Teamwork Carry To The Top

Last Sunday was a gift and a privilege. The kind of day that underscores the beauty of a group of individuals coming together to help their fellow human being achieve something big.

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@nerissa_cannon joined a @nobarriersusa event this summer, came away fired up and decided she wanted to climb a Colorado 14er. She was keenly aware that as a high functioning para, she would need to put out a rally cry for a team of folks to help her.

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The community answered her request in full force.

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21 of us showed up predawn last Sunday at the Mt Beirstadt trailhead and over the next 9 hours we assisted Nerissa as she worked her modified off-road chair by pushing, pulling and carrying her and her chair all the way to the summit and back down to cold beers.

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There was laughter, frustration, joy, tears, fatigue, pride, resiliency... all the good ingredients of a solid adventure.

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The most beautiful things take place when we embark on a mission that is uniquely directed at helping someone else achieve their dream.

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Thank you @nerissa_cannon for the opportunity to spend the day with you. What’s next?

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Also proud of @sheepdog_05 who put every bit of his 95lb frame into this mission.

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#beofservice #servantleadership #mountains #mountain #ability #leanintoit #dream #teamwork #teamworkmakesthedreamwork #getoutside #coloRADo #colorado14ers #travel #climbing #climber

Go Save Jesus On Your Birthday...

Due to spotty (read... none) interweb, this is a post from last Saturday.
Today we completed a 24 hr rescue of 2 Slovakians that were trapped on the Southwest face of Everest. More on that later.
For now... May 7. 

The older you get, the less important birthdays are... right?
Well, this one was pretty important. 

I woke this morning only to remember that it was my birthday after seeing the date on my watch as I quickly pulled myself from bed to get dressed. We had work to do and birthdays were an afterthought. 

We received a call last night that there was an extremely critical climber circling the drain at Makalu Basecamp (19,100 ft). The report was that he was very close to death and everyone there was concerned he would not make it through the night. All the other important facts like age, gender, nationality, history or chief complaint were not filtered down to me so this would be flying in to the darkness towards an unknown situation. Pretty much par for the course over here. 

We spooled up the helicopter and were just about to lift off as a massive cloudbank enveloped the heliport in Lukla. The pilot turned down the engine and we watched in awe as the helicopter was instantly swallowed by white. Couldn't see 10 feet beyond the bird. 

And just as with most important things in life... the timing was quite auspicious. Moments later the bottom dropped out of the sky as a monsoonal rain pounded down for a solid 2 hours. If we had lifted off two minutes earlier, we absolutely would have never made it up to rescue this fellow some 10,000ft higher up and surely would have been shut down from returning to Lukla... and potentially a lot worse. We were grounded and would have to delay till the next morning. 

I went to sleep last night not knowing anything about this sick person that was surely having the shittiest night of their life. Perhaps he/she wouldn't even make it through the night. Maybe this person felt like we had abandon them. I tossed and turned wondering how alone and scared this person must feel. 

So this morning dawns with patchy clouds and no wind. I was fired up to get going and hopefully save this persons life. We spooled up again to go see what we would find some thirty nautical miles and a lifetime away from Lukla. 

Makalu is a stunning mountain a couple dozen miles east, southeast from Everest. It sits very close to the Tibetan border as a stand-alone sentinel almost to distance itself from the crowds on Everest. To fly there requires crossing one of several high passes. On marginal weather days it's advisable to start evaluating the succession of passes from lowest to highest... obviously using the the lowest one possible, only using the highest one as a last resort. 

As we crept up the valley, my pilot Nischal and I kept gazing out the right side of the bird to see if the lower, standard pass was open. Not a chance. Completely socked in. OK, higher up the the valley we eval the next option. Nope. Massive wall of clouds. Higher and higher up the valley we go. Past the last, highest village of Chukung. Then over Island Peak Basecamp and into a sea of clouds. Captain Nischal and I started referring to our strategy as "connecting the dots". He would fly a hundred yards and then find a little "sucker hole" and take it, each time gaining some altitude. We continued to climb... now over 20,000ft. I would occasionally catch a glimpse of some Himalayan giant out of the glass in front of me... just popping through a veil of clouds. We were heading for what I thought was the absolute highest pass over to the Makalu region and it looked fairly clear on our side. As we drew closer we both let out an audible "shit" as we saw the impassable cloudbank resting just on the other side of the pass. 

I thought that would be the end of it and we would turn back, but Nischal in his 18 years of Himalayan piloting said... "Let's try the very highest one. Our last shot." 

OK. Let's do it. 

We climbed another couple hundred feet and followed a massive, corniced wall as it hooked around to the north until a small nook appeared. The captain deftly crested about fifty feet over the ridge down the other side. The helo altimeter read 21,000ft. I could feel that the helicopter was straining at its max, cutting through the thin air with every rotor spin. 

Five minutes later we came in hot on top of Makalu Basecamp. Our patient was a mid 30s, Spaniard named Jesus that could not walk. With the help of the ground crew of Sherpa, I loaded him into the helo till he flopped into the back floor. I turned his oxygen mask up and told the captain that we were locked and loaded. He powered up the bird and I listened again as the rotors thwapped through the thin air. 

Jesus was a very experienced climber with five, 8,000-meter peaks on his resume. He had never had any physical problems in his 10-year career. Throughout the flight he continued to describe to me in Spanish how he was convinced he would have died within two hours of our arrival. He had been suffering from a very elevated heart rate and chest pain for 2 days and told me he was losing his will to fight. 

We flew him straight to the Lukla hospital where his tears flowed freely. I told that him that today was my birthday and he had given me the best present ever. He gave me the opportunity to be a part of a renewal of life. I was a part of a team that gave him the chance to celebrate another birthday of his own. 

I can't imagine a more profound gift.
Well... that, and we got to rescue Jesus on my birthday.
Pretty dope.
‪#‎beofservice‬

Be Of Service To Your Own...

Yesterday’s morning radio comm began with a rather impassioned call from our team up at Everest Basecamp imploring us to get a bird up to Camp 1 as promptly as possible. A close friend of one of our 5 super-stud climbing Sherpas was at Camp 1 in dire straights. The evening before, while carrying a load through the icefall, this mid 20’s, highly experienced climbing Sherpa had an acute onset of left sided chest pain. The story we were receiving was that Ongchu Sherpa was writhing in pain, clutching his chest and gasping for air. And this dude was a stud… not some middle-aged, guided, western climber. This lead climbing Sherpa had multiple 8,000-meter summits under his belt including standing on top of Everest twice. His Sherpa brethren surrounding him were extremely concerned for him as he was clearly in overwhelming pain and from their perspective, close to death.

We absolutely needed to go get him.

And here’s where things get a little complicated… both of our helicopters were grounded down in Kathmandu getting their regularly scheduled maintenance. So of course during our mandated 4 hours of down daylight time, we have a “do or die” mission requiring a helo evac from 20,000ft.

Perfect.

Luckily for us there is another helo operation basing out of Lukla with a badass B3 bird and an even badder ass Kiwi pilot named Andrew. I had been intermittently chatting it up and swapping stories with Andrew during the month the two of us have spent flying on separate operations in and out of the Lukla heliport.
Good dude.
Sick pilot.

So let’s get to work.

Once all the operations guys made their deals and we were confirmed a go, Andrew and I high fived and started planning. We would strip all the seats out of the bird here in Lukla, clip me in via my climbing harness into a fixed cabin bolt and fire up to Camp 1 to scoop up this fella.

I have to admit that I was just a twinge skeptical that a healthy, mid 20s, super fit climbing Sherpa was having a heart attack… but the approach to medicine is always to assume the worse and work backwards from there.

The weather was manageable with gentle winds as the patient was loaded into the bird.

Then I got my first look at this guy.
He was sick and this was no bullshit.

The report from up high was bang on… true to the tale, as he collapsed into the helo he clutched at his chest and squirmed violently in pain. As I went in to move his sunglasses aside so I could more clearly see his face, he took a wild, scared swing at me. He was in pain, frightened and delirious.

The last thing you want in a helicopter is to have a passenger goin all UFC in the back of the cabin. I managed to get a quick exam in with some basic vitals and promptly loaded up a dose of Haldol. This would shut him down for the length of the flight and allow us to safely return down valley.

The 10-minute flight felt like an hour. Every minute or two Ongchu would appear to pass out for a couple seconds, requiring me to press him with a solid sternal rub after which he would pop up in another confused thrashing session. The Haldol helped to sedate him but he clearly still had some fight left hiding inside his pain and delirium. Each time he dropped out I prepared to begin CPR on him…but each time he would spring back to life.

I alerted Andrew of Ongchu's tenuous condition and how great it would be to get down valley as quick as possible. Then Andrew gave me a choice… fly at a higher elevation and arrive a minute quicker or stay lower in the valley and take that extra minute in flight time. I chose to get lower as quickly as possible as my likely diagnosis was starting to take shape in my mind and the higher altitude was not helping his case. I began to get a sense that this was in fact not a heart attack but an episode of coronary artery spasm, which is not all that uncommon with exertion at altitude. The process is just like it sounds… the coronary artery goes into spasm, which intermittently occludes blood and nutrients into the heart. It hurts and robs a heart of the thing it needs the most… blood. Typically these episodes don’t last a very long time but my guess was that the excessive altitude exacerbated this whole process.

It felt like we were in a rocket ship. Faster than I’ve ever been in a helicopter. Andrew very nonchalantly radios back that he has the helo pinned. 
No shit.
We are absolutely nuking down the valley.

We make the call to bypass the helo pad in Lukla and head straight to the Lukla hospital landing pad. I knew the local hospital had all the staffing and equipment to handle a potential cardiac patient and was an hour closer than traveling all the way down to Kathmandu.

Andrew requested the tower hold all other aircraft as we blew over Lukla and dropped down onto the hospital LZ.

We carried Ongchu into the ER bay, got him settled into a bed, hooked up to monitors and I officially handed over care.

Yesterday afternoon I ventured back over to the hospital to get the final diagnosis. Dr K.C. confirmed my suspicion… no signs of a heart attack but we both agreed that his heart was indeed sick and he was in need of further cardiology follow up in KTM today. That quick 10,000ft descent relaxed that coronary artery and his heart began to normalize.

Our Sherpa crew felt this one. They were scared for their friend.
It’s another clear illustration… altitude is no joke. It’s the invisible assassin. Can take a strong man or woman and drive them to their knees.

I’m very satisfied looking back on this one. Our team showed how well it could perform at a high level with absolute situational awareness.
No down days in the Khumbu.
‪#‎beofservice‬

Smoke Signals Work...

Solid couple of days... to say the least.
Yesterday received a call that there was a mid 50s Nepali woman with a possible broken back in some nondescript village 10 miles down valley from Lukla. We heard she had fallen out of a tree a week ago, busted her back and had been non ambulatory since the incident.
Finding her was gonna be the hard part.
We got some vague coordinates and set off from Lukla after directing the family members to start a fire and bring us in via smoke signal.
No shit. Smoke signals. 

After a few circles and passes we spotted the smoke plume and set the bird down on a terraced potato field amongst a speckling of small homes.
A hundred meters up the lumpy hillside we found the grandmother of the community laying in pain, nested up in her spartan home.
My exam showed she most likely had a lower vertebral fracture but fortunately appeared to be neurologically intact... no signs of paralysis. 

The community men bonded well as we directed them how to transfer her onto the backboard, down the hill and in to the bird.
A quick stopover in Lukla, a call down to receiving hospital in KTM and she was off in the bird with her husband down to the ortho/neuro hospital in KTM. 

This is another one of the many rescues we have already been a part of that fills my heart with pride. This gal had absolutely no other option. No car. No yak. No horse. No foot. She was stuck. Helo was her only option. 

As we were loading her into the bird I watched as members of her family kissed her, clutched her hand and cried over her. A dozen family members came up to me in succession, draping beautiful golden khata scarves around my neck as a token of thanks. I was laden with them as the helo door closed us in.
It occurred to me in that moment that we were providing that community more time with their matriarch. She will be back. And the community will be whole again. 

Had another amazing rescue today of super critical Sherpa from Camp 1... will save that story for tomorrow.
‪#‎beofservice‬

Sometimes a 60ft Barrier Is Stronger Than What’s Inside You

I felt the joy drain out of my body as soon as we rounded the wall and I laid eyes on it. Suddenly, reaching the summit with our 2015 No Barriers Warriors to Summits team seemed painfully out of reach.

Josh, Margaux and I had departed the team’s high camp earlier in the morning to scout the upper section of the route for our summit attempt the next day on Gannett Peak.  The previous day had been spent eyeballin the upper crux of the route, a left slanting couloir that appeared from a thousand feet below to have an anemic amount of shitty ice protecting it’s access. Even from our camp perspective we were skeptical of the upper flank conditions.  If that ramp of ice wasn’t safe to climb, the summit would be unattainable.

Gannett Peak is about as remote of a worthy climbing objective as any in the lower 48 States. Our team of 10 veterans, 5 guides and 2 photojournalists spent the better part of 5 days trekking deep into the Wind River Range of Wyoming, passing through some of the most breathtaking alpine terrain I have ever laid eyes on. Every one of the 26 miles of the approach were well-earned… not the least of which was the final mile leading into our high camp.  The “boulder field” was a linear mile of uninterrupted, VW Bug sized boulders that had the look of middle earth meets the album cover of Houses of the Holy. Our 2 amputees and 1 super-blind dude got their money’s worth climbing up, over and down each of the hundreds of massive rocks.

But in spite of all the fireball terrain and big-ass boulders, we arrived as a complete team into our high camp…. tired but satisfied and excited about what lay ahead.  All the lead up work had been done. Training was complete. The long approach was behind us. Only thing left to do was power through a solid summit day and stand on top of our objective.

That being said, my concern for route conditions grew deeper with each glance I stole of the upper route. As the sun cast down on the upper snowfield, the reflection off the snow mirrored a sheer face of what appeared to be very old, desiccated ice with a potentially broken up snow bridge leading to the climbable ice. The inexperienced eye would see it as shimmering beauty, beckoning for boots and traffic. But those of us with dozens of years climbing in variable alpine conditions knew better. We knew that weeks of higher than average temperatures would have melted the seasonal snow away, leaving only the thousands-of-years-old ice exposed. This is the kind of ice that is hard, crumbly and tough to protect. It’s the kind of ice that a few of the leadership team could handle with some minor effort… but the thought of putting our 10 participants on this terrain made my hands sweat and my spidey senses tingle.

Each of our hard charging participants have proven themselves competent and experienced in the theater of war… but their alpine climbing training consisted exclusively of our 3 training trips we had facilitated over the previous 4 months.

Not a lot.

Remember, our goal all along with No Barriers Warriors is not to make these men and women mountain climbers. Our mission is to provide them with a transformational experience that uses the mountains and rivers as a backdrop. Even from a half mile away I knew it would be tough to get everyone up and down that section of mountain safely and efficiently.

It was clear that we had to go up and lay eyes and feet on the route. As the expedition leader I knew that the ultimate “go or no-go” decision rested firmly on my shoulders, so I would need to go.  So on the morning of our “rest day” Josh, Margaux and myself departed high camp to go explore the upper reaches of the mountain.

Fun… just straight up fun. The climbing was complete with low 5^th class scrambling, glacial traverses, low angle snow climbing and splitter blue-sky conditions. We had a blast over the course of a few hours gaining an upper position. We rounded the corner of the “gooseneck” headwall and finally got close and personal with the upper couloir.

Shit.

The first obvious eye catcher was the 20ft deep, sunken bergschrund that separated the upper ice from the lower glacier. Bergschrunds are the features that form as the ice that is pasted to the steeper flanks of the mountain separate from the lower angle glaciers. Often times there is a snow bridge that exists that provides easy access on to the upper slopes. The same little snow bridge that existed when Charlie and Josh reconned the route 2 months prior still was in place. But now it was a sad little 1ft thick, droopy, unsafe marshmallow.

Well OK, we can get over that. Will take some work to get everyone over and back across that thing… but we can do it.

Then we looked up.

Above the gap we could now clearly see the condition of the ice that protected the summit ridge. Just as I had guessed...stretching from side to side of the couloir was 60ft of glistening, boilerplate hard, 10,000-year-old ice. Dripping water cascaded down its face. Once again I thought of a handful of ways we could get our crew up that section of ice but I continued to stalemate on how we would safely get everyone down this terrain.

But damnit…we knew that if we could just get by that 60ft of terrain we would have a fairly cruiser ridgeline all the way up to the summit.

Might as well have been made of 2ft thick glass.

I sat deflated as I contemplated alternatives. Each one ended in the same comment, “We might be able to get em up that way but there is no way to get them down that same section safely.”

In typical Josh fashion, the 27 year old ex SEAL continued to suggest multiple alternatives…. the best of which was climbing around the ice… “maybe we can circumvent the entire headwall. Let’s go check it out.” An hour later and some fun rock-block scrambling lead us to the edge of the headwall… and a 1,000ft sheer cliff.

No go.

Down we went… occasionally blasting out a “Fuck!!!!!” with disappointment. We had worked so hard to get here as a team and we would be going home without a summit.

Back through the sweet terrain and into camp to join up with the rest of the team. Ultimately to tell them that their much desired summit… the same summit that they had worked for and dreamed of… would remain out of reach.

I wasn’t bummed for my own summit aspirations. Over my 20+ year climbing career I have been turned around countless times due to unsafe conditions. I was accustomed to dealing with the “no summit blues”. All of the common axioms were a part of my long developed alpine mentation…

“The summit is optional but coming home is not.”

“The mountains make the music, we simply listen.”

“It’s about the journey…not the summit.”

And yes, all of this is true… but when I broke the news that we wouldn’t be able to summit, there was no cute little quote that would quell the disappointment the group clearly felt. As much as we had tried to frame up the possibility of not touching the summit, this was still a massive body blow to the group. Tears, frustration, disappointment. We all felt it. For many, it was just another one of the many obstacles that was keeping them from completing the ever-elusive “summit.”

Then the magic happened…

The team requested a participant only meeting… all the leaders were asked to step away.

Thirty minutes later we rejoined the team and listened to them request an opportunity to venture up, as a complete team to this high point… to go as high as they could… to lay eyes on this piece of unsafe terrain… to feel the power of the mountain and let it judge them for who they are… to conclude that they had done nothing wrong in this journey and to confirm that they had done everything right. It was just the mountain dishing up a shitty sixty feet of ice protected by a big ass moat.

Then I knew we had done our work. We had set the table appropriately. We had invited our guests and they had joined us for a lengthy feast. The appetizer was good… it whet our appetite and made us hungry for bigger things. The main course was delicious… we took in all of the miles and smiles and felt full. But alas there would be no desert…. the cake would not be served. We wanted to end on a sweet note but would instead have to reflect on the fact that our bellies and souls were full.

We had feasted.

The next day I began what would be a 2-day evacuation of one our participants that was sick as a dog and spiraling towards full kidney failure. He warriored through all 26 miles back to the trailhead on 1 foot, 1 prosthetic, a horse and a shit ton of grit and will.

That same day, September 11^th, the rest of the team climbed up to my same high point, took a look at the bergschrund and 60ft of ice and said, “Yep, I get it. Don’t want any part of that.”  Although there was still disappointment within, the team had now faced that barrier, looked it square in the eye and said, “F You!!!”

I heard stories of how each of the team yelled out names of their friends, fellow warriors and family that had been lost or deeply effected by the events of that anniversary 14 years prior. Powerful to say the least.

My best bro and long time adventure partner, Erik was the founding father of No Barriers. From the beginning the tagline has always been “What’s Within You Is Stronger Than What’s In Your Way.” I know that’s true most of the time.

But sometimes 60ft of shitty, unsafe ice IS in your way. And it IS stronger than you. And it IS blocking you from reaching your desired summit. And it IS NOT moving.

This is a fact of life.

When we encounter these immovable objects, it’s critical to be resourceful, look for work-arounds and think outside the box. Then, once we have exhausted all alternatives we have to come to grips with it. It’s not that I’m OK with it. I just have to acknowledge it’s existence. It’s not going anywhere. But we are. Moving on. Setting our sights on the next summit… the next objective.

And so we climb on.

It's Not About The Mountain

Typically when a team arrives on top of a well-earned mountain summit, the moment is met with a loud chorus of yee-haws, high fives and bear hugs. I’ve been a part of many of those scenes on summits all over the world over the past 20 years.

Not this time…

The 2014 Soldiers to Summits capstone expedition culminated last week with a summit of Mt Whitney in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. At 14,505ft, it stands as the highest point in the contiguous United States. When I first accepted the role as the expedition leader for this years capstone trip, I have to admit that I was a little uninspired with the choice of Whitney. Clearly it doesn’t carry the allure or prestige of a Himalayan peak or the exotic nature of a mountain down in the Andes. However our main sponsor, Wells Fargo, had requested in their support of the expedition that we keep our training and peak objective within the borders of the lower 48 states.  

You bet… we can do that.

In preparation for our final expedition in the Sierras, the team came together for two separate training exercises in the Rockies of Colorado. It quickly became very clear to me and my leadership team that this year’s group of injured veterans was remarkable. We had selected well. Each of them embodied the characteristics that we strive to recruit for each of our S2S experiences… maturity, a willingness to grow and heal as well as a solid, collaborative energy. More so than any of the past iterations of S2S, this team was ready to charge forward with solid intent.

We came together as a team during our trainings… we came together as a family while we were trekking towards Whitney.

The week we spent together deep in the Sierra backcountry gave us the opportunity to embrace the mountains and each other…  learning, growing and healing along the way. The mountains don’t always give us what we want but they always give us what we need.

As the morning of September 11^th dawned, all twenty of us stepped on to the summit of Whitney just as the nautical twilight was starting to cast its glow over the horizon. We took those final steps and gazed east, watching the day dawn over a country that is still hurting from those devastating events 13 years earlier. We paused to remember those that were lost both on that day and as a result of conflicts that sprang from the events of 9/11. In fact, the vast majority of the men and women on this trip had enlisted or were brought back in to active duty as a result of that horrific day…. their lives changed forever.

I’ve been on bigger and bolder mountains. I’ve been on tougher and colder mountains. But I have never been as proud as I was that morning standing on top of that mountain with those men and women. Quietly. Solemnly.

We hugged each other… one by one. Very few words spoken. Many subtle smiles exchanged with a knowing glance. We knew why we were there. We were there to remember. To honor. To heal.

Because it’s not about the mountain. It’s about the people.

Climb High
Jeff