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Voice of the Mountains: Success is Not the Summit with Peter Metcalf
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In this episode, Steve House interviews Peter Metcalf, the legendary climber and founder of Black Diamond Equipment, about his journey from young climber to industry pioneer. Peter shares gripping stories from early ascents, including harrowing ascents, which tested the limits of endurance and leadership. He reflects on how climbing instilled values of trust, humility, and calculated risk that shaped his approach to business. Metcalf also recounts the resurrection of Chouinard Equipment into Black Diamond, a climber-led effort rooted in shared purpose and cultural authenticity. Ultimately, this is a story not just about climbing, but about transformation, resilience, and building something that lasts.
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Transcript
Peter Metcalf's Legacy in Mountain Sports
00:00:00
Speaker
You might not know the name Peter Metcalf, but you absolutely know his legacy. If you've ever clipped a black diamond carabiner, buckled one of their helmets, or gripped an ice tool that made you feel just a little braver than you really are, then you've touched something that Peter helped build.
00:00:18
Speaker
Long before our Black Diamond Equipment became one of the most influential brands in mountain sports, and long before Peter became its CEO, he was an obsessed climber.
00:00:29
Speaker
A dirtbag with a dog-eared copy of Freedom of the Hills, sleeping in a little tent and up in the Bugaboos, hitchhiking to the gunks, and working his way through his apprenticeship as an alpinist by tirelessly climbing rock all summer and ice all winter.
00:00:48
Speaker
In 1980, he and two partners set out to climb a new route on the formidable Mount Hunter in Alaska. They launched up this massive wall with nothing more than a rope, a rack, and packs on their back.
00:01:00
Speaker
They expected their climb to take six days, and it took 13. On the descent, they experienced full-on out-of-body hallucinations, and one of them sadly lost all his fingers to frostbite.
Leadership and Lessons from Climbing
00:01:15
Speaker
The story of that climb is raw and real, and it's a lesson in leadership under pressure and in trusting your partners. There's a story about choosing unknown transformation over the status quo.
00:01:32
Speaker
And it's a story about choosing to climb until they crossed over onto Sun Tzu's death's ground, where the only way to live is to continue to fight.
00:01:44
Speaker
A few short years later, Peter found himself facing a very different life or death situation. Chouinard Equipment, the legendary climbing company started by Yvon Chouinard, was bankrupt.
00:01:58
Speaker
Most people would have walked away, but Peter did not. As the general manager and against all outside advice, he organized a group of fellow climbers, not venture capitalists or bankers, climbers.
00:02:12
Speaker
Together they scraped together the money and he convinced his workforce to roll all their retirement savings into the collateral that they used for the loans. Loans with frighteningly high interest rates and loans they needed to survive.
00:02:29
Speaker
Peter will tell us what he learned in climbing his mountains and how those lessons shaped everything that came after for him. How risk in the Alpine prepared him for risk in business and how humility, honesty, and a shared purpose can build something that truly endures.
Introducing 'Voice of the Mountains'
00:02:54
Speaker
This is a story about climbing, yes. But more than that, the true spirit of uphill athlete, it is a story about becoming. my name is Steve House, and this is Voice of the Mountains.
00:03:17
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four-week sample training plan. Head on over to UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go, and once you sign up, you'll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training plans.
00:03:34
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go. That's UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
Peter's Climbing Beginnings and Transformation
00:03:50
Speaker
Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for being here today. really appreciate you. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate the opportunity. So why don't you start us off just by telling us a little bit about how you got started in climbing? Because as you know, and I know, and our audience knows, when you started, climbing was not the more mainstream sport that it is today.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, I was very fortunate. Life is more serendipitous than most of us, give it credit. And I did what most kids did in the mid-1960s in America.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I was just outside of the city. I'd been born in New York City, and it was just outside of the city. And I joined Boy Scouts. And serendipitously, the scout troop that I joined, we heard it was a good troop, and I liked doing things outside.
00:04:39
Speaker
was 14 at the time. And it just hit me, that this... unique activity. i i love being outside and I saw it as ah skill to learn because I love being in the mountains, but there was something about this art Varkian, Bohemian, outsider, eclectic group of people. And it was a small group of white collar, blue collar ah people that just, it just spoke to me. Like it suddenly dawned on me, these are my people. That's your people. Yeah. that's So it's as much about
00:05:14
Speaker
the people that were climbing and having not climbing started climbing that earlier, but I mean, climbing has homogenized so in some ways, right? In terms of the the participation and the people that I see doing it.
00:05:29
Speaker
And not that that's a bad thing. I think that's a good thing and a natural thing, but I think people who don't didn't climb in the seventies don't remember just how out there of a, how, how fringe of an activity rock climbing was. I mean, there was, there was basically no technology around it, right? There was, there were no cams. There were like, the, the ropes were very rudimentary,
00:05:53
Speaker
and but You probably didn't even have a harness to start with. You were probably just tying in with a bullen on a coil, i would I would guess. And so very, very different than now. And then rapidly learned that, hey, a bullen on a coil is a heck of a lot more comfortable when you fold than a bullen.
00:06:08
Speaker
Than just a straight bullen. Yes, you nailed it. i mean, it was very unusual. And when I came back to Long Island, just that side of the city, and told people what I did, nobody understood it. Like, oh, you're rock collecting.
00:06:20
Speaker
You're what? And, um but it was okay. I mean, and and to the point you made about it was the people who attracted me, but there was also, i loved being outside. i've done some fishing, a little bit of hunting and many different things, but I didn't have a vehicle to channel that love of the outdoors in a, in a, I needed, i needed something that could soak up my thinking, my,
00:06:48
Speaker
need for activity in some focused, skillful way. And I tried many different things. and And at the end of that weekend, it just hit me that I think it's climbing. I think this is my vehicle to love, to enjoy and just just enjoy and cultivate my love for the outdoors and the mountains and the wild places.
00:07:11
Speaker
Well, as as someone who I believe we both know, Kyle Lefkoff once told me, like, if His theory is that if you have the climbing gene and you get exposed to climbing, your life has changed.
00:07:23
Speaker
And it's just like you you're you're on that path now and there's nothing you can really do about it. It's taken over your fate and and directed you in that direction. to that That gene lays dormant in many, many people.
00:07:37
Speaker
maybe sometimes for their whole lives because they never get that serendipitous exposure that that you had through the
Mentorship and Big Mountain Adventures
00:07:43
Speaker
Boy Scouts. Yeah, that's I had not heard that from Kyle, but I love that description. i think it's very ah apropos.
00:07:51
Speaker
I think at the time, as I got serious about it, I think some people would have been less gracious and said, it's ah it's a terrible addiction and it's ruining your life and all your friends. going to end up to nothing.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yes, yes, that's that's the flip side of obsession, right? Because it can also be addiction. To the point I understand that as I tried to introduce some of my good friends and Garden City, i became, in some households with parents, Pisana and Grana. I was the kid who was attempting to turn their kids into delinquents, taking them to the gongs.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the... I was so lucky in that way, like with my upbringing personally, that my parents supported it and loaned me ah car when I was 16 so I could go, in my case, to Smith Rocks in 1986 and things like that. And ah not everyone has that ah that support. And so that's that's really, really great that you were allowed to express that and follow that.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, I fully agree with that. You know, when I saw the, i had accepted and taking my parents' support of this for granted until I saw the reactions of other parents. I think what they saw was they provided me with a safe home on a good basis, but wanted me to have enough independence to experience the world in the way that they had.
00:09:17
Speaker
And though I didn't have the benefit of a car, they were very willing, this is their the 60s, late 60s early 70s, you could hitchhike, you could take the, jump on the train, take it into New York City, which we would do, take the subway up to George Washington Bridge, walk across the George Washington Bridge and start hitchhiking on the Palisades every weekend. And that was the weekend routine.
00:09:39
Speaker
And they were very supportive of that. How does, how did, what was your journey like from going to the Schwan Gunk to, you know, going to, to big mountains um in Alaska and elsewhere?
00:09:52
Speaker
you know, how did, how did that, what was that path like at that time? You know, I would, first let me respond and say, yes, I guess at the end of the day, I would have at a point in life, definitely call myself first and foremost, an alpinist over a rock climber.
00:10:09
Speaker
But I will say throughout that period of time, i was incredibly passionate about rock climbing. I just wasn't at the highest levels, but I so enjoyed it. And it was what i did the the majority of my climbing along with the winter ice climbing and mountains. But when the weather was warm, I loved to rock climb.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so to then to answer your question, the journey to that was, The diet of books that most of us who got addicted to this sport in the late 60s and early 70s had ah was i Chose to Climb by Chris Bonington. It was The Hard Years by Joe Brown. It was One Man in the Mountains by Tom Patey. I mean, and what I saw in all these And all these biographies ah autobiographies that was reading and the people who introduced me to climbing at the shuanguns, the AMC, they were all mountaineers.
00:11:07
Speaker
You alpinist wasn't used so much at that point in time in America. it was in Europe. um But all of them were quickly telling me like something to the extent of you got to get these skills. And in the summer here at the Gunks, it is so hot and so humid. You got to get the hell out of here.
00:11:22
Speaker
So what you do in the summer is we go to the Tetons and we go to the Wind River Ranges and we go to Canada and things like that. he said Oh, wow. This sounds pretty cool. And And but in reading those those biographies and hearing this, you realize, oh, there's a huge apprenticeship here. How do you become a mountaineer or an alpinist? Like, what do I need to do to go climb Mount Ropeson or go to Canada or Alaska?
00:11:48
Speaker
And, you know again, fortunately, this community of people I was surrounded with were including people who had done first ascents already in Alaska. i mean, that was the AMC at this time. And I got a hold of the Boyd Everett Expedition Planner.
00:12:00
Speaker
You Boyd Everett was on that American Annapurna trip. um But I guess my point was, what was really interesting about this only being 14 was that I had never done in my life at that point in time, anything big, you know, at that age, you're, you're carefree, you're running around, you're doing whatever.
00:12:20
Speaker
you know, climbing combined with reading these stories and go, yeah, I want to do those things. I want to go to Alaska. I want to go to Europe. I want to go to Mont Blanc. I want to do the Fray Pillar. I think someday, but whoa, that's a big deal.
00:12:33
Speaker
and But you're hanging out with people who say, yeah, it's a big deal, but there's an apprenticeship you go through. So going to go, going to rock climb here. You're going learn to lead. Then you're learn how to do winter camping. And then you're going to learn step by step by step.
00:12:50
Speaker
And it was really, i think that has affected the rest of my life in that you can look at a goal and you immediately know how to break it down to all of its components.
00:13:04
Speaker
Number one, i love the mountains. I love the wild places. I love challenges. And reading these stories of Bonington and Pates and Don Willans and then Annapurna Southface of Haston and Bonington wrote it, but that is sent by Don Willans and Haston, who were the people who submitted. It's like, I got to do this.
00:13:27
Speaker
I don't know. It's
Significant Climbs and Life Lessons
00:13:28
Speaker
just part of the part of that gene that Kyle talks about. And it was, okay what are the steps and how am I going to do this step by step? Yeah, I feel like Boy Scouts itself taught me that because you would have these lists. Like, you know, the Boy Scout handbook in many ways for me was sort of this, it was a path. And i was like, do you do this? you do this? You qualify for this. You got to wait this many months. You have to assume this level of leadership within your team.
00:13:55
Speaker
and And it's like, okay, I could follow this list. you know And then, yeah, you look back four or five years later and you're like, you've learned all of these things. You've become. And I think that that's so... Interesting because i there is, and you what you said with outside, there is absolutely this tension between, you know, this mentality that you're describing where you are working for long-term goal to to become something that is going to take versus,
00:14:25
Speaker
versus I want to be that. it Those are the different, different, you can be an alpinist perhaps in seven days by some definition, but you're not, you haven't become a new person through that process. And those are very different things.
00:14:43
Speaker
Right. It's not been a metamorphosis and, you know, I had never before thought about what you just said about the boy scout, the handbook. But as I think about it, i when I was done with my copy,
00:14:56
Speaker
It was so dog-eared. And I think like you, I read that thing. It sat by my bed every night before going. before it It was what I read until I fell asleep. And kept reading it and using it when ah got serious enough about the climbing a year or two after I started. and And that book was replaced by something else that became very dog-eared, but had hard cover. It was called Mountaineering Freedom of the Hills, which showed you everything from how to do Tyrolean traverses to tension traverses to Kravass Rescue, and I would read that every night and go, okay, what am I going to practice this season?
00:15:33
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's, I did, did the same. I still have my Boy Scout handbook somewhere and it's, it's, it's literally like just, just a bunch of pages, you know, you like it, like an ancient text or something.
00:15:47
Speaker
But, um, so, so you still haven't answered my question though. Like you heard about becoming a mountaineer, going to big mountains, going to the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies and Alaska.
00:16:00
Speaker
And of course, yeah, you're 14. So you've got some growing up to do as we all do But at some point you made your way up to, to Alaska. And what was that?
00:16:12
Speaker
What was that path like? Who did you meet along the way? Who did you bring with you along the way? So, you know, again, life is serendipitous starting at the gunks. One's very fortunate. a lot of serendipitous acts that fall was a TV show.
00:16:28
Speaker
A one-hour documentary, and i I don't recall what it was called exactly, but it was a documentary on Knowles, a National Auto Leadership School in the Wind Rivers, and Paul Petzl leading a 35-day wilderness mountaineering course.
00:16:45
Speaker
Really well filmed, showing people self-resting on snow, rock climbing, climbing peaks. I'm yelling to my parents, Mom, Dad, come in here. You've got to see this. I've got to do this. Check this out.
00:16:56
Speaker
My parents caught a little bit of it and go, well, if you can figure out how to get there and do it, you know, whatever. do that. So anyway, and I had, know, that wasn't cheap. I mean, the thing cost nothing in hindsight, but it still was a lot of money to save up. But I had with my brother a little lawn business and they said, hey, you can save up and do it.
00:17:14
Speaker
And I sent out for the course material, got the materials applied for their Alpine guide course. Got accepted in early June of 1971, went west for the first time, flew out to Denver.
00:17:28
Speaker
I had to lie on my age because it required you for that course to be 16 and a half and I was 15. So I lied. figured that I was pretty rabid and did that five week course. But that course was pretty incredible at that time. Pet Salt, yeah who's a legend, was on it for the first 10 days and then he
00:17:51
Speaker
walks out bidding everybody a farewell. And you head off up north towards Gannett Peak in that whole area. And because it was the Alpine guide course, they wanted to teach you more about leading and real technical climbing in the mountains.
00:18:09
Speaker
They had hired and he walked in there. We met him for five days in and around Gannett Peak. Somebody who, just before i went out there, I had read about because at that time, the coolest publication that you could read about climbing was called Ascent.
00:18:26
Speaker
And it was the annual, sublime, beautiful, long-form journalism magazine once a year of the Sierra Club. And there was an article in there written by Royal Robbins on the first ascent of Tissa Act.
00:18:42
Speaker
in which he wrote both his part and a guy named Don Peterson's, talking about Don Peterson as the young Turk up and coming and constantly challenging him on the route and not listening to his paternalistic wisdom and experience. And they fought all the way up that route.
00:19:01
Speaker
It was just an amazing article. And I had read it probably five times. i was like fascinated by it So who walks in to the Gannett Peak base camp? Don Peterson, looking every bit as tough, hard as Rob has made out to be.
00:19:16
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, this I am going to be rabid and just like do anything he says and be with him. And fortunately in this course, you have five weeks in the wilderness. That's a long time.
00:19:27
Speaker
yeah um a lot of people were kind of burned out and since it was voluntary, Only two or three of us said like, yeah, yeah, I want to do this. I want to do this. So we did a bunch of climbing with him. We actually did a new technical route in Gannett Peak together.
00:19:42
Speaker
But I mean, just hearing his stories and climbing with that guy. By the time I left Knowles, I really felt like I had definitely come up a level. And one of the young guys who I really hit it off with,
00:19:56
Speaker
whose name escapes me at the moment, but it doesn't matter. And I said, like, as the course was ending, have you ever climbed the Grand Teton? And he said, nope. And everybody said, love to. And I go, well, so would I. So as soon as the course ended, we grabbed our gear and said, man, we're mountaineers now.
00:20:13
Speaker
And hitchhiked up to the Tetons, got to Jenny Lake, camped out there, and then started like investigating, okay, what's the route and this and that. And just somehow in the process,
00:20:26
Speaker
Realized in talking to people there like, you know, you kids, I mean, we we're 15. Before you might want to do the Exum Ridge, you might want to get a little bit more instruction.
00:20:36
Speaker
So we walked into the Exum office and talked to Exum about it. And he said, yeah, know, we have this advanced rock climbing class that teaches more about leading, more about placing pro with a guy named Herb Swedeland.
00:20:50
Speaker
We finished that thing. Sorry, it was the one day, but we finished it with also a climb at Baxter's. And at the end of that, Herb said, you know, I think you kids could do it. And so we went up and, yep, climbed the Exum. We're lucky to have lived through it because we didn't start at 3 a.m.
00:21:09
Speaker
um We weren't the fastest kids in the world. And i learned a lot about afternoon thunderstorms. So we got up near the summit in a raging thunderstorm. with I had long hair, frizzy hair standing out, sparks flying between the few carabiners we had.
00:21:25
Speaker
But anyway, we did that, came down, did a little bit more stuff. And then I hitchhiked back east to get home. But that fall, the next great thing was I got back and I'm not and doing anything with the AMC anymore.
00:21:40
Speaker
But those people I had met through the AMC were people I was doing some climbing with. And one of those people was a wonderful guy who has since passed, Guy Waterman.
00:21:52
Speaker
who had been one of the instructors and he had two sons, Scooter, had three, one had had passed, Scooter and Johnny Waterman. And he said that Johnny was a really good climber and he and ah another climbing partner of his, he was out West, a guy named Leif Patterson, were the following summer, summer of 72, putting together two week long mountaineering courses And they had this two week course they were putting together to climb Mount Ropeson by the cane phase.
00:22:28
Speaker
And it was glaciated to learn a lot about more about glacier travel, this sort of thing. In the um summer of 72, hitchhiked out New York City up to Montreal because at that time for $35, you could go all the way out to the West Coast on the Trans-Canada train.
00:22:48
Speaker
And we did research and they actually had a whistle stop at Mount Robeson Station. So in the middle of the night, after three days of travel, the train guy, the conductor agrees to tell the the the engineer to stop the train.
00:23:02
Speaker
We pile off at Mount Robeson station. Next morning, run into Johnny and Leif and go packing into Berg Lake at the base of Mount Robeson.
00:23:13
Speaker
And when we get there, we run into a guy named... Warren Blesser, who was well-known at the time, had just done a new route, East Ridge of McKinley or something.
00:23:25
Speaker
But definitely I'd read and heard of him and Leif knew of him. And his partner had just twisted his ankle and was walking out. And Leif was there left with his dog, his Alaskan Malamut, looking for a climbing partner.
00:23:39
Speaker
So, hey, can I join you guys? And Leif said, well, I got these three kids who I'm teaching to climb. But if you want to join us, you're welcome to. he Warren said, sure, let's do it. So we climbed the cane face, leading it and placing screws. And this 1972.
00:23:55
Speaker
And this is part of what we're learning about ice climbing. We make it to the summit of Rotson, which is really cool, like Alaskan Peak with its ice flutings and stuff. yeah You did that emperor face route.
00:24:09
Speaker
But at this point now, the clouds are blowing in and it's, Visibility is getting low. and in and out of the clouds, we keep hearing that, well, before we can see it, we're hearing these whistles blowing.
00:24:22
Speaker
One whistle, then two, one whistle, then two. And then as the clouds blow clear for a moment, we see down below a team that turns out to be four Japanese climbers who had come up the other side, the ledges route or wherever the standard route is.
00:24:40
Speaker
and they had just made it to the base of the pyramid and they're slowly working their way up. Anyway, that section, as you know, is not that steep. It's probably only 30 degrees or so. At this point in time, it's getting late and the only way down with us is we're gonna wrap the cane face.
00:24:57
Speaker
and But the door can't repel. So anyway, we did that and got to witness the first ascent of real ice realized conditions ah of that climb. Then we all came down and actually then afterwards still had enough time over two weeks and did a new route on Whitehorn in a day.
00:25:13
Speaker
um Well, for all of us, mean, it was coming down in the dark. We didn't have headlights, just little flashlights. and the three of us who had never done an unprepared bivouac before kept saying the to to Johnny and Leif, let's do a bivouac.
00:25:29
Speaker
We've got to learn how to bivouac. And finally they capitulated and said, all right, you want to be miserable i understand what it is to do an unprepared bivouac up high. Let's do it.
00:25:41
Speaker
And shivered through the night, never slept a moment, put every stitch on, lay on the ropes and learned what it was like to bivouac and got down, walked out. And then after that, it was a great trip and he decided, all right, we still got two weeks left, hitchhiked down to the Bugaboos and had a great eight or nine days in the Bugs and got to do everything from the standard routes and Bugaboo and Snowpatch to the Krause McCarthy and Snowpatch. Pretty good routes for the day. As I realized, as did some of my other climbing buddies from the Gunks who had had similar experiences,
00:26:21
Speaker
we we need to do something bigger now. We need to go to Alaska. We're ready. We want to do something technical. And so, you know, doing the research, we found out, oh, Brad Washburn up in the Museum of Science had this amazing archive of, from his aerial photography days, photographing every Alaskan peak.
00:26:42
Speaker
And that he would allow you to come up there and go through his books if you made an appointment. Brad looked at the photos with us and helped us. And they said, well, there's that Ridge is Undone. That Ridge is Undone. That one looks really cool.
00:26:53
Speaker
And he goes, I would go do that one. You guys can do it. I mean, you're going to be college kids in another year. I mean, yeah, go do it. So we got to Juneau, pulled off there, pulled into Ken Loken. He was the pilot's office, walked in. I think we called our, I forgot what we called our expedition. We came up with a name. Everybody had a name for their expedition. Right. And we walked in and said, we're their so-and-so expedition.
00:27:16
Speaker
And Ken Lokens, administrative assistant secretary, cetera, office manager looked at us and said, do your parents know you're here? ah you see You are the expedition. yeah yeah so We were expecting actual full grown adults.
Founding Black Diamond Equipment
00:27:36
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah coach a budget So anyway, us into Bay and we spent days the mountain. um And had a phenomenal time.
00:27:49
Speaker
so we did get flown in first and right there, but initially, you know, we're ferrying loads. We got 30 days worth of food, ropes, et cetera. And during our climb, there was a massive earthquake.
00:28:03
Speaker
And thank God we were on the ridge because every face in that surf of every peak fully avalanche. It was an incredible experience. And that, I guess, is the the journey to alpinism in Alaska. And then, of course, my appetite for Alaska was now turned on. Yeah.
00:28:24
Speaker
And, so you know, i mean, I think any alpinist that you talk to has threads of this story in common, whether it's, you know, The people they met, you know, the the ah things that happened.
00:28:39
Speaker
yeah just just so many, I think, about my own trip my first trip to Alaska. you You don't realize as a young person, when you step into these theaters, you really do step into history. Like you step into live history that's being written by your being there and these other people being there. and And I mean, these are shared it's our shared history and culture.
00:29:02
Speaker
and and there's so much that's familiar with with with your story that Me not having known any of this from you personally, but ah so much of these threads are are familiar.
00:29:16
Speaker
Steve, that is so well well said. And i've I've thought about that myself in that perhaps that's why for our generation, this history was so powerful and why we read all these books and biographies because It was tangible. We met these people, the we the legends we got to actually hang with and be around. And it wasn't elitist. You just, it just, what you learned from their presence and seeing them was just so powerful. Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. So you, you, I think it was correct me if I'm wrong, but two years later, went to climb Mount Hunter by a new route. No, it wasn't. Yeah, but you got a good part of this down. So two years later, i go to do a new route in 1975.
00:30:10
Speaker
five on Mount McKinley. We called it Reality Ridge, the Southeast Ridge of the South Spur. And it was with several of the same people who I had done fair weather with, three of the same, ah two of the same, and one new partner, a partner that I had met In the fall, you got hooked on Alaska and began looking at, let's do something on McKinley and Logan and St. Elias and came across this, the reality, what we called reality, where it's southeast spur of the South Ridge and decided like, okay, let's go do this guy and let's do a capsule style instead of leaving a bunch of ropes. You know, this is still before things been done Alpine style up there.
00:30:50
Speaker
The gear was still not that good. It was better then than it was two years earlier. um And so what we ended up doing was driving the Alcan that time up to Alaska. But first I spent the the spring living in the valley and my buddies picked me up in California at the valley with my other climbing partner.
00:31:10
Speaker
And we drove up there all gear again. And then like a tugboat lashed extra tires onto the front of the car, like bumper guards and drove the Alcan, what was still dirt up to Talkeetna, got flown in and did this new route on McKinley and did kind of a circumnavigation because what we did was we had 10,000 feet of rope that would pull the Poly Pro on Reality Regional.
00:31:40
Speaker
until we got to top of the South Ridge. Then we buried it in a crevasse deep down. And then from there, I think we had a ferry, one or two more loads, went into Thayer Basin.
00:31:53
Speaker
And then up out of their base and up into what's really, I guess, the West, they um the, the Muldrow route and over to Denali Pass. and And then the weather wasn't so good. So down to the high camp at 1702, did the summit and came down to Kahiltna route, down to base camp. And that was 45 days.
00:32:12
Speaker
It's a long time to be in mountain without a shower or anything else. That's a pretty significant achievement, just keeping yourself supplied with food and fuel and everything you need to survive in Alaskan conditions for, for for what six weeks?
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, 45 days is a long time. Yeah, ferrying all own gear and loads and food and pulling ropes out, refixing them, pulling ropes out, refixing them, and all of that.
00:32:39
Speaker
And I think our theme song... at about the 30 day mark became Paul McCartney's, if I ever get out of here. um
00:32:49
Speaker
and But great experience. And, but well, in Taukeetan, they're both waiting to get flowing in. I think we had to wait that time, five days, even though at times it looked really clear.
00:33:03
Speaker
And I kept looking at Hunter and from Toquitna, the central river, the south face is like a gigantic Walker spur. And I looked at that thing, that is one of the most aesthetic lines I have ever seen.
Principles and Vision of Black Diamond
00:33:18
Speaker
And asking around, nobody knew if it had been, nobody thought it been climbed. And I just thought, well, if it hasn't been climbed, that's my next objective. I have to go to college for a year or two, at least.
00:33:29
Speaker
I did the yeah seven and a half year college program year on, year're ah you're year on, year and a half off, year on, year and year half off. And started scheming on that trip and um planning on that trip to do that.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so the next two years, I ended up climbing in Europe for two summers with a host of different partners doing those great routes and really getting great experience and decided, okay, 1980, we're going to go.
00:33:58
Speaker
was Charlie Fowler who I'd been climbing with in the Alps. Glenn Randall had done a ton of climbing with and had just done a new route a year earlier in Mount Huntington. and me.
00:34:10
Speaker
And then Charlie fell in love and decided he's not going. So somebody else who I had not climbed in the Alps with, but I had done a lot of rock climbing and ice climbing with, I said Glenn was Pete Athens.
00:34:23
Speaker
So talked to Glenn and said, I'd like to invite Pete, did some more climbing together, and game on. And it was up to me to sort of organize, okay what's the style? How long is it going to take?
00:34:35
Speaker
Because I'd been there before. and planned the trip out and anyway, did that. And that's what ultimate got us to in the May of 1980 to Tarkitna and the Tokasitna at the base of Mount Hunter to try it again.
00:34:58
Speaker
And with a totally different, what was the group dynamic on that trip? It was phenomenal because i had, know, I think sometimes you don't know which you don't know until you know it.
00:35:12
Speaker
And what I mean by that is you sometimes take things for granted. So my first two Alaskan trips, dynamics were great. we had spent time together and just and I just thought like, yeah, you climb some with people, like we get along, we get along, we we it's it's all good. And then on that first hunter adventure,
00:35:33
Speaker
I realized among some of the other reasons we failed that no, it's not a given that people are going to in these very stressful, very challenging q situations that they're going to mesh and bring out the best in each other and support one another.
00:35:51
Speaker
So that was something was highly cognizant of with this team um you what we needed to do this. I also recognized at this point, having been there once, been on it and backed off of it, that this was going to be the most, up until that point, without question, most serious climb in my life.
00:36:11
Speaker
And it was a climb that I also realized and explained to Glenn and Pete, is this is something we might not come back from. and it's not that we had a death wish, it was just that this was important enough to me and I wanted to communicate that to them, that this was gonna take everything we had, we had to be our best, and even with that,
00:36:33
Speaker
the outcome was not guaranteed, nor is our coming back. And I remember at this point, because I had, won't go into details, I had already had now several partners killed climbing and people I knew well.
00:36:49
Speaker
And so I had to go through that experience, actually the previous summer in Chamity, when my climbing partner from Fairweather was killed and went through that experience of having to tell his wife, call his dad,
00:37:02
Speaker
ah meet them at the airport and go through that trauma.
00:37:09
Speaker
And I think my realization at this point in time was also that not only do we have to accept our own risk factors in this,
00:37:20
Speaker
But we have to understand that there may be other people who are going to be affected if we get killed. And we need to make sure those people know what we're doing and why we're doing it.
00:37:32
Speaker
And we accept the risk and understand that so they can accept that. And I actually wrote a letter to my parents and said, do not open this letter. My brother saved it. Explaining that to them, i said, open in case of problems or something like that. I think I gave it to my brother and explained it to him because he had it.
00:37:52
Speaker
So I just share that because want to be sure they and all of us understood what we're getting into and why it was such dynamics happening. dynamics was so important and the training and thinking through every piece of gear we had um and testing it beforehand and making sure that this was right.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah. and And you you chose Glenn and Pete rather, i don't know what the right term is, deliberately. So yeah, that takes a lot of self-awareness and you have to be, I think, pretty vulnerable with what that means, right? Like you have to be honest about what that what what you're actually talking about. You're actually talking about life and death. And as you said, affecting how that affects other people, what you're choosing to do and why you're choosing to do it.
00:38:46
Speaker
Those are a lot, that's a lot to lay out. Yes, it's really well said, Steve. And I would also add that You know, actually at that point in time, Pete was not the climber he became. i think Hunter really was a giant stepping stone to his becoming the great climber he became because up until then, he came back into Alaska.
00:39:11
Speaker
And both Glenn and I recognized, I had climbed with him by the way, the previous summer in the Alps. We had done the American Direct on the Drew in three or four days and several other longer multi-day routes.
00:39:25
Speaker
And so at this point I was definitely much more experienced than Pete, um but he was strong. And to the point you just made is that it's not only experience, I mean, technical ability is really, really and important experience.
00:39:41
Speaker
But I would add that if I'm having to choose choose between experience and thoughtfulness and awareness and the chemistry of the team, i would choose the latter.
00:39:58
Speaker
And what I knew with Pete, having been through some challenges on on the climbs we did, the guy is very thoughtful, he has humility, He knows what he's willing to admit when he can't do a lead and he's willing to tell you when he can. um And to your point you saying earlier is that in the team dynamics,
00:40:24
Speaker
but you have to you have to have 100% confidence in the competency of your partner. And you have to have 100% confidence that that
00:40:37
Speaker
There's enough absolute brutal honesty with your partners that they're not going to take the lead in a in a situation like this where you can't fall if they're not up to it.
00:40:50
Speaker
That they have to say, I'm just not up to this. Or like, hey, I'm up to this. day <unk> I'll do it. And they just have they have to be able to say
00:41:01
Speaker
anything and everything that's on their mind that's going to affect their performance. And a realization that, you know, this is really a cliche, that but it's so true.
Intuition in Climbing and Business
00:41:13
Speaker
It's like, you're only as strong as you're weak as a member. And if somebody's not healthy and well, you're not taking care of your team or your partner, you're screwing yourself. Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
So there's all those are such important dynamics in working with a team of people to get things done. And you're looking for humility and a lack of hubris in people so that they're so honest and acknowledging their fears, their concerns, and that you can talk through things and find
00:41:48
Speaker
ah com ah solution and everybody can agree with it and not fight over it Right. Right. Yeah. And around this same time, I'm not exactly sure on the on the timeline here, you got involved with a young company called Shannard Equipment.
00:42:08
Speaker
You want to tell us how that came to be? Because, you know, you're best known to many as I don't know what the right title and for you was if you're the founder of Black Diamond because you did reincarnation art equipment as Black Diamond Equipment. And then you led that company for decades until its eventual sale and then remain involved to this day with that but that company. You've been an incredibly influential, you know,
00:42:41
Speaker
company doesn't do it justice, but it's, you know, Black Diamond itself through in part through you and and all the others that worked on it, that you were, and you shaped our culture, you shaped our conversation, you you shaped our vocabulary in many cases, and you've absolutely shaped the technology that we all used.
00:43:00
Speaker
So I want to get into that, but I wouldn't want to hear how you got into that and how that came about. Thank you for those very gracious comments, Steve. I appreciate them.
00:43:11
Speaker
So, know, America is a place to be a professional climber in the 1970s into the early 80s. It was very different than it is today. did like my academics. um I didn't know I wanted to do other than wanted to climb.
00:43:30
Speaker
And I wanted to work as little as I could climb as much as I could. So I lived as frugally. I didn't own a car. Yeah. until I went to work for Yvonne and it was 1982.
00:43:42
Speaker
I finally bought a car. But the goal was climbing. And I survived doing what climbers in that period of time did was I worked out rebound often. I did a little illegal guiding. i worked as a helping out at the climbers ranch, some of the Alpine club.
00:43:59
Speaker
I spent two winters throwing chain with Mike Munger and Angus Thurmer. on drilling rigs in Wyoming in the winter. was a chain hand on Wildcat rigs. And it was reasonable money, and but not great work.
00:44:14
Speaker
I realized that by 81, I was starting to think like, this is not a good long-term sustainable model. And I was looking at Fred candidly and going, I want to have more of a career than Fred. i got it i need something Besides just climbing and working on rigs, working outward bound, picking up work, that's it's not a future there.
00:44:38
Speaker
um I need something more. And so this 1981. nineteen eighty one And you um traveling, climbing with yeah what I call the more serious climbers of America at the time.
00:44:51
Speaker
And a few of them are starting to get this this new job, which I'd never heard of. It's called sales repping. And it seemed like they could keep climbing and they had own cars and they would just stop by all the retailers I knew. i knew Bob Culp, knew Gary Neptune.
00:45:07
Speaker
I could go talk to those guys and they'd just show them some product, talk them about product and get orders, go to the next shop, go climbing for a couple of days. And I thought that might be an interesting way to break into a career.
00:45:19
Speaker
So I just started sending out letters to people I knew at companies that I had hustled free gear from ah for expeditions that I was aware of this, you know, here's who I am.
00:45:31
Speaker
you Well, you know who I am. And I'm ready to start getting more serious about working. And I think it would be a great rep. And corresponded with all of them and whatnot. And one of the companies I sent a letter to was, I didn't know Yvonne.
00:45:44
Speaker
um but I had met him, but he didn't know me. I knew people who knew him. Talking about, sorry to interrupt, but we're talking about Yvonne Chouinard, who founded Chouinard Equipment and Patagonia. Yes.
00:45:56
Speaker
And so started corresponding about a rep job and I got a, and Patagonia, Chris McDivitt, who was the, at the time, general manager of Patagonia, replied and said, um, Yvonne says he's interested. We're interested. We'll talk to you.
00:46:10
Speaker
Why you come to Chicago? There's a trade show in Chicago at this date and interview. And
00:46:19
Speaker
I just wrote back a letter at the time. i didn't tell I didn't have a car, but i didn't have a car and I didn't have any money. And I'm like, I'm not going to Chicago the interview for this job. And then another opportunity came up somewhere. But at this point, climbing was working really well and it was going to be a sacrifice to go somewhere to interview for the job. And I just blew it off. I didn't even respond.
00:46:41
Speaker
And I just at this point. So now we're at the spring of 1982 and got contracts at somewhere that were bound. I fly up to Alaska in May with Glenn Randall.
00:46:52
Speaker
When I get back from Alaska in late May or early June, there's a letter waiting for me. And it's from Chris McDivitt. And she begins with, this is the last letter you will ever receive from me.
00:47:05
Speaker
That's quite a beginning. Wow. yeah And she says that Yvonne last year split his companies up. And it is up until 1981, there was one company, and it was the maker of Chinat Equipment.
00:47:21
Speaker
And it had Patagonia Clothing. It had Chinat Equipment climbing hardware. And GPIW, which was a retail store and a mailware operation. And what the letter said was, we split the companies up.
00:47:32
Speaker
I'm running Patagonia. um Somebody else is running GPIW Retail. Ivan thought he was running Chinat Equipment. But it's become clear to me and him that somebody needs to run it.
00:47:47
Speaker
And at this point, the company is sub million dollars and it's declining. And you cannot tell the history of global climbing without telling the history of short equipment, whether you're talking about big wall climbing and pitons or free climbing, hexentrics and stoppers or ice climbing with the the rigid crampons and curve pick tools.
00:48:09
Speaker
But Yvonne had begun really focusing by the late seventies in Patagonia. And by 1982, that company hadn't even done a catalog in a couple of years. Wild Country was crushing it with its rocks and now, uh, uh, and John was going backwards very quickly, but the reputation was strong. You don't ruin a reputation like that.
00:48:34
Speaker
Um, very easily. And I should add that to me and many people of my generation, when received the 1972 Chinat Equipment Catalog, which was not a catalog, it was to us in my generation of climbers what Mao's Little Red Book was to the Cultural Revolution.
00:49:00
Speaker
This was something that, yeah, it sold some gear, but it told you how you use the gear. It told you how you dress. It told you what your ethos were, what your ethics were, what your morality should be.
00:49:12
Speaker
it It showed you how to dress, how to act, how to behave. i mean, this was ah template. I had become, know, just a, I was a full-time climbing bum. I had reduced my worldly possessions down to literally a single haul bag.
00:49:28
Speaker
I didn't own a car. And I had that catalog in there, that catalog I had. I still have it today, 50 years later. um So to me, when this letter comes and I'm told that Yvonne is looking for a general manager and that he looked at my resume again and said, give that guy a call and let's interview him.
00:49:52
Speaker
I thought, all right, stop everything. This is, this isn't a rep job. This is to go work for the guy who wrote the little red book.
00:50:02
Speaker
I sat down and put together a two page letter to Yvonne saying, this is why i want this job and why I think um even though i have never run a business and and whatnot, I think you could train me. I think I'm your guy.
00:50:17
Speaker
And for the first time in my life, threw down, rode my bike over to the FedEx office, threw down what was a lot of money, 25 bucks to mail somebody a letter. So he would have it when I called And so then the prescribed date called him up and said, um hey, Yvonne, it's me, Peter MacDuff. And he goes, and knew immediately I'm off to a good start when he said, yeah, I got your letter. That's a great letter. Let's talk about it.
00:50:45
Speaker
Had a long conversation with him. And then he drops the bombshell. But he goes, I can't hire you off of a letter or a phone call. He goes, we got to meet and spend some time together. And I go, oh, where?
00:50:59
Speaker
I go, coming out to Ventura is not easy for me. And he said, well, I'm in the Tetons. I go, well, I got these three contracts with Outward Bound this summer. I'm leaving shortly. got to start working.
00:51:11
Speaker
And he goes, what are the dates? And I tell him, he goes, you got a break in between those. go, yeah. And he goes, well, I'm teaching an ice climbing course for three and a half days on the Teton Glacier through Exum on these dates. You're free then. And I look at it and go, you're right. And he goes, get up here.
00:51:29
Speaker
And you tell you teach help me teach this course. And then we'll spend the day with Melinda at the house and that's gonna be your interview. So anyway, get that with Bound and talk one of my buddies into who has a car.
00:51:42
Speaker
And said, hey, I'll pay all the gas to Jackson on our break. And you get to meet Yvonne Chouinard. All we gotta do is walk up to Surprise Lake and you can join in on this ice climbing course if you want. And I just tell finally like, Hey man, this is Yvonne, this has been great.
00:51:57
Speaker
And we talked about, by the way, I should say in the interview, he's been talking about what would i do What gear ideas do I have? I mean, it was a very intense interview. And I finally just said to him, i got to run, man.
00:52:08
Speaker
Um, where, what do we do from here? And Yvonne pauses a moment, grabs a little piece of scrap paper, writes something on it and hands it to me.
00:52:20
Speaker
And it's ah an address in German. And i said, what is this? He goes, that's an address in Germany of my, of the sales, the guy we just hired, he's a climber, and we just hired, we're going to set up business and in Europe.
00:52:37
Speaker
And there's a trade show in Munich, Germany called ISPO in September, mid-September. And this guy's going to be there. and that's how you're going to start. Just find your way to that address on that date.
00:52:50
Speaker
And you'll meet this guy and you'll start at the trade show. And that's going to be how you start. And I get up and go, thank you very much. Well, I'll figure it out. You know, it's been two, the past two seasons climbing over there.
00:53:05
Speaker
I'll figure it out and go there. And then I stop a minute it and go, oh, what, what question I, you will pay for this flight, right? And he goes, you get there, I'll refund you. And I oh, one other question.
00:53:16
Speaker
Why am getting paid? And he thinks of it and he $15,000 a year. And I'm like, done I'll see you there.
00:53:27
Speaker
I just got to say, having no having known Yvonne for myself, I mean, for those of you that are listening that haven't seen Yvonne or interacted with him, you know, you're just playing him to the letter with, with,
00:53:41
Speaker
just the mannerisms and and how he thinks and and how he, you know, how resourceful he is. It's a scrap piece of paper. It's not like he doesn't have, a you know, it's not prepared. It's in his head, but he's making all the right decisions. There was at time where people's work identities and personal identities were highly separated for the most part, right? Like traditionally, like that's how my parents grew up. That's how Like culturally, that's how we were.
00:54:07
Speaker
One of the things that was always different at Patagonia is that was not the case because even when I got hired on as an ambassador in the late nineties, we went to Yosemite with Yvonne and Melinda and a couple and Ron Kauk and, you know, Dean Potter and Steph Davis. And we went, we rented a cabin and we went walk for walks in the woods and talked about the philosophy of climbing and, and, and cooked meals together and, slept you know, we all slept were sleeping on the floor in the living room. And, and you know, that's very, very atypical, especially at that time of
00:54:42
Speaker
and And now, if you fast forward to the current day, i mean, maybe because of remote work, it's shifted, but and that has become much more common culturally for people to integrate more of themselves and do things. Now we call it team building.
00:54:59
Speaker
Ivan, I think, was, again, as you said, his instincts were always so good. He'd rather hire a climber and teach them how to fill in the blank than the other way around because then he had a common ground and cultural, cultural fit. And you really carried that, that through as you, you know, created ah the culture at black diamond. I mean, I was around black diamond many times over the decades and,
00:55:27
Speaker
All those people that were there were climbers. I think every great climber, and at least in the United States, worked for you at some some point. Was that a conscious thing that you engineered after that came out of your experience with with working starting with Chouinard?
00:55:45
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And I just want to say that you're absolutely right about the Chouinards. And because it was the first real business I ever worked at, to me, what was among so many things that were so compelling about it were just those attributes that there wasn't a bifurcation between business.
00:56:04
Speaker
your workday, your friends, your social life, your your passions. It was all one. It was seamless, right? And so the desire to follow that, that's what I knew in creating BD, but there's a lot more to the BD than just that, um was was just a very natural thing to do. And I should add that it was years later, I read that Warren Buffett quote that I thought captured this, what you just said so well from a business person, which is culture eats strategy for lunch every day.
00:56:43
Speaker
And that was something Ivan understood so early on in starting his businesses is that the culture, the human dynamics, how people get along and that you're ah team.
00:56:54
Speaker
oh Yeah, that's so true. And one of the things that I think that in my experience carries through is when you're in the mountains doing these things, i it's very vulnerable many times, right? Like, as you said, you have to, you have to, you have to speak up when you can't lead the pitch.
00:57:16
Speaker
You have to speak up when you don't feel well, you have to ask your partner how they're feeling. You maybe you have to step up and take the lead when you didn't really want to. um And there's a certain intimacy to that.
00:57:29
Speaker
And being able to that that translates very well to the, in my experience, the work environment to being able to say like, hey, ah this is going on for me, you know.
00:57:42
Speaker
so if I feel a little, I don't know, edgy today, then it's just because, it's not because I don't like your ah idea about, I don't know, the catalog. It's because maybe, you know, my dog's sick or whatever it is. and And that that seems to like reveal or reduce a lot of the friction for people.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yes, if you can be that open and not feel like there's been any retribution recrimination because of that, that's really healthy. Yeah. You talked a little bit about how, you know, this moment of when, you know, and this is, I think, unique to the time that you were climbing where we were transitioning away from like lot fixing the entire route to pure Alpine style ascents.
00:58:31
Speaker
And that was very common. even Even when I was younger, we used to fix the first two pitches and and so on. That was kind of a very common practice then. And, you know, and then you talked about that cutting the cutting that tether and and heading up on the route.
00:58:48
Speaker
Can you describe a similar experience that you had at Black Diamond that you that felt similar? First is
00:59:00
Speaker
An alpinism. As in business entrepreneurship, if it's not. um
00:59:10
Speaker
something like with a bunch of venture capital and whatnot, it puts you in situations of serious consequence. Both put you in situations of serious consequence.
00:59:22
Speaker
um And secondly, there is an incredible tension between the need to prepare, organize, strategize,
00:59:36
Speaker
um and the need to just cut loose and go for it. Or as Patton once said, know, the minute the the door of the landing craft opens on the beach and you're being fired upon, everything you know has just fallen by the wayside.
00:59:53
Speaker
And that's not quite true, but it's you you do everything you can to prepare and then you got to start being agile and improvisize and whatnot. It's what people have to realize is that
01:00:09
Speaker
The transition from Chernin equipment to Black Diamond was not quite as seamless as people think it is. i mean, what happened and to tell that story, you really have to understand that there was a big bang, or it's what I call the big bang. There was a big bang that hit America's outdoor industry in the latter part of the 1980s. And it also hit the sports um of climbing, backcountry skiing, mountaineering.
01:00:36
Speaker
And when I say the big bang, it was the confluence of
01:00:41
Speaker
several big social demographic and legal trends. One was the creation and birth of what we call tort law. And up until the mid-1980s, tort law, i.e.
01:00:52
Speaker
the ability to sue a landowner, whether it's the government or a private individual, for the fact that you got hurt on their property and you can claim attractive nuisance, that they didn't block you, they didn't warn you,
01:01:06
Speaker
um whatever. So you had the revolution toilet law and Sherrard equipment went at, I mean, many companies were being sued out of existence, football helmet manufacturers, playground manufacturers.
01:01:18
Speaker
um The list is is endless. And that's what we see all these warning light stickers on things. When it comes down to the, the outdoor industry, Sherrard equipment received in rapid succession, a series of very serious failure to warn lawsuits.
01:01:35
Speaker
They never claimed that the product failed, but they claimed that the product failed to perform in the situation it was being put to, that the user wasn't properly educated, that the user wasn't properly warned about the limitations of the product.
01:01:50
Speaker
And that's because up until that point in time, we all assumed that the person buying this gear or equipment would only be buying it because they had gone through the apprenticeships that you or I and everybody else up until that point in time had.
01:02:04
Speaker
And so as a result, insurance premiums went through the roof. Companies are receiving lawsuits and losing them that are causing them to file for bankruptcy. Concurrently, you've got land managers changing situations, beginning to ban things like climbing.
01:02:21
Speaker
um You have ski areas that if you remember nineteen eighty s Colorado or Utah, There's that your left ticket said, do not, if you ski out of bound, it is illegal to ski out of bounds of any area.
01:02:34
Speaker
And if you do, you'll lose your ticket. You will spend one night in jail and you will be fined $500. That was when $500 was probably like $5,000 now. There was no winter wild lands. The access fund was not even created at this point in time.
01:02:50
Speaker
There was no, I think, American whitewater. um These groups didn't exist. And there wasn't even an OIA this point. I mean, the the industry hadn't even organized a trade group at this point in time.
01:03:04
Speaker
And so this was a huge wake up call. And so 1989 was the year the Access Fund was formed, was being formed out of the American Alpine Club. Some of these other groups came later. But as a result of all this, and I should add, there's one other thing that was going on here.
01:03:20
Speaker
that is parallel to but discrete from. So, you know, if you want to put the birth date of Black Diamond legally, its birth, its creation, its founding, 1989, that is correct.
01:03:36
Speaker
But if you want to talk about when it was it really founded, when was the ethos and the values in the beginning of it it was 1982 when i was hired. because Chinard equipment had been going backwards for a couple of years, no catalog, no new products.
01:03:51
Speaker
It was a becoming an also run. And I don't say that with any disrespect for Yvonne, He was just now focused on Patagonia and not climbing very actively anymore. I began to, I could start growing the company, I had permission then, OK, you could start hiring people.
01:04:07
Speaker
And so who was it I want to hire? I wanted to hire my friends, meaning climbers, people that I had climbed with or knew of, would interview and talk through and start building a community of climbers because that we didn't really exist over at Patagonia so much anymore.
01:04:22
Speaker
um and And so that started there. um And it was also a realization that we had to really move forward with the sport.
01:04:35
Speaker
To me, and those who I was hiring, the future, the golden years, because i was 27 when Yvonne hired me. The golden years were still at the windshield.
01:04:46
Speaker
They weren't in the rearview mirror. And at the moment, a little bit for Yvonne, with all due respect, The golden years were a little bit more in the rearview mirror. And he had a high set of ethos.
01:04:59
Speaker
His values and such were that didn't really believe in sticky rubber, bolts, chalk, camming devices at the time. And he moved forward with it over time.
01:05:12
Speaker
But a lot of what was starting to happen in the mid-'80s and late-'80s, as sport climbing took place. And if you certainly remember those debates, the hang dogging and the great debate that the Alpine Club had, we all went to Yvonne, Melinda, myself, people from Chouinard.
01:05:30
Speaker
um But as a result, and Yvonne gave me and the people I hired and my marketing director I hired, Mariah Cranor, was absolutely brilliant. Um, it capturing these ideas that I had and had a manifest. I did the first couple of catalogs and then I hired her.
01:05:49
Speaker
Um, but as a result of this, it was also something that was not overly pal palatable for Yvonne. He wasn't happy with it because as he said, gosh, this company is moving in a direction visually image wise, gear wise, product wise, ethic wise, embracing sport climbing.
01:06:09
Speaker
the clothing, this gear, I don't really believe in it. And so it's challenging for me as Yvonne Chouinard, it's my name on this company. So this was a ah source of great strife between myself, mariah me and Mariah with Yvonne, which I respected and knew it was a real problem.
01:06:30
Speaker
But then you add to this, what I call the big bang that hit the industry, all the challenges, and then the lawsuits hitting. And suddenly our insurance premiums went through the roof beyond what this company could afford. and And it also was the fact that Chinon Equipment was part of this corporation of Patagonia now, which was become a much, much bigger company.
01:06:48
Speaker
um And Lost Arrow, the Great Pacific Islander, was now the mail order and retail operation was much, much bigger. And it was clear to any good attorney that somebody might be able to pierce the corporate veil and attack Patagonia, let alone little share on equipment now, which I had grown into to $5 million dollars in revenue.
01:07:08
Speaker
And I think was a leading company for its period and once again. um But between that, Yvonne's sort of own beliefs about where the sport was and what I was doing with Mariah too capture that leadership position.
01:07:27
Speaker
And then, gosh, the risk and then the lawsuits. And now it was not profitable because of the size of the insurance premiums. He had it and he finally decided in the spring or late, early, early spring or the end of the winter. it was early 1982. He filed it for bankruptcy.
01:07:46
Speaker
he filed it for bankruptcy And they said, we got to, it's over. It's not worth it anymore. And he said, I want you to put together a plan to liquidate the assets as quickly as possible with the least cost to the company.
01:08:02
Speaker
But you can spend a couple of weeks first trying to find a buyer. If you can find a buyer, otherwise we'll just liquidate it as quickly as possible. So I got working on that, met with a few different people and entities and people looked at it and laughed. Why would anybody want to buy this?
01:08:18
Speaker
This thing is losing money. You can't get insurance for it. um There's all these lawsuits. There's no future here. And I thought about it and had an epiphany and realized,
01:08:33
Speaker
wait a minute here.
01:08:37
Speaker
I'm not about to just surrender and and make a mockery of my last, what was eight years worth of effort in rebuilding this company into the leading climbing equipment company again.
01:08:50
Speaker
I hired so many of my community at this company. Now we have a good number of people. The community is depending on us and what we're doing as far as innovative gear, the catalog,
01:09:03
Speaker
And I said, I don't want to make a, um I don't want the legacy of that I and in my generation have been raised on of Sharnard Equipment to go to nothing.
01:09:15
Speaker
More importantly, if this company disappears, who, what is going to champion the issues of great importance to fellow community of mountain sports and theaters, climbers, alpinists, and off-piste skiers. To me, it was, this wasn't about looking at a group of consumer potential consumers and saying, what can we sell to these people?
01:09:38
Speaker
It was looking at it my community and saying, what needs do they have? What services do they need to have provided? And we're going to provide them.
01:09:50
Speaker
And because this business would be created to champion the issues of great importance to a fellow community of technical mountain sports enthusiasts, and then champion the issues of great importance, which I defined as good, safe, innovative, high performance gear.
01:10:09
Speaker
It was to continue to affirm and and celebrate your decision to be a climber and to champion the access to and preservation of the mountain canyon crag environment that we also love and our sports and activities are absolutely dependent upon.
01:10:28
Speaker
So that was the vision. And I shared that with employees and I just said to them, look, I don't have any money, very little. I'm not paid that much. You guys, I know don't have a lot of money, but don't leave. right And but stay, come on guys, stay.
01:10:46
Speaker
i want to start a new business. It's going to take some time. I'll figure it out. Give me some time to do this. And so one, Ms. Chouinard's agreed to give me some time. i said three months.
01:10:58
Speaker
It turned out to be about eight months of hell. I finally found a commercial finance company. who agreed to do the deal LA at interest rate of 12 and a half or 13% with a point to originate.
01:11:19
Speaker
And I said, no, but not giving it a personal guarantee. I said, I'm not even going to be a 10% owner. I have 38 employees who will be the owners. I have a dozen outside people who are going to be owners.
01:11:33
Speaker
um not giving I can't give it a personal guarantee. So the last night in November, early November, i go down LA to a sign all the papers. And these guys at the commercial finance company with their gold chains hanging around their neck with their open shirts say, sign all the papers and then go, oh yeah, forgot two things.
01:11:54
Speaker
The success fee, it's a point, a point of what you're borrowing. And I said, oh, no, we got it. It's the origination fee. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's the origination fee. This is success fee for the team here. It's a split.
01:12:10
Speaker
i mean You got to be kidding me. There's no deal if you don't sign that. So I sign it. And then they go, oh, yeah. one other thing, know, we were really torn over this personal guarantee. We got to have it.
01:12:23
Speaker
I said, you got to be fucking kidding me. And they said, no, we got to have it. And at that point, you know, was so much at stake and I thought about it and thought about all the commitments people made. I realized what the hell, I mean, and still young.
01:12:38
Speaker
don't have that much equity in my house. I had talked this through with my wife and she was willing, as I said, if we have to just leave town in my old Volkswagen, we we still can start over. Right. And she goes, we could.
01:12:52
Speaker
So I signed it. Wow. But talk about, i mean, just, like Mount Hunter, when you, we didn't talk about it fully, but that moment where you realize ah day three, you can't go down anymore.
01:13:05
Speaker
The only way to live, to do the route and live is up upward bound. And my attitude at that point was the only way to not give up everything I have, including my house.
01:13:18
Speaker
And to realize this vision with all the employees is move forward and succeed. How did you, bring people along for that? like it's It's a very good question.
01:13:32
Speaker
know, I think what is so crucial is if you're ah starting something, are you doing it because you're trying to make make money? Or, which is not very compelling to anybody unless it's a bunch of people and tech, like, let's see how quickly we can do this and go public and get the hell out and make a buck.
01:13:53
Speaker
You know, that's that's not a That's not very compelling. And to me, as I shared, creating Black Diamond wasn't about getting rich. i mean, creating Black Diamond was my thinking was if we could get to 5 million and break even and make a difference, right? It was make a difference for a fellow community of users through gear,
01:14:18
Speaker
champion the issues of great importance, access, preservation, affirmation, celebration of your this success. And this was the why are we doing this? This is why we're doing it This is why we're going to sacrifice. This is why we're going to take risk.
01:14:33
Speaker
So to me, the time I put in was on the vision. Why are we doing this? vision, mission, and what I call the 10 commitments of this company, which the style in which we accomplish this goal is every bit as important as what we accomplish.
01:14:50
Speaker
And what I mean by that, it was like, what the 10 commitments, we will share the success of the company with all employees. We will be a truly global business. And there's a reason behind each one of these things.
01:15:05
Speaker
We will be a fierce, but highly ethical competitor. um we we will champion access to and preservation of mountain canyon crag environments, things like that.
01:15:15
Speaker
And it was putting that together and sharing that with everybody and go, this ah if this is if this has resonance to you, then I ask you join. And will, myself and the management team will figure out the other components.
01:15:30
Speaker
And depending on who the people on the team had to be involved in more and more, and then some aspects when nobody else had to be involved in me because i think the role role of a leader is not to shield people from the overall risk factors the concepts, but they do need to shield from every, from some of this.
01:15:55
Speaker
And I didn't want to hide,
01:16:00
Speaker
trying to say this Yes, I was not fully transparent with everything But I did not, when people put their money in, before i could access that money, put into a um escrow account until we had everything there and then we're ready to push the button, sign the papers, doors open.
01:16:22
Speaker
and i I had everybody aware of what we had to do to succeed. I we don't have cashflow to go more than two weeks in the negative. And day one, this is how we're gonna do it.
01:16:34
Speaker
And this is where your salaries are gonna be. So I explained to people, the minute that we were putting product into work that day, it's like, figure you're on a 50 mile run across the desert and you got one liter water.
01:16:48
Speaker
make it last and get across that desert. Cause when that leader's gone, you're going to be dead. And so, cause we can't, we can't have more than this amount of money in there. So everybody learned basic accounting.
01:16:59
Speaker
And that was not my idea. That was Jack Stack's idea. The great game of business. Make sure that people understand the dynamics of your business and what it's going to take to be successful and stay in business. So they don't lose their job and they don't lose their money.
01:17:12
Speaker
yeah It was, it was tiered is what they knew, but the most important part for them to know was There was risk. And this this is why we're all doing this. And we're in it together as a team.
01:17:24
Speaker
I don't get anything better than you do. And i'm with you here 100% of the way. so i mean, you were you're always there in the in the office, always working. And that leads me to a question I want to ask you. You know, i don't know if you know this, but, you know,
01:17:42
Speaker
Well, probably you do. Your work ethic was legendary. At what point did you and perhaps Mariah and others realize that sheer force of effort alone couldn't scale Black Diamond to fulfill it the goals that you had set out for it? or
01:18:03
Speaker
i i think I knew that the moment I started. Yeah. I think Mariah knew that too, that it's
01:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, I would call it, I mean, I think I recognize that Black Diamond was going to be the ultimate enchantment, the climb without end, that we would never arrive. You know, my vision for the company, separate from the mission and separate from the why was to be one with the sports we serve, absolutely indistinguishable from it, that we were going to continue to be, or to be an integral part of the community, that when you thought of climbing, alpinism and backcountry skiing,
01:18:43
Speaker
you thought black diamond. And when you said black diamond, you're obviously talking about climbing, alpinism, and off-piece skiing. And that we would never arrive at that, we'd never arrive anywhere.
01:18:57
Speaker
It would be a process of constant climbing and it would take huge efforts. And at the moment one was tired of that huge effort was the moment it was time for you to leave.
01:19:10
Speaker
um I said, partnerships don't work. I know that for a fact and that this is not going to be a partnership. This is going to be a company, a corporation. And we'll have a board of directors made up of investors and you, but you serve at my pleasure and I will serve at the pleasure of the board. You will be both below me and you'll be part of the group above me.
01:19:35
Speaker
But that way, if I determine...
01:19:41
Speaker
it's time for you to go, i can make that decision. And likewise, when the board determines this company is no longer moving forward in the right way, they can determine that and have me leave.
01:19:53
Speaker
And bring that up because to your point, I knew it was gonna take big effort. And i think in this in the roles, especially the senior team, you gotta give it everything.
01:20:05
Speaker
I think the same thing about, you know when I was climbing full-time, i I had no balance in my life. I was only focused on that. And now at this phase of my life, I'm only focused on what I'm doing now. And, you know, I think that there is ah myth about, you know, being able to do three or four things at a time, and at one time period in your life well.
01:20:33
Speaker
And for me, but doesn't, doesn't work. Yeah, i mean, to your point, just to reinforce that, back in that period around Hunter, I came back to New York at some point for week. I invited Christmas or something.
01:20:50
Speaker
And just between where I was focused on planning a trip and training, my brother said to me at some point, we were pretty close, and we he talked frankly, he was there and he goes, you know, this climbing thing has turned you into such a fucking asshole to the family.
01:21:05
Speaker
i mean, you... Because, you know, you're here for the hot holidays and all you're focused on is not the family, but your stuff. And i it it stopped me in my tracks and I said, hmm, I don't mean to be.
01:21:19
Speaker
it is this is the This is my life and I don't mean to be this way. I guess it's who I am, but I will try to do better right now since I'm here. And yes, starting the company, i mean, even when I got to Charnard, it wasn't initially, but as I saw what the opportunities were and what that company could become, it rapidly, within a few years, started to become a monomaniacal part of my life.
01:21:42
Speaker
And i think, you know, if you ask my three kids and my wife, how many kids did I have? They'll tell you four, and without question, Black Diamond was the favorite child.
01:21:54
Speaker
And it's true. you know, it's just, it was, it was, and I love my kids and they know that. So much about alpinism in business is about making really hard decisions with incomplete information. And in climbing, we talk about having intuition, having a sense of things, you know, those good old, should I go up or down signals that we share with our partners.
01:22:19
Speaker
In Running Black Diamond, you have similar intuition or is Is it all analytics for you? No, no, it's very much intuition. um Because
01:22:34
Speaker
is is I shared, you're creating Black Diamond was such a quixotic dream. And many people just said, you can't do it. I mean, in this community, you guys have no money.
01:22:47
Speaker
you know Some of the banks I went looked at the thing and just said, you know i can deal I can understand getting behind a deal with warts, but son, this is the artichoke of warts. Every time you peel back a layer, you get a bigger and bigger wart.
01:23:02
Speaker
There's nothing here that's worthwhile. And so, but you have to go with there, this idea that, no, I, my intuition tells me this is doable. I just feel it and know it can be done. It's just figuring it out and we're going to do it.
01:23:18
Speaker
um And then, you know, in caught and and In big hard climbs, you know, you often come across, as you know better than i some challenge of some sort of route finding, of technical climbing or some mixed thing. Your first thought thought is like, this is impossible.
01:23:41
Speaker
And then you look at it a moment and go, no, this is impossible. This is, I just need to figure this out. And I'm gonna turn the impossible into the possible. or to say differently, yeah that happened in Hunter.
01:23:55
Speaker
And when I got to Black Diamond, I'll just have to say both in start trying to start it, but then after the doors opened, there was three what you'd call existential moments that looked like, and it's game over, you know disaster hits.
Transforming Disasters into Opportunities
01:24:13
Speaker
And each time we were able to metamorphose that disaster, that existential moment to be taken down into a moment of absolute opportunity that actually made us much, much stronger and better because we flipped You know, sort my cliche BD after the first year was like, you know what?
01:24:37
Speaker
Disasters are nothing but situate opportunities and drag. We just have to figure out where the opportunity is. And we did that so many times that those disasters made us so much stronger. And I think like in climbing,
01:24:49
Speaker
Every time you you are challenged to your very limit, you come out of that and go, you know that was the best climb of my life. I made that, I became a better climber because of that. And that's why I'm climbing is to discover what I'm capable of and what I wanna do and to get to that edge and just feel so fucking alive.
01:25:10
Speaker
And and business in in in so that's, I know I'm digressing from your point about intuition, But it's to look at something and go, know, they use another cliche is I think we, I initially in my team grew with me to look at things that aren't and instead of saying, how come looking at things that aren't and saying, why not?
01:25:35
Speaker
Okay, there was no like business like Black Diamond that was committed to this being a public service, so to speak, but was a for profit business that we're going to champion this issues.
01:25:46
Speaker
um And in my attitude before anybody talked about mission-driven companies was not that, hey, if we do good as a business, we can do, if we do well as a business, we can do good for the community. My attitude from the day one was like, look, guys, if we do good for the community, we will will be rewarded by doing well as a business.
01:26:09
Speaker
And that's that's intuition, right? Sometimes the
Relocating to Salt Lake for Community and Lifestyle
01:26:12
Speaker
people you hire is intuition. The decision to go to move to Salt Lake when no other business was here. And everybody I said, we're moving to Salt Lake looked at me and go, it's no outdoor business is there.
01:26:24
Speaker
That place, you know, i moved to Salt Lake. Yeah. at that time, Salt Lake had a very rough reputation as being quite industrial and it was not. And now the it's the center of the outdoor industry and in the US. There wasn't one outdoor company here and people, you know businesses do better when there's an ecosystem of other like-minded companies.
01:26:46
Speaker
And even, you know, the climate community, when I told Johnny Woodward, Johnny was Mariah's husband and Mariah like, Hey, you know, I, I'm, seriously, I think this Salt Lake City area is actually pretty good.
01:26:59
Speaker
And the question, and I explained why, and Johnny, but there's no climbing. And I said, Johnny, i know you're getting into sport climbing, but there's AF. And Johnny looked at and goes, that pile of choss.
01:27:14
Speaker
And, you know, that people don't realize how much this, how This place both as a place to live and reside, to all have businesses that was transformed to for the outdoor industry, in which I, all humility aside, would take full credit for because I worked that so hard because I realized that was important for our brand to be associated with the place. And I wanted to hire only climbers and skiers.
01:27:38
Speaker
So I saw place this place as a place that they could afford, that they would love, and that we wouldn't have to bifurcate our lives. You know, in a place like Ventura, You have to make a decision every day. Do i stick around and work?
01:27:51
Speaker
Do I spend the weekend with my family, if they're not climbers or my kids? Or do I get to climb? And in Salt Lake, I saw Innsbruck. It was like, hey, and we can all do this. We can do a dawn patrol and be at work at eight.
01:28:05
Speaker
We can do something after work and be home with our family at 7 p.m. We can be out Saturday morning and be back with the kids in the afternoon. And this would be part of our lives, our community, our friendships. And I saw this with the...
01:28:18
Speaker
in businesses in Italy and in Europe too, this integration of community, life, activities, friendships.
Team Collaboration and Personal Vision
01:28:26
Speaker
We did strategic planning every year and I wouldn't bring all employees into the strategic planning, but I would bring a huge amount in every year for the beginnings to talk about it, review ourselves.
01:28:38
Speaker
And I'd always create a a a report card and say, how are doing? And hold up the mission statement, the vision statement, the 10 commitments. Are we being true to these? And then those were posted all over and any strategic plan, actions, you could look at that and go, are we being true to that?
01:28:55
Speaker
Are we living those things versus you know companies that bring some consultant in for a week, do all that, write all that shit. And then they'd file it away in a file cabinet, never to be looked at again until somebody asked for it and they'd dig it out and I think it's here.
01:29:12
Speaker
You sound exactly like Yvonne Chouinard when you say that. Which is the highest form of compliment. Thank you. i do take aside. Good. Good.
01:29:25
Speaker
If you could sit across from your younger self camp, you know, in El Cap Meadow or the Patagonia offices in 1982, what would you, what would you tell him about, you know, about self-worth, about your identity, about career, about climbing, about life?
01:29:46
Speaker
I think the advice I would give to people as I look at how we've all done, we've all done great and have had wonderful, joyous lives is that be true to yourself, believe in yourself, follow your vision and and more exotic it is. That's fine.
01:30:05
Speaker
Understand that there isn't magic that is out there and that But if you have something, every human being is if it is at the right place at the right time.
01:30:18
Speaker
They just either don't know it or they don't seize it. So be aware and when know it, follow your heart. And when an opportunity comes to be aware enough to take advantage of it. And that for example, for me, that was when Yvonne,
01:30:35
Speaker
When Chris sent me that letter, last letter you're getting from me. It's like, that's it. I got it. And then you have to seize it. And so many opportunities come.
01:30:45
Speaker
Like the opportunity to start Black Diamond came out of a disaster, right? It talked about turning disaster into opportunity. liquidates these assets. don't have job. What are going What are we going to do?
01:30:57
Speaker
um It's like, no. And what's my community going to do This is a wonderful opportunity. But you got to seize it. And I should say that moment. I just had a kid born. ah yeah My third kid was just born at that time. It's so like, I mean, the shit that was going on in my life at that time is like, this is not the time to leverage everything and try to start something.
01:31:19
Speaker
But my heart said it is, right? And it was being aware enough and having the support of people around you that are going to at least sign off on it or support you.
01:31:31
Speaker
So it's be true to yourself, know who you are, don't capitulate to others just because, but be aware enough of what you what you're looking for so when it comes, you can really seize it and opportunities don't come at great times.
01:31:51
Speaker
And then you have to apply yourself 100%. Right. i mean, you have to apply yourself. I was really drawn having known a lot of your story. I was really drawn to bringing you on here because ah I, first of all, you know, you and there's,
01:32:11
Speaker
Your generation, like your generation clients, I sort of think of, the you know, the Chouinards as being, you know, one or two generations ahead of you. I just look up to you guys and as a group and um and you really inspire me to try to find, seize those opportunities that I have at this time and in my life and and say, okay, those guys did it.
Entrepreneurship and Personal Growth
01:32:31
Speaker
They figured it out.
01:32:32
Speaker
I don't see the whole picture yet, but ideas aren't born fully formed. I know that that's how they did it. That's the lesson of, Patagonia is a lesson of black time so many others. And, you know, but just I just have to follow my intuition and and try to put it together and and look at this in a big enough time scale that it actually can work. It's not a matter of of months. And, you know, you said it so beautifully when you were talking about
01:33:05
Speaker
the feeling you have after having done a great climb that pushed you to your limits and made you feel alive and and expanded who you are, expanded who you knew yourself to be. And if you look back at, you know, the early days of transitioning Chouinard equipment into Black Diamond, you said yourself earlier, it was eight months of hell, but that eight months of hell, just like those 13 and a half days on Mount Hunter change you. Right. And that's, that's the same. it's the same.
01:33:41
Speaker
I just heard this over and over again in your story, the story of in applying yourself and having a vision, having, pulling all these pieces together, which is very difficult to see and do.
01:33:53
Speaker
um,
01:33:56
Speaker
coming out someone better and someone new and someone expanded. And now you're doing incredible work in in other areas with conservation. And we didn't even, but we'll have to we'll have to save that for another conversation another day.
01:34:13
Speaker
But i I just think that there's so many threads here that you pull together that inspire me and and the story will truly inspire the the community when they get a chance to listen to it.
01:34:25
Speaker
Thank you, Steve. That's really beautifully well summarized and I really appreciate it. i just want to add one element to what you said, which is both in creating, both is for me as a climber and in getting to Chouinard and trying to reinvigorate Chouinard and creating Black Diamond,
01:34:45
Speaker
There was never, a it didn't begin with like, as I shared with BD, we're going to be a great company. It's just like, we just need to make a difference if it's 5 million. But you go through these steps, both as a climber and in creating a business that at the end of and say five years, gathering everybody together and go, wow, look at what we've achieved.
01:35:08
Speaker
And now we can stand on what we've achieved and go, but look at all the other needs. look at all these things that we should be, we could do and the community needs us to do, and we should do.
01:35:19
Speaker
And you do that. And then three years later, if you get there, you, you, you, it's a constant rebirth. I always said like our strategic planning was three years of evolution, three to five years of evolution and a one year of revolution.
01:35:35
Speaker
And every, And there was these chapters where you just sort of look at what you've done and go, wow, if we want to keep this exciting and bold, we need to look at where we're at and go, wow, what are the needs? And if there's a recreation process goes on.
01:35:52
Speaker
And then when you're all done, you can look at back at it and go, Wow, you sort of connect the dots. All this led to this. And wow, there is something kind of special there that wasn't I didn't start there. But you look back at it and you can reflect upon it. That was really pretty cool. Yeah.
01:36:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You could never imagine being there in the beginning. But when you sort of go through step by step, you're there. Yeah, as often as you have, I'm sure, had that feeling at the top of a big route.
01:36:22
Speaker
You know, like, wow, look where we came from. i can't believe that we just climbed, you know, all the way up from the valley and here we are. Yeah, the the the yeah and you've done some amazing climbs. I guess that the similarities are so powerful. I like to call
Legacy and Community Impact
01:36:41
Speaker
it alpinism and entrepreneurship.
01:36:43
Speaker
the qualities, the humility needed, that everything about it, the approaches are so parallel and akin to one another. It's uncanny. Interesting.
01:36:54
Speaker
Yeah. I want to follow up with you ah on that. One last question, Peter. yeah How do you want to be remembered? I would like to be remembered as somebody who
01:37:09
Speaker
did his best to make a difference for our
01:37:14
Speaker
a community of technical outdoor enthusiasts and those who love the wireplaces was a good friend.
01:37:29
Speaker
Well, it's been a real pleasure to have you on and into be able to to talk to you have I've not known you well, but I've known you for a long time and always been a big admirer. And thank you so much for being here. So thanks, Peter. Well, thank you, Steve, for the opportunity. I mean that um it's a real honor. And i will now flip that on you and say, i have followed your career and just been slacker and in awe reading the accounts of your climb. So you're one of my heroes. So to do this with you is just such a treat.
01:38:06
Speaker
Great. ah Well, that was another chapter in my life now. I'm on the i'm on the the game of business chapter now and and trying to learn from learn from the grades here.
01:38:18
Speaker
So thanks for time. Thanks for that. A pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks so much, Peter.
01:38:37
Speaker
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01:38:54
Speaker
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01:39:08
Speaker
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