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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker 1
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year olds. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered spoken Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean. I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com moth today.
- [01:08]
Unknown Speaker 2
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- [01:38]
Unknown Speaker 3
This podcast is brought to you by squarespace.com if you have a story to tell. Whether it's about starting a new business or sharing photos from a recent adventure, Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to bring these stories to life online. With modern templates, mobile responsive designs, simple drag and drop tools, and 24 hour support, you can create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use offer code themoth.
- [02:11]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. The story you're about to hear by Joby Ogwen was told live in Los Angeles in 2012. If you're an adrenaline junkie, you're gonna love this one. I think the theme of the night was carpe diem stories of our most vital moments. And just so you know, you probably already guessed it. Since I'm a podcast host, I'm not as athletic as this guy.
- [02:45]
Joby Ogwen
So I'm at my tent, chilling out in my tent at Everest Base Camp, tallest mountain in the world. And it's about 2:30 in the afternoon. I'm just hanging out and I have my radio inside my tent. It comes on, it's my friend Henry, and he says, hey, Joby, I just got the weather report. And it looks good for like the next day or so, but after that it's bad. It's going to get bad. And this is the end of the season, so if you want to go for the summit, you better go right now. So I grabbed my equipment and kind of put everything on and started hiking up to the base of the route. And as I was hiking up to the base of the route, I started to kind of visualize what it was that I was trying to do that day. And what I was trying to do was make the fastest ascent of Mount Everest that's ever been done. A solo speed ascent. And to give you an idea of what goes into that, the average climber on Everest now, I'd say basically everybody who's ever climbed Everest, with the exception of maybe a couple people, take about a week to get from the bottom up to the top and back down again. I was going to try to do it in less than 24 hours, and I was going to be all alone. And this was something that was kind of different for me because usually I climb with a partner in particular, one guy from Spain who was my, you know, best friend, main climbing partner. His name is Inyaki. And Inyaki had invited me on another expedition to another mountain close to Everest. And I turned him down, which was I had never done before. But I had this project. I had a new TV show that was coming out on National Geographic, kind of action adventure show. And the producers of the show said, hey, wouldn't it be cool if you kind of, you know, did one of your mountain climbing things? And I came up with this idea of the speed ascent on Everest, and they loved that. They said, oh, that's awesome. That'd be a great way to promote the show, right? When you come back, if you can set the world record, that would just be great. And I thought, okay, no pressure. And so, you know, you're trying to do something that's never been done before, basically. And so I had this idea and, you know, so I got in Yaake, he was sort of doing his thing and I was doing mine. And so I'm visualizing this thing and I get to the base of the route and it's a 4,000 foot, just almost vertical, very steep rock and ice face. And I just start going up and I'm plowing up the face. And in just about three hours, I arrive at the high camp at 26,000ft. So I was making really good progress. I'd gotten into my rhythm, I was feeling good. And when I got up there, the sun had sort of set and I found a tent. My friend Henry had had a tent with some other sherpas that were up there and working for another expedition. And he said, hey, man, you know, if it's too cold, there's some oxygen in there and you can grab it. Feel free to grab a couple bottles and take it with you. A lot of people don't realize that the oxygen systems you use for high altitude climbing, it's not like a scuba system. When you put the mask on, it doesn't help you breathe any better. In fact, it's kind of claustrophobic. But what it does is it keeps you warm and it keeps your head more clear. And so this is really good when you're trying not to fall off the mountain. So I get into the tent, I grab a couple bottles really quick because I'm trying to go as fast as I can, and I hook my regulator and mask up to one of the bottles, and I put the other bottle in my backpack, and I just move right on out of the tent and keep going. And wherever it is, it's kind of connected to another mountain. So there's a saddle in between, and it's sort of a flat area. And that's where people put their high camp at 26,000ft. And as I was walking across this saddle, I looked back and I could see these really beautiful mountains just glowing in the moonlight in the background. And one mountain in particular was a mountain I had climbed within Yaqui. And it was beautiful. And I remember the experience that we had there was just amazing because it was a really pure, beautiful climb that we did. No help, no ropes, no sherpas, no oxygen. Just did it. And I started thinking about Inyaki and where he was at on his expedition and the experiences that he and I had. And I started thinking, you know, man, he would really disapprove of what I was doing here because I was doing it for the money and I was doing it with oxygen. And Inaki didn't believe in doing either one of those things. And here I'm doing both. So I thought, man in, he would really not approve of this, and it really bothered me. But I had a Task that I had to get done. And I started climbing up the last 3,000ft of the mountain towards the summit. And it was dark out, and there was a few other climbers that were going up, and I could see their headlamps. And it's a really interesting thing. It's like being on another planet climbing at that altitude in the dark. But I was hammering my way up the mountain. I was feeling really good. The oxygen definitely helped a lot. I was moving faster, my head was clear. I started passing these guys, and within a few hours, I was almost near the top. I was at an area called the South Summit, where you can see the top. It's kind of the point where you realize you're going to make it to the summit. Before that, you don't know what's going to happen. It just keeps going up and up and up. And I got there and I was feeling pretty decent at the time. And then I started slowing down and I started getting cold and feeling kind of weird. And it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was, but I had run out of oxygen. So I thought, okay, I've got to stop and, you know, change the bottle out. But on the ridge where I was at, it was, you know, almost 29,000ft, and the sand blasting of the wind and the 40 below zero, cold, you know, was not a good place to be. In fact, the ridge was so tiny that when I stopped, I actually had to punch into the snow, crouching down up to my elbows to kind of give myself some stability to keep from being blown off the mountain. But I stopped. I pulled the extra bottle out, and I unscrew the regulator, and I put the other bottle. I start screwing the next bottle that's full onto my regulator, and I'm screwing it on. I tighten it up, and I'm still hearing some air hissing out of the bottle. And at that point, I knew I had just made the ultimate rookie mistake. I had not checked to make sure that the threads on the bottles fit my regulator, and sometimes they don't. And I had seen that happen before, and I had just stepped in it. So instead of basically having about six hours of oxygen left, I figured I was guessing to maybe 20 or 30 minutes. That was bad. But I could see the summit, and it seemed so close. I thought, you know, I should probably go down. All my experience is telling me to get out of here as fast as I can, but screw it, I'm going to go up there. So I start kind of going angling myself across the Ridge, and it's at that point very steep. It drops off for 12,000ft on both sides. And you're just kind of walking on the edge of this pair of scissors, basically, and you're kind of going around, and every placement of your foot and your hands has to be perfect. And I climb up the Hillary Step, and as I'm taking the last few steps to the summit, I start getting cold again, and I start getting a little bit dizzy. And I knew I was out of oxygen again. Now, the thing about high altitude climbing is that on a mountain like Everest, which is a little over 29,000ft, you have about a third of the oxygen that you would have here at sea level. And so if you start using that supplementary oxygen and then you stop using it, that's really bad because your body's gotten used to it, and all sudden you're taking that away. And what happens is very quickly you start to go down, and you can have fluid building up in your lungs and your brain. You can get an edema, and within an hour you can be dead. And I've seen it happen many times. So I knew right then I've got to get out of here. The only way I can survive is to get down to the lower altitude. So I point it down, and I'm hammering my way down the mountain as fast as I can. No photos, no celebration, no video. All the stuff I was supposed to do, and I was getting paid a bunch of money to do, I forgot all about that because I was just trying to live. And I'm hammering my way down the mountain, and as I'm going down, I see some of the other climbers that were going up that night. And of course, I asked each single one of them, you got any oxygen? Hey, man, you got another bottle? And they were looking at me. I mean, they didn't even say no. They were just looking at me like, are you crazy? You know, it really is kind of every man for himself above 26,000ft. There's a reason they call it the death zone. And so I knew I wasn't going to get any help from anybody. And I kept going down. The only thing I could do was, I've got to get down. I've got to get off this mountain. But I kept getting more tired, I was getting more cold, but I was super fit. Like, I figured, okay, I'm going to lose some fingers to frostbite, I'm going to lose some toes to frostbite. That's okay. But I'm going to make it down this mountain. I felt like I had worked out so hard. I was training harder for this expedition than any other expedition I'd ever made. And I thought if I focus, I should be able to get out of this. So I'm hammering my way down the mountain as fast as I can. And then I'm just feeling worse. And I'm having to stop and rest a lot more often. And I start throwing up this black liquid stuff. And now I was really, you know, getting scared. But then the sun came up, and it wasn't as cold. The wind died down, and I could still see the high camp. The tents looked like little ants. It seemed so far away. And it didn't really seem like I was making any progress. And I was getting slower and slower and slower, but I was still moving forward. Then I saw another climber sort of down there sitting in the snow, and I had to walk past him. So I sort of made my way down to him. And I sat next to him in the snow. And I thought maybe he had a bottle of oxygen, but he didn't, of course. And we kind of carried on this little. I was talking to him about how glad I was expedition was over. We'd been there for two months. I was really glad to go home. And after a few seconds, I realized, this guy's dead, and he's been dead for a long time. He had completely frozen, encased in ice in the mountain. And I realized again at that point how on my own I really was. And that if I didn't get off this mountain as fast as I could and keep going down, I was going to end up like this guy. So I stood up and started powering my way down the mountain again. And after a few hours, I made it back to the high camp at 26,000ft. And I found the tent that my buddy had, and I crawled inside. I found another bottle of oxygen, screwed it on. Of course, that one worked perfect. And I put the mask on and I felt a little bit better. And then a Sherpa just out of nowhere. I thought I was hallucinating still. Just opened the tent and reached inside with this little dirty tin bowl of some kind of Sherpa tea that had little bits floating in it. Gave it to me, and I drank it as fast as I could. This was the best thing I ever had in my life. I was so dehydrated. And the Sherpa left. And I thought, man, maybe I could stay here tonight. I rest. I was so destroyed. And I thought, no way, man. I Got to get out of here. If I wake up in the morning, I'm too tired, then you know I'm going to die up here. I've got to just keep going down as fast as I can. So I crawl out of the tent, I start walking over, I start going down the face, and I'm going as fast as I can. And after a few hours, I make it down to sort of this flat area in sort of in between all the mountains there. And there was one last obstacle. It was the Khumbu Icefall, which is basically like this frozen waterfall jigsaw puzzle of ice that moves about three or four feet every day. Big ten story blocks are just falling. And it's the middle of the afternoon, which is the worst time to be there because everything's sort of unfrozen. And I thought, I'm going to go through it anyway. I'm going to power through this thing. I'm going to make it down. So I start making my way through the ice fall and there's these crossing these big crevasses that are so deep that you can't even see the bottom of. And after a few hours, I make it to the bottom and I step out onto the hard ground. And as I got to the bottom the rocks, I was just so relieved. I mean, mentally and physically, I had used myself completely up, but I was just so happy to be alive. And I was really happy that I had worked out as hard as I did to get a high level of fitness so that I could do this. But I was just like a zombie sort of walking through the base camp trying to find my tent. And finally I found my tent and I just opened the door and collapsed inside. And all I wanted to really do was sleep. And as I sort of drifted away into sleep, I heard somebody's voice calling out to me saying, joby, Joby. And I thought I was kind of hallucinating again. And then the door of my tent unzipped, and it was a friend of mine, a new friend. Her name was Mara, and she was actually in Yaake's girlfriend, and she was working for another expedition there at Everest Base Camp. And she was like, hey, how are you? And I was like, oh, man, you can't believe what happened to me. I ran out of oxygen on the top. And, you know, somehow, miracle, I managed to get down all by myself. And here I am. I'm just happy to be alive. She said, well, I'm happy you're here. But in was not so lucky. He died and he was in a similar situation where he was climbing to the summit and the weather turned and he had to turn around and it was really cold, he didn't have oxygen and he started to get frostbite. And he made it down to his high camp and he crawled in the tent. And then he started getting the same symptoms and the same things that were happening to me, which is the altitude and fluid was building up in his brain. And he got kind of an aneurysm and he died after like three days of being up there and suffering really. And some guys tried to rescue him, but they just couldn't do it. It was just too high on the mountain to get one guy down. And I thought, how in the world does a guy like, in a guy who's climbed 12 out of 14 8,000 meter peaks, a guy who I thought and saw as the strongest guy in the world, larger than life, how could a guy like him get into the same position that I was in? And he's dead and I live. And I started thinking about how, what he would have thought about what I was doing, how I thought he would really be disappointed in the way that I had climbed the mountain and why I was there. But he would have been happy about one thing. He would have been happy that somehow, some way, I had the strength to reach deep down inside and find the strength and the courage to get down that mountain and get out of there and survive. That would make him really happy. And I didn't want to. I didn't want to lose that. So I promised myself at that point that I would never return to the Himalayas for the wrong reasons. And I never did. Thank you.
- [18:15]
Dan Kennedy
Joby Ogwin is a world renowned alchemist and base jumper who first summited Everest when he was 25, becoming the youngest American to make it to the top. This May, Joby will make an epic wingsuit jump from the top of Mount Everest, which will air live on the Discovery channel. Go to discovery.com for more details.
- [18:36]
Unknown Speaker 3
This podcast is brought to you by stamps.com every second counts. When you're trying to grow your business, you certainly can't waste valuable time going to the podcast post office. That's why you need stamps.com with stamps.com. buy and print official US postage for any letter or package using your own computer and printer whenever you need it. 24, 7. Never go to the post office again. And now listeners of the Moth podcast get a special offer including free postage. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone and type in Moth. This podcast is brought to you by squarespace.com Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use the offer code themoth. Thanks again to squarespace.com for supporting them all. Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is a.
- [19:30]
Joby Ogwen
Writer and performer living in New York.
- [19:32]
Unknown Speaker 3
And author of the new novel American Spirit, available now.
- [19:37]
Dan Kennedy
Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.