Everest No Filter: A SportsCenter Special

your body is so tired at that point that if you lay down to go to sleep there's a high likelihood that you're either gonna get frostbite or be you're just gonna go to sleep and die [Music] [Music] [Music] scam facecam monica alpenglow anyone copy Monica Piris is our doctor and she's on the radio with us all the time and so what she's looking for every half-hour and our check-ins is words you know are we slurring are we putting sentences together correctly she's looking for cognitive distortions things that would indicate that something has gone wrong or we're not receiving enough oxygen or we're getting sick so she's looking for you know how do your fingers feel how do your toes feel are you nauseous do you have a headache and you might have a couple of those you know but if you have a headache and you've got tunnel vision and if you're starting to lose all your fingers and toes you need to turn around unfortunately a be had to turn around a little bit earlier so it's up to me to hold it down that's the summit last year I tried to climb without supplemental oxygen with Cori and I turned around about two hours below the summit after a two and a half month long expedition I failed and ultimately came back down I pushed for about five hours through this like cold and shivery and like a new things run right but I kept pushing because I felt like I was in that stage you were talking about it sort of like you need to push through this push through this push through this and then at a certain point there was no conscious decision for me and I think that's where it comes back to gut or instinct or twenty something years of experience in the big mountains but there was some point that I reached you where there was no question I had to go down like it I don't remember the process it wasn't like I was like oh I have this red flag and this red flag and this red flag it was just like I gotta get out of here so here I am eighty six hundred meters I get up there and last year I got there and I was alone you know there were a couple people down below me but but a ways down and I was you know it's all of a sudden you're just like oh like this is really really far out there I'm as high as I can get on the planet I'm touching space I have no oxygen my phone died not that that matters like I'm gonna call somebody and it's like I got to get out of here at the point the court is summer that I had made it back down to the highest camp still a 27,000 feet it's still really high but we had a bottle of rescue oxygen there in case something went wrong and I immediately put that oxygen on and after 30 or 45 minutes I started to get feeling back in my hands and my feet and I was able to take off my gloves my mittens and look at my hands and think okay I'm not gonna lose my fingers my girlfriend's not gonna kill me you know that kind of thing and then you know Cory summited came back down in four hours later or three hours later made it back to the camp and that was that moment of like we're gonna be okay like we're gonna go down together Cory summited we both have our fingers and toes that was that moment of like joy much more so than my past summits of the mountain I've essentially climbed mountains in the exact same way for the past 20 years because it's always worked and Everest for me was this place where finally I failed and I failed completely because of myself not because of danger avalanches or rock fall or whether it was just me my body couldn't do it and that was really powerful and kind of heartbreaking and yet it also spurred me to see how much more I can do what can I change what's fascinating about Adrian and my physiology is how different we are metabolically like where I start to demand glycogen or glucose sugars carbohydrates is way way up towards my max heart rate mango slices chocolate and even some cliff energy blocks so I'm eating tons of sugar just like tons of sugar and that's what it kind of sustains my body up here Adrian on the other hand where Adrian starts to demand it is sort of zone one-and-a-half or at least importance when I'm sleeping I'm boating because I gotta wake up every two hours and have a Snickers ball and sleep so this year pretty much after I recovered came home my mind settled down a little bit from that sort of exertion of that season my whole focus has been on training and diet I'm essentially on a ketogenic or Paleo diet so even though our meeting 4,000 calories a day to try to match my workout schedule it's almost no carbohydrate father she's doing a lot of interviews and everyone was asking if I was going back the answer was like I have no idea no way you know different versions of that and then somewhere we were in New York City and and like the 23rd interview of two days and my mind was completely gone I was totally jet-lagged I was like hell yes I'm going back and forth some go back Corey gave me this huge hug you know it was this random interview and it just happened like that our main team is Corey and myself we're climbing as you know this this team this independent whole as partners but at the same time we are partnered with my guide company alpenglow expeditions which has a group of seven on the mountain and together we're supported by seven Sherpa and three Basecamp cooks and assistants so really it's like 20-something people all together for two months on the mountain the reason I like to go back to this place is because it offers limitless lessons allegorically if you picture it it's the point from which all else on the planet flows that point is the place from which everything else comes outward and downward and all sorts of and weaves and interconnects and that to me is a special place to visit because if nothing else it gives you perspective but also what I've found is Mount Everest like it's this place of human struggle you know when you spend two months on that mountain it doesn't matter who you are a Sherpa a guide a professional athlete or a client on a team everybody is pushed to their absolute limit physically mentally emotionally and I love being a part of a team that's the partaking of that it's powerful [Music] first morning at 7,000 meters a breathing hard just sitting there are a lot of different ideas about the best ways to acclimatize but we pretty much stick to the old school which is climb high sleep low so today we're gonna rest here maybe do a tiny little walk tomorrow try and tag 7,500 or 7700 we're getting out of here time to go rest two or three days after two nights up high so our plan is to go up for three nights sleep least one night at seven thousand seven hundred meters and hopefully touch 8,000 meters now it's looking super beautiful today out there just a little bit of wind on top [Music] so here's a little context before we get started the FAA requires pilots and unpressurized airplanes to wear oxygen if they fly above 14,000 feet because the brain can start to lose function that's 3,000 feet below where we begin our climb at Basecamp 17,000 feet above sea level from there it's a 12 mile height from base camp to advanced base camp which in New York would take you from about Battery Park to the Bronx Zoo at advanced base camp we sleep at 21,000 feet which is taller than the highest peak in North America after ABC it's 2,000 vertical feet up to the north call which relatively may not sound like much but any volunteers to take the stairs than the 1250 foot Empire State Building at camp to 25,000 500 feet above sea level we sleep at the cruising altitude of a twin-engine airplane from there it's up to camp 327 thousand feet which if it were a peak would be the 6th tallest mountain in the world at that altitude you're in what's known as the Death Zone because quite simply you are not getting enough oxygen to live and from there no big deal it's a 40 hour work day to get on top and back down to safety suffice to say Everest is more than a little daunting Corey and I as partners I think it's been a really interesting process and it was a very much an unknown actually in 2016 we had you know like I said hung out a lot together and I'm sort of like oh we're in eure Colorado you know a couple of ice pitches together that kind of thing but spending a few hours together and who we were gonna go on the biggest expedition of our lives for two-and-a-half months and you you know I was really uncertain how it would actually work Adrienne's defining characteristic as a partner is his ability to read me as a partner and I think that comes from years of being a talented mountain guide because what that requires is some emotional sensitivity some emotional maturity and intuition and the fact that I'm a fairly emotional I think can be challenging for any partner he had a climbing partner Herbie had a life partner be it whatever I'm not always the easiest person to be around and and I think what makes him so special is he can identify those shifting moods and fill in the gaps that need to be filled in I think our connection and our different personalities bit quite well together in the big mountains because people often joke that I'm a robot I'm more emotional he's a little bit more and I mean this in the most endearing way robotic quarry is I think he'd be the first one to tell you he's a hot mess he's just a total emotional junk show and that's how he runs and that's how he reaches these incredible highs and of course there's the other side where sometimes he's just pissed off and down and dark and not having fun and it's really hard for him when I was an adolescent I you know I was a straight-a student I skipped two years of school hey you know everything was kind of like going swimmingly on the straight and narrow and then all of a sudden nothing was working and my grade point average dropped you know down to like a 1 point eight nine or something which I think is like straight DS and and of course my parents were like well what's what's happening so I was you know they took me to see a doctor and I was diagnosed with clinical depression and and later on with with bipolar disorder and and I've taken medication my entire life for those things and I'm not shy about that and they've saved my life and I don't there's there's no room for discussion in my life about it but in the lead up to a trip like this there's a tremendous amount of stress you're packing you're preparing and then and then all of a sudden you do like a six-day travel sequence to get to base camp and quite frankly it's easy to forget to take your meds it's not something that I have ever intentionally gone off of but when you start to miss that consistency it's very easy for the levels to drop in your bloodstream and so what ended up happening this year is that travel sequence took its toll and I could not figure out why you know I couldn't I can barely move uphill and when I realized oh my god I'm I'm just depressed and I'm super anxiety because of it instantly that changed my mood because I knew finally why I was having those problems and bringing that to Adrienne as soon as identified it he was like oh cool I got it no worries it was a powerful moment for us I think to be like hey we we are all human right we're here to climb a mountain but there's a lot of other stuff going on in our lives and this is part of that and if we're gonna be good partners we have to work through it so it was powerful in person it was powerful discussing whether and when to put it on snap and his decision to open up about that it's a sidebar to depression dealt with addiction and an anxiety specifically today's been sort of a rough one for me not for any particular reason other than that I you know I get in my head about my fitness and I worry but these days for me totally suck no super discouraging and they fill me with all sorts of questions and self-doubt so basically early on in the trip I was dealing with a minor bout of depression and severe anxiety when I shared my struggles with depression and anxiety I got a huge amount of personal feedback what ends up happening when anybody in any major league sport comes out and says hey you know I'm I deal with this I'm just like you it's like this great sigh of relief moves through the audience that's watching those people because by a fleet get put on pedestals and people think that they're somehow different when in fact it's the same and an athlete's deal with the same things every day day in day out they fight with their spouses they you know they they struggle with depression whatever happens to be and so I think the more that is offered outward the more people feel like oh I deal with that and I can rise up and and you know and accomplish something that I'm very proud of Adrienne's ability to not have judgment around the fact that I do have these issues and still want to continue to climb with me is very special I think his that emotional side of him is both a strength and a weakness again and some some of the creativity and successes he's had absolutely I think come from that same place so I was very familiar with the background when he had that really tough period at the beginning of the trip I think he really he started by really trying to keep it to himself not talk about it try to figure it out wasn't really figuring it out and then he had this lightbulb moment and it was with the lightbulb moment when he brought me and it was like I think this is what's happening like I I might need some support I need to get this right so that we can go and do what we need to do or the mountain I think there's a perception that we come here and and there's no fear and the truth is is that and I don't mean this to be damn dramatic I don't at all but this is a two month meditation on mortality for me and it's and and there is a huge sigh of relief when it's over because I spend six to eight weeks a year thinking about death and I know that that's a real possibility here and I don't balance it well but you know balancing or learning to understand the difference between fear and intuition is a lifelong process and at 36 I I don't understand it at all I've every time I come here I feel like I'm gonna die and I have to prepare for that and it's an exhausting exhausting process for me I'm always scared the only way I can describe why I keep coming back is to its it's analogous to love you know we fall in love we get hurt we get broken and then somehow we forget that and we decide to do it again and it's one of the most irrational things that we as humans do and I think that's what this is for me it's love it's just because it hurts doesn't mean I'm not gonna do it again and just because I'm scared doesn't mean I'm not gonna engage with it we've lost so many friends because if you do do this like Corey said three expeditions a year like I've come to hit the Himalaya twice a year every year since 1999 or whatever it is it's like if you keep doing that your your odds are not not good just the cold hard facts I counted seven bodies on the route this year that's a emphatically minder of the venue that you've decided to play in and and everything's it's all good and it's all fun and it's all easy until it's not and that's what happened to all those seven people you know it's a series of small mistakes that they make throughout the climb and then they don't leave seeing bodies around you it's not it's not scary or alarming or anything like that but it's definitely profound and and for me sombre you know because it's like that person had a family to love them very much that said goodbye to them at the airport that you know was certain that they were coming home and you know all would go swimmingly and nothing could happen but it did and I mean there's a you know up on the hill behind us there's you know 20 or 30 memorials of people that have lost their lives on this side of the mountain and and when you decide to play here you take on that responsibility and it's and it's real and we both lost friends more people died yesterday for no good reason a lot more people who are meant to be with quote-unquote guides making good decisions we're up high on the mountain where they shouldn't be in brutal weather it's time to take this mountain seriously it's time to clean house we need to start standing up for what we believe in on this mountain [Music] the slope between advanced base camp and the north call has had a major avalanche before where it killed a number of Sherpa there's a serac or an ice cliff that can collapse there's evidence of it all over the place it's part of the climb you have to go through it both Cory and I've spent lots of time under Sir axe we've seen mr. axe collapse we've had near misses with sir axe behind their nature they are unpredictable you know I nearly lost my life in an avalanche in Pakistan to one of these events that triggered a larger snow avalanche that experience is stuck with me every time we leave ABC and have to go through the serac here as minimal as they are it's very hard for me and it it requires a huge amount of energy for me to let go of that fear work through it and climb with Adrian and certainly there is an element of catharsis when when we kind of emerged out onto the North Col and it's and it's safe probably about two minutes here where we're slightly exposed and I remember one day specifically where there was a low cloud layer it was snowing it was windy Adrian was moving faster and I was just mortified I was you know I was just convinced that there was some 11:8 malevolent you know force that was gonna kill me and and I was angry you know it's angry at the mountain I was angry at myself I was angry at trauma I was angry at avalanches I was angry at everything because I was so scared and I got through it and I got to the tent and I sort of collapsed a little bit and I don't remember feeling the same element of fear after that day it was like that was four years of trapped repressed anger and fear that had to be exercised the acclimatization process that's where the discipline comes in you have to put the work in it's like the training at home you can't short-circuit that and expect to have a safe summer Bush it looks so close we did touch 8,000 meters it is a huge milestone for us that that's a huge confidence booster the fact that we were both able to sleep at 7,000 700 meters and feel good enough to move on the next day and actually go up and touch that altitude is a really really good sign it was no doubt we get to 8,000 meters during our accomodation bed but what's nice it's just this transition point now we've done you know there was a huge phase before the expedition five months of training then there's all the travel then does the acclimatization phase that's been the last month and now that's done now all that's left is to make the summit bush you if you've been following our snaps you know it's all about weather and the window is coming and it looks like it might be a needle threader so we started to really look at weather patterns and I think anytime we have days upon days to think about it it becomes harder I had an amazing season this season felt so strong felt like my diet and training it worked so well the team was right we were having fun and I was just you know really feeling super solid but then having we had a week to rest which was very conscious take a full week to rest that's a lot of time to think as well and definitely doubt started creeping in where it's like well the truth is I felt great last year too I think he started to fixate on the one thing that you couldn't control which might make it better which was the weather it was something that I could pour four hours a day into debating and looking at every model and getting dozens more models into where the meteorologists were like there's no way you could possibly need this I want to look at it I just didn't want to blow it the move from camp to which is at 25,000 feet to to about 26,000 feet 8,000 years that part was actually really scary for me some of the snaps show it it was extremely severe weather and to the point where I was concerned that if it had kept up like that above 8,000 meters we would have without oxygen I wouldn't been safe for us to be there we knew we were gonna deal with some wind getting up to 80 300 metres in order to be in position for the no wind day but the wind came stronger harder it was like furious and when you're out there with no oxygen just you know the three of us climbing topo filming and Cory and I and and it fell if it got really real so emotionally there was a toll there I'd say I cross the eight thousand year mark and it's almost like I feel better it's crazy it's uh but on that day because we had been climbing in such a severe conditions for the for the first half of the day I was I was pretty worked [Music] about an hour in right now 50 minutes feeling like total in garbage it's hard to know if I'm battling last night's sleep for what but right now it's just sucks we moved to camp three or eight three today and rest but last year I didn't sleep at all a night of it Adrienne so this morning's kind about saddling up getting ready for a very very long day a long push conserving energy and then giving it everything we have summer push lasts for 42 hours because you wake up not at camp 3 you wake up at camp 2 and you climb from Camp 2 to camp 3 camp 3 is so high that it's it's it's unless you're on oxygen you shouldn't be sleeping there and even on oxygen it's dangerous so I arrived into the highest camp on the mountain in twenty-seven thousand feet camp 3 at about 5:30 p.m. and after looking at one more set of weather forecasts and sending out our staffs and Ostrava data we decided I would leave actually earlier than I originally planned we decided I would leave at 11:30 p.m. that's right originally you know as we looked at this year one of my goals was to climb not through the night was actually stalled as close to the morning as I can devastate the forecast we saw the winds were coming back in the afternoon in the 27 and so I wanted as many hours before the wind came as possible so 11:30 p.m. was my leaving time and we really debated whether to climb as the team or not it's 10:30 p.m. like I guess sleep a little more because he's faster than me coffee I wanted to climb with the team [Music] but I also knew that there was potential that if I left with the team I wouldn't end up climbing with the team anyway but the reality is you know so we were talking about this earlier that quarry above 8,000 meters is faster than me and I really expected that to be the case and we really wanted to stand on top together this year you know that was part of the goal and ultimately you know this trip is always defaulted back to the most important thing is to make sure the Adrian stands on top without us so I defaulted to that I let the decision be made essentially yeah you know I said topo Adrienne you guys make the call I'll leave when you tell me so I ended up leaving the tent two hours after Adrienne and everybody else I felt awesome and that was so different than last year I was like dancing a little bit and getting all psyched and calling people at home and talking to Monica on the radio and definitely like putting it out there like wow it feels good so yeah I was just listening to where people were when it was my turn to leave and immediately I felt I wasn't I didn't feel great I didn't feel like I was on my game as much as I have been I didn't feel bad cognitively I was completely clear it wasn't an altitude issue it was an overall Drive issue I think I think at that point I had been climbing for six hours five or six hours yeah and it had been it had been the perfect night my hands were warm my feet were warm which was a huge change from last year and it was really nice just to be able to focus topo and I were playing music where he were you know just joking about sort of being out there and moving up and Topo was on oxygen of course along with his ship and my show so they are pretty much just running circles around me while I'm suffering away was it was a great start of the day ultimately I caught up just above what's called the second step so it's a roughly 28-thousand 5-hundred feat so very high higher than any other mountain in the world and I actually had no idea Korey caught up caught up to us I never saw him we never talked well we we did brief on the radio no we talked in person yeah what do we say we fist bump ice what's interesting is I was I wasn't feeling good but by time I was on pace to make to summit in the same time of day a in the same time your as last year and actually exactly according to our plan to our buffer had been about right that we met up at a time when hopefully you'd be able to slow to my pace and stay warm enough right and some it we were on schedule and I was on schedule to summit without oxygen in the same amount of time and I just didn't have it in me I I sat down I looked at Adrian he doesn't remember obviously and I said you know I don't think I have this in me and I'm gonna turn around consciously I was much more arrogant and prideful you know consciously it was about I don't want to do this with oxygen and I'm not capable of doing it mentally right now physically yes mentally no and but certainly there was an element of self-sacrifice that that was essentially saying if I keep going and I fail I'm gonna cost Adrian his chance and and he is so close right now you know so close Corey made the really hard decision to turn around not feeling it my clay I got topo I won't give up doing it without I did you know I don't want to do that I remember when Corey saw you turn around I was super bummed because I felt like I wanted to be on top with Corey this year we had failed at that last year and to to fail at it again if you felt like such a like ah like cuz this trip has been so much about all partnership about what we found on this mountain together and how well we climb together and how far beyond we go from what we do individually or have done on other expeditions with other people I looked back over my shoulder one more time and saw Adrian and topo moving up through the clouds and I saw the summit and I just knew that I was making a bad decision it's so funny I think back and I think about the deliberation period and it's almost non-existent it was just a glance over the shoulder oh I'm in the wrong place going the wrong direction I need to fix this I remember talking to topo to relay to Monica exactly about this like don't we have extra oxygen on the mountain I know we've got a dozen extra bottles somewhere let's find them you know I think all of the the pieces were firing back and forth and finally connected in my brain oh I I can get oxygen right now coincidentally the alpenglow expeditions guided team was descending at exactly that time and we and they sort of overtook me right at the top of the second step and I was able to get an extra bottle of oxygen one of our backup masks and regulators Mingma helped me tie the bottle on as a backpack itself and Mima and i started climbing back up to catch up with adrian alpenglow expeditions with clients always carries extra masks and regulators to take care of multiple events should they occur and on their way down they had had zero occurrence of any you know malfunction of the of the breathing apparatus the masks and rags and so we felt comfortable as a team that I could take one mask one regulator and one bottle of oxygen from them on descent put it on and and make it work up and back down to that point it was incredibly fortuitous timing had it been 15 minutes later they would go they would have been the team would have been gone and I would have had no chance of putting on oxygen and coming up it was meant to be climbing with oxygen climbing without oxygen is like comparing apples to sheet rock it just it's like two different things it's two different sports it's not even a you know I put on oxygen and all of a sudden I'm completely warm it's like feeling this warm fuzzy blanket spread through your insides and all of a sudden all the energy that you thought you didn't have you have again and you're you know your pace increases two or threefold oxygen at you know at elevation is the single greatest you know performance-enhancing drug there is it was also at a time where you know like I had been going probably at that point let's say for eight hours and it was getting really really hard Adrian was hitting a wall I mean it was obvious and that that's totally normal so the team needed an injection of energy and I remember being totally sun-like this is what I wanted all along it just all of a sudden it was like of course we're all gonna stand on top and to have this new injection of energy where Cory came back up on oxygen and was you know like pelvis thrusting and fist bumping and just like we're doing this we are totally doing this it was the one maybe the best moment of my Clive I mean it's first and foremost about accomplishing the goal together secondarily it was just about doing what I love and there was a you know I saw also a missed opportunity there to be with friends in the mountains the place that I loved most and I didn't want to let that pass and I also felt you know without sounding too woowoo I felt a very welcoming sense from the environment at that point despite the fact that we were climbing in a cloud it just felt like it was it was safe like it was a safe place for me to be in it needed to happen the way it was happening and I needed to go back up the wind had started the last 10 or 15 meters of the summer to this very low annual snow slope and they were devastating for me I could it was so hard to figure out how to continue walking I was actually up there yelling at myself and punching myself in the thigh trying to make my legs keep working and I were we were I don't want to say we were lying to Monica about Adrienne's condition but we were simplifying it and omitting a little bit what we what Topol and I were doing was observing Adrienne's actions and bouncing them off each other and saying well he seems yes his his speech is slightly slurred he's it's thick but that's pretty normal for everybody that can happen with cold too he seems to be completely lucid but not but not energetic so we were just balancing everything and then we we'd sort of condense all of that and give Monica a report and keep him off the radio as much as we could and and the reason is is because if if we gave her every detail she would have told Adrienne to turn around hours before but unless you're with in this case a patient right I mean that's what she's looking at this as you know it's impossible to make a diagnosis Monica has been my expedition doctor since 2007 on every single expedition and I've been on she is our brain up there we decide to give up some of our autonomy to her discretion more rational yeah more rational decision-making down here where she doesn't feel the emotion of for instance me being up there saying I'm not turning around now you never said that in fact you looked at tough ones you said and this was at about twenty eight thousand nine hundred and eighty feet I mean we're really close to the summit you said if you told me to turn around right now I would but if Monica tells me to turn around I need you to to run cover for me essentially had I been alone I think I would have turned around like I I'm pretty I'm pretty solid and how much I love life but having these guys there knowing I had support being okay with having support not that anyone could carry me down if I sat down if I sat down I was gonna die but knowing that I had people to cajole me yell at me manage the weather and other things around me so I could just focus on that next step up or down it gave me a competence certainly to keep going Adrian fought for his he fought so hard he fought harder than I've ever seen anybody fight for anything and it was one of the most beautiful profound and moving things I've ever witnessed I couldn't I wouldn't have done it if I had I there's absolutely no way I've never tried that hard at anything in my life ever but you cannot get dragged to the top of Everest and every single step you take is your own and I've never seen anybody fight so hard for anything in my life and it's one of the most stunning displays of mental fortitude and emotional and physical perseverance I've I think I've ever I mean definitely witnessed but even heard about you know hey and it got to the point where for the last ten meters Paulding my show up I actually tied a rope between the two of us just to try to encourage me to keep moving there's no dragging anyone to the summit around here or anything like that and there was no danger in that terrain of me falling but I just I think he decided I needed something to keep motivating me and feeling him on the other end of the rope there's something very powerful there so my struggle was so hard to get to the top that I remember getting to the top sitting down I had the wherewithal to take three snaps and I did nothing else man I can't believe I did it just so gripped right now took every ship we had Clarisse helped on oxygen I had no moment of enlightenment I had no I don't even think I got to hug these guys because that would have been standing up and that was not happening up there and and I was scared I wasn't scared for the weather there was no conscious thing I was like this is wrong we're in trouble but the level of exhaustion that I was so deep that I knew getting down it's going to be really hard [Music] [Music] the plan on this side of the mountain when you climb to the summit with or without oxygen in my opinion should always be to get back down to advanced base camp and the reason for that is that you've taxed your body so tremendously hard that the safest place you can be is as low as you can be and the lowest place you can be that you can get to readily is advanced base camp at 21,000 feet so that should always be your goal it's going back to camp three at eight thousand three hundred meters or twenty-seven thousand feet is just stupid because your body is so tired at that point that if you lay down to go to sleep there's a high likelihood that you're either gonna get frostbite or B you're just gonna go to sleep and die getting down was actually fall harder than I thought it would be mostly because of like true I think mental exhaustion we would have to take breaks at certain point because people would be repelling the ropes wanted to put time and I would sit down of course because there was no way I was standing if I didn't have to and I would just fall dead asleep completely asleep so I'm at 29,000 feet and asleep and but that's where people die so whether it was Paul did at some point during the day or topo shifting from filming to being like come on Adrian like I'm wake up let's go or Cory like I I had people around me to help you know bring me back and be like you've got work to do this is not the time to take a nap and I'd wake up Gaia laughs I think they're right I should probably not nap right now and then like the actual there was no decision-making at the tents we didn't know where we were gonna stop her is like we passed eighty three hundred or got to 83 honors like I would ah I'll die if I sleep in that tent so we're gonna keep going then we got 7700 and just we had this really weird mid altitude wind and the tent is 7700 at 25,000 feet were just all being destroyed broken poles you know just being decimated it was like whoa there's no way I'm stopping there it doesn't matter how tired I am I could stop every five meters but I'm not sleeping there and then by the time we got to 7,000 feet and it was dark and we're with headlamps and you know the whole thing and it's 8 p.m. it's like well now I know if I stop here I have to fire up a stove I have to make water I've tried to figure out how not to get frostbite because 7,000 meters from me personally it's still really really cold and my body is devastated I've had half a liter of walk liter of water in the past 30 hours like this is no way and so we kept going and on the way back once we got off the last fix rope it's still a 45-minute walk to camp but there's no danger there I literally was sitting down and falling asleep every five minutes or so but I knew that at the end at the ABC not only was Corey there but there was hot water there and that's all I've hunted with hot water and heat hot water a bed and safety and people that care and people that can look after somebody who's put themselves that far out you know Monica's great at that she assumes the role of the mother and she takes care of us and she she immediately you know God Adrienne warm and got him some water and and you know that's when that's truly when the sigh of relief comes when everybody goes okay we got away with it this time we did it you know like we got away with it and and it took a tremendous amount of manpower and energy but we did it together and and we're safe now and that's the collective sigh of relief that comes it's the out-breath after Everest without oxygen

Channel: Tim Dwyer

Views: 401,300

Keywords: Everest, Cory Richards, Adrian Ballinger, Mount Everest, Mountaineering, Climbing, Rock Climbing, Eddie Bauer, SportsCenter, ESPN, TV, Chomolungma, Sagarmatha, Mt Everest, Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk, Kilian Jornet

Id: yaYwYv4MW44

Length: 47min 31sec (2851 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2017