now.
00:25:11
Speaker
And I think that that's a big part of what we're doing here tonight. And I want to just kind of keep kind of sort of, I don't know if systematizing is too hard of a word, but coming back to what these things are, whether it's, you know, it's sort of close personal relationships, it's friends. And if you're one of those friends, you know, looking that person in the eye, going into the pit with them, holding their hand.
00:25:40
Speaker
bringing them food, bringing them drink, bringing them what they need, you know, not really leaving them alone. I think that that's really powerful. And then, you know, the immediate grief counseling, and I can say I've been involved in these over a long enough span of my life, almost a 30-year span of my life, multiple incidents where I've seen, you know, what I was offered, you know, almost 30 years ago.
00:26:08
Speaker
Most recently, when I've been in those situations, what was available, you know, people were on it, like you said, like they were just, there was help immediately offered professional help, professional grief counseling. But so, that's where we are today, and that's great, but I think it's really important to, I feel it's very important to tell people that, you know, that's just the start. And that's why it started by, you know, the stories that we both shared in the beginning and how
00:26:38
Speaker
this has been with us for our whole
Community and Healing
00:26:40
Speaker
lives. And this is, these are just a couple of incidences, and we could, we have plenty more, which is not the point to go into those, but that I think is just the beginning. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. And I think it's a really,
00:27:08
Speaker
Um, good to acknowledge that it's, it's really common in mountain culture, like, especially at the professional level, who hasn't been, you know, touched by fatality and death as a mountain professional. Um, imagine there's some people who get through a long career as a guide or an avalanche safety person without it, but I can't think of many, you know, um,
00:27:37
Speaker
So it is pretty prevalent in mountain culture. And once again, I think it's really healthy that we're acknowledging that and bringing it out into the light.
00:27:52
Speaker
within the culture and hopefully having it come into the community and be supported in these mountain communities that we live in. It's not just professionals. It's recreationalists. It's just people being in the mountains.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah, something that I've been working with for the last couple years was kind of around that event of the rescue on Mount Robson where my buddy had his ankle broken. Yeah, the trauma counselor that I was seeing was also seeing a couple other
00:28:44
Speaker
mountain guides who had been much more recently affected by death. And yeah, the trauma therapist here in town, where she's a clinical psychologist, saw the need for the next step in this process of bringing this into community. And that was a peer support group.
00:29:10
Speaker
around these critical incidents. And so for, you know, much of 2019, our group of actually five, there was one more ski guide who came on board kind of halfway through. We met biweekly, kind of facilitated by our clinical psychologist.
00:29:37
Speaker
and just had these, you know, often two-hour meetings where we talked about, you know, what was going on, how it was affecting us, what it was doing to our body and our nervous and limbic systems. And
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we met in peer support, tried to help and support each other through this and that process was magic, like the amount of
00:30:10
Speaker
progress towards health and recovery that I saw, you know, these younger people who are dealing with this within our profession, attained in that time period, just, you know, this works, this is needed and it works. So, yeah, we're in the process right now of fundraising for the Mountain Muskox Mentorship
00:30:35
Speaker
program and the template is 12 people who have been touched by tragedy and loss in the mountains and two facilitators are our gal and then a guy from Calgary and
00:30:54
Speaker
We're getting to the point now where we hope to start our initial meetings, biweekly three-hour meetings starting at the end of March. And yeah, yeah, we want to develop and prove this template
00:31:13
Speaker
And there will be key performance indicators. I'm learning all these new words. You probably know these ones. KPIs that will be evaluated through our two, three-month semesters of this pilot program.
00:31:30
Speaker
And then an evaluation at the end and a report written. But I just know in my soul that it's going to work. And we want to have this template developed and being able to export it to other mountain communities where it's needed. And just in our valley here, the Bow Valley,
00:31:50
Speaker
kind of between Calgary, Canmore, and Banff, and one of the gals in our group is coming from Golden. There's no shortage in need. We could have three groups up and running right now. Yeah, I think it's the next step.
00:32:12
Speaker
That's great. And this is what we were talking about a few weeks ago when I had the idea and was excited about bringing you on to talk about this, because I think that this is what I was alluding to, you know, the first, you know, 10 sessions or whatever is great, but this is with you for your whole life. And you've got to find people that you can talk to about it, and whether it's
00:32:38
Speaker
friends like I can call Barry and talk to him about it because we have similar histories with some of these things. We've known each other for a very long time and have a close friendship.
00:32:48
Speaker
whether it's my wife, whether it's a therapist, but all these things are super important. You've got to have some kind of ongoing support network. It doesn't go away. I finally had to accept that and then check in with people like you, Barry, and be like, did this ever go away for you? It's not going away for me. Like, am I crazy?
00:33:09
Speaker
And you're not. We're not crazy. It's just something we're going to have to carry for the rest of our lives. And it has had, you know, it impacts everyone in a little different way. One of the things I want to talk about related to that is
00:33:28
Speaker
For me, I can say, and I'm curious if you have any similar experience with this or not.
Emotional Connections to the Mountains
00:33:36
Speaker
It's not something we've discussed before, but for me, I've always had when I've been, you know, close to tragedy in the mountains, whether it was a friend and I wasn't there, whether I was somebody who was standing next to me that was killed.
00:33:53
Speaker
I would go through these periods of profound guilt about going back into the mountains.
00:33:59
Speaker
And it was really hard for me personally because I'm just a mountain person. That's where I go to be happy. And it kind of doesn't matter, especially at this point in my life, whether I'm kind of skiing or climbing or running or hiking or just seeing countries somehow, it makes me feel better. But when that same place is the place that seemed to have
00:34:26
Speaker
you know, meted out the tragedy, there's a conflict there for me. And I eventually had to just sort of give myself permission that, you know, this is what I do. This is how I find, you know, my own peace and happiness. And yes, I'm skiing snow and there's avalanche risks, but I can't, there's nothing else for me. That's who I am, it's who I've become in my life.
00:34:54
Speaker
Going to the beach is not going to work and, you know, drugs and alcohol probably aren't the best choice either. Have you had any experiences with that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know.
00:35:07
Speaker
The mountains called to me as a impoverished, delinquent kid growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Calgary. And very much, it's just so metaphorical that climbing up the side of mountains raised my intellect, my emotional landscape, and definitely my physical self.
00:35:33
Speaker
And then my spiritual self went to the top too. And I belong to the church of the jagged peaks and the high glaciated mountains. That's where I commune with the creator. And that's where I feel the creator. And it's also where I'm at my best.
00:35:59
Speaker
You know, to circle back, I've seen you do acts of heroism in the high mountains that, you know, if I had you roadside and said, you know, Steve, climb that 100 foot ice strip that's only a couple, an inch to two inches deep and only maybe a yard wide and has a little overlapping overhangs in it.
00:36:25
Speaker
uh, you wouldn't be able to do it. Even if I, you know, put a gun to your head, you wouldn't be able to do it. But up on the side of house peak, you came up with, you know, this heroic performance that tapped into all of that. So yeah, it's where we're at our very best and it's what we love. And, you know, the, the love that I have for you, um,
00:36:51
Speaker
grew up on the sides of our mountains. And to circle back to a support group, beyond spouse and family, I would put in my climbing partners. These are people like yourself and Kevin and Mark and Scott. These are people that I love and can talk to about these kinds of things and get support from.
00:37:17
Speaker
But, you know, we love the mountains and we don't understand when that love is betrayed. It hurts so bad to have your love do something really unexpected. And, you know, that's metaphorical again and can't really
00:37:42
Speaker
um you know anthropomorphized uh mountains they're not human beings they don't have human you know emotions and motivations and all that kind of stuff they're things that are subject so much to the laws of gravity and every so often we fall uh foul and are hurt or killed by those laws of gravity
00:38:07
Speaker
And, uh, it's so confusing and devastating. And when David Cheeseman died in 1987 on Mount Logan after my accident in 86, yeah, I gave up for, I don't know, six months a year, somewhere in there. I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore. And I was really, really confused and, uh,
00:38:35
Speaker
Um, maybe not confused, just kind of torn and eventually, you know, kind of via connection with David, even though that he passed on at that point, but connection with his spirit, realizing that, uh, there's just something so free and wild inside of David that, you know, he'd put on the three piece suit and go be a professional engineer for.
00:39:00
Speaker
X number of months at a time, getting out to climb on the weekends on weekday nights and stuff, but he'd have to go into the mountains for extended periods of time on expeditions or trips. And that wasn't, you know, it's, I don't know, trying to like keep a tiger in the house. Like how do you keep, you know, a tiger in your house?
00:39:23
Speaker
It doesn't make sense. It's got to get out and be free and be wild. So I decided after that year that it was still worth it to me. What I got out of my love of the mountains was worth the risk that I was put at when I was in them.
00:39:46
Speaker
And yeah, I just always state that that was a personal decision and it worked for me and continues to work for me, but I can't transfer that decision to somebody else. It's such a personal decision and one that, you know, people have to make for themselves. And a lot of people decide that the mountains are too risky and they, they quit going there.
00:40:15
Speaker
And, uh, you know, or ultimately really, really alter the way they do experience the mountains and, uh, God bless them and, and yeah, Bravo.
Guilt, Responsibility, and Forgiveness
00:40:27
Speaker
Um, yeah, I second that, you know, I think.
00:40:33
Speaker
You, like me, I would suspect if I had probably been on all sides of that, right? Like, I've been the victim. I had the accident. I got rescued and my life saved. I know you've been in that position. You know, I've been the rescuer. I've been the proverbial hero and been able to help people. I've also been in situations where I wasn't able to help people.
00:41:03
Speaker
and quite a few times and you know that I want to touch on because those are sort of those are the hardest for me like it's when you know it's I don't know about you but for me when it's when it's clear like when it's clear that there's a huge avalanche and the person is gone or some or something like that that there's really nothing anyone could have done that almost is a little easier or
00:41:32
Speaker
But what is hard is if we are left thinking that you might have been able to do something. Those are really punishing experiences. And if any of you know someone who's going through that or you yourself are going through that and listening, like, you know, you got, you have to
00:41:50
Speaker
you have to let yourself off the hook. You have to believe that you were enough and that you were able to do enough. And what you were able to do in a given situation was as much as anyone could have done. And I think, you know, rescuers of all stripes, whether you're, you know,
00:42:09
Speaker
firemen or paramedics or whatever, whether it's in the mountains or not, they all have to learn that lesson. That's a hard one. Yeah. I think especially because we continue on and advance through time and
00:42:30
Speaker
maybe get better at what we do and more capable and we look back and, you know, yeah, some of the times I have been able to save people, you know, save lives in the mountains have been, yeah, it's been, wow, what a great deal. And then other times when I haven't
00:42:54
Speaker
You know, looking back at my 25 year old self with 61 year old eyes. Yeah. You need to be, I think, compassionate and kind to yourself. And, you know, I just see myself right now, um, the mountain person I am now at 61, I'm far less physically able than I was at 25.
00:43:21
Speaker
But to go back or 27 when I had my accident, to go back in my mind and go into the pit with that 27 year old and be compassionate. So bring out my 27 year old self. And, you know, a lot of that was being in that pit and go down there and hold his hand and say, you know, you did the best you could. And.
00:43:50
Speaker
There's a lot of uncertainty in the mountains and, uh, yeah, you did the best you could, man. So really, really important words, really important. Yeah. No, I think that that's, that's super powerful. So just to recap a couple of things I want to, uh, you know,
00:44:16
Speaker
Just kind of bring back to the action items for people. If they're on any side of one of these situations, whether you're the survivor, you're the rescuer, there's a lot of variations obviously.
00:44:38
Speaker
versus that immediate counseling. I actually personally feel always have felt like where in that it doesn't feel like it's moving the needle. It doesn't feel it's just so raw that it doesn't feel like it helps, but they say it's a good thing to do. So I believe them and I go through it. What I find that helps is what is the subsequent, you know,
00:45:02
Speaker
months and years. You know, for each one of these incidents, it's, you know, its own process that takes place over months and years. And it's probably, for me, I would say around a five-year process before it starts to hurt less.
00:45:18
Speaker
And generally, of course, you know, these are huge generalizations and everyone's different. But I just wanted to give some personal examples so that, you know, people don't feel alone in this and don't feel like other people don't experience this and are affected by it. Because it's a huge, these are huge things that we have to go through.
00:45:46
Speaker
Hopefully, having some therapy and counseling support throughout that period is ideal. You know, that's obviously beyond the financial means of a lot of people, but there are ways to find help, and I'll have links about the grief fund and, of course, the Musk Ox mountain mentorship as well in the show notes. And then having that, you know, support group with friends, climbing partners,
00:46:15
Speaker
And, yeah, I think that that's all, you know, remembering yourself. What you just said, Barry, was really beautiful about your 61-year-old self going into the pit with your 27-year-old self and holding his hand. I mean, you know, yeah, talk about cathartic. That's got to feel really good to your 27-year-old self. Who's still in there, right? I know he is.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Mortality and Acceptance
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this has been really instructive for me and really helpful. Do you have any last thoughts that you'd like to, to close on tonight? Um, man, uh, it's, you know, it's such a, uh,
00:47:08
Speaker
appropriately heavy topic, right? Yeah. And, you know, we've been talking about death and, you know, it's kind of almost a sound bite, but yeah, death is coming. And for me, I'm in the fourth quarter. Statistically, you know, the average Canadian male lives to 81.1 years. So I'm in the fourth quarter. And
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, uh, yeah, I think about death and, uh, in my earlier lives, like my 27 year old life, I was quite adversarial and confrontational with death. And this point in my life, you know,
00:47:57
Speaker
sometime in the next quarter, maybe I'll get a fifth quarter. Some do, some even get a sixth quarter. You know, the only person who could probably answer if they really want a sixth quarter is someone over a hundred years old. But, uh, yeah, I want to be at the point where, you know, he comes knocking or she comes knocking. It comes knocking. And, uh, I'm at the point where.
00:48:24
Speaker
You know, I've been expecting you. Hey, old friend, shall we? And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, uh, worth thinking about. And, uh, a lot of this conversation is around it. Um, and yeah, it's, it's heavy. That's a beautiful thing. What you just said, Barry, I just want to kind of pause on that for a second because, you know,
00:48:54
Speaker
That is one of the reasons this strikes so deep, is that, you know, we're talking about mortality and our own mortality. And this is, you know, one of our greatest fear, the fear of fear greater than the fear of death. And as a human, like I don't know of one. And I think that that is, you know, as basic and as powerful as it can get right there.
00:49:24
Speaker
Well, you know, I'm just going to throw one out here. Okay. And, uh, you know, um, at one point in my adult life, when I had two young daughters, you know, we were living in a, in a, in a hotel and, uh, it was coming up against Christmastime. We're going to have to be out of the hotel and we were really scrambling to try to find
00:49:48
Speaker
a house to live in in Camar. And Camar is a really tight place to buy property, rent property, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, one fear that I think would cut me as deeply, almost as deeply as my own death, would be the fear of not being able to provide a roof over my children's head. That cut me off at the knees.
00:50:19
Speaker
along with fatalities that I've been around, that was a pretty deep pit. But anyways, I also wanted to say that this has been such a heavy conversation that I just wanted to throw in the image for the audience.
00:50:37
Speaker
of you in a panic up at uh where were we nearly 7 000 meters on the south face and nipcy and you're trying your best to hold down food which is not your forte at altitude and you get in a panic because you know you're about to vomit
A Light-hearted Expedition Tale
00:50:56
Speaker
and I can see it in your eyes and your cheeks are bulging out like dizzy Gillespie below in a high note
00:51:02
Speaker
and you frantically untwist the top of your pee bottle, put your face into the wide mouth bottle and projectile vomit into the bottle and little pressure jets of your vomit are shooting out from the sides despite your best gentlemanly effort. And Marco and I really appreciated that you only heard a bit of that with us.
00:51:32
Speaker
Yeah, I will post a picture from that night with this. Please do. Please do. I think it might have been, I can't remember if it's a before or after picture, but I'll send it to you. Maybe you all remember. Thank you, Beryl. Thank you for your, first of all, your friendship and openness and your wisdom and sharing all that with not just myself, but with
00:52:00
Speaker
with everybody listening. That's a great gift. And I'm sure I'm not the only one grateful for it. So thank you for your time. Yeah, you bet. And let me say, you know, I love you, brother. I love you too, Barry. All right, ma'am. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website, uphillathlete.com.