Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1099: Alex Harz - The Culture of Everest

Transcript

Ep. 1099: Alex Harz - The Culture of Everest · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello friends, thank you for joining us today.
0:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The Adventure Sports podcast has done quite a few interviews on Mount Everest.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the tallest mountain in the world, right?
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an amazing thing.
0:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But today, we're kind of going to interview the interviewer and what I mean by that is we have Alex Hartz with us and Alex is a filmmaker and creator of a documentary about the whole Everest
0:38
[SPEAKER_00]: not just the mountain, but about what it means to the local people and the culture, and especially Nepal and Sherpas.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're going to dive into kind of the backstory behind Everest.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just, hey, I got to the top, but instead what does Everest really mean in the light of these very unique and special people?
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So Alex, welcome to the program.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey Curtis, great to be with you and thank you so much for taking your time to sit down and talk.
1:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be fun.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I love talking about Everest, but I think talking about the people means a lot more to me than the mountain actually, just to be candid.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm looking forward to this a lot.
1:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So where are you today?
1:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Right now I'm in Denver, Colorado.
1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that's right.
1:25
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm not traveling working on a documentary, you know, for the Quest series, I try to call home here around the Denver area.
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I saw that you went to see you.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I did.
1:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I graduated from see you and, you know, it was one of those things.
1:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to live in Omaha, Nebraska.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: prior to coming to Colorado and I actually spent one year at the University in Nebraska and Omaha before I came out to Colorado.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know a single person when I the first dad drove up to Boulder.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't even tell you where it was on on a map if you put it in front of me.
1:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was one of those things typical thing for Colorado transplant.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you come up for two weeks.
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Go skiing snowboarding or visiting and then you just never leave.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of what happened with me.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And rolling to the University of Colorado instead of going back to Nebraska for school and I never left since.
2:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a beautiful story, actually.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very common theme, but I love it because what that shows is how much you appreciate natural environments and adventure and opportunity to experience this planet in ways that not everybody gets to.
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's easy living in a place like Boulder or Denver or Gunnison for that matter.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Just start to take it for granted and think, well, this is normal.
2:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is most people don't live in places like these, and it really is an amazing experience.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're absolutely smart.
2:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're absolutely smart.
2:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think maybe if I were to grow up in Colorado, you're right.
2:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have taken that for granted.
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But coming from the flatlands, the Midwest, and then being odd by these amazing mountains and all the different activities out here, there's completely different than what I grew up doing during a child.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a soccer player, competitive soccer player, actually played soccer at the University of Colorado as well.
3:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, completely different atmosphere with regards to what the outdoors have to offer.
3:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, the ability to access those outdoors, you know, when you see something new like that.
3:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, it was a very, I opened an experience to come out to Colorado for the first time.
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I have a unique question for you, based on personal experience.
3:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in Northeastern Oklahoma in the foothills of the Ozarks.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's a very heavily forested area with deciduous trees and usually you're able to see about a quarter mile at top, right?
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you get a view bigger than a quarter mile, you feel like you really on top is something big because the trees just kind of hug you and you don't get to see much.
3:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I moved to Colorado, couldn't judge distance.
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I would look out at the mountains and I would think, oh, that's like a half mile away and it would be five miles away, you know?
4:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I even felt like my eyesight was tricking me, like it was an optical illusion.
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Now coming from Nebraska, you had a lot longer field of vision, growing up, but you didn't have the mountains.
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was the impact on you when you came to Colorado?
4:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
4:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And even today, the perception of distance is still a bit skewed because you're right.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: The mountains are so grandiose.
4:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you go to a place like Everest, it's of course heightened even more.
4:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, even more.
4:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's one of those things you're right.
4:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You think, oh, it's just right there.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not.
4:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just because the scale of it is so much bigger than just being in an oak tree area, for example.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to kind of like you say step out the forest to see into that forest.
4:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, you know, that's exactly right.
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It is definitely something that opened my eyes big time because a lot of it also has to do with the dry, high, crisp air that we have out here.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what humidity of Nebraska and Oklahoma, which a lot of times the visibility was cut short just because of how humid, you know, the air was, right?
5:10
[SPEAKER_02]: We're down here.
5:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see as far as the eye can see once you're on top of a fourteen or for example, looking across the range.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, you know, it was definitely a very impactful experience for me.
5:20
[SPEAKER_02]: coming out here and to be able to step my feet into the environment that was so impressive.
5:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's we promised we were going to talk about Everest or all the things associated with Everest.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I'm really excited about.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So what gave you the idea?
5:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go to Nepal.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make the documentary.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do Everest.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to make sure that we capture this in a unique and insightful way.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did that come from?
5:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a really good question.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And it kind of reminds a little bit to Omaha, Nebraska.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And the way it all started was one day, I was coming back from a soccer practice.
5:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, I was competitive soccer player.
6:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I practiced for games every single day, two hours plus a day.
6:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was coming back from a practice, I was fourteen years old.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I first think I did as I sat down on the couch.
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, did what I usually did was open up a bag of Doritos and drank some Mountain Dew, which, of course, now, they sound horrible, but when you're a young kid, you know, you didn't know anything about caloric intake and, you know, what was good or bad for you at the time.
6:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I turned on the TV and I saw something about Mount Everest.
6:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said to myself, one day, I'm going to climb that mountain.
6:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, out of sight, out of mind for a long time, I ended up graduating, you know, from Central High School and all Mount Nebraska.
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, I want one year to the University of Nebraska and all
6:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I came out to Colorado.
6:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And at that time, I wasn't in the climbing.
6:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't in the snowboarding skiing really.
6:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't really doing much of that stuff.
6:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a little bit of the snowboarding skiing because I said, see you bolder.
6:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But I never was in the track climbing or any mountaineering stuff.
6:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't really in my wheelhouse.
6:55
[SPEAKER_02]: One day, I'm sitting on the couch and Denver, Colorado watching random daytime television.
7:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely nothing to do with Mount Everest.
7:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It could have been Ellen to generous.
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It could have been a game show.
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea what it was.
7:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But for some stupid reason,
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: That recollection of that childhood promise that I gave to myself when I was fourteen years old, that I told myself one day I would climb Everest, pop back my head, and the next day I started that journey, I had no idea how to go about it, but I knew that if I couldn't keep a promise to myself,
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: how could I ultimately honor my commitments to anyone else.
7:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So I went out that weekend, it was a middle of January, I climbed my first fourteen, it was snowboarding gear on, way overloaded, way too much, too many layers on, sweating my butt off, post-holing, to try to make my way to the summit.
7:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I ultimately did make my way to the summit, it was absolutely miserable, it was absolutely miserable, I hated every minute of it, it was a couple more, yeah, what's that?
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a graze peak?
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it was actually a quandary peak.
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the first one.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I did a couple more like that, Sherman, and so on.
7:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, how this is miserable?
7:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I realized, OK, I got it.
7:59
[SPEAKER_02]: If I really want to make this ever stream a reality, I get serious about it.
8:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So I enrolled in the Colorado Mountain School when I started learning about glacier travel, wilderness survival, rock climbing, trout climbing, lead climbing, sport climbing, all the different techniques that you use when you go to these big mountains.
8:16
[SPEAKER_02]: and started that process to be serious about it.
8:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I went out to Mount Renear, out in Washington, in Plain Mountain Renear.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I went down to Argentina and Plain, the highest mountain in South America, known as Ackon Kaguah.
8:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I went up to Alaska and Plain to Nali.
8:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the epiphany came.
8:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm standing on the summer of Alaska by eleven thirty at night under that perpetual Alaskan summer sun, which was me and my climbing partner.
8:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're looking out of the beautiful Alaska range.
8:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I said to myself, you know what, I can't put all this time, effort, money, and risk in the standing on top of a summit that is as beautiful as this mountain that was currently being Denali, just for me to go to Everest for this, you know, selfish dream, you know, to try to honor that dream.
8:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had to do something bigger with it.
9:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that's for the idea of the quest series began.
9:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, you know what?
9:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that ninety-nine percent of the world will never have the opportunity.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: or the desire to want to climb on Everest.
9:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So why don't I see if I can bring them along on this journey and dig deep to whatever is all about.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So we decided to go and start putting this to the documentary together because I feel I'm experiencing international business experience in the background.
9:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I started utilizing all those skills.
9:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, let's make this into a production and make this something that other people can go along with me instead of just me standing up there and then fulfilling this dream.
9:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Then as we start again deeper into the production and the planning stuff because we had seven to D cameras, then we ended up going with a virtual reality camera as well.
9:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, you know, why don't I try to shoot this thing in virtual reality as well and get people with a closest possible experience of what it's like to climb the mountain without being dumb enough to get off the couch and try and hit yourself.
9:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, because I used to love these first person shooter video games.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in those first person shooter video games, you kind of get that perspective of being there.
10:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what does it like to actually be in a war scene or being this virtual environment?
10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, what if I had people climb with me with a virtual reality camera?
10:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, over my shoulder, then you're actually climbing with me in first person.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You're able to look down into the crevasses when I cross the ladder.
10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You're able to climb the hill or step with me, stand on the summit, hopefully with me and look, two hundred miles in the India, two hundred miles into Nepal, two hundred miles into bed as far as I can see.
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: See the curvature there at the whole nine.
10:29
[SPEAKER_02]: If I may able to pull that off, that could be a pretty cool thing because again, like I said, ninety-nine percent of people will never have that opportunity.
10:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Why not see if I can take them along on that?
10:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I added that to our production element.
10:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So we made it a little bit more complicated by adding the VR component as well, but I'm humbly honored to be able to climb the mountain and come back down with sixty-three hours of content to now be able to share with the world and take people on these two D in virtuality educational thrill rides up Mount Everest.
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us the name of the two products.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: so that everyone knows what you're talking about, but then I want to dive into the cultural side of the story.
11:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The Quest Everest VR is that what it's called?
11:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the Quest Everest VR is the virtual reality film that's twenty-six minutes long.
11:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And where do people find it?
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can go to thequesteverset.com and there you can see the links you watch the trailer in three sixty and then you can see the links of the different platforms where it's available.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You can watch it in MetaQuest, Apple Vision Pro, all the different VR platforms, but also in two D on your computer or cell phone or tablet.
11:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, through Vimeo and rival space and other couple platforms, you can actually spin the mouse around and look down, look up in three or six categories, which is the next best thing for those people that don't have a headset.
11:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the other component is the Quest Everest documentary.
11:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have the Quest Everest VR, which is the twenty-six minute virtuality documentary.
12:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have the Quest Everest, which is your traditional two-D documentary.
12:05
[SPEAKER_02]: That's in ninety-seven minutes long.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That's on Apple TV and Amazon Prime and these kind of things.
12:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, you can go to thequestever.com.
12:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Both of those productions are there at thequestever.com where you can link through and find the different platforms and watch the trailers.
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's enter into the cultural aspects of this, but let's do it from this perspective.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of preconceived ideas whenever we go to visit a new culture, a country where we haven't been.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've heard things, you know, people have told us things, we've seen pictures, movies, what have you?
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's never quite what you thought when you get there.
12:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was the first big surprise that you encountered in Nepal?
12:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right when I got off the airplane, the instant noise and the organized chaos as I like to call it in Nepal.
12:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a country that is hectic and almost somewhat fifty years behind hypercharging into the twenty-first century.
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very interesting dichotomy.
13:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You see the dirt roads, the dust in the air, all the motor bikes, the tuck tucks and these kind of things that are
13:16
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, not really in the times when it comes to twenty twenty five.
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But on the same token you can see Nepal driving very fast into the future.
13:25
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing is Nepal is the hundred sixty-fifth poorest country in the world.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not a wealthy country at all.
13:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can see exactly how different it is from let's say Denver, Colorado where I came from on the way over there.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing that you feel about Nepal right away is the deep spirituality.
13:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's basically a Hindu country, eighty-eight percent of the people there are Hindus.
13:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though Buddhism actually started in Nepal, so you've got two of the five main religions that are really dominant in Nepal, but eighty-eight percent of the people actually follow Hinduism.
13:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's from the Indian side of things.
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, the Indian influence brings that Hindu and Hindu element into it.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can see the spirituality everywhere around you.
14:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You just feel it.
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you go up into the Kumbu Valley towards Mount Everest, you start to feel it in a different respect, and that is more the Buddhist side of things.
14:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and it's all around you, and the relationship of Buddhism to the Shripa people and so on kind of shifts once you get up towards the mountains versus down into the Kathmandu Valley.
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it a notable difference between the two perspectives?
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they in conflict with each other?
14:33
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not in conflict at all with each other, but it is a notable, notable difference.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you really see it, you know, with you have that we went and filmed a lot of the cultural stuff.
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So we went to Pasha Party, not Temple, you know, down in Kathmandu, which is the oldest temple on the oldest side of worship in Nepal.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's mainly dedicated to Lord Shiva, but what's really interesting when you go to a place like that, it's open, twenty four seven, seven days a week for worshipers to come, but what's really interesting, and something that throws you back from coming from the west is,
15:03
[SPEAKER_02]: They do open air commations there.
15:05
[SPEAKER_02]: They have these concrete platforms known as Gods.
15:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And they, people, loved ones will bring their ceased relatives there.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And they will sit there and it takes two to four hours to burn a human body, old school, game of throne style.
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And to witness that all day, all night.
15:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And then to interview the Hindu Saudis, which are the holy wise men, they're basically akin to what
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: a Catholic priest would be or an Islamic Imam would be to Islam or to Christianity to then interview them and to understand their spirituality and that they denounced all worldly possessions and they live on the grounds.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: They actually don't have a home and you really get really enthralled into the Hindu culture there.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But then then come back to the hotel and kind of break away and get back into the noise of the city and break away into the modernality of Kathmandu and the hotel and then to smell your shirt and realize it smelled like campfire and I talked to my director for Tiger Fiesta.
16:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know Sam, our shirts smell like campfire, but it's because of human bodies burning.
16:11
[SPEAKER_02]: not because we were sitting around roasting marshmallows, some were out in the woods.
16:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And that really kind of hits home with you.
16:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that inundation into the culture right away was powerful and the Hinduism is everywhere.
16:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And like I said, when you got up into the Kumbu Valley and the Buddhism kind of became the dominant religion because the Shripa people came over about six hundred and fifty years ago from Eastern Tibet and they ended up in the Kumbu Valley.
16:36
[SPEAKER_02]: What they brought with them was kind of a hybrid mix of Buddhism.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They brought bond mysticism.
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: that they combined with traditional Tibetan Buddhism to form kind of their spirituality of Buddhism there.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And to see the prayer flags everywhere, to see the stupas, the shrines up there, you can just feel it in every village that you hike through of the nine days to get the Everest base camp, how powerful the Buddhism element is up there, and how powerful the Shripa people are engaged with their environment.
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, let's, let's make a point here.
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You said twice the Sherpa people.
17:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the Sherpa carry in my load.
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Explain that to us.
17:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a lot of people don't understand.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the big differences in maybe in our films that, you know, we try to differentiate from other ever films because it's not really about me climbing the mountain.
17:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really about me being a conduit to the information and going up that mountain.
17:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so interviewing the Sherpa people, interviewing those.
17:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Hindu sautives that we talked about and really telling their story, right?
17:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You're right, the Sherpa people that is a big misnomer and a lot of ever film and a lot of connotation in the West, especially they think, oh, the Sherpa or that means Porter or that means Mountain Guide, you know, no, not at all.
17:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an actually an ethnic group.
17:54
[SPEAKER_02]: that originally came from the Com region of China or Tibet modern day China today and they migrated over into Nepal out of basically a conflict that they had.
18:07
[SPEAKER_02]: They were being persecuted religiously as kind of the thought behind it and then they moved towards the west and they actually climbed over the high passes and they wanted to find the valley that the piece of lease set up their life and worship and it happened to be the Kumbu valley.
18:23
[SPEAKER_02]: While at the end of the Kumu Valley, the dead end of the Kumu Valley happens to be Mount Everest, you know, and that which is the border of China or Tibet and Nepal.
18:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, because they just, by happenstance, happen to end up in the Kumu Valley, and then, in the nineteen fifty-three, May twenty-ninth, came around in Sir Edmund, Hillary, and then, Tensing, and Hillary, where the first ones to summon Mount Everest, that put the Kumu Valley on the map.
18:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And into a large-grade, that put an Nepal on the map, and it also put the Sherpa people on the map.
18:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Because of that, six hundred fifty years of being in the Cummew Valley, they developed a genetic advantage to being at high altitude.
18:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's only makes about a ten percent difference.
19:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But that ten percent difference is massive when you're talking about trying to survive at twenty nine thousand thirty two feet or eight thousand eight hundred forty nine meters, which is the summit of Everest.
19:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And specifically what the strip of people have developed adaptations that they have physiologically developed over that time of being in the Kumu Valley is their mitochondria is more efficient in burning oxygen.
19:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So therefore it altitude they're more efficiently operating than the average person and be they're in their extremities they're able to get more blood flow out to their hands to the feet to their calves to the fore also on
19:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So now they're able to be more strong traditionally on each step, each stride.
19:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So their capillaries are actually more opened up and able to transfer more blood.
19:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And so these are the two genetic advantage that they've developed over about six hundred fifty years.
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That makes them suited to be perfect candidates to take truckers to ever space camp or to take climbers like me up to the top of Mount Everest.
20:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's very convenient that they live there.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you go to Valley's over, it's a nine-day story.
20:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing.
20:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the sherpas were traditionally Himalayan salt, traders, and yak herders, right?
20:11
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what they traditionally were.
20:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So they didn't have this economy that they have today with tea houses and guest houses and trekkers coming in helicopters and lodges and all this stuff.
20:21
[SPEAKER_02]: For two months of the year in the spring season, the Kumbu Valley's actually the second richest part of Nepal.
20:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Only because of all the trekking and hiking and climbing that goes on to omit a blob and a mountain ever since so on so ego two valleys over they don't have Mount Everest at the end of the valley their lifestyle is completely different a lot of them are still hurters and traders you know and their economy is not nearly as robust all because of what sits at the end of the valley being Mount Everest
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a question occurred to me.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the answer to.
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Did this shirt be people when they moved into the valley?
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that they were next to the tallest peak on earth.
21:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think so.
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think initially they did.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't know that for sure.
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, I can't jump into a mind of, you know, of a ship that came over six or fifty years ago, but initially, I don't think so.
21:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Because Mount Everest itself wasn't really deemed to be the highest mountain in the world until the great trigonometrical survey of India that took place in the eighteen hundreds.
21:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And so from eighteen, fifty, six to eighteen, sixty, five, Mount Everest was known as peak fifteen.
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when they started surveying the peaks of the Himalayas, they had an inclination at, well, you know, that peak over there that we're going to call it peak fifteen might actually be the highest known point on earth.
21:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so prior to that, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, up into that time, mathematically, there was no conclusion on whether or not Everest was the highest mountain in the world.
22:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would assume that the Sherpa people for the longest time did not know for sure that Mount Everest was the highest mountain.
22:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And how deep did they go down to Cumbo Valley towards Everest Base Camp?
22:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know when the first time the Sherpa ever made it to Everest Base Camp was, you know.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So for then it may have just been, yeah, that's a really big one over there.
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
22:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's peaceful.
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's quiet.
22:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's windy.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's cold or to whatever.
22:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're able to set up, you know, tears far mean and we're able to, you know, hurt our yax here and so on and live a
22:43
[SPEAKER_02]: very spiritual and peaceful life.
22:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the end, we had what they then deemed to be goddess mother of the earth.
22:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So they definitely had an understanding that Mount Everest was there, because the Shripa people called Mount Everest Choma Longma, or Choma Mia Longsama, which means goddess mother of the world, or goddess mother of earth.
23:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, like in the West, we have this kind of construct of what got us mother, the Earth means to us.
23:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's the sky, it's the ground, it's the flat land, it's whatever.
23:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But for the Sherpa people, it specifically relates to Mount Everest.
23:15
[SPEAKER_02]: That's also why you see, if you know anything about Mount Everest's expedition climbing, before you can step foot on Mount Everest, you have to do a pooja ceremony, which is conducted by the Sherpa.
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And that Pooja ceremony is basically a right-of-passage asking Shoma Longma the goddess mother of the world for permission and safe travel to step on her vaulted slopes.
23:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in order to step foot on the goddess mother world, you have to go through that Pooja ceremony.
23:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you're religious or not, everybody has to undertake a Pooja ceremony before they can step foot in a cumbo icefall and start to climb up Mount Everest.
23:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting, I know that Ahmed Ablam is also a sacred peak.
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: There's one there called cumulat self.
23:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So the cumul valley, there's a peak name cumulat, which is the most sacred peak within the cumul valley outside of the goddess mother world, and it's never been climbed.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not allowed to be climbed.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: When I allowed to be climbed, there was a Polish team that actually tried to climb, and I think in the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the
24:26
[SPEAKER_02]: will come down and rain havoc on the Kumbul Valley, send down Yeti's armies of Yeti's and so on to pillage the valley essentially like Vikings would.
24:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it is forbidden to climb Kumbula and to this day there's been no confirmed summits of Kumbula and to this day there's been no confirmed attempt of Kumbula since that Polish team tried it.
24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
24:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned Yeti and a lot of people probably heard that
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the prevalence of the understanding about Yeti in the region?
25:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a flaw.
25:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And they claim it to be a several hundred year old Yeti Scalp and Yeti Tlaw.
25:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I looked at it and I don't know what it is to be honest with you.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very good.
25:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be.
25:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But the story goes that that one of the monks, you know, he had a pet Yeti and that that was him and he got killed.
25:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeti itself got killed in an avalanche and that was his flaw and that was a scalp and it sits in this box and it has been for hundreds of years.
25:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I looked at it as close as I can from a lot of different angles and a lot of intrigue.
25:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, you know, that doesn't really look like a bear claw.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It definitely does not look like a human hand.
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what that is.
25:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all I can say.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
25:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Does the Yeti have a spiritual significance to it?
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it does.
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it is a very spiritual animal or beast because of the multiple role.
26:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a protector as well as a destroyer.
26:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so it's a very powerful being within the Shripa lore.
26:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, the Yeti definitely holds prevalence in the valley, you know, of what the Yeti means to the Shripa people if you ever were able to cite one or whether or not you go back hundreds of years to where they were more prominent, Lee Seen.
26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: How significant is Mount Everest and the whole industry around climbing it now?
26:33
[SPEAKER_00]: How significant is that to the Sherpa people?
26:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it is everything and you see it in our film, especially in the ninety-seven-minute documentary because we have a lot of time to kind of unpack Mount Everest.
26:43
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in the twenty-six minute virtual reality film you're going with me on the trek in the climb.
26:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And though there's a lot of voice over and you learn a lot of stuff, we don't have the time to really dig as deep as we do in the ninety-seven minute film with regards to the history of Everest climb and what it means to them.
26:59
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you know, we've interviewed some of the Sherpa.
27:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you kind of have a mix bag of feeling of whatever's mean to the Sherpa.
27:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of the older Sherpa, Sherpa feels some guilt on climbing Mount Everest.
27:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, again, it's got us my their own earth.
27:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And the first time they go up there to climb on, ever, they feel almost somewhat guilty that they're stepping on their God of the world.
27:23
[SPEAKER_02]: After a couple of times that becomes less and less of a guilt complex.
27:27
[SPEAKER_02]: The younger Sherpas, they don't have as much of that.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the more tied into the Instagram, the more tied into the economics of it all.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're not really as attached as maybe as their parents or grandparents are with regards to the actual religious component of Mount Everest versus the economic component, the expedition component and knowing that two months of the year, this is a huge source of income for them.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, it's the second most wealthy part of Nepal during the spring climbing season.
27:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And also on the fall is also when people go trek to it.
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: ever space camp and spend time in the tea houses.
28:01
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't attempt to climb ever too often in the fall or the winter.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: That's pretty rare, but there's still a decent amount of trekkers that come.
28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the younger generation sees it more as this is an economic opportunity.
28:14
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a very privileged area to be in, but where the older generation has a much stronger spiritual draw to the mountain itself.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You know not only is the mountain big and it seems to make its own weather.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But when people travel on the mountain, it's very common for bad things to happen.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of takes on a personality.
28:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can see how people would say, that's really much bigger than us.
28:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's making the decisions here.
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not, you know, those sorts of things.
28:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a statistic a while back, I'm trying to remember exactly what it was.
28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So for give me if I miss quoted, but it was something along the lines of a third of the people that some had ever asked, don't survive the descent.
28:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's more people do die on the sin on the way up, and that's a very good point to a lot of people don't know.
29:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's because you've you've expended all your adrenaline, all your energy to try to make it to the top.
29:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of have a kid like climbing a tree climbing a tree is all upper body usually you're doing pull-ups essentially get to the top of the tree.
29:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But getting back down that tall tree is all mental focus.
29:20
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to look where you point your toes.
29:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to make sure you don't make a mistake with your handholds to work your way gently back down that tree.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That's very similar on coming down at Mount Everest.
29:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you're very hypoxic, right?
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got one-third of the amount of density of air on the sum of Everest and you do down at sea level so you can't think straight.
29:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not thinking clear to begin with.
29:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you're completely expended your energy
29:42
[SPEAKER_02]: reserves because you've had that rush of adrenaline making it to the top.
29:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's even a lifelong dream for most people.
29:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a long process to try to get there.
29:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And then so you don't have the energy and you're lacking the focus to make those deliberate steps every three feet in front of you thousands of thousands of steps.
30:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Then things can go wrong from other elements from whether running out of oxygen and so on.
30:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, ultimately, that's why more people die on the descent for because of mental lapse or because of physical exertion than people actually going up.
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, that's something where you only have to journey in.
30:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, adversaries used to say, you know, making the summit as optional, getting back down as mandatory.
30:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and a lot of people forget to take that into account when they're getting close towards the summit or trying to get to the summit on their summit push during summit night.
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: When the earthquake happened,
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: and so many people died buried in avalanches and what have you.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Did the local sherpas think that the God had become angry?
30:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's a good question.
30:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say that some yesterday and then some took strictly, you know, the scientific approach because the reason why the Himalayans are the tallest mountains in the world and why Nepal is so immensely beautiful is also why it can be dangerous because you have two tectonic plates slamming into each other that forms the Himalayan mountains by pushing it up, right?
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: There's where you have a lot of tiktok tonic activity and as people may and may not know, ever since actually growing still continues to grow every single day about an inch of year.
31:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, it is the place pushing in and pushing up the mountains of the Himalayas.
31:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think a lot of the younger people maybe took the approach that, yeah, okay, it's because where we are.
31:25
[SPEAKER_02]: no different than the ring of fire and Japan or so on.
31:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And others would say, yeah, it could be, you know, the gods, you know, being a little bit displeasured with what we are doing.
31:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's kind of a mixed bag there.
31:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, that avalanche, you know, we talk about it actually pretty extensive in the film.
31:43
[SPEAKER_02]: We actually have footage from it as well.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: That happened in, you know, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: been giving some thought to something.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is that when we experience something in nature, especially, it could be any life experience.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we experience something in nature, we can look to the science and say, we know what happened because of this, like your tectonic plates example.
32:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We can also say, how did I experience that event?
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I feel about that experience?
32:29
[SPEAKER_00]: What did it do to me and what, what can I gain from it?
32:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I don't mean to be ego-centric, but though it changes from saying what we know what happened because of the scientific such and such, true enough.
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But our interpretation of the experience can be a life lesson.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And some people would take the next step and lean into, it's the spirituality of it.
32:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The God was angry, right?
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess when I began to look at nature and say, it has so many lessons to teach us as we journey through and experience all the amazing things.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to solve every mystery.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the mysteries are just there to ponder.
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's in the pondering I think that sometimes we grow.
33:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And it helps, it helps me to enjoy myself in nature a little bit more when I'm interacting with it in a way of not just understanding, explaining and naming, but experiencing it as that was awesome.
33:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
33:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
33:29
[SPEAKER_02]: A hundred percent spot on, Kurt.
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You're absolutely right.
33:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know what, I, what I say to people, they ask me about that and we know because I don't care how religious
33:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You may or may not be what your background may be in theology and these kind of things.
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You spend sixty-three days in a poll like we did for filming and so on over fifty-two days on the ever-sex tradition.
33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It will ultimately affect you because the spirituality around you is that powerful.
33:53
[SPEAKER_02]: that there's no way you can really tune it out.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It just really starts to affect you.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing that was kind of interesting in my case, my main climbing partner.
34:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't want to give away the films too much, because I don't want to be the spoiler here.
34:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But he was a Buddhist month for twelve years prior to getting into Mount Nieren.
34:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So along the track, enduring the climb, I learned so much about Buddhism.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: and about his spirituality, his spiritual relationship to the Kumbu Valley and to Mount Everest and so on.
34:26
[SPEAKER_02]: That ultimately, it really, really had a strong effect on me.
34:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's no way to leave and experience like climbing Mount Everest without coming back and having been touched in one way or another.
34:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it is just such a powerful place, and it is such a powerful experience, and it is such a difficult endeavor that ultimately when you blend all those things together, it really, really touches you.
34:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's takeaways because of that, that I have taken away from the mountain and my experience in Nepal, and there's also life lessons that I've learned.
35:00
[SPEAKER_02]: you know about it that I might not have thought about before I went to Nepal and it's exactly like you said it's you being in the moment and being able to be able to feel nature around you that directly has a direct impact on you and how it actually makes you feel in that moment and in my case also years thereafter coming back.
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like a real transformative experience.
35:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And in May, twenty first will always be an anniversary to me.
35:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, where people have children's birthdays or wedding anniversary to me.
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It means something.
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I do, what I started this tradition that I do now on May, twenty first, I go to a restaurant that happens being Golden Colorado.
35:40
[SPEAKER_02]: That's owned by a strip of people that are all from the Kumbu Valley.
35:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Many of which the villages I went through, people that I even know, I go and pay respect to them every May, twenty first by eating at their restaurant, you know.
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's one of these little things that I can do to kind of give myself back to that experience.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I assume you're talking about the Sherpa House.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That is correct.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, delightful place.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: App's might as well throw a bone to the Sherpa House.
36:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, absolutely delightful place.
36:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so every it's going to be one of those things as long as I'm in town.
36:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And as long as I'm capable of doing it, make twenty first, I will be at the Sherpa House.
36:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fun.
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when you get all the production work done,
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: hours after hours after hours of content can solidated down into the documentary into the main thrust of the story.
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Did it help you to process the whole experience?
36:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Did it did it did it lead you to discoveries that maybe you didn't even notice when you were in Nepal?
36:40
[SPEAKER_02]: hundred percent hundred percent curve because you're right I was so engaged in actually the post-production of which takes months and months and months of time to add it down sixty three hours a content into to the end of the are so we had to separate at any groups you know teams with a VR team to this completely different editing VR then it is editing to traditional to the linear footage so we had to separate teams that I had to constantly work in between and deal with on a daily basis that was so engaged in looking at footage and
37:08
[SPEAKER_02]: putting together the storylines and so on between the VR and the two of you that I almost forgot to a large degree that I actually went and climbed Mount Everest, right?
37:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Or actually was there until I saw the footage against, oh yeah, remember that in the ice falling, you know, me falling off an ice block and these kind of different things have happened.
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: that we have to decide whether or not we want to put it in the film or the avalanche that hit the ice fall and these kinds of different experiences that took place during the time that we were over there, you know, that we had to make creative decisions on with regards to the filmmaking side of things that had brought me right back as if I was just there yesterday.
37:43
[SPEAKER_02]: and you're right, it really did and it also had me recalling feelings and emotions that I would have long drifted out of my consciousness because of how engaged and focused I was on the project at hand.
37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really important to somehow reflect on our adventures.
38:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think often people take some snapshots or, you know, a little video with their cell phone and then they jump back in the car and continue on and they might be feeling to have the experience.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely right.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That is so true.
38:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:16
[SPEAKER_02]: In a day of digital media, social media and so on where, you know, a lot of people
38:21
[SPEAKER_02]: want to make sure people know that they were at Bryce Canyon or they were here, they were there, my posting something on social media, you write that you might be able to lose perspective that what you're actually sitting there at Bryce Canyon, you're actually there sitting at Ever's Base Camp or whatever the case may be and you don't really take in what that means and the grandeur and the beauty of it all because you're more worried about making a caption of what that is to the rest of the world, right?
38:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very much so.
38:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We heard your story, your why.
38:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you had made a promise to yourself when you were fourteen.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And you decided to make good on that promise.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it enlarged.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It said, no, this got to be about more than me.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that progression, but I don't want you to put words in people's mouths, but having been at base camp and climbed and interacted with the people there.
39:15
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think the whys are?
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you list the reasons why people strike out to climb Everest?
39:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's all across the board.
39:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that the unifying wise is it is to achieve either childhood dream or a promise or something, you know, similar to them.
39:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's, okay, easy and objective because they're doing it in order to raise awareness for cancer research or
39:40
[SPEAKER_02]: a children's charity back in the UK or something like that, that could be the main objective.
39:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it just something that they're fascinated ever since, you know, in nineteen fifty-three, whenever it's as climb and all the lore was Sir Edmund Hiller intending nor gay, you know, the book in the thin air from the nineteen ninety-six disaster.
39:56
[SPEAKER_02]: All these different things that add to this massive lore, because arguably, ever since the most iconic landmark in human adventure experience on earth.
40:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter, a lot of people don't know where the Lou vices and Paris, or where the Grand Canyon is, or even where Las Vegas is.
40:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But everyone around the world has a connotation of what Mount Everest meets to them.
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: In all the hundred and ninety-six countries of this planet, people know Mount Everest.
40:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So they have, because of all those years of this lore that's developed around this amazing place, they have some kind of connotation of what it means to them.
40:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And therefore if you start to dig into Mount Everest, you can peel all day long the onion back and back and back and back to where it now really impacts you so much that the why
40:41
[SPEAKER_02]: becomes apparent for whoever you may be, right?
40:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the wiser are a little bit across the board, but they're also really kind of also down the same lane to a large degree.
40:52
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's an objective why it seems to be.
40:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Your objective is I'm here to experience and or climb this mountain because of this.
41:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And it usually leads back to either I want to do something for
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a cause, or I always said I wanted to climb on, ever, or I was always, you know, fascinated or said, it's a Redmond Hillary intending Norgue, that, you know, what I now have that opportunity to try myself.
41:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing is that, you know, Mount Everest, base camp is a one mile long international ten city, you know, for two months of the year.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It sits on the world's highest, later, that moves up to three to six feet a day, you know, and you have people, you hear languages from all across the world,
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, in a one mile stretch of tents.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: all with that common why objective to try to make it to the top of Everest.
41:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like the United Nations of Adventuring for two months of the year.
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a really fascinating place in its own right just to go to Everest Basecamp and witness that multicultural aspect with that same objective in mind to try to get to that peak that sits right between, you know, nipsy and the west shoulder from Basecamp.
42:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You can just see a sliver of it, you know, depending on where you are and what the weather conditions are like.
42:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like a very, very fascinating experience.
42:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the wise has to be because it's the tallest.
42:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's absolutely right.
42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the way humans are just to illustrate the point.
42:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I'll excuse me.
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Listeners out there.
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Watch the second tallest peak on earth.
42:23
[SPEAKER_00]: K to.
42:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And how many people knew that?
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Not very many.
42:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's the second fastest car?
42:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what's the second fastest car record at the any five hundred or a Formula One race, right?
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Or who finished second in the NBA finals and in, you know, twenty twenty two.
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Second place is awesome people.
42:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Silver medalist rock.
42:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
42:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need to remember that.
42:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's so funny how human nature is, you know, Everest is the tallest.
42:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the one.
42:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's the way we think.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the first thing you see in the trailer for the ninety-seven-minute documentary.
42:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a guy named Russell Bryce, a very famous guy in Everest history and commercial climbing.
43:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I never see it was basically the first guy to start doing this stuff.
43:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I interviewed him for two and a half hours in his expedition tent, just me, my cameraman, my audio, just us, you know, we had a very intimate, you know, two and a half hours together.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And the opening scene in the ninety-seven minute documentary trailer is him saying, no one in the world would you climb in ice fall like this, nowhere except for on Mount Everest.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason why is because the highest mountain the world sits behind it, otherwise you would never step into the cumbo ice fall, which is arguably the two and a half miles of the most deadly terrain on earth.
43:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other reason why you do it is because you're trying to get to the top of Mount Everest.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
43:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's some perspective right there.
43:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That would be okay, too.
43:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You wouldn't do it for the second highest amount in the world, but you do it for the highest amount in the world.
43:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, of course, everyone's minds are dancing around the question.
44:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just ego?
44:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think for me was a promise.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was more about like I said before, if I could not our commitment to myself, how can I honor my promises or commitments to you?
44:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, already one else.
44:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Because otherwise, twenty thirty years later, I might have been sitting in the bottle of Jack Daniels with regret.
44:16
[SPEAKER_02]: because I lied to myself, because I didn't uphold that promise of a fourteen year old child sitting there on the couch in Omaha, Nebraska.
44:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that might have eaten me up mentally, because like I said, if you can't be honest with yourself, who are you going to be honest to?
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I can only speak for my experience, and why I ultimately want to do it, because I had to do it.
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Or at least try.
44:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean obviously there's no guarantees that you're going to succeed.
44:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Less people make it up and then do make it up.
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there was no promises that that was going to happen especially on the first attempt and then filming and hosting and all the other complexities that go along with that project.
44:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was something that I had to try.
44:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And actually, you know, I'll state it here.
44:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't tell anybody this way.
44:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, you know, on my Garmin GPS, writing, you know, archaic little text on the low keypad, back home, because I didn't want people to know about the constant avalanches about the helicopter rest.
45:08
[SPEAKER_02]: He was all the danger and all the
45:10
[SPEAKER_02]: things that you're experiencing on a daily basis, because I'm sure that my loved ones back home were worried enough as this.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kept it very vanilla.
45:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we're at Camp One, we're melting some snow in order to have some water and to make a backpacker pantry kind of a deal.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I just kept it very, very even kill.
45:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Didn't mention about the chaos or any of the danger that's going on around us today when people were worried more than they had to.
45:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I got to camp for, and I said this to my cameraman, when we went for our summit push, because once you make that decision, obviously, you don't climb at Mount Everest just one time.
45:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason why I took forty-three days from base camp to the summit back, you have to go up and down and up and down the mountain to a climb, a ties, a shocker body to produce more red blood cells in order to survive in that high-poxic environment, and to move gear up the mountain as well.
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But I told my cameraman, I said, before I left out, I said, look, if I die,
46:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's three hundred and four people that have died on Everest and then there's about three hundred and forty-five to three hundred and fifty people that have died be in there but three hundred and forty climbers I said just if it's possible grab those memory cards and do something with it right yeah let this not be all for for not at least the part of the mountain that I filmed myself grab that
46:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I trust your judgment to do something with it.
46:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But I told myself when I got to count for and before I stepped out to the ten and midnight to go for the summit, you know, and I let out with only one of the person my buddy who was the exposition leader.
46:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And the rest of the team was behind us.
46:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I set to myself and I never told anybody this part of that.
46:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I said this is only going to turn out one or two ways.
46:42
[SPEAKER_02]: either I'm going to make it to the top.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to come back down with sixty-three hours of content or I might be three hundred and forty-one, three hundred and forty-two, three hundred and whatever it might be at that time and no one will ever hear from me again.
46:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you might see me again depending on where I end up falling but no one will ever hear from me again and I really resided myself that was going to be down to one of those two scenarios.
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, I was so involved in the project because I wasn't just letting wouldn't have just kind of to some degree let myself down.
47:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Being that close, wasn't really somewhat fever as it was focused.
47:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, there's a lot of people that depended on me back with regards to the quest production itself.
47:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was carrying that burden as well on my shoulders that I had to be successful in order to make these two movies or actually three movies that we made out of it.
47:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Successful.
47:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, they would have been all for not potentially.
47:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, personally, I totally get it.
47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say that is I love climbing mountains and regretfully I've never been to fifteen thousand feet.
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've climbed a lot of fourteen thousand mountains foot mountains, but I climb for the sake of the climb.
47:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And the summit is fun, but it's not the reason I climb.
47:59
[SPEAKER_00]: climbing the mountain.
48:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously it could be a trite metaphor for life, but it's also a life experience and every single mountain has a personality and a different experience.
48:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels good.
48:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to be out there struggling against gravity climbing the steeps, you know, your hands get chewed up from grabbing a hold of sharp rocks and your knees hurt and it just
48:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You're using your lungs like they were meant to be used.
48:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
48:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
48:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love just a whole idea of the exertion and nature and the weather and the views, the animals.
48:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole scene, all of us.
48:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
48:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally totally get it.
48:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have had a lot of questions from people.
48:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you climb Everest?
48:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm people die doing that.
48:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you know how many people really live because they did that.
48:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly right.
48:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got to set that up very bloody.
49:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like you said, that experience taking that home, right, that we talked about earlier, if you're able to, and even if you don't make it successful to the summit, that experience will definitely stick with you for the rest of the life.
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: For some people to haunt them, because you gotta understand the personality types that are typically, they're type by people, type of people, highly trained, ultra marathon runners, Olympic athletes,
49:21
[SPEAKER_02]: you name it, highly trained people that are going there to try to achieve this objective.
49:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So the personality types themselves don't lend themselves to turning around, right?
49:29
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no verbal burden or shoulder, it says, oh yeah, you should listen to your body, your body is telling you the truth, but continue to light yourself or should you turn around, right?
49:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you shouldn't be there.
49:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Physiologically, we're not meant to be.
49:41
[SPEAKER_02]: There's never been a civilization that's lived above seventeen thousand feet.
49:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And never space campus at seventeen thousand five hundred feet.
49:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So you will die if you stay there indefinitely.
49:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a matter of what rate you die at depending on how high you go, right?
49:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So your body is constantly telling you get out of here, turn down, you know, turn around.
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And then your immune system shuts down, your taste blood receptives shuts down.
50:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So nothing tastes good up there.
50:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You have no desire to eat.
50:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're forcing stuff down your throat just because you know you have to.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't really feel like you want a drink and you have to drink three to eight liters a day.
50:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Just to stay hydrated so you're drinking an exponential amount of water way more than you would and when you're normally
50:20
[SPEAKER_02]: hiking around and so you're fighting all these things that are up against you just to keep going right and so it takes that drive it takes that person out and it takes that ability to like you said the suffer but to suffer to a point where you have to dig twenty percent deeper than anything you've ever done I wasn't better shape when I was climbing my never
50:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Then when I was playing the visual and college soccer, which is crazy to think.
50:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was in better shape because of the training that I did going year prior before going to Everest my seven day week two to three hour day routine that I didn't take a single day off.
50:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I stopped drinking the whole nine trying to get myself physically in the best shape of my life because I didn't want that to be the ex-factor that may make me not successful on the mountain.
51:01
[SPEAKER_02]: that you have to be able to dig twenty percent deeper and that's to find night little find margins that you have that's thin as your hair on whether not you make it or don't make it whether you may live or die or come back down sixty three hours of footage right those margins are that thin because of all the different variables that come into play and the thing that other people don't realize it's physiological so it's not like you're you can train all you want like I did and you know we're an ultra marathon runner does or so on
51:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can be mentally tough because if you're running a hundred mile races, you're mentally tough.
51:32
[SPEAKER_02]: No question about it.
51:33
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the World Record Holder in cycling, you are mentally tough.
51:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You can probably jump on the bike here in Denver, Colorado, right into my old hometown of Omaha, Braskin, one sitting without him stopping, five hundred sixty three miles.
51:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But that doesn't mean you're going to make it up.
51:49
[SPEAKER_02]: This is some of them on Everest.
51:50
[SPEAKER_02]: In that perfect case example was that there was a climber that was a Olympic athlete two-time gold medalist world record holder and their biggest goal in life wasn't actually win gold medals and to be a world record holder on cycling and it achieved the pinnacle of cycling.
52:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It was actually a childhood dream similar to mine to climb on Everest.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And they had to get helicopter evacuated from Camp II, because they're oxygen saturation levels with solo levels, as if you were in a coma.
52:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were like hours of dying.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, had nothing about them being physically prepared or mentally tough.
52:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It was genetically, they were not prone to go to altitude.
52:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you have to choose your parents wisely.
52:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could.
52:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
52:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And so unfortunately you don't know that until you go.
52:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's one of those big X factors you don't know until you go.
52:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately the mountain will shake itself out when it comes to that.
52:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, last question.
52:45
[SPEAKER_00]: because we have filled up our time-alignment, but relate to us some experience that you had with the Sherpas or any of the Nepalese people where you just made a connection and realized, I'm going to remember this person for the rest of my life.
53:01
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Shape IIIM today.
53:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
53:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I communicate with them still on a weekly basis.
53:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And because to me, I look, if you're going to stereotype groups, juniors, countries, sure, but people are the salt of the earth.
53:15
[SPEAKER_02]: These people, and I've spent now the parts of the world where I've witnessed the similar, the better one people of the Arabian Peninsula and some other places where you see this.
53:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And you see a commonality of why that is.
53:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, the better one.
53:26
[SPEAKER_02]: are not really to see the same as the Sherpa people, not even close.
53:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But they live in these extremely hostile environments, right?
53:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So in order to survive, you have to have a very strong sense of communal bonding and family in order for everybody to make it.
53:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, you're not going to make it.
53:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that kind of mentality has continued on within the Sherpa people, or the better one people, and the Arabian Peninsula, and so on, that they will give you the shirt off your back, even if they barely have a shirt of their own.
53:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that that that thing that belief in that structure of that communal bonding and to really generate strong spiritual relationships is something that I took with me from the ship of people when I came back.
54:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And because of that, the other outside influences of life that seem to annoy you on a daily basis.
54:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, the Amazon guy said he's supposed to be here today and it's not coming until tomorrow.
54:18
[SPEAKER_02]: or because Memorial Day, the trash pickup didn't come.
54:21
[SPEAKER_02]: These little tright things that are nuisance in our western style of life are no longer that serious to me anymore.
54:29
[SPEAKER_02]: because I really have gotten a greater understanding of what's really important because of not only my experience among ever, but my direct bonding with the Sherpa people and the people that I was there with on my expedition team and so on, going to Mount Everest and to spending an additional time in Kathmandu and Nepal filming the amazing sights and sounds of the environment.
54:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Alex, thank you very much for sharing with us all of this.
54:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Please give us the name of your website of the VR film and the documentary again.
55:01
[SPEAKER_00]: In other ways that people might be able to get in touch with you.
55:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
55:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you want to watch the twenty-six minute, the quest ever to be our documentary, or you want to watch the ninety-seven minute, the quest ever to be documentary, all you have to do is go to the questevers.com.
55:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, the questevers.com, and you can read more about it, see the trailers, and see the different platforms that you can link through to watch it.
55:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also follow us along.
55:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I said it's an ongoing series.
55:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That's designed to take global audiences on these educational thrill rides to reveal these rarely seen stories that they might not know about a location or be able to experience themselves.
55:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you go to social media, you can go to the Quest series page on Facebook or to the Quest series on Instagram and so on.
55:42
[SPEAKER_02]: and follow along there to see what's next down the line with regards to the Quest series.
55:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can also link through to thequestever.com to get all of those additional links to follow out on.
55:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I want to also thank you for getting to the heart of the matter.
55:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just the climb, not just the achievement, not just the big goal, but the heart of the matter.
56:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you decided to try to bring it back for the rest of us, you know, that probably changed everything.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But I for one want to say thank you.
56:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know what, thank you so much, Kurt, I'm humbly honored to be able to talk to you today about this experience and about these films that we're fortunate enough to be able to produce.
56:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Because really to me, it is like you said, to be able to share it with the rest of the world.
56:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just kind of to the information that you get to see within those films.
56:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, until all the viewers and listeners out there, I want to say thank you for watching the Adventure Sports podcast and your dream may not be Everest, but I picked up on an element here sometimes we need to make ourselves a big promise.
56:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Something that is worthwhile to pursue and to learn from and it can shape our whole life.
56:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So think about that.
56:51
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your big promise?
56:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And until the next show, please do get out there and have some fun.