Summiting Mt. Everest with Matt Ferrari, Co-Chief Investment Office of TruAmerica

Summary

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The Kirsh Connection: Summiting Mt. Everest with Matt Ferrari

Podcast: The Kirsh Connection
Host: Andrew Kirsh
Guest: Matt Ferrari, Co-Chief Investment Officer of TruAmerica
Date: October 1, 2025
Summary of Episode:
In this episode, Andrew Kirsh delves into Matt Ferrari’s extraordinary journey to summiting Mt. Everest. The conversation explores how Matt discovered climbing, the physical and mental demands of high-altitude expeditions, his approach to training, dramatic stories from the mountain, and the emotional aftermath of achieving such a rare accomplishment.

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Main Theme & Purpose

Andrew and Matt step away from real estate to chronicle Matt’s journey from casual hiker to Everest summiteer. Matt provides not only a gripping recounting of the expedition but also offers honest reflections on risk, failure, motivation, and the pursuit of meaningful challenges beyond work and day-to-day responsibilities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of Matt’s Climbing Passion

• Inspired by “Into Thin Air”: As a teen, Matt read Jon Krakauer’s account of the 1996 Everest disaster, which captivated him with the drama and challenge of high-altitude climbing.

  “I read the book Into Thin Air in, I don’t know, 12, 13… Never thought [I’d] climb Everest; to me it was such an impossible thing.” (03:16)

• Transition from Athleticism to Adventure: As a former baseball player, endurance wasn’t his forte. Climbing started as casual hikes of 14,000ft “14ers” in Colorado, then expanded to more significant peaks around the world.

2. Progression Through Major Challenge Peaks

• Early Summits and Near-Misses:
  • Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Mt. Elbrus.
  • Suffered unsuccessful attempts on Aconcagua (South America’s highest mountain) and Lenin Peak (Kyrgyzstan), repeatedly turning back due to extreme weather or team illness.
  • Learned that on high mountains, “coming back down and living is a success. Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” (06:13)
• Embracing the Learning Curve:
  • Matt viewed unsuccessful summits not as failures but as essential lessons, deepening his motivation and respect for the sport.

3. Training and Preparation for Everest

• Physical Training Regimen:
  • Hired professional high-altitude coaches and followed strict training blocks.
  • Aimed for 6–7 days/week workouts, including 6-hour sessions on the Stairmaster, strength training, and weighted hikes—despite living in flat Miami.

  “I work out at the one hotel in South Beach… It’s flat. So I’m on a Stairmaster all the time.” (10:26)

• Pre-Acclimatization Technology:
  • Used a high-altitude tent at home to simulate sleeping up to 18,000ft—ten weeks before the trip.

  “It’s a tent that goes over my head… you can set the oxygen to different levels… up to like 16, 17,000ft over a 30-day period.” (11:11)

  • This process allowed him to drastically cut down the total expedition length.

4. Everest Expedition Log & Mountain Life

• Expedition Details:
  • Team comprised 9 clients, 6 guides, 15 Sherpa, and local support staff.
  • Arrived at base camp around May 4–5, summited on May 27 at 6:51 AM.
• Expedition Life:
  • Base camp is “fairly comfortable” with tents, showers, and electricity, but higher camps are austere and frigid.
  • Dealt with cold, fatigue, multiple nightly awakenings to urinate due to altitude (“pee bottles” were a must), and the camaraderie and isolation of tent life.

  “You always have a pee bottle because you wake up, you have to urinate a lot because of the altitude… Everyone goes in a bottle, male or female.” (16:06)

• Climbing Route and Strategy:
  • Took the North (Tibet/China) side, generally less crowded but technically demanding.
  • Used supplemental oxygen only above higher camps—game changer for staying strong on summit day.

5. The Summit Push and Harrowing Realities

• Encountering Danger and Mortality:
  • Passed multiple bodies of climbers who perished in past seasons.

  “He turns around and looks at me and says, ‘Hey, I don’t want you to be alarmed, but on the other side of this rock, there’s a dead body.’” (25:24)

• Summit Experience:
  • Deeply emotional moment upon approaching the summit, filled with relief, pride, and awe.

  “My eyes welled up, put my fist in the air… I have it. It’s the last like couple minutes to the summit.” (27:24)

6. The Crucial Descent

• Mental Challenge:
  • After the euphoria of the summit, the descent is taxing and potentially more dangerous.

  “Getting down is not optional… You win game one, you go eat your lunch or whatever… It’s like game two. Like, that’s the beautiful thing about baseball… You gotta bring your A game again.” (29:06)

7. After Everest – Processing & What’s Next?

• Struggle to Process the Achievement:
  • Admiration from others does not easily translate to closure or satisfaction; there is a lingering question of “what’s next?”

  “You don’t even have enough time to process what you just did.” (32:07)

• Future Goals:
  • Plans to complete the Seven Summits, seek revenge on mountains where he “failed” (Aconcagua), possibly take on Denali and other iconic climbs—but acknowledging life balance and relationships must now take priority.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mountain Risk:

  “Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” – Matt Ferrari (06:13)

• On Training in Miami:

  “I’m on a Stairmaster all the time… Big strength training… weighted pack, ankle weights, leading up to Everest… Six hour days on a Saturday, four hour days on a Sunday.” – Matt (10:46)

• On Pre-Acclimatization Tents:

  “My girlfriend relegates me to the guest room. It’s a tent that goes over my head… you can set the oxygen to different levels… up to like 16, 17,000ft.” – Matt (11:11)

• On Witnessing the Reality of Everest:

  “He turns around and looks at me and says, ‘Hey, I don’t want you to be alarmed, but on the other side of this rock, there’s a dead body.’” – Matt (25:24)

• On Emotions at the Summit:

  “My eyes welled up, put my fist in the air… I have it. It’s the last couple minutes to the summit.” – Matt (27:24)

• On the Descent:

  “Getting down is not optional… bring your ‘A’ game again.” – Matt (29:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Topic | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |------------------------------------------|----------------------| | Matt discovers climbing (Into Thin Air) | 02:16–03:16 | | Early climbs, first “failures” | 03:16–07:40 | | “Getting down is mandatory” | 06:07–06:13 | | Training regimen, pre-acclimatization | 08:36–12:22 | | Details on Everest North Side expedition | 13:45–15:45 | | “Pee bottle” and camp life reality | 15:45–17:49 | | The summit push (weather, decisions) | 20:35–25:24 | | Passing deceased climbers | 25:24–26:05 | | Emotional summit moment | 27:24–27:55 | | The descent and psychological shift | 28:48–29:46 | | Processing the achievement & “what’s next” | 31:41–34:08 |

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Tone & Atmosphere

The tone is candid, self-effacing, and occasionally humorous, with deep respect for the mountains and the risks involved. Matt is analytical and humble, acknowledging both the physical and psychological demands. Andrew provides comedic relief (“Is there a Four Seasons Mount Everest?”) while maintaining admiration and curiosity throughout.

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For Listeners: Core Takeaways

• The line between “success” and “failure” in mountaineering is survival itself; luck and weather play as much a part as training.
• Cutting-edge pre-acclimatization and coaching now allow climbers to complete Everest expeditions in nearly half the traditional time.
• Risk on Everest is omnipresent. Behind every summit selfie lies discipline, luck, and past tragedy.
• Achievements at the limits of endurance leave climbers changed, but rarely “complete”—the desire for new challenges endures.
• Balancing life, relationships, and extreme pursuits is its own Everest, even for elite achievers.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate discussions with Andrew Kirsch. In each episode, Andrew interviews industry leaders. We'll hear their real time opinions on today's market, their background and unique career highlights and guidance for newcomers into the industry. You can find this [e-mail] and on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more. Now here's the host of Real Talk, Andrew K.

[B]

I hope you enjoyed part one of my conversation with Matt Ferrari. For part two, we discuss his incredible journey in hiking and summiting Mount Everest. How he became infatuated with climbing, how he prepared to climb Mount Everest, the rigors of being up on the mountain for, I think he said for 35 days. The altitude, the weather, the wind, the clothes, the lack of sleep, the number of times he had to urinate at night given the altitude, the loss of fingers and toes, not of him, but of other people who went up to Mount Everest just before him. An incredible journey. Don't know many people who. In fact, he's the only person I know who has climbed Mount Everest. And it's an unbelievable testament to Matt and the sacrifice, actually, that his girlfriend made by allowing him to take so much time to train and to do something entirely insane. Anyway, I hope you enjoy part two with Matt Ferrari.

[C]

And by the way, it's a perfect segue to preparing to climb the world's tallest mountain.

[B]

Let's go.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because this we're. We already made history now this is our first podcast in the podcast studio. We're making history because it's going to be the longest real Talk podcast of

[C]

one and a half speed.

[B]

We made a double speed. How did you get into climbing? So answer in 20 seconds.

[C]

I read the book Into Thin Air in, I don't know, 12, 13. Are you familiar with the book by John Krakauer? No. You've seen the movie Everest?

[B]

I've heard of it and may have seen some clips.

[C]

So Into Thin Air was by Jon Krakauer. It's about the 1996 Everest disaster where a whole bunch of people died in a huge storm and it made climbing Everest more popular than ever, even though a whole bunch of people died.

[B]

Isn't that crazy?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So I read the book.

[C]

Never thought I'll climb evers to me was such an impossible thing. So let's just.

[B]

You're in your 20s or playing baseball, you're not thinking about climbing?

[C]

No, I never was an endurance athlete. I played baseball. Like, picture like, like. No runs pole to pole. Exactly. That's it. Like I'm about speed and power. Right. Like endurance is my thing. So I read the book and then I lived so in. I'm living in Denver in 2011.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I like hike a couple 14ers. Okay. I learned to ski a 14 or what's that? It's a 14,000foot mountain. Okay. There's like 53 of them in Colorado.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So I hiked a couple 14ers and then I moved back to D.C. one of my roommates is going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. So I'm signing up to go and climb out. Kim Ajara with a friend of mine. It's 19, 347 or 41ft. I mix it up with coat epoxy. I do that. Cool. I was doing some adventure travel with some buddies. We would go to like random developing nations like Chile or Bolivia. And I'm climbing a volcano in Chile, the tallest one in Bolivia. But I'm suffering. I'm wearing ski clothes. I don't really know what I'm doing. End up going in 2018 to climb the tallest mountain in Europe, which is now another seven summit because I had done Kilimanjaro, Mount Albris. Go up in a huge storm with a local Russian guide. I'm thinking, what am I doing? I'm going to die. Everyone's turning around. We go to the summit. It was a suffer fest. I come down. I think I need to like learn to do this the right way. I had followed a guy by the name of Adrian Bollinger on Snapchat the year before. He was doing what was called Everest. No filter. He was trying to climb Everest with his climbing partner Corey Richards without supplemental oxygen. Ended up failing the first year. Succeeded the second year. He has a guide company out of Tahoe called Alpengo Expeditions. I looked him up. I signed up for their Mexico climbing school in Thanksgiving of 2019. I kind of the first and third tallest mountains there. Ixta and Pico de Orizaba. Don't climb for a little bit. Again, not really training for it. Sort of like a casual hobby. Covid hits. I sent a climb coat. Epoxy in Ecuador gets me training for something. Get to the top, come back. Had been reading about Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in South America. Ended up moving to Miami. So delaying a year. Sign up for that in early 23, start reading a book called Training the new Alpinism. And now I'm like kind of trying to figure out how to train for this. Don't summon an aconcagua turn around. 200 meters from the summit. Snow's coming in. Snow's coming in. Snow to the knees. We're moving 50 meters an hour. We had to get back down. We gave it our most snow.

[B]

50 meters an hour. You are.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You're probably.

[C]

Yeah. In knee high snow with a storm coming in most on Al Kankai when Years. So now I'm like super bummed.

[B]

Are you able to talk to each other?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're right in front of each other. So get turned around on that. Start training a little harder for researching it more. Sign up to climb Lenin Peak in Kyrgyzstan in, you know, Central Asia. Don't end up swimming there. A couple teammates get sick, try to make the Summit. It's a 7,000 meter peak. Make the summit from Camp 3 instead of Camp 4.

[B]

Super windy.

[C]

Get to like 21.5. Turn around. So now I'm like kind of, I'm taking this seriously. First two big mountains, I fail.

[B]

What is, what is your feeling when you don't make it to the top? Do you feel like you failed or do you feel like that was a still great experience?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, so it's the first time I. It's the.

[B]

I shouldn't say fail.

[C]

Well, look, I'll say this. In the mountains, coming back down and living is a success.

[B]

Okay. Right.

[C]

I mean that is the number one goal. Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory. I think it was disappointed. You're like let down. And so now these are the first two mountains. I'm like taking my training seriously now. The tallest mountains I've tried to climb. Lenin Peak was pretty. It's a big mountain, big glacier, crevasses, going across ladders, ropes. A was just super high altitude hiking, although close to 7,000 meters. So you're. I mean you're pretty upset in the moment, but then you look back and like I was still like, I got to go to Kyrgyzstan and like, you know these cool places and you become friends with the guys and your teammates. So I mean it's upsetting but motivating because now I'm like, now I'm going to. I want to be even better. And also you have to keep in mind the mountains. You can be in the best shape. It's not like running a marathon. You can be in the best shape, the best trained. The mountain will determine if you can go up at. Weather wise, condition wise, you just might get snowed up and never get a shot. It just might not be worth it. By the way, you want to go up and lose your fingers and toes. Like, there's a whole other component to this that that is part of the success or failure. And that's what makes it exciting. If I knew I was going to. If the outcome was. Look, if you go to run, unless like a marathon or half marathon, the outcome is sort of determined. You will mostly on your training, but you'll most likely finish. Doesn't matter how quick. Mountains. The outcome is not determined. And that's what's exciting.

[B]

When we're hearing this, it almost brings me back. Not that, like Fight Club and climbing are anything similar, but my takeaway from that movie was that the life they were living in, that hobby, when they got back to reality, it was. There was something missing. So when you come off these mountains and you have to go back to work and you're talking about cap rates and, you know, figuring out how to find a couple dollars to. To get a better return, how. How is that comeback?

[C]

Yeah, you got to book your next expedition quick. Which is what I did. So what. But what I did was after London, I was. I booked a bunch of other mountains in Ecuador. I hired a coach because then I was like, so. And I'll answer that because it's. It kind of coming back from the summit of Everest, I think is the biggest example.

[B]

So talk about your training.

[C]

Yeah. So I climbed after that, I climbed the third tall spot in Ecuador. I signed up to climb a mountain next to Everest in Tibet on the north side. So there's two sides of Everest that people need to keep in mind. There's the south side. You see all the big conga lines up. You hear about everyone dying. There's the north side in Tibet, which is part of China. So I climbed the tallest of the third tallest mountain in Ecuador. I signed up to climb a mountain next to Everest called Lochburi. It's the first time the north side of Everest will be open since COVID in 2024. We end up not being able to get permits. So I end up climbing to Camp One on Everest, which is 23,000ft, 7,000 meters. Okonkag was almost that high. London peaks a little higher. My. I had had this personal goal to get to 7,000 meters. That was my objective. I'd failed twice. I get to camp on and I get to 7,000 meters. And some pretty gnarly weather in the spring of 2024. I see the team going to the summit. I come home, I see them make it to the top. And I'm thinking, what seemed impossible is now become possible. I was just there. I did a big chunk of it. Not the hardest part. Big chunk of it. Like I can do this. Well, leading up to that I had signed up with Uphill Athlete. The. It's a company that the author of that book I mentioned. They have like you know, high altitude endurance coaching. So Martin Zora out of Chamonix, amazing high altitude endurance athlete becomes my virtual coach. My, my heart rate data goes to my watch or armband. Gets loaded up in trainingpeak software. He creates training blocks. I did three months of training to get me to Camp 1 and now I'm like hey, I want to go back. What's your resting heart rate? My resting heart rate is fine. I was just looking at. It's been trending down in the last 12 months. It's like 56. Yeah, but it's interesting. I have the year chart on my watch. I just looked at it when I was on Everest in May. It was up close to 70. Resting heart rate. That's how high it was going because of the altitude. So now I'm training with Mario and I have a strength trainer. I work out at the one hotel in South Beach. They have a beach club membership. It's flat. So I'm on a Stairmaster all the time. Big strength training. I'm six to seven days a week. Two days a week of lifting. Five to six days a week. Mostly zone two cardio. Some intervals mostly on the Stairmaster. Some running weighted pack ankle weights leading up to Everest. Six hour days on a Saturday, four hour days on a Sunday in the Stairmaster Just non stop going back to Ecuador to do some smaller peaks. Does your girlfriend think you're crazy? Oh yeah. She will see the on top of it to do all these mountains with alpenglow. My guy company we pre acclimatize at home.

[B]

They said I remember you telling me

[C]

the story so that even means. So I sleep in a head. It's a tent I got. My girlfriend relegates me to the guest room. It's a tent that goes over my head. Connects to a tube to a little machine like R2D2. And you can set the oxygen to different levels so you'll start at like 5,000ft and over to get to like 20,000ft you'll go to like 16, 17,000ft over a 30 day period. Eight hours a night. I usually do an extra week because of traveling for work. I'll miss a day a week for Everest. I had to sleep in this for two months again started a week or two earlier. So probably 10 weeks. By the time I'm leaving, I'm sleeping at the equivalent of 18,000ft. It's absolutely miserable. That allowed me when I did the smaller amounts in Ecuador, I could fly to Ecuador in four hours. Man the summit of a 20,500 foot mountain in 48 to 60 hours. And back home because I didn't have to get used to getting the high camp, I just go and go for the summit. For Everest that allows us to go sort of straight to base camp at 17,000ft without having to pre acclimatize. So normal Everest expedition 60ish days. Alpengo could do it up to 35, sometimes quicker depending on weather conditions.

[B]

Say that again the normal time it takes to climb 60 days.

[C]

Yeah. So normally if you go on the south side, you will do weeks of trekking to the Khumbu Valley just to get to base camp. You'll do a, you'll go climb usually Lagucha east to do some acclimatization and you'll get the base camp at like 17, 18,000ft. 17 and change. And then you'll do one rotation up and through the ice wall back down and then wait for the weather. But you. Yeah, the season starts early April ends end of May. By doing this pre equalization I'm able to skip having to get to the point where I can just get to base camp. I can go straight to base camp.

[B]

So you can only climb everest in a 30 like wouldn't you say end of April to, to May. That's it.

[C]

That's the big season. There is a fall season. It's super snowy. So usually people are trying to ski down it in the fall. It's a lot emptier. But yeah, the Everest climbing season really you can summit in the month of May. Okay. But people are kind of working their way to base camps in April. Yeah. So it's the old school way is like a 65 day trekking in drinking whiskey and waiting out the weather. And yeah it's, it's a real endeavor. So using this method allows you to cut the trip in half. Last year the team summited 21 days because we were, they were kind of rushed this year we waited to the very, very end.

[B]

So how many people on the team?

[C]

So they had what they call their open enrollment team and there was also people had, that was five clients, two guides and then there was a few one to one, one guide, one client, what they, they paid for a private expedition. So on our team there were nine clients six guides, 15 sherpa and then some of the Tibetan kind of cook staff taking care of the camp. Yeah. And so we left April 25th, got to base camp, I don't know, May 5th, 4th, 3rd, something like that. Summited on major. I summited. We all summoned on May 27th. I summoned it 6:51 in the morning. Catman do time. And got back into the US on June 2nd.

[B]

How long were you up that day of. I mean. Well, I guess what, what's your typical. The number of hours you're sleeping at night. Yeah.

[C]

So like a base camp's pretty comfortable. There's a huge dining tent. You have a big box tent. I have some great photos with a

[B]

mattress, electricity photos when we put on post production.

[C]

Yeah. So it's pretty comfortable. There's a, there's a shower. You say comfortable. There's no way my wife would be on this trip.

[B]

Is there a Four Seasons Mount Everest?

[C]

Yes, there's, there's not that yet. Who knows it could be coming. So I thought base camp's fairly comfortable. Look, it gets cold at night, but then you go, so base camp's at 17. What's what?

[B]

Talk to me about the temperature.

[C]

So at base camp, like not that bad. I mean if the sun's out, like maybe it's. It could be in. Feels like it's in the 40s, but like I can remember. But at night it gets cold. So you're in, you're in a 40 degree sleeping bag. But I can remember like coming out of the shower and like shorts and it's sunny out. When the cloud cover comes in, it gets colder. When it's windy, it gets cold.

[B]

You're climbing up Mount Everest from base camp to summit.

[C]

How many days? I mean it's weeks.

[B]

It's weeks.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So you're sleeping outside?

[C]

Well, in a tent.

[B]

In a tent.

[C]

So we have a big box tent.

[B]

I'm a Jewish kid from Beverly Hills who's never been like.

[C]

Yeah. So like the base camp tent's pretty comfortable. Sleeping bag on a little bed frame mattress. Then you go to interim camp at 19,000ft. You're in a normal tent. You would like a camping tent. That camp's pretty kind of, kind of miserable little dining tent. Not comfortable. They get to advanced base camp again. We have a big dome dining tent. You go to the bathroom in like a tent with space like a bucket with a garbage bag in it. You always have a pee bottle because you wake up, you have to urinate a lot because of the altitude in the. In Trying to stay hydrated. So like you'll wake up multiple times at night to pee and you just. Everyone goes in a bottle, male or female. This is a thing you don't want to get out of your tent.

[B]

There are pictures of the bottle.

[C]

It was an apple juice bottle that I carried from camp to camp and everyone made fun of me about. Some people just have a designated one. We joked about it like your Nalgen bottle. Like people labeled like pee. Yes. Do not drink. Yes, exactly. So you don't want to get out of your tent at 21,000ft now at advanced base camp then it's pretty cold and it could be windy, but it's somewhat comfortable. But at that altitude the living conditions are miserable. I can just remember leaving my sleeping tent. It's a three person tent. You get to yourself, going to the dining tent at 5 o' clock and you want to bring your toothbrush, your water bottles, all your layers there. There's heaters in the dining tent, but everything you need because just the 20 foot walk on rocks at night from the dining tent to that tent like would wind you. It just is exhausting. So like you don't have to go back and forth. You just want to stand and it's cold right Then you're like eight, nine o', clock, we're done eating, we're playing games. Time to go to sleep. Pretty cold. You get in your sleeping bag, you put hot water in your water bottles that you put those in your sleeping bag, you put your down booties on for your feet. You're sleeping in like layers of jackets and pants depending how cold it is. And like it's. Yeah, it's. It's kind of miserable. Like I'm getting pictures of my girlfriend going to the beach in south. I'm at 21000ft and like what was I thinking?

[B]

And you're not showering or.

[C]

So base camp had a shower. So you'd shower like every other day. Advanced base camp, they had one, but like you just didn't want to do it being cold. Yeah, so. So you're not growing a beard. Yeah. We get to advanced base camp, rest for a few days. Now what happens is you have to. Our guide company wanted you ideally to sleep at Camp One without using supplemental oxygen. 23,000ft, you have a. Getting from base camp to advanced base camp in two days is like 4,000ft of gain. 12 miles. Beautiful, huge ice Penitentes. They call it the miracle highway.

[B]

Pretty cool.

[C]

But you're in high altitude. It's High altitude trekking in your approaches. Going to Camp 1, you climb up a very steep snow slope on a glacier. The last 300ft is like almost vertical on a fixed rope. Jamar. Crampons. It's just the coolest climbing you can do. It's awesome hot if the sun's out. Sweltering hot. You have the sun blasting off the glacier. If there's no wind, you are. You're in like almost a T shirt, drenched in sweat, and it's just like, can you.

[B]

How do people die?

[C]

How do you die? They could be the altitude. It could be unclipping from the rope. They could.

[B]

Where they just fall.

[C]

Yes, but you would. So what happens is in Himalayan Klein, there are fixed ropes and you use a jamar, so you have a harness on, and then you have a bunch of things with carabiners and a jamar. I want to know what the waiver looks like. I don't read it. I should have had you read it before I signed it. So. So you, you, once you get to start going up Camp one on the glacier, you clip in your jamar into a fixed rope and it's actually very, very safe. And then you have a carabiner at the end of the rope. And what happened is every I don't know how many feet the rope goes into an anchor, it's tied to another rope. So you could just hang there. The jamar only slides up the rope. It can't go down. So as you're moving, you're always holding this thing and sliding it along the rope or up the rope. If you just let go, you'll just hang from there. Well, what would happen is once you got to a knot on the rope, you unhook the carabiner, move it to the other side. So now when you unhook your jamar, if you were to slip, your carabiner can only go to the anchor of the knot. And then you hook the jamar into the next side, so you have double protection and you're sliding up essentially on the way down. You don't use a jamar, so you either repel when it's super steep, where you're just kind of hanging and repelling yourself down, or your arm wrapping. And if you fell, you'd fall all the way to the next point because now you just have two cars on. So you get to Camp 1, super cool, steep snow slope, you get to 23,000ft and you sleep up there with no supplemental oxygen. And it was the worst night on the mountain. I forgotten My down booties. I didn't want to get my tent. My tent made. Band was super.

[B]

Never forget your down booties.

[C]

My feet were freezing. I wake up at one morning, ask him what time it is. He's like, it's 1:00am I'm like, oh, I gotta have six more hours. But then the sun comes out, it warms up, we go down. You're like, all right. The guys are like, that's the hardest part. Now we're pumped with red blood cells and. And it's time to wait for a weather window. A bunch of teams went up around 17 and 18 in high winds. I found out some teams on the mountain with us. I talked to a guy the other day. His friend was with another guy coming, lost his fingers. They went up super high. Windy days. Our guy coming said, we know there's

[B]

going to be a good. Lost their fingers. Frostbite, despite gloves.

[C]

Frostbite. So windy. I don't know. I mean, we waited. We had a great Swiss forecast that said the weather was going to be amazing in the mid to late 20s. And it was amazing. They rushed it. He doesn't have fingers now. I don't know how many he lost, but I was just texting with this

[B]

guy because even if it's one, it's not.

[C]

No, no. But by the way we went, I had my gloves off on somebody, Everest. All they had to do was wait 10 days. So, I mean, it sounds like a lot.

[B]

My kids won't wait 10 seconds.

[C]

I was jealous of them going up. I'm so glad we didn't go over that weather. And our guide company, Alpenglow, is just the. The best guide coming you could have. We all had radios. We all knew where everyone was. I mean, we waited. It was risky and we had perfect summer night weather. So now we come down to advanced base camp. They realize the weather is going to be good.

[B]

Maybe they didn't pay for as many days as you guys did.

[C]

Well, they're that guy's company. Their goal is to do in 21 days. Ours said, hey, we might be able

[B]

to do in 21, but we want everyone to have their fingers.

[C]

Exactly. So we come down and now it's our weather's going to be not good for a while. We go back to base camp. So all the way down we have to go to town for a day like shave, shower, and then we rest at base camp a few days. And now we're like, hey, the 27th is going to be the day. So now I go back up to Advanced base camp in one push. Miserable. Took me 11 hours. I was like, worked 4,000ft of gain. We're waiting a couple days. They're like, hey, we're waiting one more day. I'm like, I just want to get home. At this point we're seeing one day at a time. And you. And now we go for the summit push back up to Camp 1. Now we get to sleep with supplemental oxygen, which I had never used. And that was the game changer. I passed out for ten and a half hours because what happens at altitude is you don't eat as well, you don't recover as well from moving from the climbing because of the low oxygen. Now I've got supplemental oxygen on. I felt so good the next day. I was eating better, I slept well. My guy was like, dude, you were packed. Passed out. Now we go from Camp 1 to 2, super windy, sunny, four hours to Camp 2. We go from 23 to 25. Very windy in the tents, a little uncomfortable, deep pitch. And then we're going to go camp two to camp three. That gets you from 25, like 27. Getting super windy. But they said that night the wind is going to die down and we're going to have 5 kilometer wind 0 degree temperatures for our summit push, which was the night of memorial day here, 26 going in the morning of the 27th. So that's kind of life. And getting to the point of the summit. Summit night.

[B]

So now you're getting to the summit. You're climbing in the middle of the night. You have headlamps on icy conditions I guess on the ground, right?

[C]

Yeah. So it's a combination of. You're wearing a down suit, big down suit. You got your harness, you got crampons on your boots. And the north side of Everest is a combination of snow and rock.

[B]

You ever see Seinfeld when George has the big puffy jacket?

[C]

I didn't see that.

[B]

I'm thinking that's what you look like. The marshmallow.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, you kind of do. And so we wake up at 11:30pm and there's no wind. Like I went just. I was trying to sleep at super windy, no wind. You can see the stars were like,

[B]

so how you could touch the store.

[C]

Like we, they nailed the day. Like, this is perfect. So it's like, let's go. Yeah. So we're getting up. All the Sherpas are coming. I've got, I'm assigned my Sherpa. Young Lakba. He made his 15th summit. He's carrying two oxygen bottles for me. I changed my bottle. I got one with the guides. And it took us five hours and 45 minutes to summit. You kind of climb up a steep, rocky snow slope to get to the top of the northeast ridge. And now you have three steps. But before we get to the first, second, and third, the second is the most famous, famous. It's super technical. There's a. There's a ladder there. That's the crux of the mountain, the hardest part. Before you get there, you go to Mushroom Rock. It's cool Little Rock. And that's where we do our first bottle exchange. So we change oxygen bottles. And that was the moment where it was like a holy shit, this is for real moment. And that's because my guy turns around and looks at me and says, hey, I don't want you to be alarmed, but on the other side of this rock, there's a dead body.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[C]

So there's a corpse there. You know, it's just in this gear, you can't see the person. And that's when, like, man, everything's going so well. But, like, things can go really badly here. And it kind of snaps you into.

[B]

Can you tell, like, when that person died?

[C]

No, but I started, like, Googling around and stuff, and you get it. Like, I mean, I think that I know the last person. There's another body at the second step and the third step. The second step was from 18 or 19.

[B]

These people have been there for years.

[C]

It's too high. It's too high. It's a frozen block of ice. Yeah.

[B]

And so what. What are your thoughts?

[C]

Don't end up like that. Like, things can go bad. You need to take this seriously.

[B]

Bob isn't coming up there to get you.

[C]

No one's coming up there to get me. But again, we had such good weather, so I'm like, this is. I was feeling that maybe I felt better on the summit push than I did climbing to Camp One without supplemental oxygen. But that allows me super acclimatized and ready to go. So get to the First Step. I'm like, all right, that wasn't too bad. Now it's the Second Step. That's where, like, you get a little nervous. Super steep rock ladder. You see the next body. You get to the top of that, and you're like, that was the hardest part. Like, this. This is gonna happen. But you still have hours to go. So now you have the Third Step. Not too bad. Next bottle exchange. See the last deceased person we saw. And now, like, all right, like, this is it. Go up to like kind of a little bit of a traverse around some rocks and then get above those rocks and it's just a snow slope. And one of my guys, a good buddy of mine, Tico, he's already up there with one of my other teammates. And that's when it got very, very emotional where it's just like my eyes welled up, put my fist in the air because I'm like, I have it. It's the last like couple minutes to the summit. Some of our team's already up there. I'm with a group and you get up there, you're just like, you're just in awe. Little cloudy. When we got up there, I had a bunch of flags I had to get photos with. So I had my true America flag and my Skidmore baseball flag. My buddy Will Matthews, I brought his flag, my Buffalo Bills flag.

[B]

Oh my gosh.

[C]

So. And then we use a group photo.

[B]

Should have given you a scarcity.

[C]

I know everyone's told me this, so I would have brought them all. Like it wasn't that much weight on some of day. And you're there for like 15 minutes. I wish we stayed a little longer. I wish I had taken my mask off and thought about what it was like to breathe versus like. I took it off for photos and like wasn't breathing through it, but like really felt.

[B]

So you are on the. Is it the tallest place on Earth? Yeah.

[C]

29,032ft. Yeah, that's the. It's size you get. You see catch and chugga to one side, third tallest mountain world. Showing you another 8,000ft other side. As we're heading down, the clouds kind of clear. So one of our guys decides to fly a drone. Gets amazing drone footage.

[B]

You're bringing drones up there too?

[C]

He brought a drone. We get amazing drone footage of us rappelling. So you have to rappel. I'll have to put this on the podcast. Right at the shortly before below the summit, we all were rappel down and there's just this amazing drone footage of folks rappelling down. It was the highest rappel I'll ever do in my life. But you, you have to realize you're like, wait, I got up here but now I got to get all the way down to advanced base camp. It's kind of almost. You're more tired and harder to go down because again, you're not using your jamar, you could fall. So like again, you got to snap.

[B]

Isn't your adrenaline left you because you summited and you reached the top. And now it's.

[C]

Yeah, no, that's.

[B]

Now it's like real work. You've. You've.

[C]

Yes, yes. No, it's like. But then you're like, you gotta. Getting down is not optional. So like, you have to, you have to stay focused, right? You just have to, you know, you

[B]

have to like getting back is part of the.

[C]

It's like playing a double header, right? You win game one, you go eat your lunch or whatever, hang with the team for 15 minutes. It's like game two. Like, that's the beautiful thing about baseball. There's no like a week between games. You gotta down bring your A game again. And you gotta do it for 12 hours because you got, you want to get all the way down to advanced base camp, you got to go back to High Cam Cam 3, pack your stuff up, eat some ramen noodles, boil some water, then get down to camp two, then get to camp one. And then even getting going out from one to advanced base camp, a bunch of repelling glacier. Yeah. And you're spent, you're worked.

[B]

Anyone. Did you feel like anyone that was part of the group which is slowing you down and you just wanted to push them off the mountains? Like, come on. No, you don't deserve to be here.

[C]

No, I think. Well, look, I think there's. In my open enrollment team, there's prerequisites to qualify to be on our team.

[B]

You can't.

[C]

So because now a private. You could have less experience and they'll take you because you're not going to impact the group team. So our team was very dial. Now I think of our. Of the four of us who ended up summiting and went on the summit push, I think we had different strengths. Some of them live in the mountains and they were fast going from like base camp to advanced base camp. Way faster than me, quicker on scree. And then others were better on the technical steep rock climbing. I think I was pretty good with that with my cramp lines on the rock.

[B]

Given that you live in South Beach, Miami, what were you good at in 28,000ft with ice?

[C]

So I was very comfortable on the steep parts with the rock at the second step prep with crampons on rock. Because I had spent a bunch of time like I just going to Ecuador over and over. I spent some time in Chamonix doing ridge climbing. And I remember one of my teammates, he hated that he got. I remember he got down. He's like, I'm done with 8,000 reader peaks. And he's Cursing, he's like. But he was the fastest going from, like, base camp to advanced base camp, like, because he lived in Colorado. And, like, he would crush that. So, like, everyone just had different strengths. But I never felt there was, like, anyone inhibiting me. We were able to spread out, too, because we had. We had the whole mountain to ourselves. Everyone had already summited, so it was just us on the mountain. We were the last one.

[B]

Yeah. I gotta be respectful for my podcast producer who's behind the scenes. I guess my last question is, what is next for you? Like, how do you rec. How do you replicate that feeling?

[C]

It's a question everyone asks. And there's this.

[B]

Ah, I thought it was going to be.

[C]

There's this blogger, Alan Arnett, who goes over the Everest season, and he's just. And he's like the. He's like the news of Everest. And he's climbed a bunch of the big mountains, Everest, K2. And he kind of writes out the feelings. And this is. He's been all three of them, like, you summit, you don't summit, but it's your fault. You don't summit, but it's someone else's fault. And the emotions that come through it. When I read what he wrote, my eyes almost welled up because it's exactly how I felt. People high five you, they want to buy you a beer, they want to hear a lot, and then they say, what's next? And you don't even have enough time to process what you just did. Did. Right. So I feel badly even asking. No, but. So, look, I think. Well, by the way, in the short term, no climbing, because my girlfriend, who's an absolute angel and so support. Like, you just spent all this time. Like, we have some other things we're going to focus on. And, like, so I signed up for a half marathon only because I've never been a runner, to kind of just keep my fitness. And I. I need goals. You need ultra marathons now I need, like, goals to focus on something. And over the medium term, I would love to finish the Seven Summits. You know, I got to get my revenge on Aconcagua, because I didn't. I got to go back there, do Denali, do the Cartid Pyramid, and go to. I'd love to go to Antarctica. New Vincent. I think I'd like to learn a little, like, get better with it. I don't want to be a rock climber, but get better with rock climbing. So I could do like a Mount Kenya or a Matterhorn. I think the 30 day Himalayan expeditions are not in the cards anytime soon. So shorter trips where I can still get altitude and climbing. But it's going to be a little bit like just given the huge commitment I made the last few years to this.

[B]

People know I'm a big Tom Cruise fan. So if you go to Mission Impossible 2, the first scene, he's climbing, I think in Yosemite without anything like it's his hands and chalk.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, no way you could even do something like that.

[C]

I'm not a rock climber and I would never do that. But there are famous, I mean, the movie Free Solo, Alex all, who's I think very good friends with, with Adrian, our exhibition leader and all that. Like some can do that again. I'm. I like the mountaineering component where there's some rock, some different. You know, you're on a glacier, on a rock, ropes. Like, I like that combined. I don't like just rock climbing. That's not interesting to me. I also have always just been very intrigued at how I respond to altitude. Right. Like, I find that of like figuring out how I can, can kind of beat the altitude. Right. I find.

[B]

So.

[C]

So I've always liked going higher and higher, but that takes time.

[B]

So will Rogers park in the Palisades? Temescal Canyon. I'm going to take you on those hikes.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

See how you do.

[C]

All right.

[B]

I mean, I think we may get to like 800ft.

[C]

I'm in. All right. I'm always up for a workout like that.

[B]

So I think we're going to break this up into a two part series of that first Ferrari.

[C]

However you want to do it.

[B]

We could have gone for another hour. I know Katie's waiting for us. I'm glad you came back.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Alive.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Ten fingers, ten toes. Thanks, man. Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for talking about the real estate market and I love sharing it.

[C]

Sorry we got to go two parts, but I think it's worth it.

[B]

Yeah, we can go three. All right, man. Thanks for coming on and debuting the podcast.

[C]

I know. But you get to be the first. A good sign.

[B]

All right, man.

[C]

All right. Thank you.

[B]

That's another episode of Real Talk.

[A]

You've been listening to Real Talk Real Estate discussions with Andrew K. You can catch prior [e-mail] and on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google podcasts and more. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and for sharing the show with others.