#89 Survival Is Not Assured: An 82-Year-Old Alpinist on Choosing the Hardest Lines, Why Summits Are Optional, and Why You Must Look Ahead Despite All Odds

Ageless Athlete - Jim Donini
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Kush: [00:00:00] Jim, I always start with this question, which is, where are you right now and what did you have for breakfast this morning? 

Jim: Well, we were, uh, I got up late this morning, so I'm in re cal, uh, Colorado, where I live, my main home, and I had a piece of two pieces of banana bread and a protein shake for breakfast.

Kush: Wow. That sounds like a, a, a delicious breakfast. Maybe It's a, it's a Sunday thing. Was it, uh, banana bread that was made at home? 

Jim: No, unfortunately it was, uh, it was bought in the store, but my wife does make wonderful banana when she makes banana bread. You can really taste the bananas. Oh, yeah. Nice and moist.

The, the stuff you buy is not quite the same.

right now I'm traveling a van, so I don't have access to an oven, but I look forward to, uh, making, making some banana bread. The [00:01:00] next time, uh, I'm back in an apartment. I can, I can do that. And, and, and Jamie, you live in re and re is, uh, world famous for ice climbing mm-hmm.

Kush: In the winter. 

Jim: Yeah. 

Kush: we were just talking about how it's also become maybe a destination in the summertime. 

Jim: Well, in the summertime it's always been a big resort because we're at 7,700 feet above sea level. So you get a lot of Texans coming up here in the summertime to get outta the heat. And there's old mining roads.

So what these Texans like to do are a lot of, uh, they take ATVs out on the mining roads. So, uh, that that's been, uh, historically what, uh, it's been like in the summertime. People come here to get out the heat shop and, and, uh, go at TV, but there's a lot of things to do now. You know, when they built the, uh, uh, ice [00:02:00] park a few years ago, they decide one side of the ice park, there's a gorge coming right into town, and the gorge is very steep.

And, uh, so there's one side of the gorge where the sun doesn't shine in the winter time, and there's a pi, an old pipe coming down at the top of that side of the Gord from the old mining days. And about 25, 30 years ago, some local climbers noticed that wherever the pipe sprung a leak, the the water would drip down and freeze because there was no sun.

Now they have, uh, a completely sophisticated system and that side of the courts has about 200 ice routes and mixed routes. So it's super popular in the wintertime because one thing about ice climbing, you know, technically I think it's the easiest climbing 'cause you have these very sophistic sophisticated tools.

But also is probably the biggest, the biggest [00:03:00] difference between leading and following, I think is nice climbing. The smallest difference is probably in squarer climbing and track climbing. But nice climbing, you don't wanna fall 'cause you have all these sharp tools. And it's crampon actually, in fact, there the thousands of ice climbs I've done in my life, I've taken one 10 foot fall ever.

That's it. Oh wow. But you know, with the ice park you can, you can set up top ropes. So you get these people, you get a couple hundred people during the day. They're top roping ice, and that makes them feel much more comfortable. But the other, one of the reasons I live here is because, okay, you've got the ice park, but you know, there's great sport climbing here.

It's not well known, but there's about maybe 300 roots and they're on four, uh, three different types of rock. They're on limestone sandstone and quar site. There's no, no track climbing here, but there's track climbing [00:04:00] nearby an hour away or two hours away, depending which side you go to is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

And to me, that's the best, uh, multi-pitch track climbing in the country. I, I call it Yosemite, with an attitude.

Kush: Wow. Then the other thing that's quite, quite the, uh, quite an honor to bestow, 

Jim: well, you know, it's a little more intimidating than Yosemite. You have to go down into the gore. It's dark. These walls are really steep and there's no comfort size, roots. You know, Yosemite, they comfort size the roots by that.

They put in two bolts for every belay station. Well, you're not gonna find that in the black county, the gunison, no belay station. You have to make all of your belay station and the, and it's got a reputation for being a little bit spicy run out and maybe some loose rock. There is loose rock, of course, but there's [00:05:00] quite a few roots where the rock is perfect.

Like the, my, my favorite climb of its grade in the country is the scenic cruise. It's 13 pitches of perfect crack climbing, old school, 10 plus. And it's just a perfect climb. No, no bad rock. Little spicy, but not too bad. 

Kush: Sure, sure. And, and, and, and Jim, if you say it's a little bit spicy, then I think for the rest of us, uh, yes, I'm sure it backs.

A punch. I haven't yet been to climb at the Black Canyon yet. And I think, yeah, partly some of its reputation precedes it, but yeah, the idea of descending down into a canyon totally changes. Uh, I think just the perspective, you know, from to, from the, the classic, uh, let's say format where you walk up to a cliff and you climb up, and in this one you have to kind of go down, uh, uh, this, this steep canyon and [00:06:00] you know, you only, you have to climb out.

There's no other way you can, you're gonna get back to, uh oh. 

Jim: No, you can, um, most of the gullies, uh, you can get back, get back up them. I see. In fact, uh, but, uh, that's called the walk of shame. 

Kush: Yeah. Yeah. That, and also if you are, if you're midway upper climb, you know, then like you kind have this, uh, dilemma, right.

Yeah, you, you, you, you, you wanna finish it because, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you might have an es escape, escape hatch through the gully, but, but you'd rather climb the top. Jim. yeah, I wanna talk about, I, I know that, um, this recent stretch has been a little challenging for you, just based on some of the conversations we had recently.

If you're comfortable, would you mind sharing, how are you doing these days? 

Jim: Oh, you mean physically? Yeah. Did you know I have a, [00:07:00] I got diagnosed with lung cancer. I heard, I 

Kush: heard, yeah, I heard you also also found out kind of accidentally 

Jim: Well, uh, yeah, right. Well, you know, um, I turned 82, uh, last July 23rd into Teton You know what? I've in fact done some of my best technical alpine, first ascent in my fifties and even early sixties. So I, I, people knew me, you know, for climbing at a fairly difficult, uh, level later on in life. And, uh, I think one of the reasons I've been able to do that is because I've never lost interest.

I so always have motivation, but from a genetic standpoint, I was blessed with the fact that I don't have any joint problems, no arthritis. You know, a lot of climbers are like me, who have been climbed for a long time. They end up with sore elbow problems, shoulder problems, back problems. [00:08:00] Jay Smith is a, a really good climber, 10 years younger than me, and I, I climb a lot with, he's still very strong, but he is dealing with really severe arthritis problems.

So I never had to stop climbing because I, I, you know, I had a sore elbow or. Bad knee and, uh, if you never stop climbing, you stay in good shape. But, um, you know, then about three or four years ago, I got back from the car quorum and I was doing a little hike with some local friends, and I, I was, uh, I felt really weird.

My balance was off and then it got worse and worse over the, uh, intervening months. And it was just, uh, I noticed too that my fine motor skills, like buttoning my shirt, signing my name, that got a little bit more difficult and I think, what's going on here? And, um, I finally, and then my climbing was affected because, uh, my bowel was wrong, so I wasn't using my feet [00:09:00] correctly.

And then I finally got it diagnosed. I had Parkinson's disease. That was three years ago. The reason I never thought I had Parkinson's is because I'd never had hand tremors. So I have a fairly mild, uh, case of Parkinson's. So I started taking, uh, uh, dopamine three times a day and that all the symptoms pretty much went away.

Within two or three days, I could cut my shirt, I could sign my name. And, uh, so it was kind of, wasn't thinking too much about Parkinson's. And then, uh, six weeks ago I came back from a road trip where I went climbing the City of Rocks and I went to Seattle and did some book signing. I got back home, TV was on.

I'm in the living room doing some exercises. I have like a, a, a thing. It is, uh, like a six foot, uh, rubber tube with handles on the end. So you step on and go like this and you do curls, but it doesn't get, create much [00:10:00] pressure so you can do the curls very quickly. So I'm doing these curls like this and all of a sudden I hear a snap.

And I feel this incredible pain. Like somebody hit me on the elbow with an with a hammer, and it was incredible. So I, I went right to the, uh, emergency room I took, my wife took me, turns out I broke my, uh, humerus bone on this arm where it meets the elbow. Now, when I heard the snap, I thought that maybe the tube did a, of the, uh, thing that I was using broke.

And then I thought maybe the hard plastic candle came around and hit my elbow. But when I got back home, the, uh, it was intact. So what it really did snap, that I heard was my bone breaking. So it turns out it was a, what they call a pathological break, meaning that the force I was using would not have been sufficient to break a healthy bone.

So they found out then what the reason I, uh, my, my bone [00:11:00] broke is because I had lung cancer that had metastasized to my frigging bone. You know, so here I am six weeks later and, uh, I would not, if I hadn't broken my arm and hadn't have found that out, I would still not know I had lung cancer. Wow. But I, on the other hand, there, you know, I, there are symptoms up three months ago I went, uh, I went to Red Rocks for a week with George Low, my hiring partner.

And uh, I've always been really good at walking uphill of paw. 'cause I was a distance runner and I always had good endurance. I noticed that my approaches, I, uh, I was breath much harder than normally would though in the uphills. And then the other thing I noticed was that, you know, I just didn't have as much energy, but these are symptoms that you get.

I say, well maybe I'm just getting old and I'm out of shape. But obviously it was because of the lung cancer. So, [00:12:00] so, wow. But the, I, uh, you know, the one good thing about it is in this day and age, the, the treatments they've come up with are much, much better than they were. My wife, in fact, was a cancer researcher in, at MD Anderson in Houston when I met her.

So she's been a terrific help, not only in drive me around, but in, uh, talking to the doctors and the oncologist about what's going on. So they did a lot of genetic testing and, uh, and they found that I had this thing that, that they were able to do. They're gonna be able to, what they call, um, targeted treatment.

So I go up to Huntsman Cancer Center in Salt Lake this coming Tuesday, and, uh, they're going to start giving me a pill, which will, will, which will treat the ca hopefully the cancer. And I may be able to get out of this without having surgery. Or without [00:13:00] having chemo. Hopefully that I hope so. Yes. Yes. So looking forward to getting up there and getting this pill.

It's supposed to be, the oncologist that I was talking to him, he said, you know, when we, we put people on this pill, it's really amazing how many people tell us within a few days to a week of getting it, how much better they feel. So I'm looking forward to it. 'cause I don't feel very great right now. I don't have any mind, I don't have much drive right now, you know?

Sure. I usually have a lot of drive and a lot of, uh, energy, but I'm kind of feeling blah. Yeah. But hopefully I'm looking forward to getting back into climbing again. Uh, even though I'm in my eighties now. Something I love doing. 

Kush: Jim. Well. Firstly, thank you for, thank you again for making time to talk to us. Yeah. In the middle of this, uh, I guess this journey that you are going through medically wishing [00:14:00] you Yes. Wishing you the best and hopefully yes. Uh, neither chemo nor surgery sound like appealing option, so hopefully this other treatment is gonna work, right?

Yeah. And you know, I'm sure you, yeah, I believe you. When you say you are not feeling too well, but you look great and, uh, 

Jim: yeah. It's all relative and 

Kush: Yes, yes, 

you. I wanna talk about another place that is dear to your heart and you mentioned it, which is the KA quorum and you've had a long history with that place, the mountains and the climbing there. And I actually had Thomas Huber on the show last year.

Oh yeah. And Thomas was getting ready for his trip to to Pakistan right before [00:15:00] I spoke with him. And he mentioned that you would be joining him on that trip. 

Jim: That's right. 

Kush: And I was amazed. And then I think later on I saw some media of you celebrating, I think your birthday up in the mountains. So. What pulled you back to the Karakorum last year?

I think you were turning 81. 

Jim: Well, you know, I, um, so my focus has been alpine climbing and my focus has been technical climbing. I don't, I don't care for, I'll never climb in 80,000 meter peak because every, every 8,000 meter peak has a non-technical route where you're just kicking steps in the snow. Even K two, even K two, the, so for me it's always been about real technical climbing and the, the Kara Quorum is, you know, the [00:16:00] northern extension of the Himalaya, mostly in Pakistan.

And, uh, it, it's composed of mounds are, are grine in composition. So since they're grine. When they wear down, they, they stay steeper. So the mountains in the karakorum in generally speaking, are more technical than the mountains in Nepal, for example. So I first went to the Karakorum in this, uh, become a famous climb.

The, uh, when I did with George Lowe and Michael Kennedy and Jeff Lowe, where we spent 26 days. And, and, uh, I fell in love with them because of certain things. The place is beautiful. It's technically, and it offers up the best, alpine climbing in the world probably. And I really like the people in, uh, in Pakistan.

You see, uh, people say, oh, you go to Pakistan, isn't that really dangerous? I said, no, it's, it depends where you go in Pakistan. So if you fly to Al [00:17:00] Pendi and then take a little flight to Skardu, once you're in Skardu, you're in Baltistan home at the Bies. Uh, and these people. Not pro Western, they're Muslim, but they're, uh, they have a, uh, a more liberal version where in Baltistan you see a lot of, uh, schools for girls.

So they wanna agitate their, and then, then, but away from there, down in the suny tribal areas, they burned down schools for girls. So it's a whole different Wow. So when, uh, I've, I've, uh, spent, uh, seven times in Pakistan and the Kara quorum, maybe a total of a year, you know, a couple months each time. And I've never had an issue where I felt threatened by anybody.

And the bulky, uh, people are so tough. They're, they're very poor. They're so, they're only the, the men, they only weigh about 120 pounds, and the lows they carry are amazing. So I love the [00:18:00] people of the mountains in Pakistan. I love the beauty of Pakistan, and I love the challenges that it, that it gives you.

Yeah, I, I first went in with, uh, Kama Huber in 2016 with George Low. Mm-hmm. So what happened is, uh, you know, when we, uh, came down from our climb on late talk in 1978, we were very near the summit, but we were, we had been caught in a bunch of storms on the route. So we started out four of us with 14 days of food or 12 days of food.

We ended up spending 26 days on the route because we got caught in storms, low down and storms high up. And, uh, so we're really close to the summer. We know that we f for the first time we can dig a snow cave. The face was so steep. Climbing was so steep, you don't get any snow buildups. So we, we had a lot of, uh, biv wax, which were right out in the [00:19:00] open.

No 10 nothing. Luckily, during those times, we didn't have bad storm, so we finally got quite high. We know we're only, um, few hundred feet from the summit and we know that there, then there's a big mound of snow. So George, uh, Jeff Lowe and I are digging a snow cave while George and Michael put up a fixed rope on a, on a head wall, 200 foot head wall, right by the, uh, we were gonna have the snow cave.

So we think we've got it because we're gonna, the idea is we're gonna spend a, uh, night in the snow cave and leave all our gear there, get up in the morning, do more up to fix ropes, tag the summit, come back down to the snow cave, and then start down. That's outside. But even though we're low in food, we're low in fuel, we're, we've lost a lot of energy and strength, but we still think we can do it.

Two things happen while we're digging of the snow ca. A big storm starts coming in from the southwest, and Jeff Lowe gets ill. [00:20:00] So the next day we're in the snow cage. Jeff is in and out of co consciousness. He's delirious. We're at 23,000 feet and, uh, it's storming. So make a long story short, we end up eventually trying to go to the summit.

Jeff gets really, he uh, he becomes unconscious on a belay ledge. We spent the rest of the day getting him down to the snow gate. Now we know it's over. We have to go down and we have this epic four day. So the fact that we didn't make the summit of the climb, it made it famous. Because think about it, that this, that climb, if we had done it 1978, it would've been the most difficult, uh, climb in the Himalayas with without fixed ropes, without siege tactic.

But the fact that we, uh, if we had made it, it would be to consider just a really hard climb, but no one else would go on it because the kinds of climbers that could do a climb like that. Our [00:21:00] climbers that wanna do their own first descent. But the fact that we let that little tiny bit open at the top, we didn't get to the top.

We left the, uh, climb open for a lot of other trips and in the next, uh, from 1978 to 2017, 35 expeditions went in to climb our route. And in until 2017, nobody got within 2000 feet over our high point. I'm going, what? What's going on? Every time I heard about who was going to go in, I'd say, well, they're really good.

They're stronger than we are, and they have much better gear. You know, now they'll do it. And no, they didn't do it. No. So nobody got within 2000 feet high. But I'm thinking, what's going on here? Is there some evil mountain goddess casting his spell? I got a, uh, an email from Tomas Hubber in 2016, and he's also.

[00:22:00] History Buffalo. He, he understands the history of climbing. So he appreciated what we had done. So we, uh, so that year, 2016, George Lowe and I went in with him, and we had another friend of ours, mine, Tom Engelberg that went in and, uh, I just wanted to see what was going on. And we, and it was, uh, it was incredible.

And while he had two young Germans with him, they were very good climbers. But, you know, by the time, uh, we were in, in position to climb and everything, uh, oh, by the way, when that happened, there were two climbers from Salt Lake City, uh, that were trying to climb his big face on the Yore two. And, uh, Kyle Dempster and, uh, Scott Adamson.

I talked to the, uh, I talked to Kyle Dempster a week before he left. They went in two weeks before us. Uh, so when we got [00:23:00] there, we knew that they were there. Their, uh, liaison officer, I mean, their, uh, uh, guy before came down, he heard we were, so he came down an hour from our base band. When we got there, the, uh, a storm came, not really a bad storm, but all of a sudden you couldn't see the peaks.

Gfo came down and said that they were, uh, that he had seen their lights very high on the climb the day before. He said they'll be down in two or three days. Well, as you know, they never got down and we, we never found their bodies they de per. So, uh, things like that happened. And it turns out that when we got a really good window of weather, George and, uh, Tom Engel and myself, we were there to see what was going on, but also to do our own climbing.

So there was a little 6,000 meter peak down glacier. So we went down to try and do that, and we got very high on the peak. And, uh, [00:24:00] here, here we were, George and I and, uh, Michael and, uh, Tom Engel. And, uh, we're way, we're very high. We can see the, the summit. We can make the summit, but it's, uh, late in the year.

By then, it's late September. And even though the weather was perfect, it was cold. And even in all of our down in the sun, with no wind, it felt cold. So we could see where you make the summer. We also realized that we would have to have a bib whack in the dark without sleeping bags. Well, we were in our seventies, you know, mid seventies, and that we said to each other, well, you know, maybe a few years earlier we would've suffered a biv WC like that, but nah, we're not gonna do that.

So we went down and I got back to base camp before everyone else. The weather was still perfect and there was Tomas Hubbert. And I thought they'd be on the, on the climb. And he, what had happened was that the two climbers he [00:25:00] had with him, you know, after the Americans died and the other thing, they decided that the route was too dangerous, they wouldn't go on it.

Yeah. Growing up together. So I, and anyway, Tomas is a great guy by the way, and Yes, really, I really, really, I love the guy. And, uh, he does a lot for the Pakistan. He is the, the in pa in, uh, Pakistan. And Du he's well known. He is, uh, he's really appreciated. He's, he's, uh, he started a, a non-profit to builds build, uh, dorms for kids coming from the villages in the car duty to get an education.

They build dorms for them, places for them to stay. But the, you know, I went back to the, uh, Pakistan last summer. Yeah. With, uh, this time I knew that they were going to. The two partners he had were two American friends of mine, tad McRay and John Griffin. I had done a couple, first Ascents with Tad [00:26:00] McRay, and we did one in 2016 and Unlined Peak in Patagonia in 2017.

When I did it in 2017, I was 74. He's 42 years younger, but he reminded me. Wow. So we became good friends and uh, and uh, so, uh, Huber decided he wanted to go with Pat McRay and John Griffin, and I knew that they, that, that they wouldn't get cold feet, they'd go on the mountain. So I went in with them and for the first time in Pakistan, the first time ever I got a stomach bug.

Kush: Oh no. 

Jim: Yeah. So here I'm at 15,000 feet of base camp and I can't keep any food down. Oh gosh. And, uh, so I had gone in, uh, I also Jeff Powder who wrote my biography. He came in too 'cause he wanted to see the carrot, he wanted to see the late talker and I told him about it. He had been to Nepal several times when he got in and he [00:27:00] saw on the choc toy glacier, you're there, you are in, and what you look at to your left is ox three late talk one, ogre two, and the ogre.

Yeah. Yeah. Those four mountains are one of the hardest mountains in the world to, to climb. And uh, so he was blown away by it. And, uh, he had to go out one week. I was, I was gonna stay for a couple weeks and just sure. And, but, uh, he had to go out after a week because of business concerns. So I felt so bad with the, uh, not being able to keep my food down.

I went out with him. I went back to du it, so idu nine days early. I was originally gonna get to Du and then fly to Munich and meet my wife. So here I am Indu, not feeling very good with a stomach problem. I emailed her and I said, get me to Slovenia on Perkish Airlines in Slovenia. And I have a good friend here, SVO Carro.

Do you know that name? [00:28:00] He's a pro, I think so. I've I've heard the name. Yeah. He's a famous LP of Slovenia that has a Yeah, yeah, yeah. Theory. He has a film festival, so he is a good friend of mine. So he picked me up at the airport, took me to his home in a Mediterranean for nine days. He fed me really good meals and made me, he made me eat ice cream twice a day.

So by the time I wiped it out and picked me up, I was semi recovered. That's funny. Yeah. 

Kush: I mean, I, I, yeah, I can imagine that contrast from, uh, b bulky food at 15,000 feet in the Himalayas to, uh, Slovenian, uh, high cuisine by the water 

Jim: uhhuh. You know, 

Kush: Jim, I, I grew up exploring the Indian Himalayas. 

Jim: Yeah. 

Kush: And, uh, to some, some degree Nepal as well.

But, uh, exploring the karakorum, I think it'll remain a pipe dream because I was born in India and even though I hold a [00:29:00] US passport now, yeah, Pakistan will not give me a visa, I think, to explore that part of the world. So, yeah, I, I just have to live vicariously through stories like yours. You have spent all this time in Pakistan, in the Kara Currents, and thank you for reminding us of your famous, uh, climb, uh, 26 days, you know, trying to summit.

one thing in Alpine climbing is, um, is knowing when to turn back and. That decision can be as critical or even more critical than, than pushing on. So, your legacy has been defined I think maybe in equal parts, not just on claims you have completed. 

Jim: Yeah. But 

Kush: on, on just, um, [00:30:00] clients you've attempted.

So how do you make that call? Like, is there like a rubric that you use because there's so much effort sacrifice that goes into realizing this vision, go climb in the Karakorum or Patagonia with this team that comes together. So how difficult is that decision and how do you go about making it? 

Jim: Well, you know, um, okay.

I was born in 1943 and uh, my father was a college professor. We lived in, uh, Philadelphia. I was born in Phil. So when I was, uh, growing up, um, when I was 10 years old, 1953, I remember hearing about Everest being climb for the first time. And I thought, oh, because my father was a history professor. He didn't travel much, but he got me reading when I was a, uh, very young books on exploration in Pennsylvania [00:31:00] and Philadelphia in the, in the, uh, late fifties or early sixties.

You never heard about climbing. There weren't climbing gyms. So I didn't know anything about climbing, but I wanted to be an explorer. I really wanted to. And uh, and I thought to myself, oh my God, it's 1958. Everything's been explored. And, uh, then, uh, I got into climbing accidentally, and it was a tragedy that got me into it.

Actually. I finished my freshman year at university and during the summer, uh, I drove up to the Poconos. There, there, there's supposedly mountains in Pennsylvania. They're only 2,500 feet high. We drove up, uh, I had three friends with me. We drove up to the Pono, Poconos for the weekend. We're coming back Sunday evening and I'm driving, it's late at night and everybody in the car is asleep, but me, I'm driving, my last memory is rolling down my window.

'cause I was, you know, needed to get some [00:32:00] fresh air. Then I woke up, I fell, I had fallen asleep and hit a bridge and there were lights all around me. I had been knocked out by the steering wheel, but not badly hurt. And my best friend who was sitting next to me was killed. And another, uh, friend in the back.

So I'm 19 years old, I've had an accident, car accident, and my best friend is killed. So I quit school, joined the army, you know, maybe to punish myself, I don't know. In 1962, when I joined the Army, special Forces had just been, you know, green Berets that had just started. So when I got in the Army, I decided I might as well, I might as well make it interesting.

So I ended up getting into special forces in the Special Forces Ag detachment. And uh, we were training for a mission in North Carolina in the mountains in 1964. And, uh, we're way back in the mountains and we have two British climbers from the British SAS, which is their [00:33:00] Special Air, special Forces. We were all, we were taking a and a day off and they, there was a cliff nearby.

They put top ropes on the cliff. These guys have been rock climbers. And so I got to go rock climbing for one afternoon in North Carolina and I said, man, this is incredible. And that's what got me to climbing. When I got outta the Army, I ended up. You know, finding out where to go, uh, where to go climbing, it was more difficult in those days than it is now.

But, uh, that was a, that's what got me into climbing. \ All of a sudden I realized when I got in the climbing, uh, so I started climbing around Philadelphia.

There's little rock cliffs. Not very good. Then I went to the Tetons in Wyoming. 'cause that was in the ni early sixties. Climbers were there, there weren't as many places to go climbing. There was no sport climbing. So mostly in the East coast you had people climbing in North [00:34:00] Conway and, uh, the Schwan dunks and then, uh, Yosemite and then Boulder, Colorado.

And, but, uh, everybody, a lot of climbers would go to the Tetons in the summertime. So I went there and I realized that I could now fulfill my exploratory urge because now on a micro level, I could go someplace and climb an Unclimbed peak. And, uh, to me, you know, I could end up spending a night on a ledge no one had ever slept on before I could be on the summit of something.

So to me, that was fulfilling my exploratory areas. And that's still important to me. And that's why I think to be able to keep climbing for a long time, like I have, you have to. Physical attributes and, you know, my, uh, they have, you can't have problems with, well, whatever, but you have to have motivation.

And I've always had motivation, even when my climbing level dropped [00:35:00] off, because I still were to go back and find unlined peaks decline. So one thing about Very important. 

Kush: Yeah, super important. Uh, I wanna get back to the question of, uh, of a retreat. But one thing I'm glad, uh, thanks for reminding us of your early, uh, beginnings into the sport.

Uh, I was reading your excellent biography, survival is not assured. And one of the things that I, you know, that, that kind of stuck with me was when you were starting out, like right from your first trip to the Tetons. Then you went to Canada and you did a few things. There seemed to be this, uh, this confidence in you and, you know, maybe, maybe almost bordering on a bit of a billions.

Yeah. Right. Where you would just start climbing, you know, you would not, you would be using, you would, you would [00:36:00] go on a mixed climb and never having used ice gear and you would just start going up that climb. Yeah. Right. And, and you did that many times. I mean, this is a far cry from like, the careful like, um, you know, nurturing that happens normally, you know, the mentorship and you, you, you kind of learn things step by step, but you just saw something and it seemed like you decided to just go for it.

And where, where did you get that kind of, uh, I don't know that gumption from, 

Jim: I don't know, you know, but, uh. Has been the case. For example, when I started going to the Teton climbers that were older, that had been there for a while, they were very, very, um, you know, climbers would get a reputation, well, you can't climb that because it's, you have to really work up to it.

But, well, I, I ended up with my, my buddy Ross Johnson, who was in Special Forces with me. [00:37:00] We were there early when, um, Yvonne Ard gave his first ice climbing clinic in the Tetons. Yvonne had gone to, uh, Scotland and France and Austria and had check out all the different types of ice climbing techniques and then put 'em together into a new American ice climbing style.

And he wrote a book about it. And I, uh, Ross and I went to that first seminar. We were the only rookies there. The others were all climbing rangers and there. But, uh, so we, we took the seminar and the next day we went out and did the black ice Cool art, which was, uh, considered the, uh, hardest ice climbing at Tetons and Luis.

Oh, okay. It didn't seem too hard. And at Ard, uh, heard about that and he said, you guys should go to Scotland. And he gave us some names of some people. So we did. The next winter I went to Scotland, and [00:38:00] at that time, in 19, when was that 71? The, uh, ice climbing had not come a long way. They were still, uh, up until recently, they were still chopping steps and Point five Gully on, on Ben Nevis was considered the hardest ice climb in Scotland, if not the world.

So we show up. I'd actually become a good rock climber by that time. I'd climbed the so fe wall, but. But, uh, the locals, when we got there to Scotland, the weather was really bad, raining, terrible, and no ice. So we ended up going to this Ja, uh, bar called the Jacobite and getting, getting to know all the local climbers, and we, we could drink with them, we could keep up with them.

So they liked us and they, they knew that we were very, we hadn't done much ice climbing, so I remember they said, well, when the ice comes in, we'll take you on the, the smear, and then maybe we'll take you on the Italian climb. And that they, they were [00:39:00] working out a little climbing thing for it. Sequence.

This 

Kush: like 

Jim: stepping. Yeah. Well, the smear was a grade three and, uh, kind climb was a grade four. And the, uh, one, one of the guys who was uh, 0.5 go, he hadn't been flying for a while. So the, uh, this guy was gearing up to do it. That, that winter. Well, eventually the, uh, weather changed, got really cold, and the ice came in, in the middle of the week.

All those guys were still working. They had to climb on weekends. So Ross and I just put our gear on, hiked up to the base of, uh, Ben Nevis, looked at 0.5 go. He said, why not? And we climbed it. We, we went, we went back down and they, they were blown away that we had done that. And then the word got out to the Eng England English climbers that, these two yanks that hadn't done much ice climbing, just to put the 0.5 going.

So I think by us doing that, we took the fear out of the climb. 'cause then people started coming up and doing it. [00:40:00] So I, I've never, I, I don't know, I just always thought that a, uh, I've always been confident that if I, if I can't get up something or I can't do something, I can get away safely. And that's, that's one, uh, you know, I've, I've, uh, number of the, uh, persons since I've done in the alpine climbing have been on second or third attempts.

One thing you have to be able, if you're doing hard core. State-of-the-art, I alpine climbing. You have to be able to embrace failure. 'cause there are so many factors that come in that will keep you from doing a climb. Largely the weather conditions. So many times they're going into a climb and, uh, conditions weren't right.

The weather wasn't right. You can get up and they'd come back the next year and do it. So, uh, what, what was I getting? So my, my theory has always been getting to the top is optional. Getting back down is obligatory. Yeah. You know, you get back down, you [00:41:00] can always go back. If you don't get back down, that's it.

You're over, you're done.