A Climbing Conversation with Steve House and Josh Wharton

00:01.48
Steve and Josh
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast my name is Steve House and I will be your host today with my good friend Josh Wharton. Welcome to the podcast Josh.
Thanks for having me Steve so you are on a trip with your wife and daughter tell us a little bit about that and the significance of it and where we are. We’re sort of on our annual European sport climbing cultural trip. We’re in Brionce on France its been lovely. We spent a couple days in Paris it started the trip and then sport climbing and touring around and enjoying ourselves. You always do a trip with your family. Yeah, we usually try to do one every year and I think it’s a really good way for my daughter here to get some cultural experience and see the world a little bit and I get love to travel as well. So far she has been to Europe. 7 times in her 9 year old life. How many times are you in Europe when you were nine to zero. I’m not sure that she knows how good she has it. So she’s been to Sicily.

01:20.66
Steve and Josh
Spain a few times various places UK, Sardinia and now France Nice. What’s next for her I actually think that next summer we might go to Peru wow that’s a big step up from France. Peru yeah I feel like she has gotten an experience of seeing the sort of like Disneyland vacation cultural tour. So I’d love for her to go to a place that has some real poverty and is a little harder around edges and I feel like she’s finally getting old enough that. Might be a worthwhile experience for her. So and also the mountains in Peru are sort of benign and kind also as well. So it seems like a good mix of that. So good mountains. Good weather yet a little different cultural. Yeah, still in the developing world and she’ll see like I mean going to lima in the peruvian winter feels a little apocalyptic. It’s so cloudy and dusty and dirty and third world bits of it and so I just think that would be a cool growth experience to share with her and show her that it’s not all like you know sugar plums and lollipops. Everywhere lemonade springs yeah so let’s Zoom out just a little bit and I want to frame you up in your career as a climber and a little bit of our relationship as well. You know, tell me a little bit about.

02:55.95
Steve and Josh
You know what is important to you as a climber in your own words. Yeah so I think my climbing experience is really diverse. Maybe the story of my climbing is that there is no one story. Kind of like dabbled in all the genres and found them all rewarding in their own way and since I started climbing Twenty five years ago now I always kind of wanted to be the best climber I could be but in every genre of climbing like to. To me the best timer was somebody who could do everything well like you can put them at the base of any pitch and they could get the rope up with some style and that’s kind of where what I’ve tried to do with my climbing and where I’ve gone into a whole bunch of different genres and all sorts of different when you say genre. What do you mean well I mean like alpinism, sport climbing, bouldering, trad, climbing a bit of everything. Yeah, essentially bouldering and alpinism are pretty opposite and unless you boulder in Rocky Mountain national park in which case you might have a lot of similarities. Yeah fair, but you know one thing I’ve learned through doing this for the years is that like the genres really kind of are connected in lots of ways like you might say alpinism is way different than bouldering but a lot of times the cruxes of big alpine routes are kind of like boulder problems. There’ll be some tiny steep wall.

04:27.61
Steve and Josh
You need to figure out how to get over on this giant mountain. Actually yeah, the whole roof comes down to fifteen feet on me, yeah, that’s very true. So you’ve been climbing for 25 years you’re roughly early 40s now. So where has climbing taken you so far on this and this journey and what are some of those experiences that stick out in your mind for you as as meaningful or personally rewarding or personally terrifying. However, you want to categorize that. Yeah I have a tendency to get excited about a place and then return to that place over and over again because I feel like to get some level of mastery over a place you have to really know it. You know those places for me through the years have been the black canyon in Colorado It was gonna be my first guest. Yeah, tons of times there and then Patagonia is a place I spent a lot of time and then also Pakistan is a place where I’ve been on a bunch of trips. Although I wouldn’t say I really mastered that one although I did go there quite a lot. That’s a big place hard to master. Yeah, and then you know dabbled in other places like the canadian rockies and you know other climbing areas peru and places like that. Well.

05:58.65
Steve and Josh
So tell me about what the climbing is like in the black canyon if for the audience it wouldn’t be familiar. What does that mean to you with climbing the black. Yeah, the black is a deep gorge in Southwest Colorado cliffs from maybe a thousand feet to two thousand feet tall and you walk down to the base of the root and then you climb out. As a result it’s sort of committing because there aren’t a lot of fixed anchors so you can’t just rappel from the route very easily the route findings kind of tricky because there’s lots of weird features. It’s known for having some loose rock. So in some ways it kind of mimics alpine guiding because you know you have to have good route finding skills. You have to deal with funky protection. You’re often hot or cold. You know it’s kind of an adventurous place to go rock climbing. But it’ssort of a smaller version of big wall free climbing I would say yeah with an alpine flavor. I would say so yeah and I had a really cool, interesting relationship with the block hang in the way that I found it because. The very first trip I did to Pakistan was with Mike Pennings and Johnny Kopp and I was nineteen like total newbie. We went to the trango valley I couldn’t this is pre nine eleven I couldn’t probably have picked Pakistan out or a map before we left.

07:30.54
Steve and Josh
So okay, you went there but why did you go like how did you meet Johnny and Mike and how did it end up. Yeah you were nineteen years old I also went to Pakistan when I was 19 I think that’s one of the things that we share. That’s also a little bit unusual. So I want to hear how that came to be. Yeah, so that came to be because my good buddy Brian Mcmahon that I was climbing with at the time was roommates with Johnny Cobb okay and a couple of other guys I didn’t make that connection. Yeah Johnny and Brian we were all students but they were a few years older than me Johnny was a senior I shout out to Brian because you listen to our podcast. Okay, all right hey Brian and so Johnny asked Brian wanted to go Brian asked me because I was his primary client partner and I said hell yeah I’ll go even though I have no idea you know what I was in for we climbed the diamond a couple times we felt like we’re ready for Pakistan. Yeah, and it was just a hilarious experience because we of course thought we were going on an expedition so I took like all my heaviest stuff I had one of those Columbia jackets. It’s like the 3 in one that you zip together with like a fleece and then a puffy layer and like plastic boots that I bought at the sports recycler and just random stuff heavy like a eighty liter backpack and Johnny and mike kind of just blew us away because they climbed like a new route on Shipton or they repeated over on shipped fire.

09:04.63
Steve and Josh
Brian and I did some little things but I was just like wow that looks amazing and fun and that really changed the course of my life and that how this ties back to the block canyon is that we had to go home early start school again and what he said. Go into the garage and you’ll find my black canyon binder there and you can make a photocopy of it and you guys should go climbing in the black and that’s how I started that relationship black canyon for those that really want to go down in the weeds and have a little obscure reference. There’s a really iconic cover of the american alpine journal from that year I believe it’s Mike on the top of cats here or one of those routes that they did and he’s wearing like I don’t know what he’s wearing like sweatpants and and he has no shirt on. He’s taken his shirt off and it’s like kind of tucked into the back of his harness or something and you know I remember seeing that and this is the American Alpine Journal right like the and and you and these guys went climbing in the Karakoram and there’s this picture of this dude with like he’s not wearing a helmet. He just got like a harness some like track pants and a t-shirt. That’s the hardest like pistol borollo style. That was the thing and as a young college kid and a new climber I was completely inspired by that like it just seemed like they were having a lot of fun. They were badass climbers. They would do things like take flutes up the route you know. And bivy an extra night just because it was enjoyable and pretty up there and I was just like wanted to do that and thought that was inspiring and it seemed like the place to do it and to get that good was the black according to Mike and John well I think that they had a good idea how about what worked because it obviously works for them. Those two both spent a lot of time down there and at the time there was this real like narrative that you know when is yosemite going to get taken to the big mountains and this idea that Yosemite climbing would somehow transfer to places like yeah Karakoram and Trango that had been going on for decades. Yeah, right? And the reality was is like well there’s not two bolt anchors up all the routes in the trango valley the way that there are 2 bold anchors up the nose. So like all the speed climbing tactics and all the stuff that people were practicing in Yosemite in a place with great weather. And good rock and all those things weren’t really transferring in the same way that the black canyon transferred to a place like Patagonia or to Pakistan how many people do you think made that connection. Actually yeah, not a lot.

12:04.91
Steve and Josh
Because there’s like something a little bit masochistic about climbing the black too sound and I can just say that I think at that time in particular and to a certain extent today people didn’t talk about climbing the black was sort of like fight club. Yeah, and do not talk about first rule of fight club don’t talk about fight club and first rule of climbing the black canyon you don’t talk about climbing the black canyon you just kind of go do it and it’s kind of on the down low and you know now there’s guidebooks and all this. But before there weren’t even guidebooks there was and then for a while there was one guidebook it was really bad. And no topos just like yes old school descriptions some bad photos with some big wide lines drawn up some really big faces. So you know if you what how much of that kind of I will think of that as like the pirate mentality of just kind of flying under the radar of conventional wisdom but yet figuring out something really important is that what Johnny and and Mike were about back then or am I glorifying it? Yeah I mean I don’t think they would have put it in those terms I think they just enjoyed climbing the black. And it just you know so happened that those skills transferred very well in that mentality and I just think the mentality of the sorts of people who enjoy climbing the black if you enjoy that kind of adventure. But also you have to be a pretty high level raw climber for the routes.

13:40.33
Steve and Josh
That just transferred really well to what you know things like the trango valley right? So you’re 19 you come back. You’ve got the binder you and Brian had or you’ve got a copy of the binder which at that time was like gold right? Like I mean that wasn’t that information was not easy to come by and so you guys then what happens tell them take so we have a few days before semester starts so we get in the car and we drive to the black in August. Having no clue how hot it is at the black of the summer and we climb the senior crews who with a shared half-liter now oh my god it’s just parched out of our minds. Luckily we’re relatively fit in decent climbers. So we don’t die up there of heat stroke and get it done but that was a real wake up call to like? Oh yeah, you can have some suffering and some adventures here. Yeah, and for those that aren’t aware the Scenna Cruise is I would say is a classic intro route. Yeah, it’s sort of like the classic five ten plus yeah I mean when I lived in Southwest Colorado and people came and visited me and wanted you climbing the black. That’s why it would take them because it is an amazing route honestly, like yes, it’s great climbing but it is also facing due south even on a cold day. It’s hot.

15:12.18
Steve and Josh
And it’s a route that gets like underestimated too. You know you think oh it’s a 10 plus but it’s actually like a fair bit of climbing on it wandering. You know it’s not just a straightforward romp. No you know, those pitches are sustained. Okay, so now you guys have climbed but us a starter test piece I would call it in the black and and then from there I just started going to the block on a regular basis and just sort of had a unset goal of doing all the routes. Yeah. And that’s how I was with many places where I climbed in college I climb in eldo a lot and I just wanted to do all the routes do them all for no other good reason really than did you care about like all the 5 star routes or did you also care about all the. No rogerworth negative star I would do the negative star ones too for me. It was often I’d learned to climb in a really traditional way and been influenced by my dad who was a climber in 50s and 60s so it was a very like work your way through the grades so you know it was like I want to do every 5-10 in eldo. And then it was I want to do every five eleven and I would really go through them very systematically trying to do a new one every time I went out. That’s interesting because that’s what I was inoculated with as well like you know you can’t try five eleven routes until you’ve done like all the 5’10 and now I feel like there’s this cultural norm where we encourage people to just skip right through to whatever their natural limit at that moment is. And not do all that work to kind of get there and I feel like something important is lost in that kind of shortening of the apprenticeship for sure I think I feel very fortunate that I took that approach because I got to have so many experiences and go climb so many routes that I might not have done today had I spent a climber. There are like lots of cool routes I went and did there were great trips with friends or to really beautiful places or had something. Some learning experience or growth experience from them that I think a lot of younger climbers in today’s climbing culture miss out on because they’re just jumping to the hard thing and that’s changed a lot I think that it held me back physically and technically to some degree. Because I spent way too much time you know getting my head around 5 ten where I could have been climbing harder whatever you know whatever it was at time I mean arguably you could have been doing both right? Yeah but I do think that’s something that’s changed a lot culturally and I actually think about it quite a bit in the front range because there’s all this talk about how standards have risen in climbing in general and I’m not really totally sure that they have risen I just think it’s that people are willing to like go try something much harder and spend a whole bunch more time working at that one specific like pinnacal achievement thing than they used to be climbing. Yeah, tell me a little bit about your father’s let’s say upbringing climbing and how that affected you.

18:46.36
Steve and Josh
So my dad grew up in Liverpool England very traditional yeah and had 2 parents who were into sort of hill walking and mountaineering and a bit of rock climbing. So I guess my grandparents were climbing I have my Grandfather’s old climbing journal which has like his list of climbs and some topos and their routes from the 30s and 40s and my dad’s godfather growing up was a guy named scottie guire who owned a guide service in Wales. So my dad would go up and work in the summers. His godfather guiding through his teenage years. And my dad went to eventually move to the states to go to school at Princeton when he was 18 and wound up just immigrating to the US. But he climbed a lot of the Shawangunks. And like late 50s early 60s and then got married had a couple of kids I’ve had two half brothers that are much older than me and kind of just fell out of climbing. You know, stepped away from it but then would take me kind of once a year so we go do some like super easy 5’2 and actually wait. We went on a trip to Wales when I was a kid and we climbed some really easy routes when I was maybe ten or eleven so that was kind of my influence from him was very old school.

20:20.58
Steve and Josh
And those that aren’t familiar with the culture and I’m speaking somewhat out of turn here is a non british citizen but I would say that having climbed in the UK and especially in Scotland that there is a heavy emphasis on. But I would call traditional climbing values of you know trad climbing in the sense of you know, placing your own gear traditional in the sense of you know you don’t leave anything. It’s a kind of the original leave no trace ethic like you know they used to have fights about chalk use I remember back in the day right? So that was even considered unethical, let alone sticky rubber boots and all these other other things and I think that still permeates the the culture there. I would say and so I can imagine your dad climbing in the 50s and 60s and in Wales which you know apparently have never been but has amazing rock climbing and is also very traditional. He must have and how did he pass that along to you in terms of the values I mean he took you climbing. Introduced it I know that wasn’t originally your love as a teenager. How did that happen like how did he? How did you aspire to be more but let’s say traditionalist in an era I mean you’re just about 10 years younger than I am so you know by the time you were 18 sport climbing was like a real thing in the United States you could have easily gone much more in that direction given your age. Yeah I mean while I grew up when I first started climbing on my own it was in New Hampshire and New England and so there wasn’t really that much access to sport climbing. Yeah, and it was top roping mostly with my friends at small crags like the tucka away and this cliff called tumbledown dick near the school that I went to my dad actually didn’t have a lot of influence on my climbing ethics and things like that. Okay, what he really had more of an influence was like a conservative approach to it are my dad telling me that his entire climbing career which I guess probably was only like 20 years from when he was a kid until he was 30 or something. He fell twice. So if I would come home and be like oh we tried this hard route and we fell off he would say things like maybe you should try something easier like he came from this school of like you don’t fall. You’re very much within your abilities. Yeah bowling on a bite around your waist. Yeah, kind of thing so he just wasn’t like up to speed on modern climbing and the approach to it really at all even though he looked at climbing magazines and stuff so he didn’t really like influence me in terms of ethics or anything. He just sort of guided me down this conservative path and that whole like tick all the grade until you move up mentality and yeah, but so I’d like to kind of pull together that thread that we sort of started with your first trip to Pakistan, the black canyon and what we began with here we are in France we just went to a beautiful crag today came back had an amazing meal. You know you’re here with your wife and and 9 year old daughter. How do you close that loop I mean I know it’s a 20 year loop right but so what is the thread here. What is the constant for you I don’t know that there has been a a real constant other than that like the bottom line is that I’ve just really loved climbing in all its way and whatever form it takes I really love it. You know the reason we’re here sport climbing is because sport climbing has become kind of like once you have all the experience and have all the sort of like technical skills with gear and footwork and all those things you’ve built through the years with all that stuff I was talking about doing every 5 10 doing every five eleven then really like it comes down to at least for me because if I would feel like I’ve always been pretty good mentally that comes down to a lot of like physical stuff so now like I spend 90% of my time sport climbing and that feeds my other climbing and I can translate that.

25:00.83
Steve and Josh
Things like hard alpinism or dry tooling and so I spend a lot of my time doing that and it’s safe and it’s fun and you know although you could do it with your family in France. Yes, exactly. Think yeah, that’s a great answer one of the things that I interact with you know are uphill athletes all the time and one of the constants that I see with them is this it would answer in that same exact way they would just say I just love it. Yeah, you know and it doesn’t really particularly matter which genre or whether we’re talking about how mountaineering trip or you’re an ultra runner or something but you know they have would all have us take a similar answer. So I think that’s very relatable and universal. Yeah, so that makes sense. So once you have all of those all of the experience. Let’s just I think that’s the best thing the judgment to make the right decisions. Then your limiting factor always comes down to your technical limits because that’s what you can. As long as it’s safe. You can always push right? And I think all that experience gives you a time to be able to judge whether it’s perceived danger or actual danger and then I also think pushing having a high technical level and this I think is something that people don’t always recognize.

26:36.18
Steve and Josh
Gives you some margin just in the same way that you know your climbing skill really is your best piece of protection. Absolutely in a lot of ways. So you know if you climb 5 thirteen, five ten with poor protection is not going to feel as dangerous or as intense as it would if you are only a solid five eleven climber for sure. Yeah, that’s very true and I think that one of the things that also. Take it from this is the difference between I think in alpinism sometimes the the pushing alpinism forward. Let’s say are trying hard routes in the big mountains. The technical piece is sometimes confused with the risk piece and I’ve always made in my mind for myself a real distinction like risk tolerance is not something you can really push right? Like especially with objective hazard with like I don’t know a serac or bad weather or whatever. Like something that’s out of your control. That’s just something you have to know and understand and be able to have a conversation about with yourself and with your partner was to where you’re kind of comfortable and what is acceptable. What is not by the technical piece as long. You know again like.

28:04.51
Steve and Josh
I mean this goes back for me to my first climbing experience when I was 24 25 with Alex Lowe the first time I saw somebody do really hard ground up trad makes climbing and his approach. Yeah when I would look at this I just be like kind of like Jesus dude like what do you What are you? What are you going to? What are you doing like what do you know and he’d just be like well I’ll figure it out once I get up there but as long as I can get gear in and I’m safe. It’s all good. Yeah I mean of course he sent it to so that. Yeah, in terms like what he was strong enough and he was on sighting you know trad twelve five 12 plus at the same time back then yeah and we’re you know, climbing stuff that is probably mixed but more on like a 5’10 maybe easy five Eleven you know equivalent level so yeah that is interesting. How do you think about that and how do you think about I know you just after a bit of a quest. I want to talk about this that I was played some tiny role in with you. Just recently a year ago climbed a route on Juri Shaka in Peru and that was a multi-year project and a big alpine route technical climbing on a big mountain. You know six thousand meters I don’t remember the exact elevation.

29:37.67
Steve and Josh
How does something like that fit into being a dad and husband and how does yeah for me, Girohanka in a lot of ways was super attractive because it works as a family guy and a dad the mountain. And again this is somewhat a matter of opinion. But from my mind compared to some other things I tried or been a part of like felt pretty objectively safe. And then it also had you know it checked all the boxes of like being relatively easy to get there. Being so high that you had to spend a lot of time acclimatizing having supposedly good weather. Although as you know we didn’t have good weather on our trip. And so that worked well as a dad and was kind of how I went to that mountain in the first place. And then kept going back and then kind of got drawn in by it because after a trip realized that it had really cool, high end climbing in every genre which made it unique and kind of fit my what I you know said before, like aspire to which is do to the best climb where I can in every genre and it really had that in a lot of ways and so that’s why I found it so attractive. Yeah, and for those of you that don’t know Jerry Shaunk as a mountain in their courtiara whywash region of Peru.

31:09.29
Steve and Josh
How high is it just sixty one hundred meters sixty one hundred meters or roughly twenty thousand feet just a touch lower than denali but the base of course is much higher and in a meadow. Yeah and that’s also one of the things that sold me on it when you invited me to come along on that trip when which year was that I don’t remember 2018 yeah it is eighteen but that it is pretty safe. You’re you know, climbing a pretty steep rock wall for a good chunk of it at the bottom. There’s I guess always loose rock. There’s maybe some icicles but icicles are not such you know tend to break up into millions of shards. They’re not as dangerous. But yeah, that definitely and climbing with another dad as a father. Yeah, right? We’re gonna keep this reasonable. Yeah think that’s good. Yeah, it’s funny how that dad piece puts your risk tolerance a little bit in context as well. It has for me I mean for me, it actually has felt more like age. But I you know I guess it’s also being a dad too. But I think that there was a time. Probably in my early twenties where I would have confused badass climbing with objectively dangerous climbing or conflated the two. Yeah, you know sure? And through the years of doing it I’ve sort of realized that’s not the case that.

32:45.51
Steve and Josh
You know, just taking huge risk doesn’t necessarily make the climbing is badass. It just makes it dumbass. Yeah I’ve often maintained that there’s enough amazing routes to do that are not objectively hazardous. That you can just sort of skip the ones that there are some really cool routes that people have done that have tremendous subjective hazard. But it’s just like wow like why? You know there’s plenty of other things to do if you’re you know I think one of the things that I want to ask you about is I want to go back to the black canyon kind of era if we can and talk about how you kind of just put it together to you know. Learn how to do all of these things and live a life and feed yourself and you know have a relationship and you know there’s there’s it’s 1 thing. There’s plenty of I think there’s a well-worn path to excellence that you know I would say that I ascribed to or prescribed to for many years was like just don’t do anything else just make it just de prioritize everything else and only have one priority and laser focus on that and of course I mean if you do that you’re not good at it.

34:15.17
Steve and Josh
Yeah, you know that’s another problem you’ve sort of been able to balance a lot of different things and I think that’s you know, really interesting. What do you have to say? So yeah, that’s a tough question.

34:36.12
Steve and Josh
What was it like being Josh in your late 20s for example, like just paint us a picture of a month in the life or so.

34:47.82
Steve and Josh
And let’s say all green yeah no it wasn’t all green and pretty I suppose like injuries were always tough for me, cause they derail but I was like and still am to a large degree. But of course it’s been tempered by fatherhood and age and all those things an obsessed climber. So I always had the next trip I was planning for and trying to figure out how to come up with the money to make it happen. I fell into climbing full time and professionally Although at the start you could say it was like extremely semi-professionally financially. Really through luck in a lot of ways I went on my second or third trip I guess it was my third trip to the to the trango valley was with Kelly Cordis and we climbed a big route on great trango tower in 2004 and Kelly’s a great storyteller and came back and told lots of great stories about that adventure and it had all sorts of cool things like we ran out of water and went 48 hours or ran out of fuel at 48 hours without water and did some run out climbing at altitude and things like that and I got a call from mark after that trip asking me to be on the north face team.

36:14.87
Steve and Josh
And at the time I was like piecing together like feeding myself like building fences part-time. I just graduated college my kind of my college slush fund had run out I had like you know I was like living on five hundred bucks a month kind of thing just getting by. And Mark was like oh we’ll give you $8000 a year and I was like holy shit $8000 yes, but I didn’t I also knew that the north face was sort of like these production things like you’d go and do photo shoots and you climb with other people on the north face team who I didn’t necessarily know or wasn’t friends with and I was very like goal driven and ambitious of my climbing at the time so I didn’t want to do that and so I was getting some ropes and some clothing and stuff from the guy at the Moot in vermont and I called him up and I said hey I don’t really want to do this but he can offer me eight thousand dollars and he said I’ll match that. And that was like the start of full time quote unquote professional climbing for me. Um, and from there you know, just chasing the climbing that interested me and going after the things that I was excited about and psyched about at the time you know whether they were rock climbs or outline climbs or whatever and that’s kind of how it’s been ever since. So many threads I want to pull on here I want to go back to the route on great trango and hear a little bit about that. How did that just what is first of all, what is great trango where is it.

37:48.58
Steve and Josh
Ah, how did this route come to be I mean I know what I’ve been there I know what it looks like but paint a little bit of a picture for me. So very first trip to the trango valley that I was talking about earlier with Mikey and Johnny. Yeah, Timmy o’neil and miles smart were there and they were trying to climb this huge unclimbed ridge on great trango. That was maybe 7 to 8000 vertical feet of rock climbing. Great trango is a six thousand meter rock spire it’s right next to the iconic nameless tower the trango valley they had gotten quite high on it. Had some poor weather had to rappel their rap devices were paper thin because they’ve rapped in in this big store and I remember my eyes were like saucers hearing about their experience at the time wait. Why were their rap devices paper because like all the friction from their dirty ropes and wet ropes. Sort of wore out the rap devices I mean they did something like 70 raps to get down from their high point in a storm. Wow.

38:55.38
Steve and Josh
Some spanish guys had climbed high on this ridge. So there were some anchors and bolts and things that’s how miles and timmy had managed to get down I had a pretty successful trip there with Brian Mcmahon in 2002 I guess it was summer 2002 got another story because it was cool because its right after 119 and no one was in Pakistan. Yeah, so anyway I just was you know, excited about the Trango Valley and wanted to go back to this thing and had befriended Kelly Cordis and we went back in 2004 and had basically a sir you know they as they say there’s the fine line between dumb ass and badass and dumb ass. Yeah, and we walked that line. Very well and Kelly told the story very well that made us look back but like you know three pitches up the route I had this gear sling that also had sort of a camel back built into it that made and inside I did not know that. Where it was attached like where the gear clicked on the side of you came in and was ahead of like a re-thread that had not been re-threaded I just never even looked in there and so like third pitch the sling comes undone and all of our cams go like down this chimney and you keep going up.

40:24.87
Steve and Josh
We keep going up so we like recover what cams we can. We’ve lost like a third of the rack. Yeah, that’s something that seemed more on the dumbass. Yeah, exactly like all these things in retros back like that help. I always found water. All the routes I climbed in the Trango Valley running in streams but hadn’t really thought through the fact that the whole thing was like this giant rounded Ridge so we only had one fuel canister so day 2 we ran out of fuel at dinner. So we had no water for the next two days and that was just like you know you still went up. We still went. We wanted to go out. Yeah we were I was psyched and motivated and Kelly was too at the time.

41:20.90
Steve and Josh
And who and sit you’re just in send. Yeah, there is no going now at end the day like so if you look back at that. Do you think yeah, it probably would have been good to have maybe gone down after we dropped part of our rack or once we realized we weren’t getting longer? We should have gone down and like retooled re. adjusted our strategy come back a little more prepared like or do you just think that unfolded the way it needed to. I think yeah, maybe now I would make those decisions differently. Yeah, like we didn’t have like a good weather forecast or anything like that. You know we were just taking advantage of the weather seemed amazing. So it was sort of this like you always felt like you’re racing against the weather and you didn’t know like do we have two days do we have 4 and it never seemed at first like as those things went wrong like that we were that stretched. It was only really as we crested the ridge and started to traverse horizontally that reversing what we had come up became like really serious because we would have had decline pitches in reverse and we had big walls on either side of us. So repelling was sort of out of the question to rap off the side and then it became more serious but I have to say like in the moment I was not thinking what are the risks here I was just thinking climb up might I mean in early 20s your sense of your own mortality is not all that great.

42:54.82
Steve and Josh
So yeah and I was motivated and excited and I think sometimes on alpine rates. You have to find that space at least at the high end. Yeah, but need to have to find that headspace. Yeah, that’s a really interesting thought.

43:13.81
Steve and Josh
And I do want to pause for a second you know you started at $8000 as a professional climber I started at $1500 and you know I don’t know what the the starting salary. So if we can call it that for you know a junior pro climber is these days but it was never really even it was just very informal I think with the exception of the north face who started with alex lowe and craig child and you know there’s a kind of a group conrad anker for while kitty calhoun j smith there was kind of a couple from the dream team back then remember and like but outside of that everyone else in the outdoor industry that was doing this kind of supporting of climber it was almost seen more as like we’ll just like feed the young site guys a few breadcrumbs to kind of keep them going because they help keep us all motivated and they have yeah big dreams and we just kind of want to be a part of it. Yeah I mean really, it was like that was fully enough for us. Yeah, exactly I mean my goal was never to be a professional climber. It was just to climb full time and figure out how to make that work right? And I think that has changed but that was really I think the goal of anyone at the time was to figure out who was I don’t think there’s even a term professional climber now that’s.

44:48.92
Steve and Josh
That also always meant that you were planting trees or guiding somebody sometime. Yeah like doing other things that didn’t actually mean that you were not having to do a labor outside. Yeah your climbing pursuits your sports pursuit. Yeah, that’s what’s really interesting. So let’s talk about the mindset of you know, kind of how did you just put it. This did just go up I think that I’ve had this conversation with so many different climbers have different ways of managing that moment. But I think you already alluded to it once about how you could be up on a big route and it can come down to as we said before hypothetical fifteen feet of climbing or something like that. There’s always this sort of key bit. There’s always you know I think. Greg Child called it the moment of doubt or maybe that was David Roberts I guess in his book moments of doubt. There’s always this place on the route on the experience where maybe it’s just a better idea to go down. But for some reason you are in a certain mindset talk to me about how you access that and what that means for you where it is how you found it in the first place. Yeah I think it’s changed a lot through the years I used to find or be in that space way more often.

46:24.63
Steve and Josh
And I am now I kind of reserve it for routes that mean a lot to me for some reason or have some investment level and most of my climbing feels very safe and not that kind of level of commitment. I mean a bit of that was being younger. I think its maybe just my childhood and my parents had a lot of like my parents were very encouraging and I had a lot of self-confidence for better or worse like you know my mom would always encourage me to do things like my parents were very much about. Supporting whatever I was passionate about. So if I was passionate about something if I took the initiative to make it happen then they would support that thing and that was all through my childhood. So an example of that would be you know I was willing to bmx racing as a kid racing bikes. And my parents would drive me from like New Hampshire to Pennsylvania to go to bmx- race but I had to call and register myself for the race I had to look at the map and figure out how we’re going to drive there like I had to take the initiative to set it all up and make it happen. Like tell them what the plan was and if I did that then they would support it. And so I think from an early age I got a lot of self- confidence that then led into those being able to believe in myself in those moments and think you know it’s gonna work out. I’m prepared I’m like ready try hard.

47:59.81
Steve and Josh
It sounds like I mean we’re sometimes 10 years older than you are so but my parents had similar things like I remember you know for my family one of the things we did a lot was backpacking in the wildernesses of Oregon and Idaho, Washington I would make a calendar for the summer all the trips we were going to do because I had all these backpacking trips I wanted to do and it was my dad was working so I had like you know his calendar. My mom was a teacher so she had a lot of the summer off but yeah my sister might have had activities like but I would have to. Take all these variables in and then sort of be like okay here’s the trips we can do we got three days here we’re gonna go do this hike because it takes three days we have a week here. We’re gonna do this one kind of stuff so very similar. Ah I mean I think we both do that with our kids today. It’s kind of fun. Yeah to turn the tables as yeah, sure I’m to do that with her. Yeah, so you just had a lot of confidence and you would just kind of go for it is that what I’m hearing? Yeah at times I think that was you know was the case and continues to be the case in moments now. Pick and choose my moments a lot more than I used to. But I think for people that are coming into climbing at a later age where they are past that developmental period they’re already in their 40s or 50s or 60s and they’re trying to find the zone. You know that.

49:32.89
Steve and Josh
They don’t have that they can’t plug into that careless. Yeah reckless sort of 20-something unaware of your own mentality. Lots of testosterone you know, young male. Yeah, just speaking from my experience. And that’s presumably yours. Yeah, so you know where is that space like does it? How do you? Yeah I mean you found it there but where tell me more I don’t like how would you describe it to somebody that doesn’t know where it is or doesn’t yeah I mean I think if you’re coming into climbing later and you miss that moment and you’re finding that you’re struggling with it then you have to spend a lot of time getting those experiences so that you can get into a mode where you’re able to make you know, objective high quality decisions about whether you’re just being scared for no good reason. Scared because you’re actually in a dangerous position and that just comes with experience and being in those situations and doing the thing a lot. Um, and that’s something that you know I go climbing with people who don’t get to get out as often. Or get to climb as much I think that that’s a real struggle if you’re the kind of person who works regularly and only can get away to the mountains a couple of times a year like it’s really just hard to build up that breath.

51:03.25
Steve and Josh
Think that there’s a couple of things that happen that I think are universal one is there’s this doubting of oneself. So especially when you haven’t climbed something then you come down, you’re wrecked with. Doubt like oh you know I just you know was that a bad decision I’ve gone up what it a different you’re like all the second guessing and there’s no right. There’s no answer and you can’t go back and replay the hand again and see what would have happened right? You’ll never know but yet. It’s sort of this tortuous thing and I’ve seen myself have been in that space that I’m sure you too and a lot of people come down. They in that and when I see someone like with that now you know I really kind of go out of my way to try to tell them like hey this is what you’re experiencing right now is real learning you know you want to try to hold onto this feeling and understand it and sit with it and feel it because this is going to happen again. And you’re going to be in these situations again if you keep going in the mountains where there is no right or wrong answer. It’s only shades of gray and you’re going to have to make the best decision you can and eventually, this is going to go away. That’s what I tell people because. Eventually, you go through that enough and you realize yeah there is only the decision I make and that’s the only one I can live with and I can’t replay it and I can’t do it differently and I think it’s a really great lesson and I think it’s a really great part of the mountain life journey that I have really appreciated is because I think life in general is kind of like that you don’t get to play at a second time so we have so many decisions that we face every day that you know are irrevocable like we can’t go back and change them and once you kind of get over that angst of whether was that right or wrong you could just be like it was that we’ve made the decision and we are imperfect and maybe it was wrong. But maybe it was right.

53:35.12
Steve and Josh
I think that is super valuable for people and I think the other people think piece that I want to ask you about is imposter syndrome like this I think there’s a lot of this in climbing and I don’t know people talk about it where people are out there pushing often really hard and trying to pretend like they’re not and I think they’re doing it because you know and I certainly did this. That’s why I’m talking about it. You know you’re fundamentally insecure about yourself. You’re unsure about your own skillset your own experience level and you’re just sort of trying to let’s say fake it until you make it and hope nobody notices but in climbing that has different consequences than like I don’t know a desk job or you know learning. You know something more academic right? Like you can figure into your make it can have real mortal consequences if things don’t break in your favor. So you know is this something that you ever dealt with yourself. Was it ever like when you’re in Pakistan and you nineteen was there in your you know Tri Zip Columbia and your secondhand plastic boots and your eighty-liter backpack were you like at some point just being like oh god I hope nobody notices that I don’t know what I’m doing.

55:07.37
Steve and Josh
At that point I really didn’t think I knew what I was doing so I felt okay, where it was realizing that I really didn’t know what I was doing I have not felt that imposter syndrome aspect in Alpinism but I have felt it in rock climbing to some degree because in rock climbing I’m not like I have to work really hard to be good at rock climbing I’m not physically gifted at rock climbing. I didn’t when I started climbing I could do like one pull-up I came to it from the cycling world. We top rope slabs at the tuck away like I was not one of these kids who like came to the gym and was climbing five twelve off so it’s like a very steady progression and still to this day to climb at a high level I have to like work pretty hard at it climb lot train pretty hard. It’s not riding a bike for me so I felt that in rock climbing. Do I deserve to be here like am I capable of doing this route like this is over my head or you know whatever it is, what do you say to yourself? I mean I just usually like turn into it by working harder.

56:18.40
Steve and Josh
It comes to rates like that doing the work. Yeah, just trying to do the work and then that gives you the confidence. Yeah, show up and it doesn’t always work out. There are definitely routes that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into that I haven’t done. Um, but I still kind of like.

56:36.79
Steve and Josh
I think a principle that I’ve really tried to like guide myself I can’t remember this is a emerson quote or throught quote or something is like being great is not about being better than your fellow man. It’s about being better than your former self.

56:56.51
Steve and Josh
And that’s kind of the approach I’ve tried to take to my climbing and I say that holistically not just like physically and technically but also like in relationships with partners and all of that stuff that goes into climbing. And so I let that kind of guide me so I kind of give myself a pass. You know if I’m getting worked by a route but I’m doing all the work and trying really hard being smart about it. But I am hypercritical of myself if I don’t think I’m doing those things then I will be like did you really show up and do your stretching every day did you really actually like eat right? Did you really actually put the time in the garage training like and just try to be hypocritical about that and be fair and like if I’m doing that stuff then I can feel okay about it regardless of the outcome. Yeah I love that you know I think that this is, I’ve said this on this podcast before but you know really one of the things that I love about Mountain Sports and the reason that I’m so passionate about all mountain sports but climbing particular of course but if you know I really want. To emphasize and you know bring to the front of people’s consciousness and that this is a process and a practice of doing these things that is actually lifelong. It’s not you know it’s what I love about that is that I don’t love and I know you’re a competitive sports fan. It’s another topic but like it’s not about a winner or loser. It’s just about as you thoreau or whomever said. It’s about being better than your former self and staying in the process and showing up for yourself and doing that 45 minutes of you know rolling and stretching that you actually don’t want to do but you know that’s one of your greatest weaknesses as an athlete so you intellectually know and then you have to translate that into practice and that’s really hard to do yeah but that is also how you get to the point where you know you get to any significant level. Not even of course the highest levels but any significant level. It’s just by showing up literally every day and just doing those little trips and drabs. Yeah, and hopefully you do those things long enough they become habit and then they don’t feel as difficult as they once did right? Yeah and that’s very true, right? That just becomes part of your routine. That’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about living in Austria and one of the things I wanted to pull out of the conversation about your grandfather and your father and you’re climbing now is how it’s really a gift when these things are part of our culture.

01:00:03.92
Steve and Josh
And it’s actually just normal. Yeah, like you know the last couple days I’ve been hiking with your daughter and you know she’s a great hiker and we just like kind of cruise along and have you know talk about stuff. You know what book she’s reading or friendship bracelet project or whatever. And this is completely normal to her and she doesn’t even realize how much of an effect that’s going to have on basically her whole life like you know that’s normal I mean and it doesn’t mean that she has to hike her whole life or she may not climb. Probably hopefully she does. Yeah but you know she has this and I see this with my kids with like the skiing and just being out in the mountains that it’s just kind of part of life and that’s what people do and and it’s good and it’s healthy and they see old people they see young people. The friends go like it’s just a thing and it doesn’t have to be this like super special. You know I kind of want to get away from this concept that alpinism and mountaineering and climbing in general, especially climbing outside. You know it is sacred in some ways but it shouldn’t be exclusive sacred it should be inclusive sacred it should be. Yeah I just this is something that I really want to emphasize in terms of I’m not being very subtle here but I definitely want to impact the narrative as much as we can around this and I know that you and I share that viewpoint and you certainly practice that every day so you know I haven’t been able to convince you to drink a beer with me and like 6 years or something which brings me a question that hero wanted me to ask you when did you first become afraid of the sun. Okay, so this story going back to to Trango Valley which came up yesterday because we were hiking and you were like all sun hoodied up. Yeah sunglasses I am terrified of the sun and I hate the sun and the hair is like daddy I call it the death orb could be called the life orb yeah, that’d be those yeah I’ll be climbing the sun if it’s like fahrenheit. That’s like yeah, so second trip to Trango Valley with Brian Mcmahon this summer we were there post nine eleven you’re like 21 or so 21.

01:02:50.78
Steve and Josh
No one’s in the Trango Valley we saw no one there for we were there for almost eight weeks or not another party there because no one everybody thought we were there. We were crazy to go to Pakistan post Nine Eleven of course everybody in Pakistan is you know, having child There was like why is no one coming what happens sir. Yeah that was a real wake up call learned something about how media works in the world and stuff then but anyway Brian and I were hiking up to this very high camp. We were calling a spire that was a long way away from basecamp and Brian put the sunscreen on in front of our tents. Left it on the rock assuming I would see it I did not see it and we started walking up the glacier and I walked for six or eight hours on a sunny glacier and just got the most horrendous sunburn of my life with like blisters all over my face and of course it’s stored when we were up there so we were like stuck in a bivvy on the glacier for two days a tiny tent. Um with this bad hanging stove set up and during the course of cooking one day I managed to burn a huge hole in my down jacket. So feathers went all through the tent and then I wound up with feathers stuck in all these blisters all over my face and yeah, that was the beginning of my.

01:04:22.37
Steve and Josh
Is there a picture of this somewhere I don’t know if there is because I would love to see that. Yeah I don’t know if there is but we were shooting like slides at the time and we would not waste them unless we were climbing things right? So there were very few pictures. Also yeah, like the 4 rolls of yeah and we also made a terrible mistake on that trip that was another learning moment. We know how you often will get boulders on glaciers that sit there on a little pinnacle of ice. Yeah, the glacier basically shades the ice. Yeah, the ice around the boulder melts because of the solar radiation and it ends up. On this whole pedestal right? Nice so Brian and I thought brilliant idea there was a big boulder we’ll stash our stuff under this boulder I know where this is going so that it’ll stay dry and we don’t have to carry our stuff back up to like where we need our crampons and I stashed some of our roles of film in this bag kind of unknowingly with the crampons and our ice tools two weeks of bad weather if we come back and the boulder has rolled onto our shit and the weather’s good and we’re like fuck no like we’re looking. There are like ice still sticking out. We spent like 3 hours with a rock chopping got our stuff and continued you got stuff out. We got the stuff out but some of the roles of film had been damaged. They’ve been crushed right? So not too many pictures so actually like a bunch of pictures from that trip have a big like.

01:05:51.82
Steve and Josh
Scratch through the slide where the role film got snap. Yeah I remember stashing rolls of film because it was like oh there’s this this extra like twenty grams that I don’t have yeah knock up here. Yeah, amazing and arguably that sunburn you know probably save you from skin cancer because now you’re super paranoid of the skin of the sun and yeah never had sunburn since probably yeah. I’ll survive unless that one sunburn gets me unless I one that’s it’s so interesting how every climber I know has some story I mean not necessarily with the sun or the boulder but just has those stories of things that went sideways like yeah and learn in what you learn from those and then also how you take that experience into whatever the next climb you do is another funny story about that after I climbed that route on great Trango with Kelly. And we went without water for 48 hours that winter I was in Patagonia climbing with bean bowers and Johnny Copp and Johnny and I wound up doing the first part of the Fitz traverse like the dellas 2 points no section on that trip.

01:07:22.76
Steve and Josh
And I remember just being like petrified about not having any water and always talking to Johnny like we need to stop and get water and I’m gonna rap here like and I just like obsessing about water because I had been like traumatized for that two days without yeah. So those lips those like intense learning experiences you know, burn and cheby into the yeah. Well I mean they’re little traumas. Yeah they’re a little traumas that then you are you know like it takes a while for those to wear off or to take yeah or get very deep enough. Yeah, so you know pulling this back forward to France and traveling with your family you’ve had this, really incredible career as a climber and you have literally when I think of it you certainly have exemplified that more than anyone else for sure North American climbing where you’ve excelled in every discipline possible and I don’t see any signs of you kind of slowing down or you know, not that you need to but like what is on your mind as a 40 something father who’s had this amazing career are what are the big.

01:08:56.58
Steve and Josh
We all I think can say that we all think about that we only have so much time here and what are the things that you would like to get done with the time you have left and how do you prioritize them and you don’t have to name specific things but are there things you have a list in your head in the short term and I mean like in the next couple years. Most of the things I’d most like to do are rock climbing related and that’s just because I think that like reality of father time and the physical component of rock climbing comes into it and so there’s like some rock climbing goals that I’d like to go after why I still can train hard for them and maybe not necessarily grow physically but like maintain and take tactical technical approaches to achieving those things and that also works a little better as a dad and with a family because just rock climbing doesn’t have like all the variables like alpinism does with weather and time away from home and expense. It’s just not as complex that way. So that’s kind of why I’ve prioritized those things and I’m hoping that I could do a couple of those things you know I’d like to I haven’t free climbed el cap in a day I’m gonna try to do core zone sometime in the next year or 2 in a day and that’s a goal for me. And some local close to home sport climbs that I haven’t they’re kind of like a little beyond me and then alpinism I’ve just sort of like the last handful of years just kind of like dabbled in it. You know’s just like try to do a route or two a year thing. Feels interesting and rewarding and has that cool like the piece of alpinism that I really love that I have a hard time letting go of is the partnership connection I mean you and I became friends so you know like we spend so much time together.

01:11:00.63
Steve and Josh
Friends with Vince recently you know guys like Brian Mcmahon who’ve been friends with for decades and you know those kinds of connections that I don’t think you really get very easily in normal life, especially not in adult normal life, maybe they happen to you in college and things but not in the same way, you just don’t get that time you get someone and also like doing something intense in focus together. You really get to know somebody and who they are in that space. So that’s like why I’ve really wanted to keep alpinism in my life like to a large degree because I crave those experiences and those connections and it makes it feel worthwhile to me and I am still inspired by the climbing. But I think I’ve come to recognize that piece of it as being equally important to yeah I think that this is an interesting topic because something I’ve thought about and we have similar we’ve talked about this before but you know is the framework or the structure of alpine climbing necessary. In fact, to have those relationships have developed those relationships on that deeper level. Yeah I think I mean for I don’t know that it is for everyone but I think for me, it’s really useful that may be necessary is the wrong one? Yeah too binary but useful.

01:12:28.64
Steve and Josh
Yeah, it’s really useful and helpful in a way that it’s just you know and I don’t know that it’s there is an element of like the intensity of it I think that has that and this like shared teamwork aspect to it like working together a team which I’m sure other people have in other areas that are life like professional career. Other team sports and I’m sure that’s a piece but it’s also just a time component like when you go on a trip with somebody even to a place like Peru that’s only for three or four weeks so much like hanging out of base camp just chilling together getting past. You’re past small talk like a weekend right? So it’s like you know you’re just chatting with like you just really get to know someone I think yeah in a deep way that takes a long time to do yeah it’s true and I think it’s also for me you’re only doing one thing right? You’re going to Jerry hanka and you’re going to go try to climb Jerry Shankka you’re not also going to work and on Saturday going skiing with your daughter and on Sunday meeting a friend for a tour and you know like it’s a big chunk of time and it’s focused on that one thing with a really small group of people. Yeah and something about those experiences you know I can certainly say that there’s friends like yourself or you know.

01:14:00.94
Steve and Josh
Sort number of other people where I cannot see them literally for years then when I see them again it’s just like yeah it’s that immediate connection. Yeah, it’s like oh yeah, this is Josh safe here I know this person I really care about this person and yeah, it’s hard to daily life is so segmented and fragmented in so many different ways and we all play so many different roles and wear so many different hats especially as we get older that it’s it’s hard to to stay in the moment with with 1 person for any more than. And how are to and interrupted by your phone like and I share this you know I climb with a lot of climbers and various genres like young rock climbers and people in the big wall climbing space or sport climbing. Well. Sport climbing space and bouldering like around the front range and just have a lot of people that I interact with and climb with and when they asked me about like why do you go do outline reset times like miserable and terrible like why would you want to do that and this is kind of the answer I give them the same thing and I think that it’s something. Used to be a part of climbing in general that’s kind of not as much a part of climbing because pre-internet pre-climbing popularity. You only had you know like a handful of partners and you were really connected to those people because like you love to do this thing together and it was sort of this unique weird subculture thing.

01:15:30.72
Steve and Josh
You grew those relationships with those people and I probably came in to climbing just at like the tail end of that like late 90 s early 2000 yeah, and that’s something that I’ve seen really drift out of climbing in a lot of ways, especially in a really popular place like boulder you know Estes Park where I live. People just climb with so many different people or will just like show up at the crack and get a delay and they miss out on a lot of those connections and that on of piece of it for them anymore. I don’t know how I like if I you know as long as they’re getting those connections somewhere else in their lives. But I just think that that’s a little bitsad in some ways that’s not so much climbing anymore I think it’s absolutely sad. Yeah I agree you know and I think you know when you look back at things you’ve done in the past I think any of us can think back with it like replay the highlight role. Reel of our life of the last I don’t know 5-10 pick a number of years you know and think about what you remember you know it does tend to be the things that were connected to deep meaningful relationships. I mean there’s certainly specific moments for me my alpinism and climbing where I can really remember super clearly I don’t know pitches I’ve climbed or summit I’ve been on or you know.

01:17:03.16
Steve and Josh
Like those kinds of more like movies. But most of my memories are more about like the people and the interaction and how I felt while I was on the trip with those people that I feel supported did I feel judged did I feel you know. Like I gave my best that I feel like I felt came short. All those things that’s what I remember about those trips and it is something really nice about alpinism where it kind of and one of the things I always loved about alpinism is the traveling I love traveling and going. We both spent a lot of time in Pakistan we’ve talked about it a bunch and how much we both love Pakistan and we’ve had such amazing experiences with the people there today happens to be father’s day. And I got a video from husier from Russell telling me happy father’s day like this this guy I mean he you know was a like cook on a bunch of expeditions and I have no idea how he knew it his father’s day or why he thought I mean I haven’t had any contact with him in years and then. You know, but it was really meaningful like I’m really connected to him and other people over there. So it’s you know I think that those that those track the travel piece the cultural piece the getting to know that people everywhere are just people.

01:18:35.20
Steve and Josh
They’re basically good and basically kind and they basically you know want you to succeed and of course you know they’re going to look out for themselves to to a certain extent but they’ll also sometimes be incredibly generous and selfless as well and you can really develop relationships. I mean brussel probably speaks like 200 words of english max and like you know the guy would fall on the sword for me in a heartbeat I’m sure of it. You know, just his like that kind of guy right? That’s pretty special. You don’t get that you know sport claim. Sport climbing in the vrg not to put sport climbing the vrg down by any means that has its own beauty in many ways, but it’s just an entirely different experience and I think that you know climbing is definitely drifted away from that I’d like to see I think that ultra running. Has actually developed that in my yeah version because there’s this whole culture of like the pacers supporting running aid stations for your friends taking turns and it is sort of this cult right?Llike this underground secret society. Has this pretty high entry fee. You have to be able to run like yeah one hundred miles really hard to do and it was really painful and all those things that experience is shared. Yeah, and then once you’re in that club like you know you’re a blood brother or a blood sister.

01:20:09.93
Steve and Josh
You’re in deep and I feel like with alpinism. It’s quite similar in that way whereas and it used to be that way I’d say with broader climbing and I do we’ve talked I do miss how funky and esoteric climbers used to be. Yeah too I do too for sure like yeah, definitely I mean so my dad sold climbing partner that I knew as a child growing up because they were still friends. David Isles was this completely eccentric guy he was like a math professor at tufts and he had like this. giant head of white hair that went like straight sideways a foot and would just tell wild crazy stories and was like a total nut ball. Obviously a highly intelligent total nut ball. Yeah, what a great character right? And there were lots of those people like Guy who I built fences with out of college. This guy Rob Cadwell was like a complete character he had moved to Thailand for a few years and married this thai woman who was like eighteen years old and moved back to boulder with her and you know that was like mind blowing to me at the time. Totally nice guy but like completely wild. Yeah life story just out there just out there making his own way and I think those people are there and climbing now. But it’s more just like a pi of you know, climbing’s become just like general society. You know that’s not whereas. It’s not majority eccentrics.

01:21:42.34
Steve and Josh
Yeah, it used to be a real counterculture. Yeah climbers were part of the counterculture literally like a definition because it was not really even something that was allowed. It certainly wasn’t considered to be a sport. Yeah I mean even for me I have a hard time. Using the word sport and climbing in the same sentence like it’s not really a sport like you know track and field is a sport basketball is a sport climbing is ah something else. Yeah I think of it as like part sport part art. And sometimes those get tuned up more or less depending on what kind of climbing you’re doing. Yeah what the experience is yeah so if you think of climbing as your art and this is maybe a good way to to pull some different ideas together that we’ve talked about how do you? You know? How do you see your art. What is your art? What would a lift is a painting what it would look like oh that’s a hard question. I’m gonna ask yeah hard when did I?

01:23:04.85
Steve and Josh
Yeah I don’t know if I have a good answer for that if I have if I think about what’s a bad answer. Ah yeah don’t know if yeah I don’t know if there’s a bet I just haven’t thought about it in that context yet. Um, and maybe that’s because I’m not super reflective about my climbing still I’m still go to challenge that jaw but I know you think you’re not super reflective about your planet. Maybe you’re just hiding yeah maybe I’m hiding that I mean I guess I just am like doing the thing is what inspired like I am passionate about doing the thing and I really do like love it and driven by having these you know ambitions whatever they are whether they’re like a fifty foot sport route or a five thousand foot alpine wall and I’m just kind of like yeah using it. As a way to sort of like move forward through life and and happy path that I also find something I really like about climbing there are like aspects of society that I don’t love like capitalism and like the way that the US functions and chasing things and accumulation of materials and so I like that climbing is purposeful and has goals and you can be ambitious but at the end of the day you’re chasing windmills and it’s exotic and it doesn’t really matter and so it exists outside of a lot of that stuff.

01:24:40.59
Steve and Josh
And I find that really fulfilling about it so it gives me like purpose some way of moving forward some way of like chasing things without being feeling like a cog in the machine or chasing these things that aren’t really important to me. Yeah, and that’s a bit of it that I really like think that’s incredibly beautiful yeah I really love that I think that’s a great answer. One of the things that I think of and that is sort of a maybe and a little bit in parallel to that. For me climbing was always about minimalism to a large extent and that’s one of the things I loved so much about alpinism is how you know it’s to your point in so much of today’s society the point of having more is to have more and an alpinism the point of you know it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy but in the other direction like the less. You know the greater your inherent skill and knowledge and judgment. The less you need the more you can do with that inherent knowledge experience skill and judgment and so it fulfills and reinforces those things that are actually really important and valuable which is you know to me like the very human piece. You know the person in there thinking and feeling and hacking and striving and what’s the opposite of enforces. Just reinforces deemphasizes having the point of doing more is having more kind of mentality and I feel like climbing in particular but mountain sports in general really have a lot to teach. Society about that because I think society is still and I think that a lot of the sports that we have today that are essentially cultural events I’m speaking as an american here you know they are actually just giant businesses. And they are very lucrative for a lot of people and that’s actually why they’re part of our cultural story and it’s not just because of their inherent like beauty or greatness or humanity. And that’s reinforcing entirely the wrong things and no wonder we are where we are in this sort of late-stage capitalism as I would call it and you know climbing you know it sort of strips all that away you know.

01:27:51.60
Steve and Josh
Tools that we use for climbing may seems perfluous to many people like a compare of crampons or ice hacks or climbing shoe or rope why do you need this like super specialized you know, eighty meter piece of nylon that’s exactly this diameter and has these sharacteristics et cetera et cetera and we all geek out about that. But you know it’s a tool and it has a very specific and narrow purpose and that purpose is to sort of unlock the human that’s tied to it and you know that’s far more interesting than scoring points or winning goals or you know one country beating another country I sort of feel like this whole you know, culture of let’s say world cups or Olympics or whatever is just so outdated I’m so tired of like oh we our medal count is this and their metal count is that therefore we’re better than they are It’s like what? Ah what a tired story that is you know it’s just like I’m so over it. And I just so much rather talk about you know the stories of of the process and finding the goodness and working through the badness and growing and learning and finding those connections and travel and experiences and people.

01:29:15.51
Steve and Josh
I don’t know. There’s just so much more than let’s say quote unquote winning and losing and I think you really exemplify that you know and I’ve known you for a long time and you’re a little younger than I am but like we kind of have come up and gone through a lot of our climbing career together. You know you’re still at Patagonia I was at Patagonia for whatever 20 years and as an athlete ambassador and you know you’ve always exemplified that and he never really got sort of I would say tempted by the quote unquote dark side. It used to be I remember like when I was my late 20s like beings quote unquote sponsored was actually considered a bad thing like yeah gone to the dark side like it was not cool and you sellout. You were a sellout. You were a sellout. Yup yup yeah because you were just a paid actor and everybody knew it. Yeah and I’ve had a little bit of that like punk rock mentality since I was a kid I mean I remember in high school my buddies and I would put duck tape across the brands on our tennis shoes. We were like oh we don’t want to advertise for this company. Why are we advertising for this vernight here. Yeah you know, totally valid. Yeah, totally valid and I feel like there is some of that kind of coming back again. I mean yeah, like I think there’s a little bit of that vibe in the climbing world I hope we’ll see.

01:30:49.10
Steve and Josh
Yeah I just want what I want for the climbing world too is for it to find a voice that’s sort of I don’t think it has to be like inclusive. But I think it needs to not be divisive. If that makes sense I just feel like so much of the national conversation is you know, black and white without any kind of room for subtlety and I just would like people to start to see the subtlety and see the humanity and things a little bit more. There’s so many examples that’s a whole and other conversation. But I think that again the mountains just and by extension nature I’ll say you know have so much to sort of teach us about that. For you to just you know, sort of stop long enough to think yeah this is something I think about maybe in the context of being a parent.

01:31:55.36
Steve and Josh
Because I feel like we invest so much in our kids and often lead them down these paths to things that can’t really be lifelong passions and I feel so like a just to find something that you’re really passionate about I feel so like so grateful for that to have found something that I really love and I’m passionate about but even more so to have it be something that I can participate like as a lifelong pursuit to some degree is really rare so things like you’re talking about like soccer or football or those things like you’ll so but kids put like so much time and energy in lines and like even even if you are messy. It’s a point like that’s not. He’s probably not gonna pick up a soccer ball. Once he retires you know like he really doesn’t love it and the way he did as a kid or whatever. So yeah I feel I’m fairly fortunate I think that’s a really cool thing about Mountain Sports is that they can be a life long for sport and then there are other things out there in the world like that for sure. And that’s like my my greatest hope for her. My daughter is that she finds something that she really loves and that thing is something that she can do throughout her life in a way that’s fulfilling. You know I was going to ask you. To tell me what the meaning of it all is but I think you did honestly like in your own way it is and and this is exactly what I was potentially hoping you would say but.

01:33:29.78
Steve and Josh
I didn’t know how you were gonna say it I didn’t know how I would say it either. It was you know that finding this passion you knowing that it is tilting at windmills but yet it gives your life direction and you know you’re not contributing to a system that you know likely don’t necessarily believe in or you know are willing to support to a certain level but not too much. Yeah, you know we all want know to live safe and happy and healthy lives and have you know Healthcare in schools and basic things that we would consider you know basic to life. But you know it there is so much disillusionment out there and as you know technology gets better and better. You know I sort of wonder at what point that the disillusionment becomes so great that people just straight up revolt somehow and yet I also think that one of the things that I’ve certainly seen with a athlete in my own experience and I think you’ve seen it. We’ve talked about it is post Covid how many more people are out in the mountains biking, running, climbing doing all those things and I think part of it is they realized that.

01:35:00.14
Steve and Josh
We’re disillusioned a lot of people and those that weren’t fully locked into certain know prior decisions whether financial or whatever they were. You know had the flexibility to spread their wings literally and figuratively and do things that they’ve always wanted to do and just be like yeah it maybe it is meaningless but this is my path I’m really passionate about it and this is really incredible to me and I want to dive in like all the way in and do it and think that’s really cool. Really I really feel like with uphill athlete. That’s been you know and I keep trying to tempt you into help me with all the rock climbing training plans and written much of them. But one of the things that you know I really love about this project is that it is way of kind of guiding people along on certain parts of their journeys as they either come to sports for the first time or come back to them or work through injuries or work towards goals and I never talked about it like this like. You know the windmills aspect. Yeah as you brought up but you know it is really rewarding to just be like no kind of in the back of my head I’m watching people through their process and I’m kind of seeing cause I’ve been there.

01:36:27.55
Steve and Josh
And just sort of seeing like oh yeah and I know exactly what’s going on I’m not going to tell you because you can’t see it yet. Yeah, but this is where you’re at and this is what you need to go through and that’s why you’re doing that and that’s okay that you don’t know that and it’s also perfect. Yeah cool and that’s maybe what all means.

01:36:54.16
Steve and Josh
Anything else last you’d like to say we were purposely did not talk about training I didn’t really want this to be a training talk tonight. But maybe we can do some of those sometime. Well I was going to ask you at the beginning of this conversation I wanted to ask you about that jeeronka bivy and you said bring that back up, we’re recording so they can cut it if they want to whatever but so I didn’t fully understand what you meant by that whether you meant that you were not fully tuned into the fact that it what like you were just sort of like laissez faire. But the fact that it was dangerous too much or that you felt scared in that time that it was Dan I didn’t quite see which yeah so just to paint the picture a little bit. We were you know we had bad weather. So we attempted a variation. Basically that was in with some ice and stuff that was some mixed climbing and we went up there and tried to kind of put it together. And I think it was like the very end of the trip we had like two days left yeah it was sort of like a hail mary didn’t really think it was gonna happen. But we had inclined for a while it was what the hell yes, guy. Yeah, and we had a hard time finding a place to sleep and that’s hard on that route right? Yeah remember I think.

01:38:14.71
Steve and Josh
Can’t remember exactly how it went down but you pointed out like hey we don’t want to put the bivy here because you know this is a funnel and there’s all this rock. There’s raw fall coming down I think there might have even been little bits of rock dribbling down I was really upset with myself that I wasn’t scared interesting. Um and that I thought like oh that’s actually like how it goes down that you don’t survive up here is because you stop being scared. And you stop being and if you’re not scared. You’re not thinking proactively about what the risks are and how to minimize them like you were and yeah I mean that’s part of partnership too. I mean we all ebb and flow right? And so it was good that you made that and I remember that night you know. We were 3 in a little first flight tent you and me and mikey and you know was as the weather was just getting worse and worse all night like you know your head was kind of like right under you know? Yeah, the end of the tenant where was just sort of the whole I was just sort of pins and needles the whole night I never really slepped I was just kind of like this is not where I want to be like and just like starting to feel nervous about it or yeah then I was nervous about it then I was then I was nervous about it and I was scared and then that next day like going down. Yeah, there was a bunch of new snow on the rock. It was hard to find the anchors and everything got super wet and the ropes are yeah it’s just it’s steep. But it’s not that steep. So the ropes are like hanging up everywhere and you have to throw the ropes off like.

01:40:05.60
Steve and Josh
Every ten feet again and I was just like man. There’s like so many ways this can go sideways and none of them really seemed like they were worth like what we were. Yeah, we’re doing and was I kind of went away from that trip I didn’t know it. That’s literally like the last time I think I went real alpine climbing. Oh yeah, on a big mountain I mean yeah, and then there were some other experiences that were similar here in the alps I told you about one like you know climbing the long german route in winter. Is at trigla which is the run I’d done. You know when I was 19 and that winter like my friend Andy I did it. We got to the top at dark and but then climbing down you’re just like going down this really long like I think it’s like you know 3000 thousand vertical feet of like fifty five degree hard snow like if you just and you just couldn’t not be totally turned on and I was just sort of I have like I know I can go into this space but I just don’t know that I still find value here. Yeah there and that was a few of those experiences were just like yeah I’ve just done this so much and I’ve read this book around that time called.

01:41:42.32
Steve and Josh
What got you here won’t get you there. Okay and I think that title kind of sums it up. Yeah, and it was about like trying to learn new skills and stuff and I come it kind of got me motivated to start learning new things and because I would I realized I’d maybe just I thought I was gonna do that with alpine mentors remember that project where I’m hopefully going to learn more about myself and about alpinism through trying to mentor others and then I think there just wasn’t a good business model for that to really work and then it was like well I’m really want to learn something new and experience some new things. This is all feeling very repetitive at this point you know. So yeah that I kind of you know transition more into focusing on Uphill Athlete and that’s been very engaging and very interesting and I love it learning so much. Nice. So it’s really cool. Awesome! Yeah, so all works out but thank you for the chat. Yeah, it was a great chat. Awesome yeah rate subscribe and review and thanks for listening to the uphill athlete podcast catch you next time.