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to all the exclusive extra content. Hello everybody, and welcome back for another
episode of Modern Outdoor Survival. We have a guest this week, or say
a guest. This was more of an opportunity for me because the other human
on this podcast is a guy called Andy Kirkpatrick. So Andy is a British
mountaineer. He is an author, best selling author, motivational speaker and all
round interesting character. That pause was there, I suppose because I and it's
difficult to describe this, but my career such as it was in the outdoors
started in the mid two thousands. Really, I've been climbing and doing stuff
in the outdoors in the years before that, but it was only I really
started taking it seriously as a career option from about I don't know, two
thousand and four, two thousand and five onwards. And it was around about
that time that Andy really started to come to a prominence. So around the
mid two thousands he was known for climbing big walls, very vertical sheets of
rock, things over a thousand meters high or thereabouts, things like the Troll
Wall in Norway or El Capitan, stuff like that, the sort of thing
where it's less about athleticism and it's more about siege tactics and suffering and being
able to hack away with effort at this ascent over hours and hours and hours
or days in some cases. So he was becoming famous for that, but
he was also really becoming known in British mountaineering circles for his talk. So
it's been the standard for authors to go and do sort of in person events
around that, around the UK or around Europe or wherever when they have a
book to plug, and Andy's stuff was different to that. Normally, you
just get the author up on the stage and he or she will have a
PowerPoint and some photos and they'll say, oh, yes, I did this,
I did this, and this bit was in the book, and this
bit and the anti brave Andy's stuff was. It was like stand up comedy
and it was a combination of real, down to earth expression about what he
was doing and what these places meant to him and how he achieved it,
combined with not sort of a working class ethic, But it was obvious that
this wasn't a public schoolboy who had had every opportunity in life and had the
opportunity then to go off and be a professional explorer without getting a real job.
This was a guy with severe dyslexia that he talks about in the books
and in those talks, and who isn't you know it doesn't You don't look
at him and think that is a honed natural athlete. You look at him
and go, that's Andy lives down the road. That's just a normal looking
guy. But when you look at what he has done, and I do
urge you to go to his website or go and look him up and see
just all these amazing outdoor things he's done, it he breaks the mold in
that respect. He's also somebody who has been inspirational to me, not just
because of the outdoor stuff, but because of the way he's gone about doing
things for himself. I didn't bring this up in the episode because it would
be weird too, but it was Andy and following his stuff and following his
post and what he was writing about, what he was talking about that first
put me onto the idea that you didn't have to go through somebody else to
learn to build a website, or to create content or to write. If
you could learn how to do those mechanics, how to do those very basic
things yourself, then you could reach an audience yourself directly. And looking back
on it, he effectively helped build my business, even though he didn't realize
it. So this was a really special episode for me. And this is
a longer intro than normal and anyone who's listening for the outdoor Survival content probably
I switched off by now, but deuced say with us. This wasn't really
an interview because I just let Andy talk and he can keep He can talk
for a long time because he has a hell of a lot to say and
he has done a hell of a lot. But he has an interesting take
on things and hopefully that really comes across in this episode. And we carried
on talking for about two hours after we were recorded, about all sorts of
things. And this is outside of our normal content, But if you like
everything else we do, I think you'll really like this. And I do
urge you to go and look up what Andy has done and his doing and
his writing, and go and try and find one of his books, one
of his best selling books. We've talked about them, I think in episodes
before, particularly one called Down, which is basically the manual for how to
descend, how to descend a mountain, a cliff face, whatever you want
to talk about. So this is a rambling intro, and I'm going to
shut the hell up now and just go to the episode. But please do
listen to this one. I think you'll enjoy it. So I've got this
is our third interaction. Now yours and mine properly, because like the email
setting up, this podcast doesn't count. The first interaction was I reckon about
two thousand and eight and you came to North Wales to do us on a
speaking tour and you came to climb didno on the coast and you did one
of your It was like the my mater told me that there's this climber,
is this mental climber who is like a stand up comedian. We doesn't talk.
It's not just a slide show with here's me climbing a thing. Here's
me climbing a thing. It is like a stand up comedy tour, so
I went along to that and it was one of those there's a thing that
happens with towns that are near an outdoor center, because when a mountaineer or
someone outdoors it comes to do a talk, everyone gets out the oldest down
jackets that are covered in bits of duct tape and things, not the brand
new, shiny one or a normal coat. They get there, Oh yeah,
I've been somewhere and done something down jackets and they all wear that to
go to that event, and you never see that coat anywhere else. So
that was the first interaction I saw you there and we had about three seconds
of talking afterwards. The second was I did a review for UK Climbing for
some trousers or something, and there's a photo of me wearing the trousers in
the review, and you commented saying, hey, it's it's good that they're
finally getting someone with a proper sized body on to do gear reviews, which
you know has stayed with me as a man of gentle size, and now
this is now. So this is my third interaction with you, and it's
not the greatest opening to a podcast, but yeah, it's not meant to
be funny. That's that I always tell people. It's kind of you know,
you don't like I did a I went climbing once with What's your man?
Um? Who does? He does TV programs where he goes away with
somebody Ed Burns, the comedian Ed Burns, and we went we went climbing
together. The ideas we had to go climbing together and then we were going
to do like a comedy routine like a festival, which is a kind of
bizarre because he had some sort of outdoor I think he maybe wrote for like
Trail magazine or somebody. So someone said, why did we get Ed Burns
and Andy Kettpatrick to go climbing together? So we spent this like romantic weekend
together in North Wales And the biggest problem was he didn't understand anything I was
saying because of my accent. So we were climbing. Is it Cluith or
whatever it is? That thing they're snowed that big CHOSSI pile of chos.
I think it's like a thousand foot long route. I don't think I've actually
been climbing before, which only found out at the end. And as as
we're so, I just said I'll start climbing. When the rope goes tight,
you start climbing as well. So I started. I just said,
I remember we started through a waterfall. It was like this big green sponge
and I just started up this green sponge with water coming over it. And
then the rope went tighten head started coming up and I kept I kept saying
to him, it's not far to the summit, and he was like,
there's something what. I was like, it's not far to the summer.
Like what's she talking about? What summer anyway? So um, So I
think we should make a TV problem called the Seven Summits. So um.
But there was one point quite near the top where we he was climbing up.
I'm sure you've done some rock some climbing. This is one. This
is like grass climbing, wasn't really rock climbing. So we were climb I
was climbing. I got to the top and there wasn't a beelis. I
just like sat on the top with the rope. I was like holding onto
the rope like there was no way this guy's going to fall off this Like
it's impossible. You have to want to throw yourself off. And I was
like just pulling the rope up through my hands, and I'm pulling the rope
at pulling. He meets a rope and suddenly the ropes started going out instead
of going instead of going up coming, it was going out. I was
like, I was like, I was like ed ed ed, and I
was like shouted ed and the ropes going out and out. And what happened
As he was climbing up, the rope got caught on a spike of rock
somehow, So as he was climbing up, the rope was pulling downwards around
this spike of rock. So as he you know, when he when he
climbed ten feet, he was going to fall twenty feet, and when he
climbed fifty feet, he was going to fall like a hundred feet. And
he suddenly realized what had happened, you know, he suddenly had this terror
of just realizing he was basically free soloing like Alex Honold's style up this chelsea
pile of grass. And he thought, I thought maybe I should untie the
rope, you know, and let him dangle fall down and then but anywhere.
So luckily he managed to climb over to the rope going up and he
flicked it off and suddenly I got all this slack and pulled him up anywhere.
So so he climbed up, and I think we did. I think
we did. We did Bristly Rate, not Bristly Ridge. We did the
Snowden Horseshoe the next day, just because that's it's there for on crib Gork.
But again he didn't I didn't realize he hadn't really done a lot of
scrambling. And there was one bit where he was he thought he was going
to fall to his death and he realized the last thing he was going to
shout was Andy, and people would question who this Andy character was, like
why didn't write shout for his wife or something? So um So anyways,
so that night I had to do a talk somewhere in a climbing wall for
the Matter Rescue. So we rushed down and we kind of rushed in there
and we almost had a lot of climbing gear on basically, and there's all
these climbers they're waiting. So so I did my talk and afterwards Ed eds
like a professional comedian, like successful comedian, and he's like, oh Andy,
can I give you some pointers? Like I've noticed that when you say
something really funny, everyone's laughing. You just keep talking, you don't stop
and give people pause to laugh. And and he's giving all these pointers about
being, you know, to be funnier, and I was like, I
was like, it's not ed. It's not meant to be funny, Like
I'm just I'm just telling this story. It's like kind of serious, and
everyone keeps putting me off by laughing all the time, and it's you know,
it's not meant to be funny. So then we end up coming to
this festival. So Edard worked out all this material, you know, he
had like like cards with all the with all his material for the for our
from Our Adventure. And I'd just been I'd just had some massive thing where
I've just been to Venice. I won an award in Venice for a book
like a translation, and I think I had to work on the Friday night
at the Kendall Fun Festival. Then I had to be in Venice on Saturday
afternoon to get this award, otherwise I won't get the money. It was
like a you know, like you can have the award, but you have
to be here otherwise not going to give you know, we're going to give
you, you know, some money, and then I have you back on
the Sunday to do this thing with Ed. So it was so it was
a mad I think I went Friday night. I got in my car,
drove all the way to East Midlands Airport, slept in my car. I
was like driving there was in such a rush that I was trying to wee
into a plastic bottle and like was just pouring it all off of myself.
Get to the airport, get on this plane, thinking of Wei and being
a total state. I arrived just thinking it's going to be a load of
climbers who are going to give me this award. But it was actually in
the like a Michelin starred restaurant in Venice, and it was like it was
like they were not like the Brits. It was like, you know,
like it was a massive deal. And there was only three people are winning
awards, and the other two were these old Italian academics, and then there
was me, and everyone looked like there was like a hundred judges in tuxedos,
and there was a translator who was dressing like a ball gown, and
I was there with my jeans covered in Wii and stinking of sweat and just
looking at Absolute Mac a crazy person. And then these and each of us
had to get up and say, uh, say say something to the judges.
And what I realized was as they said, I'd won two thousand euros,
which I was absolutely skinned at the times. That was great, But
on the night the judges would decide who was who have these three books that
won this prize, was that, you know, it was a total winner.
Would would get like I think it was eight eight thousand euros or something.
So I was like, I didn't realize this anyway. And I was
like I need to catch him a plane back as well, so I hope
this is not going to take too long. So I had to go and
each of these old men got upend to give this speech, and they were
so emotional, like yeah dad, the Gunda lad have any CEO and they
and everyone was like like in tears and they were so emotional, these guys
till it giving their their their you know speech about the book. And I
got up and I had no idea what I was going to say. And
I was like hello there, hi, and the woman was like hello Bonjo.
No, you know, you know, retardio and and I was like,
um, like until until the age of nineteen and never had garlic.
And that was and or being in gladiatorial compass, and so everyone was like
the woman was like hekkay. And so it was. And it was eventually
the speeches are all done out the way, and then each of the judge
had to each judge had to come and castro vote for which was the best
of the three books. So this book of mine was the trans Italian translation
of Psychovertical, which had nothing to do with In fact, the publisher got
in touch me recently and was like, oh, we'd like to republish Psychovertical.
I was like, well, he never paid me for the previous version,
so why not. So um. So they were all casting, it
was, and it was like so the casting things with a big box and
this the woman was like picking them out at the end like and it was
like, oh, Gondela the hysteria. And there was then that this little
marker would move along like a race and he was like the psychothetical and the
psychotical and he ended up winning this this prize. So I think on the
Friday almost had no money whatsoever. And then I suddenly had like a ten
thousand yeards or something, which was great, and then they were like and
then they were like, oh, now we will go through into the Michelin
Star restaurant. And I was like, I can't. I have to get
the plane back. I have to get on the plane in like two hours.
And they give me this big award and I was like, I can't,
I can't take it. So I've got you know, I'm getting luggage
and they said you must sign your book. So I was like sitting there
signing these books and realizing how smelly I was everything else, and this most
attractive man you've ever seen in your life kind of came up and he was
looked like Italians look amazing, not even like homeless Italians look you know,
look like anyway, So he came up and I was like, oh,
I'm really sorry, really sorry about the way I look. I'm just such
a mess. And he was like, no, Endy, you are free.
So I always I was thinking about that. Anyways, right arrive back
arrived back as somehow managed to get back to the Kendall Film Festival for this
thing. So um so Ed goes up and Ed's got some really good jokes,
like he has this joke that dehydrated food taste, like, you know,
taste awful, So he got his himself for deydraator so he could make
his own food that tasted awful instead. And and then it was then it
was my turn, and I got up and I was just telling the story
of going to this film festival and all that kind of stuff, and it
was kind of it was probably as equally as funny as Eds, but he
had nothing to do with going climbing. And then what had happened. I
actually climbed El cap in Yosemite with my daughter that year. So my daughter
was there, who was thirteen, and Ed was like, oh, why
don't we get your daughter up and your daughter can say something as well,
because you're sitting in the audience. I was like, I'm gone then,
So so he got my daughter up and he was trying to interview and he's
like, Hella, do you realize how amazing it is for like a twelve
years or thirteen year old girl to climb El Capitan? And she's like,
yeah, of course I do. And anyways, basically, my daughter ended
up being much funnier within me than either me or ed with with no training,
no experience whatever. So it was, yes, it was I always
I always said to people, it's because sometimes if if people think it's going
to be serious, like people are, they almost need like a laughter track,
you know, otherwise it don't quite know what to you know, how
how to take it. Is this guy actually telling the truth here or um,
you know, like I often say, like I've got three kids,
I've got one of each, and you know, and people like, it's
that's always funny in America because people actually that is actually, you know,
these these days, that's not funny anymore. It's kind of normal. But
at the time it was kind of funny, like it used to be a
boy or girl and the hairdresser. That was like in the nineteen seventies,
that was the joke. But now I've got four kids, so it doesn't
work anymore, that joke. It's balanced out now, wasn't it. Yeah,
So yes, I do apologize. If you thought you're going to go
and see this talk and it was going to be like Chris Bonnington or Doug
Scott or me as or somebody, and it was and it was me,
So it was pretty good. You weirdly have had an influence on my life
through business, my business development stuff. But I'm gonna talk about that later
because that's a weird thing to do at this part in the show. So
I'm going to ask the really boring question now. But yeah, my gets
into some topics of you were born and then you're here. Now, at
some point you started doing something in the outdoors. How did that come about?
Well, luckily or unluckily, I was born to My father was a
PTI physical training instructor in the He actually went into the RIF as a storeman
because my granddad was in the army. And this is a very long story,
is that my like all my stories, is my granddad. In nineteen
seventeen, when he was almost like he must have been like no, he
was already very young, his mother started beating up his father started being up
his mother, and he stepped in to defend his mother. And because of
this both of them, his mother and father, threw him out the house.
And he had the only thing to do in nineteen seventeen, you know,
it was to join the army. So he went to join the army,
which is probably I think at the time, someone turning up in nineteen
seventeen say I'd like to join the army. Was was, you know,
it's like someone's going to join the Russian Army now or something. It was
probably not a big thing. So he joined the army and he went to
Like I live in Ireland these days, so I tried to not tell the
story how my granddad was in the East uprising, like he was one of
the people like driving a tank. I remember looking all these photographs when I
was a kid of like tanks, you know, because in the East in
the uprising, and he had like tanks in belt in Dublin. So he
wasn't then, and he was in Egypt, he was in Palestine, he
was in India. He had a very interest a lot, like the whole
lifetime career in the army. And so when my dad was born, well
my dad grew up, you know, like you're going to go in the
army, going to go on the military anyway, and the best job you
can get is a storman because basically I think a storm and they don't really
do anything, just sort of you know, could take things in and out,
and his prep, you know, the storman's don't get shot and things
so it's probably a you know, this is this is like a lifetime soldier's
idea of a perfect job. You know, it's like to be the storman.
Really so he m So, my dad went into the RAF as a
storman, and within a very short space of time he realized it was the
worst job in the in the world. It was the most boring job.
You know, you had to have, you know, learning about you know,
what kind of nut this is, and a you know, and it
wasn't like it wasn't the cool stuff. It wasn't like, you know,
combat fatigues and things. So m so he decided to become a PTI instead.
So he became a PTI. So he did all his running around with
a vest on and and all that kind of stuff. And then for some
reason, I think at one place where he was a PTI, they had
a mountain rescue team r IF matt Rescue. So people a lot of people
don't understand the original matter. I guess the original mountain rescue we're like shepherds,
you know, the policeman would get the farmers and the shepherds and they
go looking for people on the hills. And in the Second World War they
had a lot of crashes in the mountains in the UK, so a lot
of people, a lot of pilots would potentially have survived and died of exposure.
So the RF formed these Matter Rescue Teams which were trained to go into
the mountains and rescue people or to secure wreckage and things. A lot of
wreckage, a lot of dangerous things on. So so my dad got involved
with the Matter Rescue Team and was just a young, you know, young
fit guy going the Matter Rescue Team. But he absolutely loved climbing, clark
climbing, mountaineering, all that kind of stuff, So I don't think he
really had any background in it. Like he grew up in hole where I'm
from, and it was like this as flat as you can find, and
it's like you might, well, it's like linky but like less kind of
sexy, like in fact it you know, the Humber Bridge joins Lincolnshire and
Humber Side, like two places nobody wants to go. That's why never worked
out, so U so yes, so he he then, through through being
a physical training instructor, he managed to go to just he went to Sardinia
with Nate with like natal kind of things and eventually end up being like an
outdoor instructure in the raf in Tawing in mid Wales and above near Aberdove,
like around that kind of area. So as a child, I remember like
growing up on these on in Tawing. That was that was my first kind
of really strong memories. And he was like he'd be getting up at you
know, like five in the morning and taking all these young guys and throwing
them in the sea and then you know, going walking and climbing. So
my probably one of my earliest memories of a class of them being on a
mountain was climbing cada Ridderus, probably one I was like five years old.
Maybe I was either four or five, but maybe maybe I was, But
I remember going up there and remember the top when it was very misty,
and remember the when I don't know if it's still there, like the shelter
on the top, and yeah, so I have a few few memories of
that kind of thing. Then, Unfortunately, I think it would be interesting
to have not interesting in your life if life continued how it was, how
things would how would things would turn out? But my mum and dad split
up when I was six, and my mum took me and my brother and
sister back to Hull for some reason. And and and I spent like the
rest you know, a lot of the next part of my life in the
place where there was living in a block of flats, the misery, mason
nets were cold, which were fairly fairly grim. And I think that I
think the trauma you have the trauma of your parents splitting up, but I
think it was the trauma of being wrenched away from so much freedom. And
like literally as as a small child, five year old, I could walk
out the front door and I could just walk out into the fields and the
sand dunes and all this kind of stuff, Like I had this amazing about
of freedom. There was very like a few times I never came back and
they had to get the entire army camp out looking for me. Remember the
days you can reallys to like drain lake, you know, put hooks in
lakes, all that kind of stuff, you know, But anyway, so
that you know you'd have them a mum would you know, My mum would
be so pleased to see how still alive when they found me. You're sleep
in a haystack or something that she would like belt me so um so yeah,
So so the wrench from going from there to living in a in this
horrible block of flats where you've got the lists, the lift stink of you
know what, and the you know, it's just it was just kind of
grim. Really well it wasn't grim. It wasn't grim. It was it
was completely it was just really really it was so different. It's only like
I think my mum was really poshed for some reason. I know why,
but you know, she's always going on that we didn't have garden. We
just had a We just had a you know, like a balcony, and
we didn't really you know, your kids like adapt so easily to where,
you know, to to wherever you are. So also I often say that
all the green spaces where we lived, like the grass and the you know,
the bits of the school field with trees in or uncut grass, they
kind of took on an amazing they were kind of your wilderness. And also
just next where where where this was, was a place called Hezel Road where
all the fishermen used to live. All of you know, people went in
the fishing industry. So just before we got there, the fishing industry was
absolutely decimated and they basically bulldozed this whole community and moved them to some new
town on the outside of Hall. But there was still the remnants of this
one's huge fleet, you know Robinson Crusow, he was supposed to have got
set off from Hall and there was amazing history, but all of it was
kind of you know that thing that the end of the Second World War,
like two thirds of all people who went in the countryside left. You know,
you had a whole like ecosystem and culture that just was vanished, like
in the space off months. Probably well it's probably the same for whole so
was this um so. But we used to go playing in all these one
s mighty docks, so there was like Victoria dark and Albert dark. And
as it was over time, I mean it was the way they were built.
They were built to last for a thousand years with these huge you know,
you know all nate you know, metal bridges and everything else and cranes
and stuff. And it was used to go swimming in the docks, which
looking back on it, it was like, I don't know how we didn't
die of bubonic plague or something. You know, they'd be like dead animals,
like floating in the water and all that kind of stuff. It was.
It was like hideous and we used to walk along the I used to
get the train out o out of hole and then walk along the river Humber,
which is the most polluted which was the most polluted river in Europe.
I think the time used to walk along the mode and we were ten,
were in like Vietnam, you know, we think we've ten were a rambo
or something would be in the mode like up to our waist. And then
I remember once my brother once we had an argument or something. So my
brother was probably like six or something, and we had an argument. He
stormed off to get the train home, but he wasn't allowed on the train
because he was so he looked like he just you know, he's actually covered
in mud. So yeah, he had to walk all the way home.
But it was yeah. So but but whenever you see my dad, because
by now he's in the matter rescue. He ended up being like a team
leader at the time. He ended up being like quite a he was I
think it was one of the longest serving team leaders in the RAF Matt rescue
teams. And the reason was was he was actually a bit of a rebel.
He didn't really fit in the RAF, but he was actually very good
at that that one job. Like he was too. He was too.
He was a bit of an I think it was a bit of an outsider,
you know, like those kind of people like I've met. I've done
it quite a lot of work for the military, and those kind of people
they either kind of leave or end up being going in the SAS or the
Special Forces because in those kind of units, they're the people that's where you
kind of need. Those weird people. You remember some I remember when I
was a kid, some guy it was training, some friend of my dad's
was training to go in the SAS. Remember him sating. You know,
I had this, you know, because obsessed with the army and everything else,
was a kid and he was like and he was like, the thing
is andy all he wanted someone who can can live in a hedge. You
know, yeah, you know, you have this idea like sas to be
like abseiling in into buildings, but it really they want someone who can live
in a hedge. So so so because my dad was involved in the amount
of rescue every weekend to be going out doing the training. So that kind
of cut into how which time he could travel to hole and see us.
So in my in my memory was a lot of space where there was no
Dad. But whenever he was there, he would try and do something outdoorsy,
so you know, going like hanging out of hanging you absetlling out of
a tree or or something or something like that. And then when we've gone
to see him once a year in Wales or in Scotland wherever he was living,
we've got we do the sort of climbing and stuff. So I think
I think that gave I know, you, like you need kind of meaning
and purpose in life, and I think that gave me some kind of like
I'm kind of different. Like it's like it's horrible to say it, but
like a lot of the kids that grow up with there, they kind of
never escape from. They're almost like born like into a mold of who they
were going to be. They're kind of condemned. Really, it's very hard,
especially and it's to do. It's not it's almost like your class,
your class. Like people will say I'm obsessed with class, but your class
is like what you're born into. It doesn't it doesn't matter how rich you
are, you know, It's it's like it's like kind of in, it's
in you forever. Really, You're like Michael Caine. You know, Michael
Caine could be a multimillionaire, but he's you know, and he's been rich
for sixty years or whatever, but he's still he's still kind of that person
really, so um so. Yeah. But but this this outdoor stuff,
it made me feel like I have something I'm I'm not like everybody else.
And I think also being a child at a military child who had lived already
in several places before I got to tow In, I think you have that
kind of outsider mentality as well. You know, you never ever feel like
you're quite fit in. And it were looking back like a lot of my
friends at school, like Hole was a place where one of the one of
the original places in the UK in the seventies and eighties where they just dumped
a lot of refugees and so so because they were also outsiders, I end
up having the best friends were like a guy from lad from Lebanon, one
from Ghana, you know, like a seat guy. And and looking at
that was why because I felt more, you know, I felt more like
it's almost if you're an outsider, it's almost better's going to live somewhere where
you are completely alien to that place, because I don't know, it doesn't
make any sense. Like if you're supported, if you're sport, I think
it's the same. Like if you're like like an African American, you can
never feel like if you know, like I've met African Americans who are into
Africa and the and you know, and all the Africans are like, you're
American and they're like, no, I'm hob No, no, you're an
American, you know. So there's that weird thing about being like I think
being outside is a really really valuable thing, but it's not. It's not.
It's not that easy sometimes. So so yeah, so I think I
had this um, I had this feeling that this was something that was special,
that that I could do. So so I left. I left school.
I didn't have any I didn't have any qualifications. Like later on in
life, tend out I was like really dyslexic. So it's only when my
when my brother was born, that my mother realized there was something kind of
wrong wrong with me. Like I couldn't I couldn't like tie my shoelaces.
I couldn't. I was I was in those days you just said you were
slow basically. So I kind of struggled with a lot of a lot of
things at school and I just school was it was kind of a punishing,
you know, punishing thing. You didn't come out You kind of went in
okay, and you came out pretty, you know, pretty torn up by
it all. So I just went I didn't go to university. I remember
kids would be like, don't do your A levels, You'd be overqualified.
So this is this is the thing about your Your class kind of holds you
in, keeps you. So so I just went on the doll and I
was living on the doll and I had this idea about joining the Marines for
some reason, and I think because because I know I knew the Marines.
They went and did stuff in the in the in Norway and had some kind
of climbing related stuff, and I didn't I really didn't understand. Like I
knew there was things like expedition, but I thought an expedition was like where
you you know, you're invited on it by Chris Bonnets, their Chris Bonnington
or something. I didn't realize it was just a holiday, you know,
like anyone can go on an expedition holiday like an expedition, it is a
holiday don't pay for. So it was just so I didn't really understand like
the idea of like the idea now you just google it and you'd be like,
oh, I can get a job in North Wales in an outdoor center,
or I can do a you know, some kind of qualification and I'll
get on my outdoor qualifications. But I think in the nineties that just didn't
It just wasn't. I remember at King's Lynn there was a course in King's
Lynn and it was something to do with outdoor education, and remember thinking or
American do something like that. But I couldn't have any air levels. I
just looked like I was an idiot basically. So it was that was a
bit of a problem. So I was so I was living, I was
living on the door, I was living in a squat. Things were looking
that great. But then I met I met my few your ex wife and
and and who was doing like a French degree. And she she was the
one who said, oh, I think there's I think you're not as stupid
as you think you are. You should go and get yourself tested or something.
So I went and got a had one of these dyslexia tests, and
the guy was like, after doing this test, he was like, well,
you've got like ninety nine percent right in your three dimensional problems stuff,
and you've got sixteen percent right in your your numbers. So you're basically,
you know, you're you're an idiot. Basically you're you must be like a
savant or something. So um so yeah, So a joke that I said,
like, what what we're gonna do with that skill? He says,
you need to get yourself a three dimensional problem solving jobs. I got a
job in a couble box factory, but I actually we ended up I moved
to London, and this was this was probably what what's so I did actually
go to the I did actually go to the Navy recruiting place and asked about
joining the Marines. But I told him I was I was going to London.
He said, when you get to London, going in London, you
know, go and ask in London. So I, um, so I
went to London and my my wife, future wife, she was gonna she
was trying to get a job as a she had a degree in French.
She was going to get a job with the government or something. So so
I was like, I don't what skills ever got. And I was like,
well, I do know a bit. I've got like Lofty Wiseman's Survival
Handbook, you know, I know of stuff like that. So there was
do you remember Survival Aids? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So Survival Aids
in London in Houston Station, they were looking for shop assist, a shop
assistant. So I went, I don't know, I don't even know you'd
find out in those days, like there'd be no no internet or anything.
So anyway, so I found out this job in the window. Yeah,
probably, so I went I went down to went to went went there and
the manager was this guy called Paul, who was probably quite clueless about the
outdoors, used to work from Mark Suspensers. But he was just like a
manager, manager manager. So so we go downstairs into this little little office
and he's like write in right right, you're in the jangle. What do
you need. I'm like, um, a hammock you You've got the job.
So um. Then he was like then he was like, what about
what about a down sleeping bag? And I was like I was like,
oh god, this is a trick question. This is a trick question.
I was like, no, it would get wet, and he was like
really, I was like, yeah, yeah, I get wet. You
wanted to down sleeping bag? All right? Yeah? Yeah yeah. Anyway,
so I got this job and I suddly found myself my first real job
in my life working in this outdoor shop with all these people who had like
degrees, you know, they were all they were all you know there there
were they were just kind of an odd bunch again, but a bunch of
outsiders. Really, he didn't really fit in. I think it was two
of them had like art degrees, and there was someone I had like some
degree in philosophy or something. I was the only one who wasn't qualified.
But in a shop when it comes to like talking about yeah, you don't
need a degree, you just need to be enthusiastic and and I learned.
I learned like a lot of stuff working there. I got made redundant because
it got assets stripped. So that was that was that was a lesson being
made redundant your first Joe. That was good. But yeah, I just
learned, like there was lots of there was a lot of weird characters came
in that shop. There was there was one guy who it was called Colin
and used to come in and you say, like, like, everything I
own is in two bags so I can move at moment's notice. And I
was like, that's a bit that's a bit weird, but that's not that
weird compared to compared to other people come in this shop. And then several
years later, well maybe three years later, Joel, who was the assistant
manager, he rings me up and says, you'll never guess what kind of
that guy Colin outside at the in five minutes something, Yeah, I said,
like he was a serial killer. And it turned out to be this
guy called Colin Ireland who was a serial killer who killed they kill like seven
people in London. And and when they when they'd readed his house and found
all these survival ads catalogs, and they'd gone gone to Joel and asked him
if he'd remember this, uh, this this character stuff. But he was
probably one of the most sane people came in that shop. You get all
these like like it was when the war was going on in Yugoslavia, so
you'd get all the what the walk correspondence coming in from the BBST, and
then you get like the mercenaries coming in or going over there, and the
British soldiers and the French Foreign Legion and it was really really mad. You
know. You get someone come in and that we'd have this like lofty Wiseman
survival knife you know, in the window, and someone would say, oh,
I've seen someone hecked to it with one of those knives, and he'd
like, yeah, do you want to buy it or not? Just you
know, And so eventually got eventually got sacked, eventually made with made redundant,
didn't get my resundancy money, and and and and then it just led
to like a series of working outdoor shops. Like I waked in North Wales.
I got this job in the Peak district. I was, so I
moved to Sheffield because that was where all the climbing was. I had this
idea of like I really suddenly got into actually going out with these guys at
the shop. We get the train from London on a Friday night after work
and go all the way to we just get you get dropped off it is
it Land for faken or one of these plays on the coast like Harpus eleven
at night and then we'd walk into the hills until about two in the morning,
walk around for two days and then get the last get the train back
to But those those those days, you're so keen when you when you live
somewhere where there's no mountains, when you're living in the mountains, you don't
do anything. You just just watch him tell us so we so we um
so yes. I got this job in the Pete district. And it was
actually Hamish Hamilton, who who was the inventor of the Buffalo Buffalo jacket Buffalo
Mountain Share, who had managed to make friends with by pestering him on the
phone, ringing him up, asking him about Buffalo, because I was really
obsessed with with with Buffalo, and I think I was always I think I've
always been interest did in niche things or like borderline stuff. And they often
think that people there's a lot of interesting stuff that just kind of gets forgotten
or doesn't get doesn't get enough interest because there's not enough stuff marketing or whatever.
So things like like monopoint crampons like And when I started later on in
life, I started writing gear articles that you know, would I would find
something and I would get really into it, and I start writing about it,
so I'd say it was one of the first people to ever write about
monopoint crampons or even even a lot of the sort of soft what became soft
shell, you know, a lot, a lot of stuff that people just
didn't really you know, know about. Sonnyways, I got this job and
he's just have to cycle like twenty four miles a day to cycle over this
from Sheffield about Sheffield down into into Hope and near dal work in this shop.
It's like a caving shop, which is again it was like kind of
interesting, like cavers are kind of interesting people. So and then eventually got
a job in a shop called Outside, which some people might have heard of,
and the in between had a few jobs. I'll move back to London,
went to London for a bit in the city, you know, and
but yeah, because I then I spent the rest of the rest of my
next until I was at thirty years old working in Outside in Hafsage And they're
a kind of I think again like I was. I was always so enthusiastic
and in that shop at the time was like a lot of really good outdoor
shops and you would come in I think someone say it was like come in
to buy a newspaper. You got to buy like a copy of the Telegraph,
and someone's like, the guy behind the camps, like, you don't
want to read the Telegraph. You want to read the Guard you know,
you want to read this or you know, Private Eye or something. He's
like, no, I just want to read this. That is why I
want to, you know. So that it was one of those outdoor shops,
or someone would come in and say like I want to buy a gothic
shacket. Oh you don't want to Oh I don't want a bout you gotic
shacket. You know about sympathext jacket, And you would like so confuse them
that they wouldn't buy anything, you know. But it was I guess it
was that thing about you. You're always selling the next car, you know.
You know, so you'd often tell people to spend less on something,
or you would try you always say like, well this is what i've this
is what I've got, And then people would think, well, this guy's
an absolute you know, obsessive about gear, like if he's got it,
must he spends his whole life in here. So there was so I worked
for this guy. Dick Tambull who. Which is which is kind of weird
is that Dick Turmbull was well known for trying to climb the six North Faces
in winter in the Alps, and he had written this article about winter climbing
in the Alps. And when I was working in the other shop down the
road, the caving shop, had read this article and I was like,
oh my god, this is this is what I need to do. I
need to get out in the Alps. Did even know what the Alps were.
I didn't even know, you know, I didn't even know the guy,
you know, not what the Guidebrock was like. So I read this
article, I was inspired, I need to go and do that. So
I I packed in that job and I had a friend had met met in
chef Field and we got the bus from Sheffield to Shammony. I think it
was one hundred quid. I don't think it'd ever really been, you know,
obviously at that point, and I was like everything was so it was
like I can't believe it, you know, it's so exotic, and it'd
be like next stop Victoria bus station, and so it was. We had
this like two weeks in the Alps in the wintertime, which was a complete
waste of time, you know, to go there, you know, with
not knowing what what in what's what was? It was a disaster, But
we didn't die. We did all sorts of stupid things and but we didn't
die. But for some reason, again it was this like alaw wasn't very
good at this Alpine stuff. It felt it felt different, and I think
I was. I was always really obsessed with science fiction as well as a
kid, because it had a very good imagination. So this kind of going
to the Alps or being on a glacier in winter and there was nobody around
in the storm, or digging a snow hall, or being you know,
in the night, you know, in the super cold temperatures. This was
like being in a science fiction film. This was like being on a different
planet. And I think those two things probably came together. And then so
what was weird was then by the following year, I was actually working for
the guy who had written this article. Anyway, so one day Dick Tambil
comes up to me, It's like, here, you've been to the Alps
in the winter, And he made he made a stupid assumption that if I'd
been there in the winter, I must have been the Lords in the summer,
I must be super experian And he was like, do you want to
come climbing with me this winter? I was like, oh, yeah,
yeah, that'd be great, like you know, and when he went away,
I was like, oh my god, Oh my god, what I'm
going to do. So anyways, I end up going to the Alps with
Dick, and I remember we drove there there days in the days before we
went on the plane. We drove away from Sheffield to Shammony and I remember
We're driving through the Alp, you know, driving through the you know,
through France, you know, two in the morning, and Dick's like,
right, need to stop, you know, so st I couldn't drive at
the time. Stops a car, pulls out this huge down jacket, puts
it around himself and falls asleep. And I'm just there in my my fleece
jacket and just like I'm just old, you know, for a couple of
hours, just like real really cold, debts say anything anyway. So Dick
eventually wakes up, looks at me. He goes like sleep OK. I
was like, oh, it's a little bit cold. You're like, you're
not one of those people that complains the whole time, are you? So
we get we get to the mountains and he wanted to do this thing called
the Drew cool what was the drew? Nor face the drew? And anyway
it was it was mad. It was madness. It was madness. We
almost died and it was god, it was but any but but it was.
I think there was that. It was only eventually. I think it's
only on my third trip to the Alps I ever actually climbed anything. And
it was a route where it was so grim that the guy was climbing with
basically gave up climbing and never climbed again. A friend of spare. It
was cold, and and as I was climbing, I was like, this
is I really really hate this, but this is like the only thing I've
ever done that kind of makes any sense. And I think that's probably when
I sort of thought like, this is what I'm gonna have to keep it,
this is what I need to do, and that's I kind of led
into. Eventually I wrote an article about that climb, which talk me about
two years because I was totally illiterate at the start, and then we get
that got published in an American Climb magazine, and that was kind of the
beginning of a career as not just working the climbing shop, like working writing
and getting up on the stage and telling a very a very long story to
a very short question. So I forget what no no I was going through
that I was thinking, should I just break into this and no, no,
I want to hear this story. So I've got some notes here because
I am there. You were saying a few interesting things there that I thought,
Oh, yeah, I want to look back onto that advert. If
you're annoyed by the advertisements in this show, then why not become a patron.
If you do, they're all magically away and we'll reward you with extra
bonus content. Now back to the show. You said about the outsider thing,
and I remember I was listening to a podcast a year or so ago
is Brett Weinstein Weinsteinstein, which the one that's not the one that's not half
No no U, And he was talking about something called the weird sheep concept.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and that you that's it's an evolutionary
trait that you've got to have outsiders because they're the ones that go off and
find different ways of doing things or look at a problem in a different way.
In any kind of tribal society, including a flock of sheep, you've
got to have the one that's a bit weird, the one that does things
differently, because that often helps solve the problem that no one else can solve
because you can see it in a different way. And you mentioned that that's
a common trait within the special forces or people who do specialists roles within whether
the military or maybe the police or things like that. And you know,
we've got a few of those people in our audience, I know from other
interactions. Is that something that you've seen in yourself, you know, is
it something that's continued in your career in the outdoors because you to me,
you look you know from I've been following you for what nearly twenty years twenty
two, it's not fifteen years now, and your stuff is different to other
people's like everyone else. When I'd read an article from people and they're saying,
yeah, this is the best way to do something, because it's the
best way, whereas your article or your book would say these are twenty different
ways of doing something. I've tried all of them. This works for this,
This works for that but sorted out yourself. And that's a different approach
to what you would see from the rest of climbing literature, climbing instructors,
for want of a better word. Is that something that you noticed through yourself,
you know, once you started doing stuff in the outdoors under your own
steam and doing bigger things and going on to do the Arctic stuff and the
big wall stuff that you went on too, did you did you carry on
being an outsider or was there a point where you kind of you fell into
the pile with everyone else where you were doing the same thing. I think,
I think, I think I am like an autodid autodidectodiect. Remember I
wanted to I wanted to know how to make a harness, probably when I
was it was like fourteen, and I and I rang my dad up and
I was like, Dad, like, you know, how do you make
a harness? He said, I'll send you a book. And you sent
me this book with a load of white webbing, and I kind of had
to, you know, make this harness myself that probably just would just fall
off as soon as you, you know, took your weight off it.
And and yeah, I think he had that approach of you need to let
work it out for yourself. And and I think like I kind of had
to lend to read myself, like I just like I had a very I
lent to read very late in life, and probably I'm still I'm still trying
to learn lent to write very little late in life. And I and I
think like even as an adult, like even now after I would I can
spell. You know, I've written nine books, and I've won lots of
awards for wright for writing and stuff and and that kind of stuff, but
I still can't spell, you know. I still don't know what a present
imperative is or a now nor a verb. But I literally do not know
what a verb is. And although my kids will tell me it just it
just doesn't stick. It just kind of it just it doesn't stick. So
I think I think like I call it like my son they said he had
at tension definite syndrome, And I think it's called a tension focus syndrome because
you just can't focus on anything you're interested in, no matter how much you
try. So when if I was interested in trying to solo a big wall
or climb a big wall like climbl Capitan for the first time. You know,
I'm living in Derbyshire. There's no big walls, there's the highest routes
for twenty five meters, so I just there was no internet. There was
one book that was like tiny, little, tiny, almost like a pamphlet
type book. So I just had to go to this quarry and just work
it out for myself. And I had all sorts of near death experiences because
I was climbing by myself. So not only was it time to tie how
you aid up a crack or something, and how your duma and how your
haul, I was also learning how to solo it because it was only by
myself. So through that, through that process, and you just had to
work out yourself. There was no one to ask. Maybe if someone came
in the shop, I'd say, oh, you've climbed all cap like what
do you do? Like? You know what? How you know, you
often make a lot of problems up in your head. They just aren't true
in the you know, in the in the in the at the time when
you once you get there. If in my mind it's always dark when you're
imagining something, but when you get there, it's always light. It's always
it's always very clear what to do. So, um, so I think
that that like even lying too ski, Like I never I didn't have to
ski. And I went to Greenland, ski across Greenland, and I never
even clipped the boots onto the skis in my life, Like and so you
know, you're setting off it to ski like five hundred miles. It was
called Greenland and with this guy who's like Finish Special Forces and I'm like passy,
like how do you clip the boots onto the skis? It's like,
oh, you're very funny, ha ha ha. I'm like, yeah,
but how do you do it? And but five hundred miles later, I
was pretty I was pretty good at it, you know what I mean.
So there's so so I think if I've I haven't got any qualifications, so
that probably helps, you know, Like if once you've become an instructor,
there's quite a quite of a rigid this is way to do this because you're
trying to you know, it has to be very to a formula like we
know this is going to keep you safe and you know, blah blah blah.
But but if you haven't got any qualifications, you kind of do what
you want. And one thing I noticed I've climbed all cap thirty something times
that I five times, and every time I did it it was different.
You know, if I had a really rigid way of doing it, it
wouldn't work the next time. So things that things that stopped doing the second
time, I might start doing again the fourth time, or the equipment might
change or so it was that and people often say, you know I did.
I was like guiding people and I would open the boot of the car
and like everything would fall out. It was just absolute mess. And people
would say, like, how is your everything in your life as a mess,
But the second you start climbing, everything is where everything works flawlessly.
And I was kind of like, well, like if everything's like on a
wall, everything's chaos. It's ropes, it's the wind, it's the gear,
it's dropping stuff. So being adaptable to that situation in your if every
day, every day life's like that, you're always losing your wallet, you're
always you know, running out of money, you know this kind of stuff,
then on the wall, if you're really really rigid, and if you're
a perfectionist, you just get destroyed. When when it's you and you know
you're on incompetence and nature and everything. So yeah, like I often,
I often often have this thing where I've been with people who are very qualified.
There are level five this or level you know there there's someone who has
been training for something all their life to be competent, but when things go
really wrong, it's never quite in the way they've trained. They've been told
how it would happen. You know, some something happens and they kind of
they don't know how to adapt to that situation where you have no training or
no expectations of what's something that can happen. You may be you may be
able to deal with it, you know, you know, you know,
people are not written someone's name on their forehead. I've not done you know,
some some stupid thing that someone told you do on some wilderness first head
cast. So yes, you haven't got that sometimes easy. Yet there's a
thing that improvisation and being able to it's not just think on the fly,
but it's also being able to see the wider problem. That was something A
couple of days ago, we interviewed a guy who who is a senior Seer
instructor for the Mystery of Defense. So his podcast, this episode would have
been out by the time this one comes out. But we were talking about
that about where things have to be prescriptive, you need to do something in
this way, you have to do an then c and where it's just knowing
principles and well, if you put these things together in this order, this
will happen. But if you miss this one out, it'll still work,
it just won't work as well. And the thing he came up with was
if other people are expecting you to do something in the same order, so
they're expecting you to do this, then that then that so that they can
come and get you or the everyone around you is working to that same standard.
That's the point where everything has to happen in the right order. But
the vast majority of real survival training after that then is is improvisation almost because
you can't train for every single scenario, and particularly if you're training once every
five years or so, if your aircrew and you're you're not doing survival training
every weekend, you're going off to do a very specific course and then you'll
have to do a refresher again in five years time or whatever. Maybe there's
a parallel with that in in climbing because if you're climbing as a pair,
then the guy that the leader, you're got to get to the top.
You're building the b lay. The person the second has got to got to
expect that leader to do things in a certain way, to give the calls
in the right order, or give the right call, or at least they've
built the b lay correctly, they've equalized it. They've put everything incorrectly.
And I always found that when I was doing because I pretended to be an
outdoor instructor for about fifteen years and I still am now, but I always
in the first ten years of doing that, I was very entrenched in the
this is how you do things because that's the way I was taught, and
that's the way everyone I looked up to they did it that way, and
that's the proper way of doing things. And I was in mountain rescue at
the same time as well, which really didn't help. I think I was
an insufferable ass actually for their first ten years because I was. I was
a bit My partner is sat there nodding at me. I felt like,
yeah, by the book, and also like passively judgmental on everyone else because
they weren't doing it. By the book and at some point something clicked that
it was no. No. The improvisation is the more important part of that,
and the greater understanding comes from knowing when to be when to be prescriptive,
when to do things in the right order, when to do things you
know, A, then B, then C. And I felt like I
understood things better then. But also, you know, you have those moments
in life when you look back at who you were and you think, oh,
god, yeah, I guess you meet people this guy Carston, who,
like I did a lot of climbing with Norwegians. Now Norwegians really have
the stuff together, but they're they're you know, the idea like the pole
that our our polar heroes are people who you know, they set off,
they get frostbite, frost biting genitalia, they have to like saw them off.
You know, they lose all their friends, die in a cravass,
and they keep on going and when they get there, they've gone the wrong
to the wrong pole or something they fall off the edge of you know,
you know, they die, but they die heroically. You know. That's
how we're kind of our heroes. Where the Norwegians, it's basically guy goes
somewhere, nothing happens, it comes back them when he set off, and
you know there there they're so good what they do, but they don't.
They don't. It's not it's not like false bravado or try. There's not.
There's no, there's not a lot of an ego there. He's like,
well, this is just what we this is, this is just what
we do. And this guy cast and he used to used to take like
this the Norwegian Special Forces and these are people who've never been climbing in their
lives and Caston was like a top level climber and he would just get to
the somewhere like in Lafoten Islands and they'll be a big like big big rocky
mountain, big big face on the mountain. You're like find with high and
he would he would just give them a rope. He would just give them
the gear with no experience of how we've got to do with it, and
he got attack and he would just pointing them at the mountain and that was
it and he said like it was but it always whacked because they would you
know, like it's not actually that difficult. Yeah, you know, if
you can strip a machine gun and you can and you know, all that
kind of stuff you'll quickly work out. So sometimes maybe you kind of over
complicate it. I think. I think later in life, I feel like
I feel like I'm at set in service to climbing in that I want to
pass on all the stuff that's, um, that's important, and none of
the stuff that's not that important. You know. So if I wrote a
book, so this book. Written a few books, the technical books,
so one of them is, um, you know, I wrote this book
Me, Me, Myself and Eye, which is how to solo a big
wall. And it has has stuff like someone said, like in this book,
it's got a bit about taking a luggage strap so you can strap your
whole bag onto a trolley, Like that's why why you know, why you
waste? And I'm like, have you ever have you ever pushed like,
you know, one hundred and fifty whole bag through an airport or into a
lift? You know, like that is that's probably the best bits of advice
in there. So it's like getting away with a lot of getting away of
all stuff you can wear for yourself. And it's all the stuff, all
the stuff where it's like ah, like you know, like not tying both
ropes together when you're abseiling, you know, at the end, so the
so the kinks can work the work the way out, or tie figure of
eights so you can clip them into you if you get to the end,
and you know. So it was all these little bits of information that you've
learned, the hardware that you're trying to pass on to another generation. And
maybe some people won't. You only you only understand some things. You're like,
don't pour fuel into a into a transja while it's still lit. You
you only you only understand that lesson you know when you when you've done it,
or you know, don't try and light an MSR stove by looking down
the you know off you know. So it's there's a lot there's a lot
of things like petrol is a petrol is something like that is that like petrol
is something you think you know what petrol is until you've got it really badly
bent by it. There's always like video other people like you know, putting
petrol to someone's letter box and then trying to light it and blowing themselves up,
and like that guy's like I wish I hadn't I wish i'd known.
You know, that's why they're not actual in tanks. You know, they
have diesel so um. But but yeah, it's that. There was there
was a really good story. It was someone they were in like Delta Force
or something like. In the US Army, you're not allowed to put your
fingers. You're not allowed to put your hands in your pockets. You know,
if someone sees you with your hands in your pockets, it's like absolutely
whatever. So this guy works, you know, works in the military for
you know, twenty years and eventually gets to the Tier one ultimate fighting unit
and we tends up on the first day. The guys stood there, the
guy, the instructor stood there with his hands in his pockets. There goes
hi, guys, do you know why I got my hands in my pockets?
And they're like, no, sergeant or something, because I've got pockets.
If you're not, it does not make any sense. It just makes
sense. There was a thing saying that thing about you know, trying to
do things by the book and I'm trying to be like everyone else. There
was something I noticed once I got into my own swing of of comfort because
as the thing, because I stopped my first qualification I got was Mountain Leader,
which is like hiking leader without winter conditions in the UK, so it's
fairly basic stuff. But it took me a couple of years of working with
that award that to me to actually get my head together with it as to
you know, what you do with a group, how you interact with people
in the mountains when my clients that kind of thing, and I realized it
was something that I was comfortable doing, which was talking about my mistakes,
which wasn't really prevalent within the outdoor professional community as it's kind of they call
themselves and you don't talk. You only talk about, yes, I did
this thing, and I did this amazing thing, and I did this thing,
and oh yes, someone I was climbing here, whereas I be talking
about, yeah, I fell over over there doing that, and I did
this, and yeah I got a bash my headloon in this because I was
stupid. And I think that's a valuable thing for any kind of instruction,
because you are now an instructor, whether you like it or not. With
the podcast, with the books, you know you're doing it by proxy,
but you are sharing the benefit of your information and your experience There's a thing
I think that all instructors should do, which is normalize failure. Normalize that
iterative failure of you make a mistake, you go on and make a different
mistake next time, and then you make a different mistake. And what I
say to clients now is that I anything I got right the first time by
fluke is of no value to them because I can't tell you how to replicate
that. But I can sell the sum total of all my mistakes every time
I've cocked up every mistake I've made of firelighting or stuff in the mountains,
or doing stuff on the coast or on rivers or wherever it might be,
that all the cock ups have made doing those things. That's where the real
information is. And again that's something I've always value with your content, whether
it's you speaking, whether it's the films, the books and everything else like
that, you seem to embrace those failures. I think there's a lot of
them, That's why. But yeah, but that's the thing, and I
think you're willing to experiment. You were willing to experiment, And just like
you say with the Big Wall stuff, get get the world's smallest book on
Big Wall climbing, go to the probably not the worst county in England to
try and learn how to do it, but you know, get on with
it and then nearly die because of flaky bits of rock of a quarry falling
off on you. But I think I think, like often, like I
went through probably forty years of life, think I'd think I had low self
esteem, but actually I didn't. I just thought I did. I was
actually like I was massively common infident, but I just never It's like it's
like probably when I was also probably the same time someone told me I was
very charming, you know, to to women. I was like, really
really, you know, so like I'd say things like I'm not clever enough
to get a degree, but if I did a degree, i'd get a
first like like there's some there's some weird, there's something kind of weird,
and often I think I think I'd often write myself off so there's no ego
there, there's nothing to there's nothing to lose. Like yesterday I was out
on the on the corrub this lake where I think it's the biggest lake in
Ireland, one of the biggest lakes in British child and I was lighting a
fire. There was my son who was like two, and there was a
kid who was four, friend who was four, and then their dad.
And I was like, oh, I light a fire because we're on the
water levels go up several meters fund of how much rain has been here.
So I started making this fire. But everything was wet. So I started
making this fire, and I kind of knew, like a lot of it's
wet, it's probably not gonna work, but you know, But there was
no like, there's no like ego, like I didn't work, that's it.
It wasn't like I've got a lot of pressure now I really need to.
I really need to, you know. And I kind of got I
got the I got the fire going, and but I wasn't. I wasn't
like like on the on the way up coming back from this island in she
Gale, it's cold, so it's a it's a fair distance and the core
of this this lake, a lot of people drowned on it because you've got
these big mountains at the end and it's very it's got a lot of shallow
parts of rocks, and when you get a high wind as the fetch is
quite, it creates a lot of very high waves and fishermen are always drowning
on there. Any So, we're going we're going back and there's like four
adults and three chick kids in this boat. Me we're going along and the
boat the engine just you can tell like the engines got going. It's and
you start saying like, I'm hanging on here. You know, I'm not
feeling very well. You know, I think I'm gonna you know, it's
like just keep just keep going, and and any of the engine started working,
and you're there on this you know, it's getting dusky and you're on
the slick with all these people and you and then it's not ego. You
just have to pretend that everything's okay. That's what the mountain instructors meant to
do, or the mountain guide is when something goes wrong, they just have
to say, oh, don't worry about it. You know, this always
happens, you know, you know, a stupid engine and anyway, I
see you pull the engine a few times, it comes back, it comes
back to life, and you're you're going along, and it's that I think.
It's that's not ego. That's um. Just to remain calm when you
when you when something's not going right, and I think when you when you
so back to this low self esteem thing. It's like, often I would
solo big walls because I didn't feel I was good enough to climb with somebody
else. I think that I would think they would see that I was being
um, I was incompetent, or didn't really know what I was doing.
But when you're by yourself, you don't have to worry about that because there's
there's any of you there you can make as many mistakes. And also you
can't blame anybody. You know, all the mistakes and all successes belong to
you, So you become very accepting of of either in a way, and
then you know that's the way. That's how you end up soloing one of
the hardest routes in the world at the time because you don't feel able to
climb with somebody on the route half as hard because you're not good enough.
There's there's some weird, weird stuff going on. But I think, yeah,
I think that I think the ego thing, that you always have some
ego, But I think I think sort of not being like look you're like,
look, I'm not qualified, you know, you can't. You can't
sue me, you know not, You're not you know so it's uh,
maybe that's a cop out. You know you have enough, you have enough
experience to holp do it and work out the things you can't do quickly enough
so people can't I don't notice. But yeah, just just adapt to your
own your own incompetence. Do you do you prefer doing solo trips or because
all the trips you've done with other people, that seems to be almost an
element of challenge with the other person being there, you know, doing things
with people who are severely disabled, or doing things with children, Well that's
gonna be in context, isn't it. Well I think I think Alex Alex
Huber was like, you know, super one of the best climbers in the
world. He once told me that I was I was, I was self
sabotaging. But everything I did, like I was either swallowing it or climbing
it in winter, or climbing it with a blind person or something with a
ginger hair or something I'd always I'd always been doing something that almost would be
an excuse why I didn't do it, But then when I did do it,
it just made it more interesting, you know what I mean? Yeah,
because this is, you know, ostensibly a survival podcast, but the
way we talk about things is that the best survival training is to do a
job before you get there, do a good job while you're doing the thing,
and sort of review it well when you get back afterwards. But I
always classify survival as as being something unplanned. If you're going out planning to
do a survival thing, then you're let you're going out planning to do survival
camping. You are just going camping, but less comfortably or with fewer things.
And for you who someone who's habitually put yourself in harm's way, you
know you've done dangerous things willingly, again and again and again. Do you
have a sort of a point where you switch from this is something I plan
to do to this is now a survival situation or this is the edge of
oh yeah, this isn't going as well as I wanted it to. Now
I'm going to fight for my life. Is that a point you've reached?
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Like I often say, there's a difference.
You know, people say how many times have you thought you're gonna die?
And I'm like, well, it's not how many times you thought you're
gonna die, So how many times you knew you were going to die,
that's kind of that's a better measure. That's how kind of measure it these
days, Um like this, like this, there's literally too many too ready
to list, but there's I think it's generally when you're you're in a you're
in a situation where you're trying to control everything, you know, everything,
everything that's potentially going to kill you or kill the person you're with, You're
trying to control it. And it's when things start going out of control that's
when things get really dangerous. Like an example would be I was I was
climbing El Cap and there was there was three or four of it, and
we got we knew this big stone was coming, and we got to the
very last pitch of Elkapy Towns. Elkappy town You've got basically a thousand,
nine hundred meters plus below your feet and it just goes from you know,
an overhang at the very very top into like a slab and then you've got
bushes and the top of the mountain just just behind there. And we I
got to I got to the summit and it was dark, and then the
two other people with our friends, like they climbed up the rope and I
said, like, go over there, find a tree, like cliff into
the tree. And then I started like hauling the whole bags, and the
whole bags have got all your your bavy equipment and your stove and everything to
you know, but i'd actually i'd made everyone put the waterproofs on before anything
had happened, because because the classic thing is the storm comes and you're just
in your normal, normal clothes and you're in the sea areas. So even
in the summertime, you can go from being very very warm to being like
snowing or hailing on top of you. And I've had situations where I've literally
been in a short and T shirt and the hailer has been pounding down on
top of me, and you know, you've probably got you've probably got ten
fifteen minutes before you can lose your dexterity in your hands. And once you
lose your dexterity in your hands, when you're on a big wall, you're
basically going to die of hypothermia. And people have actually been like basically been
found just covered in ice because they couldn't they couldn't go up, they couldn't
go down. They just got stuck anyway. So so our friends went to
the top and my wife is climbing up the rope in the dark below me,
and I see as she comes over the top of the edge. I
see it from my head touch and there she's maybe like ten meters below me.
And I'm hauling these bags up and the rope is going off a bolt
bealer, solid bealer down over the lip, and as the bags come up,
they kind of get stuck on the very last bit. So I'm like,
Vanessa, just just go down over the lip. So now she's like
hanging in space, you know. So you're like, is it four times
higher than the Well Trade Center tower? You know, so you're pretty pretty
high up. You have a long time of falling wondering what you did wrong
before you hit the ground. So she goes over the edge, and then
there was there was just this noise like how would you describe it, like
a wave, like a wave was coming in, like a wave was crashing
in and what it was this storm that was coming it was coming down from
Alaska and it was just it went from one minute it was completely dry,
you know, fairly chilly Californian night, to just like a deluge of water
just coming down on top of us. Because the top of l Cap is
like a big dome. So within a minute, a waterfall was coming down,
and it was going over the edge, and it was going over me,
and it's going over my wife who was in the water. And having
been in that situation before, when you suddenly when the temperature drops, what
happens is you rope start freezing and you can no longer climb them. That's
that's one of these people might get hypothermia or die because they literally cannot escape
the situation, and again you lose your dexterity. So so I was trying.
I knew I had to get this bag up because the bag had all
out. We're already soaking, like your water proofs. You're star't gonna do
anything when you're in a waterfall. So in the in, the in the
in, the whole bag was all our stuff would need to not get hypothermia
when we got to the top of the top of the mountain. So I'm
trying to set this whole system and my wife is just struggling, you know,
it's like do I hold the bags up or do try and hold hair
up? And suddenly everything that go wrong went wrong. Like my shoes for
some reason, they were at the end of being super slippy when it was
wet, and I was trying to step up to haul the bag up and
my feet were just slipping, and the pulley, you know, the pulley
would normally work completely fine. He had two three pulleys. They're trying to
do like a three to one to get this bag up. For some reason,
one of them it had like a little catch that kept clicking itself on,
so it was locking the whole system rigid a micro traction. So if
I had it reverse the opposite way, it would wouldn't have done that.
But this this started happening, all these little tiny little things which were just
annoying normally, was potentially going to kill my wife and whatever. So I
remember, eventually I just physical just physically the system wasn't working. I just
physically grabbed the rope with my hands and just started pulling the whole bag up
hand over hand. So this whole bag could have weighed fifty key those or
something, and I just started just physically pulling this this bag up hand over
hand until I had hold of it, and then I kind of clipped into
the clipped into the bee layer. And then because the whole bag wasn't there,
my wife was able to get over this lip and managed to get to
me. And by then she was so cold that she couldn't couldn't do anything.
She couldn't like unclip or untie not whatever. So just getting from where
we were there maybe twenty feet, ended up becoming like an epic just to
get off the point where you could slide off the top of our cap.
And I remember, you know, by the time we managed to get to
safety, one of our friends came down. He was like, oh,
I'm getting very cold up here. You know, I had no idea that
just found paying for our lives on this thing. And I remember we got
all our bavy gear out, and you know, we had like synthetic sleeping
bags. You did, We did everything you would do to survive such a
situation. And although we had we did have dry bags, like everything was
just wet. Our sleeping bags were wet and everything else. And you have
like a fly sheet that goes on the top of your of your portal edge,
So just laid that flat and we just took all our clothes off rather
than getting in with any wet clothes on. And instead of instead of getting
in one sleeping bag each or zipping two sleeping bags together, we just opened
both sleeping bags and laid them one on top of the other, so you
had you know, like, because because I've had so many similar situations,
you know, when someone says, oh, synthetic sleeping bag, it's almost
as warm when it's wet. Like I'll tell you what a down sleeping bag
it's got zero warmth when it's wet, And I'd say, like a cynic
sleep bag is like fifty percent of it's warmth something. But in this situation,
we were so cold already not hypothemic, but we're getting that way that
you know, we just got in there and you needed the body heat of
the other person and you needed like two layers of sleeping bag to just start
getting somewhere. And I remember thinking, like, if we get up,
if we get up in the morning and this storm is still going everything,
we've got to wet all our clothes, our shoes, everything, Like we're
going to be in a real sticky situation to get down off this off this
wall. But luckily when we woke up in the morning, although it's everything
was covered in snow, it was you know, it was the it was
we could get down. And I remember it's like, it's such a tiny
little thing. You know, you've done all these other things. You're on
the north face of the Eiger or whatever that that you know somewhat so perilous,
but it was just such a little tiny thing that was gonna get to
you. Then another example would be went to try and climb d Nali in
Alaska in the wintertime. So again with my wife Vanessa, who had basically
know no mountaineering experience really where she's kind of Irish, you know, sending
the Irish so um, and she's like, it's kind of a tough,
tough woman, so do that thing. Like the greatest things are done by
people are either really really stupid and ignorant or astronauts. You're like, what
if once you start learning and know you know you won't do it because you're
not experienced enough. But if you don't know what you don't know, you
you'll give it a go. So um, So we we've got we're going
to we're gone to Narlie and we end up being there for over a month,
and the temperature how high point was probably about minus fifty so so as
probably as cold as you're gonna gonna get, probably on a mountain. And
what we had we had a we had a sister. So you've spent like
a lot of time thinking about this. And the biggest thing that was going
to probably if we had an earthquake in the snow hall that that potentially could
be quite serious. But one thing was carbon monoxide poisoning. So I had
this system where the pan was elevated about about twenty thirty centimeters above the position
where it should be on the stove. So we had a we had a
whisper light, which most people would have like an XGK, but whisper light
is actually very good stove for this kind of thing, so we had it.
And also it's like if you have a month with like an XGK going,
you'd be deaf. I'd be deaf by the end. So we had
the system where you just elevate elevate the pan a little bit higher than normal,
like an old fashioned stoves, like the stoves that like Nansen would use
and early early early mountaineering stoves, they had winter legs and summer legs,
and winter legs were longer for this very reason. But in the way that
the world works, someone was like, why are we giving people these long
legs? You know, we want to have like as short as possible.
They want to get like the fastest boiled time because people love that kind of
stuff. You know, this one's ten seconds faster than this one. So
anyway, so we basically used this stove in a snow hall, nearly all
of it was in a snow hall for for a month, and with no
carbon monoxide kind of you know problems. And then and then we had to
go up to the high camp before we went to the summit, so this
is like seventeen thousand feet, and so we decided to leave the windshield and
just take the stove and the pan to try and reduce the weight going up
there. So now we went back to having a system which wasn't as good
for carbon wasn't as good as for carbonoxide, which is a system most people
would use anywhere. So we climbed up and we ended up having to bivouack
ones on this ridge, which was pretty hairy, as we had spent two
nights on this ridge, it was very hairy, and all we had was
the fly sheet of the tent. We didn't have the inner tent. And
there you are in this you know, super extreme thing. But on that
trip, the biggest the biggest factor. It wasn't like we're going to get
to the top. It was all about survivability. So everything we had,
clothing, stove, mitten's sleeping system, everything was about survivability. So everything
was synthetic and everything was he was very heavy. But Vanessa was Vanessa's that
the highest woman to ever to you know, the highest woman on denially in
winter. That she's got the she's got the records, only one of the
woman though she got that. She kind of got the record, which is
kind to be impressive since she had no experience and she was dressed with a
lot of heavy, heavy gear. Anyway, So but we get to the
we get to the camp. Now this is probably that this is like being
on a different planet at this point. You know, you get up there
very short days in winter it's just just just barren ice minus fifty unbelievable under
it. But it's a dry cold, you know, only doesn't feel any
colder than minus forty. So we put the we put the tent up,
the fly sheet up, and we get our sleeping bags, every everything,
everything's sort sorted out, and we spend one We spend one night there and
the next day we just we just stay there because we have to try and
get acclimatized going to the summit. Then the following morning it maybe three in
the morning. I kind of really it's very hard to like operate a stove
in those temperatures. So you know, everything is set up like you sleep
with your with your with the fuel bottles inside your thing, because the sea
although you have like winter winter grade fuel pumps in the stove, you have
because they're still not there're still not designed for that temperature. So if you
don't have if they're not you know, warm enough, if they're not,
like then the fuel starts just leaking out everywhere when you when you try and
use them. So I get the stove, get the stove going. The
temperature in the tent warms up to you know, minor start to or something,
and oh, I'm roasting. So we put the stove on and Vanessa's
there next to me and suddenly she's like, I'm falling. I'm falling and
falling, and I turned around. She's just like like looking really really weird.
And what it was she got like she got up carbon monoxide poisoning from
the from the stove. Like I had my head right next to the stove
because I'm from a whole I think I'm like commune to all that kind of
stuff. And anyway, so she was like really out of it, and
I tend the stove off, and I remember like I knocked over the pan,
the pan and a little bit of icy water in it. I knocked
over the pan and trying to so are we're trying to do all this without
getting frost by in your you know, while you're doing it all. And
then she was like, oh no, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm
okay, Okay. We only had enough. We were very short of food,
and we only had enough food ready to get back down the mountain if
nothing went wrong. We'd really pushed it to the extreme end of things.
And Vanessa's like, no, norm, ok okay. And you have that
You've just invested so much time, so much effort, so much money,
so much commitment, so much suffering to get within like you know, maybe
eight hours there and back to the top of the Narlie Winter and this could
be this would be amazing, you know, amazing thing to do for Vanessa,
you know, it'd be great for me and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, no, we can't, we can't go.
We have to go back down, like we've just got carbon monoxide poisoning,
you know, and people do that is a thing about experience, Like less
experienced people do have that summit fever. You know, they're just they're going
to give it one hundred percent to get to the top. And it's like,
well, you know, you need to leave it a good fifty percent,
you know, or maybe ninety percent to get back down again. And
and she was like really like, she was really like sad, basically that
we have to go back down. So I packed everything up, Let's get
back down. And we started to going back down. And we got down
and when we got down to fourteen thousand feet we had a snow hole.
We've dug there. Getting the snow hole. She's like, Oh, we
could have done it, we could have done it, you know, like,
oh, I've made the right choice. So I'm like, don't even
think about it, you know, like, if this is the choice we
made, this is the choice we have to know. If no books,
you know, just just live with it. Like I spent my whole life
bailing from stuff, and it means I've had a life of some successes and
lots of failures, but I've had a life. So and then the morning
when we got up there was a you could just see all the wind blowing
off the off the ridge. So like if we if we'd gone to the
summit, we we never got all they back down again. We'd had to
bivvy up there one more time. And in those temperatures, you're looking at
minus two hundred and two hundred or something in that kind of in that kind
of wind. So like almost everything always always it's like being made redundant by
survival aids. Like everything everything happens for a reason, really, So we
uh, it's kind of funny because we managed to get all the way back
down and we had almost no food left. And when we got down to
the when we got down to the bottom where the plane would pick us up,
it took us maybe two or three days to get all the way back
down It took us a month to get there. Took us two or three
days to get back down to the to the where we'd left to stash of
food where the plane would pick us up. And the rangers that said leave
a week's worth of food. And I was like, oh, bag of
pasta, that's that'll lasts a week. It's like, you know, if
you're a student or something. So I just left a big bag of a
big thing as spaghetti. You know, spaghetti would last you, you know,
a couple of meals, and I just left it in the dugger hole,
put the spaghetti in there, and we had we had quite a fuel
and said to us, if you need to get to get to the pickup
point by nine am tomorrow, otherwise we might not be able to get you
because the storm front's coming in and we were we were absolutely exhaust posted trying
to get to this last any base, it's called it's called a heartbreak hill
because you've gone all the way down from d Nali and then to get to
the where the plane takes off, you actually go uphill. And we're going
up this hill maybe like two in the morning, three in the morning,
and you're just kind of hallucinating, and you're just like and we had like
a garment, little garment telling us where to go, and I don't you
know, sometimes something is going on where you know you're heading towards this point.
Then suddenly you know you're going away. It's point's what it's pointed to
go, but the numbers are going up instead of down or something, and
you start getting really confused, like what's going on? He started like having
those there's something wrong with the GPS satellites are broken or something. There's something,
something really obvious is happening, but you're so tired you can't work it
out. And we've suddenly gone to an area of sarak debris and cravasses.
I was like, Vanessa, we just have to stop, you know,
we have to put the tent up. It's just not safe to keep going.
So we put the tent up and we'll set the alarm for seven o'clock.
And at seven o'clock we'll just getting up with this race that we was
only eating. Maybe it's like three hundred meters. Well, you know,
it's not really far to where we have to get too fo hundred meters,
So get the tent up, fall asleep, we wake up, it's like
eleven o'clock, eleven o'clock in the morning and it's snowing outside and we've we've
blown it. So we managed to get to where this where our stash was,
and they're like, we can't come, we can't come today, We'll
try and come tomorrow. And that continued for like seven days. So we
basically had one bag of pasta to last's seven days. And so if anybody
says leave leave a week's food, leave a week's food. So I think
by day three we're eating all the pasta. And the only food we had
was this. We had one thing of porridge, American porridge with some with
something in it, and it was thought, it's so disgusting, it was
like inedible, even though I was going to unstaff to day before eating this
porridge. So we didn't. I didn't. I didn't get out of that
tent for seven days. I didn't need to have a crap or anything.
I just laid there for seven days and we managed. We had like a
little on our radio. We can manage to pick up a radio station.
Just laid over seven days. We must have had tea bags, otherwise I
would have gone insane. But we just ran the stove for seven days,
just keeping keeping our spirits up. But Vanessa was really very hyperactive, so
you should just get up and start digging a hole in the snow, or
like walking around the tent or doing sit ups. And I was like,
Vanessa was starving. We could staff to death here, like you just you
wasting too much energy. And after seven days they were like, we can
see a break in the clouds. We're gonna Basically, they say we don't
get you today. They kept saying. They kept saying his message saying how
much food have you got left? And we'd be like none. They get
they got like no, but how you know precisely how much food have you
got left? Were like it's gotten on and they just didn't believe us.
We had no food. And and then they were saying, give us a
weather forecast. And we had an a what's what's the garment messenger thing?
In reach? In reach? You had an inReach, So you know,
I don't if you have in reach, you have to It's like it's like
it's like hello, It's like h So it's like give us a foot you
need to give us a full weather forecast. For where you are, and
we'd go like crap, and and they go, no, no, we
need like a more detailed weather forecast, and go like very crap because I
didn't realize all we had was a stupid in reach thing. So after after
seven days, what we're going to do the US Air Force, We're going
to fly high altitude over the Nali and drop a parachute with a GPS something
that could steer the parachute, and they're going to transteer it to us within
a football pitch sized area with food on it, which would have been really
cool to have done that, but because they were there by now everyone was
concerned, like my parents, you know, Vanessa's Vanessa's dad who's basically he
had a bad car crash. You can hardly walk, and he's like,
oh, do you want me to come out, you know, come out
to Alaska to help to help. It's like like everyone everyone thought we were
like we were dying. We just laid in the ten listening to like NPR
or something, so yeah, so um, you know, eventually it was
like there's a there's a clearing at this end, Talkita, can you see
him out? Fica And we looked out at the ten. It were like,
I can't see it, but tell him we can see it. It
was like yes, like we're on our way. I was like, please
let that clear because if they tell up even it's not clear any The cloud
just cleared and we heard the the plane like coming in coming in, coming
in, and it kind of it came in. It couldn't believe it.
It kind of landed and it did a circle. Then it just took off
forgetting and we're like, oh the tricks. And what it was was they
have to land several times to to create some kind of runway because the snow
so deep. And then you you've gone from being like laying on your back
for seven days to like quick pack everything up and get in the tent getting
the plane, and it's so exhausted when you've not done it for seven days,
You're just everything is so exhausting, and you know, gathered all of
stuff, shift it in, the shift it in the shoved it in the
plane, and like maybe like half an hour later, you're you're dumped out
on the airstrip, you know, locked the plane up sear by. That's
the end of your adventure. So but I think, but but when when
we went to the ranger station and we did like a debrief of what happened.
Like I think maybe at the time it was something like fifty percent of
people who tried to climb to Narlie Winter had had died or had very serious
frostbite or something. So we've put not two bad odds, so the average
was the average was, you know, it's not too bad. But the
ranger said that this was like the most perfect, you know, blueprint for
an expedition, even though you didn't get to the top, because you basically
did everything right, Like we were super cautious. You know, we made
some mistakes, but we were super super cautious. And but it's that moment
when you're in the most hostile environment you could unless you're like scot unless you're
like at the bottom of the ocean, or you're like jumping out of a
plane or something, you're in an incredibly hostile environment where there's no rescue undern
early in the wintertime, it's too no one's going to fly up there,
No helicopter is going to go up there, so you're really on your own,
and once you start feeling things, you're losing control. You can't start,
you know, like, hope it's not something it should be in your
tool kit really, like I hope, we hope we make it down.
You know you should really Yeah, it's not it's not. It's not good.
Like like a lot of big wall climbing is a little bit like bomb
disposal, is that you can't just be like you don't want to be like
closing your eyes and just like you know, like red or green, red
or green. You know, so so there is that there is that like
am I in control of the situation. I can't afford to, you know,
for this to get out of control. Like the idea of you dying
would be bad, but the idea of somebody else dying. Because if you're
like, like, optimism is probably the most dangerous things to have in extreme
situations. Like optimistic people, like they're very, very dangerous. You know
someone who's like a motivational speaker, like I'm a sort of demotivational speaker,
But you know someone who's always like positivity. They're often a bit of a
liability in those kind of places because they're a lot often it's just an act
and when things don't go well, and those people just have like a crushing
you know, it's just you just fall apart and I've an ever breakdown where
you know, if you're you know, what's that thing you can be?
You can? Now what's that saying? You can? You can either have
it fast, you can kind of quickly high quality or or cheap. We
can only have two or something. Is that the right? Yeah? Yeah,
pick two. But the the other one is like we might be crap,
but we're cheap. That's one of That's like a that's a good sort
of mentality for for a lot of these things. I just think that you're
actually not really good at this, but you're cheap. You know. So
if you go in there thinking, you know, I'm going to my force
of personality and confidence is going to turn the situation around. When I've got
like a bone sticking out of my leg, you know, like that's not
gonna that's not going to happen really, So man, that is I've got
a weird thing going on there where I want to I want to keep talking
to you and keep asking you stuff, but it's going to go on for
hours and hours and hours and hours and hours because I've got loads of stuff
written down here. I want to ask, but do it. We'll do
it quickly. Yeah, I'll do that. Well, what I'm gonna do
instead is can you thank you for coming on? Can you tell people where
to find your information if they want to find out more about you, get
in touch with you, see your writing? Where read your writing and that's
where it should be. Where? Where should they go? M probably whenever
one podcast if you will say like where when people are like where, where
can we see you? And I was like, oh, do bother?
You know, I've got nothing to sell, Like, I've written a few
books Psycho Vertical, Cold Wars, Unknown Pleasures. They're like story books about
adventures and all the other books like more like technical books. Have a website
Andy hyphened Kirpatrick sounds a bit posh Andy dash kittpatrick dot com, And uh
yeah I have. I have. I have a lot of odd opinions,
so people people have to I have a I am a bit of a lightning
rod for having strange opinions. But I think that's just I think that's just
again, that's just part of embracing being like an outsider. Like I'm always
fighting with Mountain Guide Associations and you know, you know being being a dissident
and a rebel. I think so. But I think it's all again,
it's but I think it's all part of of adversity. Like I think,
I think adversity creates opportunity. And I think I'm always afraid that once you
start getting too comfortable and then you've had you've had it basically, you know,
so you always need to be fighting with somebody. I think it's in
your whole I think it's in my genes, whole genes. I think I
think there's there's a penalty that comes from thinking like everyone else does because that's
the way they think. That's the way everyone thinks, so I should think
like that, Yeah, I think. I think also also I've in like
I've lived in the Middle East three years, done a lot of traveling in
a loads of loads of places, and I think people kind of forget that
not everyone thinks the same everywhere in the world, you know, Like I
remember when I was living in a living in qaight. So there to be
you know, to be a Holocaust denier is normal. That's the default setting
for everybody, you know, So if you start talking about the Holocaust happening,
people think you're like a crazy Alex Jones kind of person. So so,
so I think people don't realize that, you know, like and also
it's a it's again, it's like a stratified in class, you know,
cetain. Certain certain groups of people in society believe completely different things to other
groups. So it's so yeah, so it's I think, but it is.
I think I'm always willing to I'm always willing and maybe that's a bad
thing these days. I'm always willing to consider that I'm wrong, you know,
or someone who is a bad person is might have some some point something.
So yeah, and that's why I call like Africa, because think Africa
people have no filter. You know. It's like, hey, fat Mama,
you know what, We'll just I'll just say they'll be they'll be like
the most racist, xenophobic, bigoted people, but they're like Africans and just
say it in such a nice way, and I'd be like a child.
So I think that's what I am, actually, just like a child.
I think I just take things as they are. Ye, that's probably a
good bombshell to end on the right. Andy, thank you so much for
your time. We're going to go off and record the after show, Andy's
promised me a story about bear grylls, so we're going to go and record
that, and thank you to everyone for listening. Thank you for listening to
this episode of Modern Outdoor Survival from Original Outdoors. If you go along to
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of Modern Outdoor Survival, and they are Number one, make good decisions at
the right times. Number two, prioritize training over shiny new equipment. Number
three, remember Instagram is not your training provider. Bye. Modern Outdoor Survival
is produced and edited by Amy Green and is an original outdoor media production.