a couple months ago I summited Mount Everest and with that came a few near-death experiences not only while climbing it but also training for it fortunately I'm still here today but all these risky and dangerous moments ended up being very valuable lessons that hopefully prevent similar experiences in the future for myself and maybe even you so I'm going to share some of those and the footage that I have surrounding them so we're going to start off of course on Everest and you can guess that's going to be on Summit day so notes the majority of deaths do happen on Summit day from Camp 4 to the Summits just let that be known there is a lot in the kumu icefall but the majority have happened above the the death zone 8,000 M when you head from Camp 4 into the Death Zone at around midnights usually you quickly realize why it is called the death zone at 8,000 M and above the oxygen becomes so thin that your body can no longer adjust to that slck of oxygen so you're put on oxygen masks the majority of people and you're sipping out of little masks connected to these bottles you're on a Lifeline if you have this you're dead this combined with Summit day being the hardest day out of the entire Expedition makes it a near-death moment I would say the entire day because if you don't have that oxygen and if something goes wrong up there there's a pretty good chance you'll die in my experience we headed for the summit at around 2 a.m. from Camp 4 now luckily a lot of the lines that you might have seen go viral on social media there was big crowds this year uh those were a couple days before us so luckily we were moving up after all those lines those people had come down so we had had a pretty clear shot ahead of us making our way to the Summits so our whole team felt strong but because of all these lines and groups that had been up right before us just an hour into being in the death zone we encountered a body obviously I don't want to go into those details but what it did was it put into perspective that there was people with the same motivation same drive as us and probably were just as prepared but something went wrong and they never were able to make it back down you can't really let this get in your head though because well if you panic then something like that can happen you as well so we continued moving up the Triangular face up to the balcony which is the first location on the mountain where you can actually take a break and at this point you become much more exposed from the balcony we headed up to the South Summit and me and Furbo were flying on this because once again we're on a Lifeline we don't want to be up in the death zone for longer than we need to so we're trying to get up and down as fast as we can once you get above that South Summit you come to the Hillary Step which isn't historically the deadliest part of the climb but it definitely is one of the most dangerous especially this season this season specifically as I was saying a couple days prior there was many climbers that had summited and came back down but there's two who did not make it back down because of a cornice collapse right on the Hillary Step a Cornus is just a piece of snow that's stuck in place um but beneath it is just nothing essentially so if you put too much pressure on that snow it'll end up collapsing which is what happened to two climbers as they were passing over over it and they're dead now maybe it was a lack of oxygen in my brain but I didn't really process where the Cornus collapse was I heard about it but I didn't know where it was but this is me stepping over it it's just incredibly narrow steep on both sides and even if you're attached to the fixed lines it's still incredibly sketchy so what I'm assuming happened was this was once a much more wide Trail but it seem safer and that's the key word it seems safer so these climbers thought they could maybe clip around other climbers to get by them or for whatever reason stepped on that part of it which triggered the collapse they didn't know nobody could have told them maybe you could have used Clues okay this looks a little bit sketchy probably shouldn't step on it but you never truly know if something can just collapse beneath you or not it's the same thing with kasses you might be stepping on a snow Bridge it could instantly collapse so that's why you clip into these fixed lines or you're on a rope team so I felt fine and controlled in that situation I didn't think that I was going to fall on either side I'm luckily pretty good with my footwork but the reason it's a little scary for me is because a lot of the time me and my Sherpa were clipping around other climbers to pass them we don't want to get caught up behind other climbers we only have a limited amount of time to Summit so we might have to move up past them unclipped so we can make our push for the summit which is scary because sometimes we weren't on the trail we were moving on what could have been cornices are just unknown you don't know what's below it but of course my Sherpa knows best and he wanted have brought us on some super sketchy um you know deathly corice luckily there was nothing that collapsed beneath us uh we didn't run out of oxygen the weather didn't get too poor that it kept us up there or we had to turn back we summon it so really just proper preparation decision- making is key here um you have to make the decision are we going to clip around these climbers or get caught up behind them it looks safe we're going to continue going up do do I feel like my brain is swelling do I need to go back down these are just decisions you need to make luckily we made all the right ones nothing bad happened now there's a few other very close calls on Everest that I experienced but I also had plenty of near-death experiences while training for Everest specifically on other high altitude Peaks we're going to go into chimber Aro so when I first sent out to Everest I wanted to get a feel for how my body reacted to the altitude cuz if you're going to die it's because of the altitude so I set out to climb some Ecuador volcanoes like chimber Aro which is just over 20,000 ft and you climb it in 2 days you do a climatize with other peaks in the area but you go up chimaru itself in 2 days you push to the high camp and then you go to the Summits and then you come all the way back down that is no joke 20,000 feds in 2 days pretty much now like I said this was in light of preparing my body seeing what my body was capable of so I could take on Everest very early into training I had taken a two-day mountaineering course in New Hampshire before this we were unprepared okay I'm going to make that clear but essentially the game plan was to acclimatize prepare our bodies get more red blood cells to take on chimazo by climbing a few other volcanoes and mountains like pasoa illona kambe in chimazo kambe being very key cuz that gets up pretty close 18 19,000 ft I believe turns out uh there was lightning striking around us on the morning of our Summit push to kambe and we didn't make it 30 minutes out the door Ilona which we did Summit was only around 15,000 ft tall so you can tell as I'm getting up to high camp on chimber Aro which is around 177,000 Ft I felt awful I was I was ill I was unprepared Headache nausea all this different stuff and it was not looking too good for me at all so when I woke up to head for the Summits at 1 p.m. I wanted to die but I pulled myself together the issue was I had lost my appetite which is very common to experience at high altitude especially if you go up quick and I didn't eat anything felt like garbage but we continued and and pushed out of the camp for the summit I was slow out of shape and only a fraction of the power I have now but we continued making our way up despite the weather getting a little bit cold windy but it wasn't too much to be concerned about what you'll end up noticing is a lot of the times you do feel horrible when you set out of camp on a summit push but around a couple hours in you actually start to feel much better better but you need to keep this momentum going I had never been out for more than 3 hours I would say climbing maybe a couple times I had no idea how to keep this momentum going manage myself in these conditions which the number one way is to stay hydrated and eat and like I said I had not eaten anything my appetites was just not there and you can imagine once we got to 5 hours in 18,000 ft which is the highest we've been so far I was on 200 calories you can imagine it was looking too good for me my guide Manuel could see I was running out of fuel so to make sure I didn't fall down the mountain if I ended up stumbling or passing out or something like that he put me on a very close short rope which means I was attached to him with a rope and if I ended up falling he could technically be brought down with me but he could ice axe a rest which is just when you're falling and you dig this ice axe into the snow and it stops you easier said than done but it's your best shots if you're both tumbling down the glacier I continued pushing up the mountain with him but at this point I was getting a little scared because every 5 to 10 minutes I had to take a break I was bonking it's just when your body completely runs out of fuel and you can't go any longer there's around 2 hours left to the top and realize let's go back to Everest this is why most people will end up dying on that Summit push is they expend all their energy going up and they have nothing to get back down so I didn't want this to happen to me therefore I told man well we have to turn back but at this point I had already expended all my energy I had pretty much nothing left so there we are moving down chimber aro's icy Glacier if you fall you're going hundreds of meters down I'm tumbling and stumbling if I wasn't on the short rope I would have just faded away off into the night luckily Manuel was keeping me up though somehow I made it back down to high camp safely and I just had to let Manuel know how appreciative I was because if for some reason I was alone out there and because like I didn't eat I didn't drink enough water I didn't take the right precautions I definitely would have died and the reason why you need to be appreciative of your guides in these situations is because well they're risking their life bringing you up if you fall and they don't catch the selfa ice a arrest they're coming all the way down with you so both of these scenarios I've mentioned I've never directly faced death I would say but on my 2023 Denali trip I I was going to die three times in the span of 30 minutes and if you think I'm kidding I went from a lukewarm believer in God to like a genuine believer after this so here I am 4 months after chimber Aro heading to Denali America's tallest mountain the good news is I'm much more in shape now I realize the importance of getting food in your body taking care of yourself drinking enough water but the bad news is I'm still an idiot I I'm always an idiot you know we all make mistakes but this time I'm a really I really mess up I don't check my gear to make sure it functions properly on the mountain on Denali because it's an elas very high in altitude it can get very cold so you got to bring out these bad boys the Olympus Mons cubes they'll keep you warm they'll prevent you from getting frostbites but the issue with the Olympus Mons is as you can see they have a massive toe Bale this thing right here very big how is any crampon which is the tool on the bottom of your boots that sticks into the snow going to be able to fit on this and remember crampons are very important you would not make it up 10 ft up Everest Denali chimber Aro without these because they keep you on the mountain so you know I'm putting together my gear you know I've been I've been this is the first time whipping out the Olympus Mons these are the crampons I've been using I look at this this toe Bell attached to the Olympus Mons Cube toe box and I think ah it's all right so we fly on a ski plane onto the glacier we head to 7800 Camp which is just a camp at 7,800 FT then we go to 11 ,000 ft Camp which is the same thing just at 11,000 ft both of those were in snowshoes but now to make it from 11,000 ft to the camp at 14,000 ft we're going to need to whip out the crampons and for reference that's just because it was much more flat on the way to 11,000 ft versus 11,000 to 14,000 ft uh if you fall you might fall off the mountain essentially so luckily I'm rocking these things from uh you know 11,000 ft to 14,000 ft and I actually actually didn't have any problems I was filming I was having a great time it was some pretty crazy weather but we get to 14,000 ft and we're at the camp and one of our guides Justin looks at my crampons and how it's connected to my boot he says M that doesn't look too secure my friend I say oh we got up here all right you know it'll be good we'll be all set so now it's time for the most technical part of the entire Denali climb the head wall the head wall is essentially just a very long and very big face of the mountain that leads up to the 16 Ridge the good thing is there's fixed lines on it so you can clip in with an Ascender and a carabiner so as you're moving up if you end up falling that Ascender is going to catch you and you won't fall off the mountain and thank God for these because as we're moving up we have these heavy packs on putting a lot of torque on our boots and our crampons because of how steep and icy it is that right one said I'm about to head out everybody cuz it just came right off my boot that was the only thing keeping me securely on the snow and on the mountain and all I had was one now and I was hanging on to this fixed line kind of panicking a little bit so the good thing was my crampon didn't slide down the entire Mountain it was hanging on just by the the straps so one of our guides Justin he had to come back down and get my cramp on off for me because I was still I'm was still Noob and I still consider myself a noob but there was no way I was going to be able to securely get this on by myself while hanging on by that rope so I needed some help and yeah now I couldn't trust the one thing that was keeping me on the mountain though so that was part one of two of this near-death experience now I was attached to the fixed lines there was no inherent risk or immediate death I could have faced by my krampon falling off like that if something had gone wrong I'd just be blay down which yes would be embarrassing but part two I did not end up having this luxury as you'll as you'll see in a second so after this first crampon incident I was able to snag a crampon from another climber he had the Olympus Mons and luckily his crampons worked perfectly on mine so with that I was able to push back up the head wall over 16 Ridge into 17,000 camp we slept that night and now it was time to push for the Summits it was looking like an absolute Divine day the forecast was pretty good there was a storm coming in tomorrow but that wasn't coming in today uh so we push up the autobond which is the hardest parts of summit day and we get off the autobond and the weather just takes an immediate turn for the worst I mean it was it was it was out of the Blu so we end up stopping and turning back just around 3 hours from the summit very bummed out but it is what it is that's just the mountains you got to turn back nobody was pushing up in that I mean you would definitely get frostbite so we go all the way back down go through all you know the head wall 16 Ridge everything we get to 14,000 camp and it's caughten up to us now the the even the worst news is now the guy that gave me his crampons needs them to get back down so I'm I'm stuck back with my golden boys here again and then we begin our approach to Squirrel Hill which is the first and last part of the climb where you actually need to use your ice ax if you do end up falling now again this part isn't that steep but it is steep enough that you can slide off of the mountain therefore you need the crampons and Ice a we have these incredibly heavy packs on getting slammed back and forth by the wind on this part of the mountain and as you can guess the torque once again builds up on my right crampon and it just slips right off so this time we don't have any ropes that were clipped into that can just stop us immediately so I start sliding down the mountain this time I fell I'm sliding down with a 50 lb pack I have to turn over and I end up hitting the ice ax arrest I mean I was I was I was I was kind of excited with myself cuz I just hit an ice a arrest you never know if you'll be able to really you practice doing them but you never know if you'll be able to do it in a situation when it actually comes to saving your life by diging into the snow I stop myself and then it hits me I'm I'm okay we're in a storm I'm putting my life at risk now and also my teams cuz I'm roped into them they look back at me I look up at them they look back at me I don't even know what they're thinking they're just looking at me they're definitely thinking oh who brought this kid who brought this kid to the mountain so one of the guys comes and help me put my crampon back on but unfortunately for me the same thing happens twice and then finally Justin comes he gets that thing back on and we finally get off of Squirrel Hill where we're not at risk of one crampons falling off and two if crampon falls off we slide off the edge of the mountain the thing that really sucks about the situation is because we're all roped together so there was three other teammates with me that were on the single rope line which is for this exact reason so by me falling and I'm in the back so I'm dragging everybody down nobody can see if I fall I have to yell communicate that which is very hard in these winds you cannot hear each other yell at all so nobody would see and everybody would be caught off guard and I'm essentially putting all of our lives at risk especially my own by not checking my gear making sure it was good but yeah I mean that was a very hard lesson for me to learn and probably my most traumatic mountaineering experience so now instead of those crampons that I just showed you I have these things which I used on Everest I learned uh you can see it goes right into the toe Bale these things take an iron grip to get off I'm never making that mistake again I make sure all my gear is tested very extensively before before I go and use it on the actual mountains which please do this being unprepared not making sure your gear works is for sure the number one reason why people get into hard situations get frostbites or just don't make it off the mountain at all so that moment definitely tops the closest and nearest I've ever been to death I would say but there was also a few very close calls and sketchy situations while I was climbing Everest just a couple months ago for instance the kumu ice fall this year had a horrible route it took took much longer to get through cuz it was very zigzaggy there wasn't a direct route it took the ice fall doctors a solid few more days to actually find a route because it was so all over the place for hours we would be traversing under these giant ice SRA and Ice glaciers that look like they could just fall on you at any moment but the scary part is they can you don't know it's just all by chance you can limit that chance by going at night or when it's colder but these things could collapse at any moment so because the route was much more confusing and took a lot longer to get through you're putting your life at risk the longer you're inside here there was a few times that nearby srax had collapsed and you could hear them or just mini avalanches and everything which was a bit scary but on the way down the kumbu icefall had melted over so much it had been so warm the last couple days and we knew as soon as we came up on it that this was going to be a little bit dangerous some of the creas gaps that weren't initially big had opened up 5X since we had maybe gone through the first time like this one here you have to jump over a pretty decent Siz Gap with I had 45 lbs on my pack you had to jump from that onto this small snow platform which doesn't even look stable and then you have to jump over the final Gap to get to the other side so I'm usually fine with jumping over the Kass gaps and everything but the unstable platform you had to go on was definitely that didn't look very nice another scary thing that was going on up there was the constant triggering of avalanch which is kind of on theme with what I just talked about but Avalanches that just take place anywhere on the mountain now you'll figure out if you ever go on a high altitude Expedition that on Denali or Everest you constantly hear Avalanches around you multiple times a day once again as we were moving our way down from The Summit in between the lot face and Camp 2 I witnessed one of the biggest Avalanches I had ever seen on that Everest Expedition and probably in my life this is an avalanche falling right down the face of NY but it's also going across the climbing route that you would take if you were to climb nsy which makes it a little bit concerning because if you had been climbing through that that Avalanche definitely would have wiped you out thankfully me and this other guy that were standing around watching it were pretty far away but that's the closest I've ever been to an actual Avalanche that could have potentially killed you if you were on that route so both of those instances I just mentioned are mostly a factor of chance you can never f know if an avalanche is going to trigger or a Sak is going to collapse I mean there's ways to tell but you never fully know but this next close moment was a bit different because it was just the foolishness of another climber I would say but as we were moving Down from Camp 4 to Camp 3 we came up across the yellow band which is a pretty technical part of the climb cuz it's very Rocky while we were going down it got pretty flooded with climbers here there's two ropes one to go up and one to go down nobody should be going up and down at the same time and there should only be one person on this section at a time and they should be waiting for each other to pass but this guy right here just didn't care at all as I was on the down rope going down I got on before him he decides to take the up rope and says I'm going to go down too brother watch out so I'm watching my footwork making sure I'm I'm stepping on actual rock and don't just slip and fall even though I'm clipped in I'm going down so if I fall badly enough I actually will fall to the next snow anchor which wouldn't be good especially on the yellow band so he's coming down now I have to watch for this guy's crampon flying into my face and taking me out that way we both ended up getting off the yellow band without him bumping into me or anything like that but I just I just don't know why he had to he couldn't wait literally 5 minutes and just make a not initially dangerous situation dangerous so yes climbing is risky I know that everybody who climbs does but the difference between the people who look at this risk and make it down from the mountain and don't make it down from the mountain is the person who makes it down mitigated the risk as much as possible they made the right decisions they prepared properly they looked at previous close experiences and learn from them with that being said I'm incredibly fortunate that I was able to turn all of these lessons as I call them into learning experiences so hopefully you all were able to take something away from these thank you for watching subscribe I'll see you in the next one
