Mountains Tell the Truth

00:00:03:18 – 00:00:17:02
Steve
As a father, I’m often struck by the purity my children naturally possess. Small kids have an innocence and a beauty of spirit that we all seem to lose as we grow up. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. Is it pure self-love? A sense of belonging? Or is it an undeniable belief that they are special?

Of course, not every child starts from the same place and some face much grimmer beginnings and much harsher challenges. For some, innocence is lost much sooner than it is for others. I’m not certain exactly when or where, but one day I lost that belief that I was special. Talking to and observing friends, artists, climbers, and lots of other humans, I started to notice this theme seemed universal.

We all forget that we’re special. The mountains are what helped me remember. If we’re lucky, we all find the mountains that our lives are symbolic for some. But for me, they’re real rock and ice. Some find them, lose them, and then get called back later in life. Once I heard the mountains called me, I never left. Today you’ll hear from a great friend of mine and a living legend of climbing, and he will describe the moment that he not only lost his innocence, but found out that he was a killer.

The mountains helped him channel that self-knowledge from violence and revenge, and to scaling peaks from the Canadian Rockies to Mount Everest. Mountains tell us the truth. And the truth that I want to explore today is the idea that we all must embrace the innocent, self-assured belief that we are each special, just like each of us deserve to believe we were as children.

The mountains have repeatedly helped me relearn and remember this lesson that I’ve often forgotten that I am. That we all are important. So keep these questions in mind. When do you feel that you matter in the mountains, and when and how do you feel small? And what truths of the mountains whispered to you? Hold on to those questions because we will come back to them.

00:02:05:09 – 00:02:30:11
Steve
With Voice of the Mountains, I’m going to take you with me, and we’re going to explore a mountain range of ideas with the aim of building towards a philosophy of the mountains. We will take one idea at a time and explore each idea with a different guest. We are going to call on the most influential experience, and in many cases, older generation of uphill athletes to help us map the internal mental and emotional journey that we all take to the mountains.

And as with any mountain pursuit, we’re going to bring our powers of self-reflection, our humility, and our gratitude as we embrace the beauty and the struggle of the mountain experience.

00:02:41:03 – 00:02:42:00
Steve
But first, two admissions. My personal philosophy comes from five decades of living in the mountains, and I acknowledge that that comes with biases formed over that time. I’ll try to remember that, and I’m going to hope my guests will remind me if I forget the second admission is that this is an unscripted, live, creative act, and I know it may not hang all together.

In fact, it may not ever mean anything to anyone other than myself. But I’m okay with that because I trust that if I explore topics with the guests honestly and deeply, what we learn will resonate with the community. The mountain community is all of us, and collectively, we’re a massive group that not only spans the globe, spans economic differences, political differences, and ton of other differences that make us all human.

I want this community to find its voice and to bring our hard earned wisdom, literally cut from stone and ice to the rest of the world. For it’s not enough if we keep our voices to ourselves. I envision Voice of the Mountains as a collaborative pursuit, not just for my guests and me, but for everyone who listens and shares this conversation with their friends, relatives, and coworkers.

00:03:50:18 – 00:04:23:14
Steve
This is our community and our conversation, and your participation is vital. I want this podcast to be one that if it existed when I was in my 20s, living in the back of a 1976 Mazda pickup, that I would have been drawn to it. And if it exists in my 80s, that I will be drawn to it. I will invite guests who know who have earned insight adventures, who have conquered challenges, accomplished goals, and turn back just short of the coveted summit because it was the right thing to do.

Above all, I want guests who have walked away from those experiences understanding better why we seek and how our journeys change us, and guests that have allowed themselves to be changed. I would have loved that when I was getting started in climbing, and hopefully I can provide it to many of you. Today I call myself an athlete, but I’m not an athlete because I compete.

00:04:45:03 – 00:05:09:03
Steve
I’m an athlete in the same way someone who practices yoga is a Yogi. I move, I reflect, and I try to evolve. Being an athlete gives me agency over my body, which gives me agency over my mind. I see what a lot of us do. Peace from not peace of mind, but peace from self-criticism, self doubt from the need to prove my worth. Peace from mind.

00:05:13:08 – 00:05:40:22
Steve
This is Voice of the Mountains. Today, I want each of you listeners to imagine yourself as an impoverished half native child of First Nations, mother of five, living in a dilapidated neighborhood of prefab housing, on the edge of a bustling boomtown in the cold and windy far northern plains of Alberta, Canada. You’re poor with a capital P, you fight most days, literally and figuratively.

00:05:40:24 – 00:06:07:12
Steve
You’re a dark skinned kid, a disposable and often delinquent boy. And the only positive male role model you see is your uncle that drives the milk truck. That was the childhood of our first guest today. Barry Blanchard is an alpinist, a mountain guide, a father, and my dear, dear friend. And he is certainly one of the purest alpine us and best humans I’ve ever known.

00:06:07:14 – 00:06:12:16
Steve
Welcome, Barry. Thank you for joining me today. I’m so grateful to you for being here.

00:06:12:18 – 00:06:21:19
Barry
Well, it’s, it’s a pleasure and fabulous to be here, Steve. Yeah. You feel it in my heart. So thanks for having met Barry.

00:06:21:20 – 00:06:39:24
Steve
This is the first episode of Voice of the Mountains, and I can’t help but feel it’s sort of a full circle moment for me to be here now, having this discussion with you and to be kicking off an adventure together with ideas. It only seems fitting and right.

00:06:40:01 – 00:07:00:00
Barry
Yeah. We’ve shared a lot of life and of course, a lot of experience and a lot of climbing and a lot of different boundary changes together. But, I think the most precious stuff in that circle is just the life that we’ve shared together.

00:07:00:06 – 00:07:27:03
Steve
So, you know, for me, I grew up in a small timber farming community, you know, in, in rural eastern Oregon. You know, I was there was a lot of kids who spent most of their time in ad class, and I sort of struggled to fit in. I was pretty intense, so super energetic. I was most definitely ADHD. my father had exposed me to to climbing, and I focused on what I found in climbing magazines.

00:07:27:03 – 00:07:56:23
Steve
I kind of, you know, I was into all kinds of sports, but I something about climbing just grabbed my heart. But I didn’t have any direct contact with climbing, per se. I started a little bit of climbing in the way so many of us do as, as, as youngsters, you know, kind of trial and error methods. But, one thing I found, was a photo of you, and I believe it was a rock and ice magazine, and I can still picture this image.

00:07:56:23 – 00:08:20:02
Steve
And you were. You were climbing alone. You were climbing solo up and kind of across this solid blue and white wall of ice somewhere in Canada. I think it might have been, I inquired Clark Dove. Is that how you pronounce the route? I remember the picture. Your your your tools are just buried in the ice. I think you were climbing on Stu by tools.

00:08:20:02 – 00:08:42:19
Steve
I remember that, and your head was kind of turned down to the camera, and you’re kind of looking at your feet, and you had this thick, long, black hair tied back with this pink bandana, and one foot was planted in the ice, and you had red foot fangs on, which were just these sort of mean, cool spiked rails with this blood red base plate that bolted it all together.

00:08:42:21 – 00:09:05:11
Steve
You wore plastic boots, of course, because of the time it was, and your other foot was kind of back mid swing and you’re just sort of balanced there. One toe, one front point, just cool, relaxed, focused. And I used to just stare at that picture. Your dark face, your dark eyes staring, you studying that that moment. And I would wonder how you did it.

00:09:05:11 – 00:09:22:03
Steve
How you were just some so composed in a moment where presumably you could be killed by a single mistake or miscalculation. Do you remember that photo? And can you tell me the story? I’ve never heard the story of how that image came to be.

00:09:22:05 – 00:10:07:24
Barry
Well, yeah, it’s, it’s actually a photo that was taken, by, Pat Murrell. Okay. Second Canadian to climb Mount Everest a day after two days after the race to the first Canadian to set of Mount Everest. And that was back in 82. So that photo was taken in 90 or 91. And it was a film project that, Pat dye had, put together called Spirit Dancer, which, was largely by a lot of me, soloing ice around the Rockies and then, incorporated, my main indigenous heritage into the footage of the film.

00:10:08:01 – 00:10:20:05
Barry
So that picture was, from one of our, episodes. out in the mountains in that, project, probably Louise Falls.

00:10:20:22 – 00:10:21:20
Steve
Could be.

00:10:21:22 – 00:10:44:06
Barry
Yeah. And you know, the stuff that I was, wearing at the time the picture was taken was in all of the locations. You know, we had the the consistency with all of that stuff. So definitely the foot fades and the plastic boots and the Stu buys, one of which said was, had white marking hate and the other one had love.

00:10:44:08 – 00:10:46:16
Barry
Love and love and fear. Love and fear.

00:10:46:18 – 00:10:48:11
Barry
Those are the ones on it.

00:10:49:17 – 00:10:52:04
Steve
You’d painted that on the tools or drawn.

00:10:52:04 – 00:11:13:24
Barry
Yeah, I painted, I think I had a dark black was the painting part. And then, the labeling of, love and fear were with, just white, like, electricians tape cut into, you know, things to make. I might have painted them, too. It’s been a while. I have to look back at my old film.

00:11:14:07 – 00:11:47:21
Barry
Try to remember, but, I think that was the thing. And, you know, Pat, being a great photographer who captured other images of us ice climbing around that time, even once, like with Jojo, the when we went into the first ascent of the sliver and burning in water, drowning at flame, which were ice clouds that we did, but cat patches, captured some marvelous images and, in the, Spirit dancer project.

00:11:47:23 – 00:11:58:23
Barry
I tried to solo, white matte falls and, got halfway up, and it was just too hard, serious and scary. So I climbed down. And in retrospect, it was.

00:11:58:23 – 00:11:59:19
Barry
Probably.

00:11:59:19 – 00:12:08:05
Barry
Harder climbing down. That would have been continuing up. But yeah. Yeah, you got, you got to draw, you know, boundaries and limits.

00:12:08:07 – 00:12:09:18
Barry
So yeah.

00:12:09:18 – 00:12:37:08
Barry
And in that, point in time and still to this point in time and, you know, as you, learned yourself, you know, you get to be such a good carpenter with ice like a carpenter, you know, the various forms and it’s we know it’s dozens, dozens and dozens of forms of ice that can be presented for us to use our tools on.

00:12:37:10 – 00:13:09:17
Barry
And we just know how much to stress and where to stress the ice structure that we’re climbing. And we become, quite, adapted at the risk levels. And when we know, you know, we’re in trouble and when we’re in a lot. And not that we ever relax, but when we don’t have to worry about falling and, you know, perishing.

00:13:09:19 – 00:13:30:04
Barry
and the mountain could always do that to us. But those are those kind of events. They do happen. But in the lifetime of a mountain, you know, the slivers of those events, they happen. And if we’re in the way, they can be, catastrophic for us in life in.

00:13:30:06 – 00:13:30:22
Steve
Absolutely.

00:13:30:22 – 00:13:48:17
Barry
And yeah, so much of the time, you know, that isn’t the case. you know, we get to know the ice so well that in that picture, I was probably very calm and very relaxed, and I had wrist loops on, so I wasn’t over gripping my tools.

00:13:48:23 – 00:13:50:13
Steve
Yeah. Of course.

00:13:50:15 – 00:13:53:09
Barry
Yeah. Foot fangs worked amazingly well.

00:13:53:15 – 00:13:54:21
Steve
They were great crampons.

00:13:57:00 – 00:14:00:14
Barry
I don’t know if we’ve improved on the front point of the foot thing for.

00:14:00:14 – 00:14:02:11
Steve
Pure ice climbing. Probably not.

00:14:03:03 – 00:14:05:18
Barry
Masterful, masterful thing.

00:14:05:20 – 00:14:33:12
Steve
It’s interesting that you talk about this, film spirit dancer. I’d. I’d love to take a copy of that up, because I would say that in the last two years, there has been a lot more as there should be, you know, focus on, you know, people from different backgrounds and different races that come into climbing, which is mostly a white man’s sport as a as we can.

00:14:33:12 – 00:15:00:07
Steve
We could say, I think both mostly a white persons and both mostly a man’s sport historically, especially ice climbing and winter climbing. And, you know, this would have been, like you said, early 90s and you were making a film that it was integrating your heritage as a, as a metaphor. And, you know, that’s that seems like something that people might be be trying to do now.

00:15:00:09 – 00:15:21:11
Steve
But you were already telling that story. And, you know, it’s always been an aspect of you that I always found fascinating having kind of grown up in a pretty Leave It to Beaver life, I was always a little bit kind of struggled, frankly, to imagine what it must have been like for you as a kid. You know, I’ve heard a lot of stories from you.

00:15:21:11 – 00:15:38:08
Steve
We don’t have to to go into all of them now. But I mean, it was, you know, it was tough. I mean, you know, first of all, tell us what Mitty is and what a little bit about what it was like for you as a young kid in Calgary.

00:15:38:10 – 00:15:39:21
Barry
Yeah. being.

00:15:39:21 – 00:15:41:08
Barry
Marty is.

00:15:41:08 – 00:16:16:02
Barry
A recognized, culture in Canada, separate from, what you could call Canadian culture and then, indigenous culture. So, you know, a lot of, mighty history which the culture has been around for pushing 300 years. We used to be buffalo hunters and, largely, of, the, the, union of usually Scottish or French fur traders with indigenous women.

00:16:16:04 – 00:16:58:16
Barry
And the culture was born out of that. And, we’re a distinct, culture in Canada. It was very common in the early part of the last century and into the 70s to call Marty half breeds. That’s what we were. That’s what we refer to and even put on birth records and, and death records in the Canadian census system as half breeds and yeah, I experienced, prejudice growing up, not as much in Alberta because the mighty influence in Alberta is less than it is in Saskatchewan and less yet than it is in Manitoba.

00:16:58:16 – 00:17:37:07
Barry
The second part of that is the poverty. You know, my mom, you know, had five different kids by three different fathers and, yeah, basically we were raised on welfare. So we were, you know, we were really, really poor. And that would be, you know, put against me, in, Canadian, you know, just go to school sometimes because I just, by a fault of geography, ended up being going to school with kids who were in Scarborough.

00:17:37:07 – 00:17:54:06
Barry
But usually the higher you go, the wealthier people get on the planet. The lower you go, the poorer people get on the planet. There is some inversion about that in certain places, like Bolivia. Yeah. It’s weird. The rich people live down low and the poor people live up high.

00:17:54:08 – 00:18:00:04
Barry
yeah. So that, made me.

00:18:00:06 – 00:18:24:12
Barry
You know, try to be, the white part of my being and be away from the native part of my being. And as matey, we have a foot in both worlds. for half breeds, we’re mixed blood. That’s what made me to be. To mix blood. And. Yeah, I was trying to be like the blue eyed, white skin guy.

00:18:24:12 – 00:19:14:09
Barry
And at a certain point, after leaving school and, you know, getting into the mountains, I suddenly very much switched to my indigenous side and started to really be proud of and stand up for and some of the prejudice and would be like with my wife at the time being, you know, basically of Scottish descent and very blond, very blue eyed, very pale, and be this dark skinned boy with her, obviously man as her husband in a shop in Saskatchewan where I could just feel the prejudice and, you know, just saying to her, we don’t need to be here, honey, let’s get out of here.

00:19:17:06 – 00:19:33:14
Barry
Take you. That’s yours. You keep that. It’s not coming on here. that doesn’t work anymore. That’s shame. Great. You have it. Whatever. But you’re not putting it on my head. So. Mark Twain.

00:19:33:16 – 00:19:37:09
Barry
Huckleberry Finn.

00:19:37:11 – 00:20:03:04
Steve
And you know if how do we connect that that upbringing I mean your for me besides being a friend and all the other things we have in common, you’re, you’re an alpinist and a mountain guide and you know, you have had a very long career. You’ve been climbing hard since a quite young age and you’ve climbed many of the hardest mountains in the world.

00:20:03:06 – 00:20:28:07
Steve
During a time when most of these mountains were effectively empty of people, and they really didn’t even hold much in the way of of human history, because they have, you know, you you have climbed a tremendous number of, of new routes, especially in your home mountains and the Canadian Rockies. And, you know, you got really high on Everest in 1986.

00:20:28:09 – 00:20:51:11
Steve
Yeah, this is for me, like the like if I have to make, a parallel distinction, it would be, you know, when when Peter and Reinhold climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1978, that, for me was sort of the beginning of the enlightenment, if you will, of Himalayan climbing. And, you know, you’re right in there.

00:20:51:11 – 00:21:12:21
Steve
And like, just a few years later, getting really high up, on, on Everest without supplemental oxygen and, you know, it, it just a few years earlier, people had been doctors, had been telling Peter and Reinhold that they would come back down from the summit of Everest, complete vegetables, and they wouldn’t be able to talk. They wouldn’t remember their own names.

00:21:12:21 – 00:21:21:21
Steve
They wouldn’t recognize their families. And so, you know, you guys were doing something that was really on the edge of what.

00:21:22:09 – 00:21:38:06
Steve
Consensus human viewpoint of, of possible was, you know, you and and your very dear friend and my friend as well, Kevin Doyle climbed Denali Casino Ridge in what year was that? 80.

00:21:38:08 – 00:21:40:10
Barry
1982, 82?

00:21:40:11 – 00:22:03:09
Steve
Okay. That’s what was going to be my guess. Like, you know, at that time there were no weather forecasts. The landing strip wasn’t even where the landing strip is now. there was the mountain. There’s a, you know, maybe maybe that route got climbed once every five, six, seven, I don’t know, ten years. It didn’t get climbed often.

00:22:03:11 – 00:22:30:24
Steve
And Denali itself probably only got climbed to a handful of times a year back at that time. And, you know, there was no assistance, no rescue, nothing. So, you know, if you think back for beef, how do we connect this many kids, you know, and this, this dual heritage that you had to these accomplishments like what is the connection?

00:22:30:24 – 00:22:48:08
Steve
Is it something to do. Like I think coming into this, I wanted to try to connect like the fighter in you. But, you know, I feel like this part of your identity is something that is is I don’t quite understand. How do you connect that?

00:22:48:10 – 00:23:06:22
Barry
I am a fighter and, I think, in, my own, I don’t know, common sense or something that I’ve, you know, one of the physical fights I got into an as adult. I got a knife. I have a knife wound.

00:23:07:00 – 00:23:09:03
Barry
Up like.

00:23:09:05 – 00:23:43:20
Barry
This part of my chest from, you know, being slashed by a knife in Joshua Tree, California, with a gentleman. I was out in the street with having basically a fist fight. Now it’s getting better, actually, so. But the knife might have been, a good, survival tactic, but, yeah. You know, as, one of our, also dear friends, Carl Tobin, who was an ecologist, once pointed out to me, and, I don’t know, maybe I knew this that male on male, combat of aggression with most mammals ends in death.

00:23:43:22 – 00:24:03:23
Barry
And it does with humans. You know, you can kill someone with your fists, and it does happen. So it’s a serious thing to enter into. Yet when your back is up against the wall, you know, I know mine. I just know that about myself. My back is up against the wall. I come out swinging. I don’t run away.

00:24:04:02 – 00:24:41:01
Barry
Sometimes I do, but I don’t run away and I don’t play dead. You know, those are what we’re hardwired for. I will come out swinging and and it’ll snap. And I’ll go into that, that combative fighting log, that fighting stance. and very often. But it’s in there. And one of the places I know, I found that was as a young, confused boy, you know, back in Calgary, with fear just overwhelming me.

00:24:41:01 – 00:25:07:19
Barry
My aunt had been brutally beaten by a guy and, my sister, and my infant, cousin were in the room, and it’s a really small apartment, you know, you know, my aunt is Mattie, and she’s. She was poor, too. But, yeah, she got, you know, violently beaten up by this guy in front of my sister who went into a freeze mode.

00:25:07:19 – 00:25:43:06
Barry
She couldn’t move. And thankfully, my infant niece, cousin was asleep, so didn’t witness her mother get pummeled like this. But, you know, immediately after that, my mother and her sisters and my mother has a number of sisters who are living in, they all got together, and they’re talking through this. My aunt has dark glasses on because, you know, she’s been, you know, she’s been beaten, and I know in bed that night, I knew that once I was big enough, if I ever met that man, I would kill him.

00:25:43:08 – 00:26:02:10
Barry
I would kill him with my own hands. I would defend my family with that. And I don’t know if that man is still alive. I never knew who he was. It’s unlikely I’ll ever come into contact with him. But if, I did, I know it’s not. I’d snap right there and then and I’d come out swinging.

00:26:02:16 – 00:26:31:19
Steve
But a fighter is connected to the climber, I think. You know, because I think a lot of the climbing, when I think of what you did and watched and things that we did together too, you know, I’ve, I’ve seen you do this, I’ve seen you, you know, and I think albinism is a lot about having your back against the wall at times, and fighting and fighting for it and not really knowing the outcome.

00:26:31:19 – 00:26:35:08
Steve
There’s, there is a certain.

00:26:35:10 – 00:26:41:02
Steve
Aggression to to it I think. Is that connected for you or.

00:26:41:04 – 00:26:50:24
Barry
Yeah. No, it is connected and I think,

00:26:51:01 – 00:27:14:09
Barry
You know, the connection goes back to around that time and this is so common. And I’ll speak with boys because I’m a boy. You know, we all grew up. We want to be heroes, which I think is a great ambition for young boys to be a hero sometime. And we often pick motor sport racing or going to being an astronaut and going to the moon or being a mountain climber.

00:27:14:13 – 00:27:42:06
Barry
Those are three of the common templates to be a hero. And, a climber was the most available to me. And the mountains called to me and I started going into the mountains and part of my indigenous, being, even then, although I couldn’t articulate it, knew that the mountains are alive, that there is spirit in the mountains, and they are like everything around me right now.

00:27:42:06 – 00:28:00:11
Barry
Nothing is dead. Everything is alive. And if we want to trace that back into physics. Yeah, they’re all atoms and they’re all moving and yeah, they’re all alive, as are we. And the universe is made up by these smaller and smaller particles that we learn more about.

00:28:00:11 – 00:28:02:15
Barry
All the time.

00:28:02:17 – 00:28:04:08
Barry
Greater minds than ours need to.

00:28:04:08 – 00:28:10:10
Barry
Try to figure that stuff out. And thankfully, they have. But, yeah.

00:28:10:12 – 00:28:55:14
Barry
You know, the mountain, is a mentor and a teacher and something alive. And it, can also be, really worthy and overpowering and superior. opposition. You know, the mountains aren’t always bathed in sunlight. They have a really dark side. And like I said, every once in a while they move. And if we’re in the way where we’re basically bags of water, and if serac or rockfall or some of the things that mountains can throw at us avalanches, we don’t stand a lot of chance with that kind of movement of a mountain.

00:28:55:16 – 00:29:33:23
Barry
So as we, you know, go into, you know, what I call a sacred place of openness, you know, cross the threshold and I’m in a sacred place. Everything changes. All of my senses are are deeper and richer and more acute, like smell, hearing, sight. All of that stuff is the volume right up. And, yeah, I’m in a sacred place because I’m, you know, it’s it’s like going into Valhalla, as as a Viking without having to die first.

00:29:34:00 – 00:29:35:20
Barry
To get into Valhalla.

00:29:35:22 – 00:30:08:13
Barry
We’re going into the ramparts of Valhalla, and, you know, we’re going to church, but we got to fight with it sometimes, and we can really get our back against the wall. And. Yeah, you know, some of the folks I run into these days, they’ll ask me, have you ever done any of the, you know, the really, competitive races and stuff, like the really long foot races and they’ve got all kinds of, what do they call those things?

00:30:08:13 – 00:30:11:12
Barry
They have a special name for them.

00:30:11:14 – 00:30:12:03
Barry
the adventure.

00:30:12:03 – 00:30:13:20
Steve
Races or ultra.

00:30:13:22 – 00:30:21:19
Barry
Races. Yeah. I always say does, you know, it’s running or cycling or whatever these adventurers say.

00:30:21:21 – 00:30:27:17
Barry
Yeah, it is racing against death count, because we’ve definitely done that.

00:30:27:19 – 00:30:32:23
Barry
And, that’s when your backs against the wall and I always feel.

00:30:33:00 – 00:30:40:04
Barry
Yeah, you know, a marathon or a 100 mile race, you can quit and step to the side. And when you’re on the.

00:30:40:04 – 00:31:06:06
Barry
Side of a mountain and it’s getting aggressive with you, which usually means a storm and you’re, you know, you’re probably going to survive. But at that moment in time, you can’t guarantee you’re going to survive. So are you using your whole toolkit and everything you’ve ever learned? And then the mountain is often asking you for something more, and you’ve got to come up with that more if you want to survive.

00:31:06:08 – 00:31:30:09
Barry
And for a lot of us, that will be certain leads where, you know, the consequences are falling are lethal, period. You’re going to die if you fall and you don’t have the option of climbing down. And the only way to survive is use whatever skills that you have to continue and get to the end. And, some of those

00:31:31:23 – 00:32:01:10
Barry
Things in your toolkit are intuitive, and that intuitive stuff has come gradually over time with your exposure to bigger and more complicated mountains for elements. we we definitely have a best before date. I think there’s a number of things that cross, and one of them is athleticism. and at this point in time, you know, one of the ways I tell people is my reflexes are not what they were as a young man.

00:32:01:10 – 00:32:25:24
Barry
And that’s just, you know, you can observe that scientific just facts. Yeah, those are facts. And there’s a reason that, you know, Muhammad Ali turned change from sticking his chin out there and saying, try to hit me. When he had, you know, reflexes. That one person, who studied this stuff told me that his reflex actually probably came from the spinal cord.

00:32:25:24 – 00:32:47:06
Barry
It didn’t have to go to the brain first. So just that. And these are just beyond nanoseconds. so, yeah, as a climber, we get to places where reflexes really how quick we can move and make decisions and move intuitive oriented reflexively is part of it. Those days are gone for me there.

00:32:47:07 – 00:32:50:10
Barry
But I mean, so yeah, yeah.

00:32:50:12 – 00:33:18:01
Steve
Yeah. But one of the so you know, just an admission here is that part of my exploration with this series and with epilepsy generally is, you know, I think of this so many times when I think about our friends that aren’t here anymore and I just think, like, they so many of them had so much more to give.

00:33:18:03 – 00:33:47:13
Steve
And, you know, this connects to the the theme that I wanted to explore specifically with you, which is that, you know, mountains tell the truth, one of which is each of us is special. And, you know, I don’t think the specialness has a pull date or a sell by date. Right? Like it just changes, like what you have to offer when you’re young and your reflexes are super fast is something different than what you have to offer now?

00:33:47:18 – 00:34:26:20
Steve
And arguably very I would say that what you have to offer now is more powerful for more people than those reflexes were just, just a hunch. And I think that that is part of. You know, part of part of the mountains that I want to, you know, part of the culture that I know you already doing this, and I want to be part of where we, you know, winning isn’t about, you know, today’s results.

00:34:26:20 – 00:34:47:21
Steve
Winning is about, as you once told me, when we were in a snow cave. And this is a house peak, you know, dying. Dying of old age in bed, surrounded by loved ones. That was your, you know, goal and, you know, and that’s my goal, too. And that that should be our, our goal as as alpinist generally.

00:34:47:21 – 00:35:05:01
Steve
Right. And and that’s and big part not just because we want to die a peaceful death versus a violent one, but rather that I think on the second half of that journey, there’s so much to share and so much to teach. And you’re a teacher.

00:35:05:03 – 00:35:06:24
Barry
Yeah, yeah.

00:35:07:01 – 00:35:32:22
Barry
Yeah, yeah. No. And I definitely agree. And thinking back to, you know, the early part where the reflexes were fast and the physical abilities, you know, there’s you can list them. where there it was very much, kind of about me and a very specific group and never a huge group, you know.

00:35:33:20 – 00:35:52:00
Barry
We both know this. We’re talking about we maybe had 5 or 6 important partners that we could go into these mountains that we wanted to go into and attempt these climbs that we wanted to attempt. It was never a huge try. It was pretty small.

00:35:52:02 – 00:35:53:23
Steve
Yeah, it’s really small.

00:35:54:00 – 00:35:55:01
Barry
Yeah, mostly.

00:35:55:01 – 00:36:25:24
Barry
About one handful. Right. And now, you know that I am a father and I have a 19 year old daughter and 16 year old daughter. my hands are much more full. And recently, you know, another mountain guide asked me while how I want to be remembered, I think was a little shocked because we were talking a lot about climbing and stuff and guiding, and I just said, I want to be remembered as a good father.

00:36:26:01 – 00:36:34:11
Barry
That is the most important thing that I’ve done in my life that I will do in my life. And it’s number one.

00:36:35:12 – 00:37:00:07
Barry
All the climbing and the albinism is great. The writing was great and all of that, but I’m proudest and put the most emphasis on my family and my fatherhood and now into community. So, you know, the hands are full. It’s not a small tribe anymore. Here he is. You know, climbing culture globally is huge.

00:37:00:09 – 00:37:31:21
Barry
And yeah, as much as I can share stories and things that I have experienced and including, you know, the death that has come into my life through climbing like friends who have died in the pursuit and, fellow guides who have had, you know, myself, had clients lost and fellow guide who have clients lost and other guides who have been lost.

00:37:33:01 – 00:38:03:23
Barry
Like within those hands there’s these these balls, and the balls are spherical and they’re like tribes, but the balls stack up on each other. And, you know, we actually reach, you know, into just even my community of Canmore, you know, that type of sharing and helping. It’s not just climbing culture. You know, those types of, challenges are universal.

00:38:04:00 – 00:38:42:04
Barry
So, you know, with my background, if I can help those stacking out of spheres, that is that is a great thing. And within our group, the mountain muskox membership. You know, someone asked me, you know, I think we’re four years into our program now, and, you know, someone asked me, is it worth it? And that was the one thing I can I reply to was I saw a couple people smile for the first time in here.

00:38:42:06 – 00:38:58:02
Barry
They hadn’t smiled in over a year, and I was there when they smiled. Scott circle. And that is that is the most beautiful thing I think, that humans can do for each other, help each other. So.

00:39:00:17 – 00:39:13:06
Steve
And it’s, you know, it is the way I see it from my perspective when I’m looking at you, Barry, it started as this kid that we talked about.

00:39:14:16 – 00:39:45:17
Steve
Was a fighter, and it was impoverished and had all these things stacked against him who turned himself into a climber of incredible, you know, let’s just say power. And, you know, you you agency and you did incredible things. And that built you to be who you are now, being able to do these things for others that you you are and without any one of those layers, you know, you wouldn’t be who you are.

00:39:45:17 – 00:40:10:22
Steve
You know it takes it takes all of it. Right? Like, and you this is this is the journey of mountain sports. And this is one of my hypotheses is that mountain sports can have. And I’m speaking broadly here because I think it could be I think there’s lots of possible paint brushes besides ice axes. There’s puppy skis.

00:40:10:22 – 00:40:36:04
Steve
There’s there’s running shoes. There’s other things. And I think that might, but my hypothesis is that we have so much to teach broader culture, you know, because broader culture is so much obsessed with competition. And, you know, there’s a there’s a time and a place for competition that’s a different podcast, a different argument, a different discussion that’s coming up shortly.

00:40:36:04 – 00:40:56:10
Steve
I’ve invited a, a guest on for that discussion. But the there’s so much more nuance to life and to society and to culture than just winning and losing. Right. And your life is marked over so many of these, these phases of life. When did you know that you were a climber?

00:40:56:12 – 00:41:01:18
Barry
I think I well.

00:41:01:20 – 00:41:27:08
Barry
Yeah, I knew I wanted to be a climber even before I knew, you know, I wanted to be hero climber was a way to be a hero. And I said, even at a really early age, I want to be a mountain climber. Even before I knew what I was saying, I didn’t, you know, I had cartoon ideas and media ideas, and the media was different back then.

00:41:27:10 – 00:41:33:15
Barry
And I had an idea of what a climber was, but I didn’t really know. I hadn’t had hands on experience.

00:41:34:22 – 00:41:46:02
Barry
Some of my first hands on experiences, stuff that was available to me, like climbing buildings and, you know, rappelling out of the second floor of the condo.

00:41:47:18 – 00:42:16:03
Barry
You know, that kind of stuff. And then finally, when I was in grade 11, being able to go to Wasatch slaps you right here in the can and ask. It’s where I’ve taught, but I don’t know how many days since. Lots and lots of days. But, yeah. Touching the rock for the first time and actually climbing up the rock and using the equipment and techniques that I learned from Royal Robbins and basic and advanced rock craft.

00:42:16:05 – 00:42:17:19
Steve
These books. Yeah.

00:42:17:21 – 00:42:30:07
Barry
Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, learn to aid climb on the stringers of the, the the basement, you know, unfinished basement, you know, slinging those off and standing on them and going, you know, Stringer to.

00:42:32:00 – 00:42:56:11
Barry
Then even. Yeah, rappelling off buildings and what was available to us. So finally I got to go and do it for real. And that’s when I, you know, so much of the calling came, and the teacher was in my hands, and I was being taught by the teacher, Hmhm Rock teaching me. I was starting to have, as Moser would say, conversations with the Rock.

00:42:56:13 – 00:43:30:16
Barry
And then in 1980, Kevin and I quit our jobs in Calgary and in the bigger course of life, you know, we’re all encouraged. We have to make a certain amount of money to to live and survive. But I can say I’ve never been motivated by money. And, I make enough, you know, I’ve, I’ve never made a huge amount of money and, if I did make some money, I never hung on to it for long because I’m climbing.

00:43:30:16 – 00:43:52:08
Barry
So I’d spend it to go climbing somewhere, like, say, K2 or something. But anyways, yeah. In 1980, Kevin and I left our jobs in the city, took what money we had, and committed to going to Shamone, the birthplace of alpinism and learning in the French mountains, in the Alps.

00:43:52:10 – 00:44:19:06
Steve
And was that the moment like for you that you were like, I am a climber now. I am a mountain climber now. I mean, I heard you say that, you know, you wanted to be a hero as a kid, you know, and and that for you manifested as wanting to climb mountains and you know what? One of the things as that you’ve probably seen in your daughters is how young?

00:44:19:08 – 00:44:50:05
Steve
Not as teenagers anymore, probably, but especially as young kids. They have this just completely natural, self-love. They they belong. They know they belong. They know they should be there. They have no qualms about it. They have no shame about it. And they know they’re special. And then at some point we lose that. Right? And then you wanted to regain that through becoming a hero, becoming a mountain climber.

00:44:50:07 – 00:45:09:06
Steve
You know, when when you and Kevin, you know, left Calgary for shamone, was that a moment where you’re like, we’re doing this that make you feel special? But that that was a that’s a pretty unusual choice. So I can imagine it may have, but what what was your actual experience?

00:45:09:08 – 00:45:16:03
Barry
Well, it was, special,

00:45:16:05 – 00:45:37:24
Barry
On a number of levels even before that. You know, my brief, appearance at university, largely because the guys I went to school with, one of whom was the first guy I ever climbed with, they were go to university. So I went to university, and I was the first person in my family history period to go to university.

00:45:38:01 – 00:45:42:16
Barry
So that added challenges. So I didn’t know what a registrar was.

00:45:42:18 – 00:45:43:01
Steve
Right.

00:45:43:04 – 00:45:48:07
Barry
So I went in and, you know, if I could go back to my younger self, I would.

00:45:48:07 – 00:45:49:02
Barry
Have talked to a.

00:45:49:02 – 00:45:58:04
Barry
Bunch of people to learn this stuff. But I just tried to pretend, you know, fake it till you make it. And, university, I didn’t make it.

00:45:58:06 – 00:46:04:03
Steve
So seemed like everybody else knew what they were doing. So you must have known and must be supposed to know to write.

00:46:04:05 – 00:46:19:24
Barry
And so that, made me feel special in my family. But, yeah, it felt really different to be leaving the template of what Kevin and I were raised to do.

00:46:20:18 – 00:46:58:18
Barry
Leaving that template behind and going to start to find our own template, which was going to be albinism and that, well, special. And where I really knew I was a climber and I committed to my path of albinism, was after the hardest climb we did there was the north face of Lake Dwight. It was the 99th hardest route in Gaston rebel fat 100 finest mountain climbs of the Mont Black massif, starting at the easiest one and ending at the hardest, which was number 100, was a central pillar of Rene, which Kevin did go and climb the next season.

00:46:58:20 – 00:47:34:12
Barry
But we went for the north face of Lake Dwight, and it was the time when the mountain asked for everything, and then more, and we came down and we were in our little illegal campground, you know, and I just remember sitting down with my back against a tree, a very mature big tree. And that’s another ancestor. That’s another living being that as soon as I put my hands or my back against this tree, that is, you know, we all recognize a tree is alive and there is, you know, energy and communication between me and this tree.

00:47:34:17 – 00:48:07:14
Barry
And I’m looking down at my deeply, deeply tanned for arms with their grid work of of veins from all of the forearm training and strength from climbing, and that deep brownness of being in the sun so much and just realizing that, okay, I am going to pursue albinism. This is what I am going to do. And this is the course that, you know, at that point, that was a decision is the course of my life.

00:48:07:16 – 00:48:30:21
Barry
Does your life work out like that? I guess mine largely has. some people will be an alpinist for a certain amount of time, then leave it and maybe come back to it later in life. And then maybe never come back to it. But, that was where it happened. And it was really, you know, I got the picture of the tree.

00:48:30:21 – 00:48:32:04
Barry
I was leaning.

00:48:32:06 – 00:48:39:22
Steve
So really there you you you kept that, a picture of that tree because that was such a horror film.

00:48:39:22 – 00:48:47:16
Barry
And campground. Andrew, Kevin and I took pictures of each other. Yeah. What came down from that?

00:48:47:18 – 00:48:49:12
Steve
that from that? Yeah.

00:48:49:14 – 00:49:16:01
Barry
Yeah. With, you know, we had World War Two woolen pants that we would shrink down in the dryer to man eating clam pants with suspenders. That was our warmth layer. And, you know, I had a cotton t shirt on. That was the label of the gym. I was working out at the family fitness center, and, you know, I was looking at that picture.

00:49:16:01 – 00:49:32:14
Barry
It’s just such a reiteration of what it is. Hard heart is what got us up the north face of light, what it was heart and it was a fighter’s heart. And we both did some fighting on that and.

00:49:33:11 – 00:49:49:15
Barry
Equipment and all the stuff we have now, it’s great. It’s all lighter, it’s all works better. It does all that stuff, but really you don’t need that. You know, you can accomplish things in these mountains with just heart. yeah, yeah.

00:49:49:17 – 00:50:03:17
Steve
Yeah, that’s so true. And. Yeah, and I think that. Did you know that you had that heart? Would you have known that you had that heart without the mountains?

00:50:03:19 – 00:50:12:16
Barry
I don’t think so. I think, you know, that route was one that, you know.

00:50:12:18 – 00:50:39:11
Barry
Made equivalent special. Because before we did that route, I was really intimidated by it because I thought you had to be superhuman. Someone like Messner, who had sold it in 69, or someone like, you know, people who put the first route up, which I think were Cornell and Dubai. You had to be specially gifted at birth. I actually think Kevin had a bit of those special gifts at birth.

00:50:39:11 – 00:51:01:08
Barry
That sense of balance he was gifted with. Right? Right. But anyways, I thought he had to be superhuman. And then Kevin and I, these two guys from southern Alberta, you know, my baseball caps at raise power Dogs, Patrick Creek, Alberta, which was a girlfriend, gave him to me because it was, you know, a an oilfield.

00:51:01:10 – 00:51:04:19
Barry
Power towing company.

00:51:04:21 – 00:51:07:19
Barry
Yeah, you know, these hex basically.

00:51:07:21 – 00:51:08:24
Steve
Yeah.

00:51:09:01 – 00:51:13:06
Barry
Had just done something that Messner did and it.

00:51:13:08 – 00:51:15:04
Barry
It made me realize.

00:51:15:06 – 00:51:16:21
Barry
Okay.

00:51:16:23 – 00:51:39:12
Barry
Messner isn’t superhuman. He’s just really dedicated. He works really hard and did that for a, you know, a large part of his life. And that was, a gift for me. And then two years later on the casino, you know, when Kevin and I did the casino, we. I would never suffer as hard as we did on that route.

00:51:39:12 – 00:52:06:01
Barry
We had six days of storms, and it was fighting all the time. Like one point, our tent was flattened by the wind and nearly ripped off the mountain. And you know, I it was a very trying ascent and I thought I frostbitten my feet, but I was so happy to find after an hour or two hours of not feeling of that, you know, I think I frostbite my feet and then having a bridge back to life.

00:52:06:03 – 00:52:16:06
Barry
But getting down and having tea with Peter Hablar, who was guiding with a group that trip, and we went and had tea at Peter’s hut.

00:52:17:20 – 00:52:19:24
Barry
He’s a really you probably know he’s a really classy guy.

00:52:22:20 – 00:52:32:04
Barry
You know, we’re talking about him and Messner and we’re just like, he bit up like like, this is one of a guy we thought was a superhuman. Yeah.

00:52:32:04 – 00:52:45:00
Barry
Here’s this guy. We still think he’s, like, pretty special. And we’re having tea with Peter Hablar and Adler. So classy. And he says, oh, yes, that’s what we are doing. So what have you and Kevin been doing?

00:52:45:00 – 00:52:45:09
Barry
Yes.

00:52:45:09 – 00:53:04:07
Barry
I says, oh, we just did the cassin and it’s like we slapped him because he, he did a double take. You get you did the cassin in this weather and we said yep. He said you’ve done it. Incredible thing. Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly, you know I’d never suffered that much again for him ever again.

00:53:04:10 – 00:53:25:02
Steve
Yeah. But he but he was you know, you it’s going back to one of the things I think that you know, I know I have a hard time with and I think you have a hard time with is when you people tell you what you’ve done is something special. And, you know, that’s what Peter just did for you right in that moment with the tea.

00:53:25:02 – 00:53:54:18
Steve
And I can see Peter doing that. Peter is one of the loveliest men. I just, I he would absolutely do that. I’m sure he was always that way. And, you know, but to trace it all the way back, you know, you’re sort of, you know, to Ledward and Shamone and then two years later to to the casino and then, you know, a few years later, you’re on Everest and, you know, you were showing your you were showing up for yourself.

00:53:54:19 – 00:54:13:03
Steve
You were you were like, yeah, these these people aren’t gods. These people are, as you said. They just are dedicated and they work really hard. And I can do these things too. And you did do these things. And then you go and do something that one of the gods himself says, you just did an incredible thing because of course, like.

00:54:13:05 – 00:54:14:13
Barry
You know, climbing.

00:54:14:13 – 00:54:44:04
Steve
The cassin in bad weather. I mean, I can’t imagine I’ve only been up there, the upper part of it in perfect weather. And it was still really hard. So, you know. It at what point is it like, at what point as as alpinist, you know, do we accept that? Are we do we know that we’re special? Is it something that we always have to do?

00:54:44:04 – 00:54:55:08
Steve
We are we just so, self-deprecating and shy of any kind of praise that we don’t want to believe it is.

00:54:56:13 – 00:55:22:11
Steve
Drive to sort of prove ourselves to something, to whether it’s that we’re we’re worth it, worthy, belong, whatever it is so strong that we we don’t, don’t want to acknowledge it. Like for me, when when as you pointed out, Scott back is came up with his nickname. You know, I hated that because I didn’t want to have to live up to that.

00:55:22:11 – 00:55:59:23
Steve
Like, if I accepted that moniker, like my job would be done, I wouldn’t have to climb anymore. And I didn’t want that. Like, I wanted to have to prove it. And I was worried that if I was accepted an award or praise or a title or a nickname, that that would take away my my drive to need to prove again and again and again that and, you know, you and I were climbing together decades after these stories you’re telling, you know, like we were climbing together in the 90s, in 2000, mostly, mostly the 2000.

00:56:00:00 – 00:56:13:15
Steve
And so this is. Yeah. Where did that go? Where did that land on you and Peter told you that? Did you just brush it off that it hit? Can you remember.

00:56:13:15 – 00:56:24:02
Barry
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh it was, it was so comp, you know for him it was just.

00:56:24:02 – 00:56:43:02
Barry
Something he blurted out. He was actually, I think astonished because he had been in the same weather. You how challenging you know, the mountain was at that time. He had a very good understanding of that because he’d been on way more mountains at that time that I did. Not sure. And, yeah, it was very much a blur.

00:56:45:23 – 00:56:52:05
Barry
He just blurted it out and it was, just really.

00:56:52:05 – 00:56:55:13
Barry
Complimentary. He didn’t, you know, intend.

00:56:55:13 – 00:56:57:09
Barry
To give us a compliment.

00:56:57:11 – 00:57:05:20
Barry
But it was so encouraging and complimenting that even as as just a blur, like a reflex.

00:57:05:22 – 00:57:12:08
Barry
It was like, you know, Kevin died. You know, we just came out and we went out.

00:57:12:10 – 00:57:27:01
Barry
There, say, waved goodbye to Peter, and we got on the crappy skis that we had, which were World War two vintage, actually, and we started ripping off down the glacier, and we both waved and stuff, and we made a point of not crashing until.

00:57:27:01 – 00:57:38:07
Barry
We were out. You can see it and we both. Right? Yeah. Just I can imagine your.

00:57:38:09 – 00:57:40:09
Barry
You know, yard sale.

00:57:40:11 – 00:57:48:16
Steve
And Peter was a ski instructor for many, many years, both in Jackson Hole and in and in Austria. So he’s an incredibly beautiful skier.

00:57:49:12 – 00:57:53:09
Steve
I, I should have added those hickory.

00:57:53:11 – 00:58:03:10
Barry
You know, painted white, hickory white for winter cowboy or something with metal edges that were screwed in and a bear trap binding.

00:58:03:12 – 00:58:05:01
Barry
Yeah. He could turn them right.

00:58:05:01 – 00:58:08:09
Steve
Oh, yeah. I’m sure he could have, though. That would have been embarrassing.

00:58:10:14 – 00:58:38:11
Steve
Because you know that, you know, a alpinist. Alpinist from someone who truly understands what that’s like, you know, that it actually really meant something to you. And, you know, one of the things that I think that I’ve always, you know, looked up to you for, and I think that you’ve always led the way for me around, is I felt like you’ve always been much more connected and.

00:58:39:24 – 00:58:58:14
Steve
Connected with your spirituality. And you’ve, you know, I think people can even hear it in how you talk now or how you talked about this tree a minute ago or like, you know, and that was something I always had a hard time with. I always felt like I was afraid of sort of admitting it might be Mount might sound like I’m weak.

00:58:58:14 – 00:59:26:24
Steve
I need to be tough. Like these kinds of things that go on in our heads. Right. And, you know, how did this, this idea, you know, is this true for you that that the mountains tell you that you’re tell the truth? Do you find is this to the are the mountains truth tellers? Is that how you know do they help you know the world in a unadulterated, pure way?

00:59:27:01 – 00:59:33:01
Barry
Yes, definitely a teacher.

00:59:33:03 – 01:00:20:17
Barry
And a mentor. But also, you know, I believe in the creator, and I believe in, you know, the indigenous. structure of of belief that I, you know, a get exposed to it. I wish I could be exposed to it more, but as much exposure as I have, which is, you know, attending sweat lodges and practicing indigenous, prayers and, ceremonies, I wish I knew more.

01:00:22:16 – 01:00:33:22
Barry
Yeah, the mountain definitely is part of that. And do they tell the truth? I think they.

01:00:33:24 – 01:00:40:11
Barry
Tell, man, the earth.

01:00:40:13 – 01:01:13:21
Barry
And the sky tell the truth and they tell the absolute, purest truths that we as humans need to interpret and try to understand. And the initial understanding may just be with the eyes and the ears, but eventually we’re trying to do what we’re doing now. We’re going to put it into words and try to relay words with stories to other humans.

01:01:13:23 – 01:01:26:12
Barry
But a lot of the stories, they’re all coming from the earth and the sky and the sun, you know, that’s where it’s all coming from.

01:01:26:14 – 01:01:34:04
Steve
And and one of those stories tell you about you. What do you what do you bring it back to you.

01:01:36:24 – 01:01:40:08
Barry
Well the stories that they tell.

01:01:42:05 – 01:02:24:13
Barry
Are when I am interpreting and following the right path, and they also tells me when I’m on the wrong path and yeah, you know we say path, we, we immediately think of a road or a street or something. But we can think three dimensionally. a number of other dimensions do, but we can think of lines going out and coming in and the mountain is presenting those lines.

01:02:24:15 – 01:03:00:03
Barry
The earth is presenting those lines, and we’re following those lines. And for me, you know, the the moments of grace that I’ve experienced when I’m absolutely on the right path at the right time, I can feel grace. And that is a word. And what I’m trying to communicate is my mind, my brain, my body, knowing that everything is right.

01:03:00:05 – 01:03:19:03
Barry
that instant in time and, you know, if I could extend that, that period of time longer, I might be some kind of master. But I’m not hmhm. Those periods are very there.

01:03:19:05 – 01:03:20:14
Barry
You know, they’re really.

01:03:20:16 – 01:03:32:00
Barry
Minutes and seconds and even broke down from seconds. But every so often, you know, the mountain lets me know that.

01:03:33:02 – 01:04:08:05
Barry
This is for one, you know what I’m supposed to be doing. Probably why I was put on this earth to do. And I’m doing it and everything is right right now. And the mountain tells the truth. So other times, you know, it’ll tell you. Which is also a truth. hard to call it grace, but it’ll tell you that, you know, at this point in time, you know, it’s in the balance right now.

01:04:08:07 – 01:04:24:19
Barry
you have to do something. You have to perform or make some different decisions and those goalposts of success and failure are just so limiting.

01:04:25:04 – 01:04:34:24
Barry
Goalposts. And really so much of human life is on the field in between. If we want to think of a football field or hockey rink or whatever. But, you know, think more global.

01:04:34:24 – 01:04:39:23
Steve
Trailhead, trailhead and summit, maybe.

01:04:41:17 – 01:04:56:24
Barry
Those so or any grace I’ve had sometimes on the summit, sometimes it’s leaving the car more often than not it’s somewhere along the path. But I hear, you know, I know I’m on the right path at the right time.

01:04:57:01 – 01:05:01:21
Steve
I absolutely had moments like that. And one of them with you.

01:05:03:01 – 01:05:31:14
Steve
On House peak, after having climbed the hardest part of that, that route. But before I got to the anchor, I, I have this super vivid memory of just oneness, I guess, and, you know, like. Yeah, that’s it’s like what you were describing, feeling like everything was right, like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing with the people.

01:05:31:14 – 01:05:34:12
Steve
I was supposed to be doing it with.

01:05:35:20 – 01:05:43:03
Steve
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know why it was just right. And it was all it was. All right.

01:05:43:05 – 01:05:51:00
Barry
Yeah. And then it it the mountain asked you. Okay, you’re out of rope now. So how are you going to make it out now?

01:05:51:06 – 01:05:52:14
Barry
Here’s some more truth.

01:05:52:16 – 01:05:58:00
Steve
Some more the truth. Yeah. That anchor, had 11 pieces of gear in it.

01:05:58:02 – 01:05:58:18
Barry
Yeah, yeah.

01:05:58:24 – 01:06:30:19
Steve
it took me a couple of hours to put that anchor together, as I’m sure you. Well, remember, those must have been painful minutes for you and Scott to wait for me to get that all strung together. I was terrified because I didn’t want. I knew you guys were going to be jumping, and I did. I was just had these visions of you guys both jumping on this anchor at the same time, and me hanging from it, and just the load and yeah, so I made sure it was strong, but that was, that was that was one of those one of those moments that for me.

01:06:30:21 – 01:06:59:02
Barry
Yeah. And interesting because, you know, I’m speaking for you. But to Scott in my eyes and we just looked at it, we didn’t climb it. you know, I assume that it asked you for things that you hadn’t been asked before, like you got a, oh, a climbing performance. Totally surpassed whatever high water marks you had in your past.

01:06:59:04 – 01:07:12:16
Barry
This is new water mark. Yeah. So. And along with that, I think a lot of that. If you had a fallen off, would you have survived? I don’t know, you know.

01:07:13:11 – 01:07:17:13
Barry
I don’t know. We didn’t have to test that. Thank the creator.

01:07:18:20 – 01:07:45:06
Barry
Having to have come up with that ability and then over so much time, you know, I think you get to the place, where fear doesn’t really mean anything anymore. You know, it’s great to have fear initially because it keeps us alive. And we learned to. Is it as an ally? Actually, you know, fear is here because I have.

01:07:45:12 – 01:07:46:24
Steve
100%.

01:07:47:01 – 01:08:03:02
Barry
And then you perform for so long that fear is out of the picture anymore. And yeah, I don’t know, a minute or two of Grace where the creator, everything made sense, right?

01:08:03:04 – 01:08:40:21
Steve
Everything made sense. And and, you know, like you said, there was a there was no fear in any of that, right? Like that was, that was just doing and experiencing and like there was. Yeah, there was no action and reaction. It was it was all it was all just flow. And I think that, you know, this is one of these things that I, you know, I’ve also experienced this in other places, like powder skiing for example, or skiing in general, where, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it in, in running personally, but I know people do.

01:08:40:23 – 01:09:07:23
Steve
And, these moments where I think they’re so powerful. If you acknowledge them as truth that you are, that you are special and that you can do that because it it’s what allows you. That’s when you, you exceed your own limitations, your own what, what you would have, who you would have defined as your limitations.

01:09:07:23 – 01:09:32:04
Steve
You’re suddenly exceeding them, but without really planning to. And and, you know, I think that that’s one of the things I love so much about albinism was especially when we were climbing new routes or variations or old routes, and without much information, is we never really knew where the punch line was. We never really knew how hard it was going to be.

01:09:32:06 – 01:09:56:21
Steve
And that’s felt really important to not know, because on climbs where I had a topo and I knew exactly where the hard pitch was going to be by the time I got to the bottom of that pitch, I was all butterflies and elbows and I couldn’t perform. Whereas when I was more in the moment, in my flow and didn’t know if these next meters were the hardest or not, I wasn’t thinking about that.

01:09:56:21 – 01:10:14:06
Steve
I was just thinking about the next handhold, or the next foothold, or the next piece of gear, or where my friends were, or how I was going to make it safer. Or, you know, all the things that, you know, you think about. I think you defined it pretty well. Like when you go into that that area, everything is turned up like all your senses are turned up.

01:10:14:06 – 01:10:26:07
Steve
And that’s that’s such a such an incredible experience. And it’s something that I don’t find. I can’t I shouldn’t say I can’t, but I find very hard to access in everyday life.

01:10:26:09 – 01:11:23:11
Barry
I think for myself, you know, some of the places that I have accessed. Moments of grace in more everyday life would be from the heart. So Hmhm love both the the love of my family, the love of my children, and the love of my partner. you know, one an image that I have, but, one of those ones that, is just so universally and humanly powerful is when, you know, I put my finger down to Rosemary’s little gray colored hand for the first time, and there’s a picture of her little fingers wrapping around my trigger finger, my index finger.

01:11:23:13 – 01:11:45:20
Barry
And there’s so much grace there, looking into those little astonished eyes and the miracle of the fact that she just within the hour, started breathing. Like we come out and we start to breathe. Good God talked about the creator. Holy. You know all mammals do it.

01:11:45:20 – 01:11:49:05
Barry
But oh my God, what a miracle to see.

01:11:49:05 – 01:11:55:15
Barry
And then those little fingers, you know, that’s it. Yeah. You’ve got my heart.

01:11:56:05 – 01:12:25:10
Barry
You had it for a while, but now you know you’re you’re. That’s it. We’re we’re together and this is beautiful. And more recently with my traumatic head injury where I suffered 11 skull fractures, if you can believe that. I couldn’t find names for or anyone’s name. You know, even my partner Nicole, and not even be able to recognize her face.

01:12:25:12 – 01:12:52:12
Barry
And thinking that one of the two weeks I spent in the hospital there in the ICU and stuff, thinking she was someone else, that it was this really attractive, brunet haired, young nurse who was being really nice to me this one evening. And my sister and Nicole were splitting time in the hospital because of Covid. Only one person could be in my room at a time.

01:12:52:14 – 01:12:58:06
Barry
So they split that morning in the afternoon shifts. So she’s there in the afternoon shift, and suddenly.

01:12:59:16 – 01:13:09:20
Barry
Person goes to hug me and I’m like, you know, I, I became a cornered little animal, but one who wants to run away. And it’s like.

01:13:09:24 – 01:13:16:10
Barry
Whoa, whoa, we can’t do that. You know, I have a girlfriend and she’s in Cabot. She’s already in, and I won’t even look.

01:13:16:10 – 01:13:40:20
Barry
At this person. And this person is Nicole. And Nicole, you know, starts to freak out, thinking, what if he never recognizes me again? And she, you know, you know, calls, my sister to try to get my sister to talk to me or no, I, I said to her, can you call the other woman? Can you call the other woman?

01:13:40:22 – 01:14:06:00
Barry
And still not having eye contact? And yeah, the other woman is my sister. Sister. Nice. Call. My sister. And she doesn’t get my sister, so she calls my mom and she gets my mom, and she says, Barry, someone must talk to you. And she hands me the phone, and I’m still, unregulated panic, light. And I couldn’t get up and walk.

01:14:06:00 – 01:14:09:04
Barry
So, I mean, but, you know, my whole being.

01:14:09:06 – 01:14:09:21
Barry
Yeah.

01:14:09:23 – 01:14:35:03
Barry
Looking at me and studies and stuff and teaches it and and as a counselor, it’s like I’m an unregulated little animal. And then I get the phone and I put it to my ear and I hear, oh, bear! And everything relaxed. And I went, oh, mom, the very first word that I came up with, and I didn’t see my mom’s face.

01:14:35:05 – 01:15:06:13
Barry
I just heard her voice, my longest connection with the human rights. My mother. Until one of us passes. Yeah, that’s just so poignant to me. it’s so telling of some of that grace. Yeah. And some of it I found in life. And then Nicole, you know, her girlfriend had to come out from, Prince Albert and, spend the night with her in the farmhouse and talk her through all but then the next day, she came into the room like.

01:15:06:15 – 01:15:11:00
Barry
Oh, you are Nicole. It’s okay. You can hug me.

01:15:11:02 – 01:15:17:05
Barry
So some neurological, some of the synapses got reconnected.

01:15:17:07 – 01:15:44:08
Steve
Yeah, yeah, that’s. But let’s just let’s stay at that moment for a minute, because I think that that that moment is the moment of truth, of knowing you’re special. Like you have a connection, you know, with, in this case, you’re your mother. You know, you you segue to that so beautifully from the story of, you know, your, was it Rosemary?

01:15:44:10 – 01:15:44:17
Barry
Yeah.

01:15:44:22 – 01:16:15:12
Steve
And, you know, this is so. Yeah, we do experiences outside of the mountains, thankfully. Yeah. I mean, I think that this is how how we got on to to this and it’s, it’s so interesting that we’re, you’re talking so much about fatherhood and your daughters and your, your mother, Nicole. Because a lot of the essay that I’ve been working on, it sort of starts from the premise of being a father.

01:16:15:17 – 01:16:43:05
Steve
And, you know, how how kids have this, you know, this unshakable knowledge that they are. I don’t know what the right word is, but almost maybe divine. But certainly special, right? And that we go through life forgetting that and then trying to reconnect with that. Yeah, both through people and and through sport and through being in the mountains.

01:16:43:07 – 01:17:12:18
Steve
And I think that’s, you know, a lot of us and one of the, one of the threads, one of the reasons I wanted to pull on the thread of, of your, you know, early life was, was also because I think so many of us who are in the mountains, whether it’s running or climbing or whatever it is, we are there because it’s sort of our therapy.

01:17:12:19 – 01:17:57:02
Steve
Right? Like because it we’re finding something, we’re finding out that we’re special or finding connection with other humans. We’re finding emotional regulation. We’re finding these things there, right. Like that on the 9 to 5, we both know people that are I would say, let’s say normally normal, whatever that means. But, you know, they, they have the they, they seem to have it all together and it seems so effortless and they sort of seem like they, they follow that recipe version of life that is sort of talked about or, you know, idolized a bit in Western civilization.

01:17:57:04 – 01:18:27:10
Steve
And that seems just flows for them. And I think for so many of the people that I’ve known in, in climbing, we none of us fit into that mold for whatever reason, you know, I mean, you think about especially that, you know, you talked about that small group of people that we wanted to go and could go and climb these routes, whether in the Himalaya or the Canadian Rockies or Alaska or the Andes, with with such a small group and everyone in that group was some sort of, a misfit, for lack of a better word.

01:18:27:10 – 01:18:43:06
Steve
I mean, I say that in the kindest possible way, right? But somehow we’re I think there because individually, personally, what each of us is, is getting something from that, and we’re providing that for one another.

01:18:43:08 – 01:19:16:15
Barry
Yeah. I just, think of Joseph Campbell’s book here With a Thousand Faces and, yeah, you know, there’s lots of criticism about Campbell and all that kind of stuff, but I think some of the stuff that really ring true for me is, you know, if you want to be a hero, you have to leave the security of the herd, you separate from the herd, and you go off into the wilderness and you have your adventures in the wilderness.

01:19:16:17 – 01:19:27:13
Barry
You learn from the wilderness, and then you take that knowledge back into the herd. And that’s one way of structuring it. Tribe would be another.

01:19:28:02 – 01:19:37:00
Barry
Leave the tribe. You go off into the wilderness, you find some truth, and you bring that back to nurture the tribe.

01:19:37:02 – 01:19:45:00
Barry
And. Yeah, I think a lot of us.

01:19:45:02 – 01:20:25:05
Barry
We left the herd, obviously, a lot of the alpinist that we’ve climbed with. And, you know, you probably say helping us in general have largely left the herd and gone out into the wilderness and learn from the mountains. yeah. Connected with the mountains, were mentored by the mountains, taught by the mountains and have brought some of that, that learning back and at this point in my life, you know, I’m trying to as much as I can, share whatever truth I have with the tribe and then the bigger tribe, the nation and, you know.

01:20:26:06 – 01:20:30:21
Barry
Try to help as much as I can. So yeah.

01:20:31:01 – 01:21:08:13
Steve
And, and I have to say, though, in my experience, this last eight years now working with athletes in different parts of different mountain sports, I think that the tribe is a lot bigger than I used to think it was. I think it’s I think it’s the whole spectrum of mountain athletes and I think that the particular flavor of kool aid that we wanted to, that we were interested in and drinking, you know, with, with hard alpine ism was, was one flavor.

01:21:08:13 – 01:21:35:13
Steve
But there’s a lot of flavors and there’s a lot of people. And when I think that alpine climbing is such a difficult thing to get into, but there’s so many people out there on the skin track and on the running trail that absolutely fit into the same, same mold. And, you know, would we all of us were choosing a life sort of a lifestyle.

01:21:35:15 – 01:21:55:23
Steve
Well, you know, I think it’s sort of part artist, part warrior. You know, when we’re doing any of that, each of us is special, right? I think it is. All of that is outside of the the main herd. And maybe it doesn’t matter the reasons whether we have something to prove or a chip on our shoulder, it’s healthy or unhealthy.

01:21:55:23 – 01:22:31:14
Steve
Adaptation. Maybe none of that matters. What matters is that, you know, each of us is is is special. You know, too. And one of the things that has been really brought this home for me and my own healing journey of this last sort of five years is, you know, the, the, the ones that are gone, you know, and I think that the, the one that actually affected me the most was losing Hayden Kennedy and most recently as well.

01:22:31:16 – 01:22:55:18
Steve
And I think his youth was a big part of that. He was just so young when he when he passed and, he just had so much more to give, you know, and he wasn’t he wasn’t anywhere close to having the opportunity to to bring it back into the herd, as you just so eloquently described. And, you know, he was such a gift.

01:22:55:18 – 01:23:19:03
Steve
He was such an incredible person and very, you know, you are such a gift and you are doing this, this work and, you know, it just I don’t know how much, how many chances I have to say this whole say this now, I just, you know, I know that we said this to each other before, but I want you to know I really love you.

01:23:19:05 – 01:23:26:02
Steve
And I really value you. So I think about you all the time. And I carry you with me all the time.

01:23:26:04 – 01:23:50:13
Barry
Yeah, well, likewise buddy. And, Yeah. Just, saw the trace of you just when I was out skiing yesterday because it went right by one of our. You know what? But Addie wrote the great days. I went right by one of our great day, that we had together on nemesis.

01:23:50:15 – 01:23:53:17
Barry
it took me so long.

01:23:53:19 – 01:24:15:19
Barry
It’s kind of embarrassing. I was 42, I think, or 43 when we were on upsy, And, you know, it was, when we were prepping for one of our lives with Marco. That. And it was a blur. It was kind of like, you know what, Peter, hablar did for me.

01:24:15:21 – 01:24:20:08
Barry
Given it’s like I just, you know, it’s just, you know.

01:24:20:10 – 01:24:22:23
Barry
Steve House. I love you, man.

01:24:23:00 – 01:24:26:13
Barry
You know? And I hadn’t had the ability to.

01:24:26:13 – 01:24:44:01
Barry
Say that to other men. I could say it with with women in my life, but I hadn’t had the ability to, especially with, fellow alpinist, my climbing partners. So. Yeah. Yeah, now, I don’t have a problem with it. I love you, man.

01:24:44:06 – 01:24:49:00
Steve
I love you, too. Yeah, I don’t either. And when we can, we just normalize that.

01:24:49:02 – 01:24:49:20
Barry
We just.

01:24:49:22 – 01:25:14:05
Steve
Can we just make that a thing that we say to each other? Because I think we all. I think we both. I need it, you know, I’m sure we all do. And, you know, I think that that’s part of, you know, my hypothesis and part of what I want to bring people along with this conversation that, you know, what we what we do out there, it’s it’s it’s the doing.

01:25:14:05 – 01:25:39:04
Steve
It’s the racing. It’s the climbing. It’s also the training and the road tripping and the buying the of the plane ticket to go do the thing and making the the unorthodox decision to commit yourself fully to something that you know from the outside doesn’t necessarily make sense to a lot of people, but you know, it’s right for you.

01:25:39:06 – 01:25:56:03
Steve
You know, I think that that’s I want people to know that, that that’s important, that they do that and that they don’t second guess themselves because I know I second guess myself so much, who I wanted to be when I was a kid, Barry. I wanted to be an astronaut.

01:25:56:05 – 01:25:58:09
Barry
I yeah, and I had the choice.

01:25:58:11 – 01:26:26:06
Steve
Right? That was one of the choices. And I was I was going to go be an aeronautical engineer. I was going because that was one of the path to becoming an astronaut. And and, you know, I mean, obviously that didn’t happen, but that was how how I saw that. And then, you know, that was still much more conventional, because being an engineer that that that was like not too far outside, I wasn’t coloring too far outside the lines.

01:26:26:06 – 01:26:46:11
Steve
Right. If I could go be an engineer so that worked for me. And so many times I was like, I should, you know, I’m just this mountain guide. I’m climbing all this stuff. I, you know, I don’t know if it really matters and could have. I’m not solving any great problems or working on anything important. Humanity or, you know, I always had those self-doubts, but it was the right thing.

01:26:46:11 – 01:27:00:03
Steve
It was all the right thing. And I just want people to not doubt themselves. If I could tell the younger, younger Steve something, I would. I would tell him not to have so much self-doubt about his past and as it feels right than it is right.

01:27:00:05 – 01:27:19:13
Barry
Yeah. Well, another Joseph Campbell quote follow your bliss hmhm. But I am also saying trust in your calling. Make sure your calling is true. So yeah, I you know, in in very simple speak, just be follow your heart.

01:27:19:15 – 01:27:22:10
Steve
Yeah. And and share your heart.

01:27:23:07 – 01:27:52:15
Steve
You know and I think that that’s, you know, one of the things that, you know, I, I spend a lot of time talking about, you know, Arabic adaptations to endurance training stimuli. And that’s all well and good, right? Like, and I love that stuff. And it’s fun. And people get to watch themselves progress and change and evolve and become capable of doing things that they were never able to do.

01:27:52:17 – 01:28:03:01
Steve
And I feel like it’s just, you know, it’s just a sliver of the story, right? Like it’s it’s an important sliver. But the there’s just a, there’s a human on top of all of that. And each of us is, is a human.

01:28:03:03 – 01:28:28:17
Barry
Yeah. With the tool box that we’re getting stuff into. And, then we go out and use our toolbox. And, you know, a lot of time we’re using it as soon as we use it in our sleep. But when we wake up, whatever is, is that’s what we’re bringing out into the world. And is everyone special?

01:28:28:20 – 01:28:45:01
Barry
And it’s just so amazing to me to think that, you know, the template for a human being for one, somewhere in ourselves is the knowledge to build ourselves. And that’s I don’t think we’ve.

01:28:45:03 – 01:28:47:00
Steve
We’ve got a ways to go on that one.

01:28:48:05 – 01:28:55:18
Barry
It yeah, it makes my mind spin just with that concept. But that template.

01:28:55:20 – 01:28:57:03
Barry
No two are the same.

01:28:57:09 – 01:29:23:24
Barry
It’s like our fingerprints. it is this template for life. But in the human, you know, our our part of the tribe, a lot of us are the same. So, yeah, we’re all so uniquely, vastly varied and special, as is the rest of all the living things that are around us. Yeah.

01:29:24:01 – 01:29:52:05
Steve
Yeah. Well, thank you, Barry. That was a wonderful conversation. And it did not disappoint my my hope for what we could talk about today and what we could share and I’m really grateful for you being here and helping people that are listening, understand that they’re important. Each of them. And there’s there’s they’re special in a way that is is meaningful and rare and true.

01:29:52:07 – 01:30:07:02
Steve
And they’re out there following their hearts. So thanks for following your heart, Barry. And I’m so glad that our hearts crossed paths in this life has been it’s been a great it’s been one of the one of the highlights for me.

01:30:07:04 – 01:30:19:20
Barry
Yeah. And even though you’re way over in Austria and I’m here at Canmore, Alberta, those connections go across this small little ball that we’re separated by.

01:30:19:21 – 01:30:28:01
Steve
They sure do. They sure do. Yeah, well, we’ll get together sooner rather than later, I think. So, thank you very much, Barry.

01:30:28:03 – 01:30:31:18
Barry
You’re welcome.

01:30:31:20 – 01:30:54:01
Steve
Well, I knew that kicking off this series with Barry was the perfect choice. He has always been, for me, one of the purest, most sincere and most self-reflective people I have met in my life. I want to thank him again for his openness about his past, the challenges he has faced in his journey to reach a place of real acceptance.

01:30:54:03 – 01:31:15:14
Steve
There are no words for the gratitude I have for him. I hope that you listeners share my sentiments, and I hope that the time I spent with Barry illustrates what I want place of the mountains to be a space where we can explore together our journeys and their meaning, whether they’re on the trail, the track or on the face of a mountain.