The Day I Almost Died

[Music] all right now I want to tell a story this is a story that I've been meaning to tell that I've wanted to tell for a really long time in life there's there's risk and there's recklessness and risk is always okay risk is always meant to be pursued but recklessness is really dangerous and really stupid and should always be avoided but the two are really close and like from afar they're very hard to tell apart this story is of the time that I cross the line from risk in direct lessness and this is probably the only time in my life where I've ever felt like I lost control and when I say I lost control you know I'm somebody who's like I've jumped out of an airplane in Israel I've jumped into a sinkhole in the Middle East I flew in an attack helicopter over Afghanistan I got hit by a car and shattered my leg in 27 places and I've crashed more motorcycles and honestly I can keep track of but this is the only time we're looking back at it really examining it I realize how stupid it was honestly I think that I made it out of there that I survived by like by a thread one of my closest friends in the whole world is a guy by the name of Graham Graham VC is freaking the [ __ ] out in 2007 graham and another friend and my brother in me we all climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania it was super awesome like Mount Kilimanjaro is it was fun it was exciting I climb it in sneakers and though it's like a little bit dangerous it's not a particularly hard climb it was great that we had fun than Kilimanjaro but after that Graham and I got to talking and we thought it wasn't enough of an accomplishment or of a challenge for guys like us that is like reckless individuals with very little forethought we wanted something more ambitious so Graham and I made the somewhat rash decision to climb a mountain called Aconcagua aconcagua was the tallest mountain in the southern hemisphere it's the tallest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas with just about zero preparation and no training Graham and I packed up a bunch of gear we flew to T Leigh and we headed to the mountain just got to Santiago Chile now aconcagua is twenty two thousand eight hundred and forty-one feet tall that's high it's not a really technical mountain you don't need ice axes or crampons or like ropes or anything you just go up that said it's an incredibly dangerous Mountain I'm sitting at a computer right here and I typed in definite incog wa January 2009 that is days after we were there five climbers died I mean that was literally days after we had left the mountain I can't describe how excited we were we had nothing but like an unbridled enthusiasm when approaching the mountain there was this moment when I saw the actual mountain for the first time we've been hiking for like three days and it was the first time where we could see like an unobstructed view of what we were about to ascend and that was the first time I was a little bit scared our goal wasn't just to climb the mountain we wanted to summit the mountain do it with no porters that is no one to help us carry our hundred plus pounds of gear up the mountain and no guide no one to show us the way for fun we also brought no GPS just a map and a pencil we're at sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty feet check out the view outside of our tent you can see the curvature of the earth from here it's pretty amazing you also can't see how bad it smells in this test because they had Jamaican barbecue chicken for dinner yeah and we had pad thai two days ago and leftovers were left in the tented baked for the last two days here's where the stupidity kicks in Graham and I were both like really narrow focused individuals and when we set our minds to something we stopped at nothing to achieve it put two people like that together and put them at the foot of an incredibly dangerous mountain and that's a horrible combination my brain's gonna explode my head hurts my eyeballs are swollen my neck hurts I don't want to do anything I just want I just want the pain to stop and I have another 8,000 feet to go we had this mantra that we kept repeating that was summit or bust as in at all cost we were making it up this mountain there was no showering and it took us like a week to get to base camp alone so this next round of footage this is when we started to climb from base camp to the summit we don't really look great we're lost not about 21,000 feet it's a funny place to be lost and above 20,000 feet there are no helicopters there's no rescue squad you are on your own it's 4:15 in the morning on Christmas morning about 21,000 feet it's about 15 below out and we have to wake up now and Joe summit the Beast everything is caked in this ice and it drips down on you Merry Christmas on Christmas Day 2008 it was summit day we're 37 minutes into our summit push and we're watching the Sun Rise over the Andes and we are literally over the Andes now you have this thing called turnaround time and that means no matter what at this time of the day you turn around I think ours was like 2:00 p.m. and ideally we would summit prior to that time and start climbing down but if had we not summited no matter what you turn around at your turnaround time right there we're so close to summit but I keep like blacking out I think it's from the altitude we're both hurting pretty bad I've never been anywhere near this altitude but the part that hurts the most the summit is right there we're gonna do it we're gonna go for it we're gonna go for it around the world not to two hours past turnaround time we hadn't made it we're so close to summit so close just wish it would stop snowing so far away sumit is right there now the title of this video the title of this vlog episode is the day I almost died and that's not hyperbole that is literally what happened in these moments I have no memory of what happened then I only have this footage and what I what I remember explicitly was being so tired that I wanted to go to sleep I wanted to lay down on that mountain and go to sleep had I done that who knows what would have happened but I don't know that I would have woken up if I had taken a nap at 22,500 feet with no energy no water no food no oxygen and no one to help me down this is the hardest thing I've ever done I can't breathe but I would never be able to live with myself if I didn't go for it so I have to take every ounce of energy I have in my body I've got to get to that [ __ ] summit it was that moment that I felt like I had crossed that line in a really profound way it was that moment that I felt like closer to not making it than any other time in my life that wasn't me summit of the tallest mountain in the southern and western hemisphere across we summited we shouldn't have we should have turned around but we summited and for the first time ever right now I honestly don't know what the [ __ ] I was thinking and we both sort of made it down in okay shape Graham took one really bad fall that I thought I thought he was seriously injured but he was he was fine Graham just fell off a cliff and was laying facedown no idea what happened to him I think he tried to slide down it and just ended up going tits up and we were beaten to hell I don't know what my middle name is I couldn't tell you my social security number I think there might be an eight and it barely speak I did summon it but at what cost my god when we like naively stupidly left to climb that mountain a lot of people were like there's no trance in fact it's the only time that I remember in my whole life where my brother doubted me he didn't think I would make it and I would say like that's what drove me to tax Lee summit I put that as like me being reckless in order to prove something that ultimately doesn't matter when you compare it to your health or your safety or your life there is one super cool detail which is aconcagua was in the southern hemisphere and the only taller mountains in the world in the himalayas that is their winter so no one's climbing in the Himalayas then so at 4:06 p.m. on Christmas Day 2008 Graham and I were literally standing taller than any other human beings on planet Earth because we were at the top of the tallest climbin at that very moment at that very day and that's a pretty amazing legacy to have [Music] and that is what Graham VC taking your looks like [Music]

Channel: CaseyNeistat

Views: 7,402,305

Rating: 4.9313822 out of 5

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Id: rYCODMuoHNI

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/sonbatell]

I think Simone Moro and a few other guys would have something to say about the Himalayas being "un-climbable" in winter.