Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 27: John Svenson; A Mountaineer Artist Explains How Adventure Becomes A Life In Art

Transcript

Episode 27: John Svenson; A Mountaineer Artist Explains How Adventure Becomes A Life In Art · Doug Has Questions

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: Today my guest is John Svenson, a mountaineer artist, longtime Haynes resident.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: But before I get into conversation with you, John, I just want to we've this is going to be episode 26 or 27, I think.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: And through that, from when I first started, there's been a lot of people that have supported me in this.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: And the two that do the most work is Marty Fowler, who's here today recording this, and he'll do the editing at Samic Feeders.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Those guys behind the camera and doing what they do kind of makes this all happen.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: So anybody that's watching, that's listening to this, if you see Marty and Sam, give them a thank you if you enjoy the program.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Um they they do their best to try and make us look good.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: So, John Svensson, welcome.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's good to be here.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for and thank you for letting us do this in the stud in your extreme extreme dreams gallery.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's uh uh we're getting ready for spring right now, so everything is in a pseudo-state of chaos.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: And I might uh Marty Fowler, Christy Fowler's your mother.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: We go back in Haynes history.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Want to talk about Haynes history.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Haynes history with Marty.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: No idea.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: That's so cool.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: That's some testament as to how people stay in Haynes and love it here.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: You're still here.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: Third generation.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, this is it's spring, the snow's gone.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: We're opening in a week, our 23rd gallery opening, I think.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: That's where it's 23rd, I know.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: And like everybody in Haynes, we're scrambling right now.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: We're still preparing for for summer.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: And the first cruise ship came into Juneau two days ago, I think Skagways got one, and so we're all kind of waiting with the baited breath for that first boat that's going to come in.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: And then summers really began.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Then that's when summer really starts, yep.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: The first ship.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Um so where where where did John's life story begin?
1:57
SPEAKER_01: The I ended up here in kind of a convoluted situation.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Where where did you grow up?
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh in Southern California.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Southern California.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Yep, south of LA, between LA and San Bernardino.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: So technically I'm a desert rat.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in the Mojave and totally different from this.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: And this is back when I was 17, 18, and my father became involved with Alaskan Indian Arts, Carl Heinmiller, and that whole movement.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: Really?
2:20
SPEAKER_01: And the way he did that was he was the art director of the LA County Fair back then, which is a huge job that you can put 10 Palmer Fairs in the LA County Fair.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: It's massive.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And um he part he was directing the art department, and uh and part of that was bringing in in um the arts, like arts and action, basically.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not exactly sure how this happened, but uh he was put in contact with Carl Heinmiller, and maybe he'd been up here before my dad, because he was a sculptor and a carver and and appreciated the wood carving aspect of all of this.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: And so he brought Carl and the world-famous Trilcat dancers down to LA to dance and uh perform, and also the totem carvers.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: This was back with Nathan Jackson and Leo Jacobs, and it goes way back.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And uh wow.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And I saw those guys, and uh they blew me away.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that those were I'd like to relate with this and whether it's politically correct or not, the real Indian I grew up with, Chuck Connors as coaches, Charles Bronson as Chato.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Those were I'd never seen real Native Americans, and and this was absolutely blew me away.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: So Carl was at the time, it was MDTA, he was running a program that uh where he put kids to work and they in in the artistic sense.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: We just interviewed Lee.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, there you go.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: Our last one, and he was talking about MTA.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: But did so you came up in that program?
3:40
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that program, it was having my wife Sharon was.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she was uh well, he had at the time every kid in town worked for Carl.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And when I came up, it was the painting oil drums for trash cans around town and painting flowers on them.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Really cool stuff.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: And I was sent up, uh my dad wanted to get me out of LA.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: It was the time of you know, the transition period, like uh sent me to a summer camp or something.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: So Carl came down, I was enamored, and and my parents actually sent me here to work with AIA as a carver and a kind of a fledgling artist, and uh and that was basically it.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And and and my dad continued his relationship with Carl in Alaska.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: How old were you on that trip?
4:21
SPEAKER_01: I think uh eight.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Just graduated from high school.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Just graduated from high school.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: What year was that?
4:26
SPEAKER_01: 1967.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: 1967.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, parents sent you to Alaska for the summer.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, Haynes to me was I mean, it was like the wild northwest.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: It was insane here.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Right now, it's a cat track.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, nothing was paved.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Um in the old Hanes, everything was all roots didn't exist.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Nope.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Like nothing, it was primitive, but for a kid from LA, it was amazing.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then I was a fledgling climber also, just getting into rock climbing, and um and that uh so I saw this place.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, California is the rock climbing Mecca.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: This is glaciers and and uh you know more mountaineering oriented, which is more inaccessible, and just it was such a challenge that I've got to get more involved with it.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: I start coming back every summer, is what it amounted to.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh at the time, and this is ancient history, Bruce Gilbert, who grew up in Haynes, he was the first Alaskan climber that I really met.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Bruce and Paul Swift, uh, I mean, these guys they were the heavy-duty expedition guys, like climbing uh Logan and Fairweather and Bruce Gilbert to the second ascent of the West Buttress of Denali back in 1958 with caribou hides.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this guy was I remember that story well.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: He would my my dad, when after they got up here, when my dad would go hunting, he'd save the caribou hides for Bruce because he would use those for his sleep for his bedroll.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because your dad would that's that his time period here.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Bruce Gilbert was the artist.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh Josephine Crumbrine did the and arts too, like seeing what other artists moved to Haynes and what they thought of this place.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: And Bruce Gilbert was, I admired him for his mountainscapes.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: He was insane.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh Josephine Crumbrine for her dog portraits, he was already really well known for that.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: And then the climbing guys who Bruce kind of took me under his, I guess, under his wing.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: He is like a mentor to me and like what it takes to haul a load across an ice field.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And there were an LAB was doing all the flying, so Leighton was going in with wheel skis and dropping these guys off back then before I ever went into the ice fields.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: That freaked me out.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: And uh just seeing the intensity of you just don't go down the street and rock climb like in California.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: This was really expeditioning.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So when your first climb in Haynes, where where where did you go?
6:43
SPEAKER_01: What did we do?
6:44
SPEAKER_01: The up behind uh Schnabel's gravel pit up above town, there's a set of cliffs up there, and uh, of course I targeted those, and uh of all people I grabbed John Hagen, and he was a young guy, I think he was 18 or 19, and uh we roped up and we climbed a route on those cliffs.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: That was a huge thing, and uh kind of freaked him out.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And uh the town was kind of aware of that, that this I was the first rock climbing kid to really come to town that was had seriously knew how to put anchors in and not dragging sleds over ice fields, and and the so that was cool.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: And then uh I brought as a result of that, uh I went back to California, like, hey man, check this place out.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of climbing friends and recruited a buddy of mine to come up, and Carl said, bring up your friends, and brought up this guy, and uh he was we'd rock climb together and introduce him to this scene.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: And uh we we suffered so much because the two of us thinking we knew what we were getting into, and then you know, the the old folks, the goat hunters and all those people were the only ones that ever went above timber line.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Nobody ever did that, and they knew where the goat trails were, and I think they kind of led us on the wrong track sometimes, like sticking to the big trees and not what looks like a grassy slope, bushwhacks from hell.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: And he and I, I think we did the first ascent of the of the uh uh would be the southwest face of Rapinsky over the airport, yeah, following those tree patches, and uh, and that was crazy and not technically difficult, but for us it was quite an adventure.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: We had gold line rope and knickers.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: This was uh very primitive.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: So he and I did that, and he uh came back a couple of times, and then as a result of that, other of my friends started coming up, and they filtered into town and then filtered out again, doing they had their lives to because I was just stuck with names with the artistic aspect, and this was it.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: And I met Sharon, my wife, who was bore basically born here in 69, or we met in 69, and that sealed it, you know.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: And and because of her, she was we're going back in time, like Joe Jurgolite, the Vermeer sisters.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they bounced her on their knees when she was a baby.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: So she had this connection with town that I never would have gotten without her.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: They all loved her as a baby, and she grew up in uh, and because of her, uh, I was accepted into this town more readily.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Like people, oh, this guy's kind of cool, and and uh I mean I could go on about this, but the I was I mean, I grew up in the uh the doors, Frank Zappa, like that age in California when the rock movement was just happening, and I came up here and uh I didn't have long hair, I had hair touching my ears, and I was the California hippie, and touching my ears.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: It was like like, and maybe I wore bell bottoms, I'm really not sure.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: So she brought back, and she had been out uh in the United States, she'd been she'd hitchhiked across America and all that, so she was the real traveler, and maybe the real hippie kind of and so I came up and it was uh that because of her my hair touching my ears, it was more accepted because I was a nice guy.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: I think my attitude got me through a lot of that.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: I was kind of this cool guy and uh and amazed at everything.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: So I mean that's that part of it.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: When I met her, that was it.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: I went to California too, and then we went to Yosemite.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean I could go on and on about this.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: We ran away together, basically.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: And uh ran away to Yosemite Valley and spent like six to eight months living in the valley under rocks and dumpster diving, and like the climbers always begin when they get uh fanaticized about.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And everybody's seen free solo and that stuff these days, so rock climbing is more mainstream.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Back then, it was uh I bet there weren't 50 of us in Yosemite climbing.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: And um, so I brought her down there, she was already experienced rock climbing, so that was that was sealed it.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is we're we're partners from that point on.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And uh and I don't know from there, but my dad was out of the scene by this.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: By this time, I would have moved on a couple of years, and and uh he appreciated it, but he was wondering what direction I was going in, because uh I grew up around in the arts in the studio, around he's a sculptor, he's a monument builder.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: This guy, I mean, there's memories of him in the studio, like hammering away on these things at 2 a.m.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: and uh monuments that took years to build, and the heaviness of something like that.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: And he was a master wood carver, and that's where he kind of I think the totems and all the things.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: Totems spoke to him in that regard.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: And uh So did you when you were a when you were a kid, did you spend a lot of time in the studio with your dad?
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of where that you think that artistic nature came from?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: Or at a pretty early age I decided that did not want to be a sculptor because of these uh projects.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: They lasted years, and my mother kept the books, so she was uh always that came up like why don't we, you know, these payments that come in on these monuments.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: That's uh so she kind of dealt with that, and she I remember her saying to my brother and myself, like, don't become artists, because it's that living that lifestyle where nothing's certain.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: You're working all the time, and and uh technically too on these big projects.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: The artist on installations is really the last one to get paid, because that goes in when the project's finished.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: So your maybe installments, how he worked it, uh, because we're talking years working on these things.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but I was watching that happen and uh and like, oh man, this is it's so heavy.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean he'd put his, take his coveralls off and lean them against the wall because they were so covered with plaster, and then he'd eat dinner and go out and hammer away on these things and do, and you'd hear them out there.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And then and he was involved with uh uh the painters, everybody in Southern California was a kind of a small family of of artists, whether they're painting, uh sculptural, ceramics, whatever it is, but the painters, I was introduced to the watercolorists, and these guys, it uh like Robert E.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Wood was my mentor down there.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: At the time, he was very well known and very accomplished, and uh he uh I'd sit in his studio because we were uh close to each other, and he liked young Johnny.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was there and he saw I was kind of interested in this, and he would they were so happy, these guys.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my dad was happy too, but he was banging away.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: It was like like heavy art.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: The painters put a piece of paper up and start painting this thing and like the massive watercolors, and they would actually finish in an evening.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Wet the paper and work your way down.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: And the style they were working in was really wet and fast.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: And I loved that.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, and he was a ski instructor, so this guy is I gotta be a painter, so I because you could travel with it for one, it's uh and it was watercolor, so it was uh you know uh very non-toxic and quick, and everything about it was more mobile.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And so I that's what I started studying was the watercolor aspect of it.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: And being a climber, you traveling a lot and getting into these weird places, sketching.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: One of his uh uh almost a mantra, do a sketch a day.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: No matter if you're in a restaurant and you're waiting for food and you've got a napkin there, keep a pencil or a pen in your pocket and sit down and sketch the spoon, sketch the cup.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make any difference.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And you and you can't help but get better at it.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: You have to get better at it.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And that was his like a sketch a day, it was almost a religious, you know, like okay, man.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: And he would uh, you know, you sketch these things, you crumple them up, and you throw them away.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: It's a personal thing, it's not something you're gonna sell or even show to people.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: But it's that uh gaining the ability to see and and uh interpret that to a piece of paper, maybe making it look 3D.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean that's definitely an art form in itself that turning a flat piece of paper into something you're looking into.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of grew up with that mentality.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: My dad could sketch, boy could that he said, I can't sketch, and you look at his sketches, and oh my god, he could like the sketching out all these monuments, and he was the sort of sketching on napkins and and uh all of that.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: So so I fell into the watercolors world of art, and I can't carve with beans.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: My brother came up and he was he followed my father, he stayed down there pretty much, and I moved up here and became what I am, and and so he was with the sculptural aspect of arts.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: And he's a master carver, David.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, unbelievable.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: And he works in neon, uh uh ceramics, wood, blowing glass, master glass blower.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: So, but he grew up with more the sculptural aspect.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: He took on that heavy stuff and uh and and became a master in what he does.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: So, and I just became a wild coming to Alaska, that's like uh a lot of people that come up here, not because of the arts like me, but because they come up and discover it and they keep coming back.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And the I mean a lot of people in Haynes sort of the origins were come to Haynes, met my wife, came, came back from Yosemite, and there's no work here.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: It's middle of winter, so we filtered into the Juneau scene.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: In the 70s, you could walk into Juneau, any office, state office, and in my case, I want to I want a riverboat up the Stakeen River with mountains are all around me and live in the nature.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: And they it was like, get on the boat, you're out of here.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean get on the boat?
16:01
SPEAKER_01: There was no paperwork or anything, fill it out and with the state museum.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: I worked for them for a few years as an exhibit specialist working there because I could draw and do all that.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Same thing, you can just walk in and get this job, and she was able to do that too.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: So the 70s were uh magical in Juneau.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And that time period also I met the Juneau Mountaineers, the guys they called them glacier grubs.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: And these guys worked the uh ice field research camps for the University of Michigan.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: That was going on.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: So they introduced What were they doing the research on?
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, they were doing glacier grubs.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: They were doing like oh, to find the little bugs and stuff that were in the glaciers?
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Juno Glacier Grub, that's a term.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm a glacier grub.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: You're a glacier grub.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: And then the scientists would come up and do their thing and bring students up, and the the Juneau guys would uh would basically do the hard labor, like set the camps up and uh punch trails in and do all that stuff.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: So, and they were their specialty was dragging loads over ice fields.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: They weren't technical climbers by any means, they're good at crevasses and avalanches, but uh but those are the guys I met in Juneau, and uh and being a rock climber, I mean this I could go out of uh this there were no rock climbers in town, and they wanted someone that could climb rocks so they can accomplish their mountains that required rock climbing sections on it.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: And uh so that uh through those years, 1980, we we moved to Haynes out of Juneau.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: The pipeline happened, all of that stuff in Juneau just blossomed, and we got to get out of here because we already knew Carl and had had a footprint here, and so we bought the land, like uh uh his Rainbow Acres was I mean this was 165 acres, Heinmiller land.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: And he had already subdivided the water aspect of it, uh-huh, like from here down, and then I I became a state surveyor for we could get into that, like how you filtered from fishing game, museum, uh, and then doing uh state work.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: As a climber, I was hired, the Skagway Road was being built, and um they and I was a climber and through my friends in June who were already kind of with the state and surveying to a point that hey man this guy can rock climb, and they hired me to s to survey the uh to work with the survey crews on the Skagway Road, which was all cut from the Libby Dam drillers all came up to do that.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: It was intense.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: And the governor actually made a position called uh rock climbing or like uh mountaineering surveyor, and an official title from my position.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And uh so I was hired on to do, I knew nothing about surveying, but you start rear chain, you do your thing, and then uh you work your way up to head chain, and then you work your way up to the gunner who's on the transit and and uh and surveyed that whole road over a four-year period from like raw nothing, and working with the drillers and and uh and hanging off ropes, it was really cool.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, the road ended, so there's your mountaineering surveying aspect kind of uh ended, but the position remained.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: So I could come on, like we're gonna stake a runway in Yakutat.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: You want to go up to Yakutat and stake us stake the runway?
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And and I go, are there ropes involved?
19:13
SPEAKER_01: No.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm not going.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: There's no ropes involved.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: And I would stay at the top of the list.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't bumped down because I refused the job because I was the mountaineering surveyor.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: I could take specific jobs doing that.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: We were serving the boundary peaks and a lot of cool chopper time, and it was the ideal for a climber, it was the best.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: It was just a dream.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Because at this expense of the state, I was going up onto the ice fields and doing these incredible things.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and then that kind of ended, and where do you go from there?
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh Roger.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: If you get the state paying for you to go climbing and paying all your expenses, that's kind of top, like you said, that's top of the hill.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: Unbelievable.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh so that sort of ended, and this was this went on for 30 years, and up to I don't know, 1991 or when whenever that kind of ended.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: But you're sort of working with the state, and then you're working toward not only retirement, but the medical.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: We were tier one back then, tier one, tier one.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Five years full medical.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Five years that there's no retirement, but the medical was there.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: So it took me 30 years to get those five in on my schedule.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I could go on the road, what they're laying down asphalt now.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'll do that for six weeks.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: You're making eight thousand a month.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: And some years I'd work six weeks, like uh eight weeks.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Kind of pick and choose.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And also the the the state wanted to move us.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: There were a bunch of us here, Mark Soggy, Chris Kemp, uh, Pete Dorn, a bunch of us here working in this tight-knit crew, and uh, we didn't want to leave town.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And they'd want to send us out to do these jobs, and we say, no way, we're leaving town.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: So it was sort of this love-hate relationship with the state in our case.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: And we were good at what we did, and we were here, they didn't have to import people, but we're like a pain in the ass, really.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, stay down to fire hires, but you know, we could do those, but um, but that went on to the point, and and like this mountaineering survey title.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I knew that once I quit with the state, that title would totally disappear.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: No, uh, you don't hand it down to the next climber.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and as state work goes and working toward that retirement aspect and the medical, I I was involved with paving the road basically from Haynes to the border.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: So you end up a mountaineering survey, checking culverts, you know, wherever they want to put you, but kind of learning the ropes at the same time, like asphalt uh quantities and how they laid this stuff down, which is a whole kind of a science in itself, working with calculators a lot.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And and uh and when we hit the border, that was like the border station, that was it.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: And my five over five years, I'm I'm out of here.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And uh and it's amazing because two or three more of us said that was kind of their time period too, and bailed on it.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: But uh, and then that was it for the state.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: And uh it was uh it was really a cool ending, in a way, like a big celebration.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: We paved the border station, and yeah, this is it.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And uh and those are considered 20 year.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Roads.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Everything paving is a 20-year road.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: So here it's 20 years later, the road's kind of wavy, and they're like watching how that kind of thing deteriorates when you survey it to the pen, you know.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: It's like everything's perfect.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: You could drive a race car up that road and not pick up a dime, you know, it was like so smooth.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: So I mean, but that was educational too.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: So that ended the state aspect, and at the same time, I was getting into um jumping around here, getting into why so why while let me let me bring this back a little bit.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: So while you're working for the state on these short increments, six weeks here, eight weeks there, is this when you were doing a lot of your climbing?
22:39
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: And and the state work um was summer, and and oh, I don't know, late summer, October, things just tend to shut down.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: And that was the beauty of this too.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: Everything shut down.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: I was still on the rehire list, uh, and it was permanent seasonal.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you talk about an ideal suit time period to be working with the state.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: That I could uh be laid off, collect unemployment all winter, and instant for sure rehire in the spring.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And with the state, you everybody says, I'm gonna come back, and they oh yeah, you'll come back.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: But we did.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: We kept coming back and they had faith in us.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Like we got this this uh solid crew in Haynes that was really there when they said they would be.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: And uh so all winter to you know till April, sometimes May, we're not working with the state.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: So and being a climber, I mean, there's connections between Yosemite climbing and and how I got involved with climbing Denali up north.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And uh buddy of mine, uh, we did a bunch of routes in Yosemite, and he went to Anchorage, I went to Juneau, he went to Anchorage and formed a company called Mountain Trip, and that was guiding on Denali at uh Rajonnais.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: Some of these people were there, but he was uh sort of the new the new blood and the whole and there were only eight guiding concessions on the mountain, and uh and so he invited me to hey come on up and want to guide Denali.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Whoa, that's really heavy guiding Denali.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And we started with Mount Sanford doing that, which Bruce Gilbert had a real good knowledge of Mont Sanford, and uh and that was kind of cool.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: And and then I went up and guided as an assistant guide Denali on this expedition, failed miserably, and then I went back that was off.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: What was the first year you tried Denali?
24:22
SPEAKER_02: 8089.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so it wasn't so you were up here in the 60s, but wasn't until 89 that you got into Denali?
24:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot of climbing down here to do.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: During the 70s, we would uh I mean this uh the climbing world, we'd go uh we'd head for Europe in July.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: We'd fly to the Chamony in the Alps, which was the Mecca for climbers, like the historical things, everything happening in the Alps, climbing with all these guys, totally international.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: It would shut down late September, we'd go to Yosemite till end of October, and all those same climbers were in Yosemite.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: They'd all migrate following the sun, basically.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: And so we got this huge international uh aspect going to this, and the uh and we sort of knew each other by then, and I mean it was a rampage.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: It was absolutely you talk about uh dumpster diving and living under rocks, and there were no rules or regs in the valley.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: You could kind of live anywhere.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: So still the the thing that gets in the this is why I never got into climbing everything, but or one of the reasons I didn't do a lot of things.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: How are you how are you paying for your trips to Switzerland and then back to California and back to Alaska?
25:34
SPEAKER_02: I understand the dumpster diving and everything, but that had to be crazy just trying to figure it's like, all right, how are we gonna get this ticket?
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Well, it was the state.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: And and so that was just the money you made from the state, you just stretch that out and cover all of that.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Stretch it out.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: We went to Europe with$135 in our pocket, a one-way ticket, that kind of thing.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Hitchhiked through Switzerland, France, and Italy, and then back to England, and uh, and you could like, what is it, Ward Air, or no, it was uh Lake Air.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: You could fly from uh Heathrow Airport to Atlanta for$130.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And it was it was like a brown bag flight.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: You weren't finding anything.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: So we'd we'd be in lines, uh, I don't know, two or three hundred people long in in the uh tarmac uh uh like the central area at Heathrow Airport, all waiting to get on these these almost free flights back home.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: And we in Europe, I don't know how we survived, you know, eating we ate and we're doing odd jobs for people, or you just no, no way.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Just just figure out where wherever you can get some food.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and one thing we found too that uh in Yosemite, the climbing world, everybody was a hippie dirtbag.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: In the United States, it was not something you wanted to get into because you're just you know out there.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: There's no esteem, nothing to it.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: You're just doing it.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: We went to Europe and the climbers were already heroes.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: They were like the Joe Brown and the Don Willens, and these guys were international heroes.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: They're getting into the Alps, and those were the guys that I really looked up to.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: You had Annapurna and Eversted and Climbed, and uh but uh so you went over there.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: If you had an Isaacs, people would come up and want photographs taken with you.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Really?
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Suddenly you're thrown into this the spotlight.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: And then they heard we're from Yosemite, and oh, that was another whole thing.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, the Yosemite thing, and that puts you in another bracket.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: So uh, which you know, uh I wasn't even, I was an average dude.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't done great things in the valley, just the fact that we were from there.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: And those uh in that we I mean, I could get into this like hitchhiking across Europe and uh trying to get into England.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: You get on in Calais, you get off at your Dover, and we're standing in line, and my wife and I are we knew we had no money, so how do you get into this country?
27:47
SPEAKER_01: And uh, we work our way down the lines like maybe ten ten uh people apart, and and then we were the last ones in there, and we both had red backpacks, and the guys in there go, come on here, they knew we were together, and yeah, and I sort of gave them our sob story, and we just can't do this.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: And I have a letter here from Joe Brown, and Joe Brown at the time lived in uh Wales, Land Barris, and he was the god of climbers over there, Joe Brown.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And we had actually been uh this goofy kid kind of writing this guy, and getting these letters, come on over, John, and we'll do something.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: I brought that letter out, and they looked at the guard, the border guards, Joe Brown! Oh my god! I mean, they knew this guy, and they go, go on, go on in.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: It was like amazing, amazing.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: But but that the realization that climbing in Europe was already a you know a national sport and really admired, and these guys were heroes, and coming back here where you're being kicked around by rangers and you know, but it's since grown into something way more acceptable than that.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: So the other thing that I'm thinking of while you're describing this is are you packing your own ropes and all your anchors and carabiners and harness?
28:57
SPEAKER_02: Are you packing all this with you?
28:59
SPEAKER_02: Are you are you borrowing that from people over there?
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Or we we brought our gear, definitely.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: This was before harnesses.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: We were there were not seat harnesses.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: So, and we would walk onto an airplane with an ice axe.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: And uh I remember distinctly like this meat hook, like in the in the customs guy picking up this ice axe, and he'd look at you and go, whoa, whoa, like you could kill somebody with this, and then hand it back to me.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's pretty secure.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: But you could uh like the Iran giant getting into the international thing, we'd come back from uh from New Guinea and and uh these places with spears and bows and arrows and spears, just walk into the airplane over there with with uh eviscerating weapons, and you just walk right on.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: So, for what gear did you travel with then?
29:45
SPEAKER_02: What all did you bring with you when you're for your climbing, when you're heading over?
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Boots were pretty important, were really important, and ropes.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Um anchors, well, quite a few, I guess.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what our rack.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: We would wear our gear onto the airplane to get over the around the weight restrictions.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'd wear our mountain boots, racks of gear, and walk onto the airplane.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: There were no walking through, you know, x-ray stuff, and just go as heavy as you could possibly go by wearing this like racks of iron and uh bit all the coats you had, and and yeah, you know, because we couldn't afford to buy anything over there for sure, although ropes cost 35 bucks.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Everything was so so inexpensive.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: But you know, it's in relation to I mean, I could get into Holly well, but yeah, we carried basically everything and then in the end we'd actually actually like uh you want this rope, you know.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I've been climbing, and that'll you know, give me 10 bucks for this rope, and that's another meal, you know, to survive and fly back to uh JFK.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: The last time we went, we flew into JFK, and there we were in uh New York, where you're not allowed to hitchhike.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: And Sharon and I hitchhiked to Haynes from JFK in 11 days, Trans-Canada went across Buffalo and and took us eleven days to get back here.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Eleven days from JFK to Haynes.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so hitchhiking.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it was really and uh I don't know.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: And it was safe.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was no this was really what year was that?
31:15
SPEAKER_01: How did we do that?
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Was that uh 1971, I think?
31:21
SPEAKER_01: 1971.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Because we did up to 78, we were going into Europe and doing that through the 70s pretty much.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Um when we came to Haynes, we had to buckle down and you know, hew our living from the land.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: Everything pretty much changed.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: But uh but that's like the 70s, but Yosemite, the Alps, and then sort of discovering this in uh actually the 70s, I didn't we weren't living in Haynes at all.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: They're still all of our friends, but my brother came up during that time period, and he was introduced into kind of the same program.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And he, you know, he's Leonard Miller, Greg Horner, like he fell in with that gang, and they were all carving and doing their thing.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: So he was here.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: But uh but I was almost pursuing my what working for the state and and that the the schedules they they put you on allowed me to do my insane climbing stuff.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: And and uh the Denali went for 15 years, and that was May.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: I never spent a May in Haynes and Sharon, she was like, God, May is beautiful here, and I would always be up there like slogging through snow and just missing it.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: And when that ended, I started seeing what May is in Haynes, and there's no way nobody could pull me out of here in May, ever, I guess.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: So you you spent 15 years guiding in Denali?
32:32
SPEAKER_01: Pretty much that time period.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: How many summits?
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh over 10, between 10 and 15, somewhere in there.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And and that was uh, and I've never climbed the mountain without clients.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: I never did it on my own.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: It was always with customers, and and what what is that like as uh tackling a mountain like Denali?
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Where you've got these other people that uh their life depends on you.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: What what's it what's the stress factor like on that, John?
33:00
SPEAKER_02: Is you're especially the higher you get, I'm assuming the stress probably increases with that.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Totally increases, yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: And you sp it uh it and it still happens this way.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Mountain travel would send 10 people on an airplane.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: There's your expedition is arriving today, you're gonna meet at the airport.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: These people come down the thing, and you look at them like, oh my god, they've never met each other.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: They all paid a lot of money to do this thing, and they in the here's this I could get into the troublesome trekker aspect.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Immediately they're looking at each other, and uh and they're looking at this one guy like he shouldn't be here.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: It's so obvious this guy should not be here.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: So they're immediately you become a psychiatrist.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm I'm guiding, and it's my job to get not cause a problem uh for them by taking care of the I'm taking care of the this weird guy that maybe he's a brain surgeon, but he's just out of his element.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these guys they aren't stupid, they're just ignorant.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: And these and um so that kind of thing would happen.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: We'd fly into the mountain, and as you work your way up, as a I started as an assistant guide and kind of learned what head guiding was like there, because you can always he's the head guide.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm just you know it.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just helping him out.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: He's making the calls.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Watching his anguish and how he would handle that thing.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: And then when I became head guide the next year, I had my own trip.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: Then uh so as a head guide, how many you did you say 10?
34:28
SPEAKER_02: You're responsible, or is there do you have an assistant with that one?
34:32
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the assistant, the ten people is a lot when you're dealing with that's what I was thinking of trying to keep ten people together on a mountain.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: So you'd have one assistant or two assistants, or sometimes two.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: If there were 12 people, two assistants were good.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: But with 10, two people could do that?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Uh one guide and an assistant?
34:50
SPEAKER_01: I've handled 10 with one assistant.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: If he's if he's already been uh, you know, indoctrinated into it, not a raw recruit, you know, this poor kid.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: It was kind of uh uh but you know, you're working way up the mountain, uh fly into 7,000 feet, haul a load to 8,000 feet, then you're at 12,000 feet, then 14,000 feet, 16,000 feet, and 17.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: So you're establishing these camps all the way up the mountain.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh as you work your way up, uh you you break down, there's a breakdown period where these people maybe they did a a thing on Rainier, like a training, kind of getting in like what they're getting into.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: And but there's a breakdown period where everybody's hauling loads and sleds up this thing, and the it's not technical, but it's uh it's your body's just being broken down, and at the end of the third or fourth day, like, I'm dying! You know, no, you're not dying, it's just your body, and by the time you get to 14,000, you start to toughen up a little bit.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: And the ones that aren't going to make it really make it themselves evident by then.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't know about this.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so you're kind of working your way up.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: And at the uh, I didn't have too many psychological breakdowns.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: There were moments where uh, I mean, I could get into this in depth, but one incident where this guy is with us and he was kind of a problem, nobody and everybody didn't know what his problem was, and uh we were at 12,000 feet, and he went, oh no! Back around the backside of the tent, and he had this pill box that was full of uh it looked like rainbow colors, every color that and this pillbox had dumped into the snow, and they were all melting in, leaving colored trails in the snow, and he was freaking out.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: And what's all this about?
36:26
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know anything about that.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, then he had to spill the beans, like, uh these are critical.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: I have to take these on schedule every day.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Why?
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Because he had this thing, was it Rave syndrome?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: There's a technical, like when if you don't take these pills, you go nuts, and you you get tense and screaming at people, and oh my god, and that kind of thing.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: So, how far up the mountain were you when this happened?
36:51
SPEAKER_01: This we were at 12,000 feet.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: 12,000 feet.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: And at 14,000 feet, the medical camp was there, and that was uh where you could check in.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: They had hyperbaric chambers and all this stuff where they could get on stationary bikes, and that stuff was flowing in so they call it.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: This was all CDs, no cell phones.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: Everything was, oh God, I got this guy.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: He called it because we knew the doctors and stuff, and I got this guy with me.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: You you gotta talk to him because he's like, nobody's turning me around, that same kind of thing.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: The the guides can't tell the guy he's not gonna make it if he's feeling good.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: The doctors have to do it.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: So I turned this guy into the doctors, and they run him through the mill and they know his problem, and either they can say, You better stay here while the rest of them go to the top, or or we don't find anything wrong.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: Keep him on the team, and that's when the problems begin.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Because a guy like that could pass the tests and everything, and we don't see anything wrong.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: But what about the pills?
37:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, normal now, and uh, and like chain him down and watch him go crazy.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: We had that happen uh uh one instance like you just keep me here for two days and watch him.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: But that kind of thing.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: You're there was a in the guiding industry, we'd get this uh booklet called The Troublesome Trekker, and they know that you might get these people, and um so the it's my job to keep the troublesome trekker off the backs of the rest of the people are paying for a good time.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: They don't want this guy bothering them.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: So it's my job to take care of that guy, and they appreciate that.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: They go, how could you ever do this?
38:14
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but not let them know you're doing it.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: There's a it's an art form in itself.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're an idiot or maniac, I I can work with you, not saying you're an idiot or maniac, kind of like, oh okay, kind of get you to filter in a little bit more.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Once the guy discovers that you're babying him or pampering him, then the problems begin.
38:34
SPEAKER_01: Because then he looks, feels, oh no, he's cowering, and everybody's looking at me like that kind of thing.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: So you have to keep it, you know, keep it kind of neutral.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: That's where the assistant would come in.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're my assistant, this is your first trip.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Bob over there, you know the problem here.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Take care of Bob, get him off my back.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: If you can take care of Bob, do the thing, you're with me in the cook pit.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: You're getting, you know, first food.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of the testing the assistant.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: Can you deal with this guy?
39:00
SPEAKER_01: And uh and not let him know it, but just you know, and make everybody happy.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: And so in my case, this didn't happen a lot.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the trips were immaculate with no problems, but you'd come back with seeing the whole trip through the eyes of the guy in most pain.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm dealing with the guy that's in pain.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: That's I'm not seeing it with the other clients' eyes.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm dealing with this guy.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh inevitably, you run back, there's no cell phones.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: We'd come back to Tawkitna, the expedition offloads, and I go right to the phone booth and call Mountain Travel in Berkeley and say, This guy, Bob, man, you're gonna get a call and he's gonna chastise me and rape me over the coals.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: And certainly within a half an hour, he calls Mountain Travel.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: Svenson's an asshole! And you know, and I've got already got my backers for there, you know.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna back me on this, aren't you?
39:48
SPEAKER_01: But luckily I called first.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: So they do the if he calls first, then I'm on the defense.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's things like, what does he mean by that?
39:55
SPEAKER_01: And then, but I mean that kind of thing.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: And uh and it would so what are what are the qual for somebody to go on a trip like that?
40:02
SPEAKER_02: Are there any pre-qualifications that they have to meet to or is it just if you got enough money, you're here we go?
40:10
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of that way.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: We would do seminars the if people are contemplating uh an asset of denali, the year before they would sign up for a seminar in Little Switzerland on the same glaciers and stuff and kind of break them into the systems we're working with.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: And they did that on Rainier too, is they had a training program for Denali people.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: And uh and and then that again that's a whole different uh you're down out lower altitude, but you're dealing with the technical aspect more than and you can see the mental kind of what's going on there too.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: They but the people would fake their doctor's reports.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: You have to get have a doctor's release, your heart's good, you know, you're not this rare guy on pills or something.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but these guys would sneak in and you'd look at that and you'd probably, hey, I'll give you a thousand bucks doc.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: Just give me on this trip.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: And oh, that was happening often.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: The doctor's like, yeah, because maybe I won't have to deal with you anymore.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: Well the doctors that ends up with dealing with him in the end, like if he's rejected and he's this maniac, they you know the doctor knows what he did, but that was but they did like technically had to have when we climbed Aconcagua, this was in South America, one of the seven summits, they would make us the army would make us run around the track, five laps around the track in uh Mendoza before they would allow us to go off the mountain.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: This is the army making sure that you could run.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: That that was the that was the test if you could.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: If you could do five laps around the tracks of a mile and a quarter, yeah.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: If you could run that, was there a time limit you had to do it in, or you just had to stagger along?
41:38
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it was like a serious thing.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: And they failed people, you know, doing that.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: They had to keep a perfect clip going, but at least keep moving.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: And uh, I mean that was pretty controlled, but there was no doctor thing.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: They actually had a doctor in Mendoza that could check your heart, which is way cool.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I I like that.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: But uh, because that was a serious, but this is back in the uh this is back in the 80s when that was happening.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh so in and speaking of doctors, you'd mentioned on Denali, like at 14,000 feet, so you got 3,000 feet to go at the top, right?
42:12
SPEAKER_02: It's 17,000 roughly.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: That last day is a long one.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: So at 14,000, they've got like a they got a medical place there.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: You've got the doctors that if you're if the doctors like you're not gonna make it.
42:24
SPEAKER_01: Basically, and that was it started as just one weather port with uh a couple of mountaineering doctors were kind of running this thing.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: It grew in the time I was there, like a couple of weather ports, oxygen bottles.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: Um it was quite a thing.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: You could uh uh it wasn't like uh the hospital where they you had your own tents and all that stuff, but uh and they were dealing with all the frostbite coming off the mountain.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay that's sort of the uh yeah, if someone's in really dire straits of being rescued, that's where they end up.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: And they could bring a chopper in there, but it had to hover, it couldn't settle down, so it had to be pretty serious to fly someone out of 14,000.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh that's also where they stack the bodies up, and I can get into that.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: There's no death zone on Denali.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: That starts technically at about 24,000 feet or something.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: But you get above 14,000 feet, above 17,000 feet, because of the spinning the earth, the the the uh atmosphere is thicker at the equator and thinner at the poles because the earth is spinning and it does this thing and uh and uh so it it uh Himalayan climbers would come over to do Denali, these big buff dudes, and oh man, 24,000 feet, no sweat, they would get so punished on this mountain that 19,000 feet on Denali was like, I don't know, you know, 26,000 feet, 25,000 feet in the Himalayas.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: And there's a shock of these guys getting just hammered up there in the, you know, the high winds and uh it's really harsh.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh and that aspect was kind of fun to see.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: And they'd come back more damaged than you know, the Americans and the people here that were kind of were too.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: So how tall?
44:02
SPEAKER_02: I thought I thought you'd said earlier 17.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: What's it's how tall is Danell?
44:07
SPEAKER_02: It's 20,000.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: 20,000.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: And then a couple camps to the summit.
44:14
SPEAKER_02: And you get to the summit.
44:17
SPEAKER_02: So that last day you got to do, or when you're going, you got three thousand vertical feet.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: It's a long day.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: And by then you're either get tough or die kind of thing.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: Like whoever makes it to 17, okay.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: You made it here, you'll make it to the top.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: You make it to the top.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: But then it depends on what you eat, like the weather.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: Do you judge what's because that's that's where people the death zone on Denali, probably 19,000 feet.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: That's where the winds pick up and you freeze to death and and uh that kind of thing can happen, which would shock these guys that would come over to do that.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: Um because you see them in the you know, you see people at 14,000 feet in the Himalayas without gloves on in a lot of cases.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: So it's just I mean that was fun to see.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Europeans, we're on a time limit.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: We got two weeks, we're gonna do it.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: And you watch these guys like flying up the mountain, and they're the ones that have pulmonary pulmonary edema on their big purple toes and they're on a time frame, and they can't go slow and work your way up and acclimatize, they just bolt.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh there was a lot of good epics happening there.
45:13
SPEAKER_02: So, how how long would be for you for looking at it, if a person wants listening to this, it's like, I want to do denali, is that a four-week, three-week?
45:23
SPEAKER_02: 30 or 21 days.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: 21 days is a good time frame to do denali.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's plenty.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: And we're usually somewhat on our 14th to 16th day, like 14 days would generally get us to the top.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: And then we're like hauling a load back to camp, move up, haul a load, back to camp, move up.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: So you're you're ferrying loads up the mountain, and that's your acclimatization process.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, which these uh Europeans, man, they're in a day pack and running.
45:46
SPEAKER_01: They get up to like 7,000 to 14,000 in Worlies, and you go through these sort of nausea zones.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: For me, 14,000 feet.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: You spend an extra day there and get over the lack of oxygen, and then you 17,000 feet was always like I feel kind of pukey.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh and a day there and you get over that.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Your body kind of catches up with uh lack of oxygen.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: And uh and that's you have to kind of adhere to that.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like a recipe for disaster if you don't.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: It's uh and we'd be low on the mountain, there's a storm going on up top, and we're down at 12,000 feet listening to the radio calls coming from 17,000 feet, just getting hammered.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: And you can look up there and see that lenticular uh cloud.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: These guys are just engulfed in the whirlwinds, and we're down there in t-shirts on the glacier below so the clients are also seeing what's going on.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: It's I I think climbing Denali, if you're interested in high altitude mountaineering, I think it's the best training climb you could ever do.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not only uh it's it's it's like a continual circle going.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: We land, the people are on the summit, we go out to our first camp, those people are coming back.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: So it's like uh you're getting the clients are seeing the results of what happens.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: These guys and being guides, we were um required to assist in any emergencies and stuff.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: That was the park service.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: So we're of course we're the guides doing that stuff, and here comes here comes Heinrich being dragged in a sled down from the mountain.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: We already heard about Heinrich's in trouble, and and he'd see us, he'd see me as a guide, and with my clients, we gotta Chuck Heinrich.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh god, okay, Chuck Heinrich, and then here's he is, and and uh they'd pitch a tent, Heinrich would go in there, and uh my one uh requirement was though, uh Heinrich's got these big purple toes, and like, what'd you do?
47:30
SPEAKER_01: I put on an extra pair of socks on Summit Day, cut off the circulation.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: It's like self-destruct in a way, but I would have my clients, I want my people to see this.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: They're not outside just listening to me on this tent.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: I want them to come in and look at this guy's toes, and uh and by the time they get to 14,000 or 17, they know what they're up against.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: And um, and then we analyze that night, like, okay, what did Heinrich do that was wrong?
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Socks and whatever it was.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: What'd you eat for breakfast?
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Little things can can do that.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: But the so my people would be really tuned, and there there would be, I had people bail, like I don't think I want to go up there, and uh, and that's cool, you know, leave my four team and it's better to know that beforehand.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, way, yeah, it's way better.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: It was uh Denali became it's kind of like being drafted.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: You can meet up at the airport, you go to Taquita, you talk all this stuff out, and you could reject anybody, but once you fly in, that's where you know, politically or every, I mean, it's like, man, they fly in, they're in there, and you really have to be assertive to get them out and not make them feel bad and do all that.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: And I've had people fly into or go to Tawkheetna and actually say, uh, okay, I I you know and they get a rebate and a refund.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: If they don't fly in, okay, you get a lot of your money back.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: Enjoy Talkheetna.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: But uh but it is like you're you gotta make these decisions and work with these people.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of been guiding all my my life.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: And then I got in uh the Donali years finished, and what you meet in the mountains like that is called the Sugar Daddy.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: And out of the hundreds of people I took up and down the mountain, there's a couple in there that really liked me.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you did such a good job, and so you want to go climb in South America?
49:11
SPEAKER_01: Sure, I do that.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: And and so I get a call from my first one, was Iri and Jaya.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: This guy's in Jakarta.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: And hey man, I bought your ticket already, get over here.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: I need you to help me climb this thing.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh my God.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: And so you pick up these people and you can kind of filter out of the gravy train, the cattle prodding thing, and get into more of a uh one-on-one or a bunch of buddies and and who take you around the world to to come.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: So I had two sugar daddies out of, I don't know, over ten years.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the Japanese extreme skier and who's been to Haynes.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: We skied from Skagway to Juno.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: That was epic.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: And uh and then you met so you met him on Denali?
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, he was a he was the guy.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: He and he was buying his his or the Japanese guy, he wanted to ski the West Rib.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: And uh in that case, that was one of my last trips up there in Yoshi, who I knew a little bit about Japanese, I'd worked with them before.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: And there's that's an art form in itself, because culturally and and mentally they're totally different people the way they approach things and see it.
50:11
SPEAKER_01: And uh the gift giving was huge.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Like on the on the and plus we were we had a pretty good time up there, and then I was went up high with him and did all this stuff, and uh he'd have these Walkmans with earbuds and AM from Anchorage, that was our whole thing up on the mountain.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: You pick up everything, and he heard what did he hear?
50:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh split ends.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: Some group back then was like, man, it was like marching music and uh Enigma.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't forget what that was, and what's all and he was just love that song.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: So I bought him an album.
50:40
SPEAKER_01: We got back to Anchorage, and I bought him an album.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: Here it is, and it was like the gift giving thing was just huge.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And uh and from that, I guided him for 15 years after that.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: We went all over the world doing Antarctica, Greenland, Mongolia, that guy.
50:56
SPEAKER_01: Really?
50:57
SPEAKER_01: Intermixed with uh the millionaire from Chicago, Al, and uh, and he was very rich, and uh, and we we put together and we climb a thing together, and it was the same thing.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: He was um put together the goon squad on the mountain, the goon squad, you have a handle.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's got the uh May West, the April Fools, whatever you are on the mountain, that's your handle.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: We were the goon squad right from the beginning.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: He liked that, that goon squad.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: And uh and uh he put his whole this other Denali guy to myself, took them up the mountain, and he already had four guys with a Wrangler from Colorado, with a river runner from somewhere, a doctor from Greenland.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: He already had kind of formed this adventure team that he paid for everything.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: Everybody got so Denali was his first of the seven summits, and uh and he was from that moment on the goon squad.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh where did we go next?
51:50
SPEAKER_01: Um Aconcagua, I think, and then Calavanjaro.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: The seven summits was his goal.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: His goal, yeah.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: And he'd get the goon squad together, and it uh we were a tight, we were all guides.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: So and then he would buy into a larger company, Alpine Essence International.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: They would set all the say we go into Africa and do this stuff.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: They were in charge of the porters and food and all that stuff, but but uh we were guides, so they didn't have to work with a bunch of Yahoos who were just keeping Al alive, getting him up these mountains, and that went on until uh a couple of Everest attempts, and uh I think his wife probably pulled the plug on that because we accomplished everything.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh I think Mount Vinson and then Everest.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: He kept going back to Everest and getting lower and lower on the mountain.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: Did you go to Everst with him?
52:37
SPEAKER_01: We were on Amadablom right next to Everest as our training climb, basically the green squad and uh behind this thing.
52:44
SPEAKER_01: Sharon came on that one, that was a bad experience.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: But uh and failed.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: Like a rock fell on one of our guys and broke a compound fracture of the femur at over I don't know, 20,000 feet.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: And it was terrifying, like bones sticking out, and uh luckily Alpine Ascents International, they had the morphine and the giant medical kits.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: We were just, oh my god, we could patch someone up, but this was really serious.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: We're up on this ridge, and and so it took days to get this guy down, and like with a ski pole kind of thing, a brace on his leg with bones sticking out, and uh flew out to Kathmandu.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: And I went back up on the mountain with the remainder of the goon squad, and uh I got to this high point and there was wrappings of blood, and uh it was horrible, and and uh I just this is it, man.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm just not gonna go up in this thing because Sharon was down in base camp watching me with binoculars and please don't go.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: That was living through that kind of thing, and uh I'm out of here.
53:42
SPEAKER_01: Is that the first time she said don't go?
53:44
SPEAKER_01: It was possibly well, she you know, it wasn't on on bended knee, but it was like she didn't feel good about that at all.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: So uh so I bailed, I got up there to that point, and and uh we just had had a death here.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: Donikowski, what was his on goat hunting up at 9.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: Sam, like he had just perished before we flew out to do this.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: And he was up there, it was a horrible experience, and you know, I flew up in the chopper like, oh no, and uh so I got up on this mountain, and here's the French woman fell off last week.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: She's a bunch of material like a thousand feet below us, and she had toppled off this thing, never to be recovered, and it was like uh I just I didn't didn't want to go up there, but I was kind of like this is horrible anyway.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: But uh so two guys kept going, they made it.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: I went back down, and Sharon and I went down to Pangboche, this really cool place, and kind of watched them, and uh and then the next year they went back to do Everest.
54:42
SPEAKER_01: That was the plan, the training for Everest.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: And Yoshi, this was all happening, the goon squad and Yoshi at the same time.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: And Yoshi said, Hey, let's go to Mongolia, and I want to climb the third highest peak and ski it in Mongolia.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so man, I'm on that.
54:55
SPEAKER_01: So got together with the Japanese, and then uh and then our guys went back to Everest in '96, got that shit kicked out of them.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: They weren't, that was into thin air.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: That was the year that they went back up there, and they didn't even make it to the South Cole because all this stuff was going on.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that's when Al's it cost Al probably a million bucks to get us all to Everest and buy permits and do all that stuff.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: And uh his wife, this was his third ascent, and his I think his wife just said, forget it, man.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: And we were hiking career, your climbing career's over.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: Had enough, you know.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: There's just a point where you just don't want to pump more.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to be the oldest guy to climb the mountain, too.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: And a Japanese guy, older guy, had climbed it the year before, and that put a damper on like his goal.
55:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of like you remember the movie K2?
55:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: That's old now, where uh benefactor, he just hung out in camp and paid for the kids to do the climb.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: This was the same thing, but uh he wanted to do the climb as well.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to do the climb as well.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: So those guys kind of Yoshi finished his Big Ten Adventures, Al pulled the plug, and uh, and that was it.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: Guiding ended for me.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: That was uh I don't know what that was, 90 something.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: But uh or two no 2005 was the last uh uh Japanese trip with Yoshi.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: And that was kind of it, because sugar daddies play themselves out.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: But to fall in, to find these people on these guided trips, to find the guy that really likes you and trusts you and get in with uh do buddy system stuff where you're not dealing with these Yahoos getting off the plane that shouldn't be there, it really made it more exciting.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: And and also going into places I've never been, because like Yoshi and Al too, like I've never been there, I'm guiding you, but I've never been to this place.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: And uh so talking about that, so you're going this place first time you're on this mountain and you're guiding somebody without the local knowledge, like after your first time, but the first time you do Denali, you're an assistant guide.
56:48
SPEAKER_02: You're going to some of these others, and you're kind of like the head guide.
56:51
SPEAKER_02: Who who are you leaning on, or where are you getting your information from?
56:55
SPEAKER_02: You've exactly you've never seen the mountain.
56:57
SPEAKER_02: You've got this, you got these people that are relying on you to keep them safe.
57:01
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
57:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:03
SPEAKER_02: How are you doing your research, or what research are you doing, or who are you talking to before you head out?
57:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, things like the seven summits that Al was doing.
57:10
SPEAKER_01: We all knew about the seven summits.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't uh we knew where we were going and kind of Yoshi, he'd go, we're gonna ski the highest highest peak in uh in uh Taiwan.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: Highest peak in Taiwan, or like going to Mongolia or going into Greenland, the highest peak.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: And uh he wasn't interested in the summit so much as the skiing, because he was an extreme skier.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: And uh my deal with him was you get me to Timberline, I'll get you to the summit.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm not hailing taxis in Jakarta, that's not my job.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: And I can handle that.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: Once I'm you know on the glacier, okay, I can do that.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: What was I doing?
57:42
SPEAKER_01: Hailing taxis in in uh I mean I was because everybody on everybody speaks a little bit of English, but nobody speaks Japanese.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: And I was the his head guide and videographer doing all this stuff, and so he'd push me out in front and do the negotiating and stuff like that.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: Things that I I'm not hired to do this stuff, but he knew that too, so there was sort of this mutual thing, and he'd uh like news conferences and things like this, he'd say, Johnson, speak for me.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: And okay, Yoshi was like up, down, good, bad, no, you know, really like cryptic stuff.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: That what does he mean by that?
58:17
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but that so that was, yeah.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know Iri and Jay, are you kidding?
58:23
SPEAKER_01: We had naked porters hauling things on their heads and like uh I don't know, getting into situations flying into Greenland, there's no way out of here.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: The plane doesn't come back, you're not even walking out of here.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: Things that are pretty terrifying in a way.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Faith in airplanes.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh but yeah.
58:40
SPEAKER_02: What what is your thought process going into that?
58:44
SPEAKER_02: Like you're just saying, I mean, I'm I'm listening to you knowing your experience as a guy, all these trips that you've just talked about that you've gone on, but you're talking about it's kind of terrifying in a way.
58:57
SPEAKER_02: How did you get that mental mindset to like, all right, this is we're gonna do this, this, and this, and this is gonna work out as long as this goes to plan?
59:06
SPEAKER_01: It was he knew I hadn't been there before.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:09
SPEAKER_01: That really playing out, Yoshi.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't know where we're going or how we're gonna do this thing.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Have you set everything up?
59:14
SPEAKER_01: Do we, you know, but of course it isn't all set up like the taxis and the porters.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: To a point it is, and we'd always have on those trips we had a complete Japanese film crew, like uh from Tokyo with us.
59:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, guys that had never been on mountains, and they were like the low-altitude cameraman.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: I was the high-altitude guy.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: And they would only go to a certain level, and and uh they knew uh so we're dealing with that entity because these turned these were turned into like 90-minute commercial-free epics, like his plan was to make these.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: They're pretty good.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: I'll show you one of those sometime.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: Because he has one on the Juno ice fields.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: But uh, but it was, and I had the the only reason I worked with the Japanese, you know, people like it's a death wish, man.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: These guys are just dying like flies.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: But the Japanese are pretty hard-headed sometimes in the mountains, not fully understanding uh what kind of situations they're in.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but he gave me free reign to say, Yoshi, we're not doing this.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: We're um we're in Mongolia.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to see the north face of this big peak.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: And we looked at that north face and uh, Yoshi, we're not gonna do this because North Face sponsored him.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_01: It's one of these things.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: So he can build it up, but not really no way.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: But but I said we can't do it.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Oh, Johnson, what?
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but he accepted that.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: I said, if it looks like a death wish, I'm not gonna let you do it, I'm not going with you.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: And he really, that's why he liked me.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_01: I could call the shots and let him know because he didn't know actually, he didn't know that stuff.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_01: So you get built up that trust.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then we do this long conference like uh Johnson, why not?
1:00:45
SPEAKER_01: And uh, the mountain, you know, that kind of led to the mountain is tough, defeated by the mountain, and get this heroic, yeah, it was time to turn back and kind of turn it around like it wasn't defeat.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_01: It was like the mountain wand, but that kind of thing.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh but yeah, I mean there were some really interesting, you know, I got in positions with the Oshi that I did not want to be in.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: Like uh, I mean, I could uh in Jakarta, we were going through the Freeport Mine, which was owned by owned by uh Freeport, the largest mining company in all of the world.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: They'd think and it was an open-pit mine that you could have put all the whole town up from here to Haynes in it, in the middle of, and it was all the secretive stuff.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: It was uh American-owned, because in theory, uh Jakarta owned owed America so much at the time for everything they'd gone through, they'd just come in and mine it.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: So there were no rules or regs, and it was under surrounded by Indonesian guards to go through that mine pit.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: It was, I'm surprised we were even able to do that because armed guards with us, like uh no photos, you know, just like really spooky stuff.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: And then the peak we were climbing was beyond that.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: We went through that complex, and uh the the guy we weren't getting a permit.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: We were in in Jakarta for three weeks, just sitting there.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_01: I ended up roaming the streets at night and having a pretty good time, but Yoshi's running out of money in time, and there was a big banquet being held the next night, and he goes the the guy they called the Fat General, who was the guy that signed the paper that would let us into this thing.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: The fat general's coming to this gala ball tomorrow night in Johnson.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: I want you to go in there and uh talk to him and say, where's the permit?
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: And me, and uh, that's not my job.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_01: And this guy was like Pancho Villa, bandoliers and everything, a pistol.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this guy was serious.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm supposed to go to this thing and introduce myself.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: Hi! I'm with I'm with the Japanese guy.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: Sign, please, and uh, I was sweating that.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: And uh Yoshi, I was gonna do it.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: And the Indonesian kid that was guiding us around Jakarta didn't even want to be seen near the gate.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're on your own man, I'm not going in there with you.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: And the next day he signed the paper.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: I got out of that one.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: But I was trembling on that.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: And where do you draw the line?
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: Like Yoshi, I'm not gonna, but Johnson, please, you know, and the locals don't want to be part of that.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: It was terrifying.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_01: I and uh, but that was probably the most terrifying, potentially horrible thing I would have had to do.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: We catch fish, or you know, whenever you approach these guys.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, that whole Yoshi thing was it was really enlightening, like watching how dealing with embassies a lot.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: It was a whole different situation going into Mongolia.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_01: We were there 12 months after the Russians pulled out.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_01: It was insane.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: And Mongolia, they took all of their all the arm, not the arm transports were gone, but the troop carriers and the helicopters were all left to the Mongolians at that time.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh was just this uh concrete kind of jungle, and no one, the industry, nothing had been happening there, and the the army was there, Mongolian army, but they were practicing with with wooden rifles, and it was all drawings and buttons, you know, Velcro and doing their maneuvers and stuff, and finally they were in control of their country.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: Russians had pulled out, and it was uh so we went across the whole country and this this troop carrier and the the best driver, and we had the best, everything was thrown at our disposal because Yoshi would not only the climbing and the skiing, but he was promoting uh tourism in Mongolia.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Fishing is huge.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_01: So he was like a friendship thing with Umpah bands were meeting us at airports, and it was like more than just the climb.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: And uh I was the only westerner on this crew, and uh looking like I do, like we'd be flying across the country in this bashed up Russian helicopter.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_01: We'd land in these little villages as we go.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_01: I'd poke my head out and we'd be met by people on horseback and all this stuff, and they would scatter.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_01: I'd just stick my head out.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: I'd look Russian, they don't know who the heck I am, and they would scatter, like leaving dust trails out into the desert, and then one Mongolie, come back, this guy's cool, and uh then they'd all come back.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: Terrifying, these helicopters, you know, as a gunship.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: And um, but but having that kind of thrown at our disposal because of the Oshi and his uh international view is backed by a lot of people do that, Suntory, uh Northface, um Nikon, Sony, all these people, big thing.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: But to be in that position, too, and then once they knew I was a cool guy, Alaska, I always carried an inflatable beach ball with the world, one of those, you pull it up and then go, Alaska and Mongolia, because these people had never seen the ocean or anything, and kind of vague, and that kind of and then a picture of a fish, uh the third world, a picture of my outhouse and a picture of the chicken coop.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: You're instantly family.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody has chickens and everybody has outhouses, and it kind of puts you on, they all think we live in gated communities and condos and stuff like that, their vision of an American.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_01: But to know that we live in the woods and there's a chainsaw, that was really learning how to communicate with third world people and the Kids, they swarm around you like Hanes.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, you go into the village and suddenly the kids are all over you.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: And we had little things for the kids who go to Toys or Us and buy little magnifying glasses and show them this science show.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: Mark Soggy was with me on one of these things, going into the villages and doing our magic shows.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: And Mark's down the street, and he's uh but uh once the if the kids like you, you're invited into the huts or the houses, whatever it is, because they're so children-oriented, family-oriented, and that little just knowing that was really helpful and fun.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: Like I like kids anyway.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_01: They're so unfiltered, you know.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_01: Humans are all screw, you know, adults are screwed up, and we've got our opinions on what's going on.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_01: The kids are the ones that really like fresh, fresh air.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_01: So that aspect was cool with Yoshi.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_01: Going into the more third-world uh areas than with Al and the seven summits, that's pretty well trodden, and you know, those routes are established.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: Where this was, we were, I mean, bushwhacking through the jungles and area and jail.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, what the hell?
1:07:01
SPEAKER_01: The spiders are as big as dinner plates and uh I don't know, spooky cool stuff besides the climb.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's getting to it was kind of the adventure.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_01: But uh you miss it.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't miss the guiding aspect.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_01: I I kind of I'm done flying over oceans, like we've got friends now that are flying all over the place.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: And I I don't know.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: That was just, you know, for a 15-year period, I wasn't even home six months of the year.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_01: Yoshi to Al.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: Like we I just land in LA and then take off to Taiwan from Antarctica.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't around.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: Yoshi paid, that was cash on the barrel head.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_01: Al was just a free trip, Haynes to Haynes.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_01: And uh so I'd go at least Yoshi, and I'd end up with these uh, what did it was I charting?
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: $3,500 a trip.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: It's my Yoshi, I'm at your mercy for$3,500.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: And that's about what Denali cost then.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: And we would, he'd pay me in hermetically sealed hundred dollar bills and little envelopes.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: There was no written anything, nothing written.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it was just like cash and and sealed hundred dollar bills and envelopes.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, like payday was unbelievable.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you kind of stick that in your pocket, and but uh, and that was kind of cool too.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: And I let him know, boy, if you break your neck, uh there's no paperwork here.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm out of here.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_01: And he accepted that.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_01: Al, I don't know what the deal there was.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: Um but I I guess if you're collecting unemployment and you're on permanent seasonal, you're are you insured with the state?
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: Like if I break my neck over.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure if, but we had uh um uh Medvac insurance with American Alpine Club for a hundred bucks.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like they'd fly you to the nearest uh sawbones and dump you off, but at least you get out of the mountains, so that was uh taken care of.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad I'm not I'm done guiding that.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: It was like perfect timing for me, like and and that uh and then focusing on the arts.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got I've got a job to do.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_02: Before we get to the arts with the climbing, are there any of these any of these adventures that you went on that while you're while you're just I said, this would be real cool to just come back with Sharon and I.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_02: Just to do this, to it'd be cool just for the two of us to come and just have an adventure on our own.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_02: Were there any of those that you took off as a result of I was doing while while you were with Al or while you were with Yoshi, a mountain or a place that you're like, he's like, I need to bring Sharon back here.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: That was well, Sharon.
1:09:30
SPEAKER_01: She went on a couple of them with her.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: No, I told Al, I'm not going to Nepal without my wife.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: And he met her in Anchorage when we did that thing, and he said, Bring her.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh and we and as a result, and then Yoshi, I'm not going to go back to Africa without Sharon.
1:09:45
SPEAKER_01: They'd met.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: So he says, bring her along.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_01: And then she had to pay was doing her, you know, getting her, and then we went around the world, like we went to uh Africa is exactly Nairobi's about halfway from here, basically, or LA.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh so you continue on to Bali, uh, they went into Iranjaya to get back to LA rather than come back the way we went.
1:10:06
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:10:06
SPEAKER_01: So that was uh really a sweet thing to get her to go basically around the world twice on these trips on their ticket.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_01: The um the Japanese and the you know, this is Mano Imano, the Japanese having a woman on the team, and that's a cultural thing, and but Yoshi loved Sharon, and I mean we were all family, and but the other crew, the film crew, she had a hard time sometimes because she was tougher than them.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_01: She was hauling load up Mount Kenya, and these poor guys are just dying and watching this female outdo them.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_01: There was an ego thing involved.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_01: And we all got sick as dogs at high, you know, everybody's kind of puking as you gain altitude.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_01: So she was human to them.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_01: But she would offer warnings and things like, don't drive too fast, you're gonna kill a kid, and they'll all be stuck with spears.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: These guys were kind of insane over there.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_01: Not no, they didn't blend in with the the third world aspect too much.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: But so she actually uh pulled on Amada Blam.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: She was there when this guy broke his leg, and she was the only person that could grab the the radio and talk.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: English go, this stuff is going on, and she she dealt with that before, and she was actually doing the communication from base camp up to where we were.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: So a real asset, but that wasn't a Japanese thing.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_01: The Japanese were they put up with her in the end.
1:11:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was all worth it in the end.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_01: Then you just learn to kind of stand back and and let it happen.
1:11:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh they won't they won't insult the w a woman, you know, that kind of thing, but a boy they she can be shunned and you know, just not really listened to.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_01: She's not a part of this thing.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, no, that was incredible.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_01: I've never paid, I've never paid my way to go around the world ever on any of these trips.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: And then she got these free ones out of it, too.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_01: That was the sweet aspect of this whole thing.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I've got friends that went on to do it still international guiding doing this stuff, and I I don't know how they do it.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, you're I mean, you hit a certain age, and you I don't know, it's not you don't get more cantankerous, but more direct with people.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a way to politically kind of schmooze your way into or whatever it is, talk your way out of a situation by talking their talk or whatever it is.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_01: But I I have a hard enough time talking my own talk here.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think the guiding two is a good time to end because getting into the art's more full-time and then picking up the like the one percents and like really focusing because I've I've been painting the the art with the same time period.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_01: We're we're making art.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you you started with your art when you were still young.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_02: When did it become in your mind or when that hey, I can sell some of this?
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the 70s in Juneau, we were in galleries, you know, selling.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_01: The selling was there, but wasn't putting the um maybe the the professional technical like the time into really figuring it out.
1:13:05
SPEAKER_01: And like the kids, uh I never took business classes, and and now you're talking about what are you gonna be, or what did you, what's your degree, and what are you going into business?
1:13:15
SPEAKER_01: Back then it was business, how boring was that?
1:13:18
SPEAKER_01: And uh and my thing with the the ArtFest kids, part of my talk with them was like uh you want to become professional artists, you're gonna get a degree in art, if you're gonna major in art, made or minor in business, get that.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_01: Because making the art is just one aspect.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_01: You have to sell your art.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_01: And if you know how the system works and how to start a business, I mean that's a jump start right there.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_01: How to start a greeting card business or how any of that stuff works and outside the gallery scene.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_02: So when you were first putting stuff in galleries, was that just your watercolors?
1:13:50
SPEAKER_02: Was that some of the larger stuff?
1:13:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the uh I worked in pented ink, uh, watercolor, and then wood block prints, but flat art, there's no glass involved in the early days at all.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_01: And was Sharon doing the same kind of stuff at that time?
1:14:02
SPEAKER_01: She was a weaver.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_02: She was weaving at that time.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_02: She wove for like 20 years on moons doing.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, the the thing, the thing with both of you is you guys both do so many different mediums that I don't know which when you started each one of them.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: I I'm I'm too spread out right now.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_01: This glass really screwed me up.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the painting and focusing on the the problem is dealing with galleries and things through my whole life, they uh they know you as a painter.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_01: And and when something sells, you need to replace it.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and if you're you so you you're basically painting all the time to replace what in theory sells, and then you get into another medium, like glass.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not known as a glass artist, I'm known as a painter, so you have to introduce yourself and the paintings or the glass I'm doing is like almost like paintings, uh like powdered glass and fusing it in like a watercolor.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_01: That aspect is what really got me into that.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_02: Is it that that idea of trying to make it look like a watercolor?
1:15:02
SPEAKER_02: Is that what intrigued you about getting into glass, or were you just kind of looking for something different?
1:15:08
SPEAKER_01: No, I I think that that had a lot to do with me sticking with the glass.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_01: Like she's a mosaicist where you cut everything up and you know, traditional mosaic.
1:15:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm I I'm sifting uh sifting powder through through onto glass like with stencils and making it look like a watercolor wash.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_01: That freaked me out.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: Just the ability to do that.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_01: I'd seen it before, and there's so many ways you can approach that, but this is like man, this is a painting on glass, and uh and and then the bead making.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_01: I think the first glass I ever did was on torches, really making beads, and uh and I got those set up here and uh and getting into that aspect of melting glass, not not the kiln work so much.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, the galleries, then you have to like what are you?
1:15:53
SPEAKER_01: How do they promote you?
1:15:54
SPEAKER_01: Are you a glass artist?
1:15:55
SPEAKER_01: Are you a painter?
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: Like uh you don't want them to be so confused that you're they're marker to you.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean they're uh they're they make my living for me.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_01: So to legitimize yourself as a glass artist, um I don't deal with that many galleries.
1:16:14
SPEAKER_01: The and then there's the web and all that stuff going too, so you can promote yourself.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_01: That's for like these kids, but everything is so digital now, you can start an art business on a computer.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: But uh the letting the the uh the galleries uh we've Annie Kills and Gino, that's it.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_01: Like uh, I don't know, uh Lynch Kennedy and and uh in Skagway and then um the Sitka Rose and Sitka and us, and then of course Ampersand, everybody around here, those are the only three.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants your best work.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_01: I found that they want your best.
1:16:53
SPEAKER_01: I own a gallery, I want the best.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: So how do you divvy that art out to have them being satisfied because it has to sell, you're not drawing displays, there to you're marketing that stuff, and and that's kind of confusing because because we don't do mass production.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: We don't just don't like greeting cards or prints.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_01: It's everything is handmade, so there are no no two pieces that are exactly alike.
1:17:16
SPEAKER_02: So you don't do any prints.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_02: If somebody's buying something, it's yeah the only one.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_01: The print market I do I print my own prints now on a computer, and and uh everything I've painted, I format to uh uh eight and a half by eleven, so like magazine cover size.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_01: That's as large as I want to make anything.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_01: And and that's actually reducing it down in a lot of cases, and that's uh um, you know, I have those in the bin, like everything I've painted, and not going the offset litho scene that was through the 80s and 90s, like like Chaws and Juneau.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_01: She'd go, Oh, I love your painting, we're gonna make 750 of these prints, and she would foot the bill for bricks of prints, and not that I and she would sell them, she was really good at it, uh-huh, but they each have to be signed, so it's a placemat without a signature.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh so getting in that market, and then the print market kind of died because people started getting into more original work, or like the woodblock scene where I could do more than one.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a one-off like a watercolor, and uh which helped that a little bit, and uh, I have got and then the print market died.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_01: You just like uh got these bins of prints here.
1:18:25
SPEAKER_01: I have hundreds of pounds of prints that may never sell.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_01: It's one of these things where what do you I'm painting on the back sides of them now.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_01: They've made their money, but it's not like the what do you do with these things?
1:18:39
SPEAKER_01: And some are so big that you know you can't walk out with them.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_01: And so getting out of that market, even the greeting card business, that's went through that.
1:18:47
SPEAKER_01: It's uh I don't know where you, you know, where you know, like what to do with these things.
1:18:54
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I'm painting on the backs, and you know, maybe I should at least sign these hundreds of pounds so they're you know, they're at least the worst 495 on the garage sale.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_01: But the original art is is uh but back to the the point of like how when you distribute your work, um, you want to give each gallery what's maybe uh uh Annie Kales wants fish this year.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_01: You kind of feel the galleries out.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Eugene wants whales, because there's whales out there.
1:19:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh Lynch Kennedy, I don't know what she wants.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_01: It's like you offload these cattle cars, these giant boats, 7,000 people a ton, what are they after?
1:19:31
SPEAKER_01: What are they there's just no focus on a certain image that maybe they're after.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_01: It's all hit and miss.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_02: So the the part of me that's asking that is if you're not doing prints on some of this stuff on watercolors, I mean, how your glass I think is different, right?
1:19:48
SPEAKER_02: Because you can I I would think glass, you can kind of make something similar and make a bunch of them and you kind of like the whale.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, looking at the glass with the whales.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_01: You're just putting them differently.
1:19:59
SPEAKER_02: You're putting them in different different contexts.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_02: But are you still doing any watercolors?
1:20:05
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
1:20:05
SPEAKER_02: No, I've got a couple going right now.
1:20:07
SPEAKER_02: How many do you paint a year to keep the galleries so they have enough stuff to sell in four different places?
1:20:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I don't do watercolors anywhere else.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_01: No, that's just glass, actually.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay, for those other places it's just glass, just glass.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_01: The only place you can get a watercolor is pretty much here.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_01: And Annie Kales, they'll do watercolors because that's you know they have a pretty good market too.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: And we've been with her for 30 years.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_01: And uh but the and then online, everything is photographed and put on the website and out there.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_01: And uh a number of through Skagway, there's a website with all my paintings and stuff on it.
1:20:40
SPEAKER_01: Sharon's uh mosaics.
1:20:42
SPEAKER_01: If you put a uh I don't know, a raven or anything in one of her mosaics or whale, it's out of there.
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just uh it's such a unique medium uh mosaic is it's forever, never fades, you know, easy maintenance.
1:20:58
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing to it.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_01: It's also kind of um really popular right now, the whole mosaic process.
1:21:04
SPEAKER_01: Um where she maybe has a like well, you can't see that, but like a there's my glass right there, that aurora with the tents.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's the using the glass as it is and not busting it up.
1:21:16
SPEAKER_01: Using the glass is the watercolor.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I couldn't do a wash that clean.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so I'm sort of high grading these sheets of glass we get are huge, and like looking at these things, and I'm not gonna bust that into triangles.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding?
1:21:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna use it as it is and uh put it in the kill and fuse it.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_01: Um and then the little all these little prints, those are prints, and they're popular, and I can get into this.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_01: I've been in Alpinis magazine, I'm in the climbing world.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_01: The people that I was guiding on to Nolly with in the 80s, we all went our different directions.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of them went to being the editors and people of Alpinist magazine, where they went, and others became sales reps or whatever it is, but the the magazine guys, we've all grown up together, and and uh so I've been contributing to that with paintings and you know quite a bit.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_01: So I get a 25-year-old climber kid comes in here and looks at this painting on the wall, and like, wow, you're an alpinist! Wow, I saw your work.
1:22:09
SPEAKER_01: I want that painting.
1:22:11
SPEAKER_01: And well, okay, uh, you live in a van, you're dumpster diving, and you want an$800 painting.
1:22:17
SPEAKER_01: I won't, I won't do it.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_01: I've got a bin over there of the same painting shrunk down to a print and for 60 bucks.
1:22:24
SPEAKER_01: I'll sell you that, and you can push pin it to your van and buy a rope.
1:22:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was there.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding?
1:22:30
SPEAKER_01: We weren't buying art when we were climbing like that.
1:22:33
SPEAKER_01: And uh and so there you go.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_01: And if it's a graduation present, there are exceptions where, okay, if your parents are buying this for you, that's you.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_01: But I'll just be flat out because I was one once, and uh buy a rope, you know, buy a rope, it'll keep you alive until you're 40.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_01: You might have an apartment, and then buy your painting.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_01: But I'm totally sympathetic toward that.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_01: And my audience through my whole life has basically been I paint the adventures, I paint the climbing, all that, and my audience is dumpster diving van people.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_01: Those are the people that really get what I'm painting.
1:23:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and uh that's my fate, I guess.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_01: I just can't do it, paint anything else.
1:23:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, I do whales' tales in Lynn Canal are the more commercial things, but uh, but that's my audience who really gets it.
1:23:18
SPEAKER_01: And uh the the free solo gang, you know, they've seen Alex do his things on El Capitan, and I mean they they get it, but those are the ones that really don't have money to buy art.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean I can what is the what is the difference for you?
1:23:32
SPEAKER_02: Because I there's just in my mind, there's this huge dichotomy between these two careers, this guiding where very stressful, high, I mean high adrenaline in a lot of things, and then the art is seems is that kind of the yin and the yang where that kind of it's the more peaceful artistic aspect compared to this really high-intensity other part of John's life?
1:23:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well that's that's what I like about it.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the art is is like soft sport by comparison, and the hard sport is what where I'd get my ideas to do the paintings.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_01: Come back with all these ideas and like we really get them done on paper while it's fresh in your mind.
1:24:11
SPEAKER_01: And after every international trip, like I've got a whole brick of Nepalese paintings, a brick of South American paintings, African paintings.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_01: That when I got back, you just rampage because that's fresh in your mind.
1:24:22
SPEAKER_01: Go through maybe a year or two of that, and then and then you move on to the next trip.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_01: But that's where the energy came from, and the painting is is therapeutic.
1:24:30
SPEAKER_01: Right now it's therapeutic.
1:24:32
SPEAKER_01: I'll be on the kilns doing this stuff, and then every time I walk by the the easel, I'll stop and work on this painting because it's sitting there and kind of pick away at it, and it's like kind of cleans my mind out because it's so fluid and you know it's it's not a you know, I get into like making beads where the focus on the hard sport and the soft sport where you're they talk about uh focus and and sort of nothing's moving but your hands.
1:25:00
SPEAKER_01: You got a bead on a mandrel and you're just twisting and you're looking at this flame, and it's you're it's uh it's it's almost like a trance dance in a way.
1:25:09
SPEAKER_01: You just get so focused on this thing that's a pinpoint.
1:25:12
SPEAKER_01: They say computers, you know, you should walk away computer screen, you're looking at this thing.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_01: Every every 20 minutes you should walk around and look at something else, and you're focused.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_01: But when you're focusing on bead making, it's you're dealing with uh, you know, square inches.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_01: And having that be, that's ter totally therapeutic to me.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_01: But the painting is the the cool thing about the painting is I can now kind of paint what I want because the glass is, I mean, it's kind of the market right now, these slop dishes and all this is really cool.
1:25:43
SPEAKER_01: And each one of those is um it's not uh well I guess the process is formula, but the images are all different.
1:25:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh and so you're working with all these bears I'm doing, and which ones are really gonna move first, and those are the ones you want to do again.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh I've never been a production line guy, I just can't.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_01: Like I say, the wood blocks, you end up with so many of them, and that's it.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_01: But that's then you destroy the block and it's gone.
1:26:08
SPEAKER_01: The painting is totally I don't know where I'm going with the painting.
1:26:12
SPEAKER_01: Right now I'm doing we're looking down from Rapinsky at Haynes at night with the aurora.
1:26:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm really into night scenes.
1:26:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's uh something that people really understand and it's uh maybe a different view than you normally see.
1:26:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh and those have been fun.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm so you know, you talk about being extended in the arts, like where am I going?
1:26:33
SPEAKER_01: I have the the bead making, the fusing and the slumping, and some mosaic, and then the painting and the wood blocks, and too many things.
1:26:40
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to to give one up.
1:26:43
SPEAKER_01: And and I've talked to other artists about this too.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_02: But wh why would you have to give one up?
1:26:48
SPEAKER_02: If you enjoy them all, and they bring you pleasure, they bring you that relaxation, that idea of creativity is still there.
1:26:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:26:57
SPEAKER_02: Why would why would you have to give one up, John?
1:27:00
SPEAKER_01: It's it's like um the if you want to really excel in one of those art forms, you probably shouldn't be fooling with anything else.
1:27:07
SPEAKER_01: If I wanted to be a glass master, I shouldn't be wood block printing and and uh painting, I should be focusing on the glass, like the marble makers, watching these guys and and uh how they do these perfect orbs with all the stuff inside.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_01: That's a like dedicating kind of your life to that.
1:27:23
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you do you have to be a master or can you be really, really good at it?
1:27:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:27:28
SPEAKER_01: I think being in my case, I'm good at a bunch of things.
1:27:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm a master of any of them.
1:27:33
SPEAKER_01: Because the more And I guess that's the question.
1:27:35
SPEAKER_02: Do you do we need to be a master at something?
1:27:37
SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_02: Are we better to be a master at one thing or just really good at a bunch of things if all of them bring us a good if all of them bring us satisfaction and joy?
1:27:49
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it depends on your audience.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_01: Who who are you trying to reach?
1:27:52
SPEAKER_01: Who are you showing what you're doing?
1:27:54
SPEAKER_01: If you're young and you're you want to make a living as an artist, you establish yourself with a gallery and they want you.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_01: And they want people that are can become masters anyway.
1:28:03
SPEAKER_01: Like where do you where do you become a a master?
1:28:07
SPEAKER_01: I've long since the the painters that I that my mentors, they were in their 60s then, really old to me, and uh late 50s, 60s, and still like nationally known painters who doing magical things and still looking at their paintings and going, I'm still trying to figure it out.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm still trying to figure it out.
1:28:29
SPEAKER_01: And you look at the paintings they're doing, and they're still kind of working with the medium and like how water color works on different papers and all that stuff.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_01: And but these guys, uh, and they were masters, definitely.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_01: The and uh I've long said like the marble makers.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_01: I love making marbles, but I don't have 50 more years to figure out how the heck they're doing that unless I sit on that torch for you know endlessly just working at it.
1:28:55
SPEAKER_01: And I really don't have time to do that because I enjoy doing everything I'm doing.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_01: You're like the fusing, I'm up now.
1:29:02
SPEAKER_01: What what's a master?
1:29:04
SPEAKER_01: My goal in the gallery, pretty much, a lot of my work on the walls, is to have somebody that is a master or someone that really works in glass look at my paintings and go, wow, these are pretty cool.
1:29:14
SPEAKER_01: Keep it at keep it up, you know, that kind of thing.
1:29:17
SPEAKER_01: You're looking for someone that knows the medium rather than someone off the cruise ship that looks at a marble and you know, they they don't look for that maybe that kind of quality or look at it as being made by a master so much.
1:29:30
SPEAKER_01: But to have someone come in here and tell me my paintings are doing really well and and they paint themselves, that's cool.
1:29:36
SPEAKER_01: Even if they're not masters themselves, but they understand the medium, they know what we're up against.
1:29:40
SPEAKER_01: We're all up against this thing, and they go, wow, that's really cool.
1:29:43
SPEAKER_01: I do that.
1:29:43
SPEAKER_01: I walk into someone's gallery and look at what they're painting, and like, man, that is hot.
1:29:48
SPEAKER_01: How'd you do that?
1:29:49
SPEAKER_01: And oh, you know, we just you know, you kind of talk shop.
1:29:52
SPEAKER_01: But uh that's all.
1:29:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I was a master, a true master, I'd have been there by now.
1:30:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, over 70, give me a break.
1:30:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, where and like portfolios get into you're building your portfolio.
1:30:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm building a portfolio.
1:30:08
SPEAKER_01: I've got one.
1:30:09
SPEAKER_02: It's uh and I guess that's kind of what I was saying.
1:30:11
SPEAKER_02: Is I I look at I look around your shop here and I look at pretty much the whole time I've known you, I've known art by John Sventson.
1:30:19
SPEAKER_02: There's uh like you said, the climbing pictures, all this different stuff, and I'm not an artist in any way.
1:30:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have a hard time drawing a smiley face.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_02: So it's a totally different, it's a totally different thing, right?
1:30:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's but I look at and and and and maybe that's just me that I I look at what other people do, and I'm totally fascinated.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_02: I think it's amazing the things that I can't do when I see somebody else do it.
1:30:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm totally enthralled by that.
1:30:48
SPEAKER_02: The stuff that's similar, if if it's something that I can do, I'm like, well, if I can do it, anybody else can do it.
1:30:54
SPEAKER_02: It's not that special.
1:30:55
SPEAKER_02: But I look around here and just the way that you've expanded over the years into the different mediums, I think it's that's phenomenal that you're in all the and you do them all really, really well.
1:31:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, so I don't know if I I don't for me, if I was you, I wouldn't care if anybody called me a master because I think you do all of them really well.
1:31:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if they bring you enjoyment, keep doing all of them.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like the same old the portfolio thing.
1:31:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm not building a portfolio, and what you see is what you get, and I'm I I think my watercolors, I do under I'm getting, you know, I'm understanding what I do in like uh pictures of the paintings.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was taught too that that uh the whole painting, I might not like the whole painting, but I like this part of it is really good.
1:31:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:31:38
SPEAKER_01: Down in the lower left-hand corner, and then you can mat that out and enlarge that piece of your painting to make it into the larger painting.
1:31:44
SPEAKER_01: And pulling, being you can't be overcritical of what you well, maybe I am over-critical of what I look at I can see things in this that a human normal human would never see that bothers me.
1:31:54
SPEAKER_01: It's like uh but if you're dealing with things like perspective and and uh that kind of thing, where the normal person goes, something's really wrong with this, and the perspective is a pretty critical thing, like buildings are tilted the wrong way, and you're purposely doing that.
1:32:07
SPEAKER_01: But uh you're like painting um, say, things like the matterhorn.
1:32:11
SPEAKER_01: The matter horn uh is on every chocolate box.
1:32:14
SPEAKER_01: Grandma knows the shape of the matterhorn, especially climbers, and I paint that matterhorn, I can't really alter it to be different because a normal person would look at that.
1:32:23
SPEAKER_01: This doesn't look right.
1:32:24
SPEAKER_01: Um that kind of thing.
1:32:26
SPEAKER_01: So for that audience, my matterhorns are pretty spot on.
1:32:30
SPEAKER_01: It's the way you approach the paint, applying it to the paper and doing all of that.
1:32:35
SPEAKER_01: But the the idea of being um have I we get into this too.
1:32:40
SPEAKER_01: Have I when do you be?
1:32:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is pretty crazy.
1:32:44
SPEAKER_01: When do you go from being a wannabe to a could have been?
1:32:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of jokingly like, well, uh, I wanna be this, and you I mean, like me, I hit 70 and go, what do I want to be?
1:32:57
SPEAKER_01: Or what could I have been?
1:32:58
SPEAKER_01: And then you can kind of look back in time, well, if I'd have approached the galleries different when I was 30, or you know, done different things, I could have been in a different way, like a Ray Troll.
1:33:08
SPEAKER_01: You look at that guy, yeah, man, making a million on t-shirts, and you know, that is a he's a genius in what he did.
1:33:15
SPEAKER_01: He approached it right, his imagery is cool, and uh and you got the John Farringers, you've got the Nancy Stoningtons, like these other artists that kind of um applied all they know to that one thing, and uh, and good business.
1:33:31
SPEAKER_01: And and and uh I don't know.
1:33:34
SPEAKER_01: I I'm happy, I I mean, uh I don't know what I don't know if I want to or if I could have been.
1:33:39
SPEAKER_01: You can't think about that too much, because I could have been anything.
1:33:42
SPEAKER_02: My my my pushback on that was think of the think of the trips, the guiding trips that you took with Al and Yoshi, that if you were a hundred percent dedicated to your artwork that you never would have been able to take.
1:33:56
SPEAKER_02: So do you think it's worth it to go on those trips?
1:34:00
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
1:34:01
SPEAKER_02: Instead of if if you would have spent that time on artwork and you might wherever you might have been in the art world or in your mind further in art, would you looking back at it today, would you give up those trips?
1:34:13
SPEAKER_01: I would no.
1:34:14
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't there you go.
1:34:15
SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of where because that was an art form in itself.
1:34:18
SPEAKER_01: The guiding uh it can relate with the gallery a lot.
1:34:22
SPEAKER_02: It's uh and and I think as you've as you've said, that inspired a lot of your artwork.
1:34:28
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
1:34:28
SPEAKER_02: Going on those trips inspired a lot of the stuff that you did that then you shared with others.
1:34:32
SPEAKER_01: Yep, and see that's what you talk about Yoshi living on his adventures later when he ended, he was he's still, you know, ski club and all that stuff.
1:34:42
SPEAKER_01: He's doing his thing and he's living on that reputation that he built during that time period.
1:34:46
SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot from him, like how you build uh I mean this I mean it's insane, like rock skiing Mount Fuji as a kid, and you know, somebody got a hold of him and hey, you should do that.
1:34:55
SPEAKER_01: Kind of built into this self-promotion thing.
1:34:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
1:34:58
SPEAKER_01: Where uh the yeah, if I wasn't if I didn't get into the climbing world, who knows?
1:35:03
SPEAKER_01: I'd be painting just whales' tails in Lynn Canal.
1:35:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what my subject matter would be, but to put that time focusing on I wouldn't trade those adventures for anything.
1:35:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really, just to become a uh maybe a master at painting or no, that I mean they're a part of the whole system.
1:35:20
SPEAKER_01: That's how it kind of worked.
1:35:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh and my whole reputation is the paintings I do of Africa or wherever it is, is those trips like tie that all together.
1:35:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:35:29
SPEAKER_01: Um and the idea of of uh not having, I can't imagine not having.
1:35:36
SPEAKER_01: I was a Yahoo.
1:35:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, back then climb when you get so obsessed with uh something like that, because there's your family, your your group of people that's fairly small, and uh and you're doing the best you can because you want to be and the and some of those guys I was climbing with or around, like they were beyond what things that I knew I could do that if I stuck with it.
1:35:59
SPEAKER_01: You just don't go to Yosemite and climb El Capitan.
1:36:01
SPEAKER_01: You gotta spend a lot of time there to just build yourself up to that.
1:36:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of like painting.
1:36:06
SPEAKER_01: You just don't pick up a brush and start painting.
1:36:08
SPEAKER_01: You gotta work on it and work out the bugs and like what works and what doesn't.
1:36:12
SPEAKER_01: And in the climbing world, we could get into this too.
1:36:14
SPEAKER_01: There was a a title called the uh the macho man or like the hard man, the hard man climber in the valley.
1:36:21
SPEAKER_01: And we're all kids wanting to be.
1:36:24
SPEAKER_01: I think climbing was the first thing I I got involved with the people where you're identifying yourself as a group for it a change, like you're with this core group of people so dedicated that that's all you did.
1:36:35
SPEAKER_01: You're starving to death, but you're on the rock.
1:36:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, you beat up pick up truck, but you're on the rock.
1:36:40
SPEAKER_01: That's all that mattered, and and watching how those guys, watching them evolve into what they became, and uh, you wanted to be a part of that, and I was accepted into that because I was a fledgling in the beginning, and like here's this new kid on the block, and kind of filter in.
1:36:54
SPEAKER_01: As long as you're humbled and don't, you know, there are a lot of lessons to be learned.
1:36:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, everything el nothing else matters.
1:37:01
SPEAKER_01: But I stuck with the art as more of a sketched a lot, did all this, but it wasn't like the market, it wasn't like trying to sell art so much.
1:37:09
SPEAKER_01: I was too involved becoming I became a pretty darn good climber.
1:37:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was doing things that people, whoa, wow, that was cool.
1:37:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the climbing world, you do something that people admire that way, and it's it's known, you know, it's written up, and it's things where you're you're it was like a family to me.
1:37:25
SPEAKER_01: I I maybe I needed that then when I left California and came up here and did all that and then became involved with that scene, and and uh and there was a point there where uh I should have done more where you're you're climbing at your peak.
1:37:38
SPEAKER_01: You've got like a say a 15-year period where you're you know younger and buff and kind of more focused and forgetting everything else and like putting all you have into that, where um I was climbing horrendous things.
1:37:51
SPEAKER_01: I look look at what I did, and uh, I don't know, man, ropes didn't just break.
1:37:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you it was all pilot error.
1:37:58
SPEAKER_01: If you died on the rocks, like in Yosemite, it's you did it.
1:38:01
SPEAKER_01: It isn't like you just fall off a rock cliff.
1:38:03
SPEAKER_01: Something happened that you screwed up, and that's where that was teaching uh make sure you screwed in, triple-checking each other, don't lean over the edge until your anchors are good, and just common sense stuff, but pounded in, and and when it didn't work, someone died.
1:38:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, someone in the valley would die because then we'd sit around the campfire, like, oh my god, what happened?
1:38:23
SPEAKER_01: And so, okay, or the rope ran over a sharp edge, or what how'd this guy kill himself?
1:38:28
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, that kind of uh it doesn't happen in the art world, like not quite that if you screw up in the mountains, you're dead, and then going into the the high altitude mountaineering, the ice climbing, and getting to these high peaks where um you don't.
1:38:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could get into this where someone digs a snow pit, like onto not like check the snow out to see how you know the stratified, however it is.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's okay.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_01: You're on this slope that's 5,000 feet high, and what's going on up there?
1:38:55
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're okay in your thousand feet here.
1:38:57
SPEAKER_01: But what's up above?
1:38:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the avalanches come down or like falling into a crevasse, that kind of thing that is somewhat out of control, and uh and uh and people do perish in the mountains quite a bit.
1:39:08
SPEAKER_01: A number of my friends have perished in the mountains, and the guy that taught me to climb was only 27, and he was giving it up because all of his friends were dead.
1:39:15
SPEAKER_01: And he was climbing in the Alps where people were dropping off ropes, and and we were his last students.
1:39:21
SPEAKER_01: This guy, he's only 27, he seemed so old to us.
1:39:24
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I've had enough, man.
1:39:26
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want to be responsible for me dying and my parents coming down on him.
1:39:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, no way.
1:39:32
SPEAKER_01: And he he would slap us to the ground for standing on a rope.
1:39:35
SPEAKER_01: He would, this guy was hard on us.
1:39:37
SPEAKER_01: He'd make me back down a whole rope length to turn the carabiner around because I clipped it wrong.
1:39:42
SPEAKER_01: That kind of stuff, where he really pounded in the safety, and he said, do not compete.
1:39:46
SPEAKER_01: Competition kills.
1:39:48
SPEAKER_01: He really pounded in the safety thing, and and uh and I'm really glad for that.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_01: Me and my buddy are still alive that worked with this guy.
1:39:55
SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't know, but having a mentor that liked kids and he trained us to the point where and and he just passed away last year, and we were still he was so proud of me for surviving.
1:40:09
SPEAKER_01: We'd have these talks, and he'd be revealing these things that he did that we never know, like his historical alpine stuff.
1:40:15
SPEAKER_01: And I was one of the last people that we'd talk and talk, and he would come out with this stuff, like, but he was just happy that I lived.
1:40:22
SPEAKER_01: I really listened to him, and that's why I'm around right now.
1:40:25
SPEAKER_02: Um I think but I think you're you're kind of doing the same.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_02: Not not that you're giving anything up, but giving back.
1:40:32
SPEAKER_02: Because like you said, the the classes and stuff like that with the kids that were here this last weekend with the art fest and everything.
1:40:39
SPEAKER_02: That's always been something that in the I've known you for a long time.
1:40:44
SPEAKER_02: We're not close friends or anything, but I've known you coming in the store from when I was a little kid, and you've always had this very generous spirit and attitude about yourself that you're always willing to share stuff and try to beat up.
1:40:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, no, I just I that was something that always came through to me that you're you're that way.
1:41:02
SPEAKER_02: And I and when we're trying to schedule this interview, you're like, I got these kids coming, we can't do it until after the kids are here.
1:41:08
SPEAKER_02: And when we first started talking, I don't know if they we recorded that as before we started when you're talking about how much enjoyment you got with those classes with the kids that were here for Art Fest this weekend.
1:41:19
SPEAKER_01: Always, you know, and and like uh I mentioned the adults are kind of where they are, the kids are just these fresh brains, and these were art kids too.
1:41:28
SPEAKER_01: They came up for the arts, so they were focused on what they were doing.
1:41:31
SPEAKER_01: And I would rather deal with kids any day.
1:41:35
SPEAKER_01: Because what's really cool about this is I'm a geezer now.
1:41:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm like really old with these 18-year-olds, and we're we'd get into the same discussions.
1:41:42
SPEAKER_01: Why are you climbing Yosemite?
1:41:43
SPEAKER_01: And they've all seen free solo and uh like my subject matter, and uh really gets them cranking because art can be, you can do other stuff, and art is fun, you know, and I'm sure reflecting what they're all what they're all snowboarders, like these kids aren't just hanging out.
1:41:58
SPEAKER_01: A lot of them were you know on skis and snowboards, so they're kind of getting into that uh adventure aspect and enjoying Alaska for what it is, especially Alaskan kids.
1:42:06
SPEAKER_01: These guys, oh man.
1:42:08
SPEAKER_01: They're doing all sorts of stuff.
1:42:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, I've always maintained when I came up here, I was kind of a tough 18-year-old, 17 and a half or something in California.
1:42:18
SPEAKER_01: I'd been backpacking and all that.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_01: Came to Haynes and met guys like Lee and these 12-year-olds were tearing down chainsaws.
1:42:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, 12-year-olds running outboards.
1:42:30
SPEAKER_01: I I was a wimp.
1:42:32
SPEAKER_01: And these little guys were doing this stuff that just grown up here doing that, and uh and uh I've always maintained, man, if I had to grab my bag and run for it, Armageddon hits, I'd grab a local 15-year-old.
1:42:43
SPEAKER_01: You're like I'd grab an adult and I'd grab one of these kids that knows how to live in the woods, and it's still happening that way.
1:42:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought maybe this was a phase that we were uh going through in the history of the world or something, but up here, these tough little suckers, uh, I don't know.
1:42:58
SPEAKER_01: I wish I, you know, like I said, I thought I was tough down there, and it was like an eye-opener to me.
1:43:04
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm nobody, so I I listened to them.
1:43:07
SPEAKER_01: They actually taught me a lot.
1:43:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, like, okay, dude, how do you take a chainsaw of pieces?
1:43:13
SPEAKER_01: But um, but the but working with the kids, my one of my, I guess in my golden years, I'd like to pass on what I know, what little I know, to kids, and because they go, oh, you're doing all this stuff.
1:43:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, the the more I study what I'm doing, the it's almost the more I realize that that I don't know a lot of things because it's all hit and miss.
1:43:36
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to go to the cutting edge every time, so you want to experiment by putting one more wash on or one more uh sift the glass, like just to push it to the next level to see if you can pull it off, and boom, everything flies to pieces.
1:43:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're taking that, you're walking the edge all kinds of like climbing.
1:43:51
SPEAKER_01: You're on the edge of what you're know you're capable of doing.
1:43:54
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to go to the next level?
1:43:56
SPEAKER_01: And uh and like these kids, it's uh they have no level at this point.
1:44:01
SPEAKER_01: They just get like the kids on torches yesterday, like watching them, the way they approach the molten glass, what they do, and you can look at them and like, man, these guys are focused.
1:44:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh, or some are, some aren't, but you can find you can see what's going on in their brains when they really want to learn it, they they pick it up pretty quick.
1:44:17
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and but just dealing with that mentality, uh I don't know where this is going.
1:44:25
SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll interrupt you there because I got a couple, I got two things I still want to discuss with you.
1:44:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, go for it.
1:44:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh the first one is what was the impetus for doing the ashes in the glass?
1:44:37
SPEAKER_02: I thought that when that when you started doing that, I thought that was a really cool way to if and what we're talking about for those that aren't it's cremated remains, you take the ash, you put them in a glass, and you can uh melt it into the glass, and so you can have it as a necklace or whatever.
1:44:52
SPEAKER_02: Well what was the inspiration behind that?
1:44:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's kind of I I knew uh Reese Williams, who's living here now, is a glass master.
1:44:59
SPEAKER_01: He taught glass in California, and uh he was doing his business with Crystal Eternities, where he would take the ashes and lay them out and just roll this big bubble.
1:45:07
SPEAKER_01: He's a glass blower in this big vessel form, and uh and uh there they were, and then like the and that would bubble and do this weird stuff, and that's where I'd first really seen that.
1:45:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh and then I'm a bead maker, I don't have a hot shop, so my mother passed away.
1:45:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh, okay, what are we gonna do with her?
1:45:24
SPEAKER_01: And my dad was kind of in on this, like put her in a bead.
1:45:27
SPEAKER_01: So lay mom out, roll her in this thing, and make these mother beads, and wow, that works.
1:45:32
SPEAKER_01: And there's a you know, the way the first one's really rude because I wasn't sure how much how much it's a different substance.
1:45:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what can you mix with glass and not destroy the glass and uh and just kind of that system evolved and like wow mom turned out good, and now here's dad.
1:45:49
SPEAKER_01: And uh I've done husbands and wives together, and and it just it's something like I'll make one for somebody, they'll go back eastward when someone will look at that and go, what's that?
1:45:58
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's right.
1:45:59
SPEAKER_01: And then the word kind of spreads.
1:46:00
SPEAKER_01: It's on the website, but I haven't really promoted that heavily.
1:46:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
1:46:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh it goes in waves, like cats and dogs, a lot of cats and dogs, and humans come in every now and then.
1:46:09
SPEAKER_01: But the whole idea in the in the glass world, throughout world history, how many uh uh Armageddons have there been where whole civilizations have been leveled, and you know, going through that, especially like in the Middle East and Baghdad, the oldest hot shops were found in Baghdad.
1:46:24
SPEAKER_01: And the the Tigris and Euphrates, and somebody could correct me on that, the sand is is so good, it's good for making glass, and like the Mediterranean coast.
1:46:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh so the oldest hot shops, the remains, there's always beads in all of the ruins all over the world.
1:46:40
SPEAKER_01: Glass is the last thing there.
1:46:43
SPEAKER_01: And uh and just that aspect itself, like these beads that uh I put someone in.
1:46:48
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, how many generations does that go down?
1:46:51
SPEAKER_01: Like this is mom, okay, that's grandma, and then his great grandma, and where does this bead go?
1:46:55
SPEAKER_01: And in the end, someone may own that that knows doesn't know who's in it, but they're still wearing that bead.
1:47:01
SPEAKER_01: And grandma's she's looking out of this bead and and like placing them in in uh my mother.
1:47:06
SPEAKER_01: I spread her all over the place of penguin nests in Antarctica.
1:47:09
SPEAKER_01: Put her there, like shooting her with a slingshot into volcanoes, and I mean really cool stuff, like the and like sticking her in weird places because people run across these, and uh and because beads are in like Africa.
1:47:20
SPEAKER_01: You spread a few beads around and it's gonna end up around some guy's neck.
1:47:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the coolest thing I did, I put I put her in a wad of hamburger and fed her to a lion on the Serengeti.
1:47:31
SPEAKER_01: This lion wolfed her down, and so she was pooped out on the Serengeti, and then the hyenas come along through the poop, and then a uh uh mass eye, I'm sure, because it glints, I'm sure she's being worn around the neck of a herdsman and just that whole concept of my dad got a kick out of that, like, oh man, that's like payback.
1:47:49
SPEAKER_01: You can do kids because you never know where they're gonna end up.
1:47:52
SPEAKER_01: But it's like it's uh they're forever.
1:47:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:47:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've got beads here that are 3,000 years old from Tutankhamons, you know, the Valley of the Kings.
1:48:00
SPEAKER_01: And it's I like the staying power of it.
1:48:03
SPEAKER_01: As much as especially with the ashes in it.
1:48:06
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, nobody knows who's wearing these beads at 100 years.
1:48:08
SPEAKER_01: Where's mom?
1:48:10
SPEAKER_01: She's around somebody's knee.
1:48:11
SPEAKER_01: If it's a bead, yeah, they're gonna wear it.
1:48:14
SPEAKER_01: Um so that's cool.
1:48:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh I I don't know, the idea of sprinkling someone in the garden, that's okay, but it's good for one crop and then they're gone for good.
1:48:23
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
1:48:24
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
1:48:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm not the only one doing that, too.
1:48:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you can Google that, you know, find other people.
1:48:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it was the first I heard it when I saw you were doing it.
1:48:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and maybe my approach is a little different, but I don't know.
1:48:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm certainly not the only guy doing that.
1:48:39
SPEAKER_01: I didn't invent it either, but maybe in Southeast Alaska I am the guy.
1:48:43
SPEAKER_02: You're the guy, yeah.
1:48:44
SPEAKER_02: So the other one uh that besides as artistic and everything as you are, is the thing I think that kind of shows some of your toughness as well, is you've you're a cancer survivor.
1:48:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:49:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:49:01
SPEAKER_02: What now is several years ago.
1:49:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, 20 years ago.
1:49:05
SPEAKER_02: Has it been 20 years already?
1:49:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:49:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh and Sharon is too.
1:49:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean people say, Oh, I've got a friend and he's sick, or something.
1:49:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, what is it?
1:49:13
SPEAKER_01: Cancer.
1:49:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, of course.
1:49:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's kind of gotten to that point where it is horrible, but it's so common that uh, of course it is.
1:49:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah.
1:49:23
SPEAKER_01: And talk about uh noodle in life, too.
1:49:25
SPEAKER_01: They caught me in time, three millimeters.
1:49:28
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't be here right now.
1:49:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's one of those things where boy, timing is everything.
1:49:32
SPEAKER_01: Blood tests, I swear by it.
1:49:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh mammograms, go in when you're 20, you know, do not wait.
1:49:38
SPEAKER_01: It's like this myth that you know, after 50 you should start doing this, there's no way.
1:49:43
SPEAKER_01: And uh but uh yeah, talk about a new lease on life.
1:49:46
SPEAKER_01: And I I I looked at that 20 years years ago as my rebirth.
1:49:51
SPEAKER_01: Boy, I got away with that one, and and uh and it's like counting the years from then.
1:49:56
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm 20 years old, and like how I can't.
1:49:59
SPEAKER_02: You can almost drink.
1:50:00
SPEAKER_01: Huh?
1:50:00
SPEAKER_02: You're you're away from being able to legally drink in your rebirth.
1:50:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
1:50:04
SPEAKER_01: No, it's uh I've claimed uh incredibly hard things after that.
1:50:07
SPEAKER_01: That's like uh but that whole concept of uh I I mean I get you know how many people in Haynes have gone through this and how it's like this almost a taboo subject, but I don't think it's so taboo anymore.
1:50:21
SPEAKER_01: It's so it's so common, and you can feel free to kind of talk about it and like I don't it's pure luck, I think.
1:50:28
SPEAKER_01: All of us, all of us are lucky to be standing right now because I mean like the cancer hitting people, I mean, kids, so it isn't like you know, you get old and you die of something like that.
1:50:39
SPEAKER_01: It's like, man, really be on top of it.
1:50:41
SPEAKER_01: Do you have to in a blood test?
1:50:43
SPEAKER_01: I was so scared of needles.
1:50:44
SPEAKER_01: I I think when I was a little kid when I got my tonsils out or something, the needles were like pencil leads and they stuck them in me.
1:50:50
SPEAKER_01: I would not get a blood test for 50 years.
1:50:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going near a needle.
1:50:54
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and now with the technology and all that, definitely, but yeah, uh cancer survivor.
1:51:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, people everybody that goes through this kind of that I've talked to feels kind of the same way.
1:51:06
SPEAKER_01: Living on pins and needles, you're still uh it hasn't come back, so maybe I'll make it.
1:51:11
SPEAKER_01: And uh and the doctors all say, you say, Doc, am I cured?
1:51:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, none of them say, don't think about it anymore.
1:51:19
SPEAKER_01: All of them say, okay, you're cured for now, but keep up with it, you know, that kind of thing.
1:51:24
SPEAKER_01: They can't just write you off as a success story.
1:51:27
SPEAKER_02: That's how how do you think that changed your perspective on things going through that?
1:51:33
SPEAKER_01: I see someone, it's like the new hip thing, too.
1:51:36
SPEAKER_01: I see someone limping on Main Street, I know it's their hip.
1:51:40
SPEAKER_01: You just know it just by the way they're walking.
1:51:42
SPEAKER_01: And of course, cancer you can't tell what people have been through, but I think it's like uh it makes you, it gives you like a lease on life.
1:51:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I caught it in time, and uh and I've got these years to I think it made me focus on the climbing, especially.
1:51:58
SPEAKER_01: I better get these things done now and uh because I don't have forever, and uh and the painting, I don't do that when I'm in assisted living with a paintbrush, you know.
1:52:07
SPEAKER_01: You can always paint, but uh, and then the torch work.
1:52:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:52:10
SPEAKER_01: I think it's just more focus on you know you're not invincible.
1:52:14
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a time in your life where you know your friends start fading out.
1:52:18
SPEAKER_01: At 50 on, that's when people start drifting into whatever they're they are, like dying or becoming ill or something, and you really have to start thinking about the next you're not you're long from dead.
1:52:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, you've got till 90, you know, if you really hang on and eat right and do your things and don't get busted up, but but uh you're on the the kind of the countdown.
1:52:39
SPEAKER_01: And I don't feel uh the like these kids, that's working around kids, man.
1:52:44
SPEAKER_01: I people are so exhausted, these kids for six days just inundated.
1:52:48
SPEAKER_01: I've gained energy, man.
1:52:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm so pumped.
1:52:51
SPEAKER_01: I could have kept working with these guys just because they're uh you know they're beginning their lives and they're just getting into this, and that's why like passing on what I know to them, I think that that helped in that too.
1:53:03
SPEAKER_01: Like I want to let you know what I did, and here's my history and and go for it and approach it any way you want, but don't don't not approach it.
1:53:11
SPEAKER_01: Like face it and do it.
1:53:12
SPEAKER_01: If you don't like painting, move on to something else.
1:53:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh, if you don't like wood blocks, move into glass, like but just keep moving, don't get discouraged.
1:53:20
SPEAKER_01: People, like some of the kids do, I'm not an artist.
1:53:23
SPEAKER_01: I get that from adults a lot.
1:53:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an artist, never have been.
1:53:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, everybody's an artist, you just have to start somewhere and accept the fact that you can't draw that coffee cup right now, uh waiting for your dinner.
1:53:35
SPEAKER_01: But if you tomorrow night, try it again, and it gets better and better.
1:53:38
SPEAKER_01: And pretty soon you're at shadows and things just grow on themselves like that.
1:53:42
SPEAKER_01: But you have to enjoy doing it and you have to stick with it.
1:53:45
SPEAKER_01: And uh these kids, man, I've got all their email addresses, and one of my goals in life, I think I've succeeded so far as being the coolest old guy these kids meet.
1:53:56
SPEAKER_01: Man, he's the coolest old guy.
1:53:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh and these kids were like that.
1:54:00
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, we're all coming back, you're so cool.
1:54:02
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that that whole thing.
1:54:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be this old cantankerous geezer that nobody wants to hang out with.
1:54:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I want to be We need to get you a t-shirt.
1:54:11
SPEAKER_02: Coolest old guy you'll ever meet.
1:54:13
SPEAKER_02: Cool geezer.
1:54:14
SPEAKER_02: You can just wear that at the shop here to everybody that comes in.
1:54:17
SPEAKER_02: They're just gonna know right at the start.
1:54:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, another extreme dreams.
1:54:20
SPEAKER_03: There's my dream right there.
1:54:23
SPEAKER_01: Extreme dreams, home of the coolest old guy you'll ever meet.
1:54:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of cool guys.
1:54:28
SPEAKER_01: I want to be the guy that I wish I met when I was a kid.
1:54:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you kind of get to that like and I did meet a few of those guys, like the painters and uh just the uh yeah, I mean, it just makes sense.
1:54:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, pass on, like I said, what I know.
1:54:42
SPEAKER_01: If they're coherent, I'll pass on more.
1:54:44
SPEAKER_01: If they really get it, I'll stick with the kid and just train them to do what I'm doing because and then this competition.
1:54:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're training your competition.
1:54:51
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me?
1:54:53
SPEAKER_01: Everybody approaches, and I've met artists like, I don't want to show you how I did that because you you step on my toes and start doing this.
1:54:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, you don't have their own take on it.
1:55:01
SPEAKER_01: Nothing's gonna be the same.
1:55:03
SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's your you might try and do the same thing, or it's like uh taking a photograph and making a mosaic out of it.
1:55:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, plagiarizing?
1:55:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't think you know, plagiarizing, that's nowhere near the photo.
1:55:13
SPEAKER_01: Just flip it over and make it reverse.
1:55:15
SPEAKER_01: And but that um I don't know.
1:55:18
SPEAKER_01: It's uh as long as they keep cranking at it, but being the cool little guy they come back to and uh and let's get jokingly like uh all these young kids, whether they're like in their 12, 15 or something, they're gonna be the ones pushing me around in a wheelchair.
1:55:32
SPEAKER_01: And I tell them directly that, like you guys, if you're liking me, man, you're gonna be the guy pushing me up.
1:55:39
SPEAKER_01: I'll do it! Yeah, right.
1:55:42
SPEAKER_01: But you know, let it let them know I value them and and what their their approach.
1:55:47
SPEAKER_01: And uh especially the kids that are into the arts, God, it's so fun working with minds that came here to do art and and not say basketball or other sports.
1:55:56
SPEAKER_01: We get lots of kids in here, but the ones that are focusing on this is what they came to do, and everything they were so attentive and just on it.
1:56:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's where I think I get my energy was from them.
1:56:05
SPEAKER_01: They were like perking me up, and I was telling stories, and they ask questions too that are pretty cool, you know, like wow, an adult never asked me that.
1:56:14
SPEAKER_01: And mostly about growing up, and it's amazing the questions I get about adulthood.
1:56:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, uh, what should I do and where should I go?
1:56:21
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's like telling take a course of business, man, and you'll do better than you, you know, at least if you started business, you should know how the how it works.
1:56:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, and uh, and as I think of that question too, as I've gotten older, it's it's like don't worry about failing.
1:56:36
SPEAKER_02: Because there's always another option.
1:56:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah I look at the when I was 18, 17, 18, where I thought my life was gonna go and where it's actually gone, I I never give I never would have picked where I'm at now.
1:56:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:56:49
SPEAKER_01: Well that 40 years ago.
1:56:50
SPEAKER_01: Failure is uh that's where the watercolorists uh a lot of people give it up because it's a lot trickier than oils.
1:56:58
SPEAKER_01: Lose your whites, you're not painting white over it again.
1:57:01
SPEAKER_01: You have to really think ahead and plan these things out.
1:57:04
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people kind of give up watercolors because they just um I don't know, they don't want to try again and again.
1:57:10
SPEAKER_01: Failure.
1:57:11
SPEAKER_01: It's the same with climbing.
1:57:12
SPEAKER_01: Failure, I've probably bailed on more climbs than I've succeeded on just because I had the, you know, I don't know, something happened to where I don't care if I make the summit or not.
1:57:25
SPEAKER_01: That's not the point.
1:57:26
SPEAKER_01: It's it's like the adventure trying to get there and back.
1:57:28
SPEAKER_01: And and I've been with climbers that I never fail, you know, they gotta go on or it's a tragedy, and you know, you know, that's not the case.
1:57:36
SPEAKER_01: If it's a goal you've been trying to hammer away at for years and years, and you still didn't make it, there's a like Al, this guy in Everest finally just says, Okay, I've done enough.
1:57:45
SPEAKER_01: And and time to go on to the next one.
1:57:47
SPEAKER_01: And then what are you doing?
1:57:48
SPEAKER_01: Building that's a personal thing.
1:57:49
SPEAKER_01: Are you still building a portfolio on all these ascents I did, and I've got to make this last one, or or like uh entering uh juried pieces, juried shows, or so I don't know.
1:58:00
SPEAKER_01: I've been a bunch of those, and you know, like uh the Alaskan Watercolor Society send paintings up and uh and they sent bring a judge in from New York to look at all these things that Alaskans have done, and then that person from New York, you you get a prize or you don't.
1:58:19
SPEAKER_01: You'd like honorable mention.
1:58:20
SPEAKER_01: You go through all this stuff, and uh I've had my most successful paintings with those kind of things are like uh sent a picture of Nepal and got first prize on this Nepalese painting with prayer flags and all this stuff, and like, what's that all about?
1:58:33
SPEAKER_01: This guy's coming to Alaska to analyze Alaskan artwork, and he based it solely on composition, like how it went together, how the colors worked.
1:58:42
SPEAKER_01: He didn't care what the subject was.
1:58:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh and what a thrilling, I mean, wow, that was really cool because the guy was that's how he was looking at everything.
1:58:51
SPEAKER_01: He didn't care if it was a whale or a moose, or that didn't have anything to do with the but the poor guy that did a perfect moose.
1:58:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I look at what he did, like it's just you know, and to be uh to to think that you failed because you weren't chosen in a juried show or something like that, or get into the gallery is like uh you gotta accept that.
1:59:11
SPEAKER_01: Like these big murals are doing all over the state for uh one percent for the arts, big murals, and where you there's a selection process where they it's a it's uh advertised, okay, this is what I do.
1:59:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, what would you do with this?
1:59:26
SPEAKER_01: And then you get the floor plan and and how they're at the whole time you're uh supplying them with more information on your approach, the subject matter, what it's all about, they're whittling those applications down.
1:59:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if this will work on it, and uh I think we hit hit it pretty lucky on mosaics for because they're everlasting, they attract light, they're just perfect, and uh and they whittle it down to where you down to the five people that fit within their budget, and uh and like wow, I mean that then you contact those people because you're like I'm gonna put this over here, what are you gonna do over there?
1:59:58
SPEAKER_01: And and then then that artist community, and it doesn't mean that they're they were chosen because they're master artists, it's because their subject matter just fit the fit the bill.
2:00:09
SPEAKER_01: And how the and we've gotten 15 of these things, and it's kind of like get on a roll with these uh big projects, and that's really um survive.
2:00:19
SPEAKER_01: We survive because of that in a lot of cases, like you can actually, and that's a the one percent for the arts, what a program that is.
2:00:25
SPEAKER_01: And uh and now the kind of budgets run out, and I think I've applied for one now, waiting for a smaller one, and and uh just seeing how that works.
2:00:33
SPEAKER_01: It's fun.
2:00:34
SPEAKER_01: And then your s your work is in all of these schools, and people look at that, like in Wasilla and Willow and that area, you've got a few in there, and like the the architects and the engineers, whoever's developing this thing, and the the art, the panel that chooses this stuff can see a real one on the wall.
2:00:50
SPEAKER_01: They go, man, this is really cool.
2:00:52
SPEAKER_01: Like this consider this guy.
2:00:53
SPEAKER_01: And really lucky.
2:00:54
SPEAKER_01: And and my approach to that is to I don't want to suck your budget dry because it's not cheap.
2:00:59
SPEAKER_01: I want other artists to be in there with us.
2:01:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's uh that's what it's all about.
2:01:03
SPEAKER_01: It's not just me on the wall, it's I want to see other people and they like that too, like that approach.
2:01:09
SPEAKER_01: And uh and let them kind of figure out if they're gonna give you that money or not.
2:01:13
SPEAKER_01: And all of these projects, it's been done to like five artists on the the school, big school things.
2:01:18
SPEAKER_01: So we're not in those things alone.
2:01:20
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know where it's going with that.
2:01:23
SPEAKER_01: It's like uh but the but that's been that's money on the barrel head, and that's pretty rare where they just like stamp the check and here you go.
2:01:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got this many months, and then we expect it to be installed.
2:01:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you like a you get an advanced payment to buy the materials, and it's all I don't know, trying to be as friendly with them as possible.
2:01:44
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of these people that on the panels and the engineers and stuff, they're not dealing with really friendly people a lot.
2:01:50
SPEAKER_01: It's like strictly business, and you get this thing going where you're not getting dialogue.
2:01:54
SPEAKER_01: You like hooligan?
2:01:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you get going back and forth and uh establish a real relationship.
2:02:00
SPEAKER_02: Makes a difference, doesn't it?
2:02:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh god.
2:02:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's like the I mean get into the cruise ship thing or dealing with an audience, the reactive audience, where the and it all comes down to I think guiding.
2:02:11
SPEAKER_01: The mountain guiding is all I when people come in the gallery door, I'm a guide.
2:02:16
SPEAKER_01: I really am.
2:02:17
SPEAKER_01: And one thing I hate about a lot of galleries, I galleries is like uh there you are in the silent room with all this art, and here's this bejeweled babe in high heels click-clacking around trying to sell you stuff.
2:02:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's not what it's all about.
2:02:30
SPEAKER_01: Art sells itself.
2:02:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't need someone to sell me something.
2:02:32
SPEAKER_01: If it's the technical aspect, that's cool.
2:02:34
SPEAKER_01: But uh, and always have music going in the back so when people are talking, you're not listening to them over there and make people comfortable in the situation they're in.
2:02:43
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, that's that's really important to me.
2:02:46
SPEAKER_01: It's like um, but then you're guiding.
2:02:48
SPEAKER_01: You're basically I'm showing them everything, and I'm pretty good with people because of the guiding thing, and you know, I can relate, like the get into it, but the cruise ship audiences.
2:02:58
SPEAKER_01: That's another hole.
2:03:00
SPEAKER_01: I never in my life thought I would ever be on a cruise ship.
2:03:05
SPEAKER_01: Ever.
2:03:05
SPEAKER_01: Because you you know, you you watch the cruise ships, they dock, unload, the zombies just pouring off of these ships, and they're all standing on center line and they lost in space, and they're they walk all the way down to Delta Western for a hot dog, you know, and they're being fed they're being shoving food in on these boats, and it's just this weird mentality that uh uh but to get on one and see uh because of this program in Skagway, what what program the enrichment program.
2:03:31
SPEAKER_01: The enrichment program?
2:03:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like they don't want some kid with a plastic bear tooth from Colorado talking about bears up here.
2:03:36
SPEAKER_01: They want someone on the boat that's actually knows about this place, and and uh it's pretty fresh program, I think the fourth year, where I mean talk about a sweet deal.
2:03:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm never gonna pay for a cruise, but it's like the guiding.
2:03:51
SPEAKER_01: Like suddenly I'm thrown into this situation that I couldn't have afforded, but or even wanted to, but suddenly you're I mean, dirtbag climber, dumpster diving on a cruise ship.
2:04:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean you your origins and where it can lead you.
2:04:04
SPEAKER_02: It's you just when you go on the cruise ships, you get on in Skagway and do you do the whole week, or do you just go to Juneau, or what what's what's that format look like for you when you're on that?
2:04:13
SPEAKER_01: The Royal Caribbean, we fly to Seattle, get on the boat there and do a round trip to Seattle.
2:04:18
SPEAKER_02: You do the round trip.
2:04:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:04:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:04:19
SPEAKER_01: For three 40-minute uh presentations?
2:04:24
SPEAKER_01: 40 minutes.
2:04:25
SPEAKER_01: And the the attention of a cruise ship, this is a whole new world that I because you're kind of guiding there too.
2:04:32
SPEAKER_01: The attention of a cruise ship passenger is 40 minutes.
2:04:34
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if it's Cirque de Soleil, somebody like Trivia, or me on stage, 40 minutes, that's when the hook comes out.
2:04:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's when you start to lose them.
2:04:43
SPEAKER_01: And this can't be true.
2:04:46
SPEAKER_01: And I'm on stage looking at these people, and I got and I did one on Denali called the Meat Grinder.
2:04:51
SPEAKER_01: And I said, What do you want me to talk about?
2:04:53
SPEAKER_01: Kick ass, they said.
2:04:54
SPEAKER_01: That I mean, that was literally kick-ass.
2:04:57
SPEAKER_01: Wake them up.
2:04:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the meat grinder Denali.
2:05:00
SPEAKER_01: It's all purple toes and crevasses and that stuff, and then the other one is around here up on the ice fields.
2:05:05
SPEAKER_01: Bushwacks to hell.
2:05:07
SPEAKER_01: And it's like uh that aspect, and then there's another one on like Haynes low-level stuff that we see uh from like skiff trips and stuff, and then like life in general.
2:05:18
SPEAKER_01: And man, you get on the the introduction takes five minutes, so that leaves 35 minutes, and then uh you start yakking about this stuff.
2:05:26
SPEAKER_01: You can't dwell on each slide, you have to kind of keep moving and watching these people out there and and have them interact with me.
2:05:34
SPEAKER_01: Like, how many of climb to know?
2:05:35
SPEAKER_01: Nobody, how many have seen it?
2:05:37
SPEAKER_01: A few hands go up, you know, and get so you're relating with the crowd.
2:05:41
SPEAKER_01: They love that when they become a part of the act in a way.
2:05:45
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but man, when that when that hook comes out, we've got to get out of here.
2:05:49
SPEAKER_01: The trivia guys are already standing next to me with their notepad.
2:05:52
SPEAKER_01: With the notepad ready to go.
2:05:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:05:55
SPEAKER_01: But uh, but the idea of dealing with an audi is like a thousand people.
2:05:58
SPEAKER_01: You're looking at all these faces, and and uh even though you're another just another act, you know, a 40-minute act, it's the meat grinder.
2:06:05
SPEAKER_01: And how many came here because of the title of this thing, Hands Go Up?
2:06:09
SPEAKER_01: And uh and like uh, you know, all of this stuff, everything you're seeing on the screen was shot with film and uh transferred digitally, but it's all with real cameras back in the days when you know there was no digital stuff, and let them know where they're coming from.
2:06:25
SPEAKER_01: How many people have shown shown real slides, gray hairs?
2:06:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, how many have shot real film gray hairs?
2:06:32
SPEAKER_01: Anybody under 50 is like so the older folks can really relate with that that approach to it.
2:06:38
SPEAKER_01: There's all this stuff and like how we didn't have.
2:06:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you talk about ancient technology, this whole surveying thing in Skagway.
2:06:47
SPEAKER_01: It's uh we did the we didn't even have hand calculators back then.
2:06:51
SPEAKER_01: Everything was done wronghand with transits, you know, vernier plates and magnifying glasses, there's nothing electrical.
2:06:58
SPEAKER_01: And how we that's why it took three years to survey that thing.
2:07:02
SPEAKER_01: Right now they fly over it, there it is, and can print it out.
2:07:05
SPEAKER_01: But man, I I mean, we're in the chainman, we'd be all these numbers like like 12 digits, or stacked up and come out.
2:07:13
SPEAKER_01: And if if two out of three were correct, that was good.
2:07:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, seriously, ancient stuff, and and uh and where it's evolved, like kind of like this slideshow thing on the the boat.
2:07:25
SPEAKER_01: It's like how many people were born before digital stuff happened?
2:07:30
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, but but then you're kind of dealing with them and they're and uh and uh letting them know I'm I'm only up here for 40 minutes, but man, I've got my little hat on, I've got my badge, and any time on this boat, I'm at your disposal.
2:07:44
SPEAKER_01: You just walk up and start talking, yeah.
2:07:46
SPEAKER_01: And and then they suddenly loosen up, and it's it's just fun.
2:07:49
SPEAKER_01: So the rest of the trip, you're they know you're out there to give them information.
2:07:55
SPEAKER_01: And uh and I've been on, I've watched the other shows on these boats, like, man, this is terrible.
2:07:59
SPEAKER_01: Like how they're not relating with the it's 40 minutes, but it's only 40 minutes, and then they're out of there.
2:08:04
SPEAKER_01: But uh letting them know they're I'm part of this journey too, and my hand went on how many of them this is your first cruise.
2:08:10
SPEAKER_01: Bunch of hands go up, mine goes up, so you're as blown away as I am, like, whoa, and let them know you're one of them.
2:08:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but uh I don't know, but that's who knows, that whole program, uh you know, the um Royal Caribbean, like these quantum boats with 7,000 people on it, that's the population of Sitka is on this boat, 800 kids, you can skydive on this boat, you can surf on this boat, climbing walls, inflatable laser tag, castles, it's insane, right down to daycare.
2:08:39
SPEAKER_01: The kids are taken care of.
2:08:42
SPEAKER_01: You walk on and you buy your$800 drink ticket, the adults can drink all they want for those seven days.
2:08:48
SPEAKER_01: And the kids are taken care of, they're just the adults are sitting in the jacuzzi just drinking, and it's a fun zone.
2:08:55
SPEAKER_01: And uh, I mean, I could get into this cruise ship thing, the atrocity and the magical at the same time, because there's no getting around the atrocity aspect, the smoke and the food waste and all that stuff, but the engineering aspect to me is I don't know how they make 5,000 beds a day.
2:09:11
SPEAKER_01: Like how all this stuff happens is this flawless system.
2:09:14
SPEAKER_02: And even the turnaround from when they get so when they'll get back to Seattle, whatever their headport, they've got to get all those people off.
2:09:22
SPEAKER_02: You bet.
2:09:22
SPEAKER_02: They've got to get everybody's luggage and stuff back on to their rooms, the people checked in.
2:09:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's a and all the provisions, all the provisions, all the garbage off, all the provisions on.
2:09:33
SPEAKER_02: And then it's a really tight window.
2:09:36
SPEAKER_02: That's huge.
2:09:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's all in one day.
2:09:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's like 24 hours.
2:09:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're all putting in their online.
2:09:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the logistics of it just amaze me.
2:09:46
SPEAKER_02: That the the engineering for the ships to get something that big and to have all that really cool stuff and still have it float is amazing as heck.
2:09:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, but the logistics of having all of that stuff, it just blows my mind.
2:09:58
SPEAKER_01: I I don't get it, you know, and it's like uh it's flawless.
2:10:02
SPEAKER_01: I never saw one fist fight, you know, all that stuff going on.
2:10:06
SPEAKER_01: But you think of, we've seen the movies where below there's five decks below where we go.
2:10:11
SPEAKER_01: That's where the hissing pipes and the Keanu Reeves is chasing the terrorists with a bomb.
2:10:15
SPEAKER_01: That's all happening down there that we don't see, but he saves the day by one minute.
2:10:20
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
2:10:20
SPEAKER_01: We don't see that stuff, and we don't know if it's going on or not, but the it's like the food waste was, and I I deal a lot with the people like the workers, because they're all from Indonesia and Africa, and those are the really cool people.
2:10:33
SPEAKER_01: And like, what do you think of this?
2:10:35
SPEAKER_01: And getting kind of their opinions, and then all distraught and in rags, and poor, they're having a good time.
2:10:40
SPEAKER_01: I think the I don't know about the guys on the sewage deck where you enter into the industry, they're having such a good time, but like everybody above deck is just really fun.
2:10:49
SPEAKER_01: And like start talking uh Africa with uh an African on the boat and get these dialogues going, and and the food waste is just horrible.
2:10:58
SPEAKER_01: I I uh and even they hate that.
2:11:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, uh to get into it, like the we call it the hog trough on the big boats where they have an Asian circle, uh uh Mexican circle, and like all the an acre of food, and uh and everybody just goes in and they're just shoveling it in.
2:11:15
SPEAKER_01: That's all free and and uh and at the end of the evening, there's still two feet high of chicken wings, um jello, I mean ton of food.
2:11:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh, what do you do with this?
2:11:25
SPEAKER_01: They they throw it into a hopper, grind it up, and throw it out the back, you know, like into hash-sized chunks.
2:11:31
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure the halibut on those routes are doing really well.
2:11:34
SPEAKER_01: But what can you back up to and the the the crew doesn't eat that food, they have their own kitchens down there.
2:11:40
SPEAKER_01: And uh boy, one container backed up to against that boat in Juneau, and one day's offloading could feed all the poor folks in Juneau, like the glory hole, all this stuff.
2:11:50
SPEAKER_01: They'd be eating like kings.
2:11:51
SPEAKER_01: But I guess FDA won't let 'em feed them all with chicken wings, you know, that kind of thing.
2:11:55
SPEAKER_01: But and the crew is well mad, they don't like that food waste at all.
2:12:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what they can do about that, but so you're just it'd be interesting to look at that, see if there is a way.
2:12:06
SPEAKER_02: If there's a way to because I live on day old chicken wings, man, I don't need a day old chicken wing anytime.
2:12:11
SPEAKER_02: Or even if there's a way you could freeze it or dehydrate it or freeze-dry it or something that it can be reused at another time.
2:12:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:12:20
SPEAKER_02: That's I mean, that's our culture in general.
2:12:22
SPEAKER_02: We waste so much stuff.
2:12:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh God.
2:12:25
SPEAKER_01: And you see that firsthand in like uh but the kitchen decks and stuff being the uh acres of stainless steel, the food is immaculate, got the sous chefs, everybody is immaculate.
2:12:35
SPEAKER_01: Acres of stainless steel kitchens going up on dumb waiters, and I mean, it's a it's the process is unbelievable.
2:12:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad I'm seeing that.
2:12:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, what that was my show at the library last week.
2:12:46
SPEAKER_01: The belly of the beast.
2:12:47
SPEAKER_01: What's going on inside of this thing?
2:12:49
SPEAKER_02: And uh but they recorded the last one, right?
2:12:53
SPEAKER_02: They did.
2:12:53
SPEAKER_01: Is that going to be online anywhere?
2:12:55
SPEAKER_01: If people wanted to watch that, do you know?
2:12:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they've got it.
2:12:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it went out like uh Zoom.
2:13:00
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't a Zoom meeting, but it was recorded.
2:13:02
SPEAKER_02: It's all recorded.
2:13:03
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if the so that was at the library?
2:13:05
SPEAKER_01: I'd probably ask them.
2:13:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we'll have to check with that and see if that's some if that's available online somewhere for people to check out.
2:13:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:13:12
SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, that's sort of the culmination.
2:13:14
SPEAKER_01: You wonder, you know, my origins and where I ended up.
2:13:17
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I've been on a cruise ship and like what I've been through, and then uh like how how did I end up on a cruise ship in the southeast?
2:13:25
SPEAKER_01: And I mean that's like the glitter dome.
2:13:26
SPEAKER_01: This is as good as it can get, like seeing Alaska on their ticket and eating on, and Sharon goes free.
2:13:32
SPEAKER_01: Um she won't go on World Caribbean again, but she'll go on the Queen Elizabeth, and this is their last sailing this fall.
2:13:40
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about a difference in what's like a white glove service and ballroom dancing, string quartets, and I mean really Titanic on steroids and really fun.
2:13:49
SPEAKER_01: And she'll do that one, but the the quantums she's done with that.
2:13:52
SPEAKER_01: It's just had enough trips.
2:13:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh enough of that.
2:13:55
SPEAKER_02: So, how many trips will you make a summer on that?
2:13:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh well last year we did two, and and uh end of this month I'm on uh princess cruise going to Whittier.
2:14:04
SPEAKER_01: We're doing one presentation.
2:14:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how they they're probably wallowing in money, but uh I get on that in Skagway, one presentation, we go into Glacier Bay and then Whittier, offload me, get me to Anchorage, fly back to June out to here, which I don't pay for any of that for one 40-minute presentation.
2:14:21
SPEAKER_01: And I've never never been on Princess, that's uh 2,000 people, 2,500.
2:14:26
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going on the uh the quantum at the end of uh early June.
2:14:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and Sharon's not going, but I can bring a friend.
2:14:34
SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm I've signed my brother up, David, to do my third presentation, and it's all Clintett culture.
2:14:40
SPEAKER_01: He's adopted Clinkett and all of that, so he can do a really good presentation.
2:14:44
SPEAKER_01: He's never been on a cruise ship, so I get to bring him and then go back and forth and what's then the Queen Elizabeth is uh end of August, pretty much toward the end of August.
2:14:53
SPEAKER_01: And that's uh we get on that in Haynes, go to go to Seattle, offload and new load, and come back off and get off in Hanes again.
2:15:03
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to fly anywhere.
2:15:05
SPEAKER_01: And that's sweet.
2:15:06
SPEAKER_01: I really like that.
2:15:07
SPEAKER_01: Meeting two boatloads of two different people in the case.
2:15:11
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know, you know, I'll I'll do it as long as the program's going, I'll do it because I've got it wired right now, and it's a little break from here.
2:15:18
SPEAKER_01: Another thing I like about the cruise ship is you're you need a passport to get on.
2:15:22
SPEAKER_01: It's like a foreign country.
2:15:24
SPEAKER_01: These are foreign flag vessels.
2:15:25
SPEAKER_01: So you're not in the United States when you get on these things.
2:15:28
SPEAKER_01: And so you go through all these security checks and stuff, and uh passport, and the last person in line, you there's this beige vested babe with a million-dollar smile, welcome you onto this boat.
2:15:39
SPEAKER_01: Have a good time, and and uh and the whole thing is it's non-political.
2:15:43
SPEAKER_01: You go into those big hearts, diversity, love, get party and scream, you know, like go crazy.
2:15:49
SPEAKER_01: This is your week off.
2:15:51
SPEAKER_01: We're not even on Earth anymore.
2:15:52
SPEAKER_01: And that approach to me was like, it was because you can tell these people are rampaging on these boats.
2:15:58
SPEAKER_01: They're just like it doesn't exist out there.
2:16:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think with the way the world's kind of going right now, we don't know where it's going, but if they keep that theme going, I think that's we're gonna continue to be successful.
2:16:09
SPEAKER_01: You're just going to another planet for reality.
2:16:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that's a killer approach to this whole thing.
2:16:16
SPEAKER_01: Because I never really met an angry person.
2:16:18
SPEAKER_01: Or I mean, I'm sure both sides are there, but we're all in disguise.
2:16:22
SPEAKER_01: But it's like, but that approach really freaked me out.
2:16:25
SPEAKER_01: I I like that because it's just a it's a love boat, and uh it's it's just it's like the whole thing is a daycare center.
2:16:33
SPEAKER_01: Their job is just to make sure that's daycare for all ages.
2:16:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, right down to daycare.
2:16:38
SPEAKER_01: So but I like that as far as through this program, I've seen that industry, like how it works, because most people, you know, you just see the results, you don't see what's going on on these boats.
2:16:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, like where that whole industry is going.
2:16:53
SPEAKER_01: It's so hard to tell where anybody's what it comes down to is we are so lucky to be here in Haynes.
2:16:58
SPEAKER_01: I think we're in one of the sweet spots on earth of all the earth.
2:17:03
SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of them around there, but this is sweet.
2:17:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh we have it so good up here because you know it'll be Mad Max rampaging through the deserts down there, but we'll be pulling out crab and shrimp and water, and we just got it so good.
2:17:17
SPEAKER_01: I I don't know if the society collapses, you're not gonna have commercial crabbers coming in.
2:17:22
SPEAKER_01: You've taken our crabs.
2:17:23
SPEAKER_02: We're be be careful though, because if you sell this too much, then a bunch of society's collapsing, they're all gonna run up here and they're gonna want to be camping in your yard.
2:17:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I better watch what I'm saying.
2:17:32
SPEAKER_02: Don't don't don't let the movie don't let them know the whole story, John.
2:17:35
SPEAKER_01: Just a little bit.
2:17:36
SPEAKER_01: My root seller's got five years worth of food in there.
2:17:38
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to tell you, we've seen that movie before.
2:17:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:17:41
SPEAKER_01: But uh, but oh, we are so I don't know.
2:17:44
SPEAKER_01: I love this place.
2:17:44
SPEAKER_01: We're not going anywhere.
2:17:45
SPEAKER_01: This is the end of the line.
2:17:48
SPEAKER_01: And like this relationship with Canada, I mean, uh, White Horse, Haynes Junction, Skyway and Haynes, we've been partying for a hundred years and like watching that kind of, you know, they come down to fish, we go to the Yukon, and how that, with everything going on, how that is uh we still have such a good thing going.
2:18:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I welcome Canadians, you bet.
2:18:08
SPEAKER_01: I give them discounts, yeah, 10% off, you know, because everything is we go to Canadian Tire, we do all of our stuff, but I don't know.
2:18:16
SPEAKER_01: In the you know, I just think that, you know, we're we're just so lucky.
2:18:21
SPEAKER_01: And I get that a lot of people that come here for the first time are looking at this place at any land for sale.
2:18:26
SPEAKER_01: You just see their eyes light up on a nice day.
2:18:29
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, come back in January and see what you say.
2:18:32
SPEAKER_01: July is one thing.
2:18:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but to be in a place that's people spend you know lifetime, you know, saving money to come to a place like this, and we live in it.
2:18:45
SPEAKER_01: And we saw that like in Yosemite, the Degnan family staked out the middle of Yosemite Valley, like a couple acres right in the middle of the valley, and that family, when they staked that out back in 18 something, wow, they've had the deli going and this like this living in a place like that where people go to visit it and amazed.
2:19:04
SPEAKER_01: You got this your own fire pit and your own land, you know, that kind of thing.
2:19:08
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
2:19:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
2:19:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, I appreciate you sharing some time with us here, John.
2:19:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, I know there's we could probably go for another four or five hours.
2:19:16
SPEAKER_02: Don't get me cranking on it.
2:19:17
SPEAKER_02: We can we can there's a lot of things we could go down, but I think people are gonna enjoy hearing your story.
2:19:22
SPEAKER_02: I know I always enjoy my conversations with you over the years, and I I appreciate you feeling in a lot more of that today and sharing your love of the arts and outdoors and haines.
2:19:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope I I made some sense in all this jabbering about you made a lot of you made a lot of sense to me.
2:19:38
SPEAKER_01: So you get me on a tangent and talking about certain aspects of all of this, and I don't know.
2:19:42
SPEAKER_01: But that's that's part of being the when I get into this guiding aspect, like talking to people, and and what I've found cruise ships too, is like someone or even coming in here, someone wants to know more.
2:19:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's rare that people can they want to know more than what they're actually seeing, and we start digging into the details and what's uh what really happened.
2:20:03
SPEAKER_01: Like all of us that moved to Haynes, and we've gone through three generations in Mud Bay, and uh and watching the evolution of like the the jergolites and the sagis and the nelson.
2:20:12
SPEAKER_01: So when we moved here, we were the kids.
2:20:15
SPEAKER_01: We were like 28 or 30, and how they showed us how to they were our mentors, like this is how you build a cabin, and this is how you build a root cellar.
2:20:23
SPEAKER_01: They knew all that, but they were the pioneers where they would just throw a log into the ground, and uh and then that's good for 30 years.
2:20:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, 30 years comes along, and you're under the house replacing that log.
2:20:33
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of us sort of built that way.
2:20:36
SPEAKER_01: And uh, I've been replacing some footings, and uh, and now the next generation comes along, and these we're mentoring them, like I can tell them what not to do.
2:20:47
SPEAKER_01: Don't do it that way.
2:20:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and all these new 20-somethings are pouring concrete foundations with in-floor heating, and they're doing it so they're going into the next level because of what we did, and they see us repairing things and going back, and uh and how that uh uh just that how that evolved from the real pioneering aspect to uh what we are now and what's happening in this and all the young folks' houses going in here are gonna be here long after ours could crumble into the ground just because of the way they're building it.
2:21:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and it's so good to see that because they're they're serious about this place.
2:21:20
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't be putting that much time and effort into it.
2:21:23
SPEAKER_01: And um, I mean, I just I like that, just being in a place where people are thinking about it.
2:21:28
SPEAKER_01: And uh what that brought oh this is I've uh we could research this.
2:21:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I moved to 1968, there was a gunfight downtown.
2:21:40
SPEAKER_01: And this is what part of what made me, man, I'm moving to this place, and uh gunshots I was in Portugal.
2:21:46
SPEAKER_02: The fact that there was a gunfight downtown is what led me want to be like I want to be here.
2:21:50
SPEAKER_01: There was death in there.
2:21:51
SPEAKER_01: That's usually what people are like, I don't want to go to that place.
2:21:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, like I was saying, like Indians to me were like TV Indians.
2:21:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean this was uh this wasn't a native thing, but uh the gunshots went off and all the power in town went out for a while.
2:22:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh the next day we found that this was at Wiley's, remember Wiley's Cafe?
2:22:08
SPEAKER_01: It was like a soda joint across from the museum with the hexagonal windows, and uh some guy was sitting in there and uh or some woman was sitting there, some guy came into maybe it was the what was the bar next to Wiley's?
2:22:21
SPEAKER_01: It was a bar.
2:22:22
SPEAKER_01: So I don't remember the bar.
2:22:24
SPEAKER_01: The pioneer was always there.
2:22:27
SPEAKER_01: But the so typical cowboy scene, uh woman's sitting there, and this guy comes in, sits on, hey babe, what's her name?
2:22:34
SPEAKER_01: And and then the the woman's husband literally kicked down the door, where's my wife?
2:22:39
SPEAKER_01: And he he came in and and uh and in a rage, and and they were just sitting next to each other, and he goes, I'm gonna kill your ass, and he left the bar to get his gun, and the bartender had a shotgun, and uh the trooper was notified.
2:22:52
SPEAKER_01: There was a showdown on Main Street, and one person was killed.
2:22:55
SPEAKER_01: The wife might have been wounded, and the trooper was winged.
2:22:58
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good.
2:22:58
SPEAKER_01: It was an all-out gunfight.
2:23:00
SPEAKER_01: This is the first time I've ever heard this story, John.
2:23:02
SPEAKER_01: I kind of asked older people, and they kind of remember this happening too.
2:23:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:23:06
SPEAKER_01: And then the power, the one spray bullet took the power out by the pioneer.
2:23:11
SPEAKER_01: And uh, like, oh my god.
2:23:13
SPEAKER_01: This was so cool.
2:23:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, this is a real thing.
2:23:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that same year in Skagway, there was a showdown on Main Street with a shotgun and a pistol, just like the movies.
2:23:23
SPEAKER_01: And I think the guy with a pistol got peppered pretty good, and the pistol missed.
2:23:27
SPEAKER_01: But it was like a real draw partner kind of thing.
2:23:31
SPEAKER_01: I gotta ask some people about this gunfight.
2:23:33
SPEAKER_01: Gunfight is it's cool.
2:23:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
2:23:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was my parents were here, was it? '68.
2:23:39
SPEAKER_01: It was in one of the bars, probably where the e glue.
2:23:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it was the pioneer, I think it was on Main Street.
2:23:44
SPEAKER_02: She would have been 13 or 14.
2:23:47
SPEAKER_02: Remember the green?
2:23:48
SPEAKER_02: Tony Tony probably would know.
2:23:49
SPEAKER_01: Tony would probably know.
2:23:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:23:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but I've to confirm, I mean, I kind of tell this story and I talk to people, older people, and they go, yeah, I kind of remember, not sure how many actually died, and what, but the power going out is kind of confirmed.
2:24:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it could have been the pioneer.
2:24:03
SPEAKER_01: It was right there next to the power plant.
2:24:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:24:06
SPEAKER_01: But that kind of We gotta do some research on this.
2:24:08
SPEAKER_02: You've given us a mission.
2:24:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is a mission.
2:24:11
SPEAKER_01: I hope it's hope it's true to a point.
2:24:14
SPEAKER_01: Of course, the death and all that, but that was like, I'm done with California.
2:24:17
SPEAKER_02: This is where the place to be.
2:24:20
SPEAKER_02: And that's the part that cracks me up.
2:24:21
SPEAKER_02: It's like I want to go where the gunfights are.
2:24:23
SPEAKER_02: That's a place for me.
2:24:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was kind of fun.
2:24:28
SPEAKER_01: But relating that story, you know, things kind of grow into but I was this was just this year.
2:24:33
SPEAKER_01: I asked a couple of older folks.
2:24:34
SPEAKER_01: They go, Yeah, I remember that gunfight.
2:24:36
SPEAKER_01: That was uh so it did happen.
2:24:38
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, if we can dig up the dirt on that.
2:24:41
SPEAKER_02: Dig up some dirt.
2:24:43
unknown: Oh man.
2:24:44
SPEAKER_01: You got a project now.
2:24:46
SPEAKER_01: All right, well thank you, John.