Guy Cotter on Everest

00:04.70
Steve
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast my name is Steve House I’ll be your host today. I’m super excited to welcome a new guest, a new name and face to the uphill athlete community. But certainly not a new name or face to the big mountains of the world, Guy Cotter welcome to the uphill athlete podcast good to see you. We’ve known each other for quite some time you know tell us a little bit about you know.

00:24.77
Guy
Yeah, thanks Steve good to see you again.

00:38.80
Steve
Who is guy conter? Where are you coming from? What do you do? How do you describe yourself?

00:44.20
Guy
And sure how do I describe myself? Well my name’s guy cotter I come from New Zealand a mountain guide based there and I run a mountain guiding company called adventure consultants. Many people would have heard of that. Because of you know the events probably back in 1996 Rob Hall was my friend and mentor ran the business and from 1992 I was involved with adventure consultants along with Rob Hall’s partner Gary Ball in running some of the very first guided expeditions to Mount Everest so I was there in ninety two ninety three, in 95 and I was guiding more in 96 when things went down on everyone was Rob and the party in scottfish air and co.

01:40.51
Guy
Then I went on and purchased the company I’d already had a small guiding company in New Zealand I’m an IMGA guide and I grew adventure consultants to operate the expeditions all over the world. When Rob or Gary Baldo owned it they were doing like 4 expeditions a year in the ten years or so after that we were doing more than 35 expeditions a year as well as having a guiding school in New Zealand and in Chamonix in the Alps. So we got kind of busy. So through that period I climbed Everest 5 times climbed stephen little.

02:17.19
Steve
I need to just interject here for a moment if I may because before we go through the whole history here I just want to step back a moment and I think that everyone listening of course has heard about the tragedy of Mount Everest 1996 and of course heard about adventure consultants and I think you know many of our uphill athlete climbers and athletes have climbed with you both on everest and on other mountains across the globe.

02:37.21
Guy
So close the floor.

02:55.81
Steve
And you know I was a little bit tongue-in-cheek I think that you know your exploits are well-known in much of the mountaineering community and certainly in the big mountain guiding community I think that you are truly a pioneer of big mountain guiding and expeditionary guiding. Not just you but your whole company and the way the standards that you have been setting for a long time over there. So let’s just back up a little bit and I want to talk about you know you as a climber like take me back to I don’t know half a generation or so older than me so we have a lot of mutual friends Barry Blanchard and most notably perhaps who we’re both close with tell me a bit about what it was like for you when you started off with climbing and what got you into climbing. Yeah I just want to hear in your own words a little bit about what that experience was like for you back in, you know the late 80s or early 90s and even earlier.

04:02.72
Guy
And even earlier. Ah, thanks for asking? Yeah I was born into a climbing family. My father was mountaineer. He’d climbed in the himalayas and made an ascent of a Seven Thousand two hundred meter peak in the gaul region called mockat parbat along with Earl Reddiford and George Loe and from that 2 of them got invited to the Iris Reconnaissance back in 52 so ah, there’s been a long history of mountaineering and when when I was young I was living in Southern New Zealand and there wasn’t really a whole lot to do back in those days it was before Facebook and Tiktok and all of that so you could kind of read books or you could play ragby or you could yeah I was lucky.

04:49.90
Steve
Of course.

04:57.44
Guy
My family was at the goings the outdoors. So I got experience going to the outdoors from when I was quite young and resonated with me I wasn’t really into the destruction sports I enjoyed being in the outdoors I enjoyed the freedom it gave me and from when I was 12-13 years old I was going to the mountains by myself and meeting up with other people and go and climbing or sometimes different solo trips. You know, reason easy to rain.

05:25.42
Steve
Let me, pause you there for a moment because I probably know I am remiss in one fact that the impetus I was having this conversation was actually you publishing a book. Called everest guide and you gave me a copy and I read it. It’s a great read. Great story. It’s published in New Zealand currently and hopefully everywhere else soon and you know this is one of the parts that I’m going to read a little quote from the book that I think connects to something because you talked about your father. He talked about this reconnaissance expedition obviously New Zealand mountaineers were very involved in you know the first ascent of Mount Everest and you talked about your father and you said whether all of this had an impact on me as a young climber I will never know but I suspect that some of what transpired and my father’s subsequent feelings of having been usurped by people who are no more deserving than he did filter into my subconsciousness now. That’s a really interesting I wrote that down and highlighted that section of your book because I thought it was a really interesting self-reflection as to how you know our father’s feelings sort of generationally affect the shapes of our lives.

06:57.36
Steve
How did that, tell me talk to me about how did that feel? How did that am I on to something there or am I just grasping at straws? Well, how do you see that now.

07:06.58
Guy
Ah, no I think you’re definitely onto to something there and the long story and a very short version is that after my father and Earl Reddiford and sherpa pa sun climbed look at parbat. They got an invite from the British Everest expedition reconnaissance expedition for 2 of them to bring them on Everest and that was difficult because you had 4 people who all felt that they deserved to be on this expedition and my father quickly stepped backward from that basically the argument that ensued overnight and in a town in remote India seeing that the whole ambiance and friendship had all fallen apart in this expedition because of the competition to be involved and it was a bit of a bad call from the whoever it was and the reconnaissance expedition who invited the kiwis if that had Justin invited all 4 of them then it wouldn’t have been a problem but so you know my father went on and saw Earl Hillary, becoming the first person to climb Everest and rightfully so he deserved it and yeah there was no question about that. But he’d been very close and missed that opportunity. Ah personally I feel that maybe my father might not have even been the one to climb everest if he’d been given the opportunity because he would have to pass it on to somebody else to give the opportunity to he was that sort of guy and yeah he wasn’t out there just grabbing it for himself. Ah, but I think that was probably always there and in the background and my early family life and the way that I suppose that. Affect me when we’re talking about a dad’s is made me realize that you should take opportunities when they present themselves and that’s probably something that I’ve done in my life differently than maybe what my father had done.

09:07.87
Steve
Ah.

09:12.83
Steve
Yeah I would feel like I’m actually and I would say something similar for me and I think that you know with my father with his relationship with mountaineering and climbing. You know I think that you know he always reminisced very fondly on the years where he was able to climb in mountain near a lot. But then once he had a family it was just financially logistically really difficult for him to continue that path and I just suppose that some part of his regret filtered into me wanting to you know it’s probably a pretty normal thing and you see this all the time in sports right? He never pressured me by any means. But I definitely think that it affected my passion for mountaineering and climbing and being like okay like you know he didn’t.

10:06.50
Steve
He wished he had done more of this. That’s something I’m going to learn from and I’m going to make sure I don’t make that I don’t know the mistake is maybe too strong of a word but have that regret maybe? I sense that and in your in your well-written book and so I thought that was interesting because we also kind of came as I was kind of talking about like you know we came up both but in a similar way that we’re both really passionate about climbing. We both came into climbing from a young age. So our fathers and we both found guiding at a relatively young age and we found mentors who were mountain guides who exposed us to things and talk to me a little bit and you wrote about it in your book really well. But I would like to hear from you in this context, how guiding kind of shaped your climbing and I don’t know even survival.

11:03.41
Steve
Or survivability as a climber and I know this is something we’ve talked about with Barry and other conversations as well. One on one but I’d like to hear more about that.

11:14.20
Guy
Yes, well following on from your question before about where I came from as a young mountaineer after being exposed to the outdoors I got into the mountain area in New Zealand and rock climbing was kind of just beginning at that stage I mean do you remember ebs.

11:26.53
Steve
Who yeah.

11:32.10
Guy
Yeah, really old rock shoes made of solid rubber that kind of slipped on everything. We were very lucky to have british climate John Allen come over to New Zealand and lived in crochech where I was living at the time and introduced a bunch of us to your more high-end rock climbing and then people like Toin Soremson turned up. You know when we’re getting into the alpine and ah yeah, but our mindset was formulated by I suppose the british background of mountain magazine and that was our access to what was going on in the rest of the world of Mountain Area and so I was you know climbing Mount Cook when I was 17 and then went on to basically just commit myself to to climbing and I was really interested in getting into the greater ranges I would be in Australia. And the summers rock climbing at mounta raples and yeah in my early 20s just sort of starting to think about getting further around the world. I went to America for a couple of years living at Lake Tarvo and climbing in Yosemite did my first war climb with the buddy was a two day ascent of our cat back in 82, by the nose and then we went into the salae and you know it was like oh yeah, this is good being on good rock was amazing. The reason we did the nose quickly is because.

13:06.61
Guy
We only had three cans and twenty carabiners and a set of hexes minus under 10. So we didn’t really have time to stop around putting gear.

13:14.85
Steve
Yeah, but you could also say with only three cams and hexes that would really slow a person down I mean now people go up there with I don’t know like 30 or 40 cams and they take more than two days most of the time. So like it’s really oppressive. I don’t think people understand. The context of what climbing was like in 1982 I mean even just what harnesses were like and what ropes were like and you know what the carabiners were like is just not nothing that we have now worked nearly as well as back then things just didn’t work I mean.

13:49.65
Guy
Absolutely, totally different and very rudimentary and fee-ray rock shoes which certainly don’t fit a kiwi foot.

13:50.35
Steve
You’re probably bullying with a stitch plate or something you know just totally different.

14:01.92
Steve
Perfect.

14:06.99
Guy
Ah, and so on. But so then I was back climbing New Zealand and you know started to solo some reasonable sort of climbs and there’s alpine climbing there and then I’d come back from from the US and and got into.

14:26.95
Guy
Helley ski guiding initially I’d actually resisted getting into mountain guiding because I saw a lot of friends get into guiding give up their own personal climbing and I was aware that I didn’t want to do that still very focused on my own climbing. But I kind of got into it through helley ski guiding and then started to do my qualifications and yeah, over a few years became an imga guide and when I went into that I was talking to friends saying well I don’t know getting into this guiding stuff whether I’ll learn very much. And I was very taken aback by recognizing how little I actually knew as an amateur climate even a strong amateur climber. I see that being an amateur climate a good amateur climber is being an expert in the art of selfishness. And what I mean by that is that you look after yourself and your climbing partner looks after themselves and if you have to you help each other but you’re actually both on equal footing and you’re doing your very best to get up this climb and that independence is really important for both of you. Achieve that and then you come together for those parts where you’re helping each other but what I recognized when I got into guiding was having to make rational decisions about the well-being of the people that I’m taking and making decisions that I can reflect on later and go yes that was right decision to make for this particular.

15:56.66
Steve
Yeah, you wrote a really nice passage I want to read quickly. You wrote even though I was virtually destitute I was cognizant that I was drinking deeply from the vessel of life aware that the mountains were constantly changing and moving with every temperature shift or wind change. I learned that decision making had to be fluid and in keeping with the moment in an arena where the slightest complacency could lead to bad outcomes. I knew intuitively that it was imperative to retain the highest degree of vigilance. My guiding gave me a platform from which to extend myself and then you talked about going on an expedition to I think one of the most beautiful mountains in the world Uli bayaho which I’ve always just loved that mountain and I think those of us that know you in the community, especially from guiding.

16:49.81
Steve
Frankly I didn’t know that you’d been to Uli Bialho like I didn’t know that you climbed that incredible mountain and you know any I mean hardly is I don’t know how many ascent that thing has had but a handful 3-4 in all of history right? So like a really rare thing.

7:09.83
Steve
It’s really I think interesting and you know today I think there is certainly far more information available to amateur climbers in terms of what’s safe and I mean there’s all kinds of books and Instagram videos and everything else about how to build safe anchors all of the things that go into making climbing decisions but one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed and that one of the things about guiding that I think really augmented my climbing was the structure of the guide training I went through in the US in the 90s was such that it was.

18:04.14
Steve
How do I say this? It was set up as a learning opportunity in a refinement and it was not so much of like hey we’re going to teach you this thing and this is all there is to know is just like it was more about hey these situations are extremely dynamic. These are the tools these are sort of where you shift from this tool to that tool but it’s not a hard black and white line. It’s a gray zone and you know what some people short rope other people may need to pitch and of course it’s going to depend on other factors like conditions or your gear or the weight difference between the client and the guide are all kinds of other factors and so that gave me like a really good framework for which to sort of analyze and problem solve and my own climbing within the context of you know, staying safe which is you know a relative term of course in the mountains.

19:01.36
Guy
That is interesting that you say that. if I can ask you a question. So did you think that in your mountaineering and your guiding mountaineering that process of mindset I guess that you’re talking about held you in good stead for what you achieved?

19:01.51
Steve
Yeah.

19:14.81
Steve
Absolutely did and I had a similar experience in that I didn’t know for sure that I wanted to become a mountain guide and I went into it on a part-time basis kind of as a summer job basically and I had a really great mentor immediately and a guy named Matt Culberson who is still around in the climbing community and in the Utah area. And Matt told me something that was really important and left a huge impression on me which was to keep my guiding and my climbing seperate right. That was something that was really I took to heart and I think that also helped me. A lot in developing both as a climber and a guide that guiding was one thing and like as you were saying like the focus isn’t on you. It’s on the guests and helping them. Your focus is outward always and with climbing as you say it’s like the focus is inwards. It’s on like what can I do? How can I evolve how can I challenge myself in a new way? Those kinds of things but there are obviously many parallels and share a lot of the same terrain and features and aspects and you know for me going to high altitude.

20:44.21
Steve
A bunch of times as a mountain guide gave me a lot of the confidence to do that in my personal climb and be like yeah I’ve been to six thousand meters I don’t know 20 times. I’m going to be fine when I go up there. It’s going to be slow. You know what to expect right? So I think that there was a good intersection of the 2 for me personally.

21:02.17
Guy
Absolutely and I think you and I both agree that in some ways it might have saved our lives becoming a mountain guide. I certainly feel that the pathway that I was on and I think you and others are really making statements about this and bring this to the forefront is that you know how far do you go as a mountaineer before something happens. And yeah how do we avoid this occurring so frequently and in our community of losing people. Yeah, with ah through the competition with mountaineering or the drive or whatever it is that gets us out there doing harder and harder things. And yeah I recognize that at one point by following a guiding pathway I could still get my mountaineering satisfaction. Especially once I got into high altitude guiding where there were very different challenges from say your guiding it at lower altitudes that kind of fulfilled me in a way that filled that gap that I might have otherwise had by pursuing more and more difficult technical objectives and whilst I know you don’t aspire anymore to go and you know climb as hard as I wanted to at one stage I still want to go away and do trips of my own.

22:37.50
Guy
I can reflect on what I’ve learned from guiding to understand how to keep that on the right side of the relatively correct side of the safety barrier and I think I was very lucky because I came in an era when high altitude guiding was just starting. We were right at the forefront of it. We were learning as we went and obviously 96 was a very big learning opportunity as tragic as it was and what I saw there was a whole guiding community all of a sudden you grow up. We all were involved in the events whether it was our team or somebody else’s team but we all realized that we had to come together and help each other on the mountain and on the whole certainly with a lot of the operators we connect with their competition’s over when you get to the mountain and then you’re kind of helping each other out where you can and that’s one of the things I love about guiding and mountaineering, in general, is you know that feeling of community and sharing the challenge if you happen to be on the mountain with other people. Ah, and you know now that things are a little bit more crowded as far as more operators coming in from all over the world and different nationalities involved. It does appear that it might have gone back to a little bit of being competitive.

24:06.58
Guy
Ah, to try and get a point of difference but that’s not a game I really like to play and even though others are playing it. Ah you know my passion is still to be in the mountains take people into the mountains and have a good time. I mean really at the end of the day. What are you doing it for? It’s for personal growth. It’s for enjoyment. It’s for challenge satisfaction and as soon as that is lost. You know to me. There’s no point of doing it was not just about standing on the summit like a lot of people think it is.

24:36.60
Steve
Yeah, and one thing that struck me when reading your book as you mentioned that on the first time you climbed Mount Everest in 1992 I believe you didn’t have harnesses on there were no fixed ropes above the geneva spur I assume.

24:46.29
Guy
Yes, yes.

24:56.40
Steve
You know that’s obviously changed tremendously. You know is there some part of that you I don’t know if this is the right word. Is there some part of those days that you wish would come back that you could. I don’t know if you romanticize these things if that’s the right word but what aspect if you could bring back certain parts of that pre 1996 era on Everest would there be something that you would reinstill?

25:28.74
Guy
On everest, not really I mean apart from the numbers of people really I think a lot of what has transpired over the years fix ropes on Everest. You know, being stronger and so on I think was part of a natural progression is better management than what there used to be around and as you always focused on in your own climbing career. There are thousands of other mountains and routes out there with nobody on them and if that’s actually what you want then you can go there and do that. But I think you know as Reinhold Messner put it. You know everest is now just high altitude tourism and to a degree that’s what it is and it’s been managed. But yeah I see that as being part of the positive. You know when we first were there in the early 90s the sherpas that we worked with were really there just to try and make some money they weren’t really focused on mountaineering and you know personally been really involved in trying to evolve that and now I look around and I see these professionals in the mountains getting well compensated for what they do and getting recognized for what they do. I’ve always admired them for you know their strength and to be working alongside them in the mountains but to actually then have that structure management whether it’s a western leader or a Nepalese leader or whatever.

26:59.50
Guy
Working in with professionals at every level in every role on the mountain with proper fixed ropes. Proper anchors you know and good coms. Good rescue systems and so on I see it as something that is an evolution and a natural evolution people want to climb everest if people want to climb everest away from the crowds. Well there’s still plenty of routes to go and I don’t think anyone’s climbed the West Ridge for many years if you want to if you want that please go and do it.

27:33.88
Guy
Yeah I think there’s not really much that I look back at and say I wish it was like those days because I’ve been really happy to see the improvements that are going on. There’s still a long way to go in some areas.

27:52.88
Steve
Yeah I’ve really appreciated you know your perspective on everest over the years because you have been there I don’t know is longer than probably anyone else guiding on that mountain and you’ve seen everything.

27:53.13
Guy
I think over time we might get there.

28:11.76
Steve
But 1992 where you’re up there with clients but you don’t you know there’s no harnesses. There’s no fix ropes. You know to what the way it is today and I’ve never been there obviously. So I can’t say exactly what that’s like but I agree with you this is a progression of that’s very natural. It’s very human and at the same time I think it’s important and this is why I think your book is so important I think it is important and we do have a responsibility as people who have, survived this long and arc in our careers in the mountains if I may be blunt to remind people of the history and where this has come from and you know that this moment in 2024 is again, just another moment. It’s not the apogee. It’s going to continue to evolve and to change and that’s also normal and natural as you know people are always going to climb everest because it’s the highest mountain in the world and why shouldn’t they and you know the work you do support people the work that Uphill Athlete do support a lot of people to fulfill those dreams and as you said people have different motivations so it’s personal development some it’s personal challenge some want to get famous some don’t care about that at all, you know and everything in between and then of course there’s always the multitude of mountains beyond everest that offer unlimited opportunity for you know expression of whatever that is people want to express out there and so I think that it’s really important for people to hear you know these stories and you know in your book. Obviously I think as everyone expected you do recount you know your version of your experience with the 96 tragedy. You were obviously in base camp when all that was sort of going down on the upper mountain that fateful night and day and were instrumental and organizing. A lot of the rescue efforts that followed and you know now we’re almost twenty years on or I mean no sorry almost is it almost thirty can that be.

30:36.30
Guy
Almost thirty years on yeah.

30:38.32
Steve
Wow almost thirty years on wow it doesn’t seem like that long ago I’m getting old almost thirty years on from that and you know we haven’t had probably another tragedy quite like that though. It does feel like things are arcing a little bit more in that direction recently is that just my perception or is that as an outsider what’s your perspective?

31:00.90
Guy
I mean I think you’re absolutely correct. There’s Steve as far as that specific type of event I mean obviously the 2014 avalanche which unfortunately took 16 sherpas was you know the most dramatic.

31:19.58
Guy
And then the avalanche the earthquake in avalanche and debate camp in 2015 somewhere between 18 and 22 lives were lost but as far as an event high on the mountain. Ah, you know 96 still stands out and I think.

31:39.28
Guy
The reason that it stands out is that that was at the very outset of the internet being available I mean around the world and also at Basecamp and so satellite communications were new prior to that any of these big events that ever happened. Was a time lag before they ever got reported whether it was somebody having to run down and get to a telephone further down the valley or post a letter or whatever it used to be send the pigeons out so 96 was dramatic in that respect. Ah I think what you’re referring to with what’s happened now like there was something like 18 people died on Everest last year and 10 or eleven of them were completely avoidable. And yeah, what we’re seeing is I suppose it’s a reflection of the modern age. Ah, you’ve got you know some people out there telling everybody to go hard. You know give it everything you’ve got never give up. Ah so some people are taking that literally even though they don’t have the experience to know when they should give up or when they’ve actually drained their own tank and you know that they’re exhausted.

32:52.30
Guy
And what it takes to get down off a mountain and how difficult all that is so yeah, and that’s happening at the same time as you getting a lot of especially Nepalese operators doing the 1 to 1 guiding. Up on Mount Everest where a person has a personal sherpa.. They get up high on Mount Everest on summit day. They yeah they might make it to the summit. They might not but then they resource. They fall over the sherpas looking after them can’t rescue them by themselves and so they get left behind and that happened. Like ten or eleven times this last season on Everest which is very different from the approach of climbing with the team where you have the strength of a team and you care if somebody’s having issues then you can as a team you can resolve that issue and we build in strategies into our approach for our summit days to deal. Specifically with that. Ah, so you know you’ve got a combination of things going on there which is a lot of it is about how to sell tickets on your Everest expedition. You make it cheap and you make it sound attractive and so looks like good weather and the brochure until things go wrong and people who are very inexperienced in the mountains who have never had that day where they’ve had to dig deep just to get themselves back from the mountain or know when to turn around or their summit focused and when they get to the summit they say to.

34:27.82
Guy
You know the guides or the sherpas. It just doesn’t work like that and I think there needs to be more education for people about what is required to go on to one of those expeditions and unfortunately everest is so accessible these days. That anybody can join without actually having the experience in the background to actually be able to look after themselves in that environment. They kind of get sold this idea that you don’t need any experience. You just come along and you’ll get looked after which I’ve always thought is completely wrong. My approach is that everybody who’s there should be a mountaineer they should have done the requisite steps to gain the skills and the experience so that when they get to everest. They can really appreciate it. They’ve earned it for themselves. It’s not just something they’ve bought off the shelf.

35:19.19
Steve
Yeah, I just going to read 1 short sentence that you wrote in your book which calls out this idea really well. It says you wrote when properly prepared climbers. When properly prepared climber’s response to challenges will become instinctive particularly when poised on the extreme edge of their physical capacity to survive I mean that just kind of in a nutshell sums it up right? You know that’s what becoming a mountaineer is you know finding what those edge of physical capacities to survive are like and where they are for you and how you know altitude affects you as an individual because we’re all a little different and in our responses and so on and so forth. So when you coach someone if you know we’re talking and I say guy like you know I’ve done some mountaineering and I climb Cho O Yo and I’m ready to tackle everest and I need to select a team a selected guide select an outfitter. What do you tell people.

36:32.59
Guy
So well, it really depends on what their progress requisites are I mean if somebody had climbs joy you in good style then you know I would certainly be wanting to welcome them onto one of our teams. Ah, but we’re also seeing people who. Haven’t had the opportunity to go to very very high altitude. Ah, but based upon what their duration of or length of time. They’ve been going into the mountains what climbing they’ve managed to do what level of climbing they’ve achieved. You know we make assessments. We’re often talking to guides who have worked with climbers to get feedback on how they’ve been because it’s not just about their climbing ability. It’s also for us. It’s actually about their ability to operate on a team. And we want to work with people who are going to be nice to be around for a couple of months I mean you got to realize that we’re putting people under the most stressful environment that they’ve ever been in their whole lives and if they’ve not been exposed to that before they may not recognize that. Yeah, a lot of their insecurities or fears or whatever might come out and they might not be a great team member and again coming back to my reasons for wanting to be in the mountains which is to be with people share an experience. You know have a great time. Obviously you know come home.

38:04.82
Guy
Yeah, those are all part of the factor. It’s not just about climbing ability.

38:06.35
Steve
Yeah, and you know I think it’s so interesting to you know, hear your perspective on this because you have been doing this so long and one of the things that I’ve observed whenever I talk to you know. Guides that have been in in this as long as you and I have we’ve pretty much all come to the same conclusion. You know I don’t there’s there’s really not a lot of there’s I really have yet to meet anyone who’s been you know doing this for the amount of time that you have or you know I’m not as long as don’t have the years that you do in it and I’ve never guided on Everest or at extreme altitudes like you have but the conclusions like this kind of prerequisite you look for and people are this are ultimately the same. Because one of the things when I talk to people about you know we sometimes get people who come to us for the physical training the physical preparation and they don’t sometimes know yet who they’re going to climb with and I always encourage people to focus on their relationships and you know, just to find a company whether it’s a sherpa or west based outfitter or a west quote unquote western outfitter that they develop a relationship with the guides there and who they’re going to be climbing with and they don’t and I think once you kind of put it to them that.

39:42.31
Steve
Like yeah, you don’t want to just be a random assignment to some person. You’ve never met before on the day you’re going to go to the highest point in the world like that may work out. Okay, but if the chips are down. You want somebody there who is invested in you as a human and as a friend. And as a peer and will you know we’ll be there for you when you may need them and so that all kind of factors in to this and you know you guys adventure consultants have certainly kind of made a reputation for yourselves of taking this approach. With your teams over the year I mean for decades now and you know you’re well known for that and I always really appreciate that and always feel comfortable. You know sending people your way and introduce them. You know they might not be the right fit right? You may talk to these people and be like now you know. We would like you to come and you know I don’t know do another trip with us so we get to know you a bit first and not everybody’s willing to do that and people have this like imposed timeline as we both know and you know there’s other people that will take take them on that timeline and that’s okay, right.

40:57.10
Guy
Yeah, there is I mean it’s okay, unless you meet them on the mountain and see them and then have to rescue them.

41:05.87
Guy
Be involved in you know, assisting them when they when things fall apart and the operator they’ve gone with doesn’t have the yeah you know the backup to support them. But yeah, that’s ah yeah, that’s part of it. But you know we’re we’re talking about Maybe some of the the challenges there. But I’d also like to really point out that some of the most amazing people in the world on these expeditions and that’s one of the joys I get out of being a guide is meeting people from different walks of life and some really incredible people that have become you know, great friends and we’re you know sometimes probably guilty of maybe not being able to carry on some of those relationships as much as we’d like to because we’re off on another trip with a new group of guests and yeah off on another continent or whatever and hardly even have time to reflect on what was a person’s trip of a lifetime for them but yet it was just part of the pathway for us. I think that’s something that I’ve tried to balance out and my guiding is to try and just measure that and peg it back a little bit so that I can still continue some of those relationships and it also enjoyed the process of guiding because it is super satisfying to get a group of people bring them together. Ah and have a lot of fun and get up the mountain and the best style possible and then all go back home friend and that is you know, really what we’re trying to achieve on every expedition and track that we run and I’d say that you know most of the time we’re really successful at that and that’s what keeps us in the game because there are a lot of challenges to being a guide. There’s you know a lot of like I’ve mentioned a lot of people were under a lot of pressure and so on. People don’t always perform the way that they would hope that they do or have an idea that they might and yeah there are challenges for sure. But What I like about is you’ve learned a lot about yourself in these situations you learn a lot about yourself in the mountains in general. I always say that it’s like holding a mirror up to yourself where you get to see all of your strengths and all of your weaknesses and you can then just be rational about it. Yes, those are my strength. Oh These are the areas I’ve still got to work on so I’ll work on those and if you’re you know, open to evolving as a person and learning and then I think the fact that we’ve gone through all of these challenges we learn how we perform when faced with challenge. So we learn a lot about ourselves that maybe a lot of other people who don’t test themselves never learn about themselves and I think that’s one of the great things about mountaineering in general.

44:00.41
Steve
Yeah that’s so interesting. You know as you’re talking my mind was going in a hundred different directions. But if you think about some of these incredible people that you’ve been able to climb with over the years and you think back on that you know oh well. First of all I think I have to ask this question and part of me personally doesn’t want to but how many times have you climbed everest now at this point and how many times have you climbed the 7 summits and it must have been a couple of times for all of these now.

44:37.49
Guy
Right? Well I’ve climbed everest 5 times I’ve had a couple of other times where I’ve turned back once just at the base of the Hillary step that was actually in 95 which I write about in my book.

44:46.71
Steve
Right.

44:49.96
Guy
And I turn back a couple hundred meters from the summit one other time to bring somebody else down again. I’ve done 7 of the eight thousand meter peaks I’ve done some of the 7 summits multiple times you know and wouldn’t have an idea how many, maybe 15, I’m not really somebody who counts too much with the numbers and I’m not chasing the numbers. But yeah, I’ve been on a couple of expeditions every year for the well for probably about 25 of the last thirty years and sometimes more back in 97 I did 3 eight thousand meter peaks in a year and just about 4 and that was back when it was very unusual to do that sort of thing.

45:43.60
Guy
Ah, yeah I mean Steve you have mentioned quite a few times that I’ve been doing this a very very long time but I still don’t feel that old yet I still feel like I’ve got a lot of life here to me and lost a lot of it won’t focus on yeah lots of eight thousand meter peaks and in the future. I’m still excited about opportunities in the mountains or what mountains have to offer and there are still a lot on my bucket list if you like that I would like to do your example being you know, skiing in various parts of the world and ski touring and multi-pitch rock climbing and so on. You know through all of that. It’s still just again, having that love of being in the mountains and what it provides us to.

46:27.64
Steve
Yeah, and please don’t take my emphasis on the decades of your experience as a slight in any way. I think that both you and I are probably used to speaking with people who are new to mountaineering both as guides and with uphill athlete you know talking to people who have maybe not yet taken a mountaineering course. Let alone climb seven Eight Thousand Meter peaks and everest 5 times and all these other things that you’ve done in your career. So I think it’s all relative. And I think one of the things that I love about the perspective of a lot of mountain guides that I know that especially those that are also climbers in their own right is that they have this kind of perspective like what you just express where you know you’re just at a point in your journey and this is by no means the end you still have as you say a lot of life left. You have a lot of things lot of routes you’d like to climb lot of ski tours. You’d like to do and you know I think as guides one of the things that I’ve seen time and time again is. The the sort of heroism of the average climber and I feel like one of the things that I was always really uncomfortable with in my career as a professional alpinist was that my achievements were somehow better than others. Yeah, my achievements were maybe more extreme and accepted but I don’t think that they were really any different for me than someone else who had not dedicated their entire life and structured their entire life for a couple of decades around this one narrow pursuit. That allowed me to kind of go really far in this one really narrow pursuit but there’s other people who had arguably much richer lives with careers and families and who knows what all other possible things there’s so much richness in life to experience so many things to experience and then. They may have gone in a completely other direction and just had an incredible experience. Maybe it’s climbing Everest. Maybe it’s Ama Dablum or some any one of a number of other mountains and you know what they experienced what they learned. In that process wasn’t necessarily for me any better or worse than what I experienced and vice versa and I think that that gives us this perspective on our climbing careers. As it as it were maybe that’s not the right term for this context but our trajectory our wherever we are in our relationship with the mountains at any given time and allowing that to kind of change and be different and I know for me like you know I’m at a place where like I enjoy easy safe climbing and you know skiing on days when the conditions are good like the other day I turned around because it was like really windy and cold and the skiing wasn’t that good and was just like you know what after an hour I was like I can exist out here and keep going and like accomplish the tour.

49:52.69
Steve
But I actually don’t want to experience today like I’ve done this and I’d actually like if given the choice I would rather go home make a good lunch take a nap and like go to the sauna in the evening and that’s what we did and it was great. It was a perfect Saturday this is just like literally three days ago.

50:12.17
Steve
We have that awareness of ourselves and we can say like yeah this is what I want to experience today and we don’t have to push through it and I like to try to share that perspective with people I see out there whether it’s as a guide or whatever where they may be like now this is the one day I have. If that’s the one day you have and you have to go and accomplish that tour. That’s one thing but just understand there are other days there are other potential experiences.

50:41.48
Guy
So absolutely yeah and I think you’ve obviously had a stellar career and I think at the time for you when you were climbing. You know at your peak you were doing what felt good to you at the time and what you wanted to achieve and you’re looking at the benchmark and was one of the things I felt in my earlier years as a climber is not to think about what today’s standards are but to think about what the standards are going to be in 5 years time and kind of use that as your benchmark because it’s just about mindset.

51:17.45
Guy
Yeah, that is an interesting place to go I’m not sure we don’t have time to to delve deeply into that at the moment but I think it’s the same we can apply that to other things in our lives as well and I think that is probably the benefit you’ve got from where you’ve gone. You’ve been there. You know you can do it. So you don’t need to prove that to yourself anymore and I don’t think you can actually achieve anything really at the highest level unless you’re actually passionate about it yourself and there’s something in it for you. It’s not just about what other people might think about or might just be about because it’s harder than what other people have done. It’s actually what it does for you and that’s why we have pushed ourselves in various ways to achieve what we have and yeah long may people want to do that I mean it’s part of being human is that evolution.

52:13.93
Steve
Yeah, and you wrote about that in your book really well and I think that I read a little bit about this. You wrote that you were drinking deeply from the vessel of life and this is a nice visual and I think especially a lot of people have this feeling when they’re young and then they somehow often give up on that for a few years because they’re starting a family or a career and then they come back and we often interface with them when they’re 40 or 50 or sixty and they’re like well yeah I still have that I still want to keep drinking from that vessel of life and I have a different mindset now you know and different value set.

52:54.94
Guy
Yes, and I have’t been tempering it you know like I go ski with my son over here and he’s pulling backflips off of cliffs. I don’t feel that I need to do that. Ah or that I can but.

53:08.48
Steve
Isn’t it nice to feel that way?

53:12.62
Guy
Ah, you know, but great to see the youth expressing itself in a way that you know was very impressive to watch. I’ve got a time limit here Steve I’m going to have to pull it very short. They’re going to move out of this place in a few minutes.

53:25.96
Steve
Okay, let’s just do a quick wrap up and we’ll let you go? Okay, thanks for letting me know.

53:43.19
Steve
Guy I just wanted to thank you for sharing your decades of experience and earned wisdom with us and where can our listeners find you if they want to learn more about adventure consultants or all the usual socials and websites and things I suppose and where can we find your book is it available as an ebook or is there. What are the options there I’d love to point people in the right direction.

54:13.20
Guy
Okay, well thanks for the opportunity Steve yes, you can find us adventureconsultants.com or through the usual socials looking around for us easy to find and also getting a hold of my book. It’s only published in New Zealand at the moment. Going to be working on an audio book this year and hopefully an ebook as well once I get home and maybe might even find a way to get it published in the US and Uk if possible. So yeah, that would be crazy.

54:45.41
Steve
I’m sure. Yeah, it’s a really great read.

54:49.65
Guy
If you really are desperate to get a hold of a copy. You can always contact us info@adventure.co.nz instead and we can organize to send you one from New Zealand so that’s a possibility as well. I just want to say thanks Steve it’s a pleasure and honor to talk to you. Yeah always looked on at your pathway and the pathway of some of the friends you mentioned like Barry Blachard and co who are people who have been exponents of the sport of the industry for a long time and got a mature head and a great approach so its been fabulous talking to you. Thanks so much.

55:31.31
Steve
Yeah, and next time I promise I’m going to bring up the 2002 I think it was the butane stove and an oxygen cylinder. Perhaps maybe does that ring. We could. Okay, yeah.

55:45.67
Guy
Yeah I think that’s the x-ray of do’ the x round. Ah okay, all right. Thanks so much.

55:52.13
Steve
We will keep people hanging with that. Thanks so much guy. Thanks for joining us together. Oh sorry I just have to read our little concluding thing.

56:10.19
Steve
Thanks for joining us guy. It’s not just one but a community together. We are Uphill Athlete thanks for listening. That’s it.