Guiding at Altitude

00:01.64
Alyssa
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Alyssa Clark and I will be your host today. I’m joined today by IFMGA guide and familiar voice Steve and a special guest. AMGA guide Bill Allen. Bill is an AMGA ski guide, 2 times 7 summits and owner of the guiding company mountain trip. Thanks for joining both of you.

00:31.20
Steve
Thanks Alyssa. It’s great to be back.

00:33.76
Bill Allen
Yeah, thanks.

00:36.38
Alyssa
Awesome! Yeah, and bill is a guest from a prior uphill athlete podcast episodes kind of before Steve and I took control so it’s good to have you back bill.

00:48.67
Bill Allen
Thanks.

00:51.33
Alyssa
So I’d love to hear more about your background. What drew you to the mountains and particularly you know the high altitude mountains. Also where and how long you’ve been guiding for.

01:09.72
Bill Allen
Yeah, , my sort of mountaineering experience and altitude experience really mostly started in Alaska I grew up in Oregon and so I played in the cascade mountains as a kid. But . As I got you know out of college I started going up to Alaska getting into the mountains there and then you know Denali was obviously the big draw up there and that wasn’t really what originally you know. Got me excited about it. But of course you just want to continue to pursue the next big challenge or whatever and especially as a guide you know, , Denali was ah was a goal to get up there. So yeah I started guiding on Denali for mountain trip when. Original owner. The guy who started mountain trip Gary Bookard on the company and that was in the, mid early mid 90 s I started guiding up there and so yeah and that was.

02:20.87
Bill Allen
You know the beginning of my kind of big mountain and altitude experience was up there and then from there I was able to you know, go do some other big expeditions and expeditions was one of them and in terms of just pure altitude experience I think that’s a big one and then you know continued around to the 7 summits and all that and been to Everest 3 times now and yeah, still mostly guide in Colorado where I live and then expeditions in Alaska and then a variety of international expeditions occasionally still.

03:03.74
Steve
And my Denali guiding probably started about the same as yours bill like I was I think my first trip was in a second guide for American alpine institute 90/92 with Doug Shabot.

03:20.30-
Steve
We’re on the mountain twenty-four days that trip and we’re stuck at 14 for 10 days. I think and you know you know it was ah it was an interesting time I think to be up there in hindsight I mean Peter Hackett we were just talking about a moment ago was still. Ah.

03:39.46
Steve
They are doing research on and off and you know guiding was I mean it’s still hard. But I think it was it was really set the standard in terms of work ethic for all the other guiding I did in my career just be a much sheer amount of. Physical and mental and group dynamic and medical work. You had to do for those trips and a big part of it was a medical component which of course is directly connected to the high-altitude component of that mountain.

04:11.47
Bill Allen
Yeah, you learn a lot up there about the workload of being a guide on Denali much you know for the clients. It’s a massive amount of work but being a guide up there. It’s just huge to you know that.

04:12.10
Alyssa
Yeah, but.

04:28.39
Bill Allen
The climbing, the carrying the loads, the digging camps, the melting every drop of water you’re going to drink for almost a month and all that. So yeah, pretty much everywhere you go after that. Not that it’s easy, but it’s not Denali hard. Yeah.

04:44.37
Steve
Yeah, yeah, that’s something now you go ahead Alyssa I was going to take us on a bad tangent I’ll save that.

04:47.37
Bill Allen
Even Everest honestly.

04:49.89
Alyssa
So out of curiosity. Go ahead Steve.

04:58.19
Alyssa
Well, this is yeah this is more I guess just a general question of me, not knowing a ton about guiding in Denali. But do you go in with 1 specific group to bring up or do your kind of just get planted there and then take groups up from there.

05:17.50
Bill Allen
No, we’ll have a climbing team and pretty much everybody does it this way, but you’ll have a climbing team, and you’ll have the guides and clients meet we meet everybody in Anchorage and then fly in. And yeah, we’re a team up there.

05:17.73
Alyssa
What’s their kind of standard or is that dependent on the company?

05:36.53
Bill Allen
I think one of the differences that like from the 90 s like you were talking about Steve to now is that there’s we do more smaller guide teams now climbing teams and so you may have a team. Three days ahead of you and two days behind you and every camp you may move into there’s another team there that has been there for a little while and you can go in and fill up your water bottles in their kitchen and all that and I feel like it used to be. We were more spread out and felt a little bit more on our own out there.

06:12.49
Steve
Yeah, yeah, that’s true and you know as I recall how we would run it with American alpine was that the Tripler stay spaced a week apart. So, you were like you’d be at 11 and somebody’d be flying into base camp.

06:12.80
Bill Allen
Yeah, it was different.

06:30.10
Steve
Or you might even be up to 14 people following the base camp. So, you know obviously a week part is a good is a lot. You never had more than a maximum of 3 people teams on the mountain at the time and didn’t really see each other that much. We didn’t have caches I mean except our own you know.

06:49.37
Steve
Yeah, but the altitude on Denali I think is also really interesting because as and I don’t know about your experience bill. But I first heard about this on Denali is like you Denali was my first high altitude significant high-altitude experiences.

07:05.52
Steve
And I always heard like oh yeah, you know six thousand meters on Denali is higher than six thousand meters in Asia and these kinds of things and you think yeah, I don’t know that sounds funny. But. I have to say like I actually think it’s mostly true like it is harder to acclimate above four thousand meters or so on Denali in my experience in in the experience of my own guiding on Denali than it is in.

07:34.49
Steve
And other places around the world that is.

07:39.24
Bill Allen
Yeah, I think it’s a pretty significant difference for sure, and I think it’s part of what gets people in trouble like coming from Colorado where I live where people can run up to fourteen Thousand feet or you know for a day. Go to the peak and then they come back down but, and then taking that and thinking you can run up to fourteen Thousand feet on Denali and getting up there and getting into trouble in a hurry and it’s that you know the difference between. 14000 here in Colorado and 14000 and Denali is pretty significant and then also just like spending the night and staying there is a big difference. People aren’t sleeping at fourteen thousand feet on the top of a 14 or in Colorado.

08:27.29
Alyssa
Yeah, can you explain why it is different I’ve also heard this before but what makes it feel different than say 6000 in Asia.

08:42.65
Bill Allen
Do you want to take a crack at that Steve I have my explanation which I don’t know if it’s scientific, but.

08:49.47
Steve
Yeah, I mean we both have our experiences so that’s what this is about sharing so you go for it and then I’ll jump in also I have some ideas.

08:55.89
Bill Allen
Yeah, well my understanding is that the atmosphere of the earth is stretched at the equator because it’s spinning.

09:12.10
Bill Allen
And so, it’s wider at the Equator. So. It’s stretched at the poles and so it’s actually just thinner at the poles and so your relative Barometric pressure and therefore the available Oxygen is lower as you get to the. To the North and South pole.

09:31.33
Steve
Yeah, and I have to say I think that what is certainly true is that there is just like as we were saying more work involved and I think that one of the basic concepts that I tried to pass along to people. Around acclimatization is that acclimatization is let’s say a task that your body has to do, and it needs but needs rest it needs energy it needs food needs all the things that you need to complete any other physical task and you’re. Having to do that on top of a whole bunch of other work that you’re often not accustomed to doing like what we’re just talking about. It’s not just the carrying the loads which is a massive amount of work. It’s also sleeping on the glacier in a sleeping bag on a thermarest or whatever your path is like. You know in a tent that rattles all night because it’s windy, you know, being uncomfortable because it’s really difficult to get up and urinate during the night and you know you so stand up, you sit up and you knock all the frost off. The tent and it falls into your partner’s face, and you wake them up and I mean it’s just sort of a veritable sort of you know, comedy of circumstances that make living really tough up there and so when you put all these factors together.

11:00.60
Steve
And you’re eating, you know, substandard food. Let’s say you know I mean you have to eat a lot of dehydrated food and other you know things you’re not you know so you’re just not rested as well. You’re not fueled as well. Ah, you’re doing a ton more work. You’re often under a lot of stress people. I don’t want to underestimate people really beat themselves up mentally and I’m sure bill. You have all kinds of experience with this like a lot of what I did as a guide up there was simply coaching people that they could do it because they would have themselves talked out of it before they even got to 14 a lot of times and it’s purely in their heads. And that’s a tremendous amount of stress that they’re going ah through and it’s just like with training adaptations. It’s just another commonization, it is just another adaptation. Your body is making to an environmental stress, and it takes it takes resources and those resources are scarce. Kind of un-denying. They just are.

12:02.92
Alyssa
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. Thank you both for that explanation I think it’s just I’ve heard it before and was curious. What yeah, what your reasonings were ah so I guess to go from there. And we will dig into more of what you’re talking about Steve but what are a few mountains that you have guided that are that are at quite high altitude that have stood out to you and what has made them memorable.
00:02.50
Alyssa
So, what are a few mountains that have stood out to both of you from your guiding experience ah particularly at like high altitude and what has made them very memorable for you.

00:17.45
Alyssa
Bill, if you want to? Yeah.

00:17.62
Bill Allen
Yeah, I mean Mount Everest obviously is a big one on a lot of levels and that was you know for me that was the culmination of you know decades of guiding it. 6 and seven thousand meters before I ever went to Mount Everest but you know like I you learn a lot about altitude on you know, like we were talking about on Denali at six thousand meters or at seven thousand meters you see ah a lot of you learn a lot about not just how you do, but how clients do and how to kind of manage that sort of, extreme altitude.

01:07.42
Steve
Yeah, I never guided in the Himalaya. Personally, so all my experience with heil to do guiding was in South America and Alaska and 1 of the places that was actually pretty formative for me is I did a lot of us.

01:25.87
Steve
Trips over about 4 or 5 seasons in Ecuador really early in my guiding career and those are actually great starter altitude experiences. I really recommend those climbs for a lot of people because I think there. You know they’re accessible. They’re very high. You get all ah a lot of experience both as a guide and as a climber at you know these approaching and over Twenty-Thousand-foot altitudes without all the commitment of a twenty-one-day trip like you know Denali typically is. And, you know and it’s super beautiful down there. It’s a really gorgeous part of the world.

02:08.41
Alyssa
Is the success rate generally higher for Ecuador like those types of trips compared to a Denali situation. Would you say? Yeah, that’s what I figured out.

02:17.60
Steve
Oh yeah, much higher. Yeah, I’d say the typical I forget the statistics bill you may know but Denali it’s typically around 60% of people on guided trips summit and typically around 40%

02:37.16
Steve
Of independent climbers’ summit on Denali as I recall what the averages tend to be they kind of tally the season and they vary a little bit from year to year and I would say you know we would do these Ecuador trips and we do Cayambe Coppo and Chimborazo typical typically and a 15-day trip. And you know it seemed like everybody would summit at least 1 of the mountains and you know a couple of people would summit all 3 you know out of a group of 10 and you know assign weather was stable and those kinds of environmental factors. But you know that’s a much higher success rate than 60%.

03:21.20
Alyssa
Yeah, no, that’s really good to know I know a lot of our clients go down there first and then kind of move into Denali etc. So, Steve your kind of.

03:31.32
Steve
Yeah, and if you only do Cotopaxi. You know I mean you can just do some acclimatization hikes in Cotopaxi and have a great trip in you know, nine days you know car to car kind of a thing to jet as it were.

03:48.20
Alyssa
Nice. So, Steve you touched on this of when you’re on the mountain of how a lot of it was just reassuring clients that they were capable of existing in the altitude and succeeding but, Bill you know when you’re doing. Your pre-trip communications and such how do you help clients who are concerned about the altitude when your kind of in the pre-trip planning stage.

04:18.18
Bill Allen
It’s really managed the things that you can, right? Like there’s a lot of people you know and not to keep going back to Denali. But that’s what we do with a lot of and a lot of people. That’s going to be the first time they’re up to twenty Thousand feet like maybe they’ve climbed throughout the us and maybe they haven’t traveled Ecuador or you know Argentina or wherever and gone to those higher altitudes and so it’s going to be the first time that they’re above about fourteen Thousand feet and so you know controlling what you can meaning be fit and strong and take care of that component of it and gain the other experiences so that the technical skills and the movement on the mountain is. Is easy for you and that you’ve got that side of things and so you know there’s things you can do to pre-acclimatize obviously now which is great like these hypoxia tents and those are getting used more and more not just by people who want to do like a quicker ascent but just by people who are joining our trip and going on the normal schedule and the normal acclimatization plan but they want to make it a little bit easier on themselves while they’re on the mountain or just relieve some of the anxiety about the altitude that they might have.

05:48.10
Bill Allen
Leading into it and so, you know there’s things that people can do like that to prep. But really, it’s just like making sure that you’re prepared in all the other ways and don’t worry about the altitude side of it because we’re going to.

06:04.89
Bill Allen
We’re going to design an acclimatization plan an itinerary for moving up the mountain that’s going to allow the vast majority of people to acclimatize and you know you’re going to feel Altitude. You might have a headache and you might not feel great every day. But you’re going to be able to acclimatize at that ascent rate.

06:28.93
Steve
Yeah, and the thing I would add to that bill too is that one of the universal experiences of altitude is that it’s uncomfortable and I think that people often get kind of psyched out because they get up there and they feel uncomfortable, and the alarm bells go off because there.

06:30.82
Alyssa
Ah, Steve anything?

06:48.84
Steve
That’s not normal. You know, climbing up to as you said fourteen thousand feet you don’t really feel I mean maybe that kind of uncomfortable like you do when you’re sleeping above fourteen Thousand feet for a week or sleeping at Seventeen Thousand feet the first time it’s just it’s just uncomfortable and you know. You’re going to be really uncomfortable and not be sick most of the time, right? like and still be and be basically fine. I thinks it’s your body under stress. It’s doing its thing. The acclimatization is underway but by definition you’re smiting on Denali or any of these high mounds. Well before you’re acclimated to that altitude you’re on the edge of that envelope right? You’re acclimated enough to go there but you’re definitely not acclimated enough to stay there, especially when you when you get up above six thousand meters and so there’s a real threshold in my experience.

07:47.60
Steve
For that’s different for different individuals and for me, it’s about five Thousand meters I really like I’m like oh okay, ah this is uncomfortable now I’m over five Thousand meters and for me there’s another one at 7000 where me personally like. When I transition above seven thousand meters, I’m like okay like that was that was a big step. It doesn’t feel that much worse to me from 7 to 8 or but from 5 to 7 is sort of the same sort of level of suck and from seven up is another kind of level and it’s just it’s just suffering. And you know it’s just good old garden variety suffering and as long as you can separate mentally what is the difference between the suffering and the illness and the writ and what is dangerous which is hard to do. It’s hard to stay objective when you’re that uncomfortable.. But experience brings that perspective and that’s where I think people who are new to high altitude get really psyched out because they’re just like oh my god like I’ve never felt like this before this has to be bad like you know and their brains our brains are to protect ourselves or you know it’s like oh my god I’m going to die I got to go down. It’s like no, you’re not going to die. You’re just going to You’re just going to have a headache and you’re going to feel like not good for a while and then you’re going to start to feel better and then you’re going to be able to you know feel like yourself again in a few days and let’s look at trends. Let’s not.

09:14.18
Steve
Focus on how you feel this moment and I think that that’s one of the things that ah really, you know with guiding and with being at altitude, but people haven’t been there that much as climbers, just getting people to focus on the trends. So, are you feeling? are you are you trending worse or are you trending better and not from minute to minute but from like you know half a day to half a day or from day to day that’s kind of the scale you need to look at.

09:42.81
Alyssa
No, that’s really helpful for clients who are going into it and yeah, so how do you say your client shows up, you’re getting on the mountain. How are you assessing their preparedness to go into Altitude bill if you want to take off.

10:03.84
Bill Allen
Yeah I mean it’s really it’s about pacing I think as much as anything else, you know and it’s like during the day when you’re climbing like not pushing people past where they’re able to recover, is super important because it gets harder and harder for people to recover catch up after if they’re pushing too hard at altitude people just don’t recover, so just kind of keeping an eye on people during the day and make sure you’re not pushing them too. Deep into their reserves and then like on a more long-term basis like the day-to-day thing. It’s just like Steve said it’s mono. It’s kind of keeping an eye on trends and you know if you have a headache in the morning. Like that might feel it. It might have been a terrible night’s sleep, and you wake up, you don’t feel very good, and you have a headache but is that is that an okay headache or is that like the onset of cerebral edema and a life-threatening situation and, you know most of the time. It’s just It’s going to be ah Ams it’s going to be acute mountain sickness and that’s something that is normal and to be expected and it’s hard for people their first time at altitude to gauge whether this is an okay normal headache or if this is something that’s.

11:38.62
Bill Allen
Beyond normal and there’s a lot of anxiety around that for people and I think experience at altitude I think as much as anything is learning. What’s okay and what’s normal for you like if I wake up with a headache. I’m like I’m fine I’m going to go have a cup of coffee. And it’s going to start getting better. You know and as soon as I get up and I move and I know it’s going to start feeling better and if it didn’t then that’s when I would start to be concerned but, knowing yourself and how you respond and what amount of suck is okay and when you’re kind of getting pushing beyond that.

12:19.83
Steve
Yeah, and I agree with all that bill and people have to kind of learn that and go through that themselves to believe it right? like your kind of can tell them all the things ahead of time but until they’ve gone through it and had that experience of waking up with a headache getting out. Shoveling a bit, having a coffee, whatever moving around have that have that feeling that you’re feeling better through the through the morning you know I think that that’s something you just have to experience to really believe for yourself. The other thing that. I Think really helps people frankly is just fitness just showing up fit because again a climate is a your body will climatize and to a certain extent at a rate at which it has available resources to dedicate to acclimatization and if you’re completely destroyed physically every day. I’ve never seen you know, ostensibly fitness like if you take an unfit and a fit individual and put them in a helicopter or something and flew them to higher altitudes. Their acclimatization rate does not change. It’s not directly dependent on fitness per say but it is in the sense of if you pull into that camp and you’re destroyed versus you’re pulling into that camp and you’re a little tired, but you recover fine the person who is a little tired and recover fine is clearly going to acclimatize better. So again to the bill’s point earlier control what you can control.

13:52.98
Steve
And show up for the for the trip with a good aerobic base because you know again, Aerobic is so important at altitude because there’s not much Oxygen so your ability to utilize Oxygen is amplified. The importance of your ability to use Oxygen is amplified at high Altitude. So.

14:11.79
Alyssa
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and go-ahead Bill.

14:14.68
Bill Allen
Yeah, I was just going to say the one challenge that super fit athletic people have I feel like is pacing appropriately at altitude and that’s something that.

14:32.23
Bill Allen
Can be scary on a mountain like Denali where you can’t just turn around and run downhill necessarily if you’re not feeling good and especially I feel like it’s the Colorado you know super mountain athlete people who are used to running and putting in huge days and vertical and. Running up over fourteen Thousand Foot peaks and then they come and to a mountain like Denali and they push up to fourteen Thousand feet in two or three days and then.

14:52.14
Steve
On.

15:04.67
Bill Allen
Get sick at 14 and sometimes it can. It can be pretty bad, and it can come on pretty fast and so if they weren’t fit. They wouldn’t have been able to get there in the first place that fast that fast you know so sometimes that that gets them into trouble.

15:20.51
Steve
Yeah, that’s totally true Bill and I mean so many you know when I was on my own expeditions both in South America and Asia you know this is one of the reasons. I really got into this mode of really seeking out.

15:39.71
Steve
Objectives where I could do easy climbs in the beginning like lower at lower elevation for classic example would be like in Charakusa valley where you can literally like be bouldering around basecamp and I think that that kind of light exercise is really good positive for your adaptation, and then you can you can hike a little higher than you can you know? So, you can hike up to say fifteen sixteen thousand feet then you can do a rock climb that takes you up to a fifteen-thousand-foot summit and then you know there’s ways to sort of keep that type a personality engaged and. That also keeps that in check, and doesn’t you know because the problem is as you say you can potentially get up too high into a dangerous situation and be stuck and be sick and that can definitely work against a work against people, and it does take a certain amount of time like there’s no there’s no shortcuts

16:37.74
Alyssa
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I’m sure that the mental component of assuredness will say confidence can be quite detrimental at times. So how when you have a client who’s struggling at altitude? How do you help them to manage it I think Steve you kind of spoke about this before but yeah bill I’m curious where your strategies are.

17:06.45
Bill Allen
The first thing is just taking care of the basics like food and water and sleep. You know like make sure people are staying hydrated and they’re eating well and you’re providing them with you know sometimes. People struggle to eat at altitude for a variety of reasons but like making sure that you’re fueling them and getting them water and then the sleep component is really challenging for some people who just struggle to sleep in a tent at sea level much less.

17:42.12
Bill Allen
You know at altitude and on a mountain. So that’s a big one and then and then it’s time. Ah, you can adjust the schedule and give people an extra day to rest and that sort of thing and even you know like as Steve mentioned when we’re resting like it. At Fourteen-Thousand-foot base camp or on Denali like a rest day doesn’t mean laying your tent flat all day it means like getting out and moving and getting some exercise and stimulating breathing and you know making sure that you’re doing stuff to stimulate your body but not. Overdoing it and so allowing yourself to kind of have an active recovery day. But usually if you give people a day or 2 and you make sure they’re getting food and water like it’s amazing. The difference that you’ll see in 24 or 48 hours with somebody as long as they’re not you know at advanced stages of pulmonary edema or something like that and they just have to go down, but you’ll see yeah, you’ll see a major difference in in just a couple of days of active rest and recovery.

18:56.34
Alyssa
Steve, do you want to add anything or?

19:03.36
Steve
Ah, yeah, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to because I mentioned it earlier but, yeah, I’ll just emphasize what bill said just getting out of the tent shoveling fixing up your campsite. Walking over to some neighbors and having a cup of tea. You know I think that its taking picture is just getting up and out most of the time is the is the first step the one of the worst things you know you can do is just stay in your tent and stay in your sort of bag and lay there. It’s really, It’s really tough mentally and I think that it’s not good to physically in my experience to have people just sort of stay in their tent and isolate. Don’t do well in that scenario and that is an inclination and it’s inclination for me and for a lot of people when you’re not feeling well so it yeah it helps to have other hands around you to encourage and support you to get up and get out and just do something and move and you know it’s one of the kind of fun things frankly about climbing is you do often share a lot of camps with other people that you would normally not have met and so there’s a huge social component whether it’s Aman Kawa or Denali or Everest or any other eight thousand Meter peak you know.

20:27.53
Steve
But actually, a huge social component just to kind of get to know people around and then they’re from all different countries and all different backgrounds and its often-super fun. So, you know that’s a good side of it.

20:38.88
Alyssa
Nice, yeah, that’s great advice. So, this is a question that personally I’m really interested in. So maybe this is more for me than anything else. But how do you balance your own safety and your client’s safety? And then assessing you know is it right? to continue forward. Should we turn Around. and what happens if you start having difficulty out there.

21:07.20
Bill Allen
Yeah, I mean that’s super important as a guide. You’re responsible for everyone on the team and so you need to make sure that you’re solid before you know, being able to push up higher or anything like that and so.

21:26.55
Bill Allen
You know in terms of just acclimatizing in terms of the altitude side of things I think that just comes down to having the experience to know what works for you and how to take care of yourself and how to make sure that you’re acclimatizing well and then also just like. Not being afraid to say hey I’m not there today and I’m not willing to lead you guys up higher today and I’m glad you’re all feeling great but I’m not and we’re going to take another day you know type of thing. So, yeah, I mean it obviously the guides need to. Need to be solid and that you know that’s all the things we talked about that’s fitness. That’s experience at altitude and knowing what’s what works for you and what doesn’t and that sort of thing as well.

22:17.22
Steve
Yeah, and I would also say that the guiding team is really important like those are the people that as a guide you are relying on to check in on you and your checking in on them. You know that becomes second nature to any experienced mountain guide. But you know you are one. Another’s support and you have to be super honest with each other because we do get sick too and you know every time I go to altitude my body is reacting slightly differently like I’ve been to high altitudes, lots and lots and lots of times. But it’s still always a little bit different and I’ve also had experiences where I went to seven thousand meters and got full-blown pulmonary edema and you know then the next season gone then climbed higher altitudes and felt completely fine. We’re not entirely clear about why these things happen to people, why people get sick at certain times and no other times and guides are human, and we have to you know, check in with one another and keep each other healthy. You know that’s the only thing that’s really the team’s social net and that’s really the team’s safety net in that way is that that connection between the 2 or 3 or more guides that are working together.

23:40.31
Alyssa
Have you had clients or go-ahead Bill?

23:43.14
Bill Allen
One of the I was just going to say one of the cool things about, that expedition guiding is that you typically are working with a team of guides and most of the other guiding I do anywhere else. It’s probably just me and 1 or 2 or 3 clients that I’m with and so it’s kind of ah a unique experience almost in the guiding world to be working with a team like that and it happens a lot on those high altitude peaks, and then and maybe you were going to touch on this but another.

24:20.46
Bill Allen
One of the real important things about like monitoring each other as within the guide team but also with the clients and the entire climbing team is just making sure that you have open communication about how people are feeling so that you can help to address any issues as they come up. And sort of establishing sort of the culture of the climbing team to be communicating about that stuff and being able to show weakness I think is really important because it’s easy to you know people will come into the kitchen tent in the morning for breakfast and. Just be like I feel great and I feel super strong and let’s get ready to go today and if I’m like well I have a little bit of a headache this morning and I don’t feel that great and I’m a little tired from yesterday and just changing that that conversation and the. And the sort of permission structure to say yeah actually I didn’t sleep that well either and I don’t feel that great and it’s like okay like let’s have that conversation instead of putting on the facade of like the indestructible mountain guide who never you know feels bad and I’m just going to keep going like let’s it. Let’s all just. Talk about how we’re feeling because then you can make changes. You can say okay, well let’s like have a lighter load today or maybe we’ll take an extra day and really set yet for success. But I think a lot of times that is one of the challenges is just getting people to.

25:54.42
Bill Allen
Be willing to communicate with you about how they really are feeling and with clients sometimes they think if they show any weakness that their guide’s going to turn them around. You know, like the guide’s going to find out I didn’t sleep. Well and I have a headache and they’re going to make me go down and really what we’re trying to do is get the information to use the tools at our disposal to help them succeed. Ultimately, so that’s ah yeah, just a big part of this sort of. Climbing team culture that I think is important.

26:28.87
Alyssa
Do you think that’s changed over the years with guiding where there is room for some of that vulnerability because I feel like that’s culturally in some ways the direction that we’ve gone where there’s kind of this.

26:46.33
Alyssa
Tough exterior of we can’t really admit weakness to like hey this isn’t going so well like have you seen that change throughout either of your careers of being able to have that communication or is that there from the start.

27:01.26
Bill Allen
I think that comes from the confidence that you have by having experience up there like I’m sure the first time I was on Denali I didn’t want anybody to see any weakness I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t feel good or that I was tired or anything. But like after years of doing it I’m not concerned about my ability to be there and I guess I’m so I’m willing to express when things aren’t perfect or willing to admit that. Have a headache this morning or I’m tired from yesterday or my backpack is heavy instead of just pretending. It’s all fine. All the time.

27:45.29
Steve
I think that’s a great observation bill because if you know if you have the street cred that you’ve already done this a bunch and you’re the guide and you’re you know, been doing this for decades and everybody knows you can do it and if you admit that you’re not feeling that great. It’s just like oh Bill’s having an off day. But if you’re the unproven guide or the apprentice or your the client. You know you don’t have that calm. You don’t have that social currency with the rest of the group that you can easily say that and that is a stigma ah that. That exists and I think we needed to just like what we’re doing here. Be aware of it. Talk about it in beginning and try to just I mean it’s a lot of work as ah as a leader of a team like that. You’re just constantly communicating and building trust and. Observing and you know every guide has a different way of doing it. A lot of people I’ve seen do it really successfully with sort of you know by like teasing people. They build up a little rapport and you know other people do it with like kind of storytelling or you know things. But I do think that. It just comes down to you know, basic emotional intelligence and relationships 1 on one to create this area of safety for the for those guides and clients that don’t have that.

29:14.72
Steve
Social Currency have a ton of experience at a high altitude.

29:18.59
Alyssa
That makes a lot of sense and I’m glad that it’s coming up because I think that that’s super key in the mountain world I think that’s something Steve and I have talked a lot about I’m sure bill you think and talk a lot about of like how do you both you know be safe through vulnerability in a way. I’m curious to how do you manage clients expectations. So say you get a client who’s like smit or you know I’ve wasted my money. How are you able to take that client and ring them in. To a certain extent.

30:00.23
Bill Allen
Yeah, that’s tough, we try to address that like from the very first conversations we have with people we try to define like what our goals as the as a team are for this expedition.

30:16.59
Bill Allen
And getting to the summit isn’t number one you know like being safe and having a good experience comes in front of getting to the summit. So , and what we say is like if you. If you do those first 2 things right? If you’re if you’re concentrating on you know, safety and risk management and having a good experience in terms of like treating each other well and working well as a team. Then the third one the getting to the summit that falls into place you know, but if the other parts fall apart. You’re not going to get to the summit anyway. So I think it’s you know we try to communicate that with our clients right off the bat and then and then like if. If all, you’re thinking about is the summit. You’re not paying attention to what you’re doing today. You’re not only missing out on some of the joy. But you’re probably not doing a very good job of what you’re doing today and so I always try to just like yes think about the summit but we need to break this down into what do I need to accomplish today. To get to the summit in a week or 2 from now and really focus on doing a good job of that and taking care of each little step along the way.

31:38.27
Steve
You know I think that one thing that I would tell prospective clients is you know. First of all the guiding community is freaking amazing like it’s just one of the best groups of people that I’ve ever.

31:55.18
Steve
Worked with and known interacted with and that goes across cultures across just everybody I’ve known who’s been a mountain guide for any length of time is a good person like I think that that it just the profession attracts. And frankly selects for honest hardworking people who have a lot of values and I want I want people to know is that the guides want to get to the summit as much or more than you do. Like for me is when I’m guiding like it’s really important for me that I get my group to the summit. It’s all the rest of course is important what Bill was saying and I’m not going to compromise safety and quality experience for that summit. But I really want to be successful because that’s. It’s a binary thing right? like you invest all this time. All this energy into putting this trip together and for sure there’s sometimes where it’s just outside of your control. It’s just like and bill and I both had many of these experiences where it’s just like there was. And those are honestly some of the easiest where it’s just like it’s clear that nobody can s it right now and what’s hardest is when it’s in between when it’s like maybe some people are sneaking up there and they’re getting some little windows and are getting lucky and you get and your team is like pushing you.

33:20.51
Steve
And you know I just want climbers that are climbing with guides to know that those guides are driving themselves just as hard as you’re driving them if not harder, they really want to so get you to the top. They really want that. Not just for you but also for themselves, for their company, for their sense of purpose, their sense of pride, their sense of a job. Well, done all of those things and these people are really hardworking, good, accountable, like honest people to down to every last one of them that I’ve ever met. So. I just think that that’s really important for people to keep in mind when they’re talking to any kind of if you’re talking to a guide about Denali or Everest, I mean these are these are not going to be people who have never guided a mountain before right? These are going to be people who have worked their way up and so they’re you’re already talking to like a very solid.

34:12.67
Steve
You know sliver of the of the population that is going to you know, stick by what they say and they’re going to do everything they can to make it a success.

34:22.62
Alyssa
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see clients make when they’re in high altitude situations. It seems like stay in your tent alone is one of the big ones. What are a few others that you see.

34:43.71
Bill Allen
Back to just kind of the food and water just like the basic fueling and hydrating and people it. It takes discipline to do that. You’re not necessarily going to be hungry or thirsty, but you need to. Don’t remain disciplined to take care of yourself in that way and then on the other end of the spectrum. It’s pushing too hard, sorry like people get to camp and they’re feeling good and they’re like at high camp and it’s almost 30 you it and they drop their packs and they’re like I don’t feel crappy up here. This is awesome. Let’s set up tents I’m going to start digging snow and shoveling and building blocks and building snow walls and just go until they’re like oh all of a sudden, they’re bonking. And feeling like crap and then it can be really hard to recover you know from that and so like just pacing yourself and pacing your energy, not just when you’re climbing. But when you get to camp also and all the work that needs to be done there because it’s hard. To recover once you push yourself too deep and I did that to myself moving up. It was on Everest, and I was feeling so good moving up to camp 2.

36:10.14
Bill Allen
And some of the sherpas that I knew that were working with us were passing me and I was like oh I’m going to keep up with these guys today and I could do it but I paid the price I felt like for two days after that just because I got there and didn’t feel like I should have and it took me days to recover. Because I just pushed just 10% too hard. for a few hours one day you know so.

36:38.67
Steve
Yeah, that all comes with experience and it’s my recommendation would be to just ask the people that are more experienced and because there’s a lot of these things where you just you just aren’t going to know and it’s okay, not to know you’ve never done this before but. Part of the reason the guiding team is there is to help you through all those questions and doubts and a good guide is not going to mind at all answering all your questions and they’re actually going to embrace each one as ah as a potential way to educate the whole team to make the whole team come together. To share knowledge. They’re going to be positively motivated by those kind of questions. So I’d say you know don’t be afraid to ask questions and the other thing that I’d say is I think one of the biggest mistakes. It can be not doing a good job with interpersonal dynamics I think that ah when this is this is something that I think actually we’ve been working to working to I don’t know if a address but we’ve been working to help. With uphill athlete with our memberships and other and also with our coached athletes that are that are training for the same objective and getting them in contact with and with one another so they can start to get to know one another before the trip.

38:04.77
Steve
And we’ve also had groups where the whole group trains together for a particular expedition and they’re like sharing notes on their training and they’re doing some Zoom calls about you know, training subjects and stuff and they get to see each other’s faces. They get to go get in a chat group and. You know, share pictures of their dogs while they’re hiking or whatever it is right? And the interpersonal dynamics on an expedition are really important and if you just show up at a hotel in Anchorage or Katmandu one day and you meet like 8 new strangers that you’re going to. You know, be spending 24 hours a day for seven days a week for 3 to six weeks you know that’s tough that’s tough like I don’t excel in that situation I have our time in that situation and most of us do so trying to put energy into making that as good as you can. And contribute to that being a positive experience for everyone. and being tolerant of people because everybody’s going to get on each other’s nerves at some point not get clicky not get like ah that’s another mistake where are people form these little packs within the expedition. And that has massive negative impacts and it’s of course up to the guides to kind of monitor encourage the right the right culture within ah within a trip and it sounds funny to say culture when you have a 3-week trip. But you know yeah that really happens like you have trips where the.

39:35.14
Steve
Group just gels and works really well together and is super strong and you have trips and I know Bill is nodding his head over there like has the same experience where they’re just like the group fractures that it never kind of comes together and that is really important. Not just to the safety and the quality of the experience. But also that the success because people just get demotivated when they’re not having fun with people. They really care for.

40:02.76
Alyssa
Yeah, I’ve definitely had a couple of clients actually come back from trips and be like I did I just did not like the group and it didn’t go super well so it is really interesting like that’s a huge factor in their experiences like.

40:04.25
Bill Allen
Yeah, absolutely.

40:22.32
Alyssa
I didn’t like my tentmate I felt really isolated. Yeah, so no, that’s a huge piece.

40:22.95
Steve
Here’s factor. Ah, yeah, and I’m sure bill and I have both had those trips where there’s that like that 1 person that honestly nobody likes it’s sort of and it’s really tough because you know it’s like man this person is a real jerk and not just to me but to everybody else and it ruins the whole vibe and there’s really not a whole lot. You can do other than try to get to know people beforehand this is like my standard advice when people come to me asking like who should I climb Denali with or who should I climb Everest with as I always tell them like find a guide that is doing those trips get to know them do some other climbing with them. You might not jive with them and you know don’t just sign up based on you know I don’t know how nice the website is or something like that but actually get to know the people because that’s what’s going to get you up there.

41:20.50
Bill Allen
Yeah, luckily those kind of toxic personalities are pretty few and far between I feel like in in the people that actually want to come and do these types of trips like generally understand.

41:35.85
Bill Allen
It’s a teamwork thing and there’s some really like you mentioned before like really interesting, amazing motivated driven hardworking really cool people that come to do these things and then occasionally you’ll get that sort of.

41:52.98
Bill Allen
Talks of personality that can really bring the whole team down. we try to like what we’ve been doing for a while now is we’ll do these pre-trip Zoom meetings like a couple of months prior to the trip and the whole team gets together with the guides and. Has this meeting on Zoom and begins this communication months before the expedition and I sometimes catch little threads of emails or text messages and you start to see these groups that really do come together. Before they’ve ever met in person and they’re like yeah I was out training today and I was doing this and by the time they get to the mountain then if somebody’s having a bad day and they’re you know they’re just struggling and can’t put their tent up. Well these other people they’re already like. They’re a team and they’re like going to go over and help that person out and instead of looking at them going. Who’s this person they can’t even put their 10 up. Why are they here you know, kind of thing. So , yeah, that that culture and that teamwork I think is.

42:56.87
Bill Allen
It’s really a neat part of the expedition experience is working with a team of people who come from different parts of the world and different backgrounds who all have this similar same or similar goal and are coming together to work really hard together and support each other. On this journey and it’s like kind of sounds cliche but that’s really as a guide that’s you know, part of the reward or 1 of the more rewarding parts of the of the job is kind of seeing these groups of people come together and achieve things that are that are hard to do.

43:34.42
Bill Allen
And require a lot of suffering and sacrifice along the way and seeing people do that together is pretty neat.

43:44.58
Alyssa
It’s giving a lot of flashbacks honestly to being a teacher in a classroom. It’s very similar if like getting a group of so there’s sometimes a rotten egg but when you get them all working together in collaboration. It’s pretty beautiful thing to see what they can accomplish.

44:01.99
Alyssa
Yeah, so this is kind of a last fun question because as teaching high school students can be and is very exhausting guiding sounds extremely exhausting when you come back from a trip. What’s your. Favorite way to kick back or like first meal you want when you’re back in civilization.

44:27.62
Bill Allen
Probably a cheeseburger and fries like that’s kind of like classic. Yeah, just about anywhere in the world. You can find that and yeah.

44:30.50
Alyssa
Nice.

44:39.41
Alyssa
Nice Steve.

44:40.54
Steve
Yeah I’ll add I would add a beer to that menu. But other than that and then probably ice cream. Yeah I remember 1 of my early.

44:45.19
Bill Allen
Yes, and probably ice cream at the end.

44:56.47
Steve
Trips or one of my early experiences in Alaska’s probably like 20 I would have been 25 and I guided a west buttress trip and then I guided a west rib trip and then I went out. Back in and did a personal climbing trip and I kept a journal and I was making all kinds of notes in my journal. But what I realized months later was that in the days that I had been in Talkeetna between these different trips I had averaged over three pints of Haagen dazs per day.

45:33.71
Steve
I mean part it’s the downtime right? But part of it is just like you. You know you need to eat like you’ve been working really hard. You’ve been at a high altitude your body’s craving calories because you’re just in a calorie deficit and you just need to eat. So.

45:48.49
Steve
Yeah, why not some good ice cream, yeah.

45:49.47
Alyssa
I mean that’s the metric. The people want Steve but also yeah, what you were saying like sleeping at fourteen Plus Thousand feet all I can think of is that is so many calories just existing and staying alive. Yeah, let alone working.

45:56.49
Bill Allen
Yeah.

46:02.63
Steve
It does that is yeah out.

46:08.83
Alyssa
Well thank you both so much for joining me on this episode and bill I’d love to have you tell our listeners how they can find more about mountain trip. Ah and connect with you see about getting on one of your expeditions or trips.

46:25.70
Bill Allen
Yeah, we actually have a website called mountaintrip.com and we so recently just the last couple years. It’s kind of been a passion project is we’re building this new website called summit Denali which has. Been more It’s trying to just be an educational website and we can’t help but approach everything in there from our perspective which is as guides. But that’s a new website that people can look at that’s it’s specifically just for Denali and Alaska range staff when we’ve tried to include more articles. Would be appropriate for private climbers that aren’t necessarily coming with a guide so like how do you manage your kitchen and your stoves and your food packing and all that kind of stuff, so yeah, that’s us not true.

47:15.94
Alyssa
So awesome I will link that in the show notes and also the climb Denali was the other website summit Denali wow mess it up right? Off the bat. There was 2 things to remember awesome. Well thank you? both.

47:22.23
Bill Allen
Summit Denali. Yeah.

47:33.59
Alyssa
And thank you for listening to the Uphill Athlete podcast if you could rate review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform that helps us to help more athletes. Be their best at any altitude Steve do you want to wrap us up.

47:51.65
Steve
It’s not just one but a community together. We are upill athlete. Thanks Bill for coming on good to see you.

47:56.45
Bill Allen
Yeah, it’s great to see you Steve you have nice to meet you.

47:56.74
Alyssa
Thanks both.