Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Slight Change listeners, it's maya. New episodes of
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans are coming to your feed
Speaker 1: this October. In the meantime, I wanted to share my
Speaker 1: conversation with rock climber Tommy Caldwell. We talk about his
Speaker 1: near death experience and how it helped unlock a new
Speaker 1: state of mind. That mindset propelled him to become one
Speaker 1: of the greatest rock climbers in the world. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I definitely always felt like adversity is what brings us
Speaker 2: to life, but this turned up the volume on that
Speaker 2: in a pretty incredible way.
Speaker 1: That's Tommy Caldwell, who's considered one of the best rock
Speaker 1: climbers in the world. When he was on a climbing expedition,
Speaker 1: he had a near death experience where he was held
Speaker 1: hostage for six days, and he says what he endured
Speaker 1: on that mountain unlocked a completely new state of mind,
Speaker 1: one he describes as a flow state.
Speaker 2: To me, that flow state in its most pure form
Speaker 2: is like this moment where it's almost like everything slows down.
Speaker 2: You feel weightless, you feel like your vision is a cue.
Speaker 2: You notice detail in this incredible way. It's like in
Speaker 2: the moment where all odds are against you, suddenly it's
Speaker 2: like the clarity comes.
Speaker 1: Tommy tapped into this elusive, intoxicating mental state more than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, and he's been relentlessly chasing it ever since.
Speaker 1: I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show that dives deep into the world of change
Speaker 1: and hopefully gets us to think differently about change in
Speaker 1: our own lives. So to jump in, I would love
Speaker 1: to just hear a bit more about how it is
Speaker 1: that you got into climbing.
Speaker 2: I mean I got into climbing because of my father.
Speaker 2: He was a mountain god, pretty extraordinary human being. He
Speaker 2: was a bodybuilder in the like eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 2: like big, super macho man. He had this incredible love
Speaker 2: of adventure, and he was a middle school teacher, and
Speaker 2: so he blended all those things together and used me
Speaker 2: kind of as his test subject. Like I was actually,
Speaker 2: at least socially and probably mentally, a pretty meek, delayed
Speaker 2: child in a lot of ways. You know, I'm not
Speaker 2: good at the mental things. You know, I'm socially really
Speaker 2: shy and having a really macho dout He's like, we
Speaker 2: got to figure out ways to like toughen this kid
Speaker 2: up so that he can deal with the world. And
Speaker 2: he might have overcompensated a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I did not have a cool or adventurous childhood,
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to know what that's like, Like, what's
Speaker 1: an example of something you would do with your dad.
Speaker 2: I mean to a lot of people, my childhood seemed
Speaker 2: pretty insane, especially back then. I Mean, one example is,
Speaker 2: we hiked to the Lost Arrow Spire, which is the
Speaker 2: spire that sits two thousand feet above the valley floor
Speaker 2: and you seventy National Park, and we repelled down four
Speaker 2: hundred feet off the rim of Usemni Valley with you know,
Speaker 2: two thousand feet of exposure below us.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I did this as like maybe six or seven years old.
Speaker 1: Were you scared? Like did this stuff come naturally to you?
Speaker 1: Or was it really hard?
Speaker 2: I think there were there's a couple moments from my
Speaker 2: childhood where I remember feeling pretty scared, like this was
Speaker 2: a bit much. But those were definitely the exceptions. Like
Speaker 2: I developed a sort of fear tolerance that is probably
Speaker 2: part of the reason I've been able to excel the
Speaker 2: way I do now, but there's certainly been times in
Speaker 2: my life where I wonder if it's unhealthy, Like I
Speaker 2: don't get scared when I should.
Speaker 1: But can you say a little more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the types of climbing that I do
Speaker 2: in the higher mountains, like when I go to Patagonia,
Speaker 2: for instance, there's a lot of objective hazard. Like there's
Speaker 2: instances where you're climbing up a mountain and you know,
Speaker 2: some rock fall event happens, and like a big rock
Speaker 2: will fall and land on a ledge twenty feet away
Speaker 2: from you, and most people get freaked out by that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, like they have this emotional kind of
Speaker 2: adrenal reaction, and I don't have that so much, And
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's unhealthy.
Speaker 1: Was this just a natural trait that you had or
Speaker 1: did you did you feel like you were building it
Speaker 1: over time as a kid?
Speaker 2: I feel like for me, I was building it over time.
Speaker 2: Like there are certain climbs that I go and do,
Speaker 2: climbs where I might fall twenty thirty FI defeat at
Speaker 2: a time before I get caught from the rope. That
Speaker 2: feels incredibly terrifying at first, early on in the season,
Speaker 2: but I get more and more used to it over time.
Speaker 2: So I think that can happen within a season or
Speaker 2: on a certain climb, but I think it can also
Speaker 2: happen in a way over the length of your life.
Speaker 2: And so since I started really young doing this stuff,
Speaker 2: I believe that that's why I am the way I am.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting, as you were simply describing that,
Speaker 1: I felt tingles in my fingers and a pit in
Speaker 1: my stomach imagining being at that height, so sadly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think my brain architecture is slightly different from yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's probably more healthy your way. Honestly.
Speaker 1: When Tommy's twenty two, he gets invited to go on
Speaker 1: a climbing trip with three other climbers to Kyrghyzstan, this
Speaker 1: beautiful mountainous country in Central Asia. Tommy being Tommy, is
Speaker 1: of course excited for the challenge, but the real reason
Speaker 1: he wants to go is because of another climber on
Speaker 1: the trip, Death Rodden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was certainly my main motivation behind the trip.
Speaker 2: I would say we were really really kind of early
Speaker 2: on in our dating period at that time.
Speaker 1: So this was during the like still wooing her stage.
Speaker 1: Is that why you were so excited to go absolutely yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: got it. So can you paint a little bit of
Speaker 1: a scene for me about when you first arrived in Kyrgusan, Like,
Speaker 1: what is it like and what climbing lies ahead of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we flew in, come around this corner and
Speaker 2: we see these magnificent snow covered peaks. If you've ever
Speaker 2: been in a region like the Himalayas or something, the mountains,
Speaker 2: they are just so big and so beautiful that it's surreal.
Speaker 2: I mean, it looks like you're looking at a painting.
Speaker 2: It looks completely unreal. And so those big snow covered
Speaker 2: mountains are in the background, and then these big rock spires,
Speaker 2: these incredible rock spires with perfect rock, the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that climbers dream of, were kind of in the foreground.
Speaker 2: So we flew and there was a bit of a
Speaker 2: valley kind of below all of the rock spires, and
Speaker 2: so that's where we made our base camp. And of
Speaker 2: the people that live in the valley came and visited
Speaker 2: with us and brought us, you know, yak milk and
Speaker 2: butter and fresh baked bread, and it was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was pretty idealistic, like they hadn't they had they
Speaker 2: had encountered climbing teams like us in the past, because
Speaker 2: this is the place that people had been coming and
Speaker 2: climbing for ten or fifteen years, so we knew that
Speaker 2: we would encounter them, so we brought toys to play
Speaker 2: with the kids and bits of candy and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was absolutely beautiful, certainly sort of a
Speaker 2: dream trip. Everything I kind of expected and hoped for
Speaker 2: at first.
Speaker 1: Can you describe the moment when you realized that you
Speaker 1: were in danger?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was very distinct. We had been in
Speaker 2: the valley for five or six days. We had sort
Speaker 2: of walked around and scoped the rocks and decided that
Speaker 2: we were going to do our warm up climb on
Speaker 2: this mountain, which is about a two thousand foot nearly
Speaker 2: vertical rock cliff. And then we had spent the first
Speaker 2: day climbing about halfway up that wall, so a thousand
Speaker 2: feet up. We you know, the style of climbing we're doing.
Speaker 2: You climb one hundred or two hundred feet up, and
Speaker 2: then you haul all of your equipment up, which is food, water,
Speaker 2: portal ledges. There's no horizontal places to sleep, so you
Speaker 2: set up your porta ledges and we had this hanging
Speaker 2: camp a thousand feet up this wall, and that was
Speaker 2: actually the night of my birthday. Beth presents me with
Speaker 2: this candle we seeing Happy birthday. It's like there's no
Speaker 2: light pollution at all in this place because you're literally
Speaker 2: fifty miles from the nearest source of electricity, and the
Speaker 2: stars are brilliant and these, you know, the moonlight is
Speaker 2: illuminating these these snow covered peaks up valley, and it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a pretty incredible scene. So we go to beds
Speaker 2: feeling like everything's great, and then at very first light
Speaker 2: the next morning, we awake to gunshots, like just startled
Speaker 2: awake to gunshots. And first we thought that it was
Speaker 2: just some hunters in the valley, probably, but then bullets
Speaker 2: started to hit this roof of rock that was right
Speaker 2: above us, and so we realized they were they were
Speaker 2: actually shooting at us. They were close by. We had
Speaker 2: a big camera with us with a long telephoto lens,
Speaker 2: and so we pulled out that camera and we could
Speaker 2: look down to the ground almost like looking through you know, binoculars,
Speaker 2: and we could see these heavily armed militants on the ground.
Speaker 2: We felt very vulnerable, Like we're expecting bullets to just
Speaker 2: rip through the bottom of the portal edge at any moment.
Speaker 1: Wow. So in that moment, are you thinking, Okay, they
Speaker 1: might have missed slightly with the first few shots, but
Speaker 1: you know we're going to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what we're worried about. There's no way
Speaker 2: to run away. I mean, it's just complete vulnerability. It's
Speaker 2: like somebody's shooting at you and you can't hide behind anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You're literally a fix to a vertical wall in
Speaker 1: a tent right there. There's literally no escape route.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, I mean moving out of the way. It
Speaker 2: would have been you know, a several hour process to
Speaker 2: just get up and around the corner or something.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then so you hear these gun shots. What
Speaker 1: happens next.
Speaker 2: Through our telephoto camera lens, we see them sort of
Speaker 2: waving at us to come down, and we know that
Speaker 2: we have no other option. Basically, they've got these big guns.
Speaker 2: They've proved that that they're good shots with these guns,
Speaker 2: and so we're like, we have to go down. So
Speaker 2: we have a discussion and we decide that John Dickey,
Speaker 2: who is the oldest member of our expedition, will go
Speaker 2: down and try and talk to them. We're just trying
Speaker 2: to be super optimistic at this point. Maybe they just
Speaker 2: want information, we don't really know. And so John starts
Speaker 2: descending down the wall. Takes him probably nearly an hour,
Speaker 2: and he gets down there, and we have these two
Speaker 2: way radios and he had taken one of them. When
Speaker 2: he gets down there, he just he just sounds very serious.
Speaker 2: He radios back to us and he's like, you guys
Speaker 2: are just gonna have to come down. So the other
Speaker 2: three of us just start descending down the wall, and
Speaker 2: when we get to the ground, we're confronted with a
Speaker 2: pretty scary scene. I would say. There's two heavily armed
Speaker 2: men that are wearing this combination of like army fatigues,
Speaker 2: so they look pretty scary, but their demeanor is actually
Speaker 2: pretty chill. They wait for us. We get to the
Speaker 2: ground and they're just kind of sitting around, not really
Speaker 2: saying that much, and then they just kind of wave
Speaker 2: us on to follow them back to base camp.
Speaker 1: A conflict had broken out in the country between the
Speaker 1: Kregeese Army and the Islamic Movement of Zbekistan. Up on
Speaker 1: the mountain, a small group of the militants had captured
Speaker 1: a Krgee soldier, and when Tommy and the rest of
Speaker 1: his climbing crew were forced down the mountain, they were
Speaker 1: able to get a closer look at the soldier.
Speaker 2: He just looked very stern, you know, he looked kind
Speaker 2: of scared and very stern, and he had blood all
Speaker 2: over his pants. And I think there was at one
Speaker 2: moment in there where John looked over at us and
Speaker 2: he's like, were hostages. I think were hostages, And so
Speaker 2: that's kind of when it struck us.
Speaker 1: The militants waste no time. They lead Tommy and Beth
Speaker 1: and the other climbers into the mountain side at gunpoint,
Speaker 1: and as they start to cross the river, a group
Speaker 1: of Kirki soldiers appear at the top of the hill
Speaker 1: and start shooting at them.
Speaker 2: This battle breaks out, essentially, and we hide in this bush,
Speaker 2: and Beth and myself and this Kurky soldier end up
Speaker 2: in this bush together. The next thing that happened is
Speaker 2: the rebels told us one by one to run up
Speaker 2: behind this boulder, and the Kirky soldier went first, and
Speaker 2: as soon as he got up behind the boulder, we
Speaker 2: heard these handgun shots which were different than the rifle shots,
Speaker 2: and they had just shot him in the shot him
Speaker 2: in the head right there, and then the rest of
Speaker 2: us had to go up and hide behind that boulder
Speaker 2: as this battle sort of erupted around us. It was
Speaker 2: a full on like war scene. We're hiding behind this boulder.
Speaker 2: The boulder was getting you know, bullets were ricocheting off
Speaker 2: the We were behind it, sitting on the dead body
Speaker 2: of this other Kurgey soldier, and they were shooting these
Speaker 2: mortars across at us. I mean, we were kind of
Speaker 2: certain that we were going to die at any moment.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining the juxtaposition of going from these immensely
Speaker 1: peaceful climbs in this expansive valley to absolute life or
Speaker 1: death insanity. What do you remember feeling?
Speaker 2: Definitely running on adrenaline, totally surreal. I feel like that
Speaker 2: is not like the rest of life at all. And
Speaker 2: I think it was fear that was more intense and
Speaker 2: far different than anything I had noticed. Like in some
Speaker 2: ways I was used to dealing with fear because of
Speaker 2: my climbing life, but this was just way different.
Speaker 1: Tommy, Beth and their crew managed to make it out
Speaker 1: of this skirmish alive, but they're still being held captive
Speaker 1: by two militant rebels. They can't communicate with their captors
Speaker 1: because they don't speak the same lifeuage, but from what
Speaker 1: they can glean, there's an older guy who seems to
Speaker 1: be in charge, and then a teenager named Scherapov. During
Speaker 1: the day, the militants lead them around and what ultimately
Speaker 1: ends up being a big circle looking for hiding places.
Speaker 2: And we don't have any food. We had we had
Speaker 2: to abandon all of our food except I had managed
Speaker 2: to shove like five or six energy bars into my pocket.
Speaker 2: So each day we would in the evening, we would
Speaker 2: split one of those energy bars between the six of us,
Speaker 2: and that's the only food we had, and we do
Speaker 2: kind of feel like we're all in it together, like
Speaker 2: we share our food with them. They didn't just take
Speaker 2: all of our food. They shared it with us, those
Speaker 2: six you know, energy bars that we had, and the
Speaker 2: demeanor became pretty friendly a lot at the time, and
Speaker 2: then during the daylight hours we would hide in usually
Speaker 2: just absolutely miserable hiding spots, like you know, by rivers,
Speaker 2: under boulders. It was always super cold, you know, our
Speaker 2: teeth were chattering all day live every day to the
Speaker 2: point where our jaws and our mouths got really sort
Speaker 2: We'd be sitting there hiding for fourteen hours of daylight
Speaker 2: or whatever, and it would feel like a week.
Speaker 1: Did you ever worry that you were going to die
Speaker 1: of hypothermia, so it's not just the potential of being killed,
Speaker 1: but also you just might die from extreme conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that was definitely a worry of ours. We
Speaker 2: were probably on the verge most of the time, and
Speaker 2: we're at a point where we can't really just sit
Speaker 2: through these conditions anymore. But then, weirdly, at times, I
Speaker 2: think this is sort of a proven thing that happens
Speaker 2: when you go through this severe hunger, is you have
Speaker 2: these moments of like mental clarity, like you feel like
Speaker 2: you are almost more alive than ever. As you're starving
Speaker 2: to death, your body just sort of starts to kick
Speaker 2: into this like survival mode, and so you sort of
Speaker 2: alternate alternate between that and then other times just feeling
Speaker 2: really lethargic and really slow and you know, really hungry.
Speaker 2: So we just traveled around like that for six nights,
Speaker 2: getting progressively weaker, and then finally on that last night,
Speaker 2: things are pretty desperate and so we were left on
Speaker 2: this night with just the young scared soldier Sharpov and
Speaker 2: told to climb up this incredibly steep mountain. It was,
Speaker 2: you know, true rock climbing, Like it was kind of
Speaker 2: terrain that if you fell on it didn't seem like
Speaker 2: you would stop. You would just continue falling until you
Speaker 2: got you know, bouncing down the mountain until you got
Speaker 2: to the bottom. And sherif Pov was really scared, we
Speaker 2: were actually having to lead the way because we were climbers.
Speaker 2: We would you know, grab his hand and pull him
Speaker 2: up over rock steps. We would point out footholds for
Speaker 2: him to step on. We would sort of spot him
Speaker 2: in case he stumbled, we could catch him so he
Speaker 2: didn't just fall down the mountain. And so in all
Speaker 2: of our minds like if there was a time to escape,
Speaker 2: this was it.
Speaker 1: So I'm true, and it seems like the very natural
Speaker 1: instinct to help others was kicking in for you. Right,
Speaker 1: you're spotting this guy, you're leading the way, you're helping him.
Speaker 1: Who were these competing feelings towards him and the situation
Speaker 1: leading to kind of bizarre behaviors in you. It's so fascinating,
Speaker 1: right that you can build this kind of camaraderie with
Speaker 1: a person who might ultimately lead to your death if
Speaker 1: you have that kind of empathy towards their circumstance and
Speaker 1: their situation.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it felt different at different times.
Speaker 2: Like at times I was like, we should outlast this,
Speaker 2: We should be good human beings as long as we can.
Speaker 2: In a way, of these rebels, I didn't see them
Speaker 2: as super evil people, especially Cherpov who were with Like
Speaker 2: he was just he was younger, or he was probably
Speaker 2: about my age or maybe even younger. I think he
Speaker 2: was eighteen years old at the time. He was a
Speaker 2: hired mercenary. He was obviously super frightened himself, you know.
Speaker 2: He like, who's to say if I didn't grow up
Speaker 2: in a circumstance, I wouldn't have been right there with him.
Speaker 2: So I thought it was sort of morally wrong to
Speaker 2: try and take these guys' lives. But I think on
Speaker 2: this last night, cloud started to roll in, I started
Speaker 2: to rain a tiny bit, and all of us were like,
Speaker 2: if we don't escape this scene pretty soon, we are
Speaker 2: going to succumb to hypothermia. Yeah, So as we were
Speaker 2: getting to the top of the mountain, I knew that
Speaker 2: our opportunity to push him was going to be gone soon.
Speaker 2: And Beth had been adamantly against killing somebody this whole time,
Speaker 2: but it was getting pretty dire. So I looked over
Speaker 2: her when we're at her, when we were maybe fifty
Speaker 2: or one hundred feet below the top of this mountain,
Speaker 2: and I was like, do you think I should? And
Speaker 2: she didn't say anything, which to me that meant that
Speaker 2: she thought she'd come around, like she thought that this
Speaker 2: was probably the right thing to do. And so when
Speaker 2: he saw the top of the mountain kind of close,
Speaker 2: he got a little bit excited. He started to sort
Speaker 2: of rush up ahead of all of us. He is
Speaker 2: in Sharapov and I then started to sort of sneak
Speaker 2: up behind him, and he was so focused on like
Speaker 2: staying attached to the mountain, you know, like grabbing the
Speaker 2: right hand holds and stuff, that he really didn't even
Speaker 2: notice me. And I ran up behind him, and I
Speaker 2: just grabbed his gun strap and just tugged backwards on it,
Speaker 2: and he started to fly off the mountain side. He
Speaker 2: fell about twenty feet hit this ledge that was below us,
Speaker 2: bounced off of it like the sloping ledge, and then
Speaker 2: out of sight, just in the blackness.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: I'm maya Shunker, and this is a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: Tommy Caldwells made the bold decision to push one of
Speaker 1: his captors off the cliff. Years later, a journalist working
Speaker 1: on the story discovers that Cherapov did not actually die
Speaker 1: from the fall, but at the time, Tommy assumes he's
Speaker 1: killed Schherapov, and for Tommy, the reality of what he
Speaker 1: just did comes crashing down on him.
Speaker 2: It's just like this flood of emotion is going through me.
Speaker 2: I like can't believe what I've just done. I remember
Speaker 2: like closing my eye is incredibly tight, and like seeing
Speaker 2: like weird starry visions. I mean, it was just like
Speaker 2: it's almost hard to explain it. It was just like
Speaker 2: emotionally overwhelming that I've never experienced.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Beth was really comforting me. I mean she'd like, I
Speaker 2: like I said, I was deeply in love with this woman,
Speaker 2: and she was and I didn't know she suddenly think
Speaker 2: that I was like this evil person because we hadn't
Speaker 2: really been able to talk it out what I was
Speaker 2: about to do. So she was the one was like,
Speaker 2: you're You're my hero. We're gonna be okay because of you,
Speaker 2: and trying to say the right things to help me
Speaker 2: in that moment.
Speaker 1: The moment doesn't last long, though, with one of their
Speaker 1: captors pushed off the mountain and the other one out
Speaker 1: of sight. Tommy and his team know they need to
Speaker 1: seize the moment and get out of there as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, so they run down the mountain and find
Speaker 1: safety at a military outpost, and eventually they all make
Speaker 1: it back to the US. Almost immediately, Tommy's dad notices
Speaker 1: a change in him.
Speaker 2: I mean, I felt like for a time I sort
Speaker 2: of receded into a ball. I didn't talk to anybody
Speaker 2: except for Beth about personal things. But Beth and a
Speaker 2: few other close friends. I didn't talk to my parents
Speaker 2: that much about it, So I think he probably had
Speaker 2: that take more than most because he knew me a lot,
Speaker 2: and then I just didn't want to discuss this with him.
Speaker 1: What aspect of the experience made you most uncomfortable talking
Speaker 1: about with your dad?
Speaker 2: I think I was just I just didn't know how
Speaker 2: to think about the experience, Like I didn't know for
Speaker 2: a while whether whether I, you know, was kind of
Speaker 2: an evil person for having done this thing, or whether
Speaker 2: I was kind of a hero for saving us. I
Speaker 2: was both, but I'd also learned. I think very few
Speaker 2: people get to find out how they will react in
Speaker 2: super intense experiences like that. Everybody sort of wonders, and
Speaker 2: I now knew that when when things are really bad,
Speaker 2: I was able to kind of like rise to the
Speaker 2: occasion and do something that was really hard for me
Speaker 2: and really fight for survival in this way that I
Speaker 2: think I was a bit proud of at the time.
Speaker 2: But I didn't want to seem proud. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to feel I didn't want to feel proud in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, but I think kind of deep down
Speaker 2: I was a little bit proud, like I felt empowered.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So did the adversity you faced in Kyrgyzstan change
Speaker 1: your understanding of yourself or actually just reinforce what you
Speaker 1: had believed all along about what you were capable of.
Speaker 2: I think it it reinforced more than changed, But it
Speaker 2: also revealed a lot. It opened up a ton of curiosity,
Speaker 2: like I wanted to learn more. I wanted to in
Speaker 2: some ways get back to that place of being in
Speaker 2: this incredibly meditative like flow state that I felt like
Speaker 2: I had experienced it at times in Kyrgyzstan. I think
Speaker 2: in some ways my climbing ever since then has been
Speaker 2: an effort to almost get back there in a way
Speaker 2: and learn more. Yeah, almost like an addiction potentially. I
Speaker 2: think I saw Kyrgyzstan as this like fuel to put
Speaker 2: me on this higher plane where I could like use
Speaker 2: that adversity to fuel my life in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways and and sort of my pursuit of of my craft,
Speaker 2: which continues to be climbing to this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, you are such a climber at heart. Like
Speaker 1: the fact that you're you're describing Kurgason as being a
Speaker 1: flow state in which you had like you know, deep
Speaker 1: mental acuity, and you're that's as a lay person, right,
Speaker 1: That is a truly astonishing way of interpreting those events. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I didn't go there first. I probably win a
Speaker 2: lot of places in that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the place that I ended up finding
Speaker 2: to be the one that suited me. But if you
Speaker 2: think about it, like you know, I can, I can
Speaker 2: equate it to situations as a child where I was
Speaker 2: up on some big wall with my dad and you know,
Speaker 2: surrounded by some incredible thunderstorm and things get really real,
Speaker 2: and my dad would look at me and these kind
Speaker 2: of moments with these wild eyes and be like, this
Speaker 2: is what brings us to life. So that was built
Speaker 2: into me from a really young age.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Okay, yeah, I think my parents were like, why
Speaker 1: don't we go inside? Now there's thunder you would prefer
Speaker 1: not to die?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Anyway, anyway, can you describe more? I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners we'll be curious what you mean by
Speaker 1: this flow state that you experienced in Kyrgyzstan, Like, what,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like? What were you what were
Speaker 1: you trying to reach psychologically when you came back and
Speaker 1: started climbing again.
Speaker 2: To me, that flow state in its most pure form
Speaker 2: is like this moment where it's almost like everything slows down.
Speaker 2: You feel weightless, you feel like your vision is a cue,
Speaker 2: you notice detail in this incredible way. It's like a
Speaker 2: physiological change that is incredibly easy to notice when it happens.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like in the moment where all odds
Speaker 2: are against you, suddenly it's like the clarity comes and
Speaker 2: it's completely surreal and completely magical. I feel like I
Speaker 2: had experienced that in Kyrgyzstan, and so I was trying
Speaker 2: to get back there in climbing. But I wasn't. I
Speaker 2: wasn't finding that flow state in that way. So I
Speaker 2: did start to shift some of my climbing to like
Speaker 2: this mega endurance days where you're out, you know, sleep
Speaker 2: deprived for you know, fifty hours in a row, and
Speaker 2: a lot of times these climbs would take four or
Speaker 2: five days, and I started to do them in one day,
Speaker 2: like twenty four hour pushes.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm pausing only because if I were an alien
Speaker 1: descending on this planet and I heard that there's this
Speaker 1: guy named Tommy Caldwell who went through a harrowing experience
Speaker 1: in Kyrgyzstan who's now trying to replicate aspects of that
Speaker 1: trip on his own volition and normal life, I think
Speaker 1: I think the alien would bat Andy. That's all. It's
Speaker 1: It's why I admire climber so much. It's the relentless
Speaker 1: focus and resolve. And again, I flirted as a musician
Speaker 1: with flow right in my childhood, and I in my
Speaker 1: own way, I crave that too. There's something about engaging
Speaker 1: with art and I guess I see climbing as an
Speaker 1: art form too that can put you in a certain
Speaker 1: mental state that's really hard to you can't you can't
Speaker 1: recruit it in daily life at will. Right, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's one of these elusive things that happens when all
Speaker 1: the stars align right, or at least that's how it's
Speaker 1: been in my own experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now I can tell you have like you have
Speaker 2: the craving and the thirst for it, and yeah, I
Speaker 2: felt like I need to pursue that a lot in
Speaker 2: my life since then. But in some ways, I never
Speaker 2: got back to that place that I was in Kyrgyzstan,
Speaker 2: like that flow state that I experienced that really comes
Speaker 2: from this that you can really only access when you
Speaker 2: when your life really is on the line. Even though
Speaker 2: I was pushing way harder than I was before, I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I wasn't ever getting back to that place, to that
Speaker 2: incredible flow state.
Speaker 1: Tommy spent the next year after his return from Kyrgyzstan
Speaker 1: trying to access that high, that flow state in his clients.
Speaker 1: Whatever downtime he had, he spent with Beth in this
Speaker 1: little fixer upper cabin they bought in the mountains of Colorado, and.
Speaker 2: One day I was working on the house. I was
Speaker 2: trying to use the tools and not knowing how to
Speaker 2: use them properly. I ended up chopping off my index
Speaker 2: finger on my left hand with a table saw. So
Speaker 2: this is kind of like worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Can you describe the moment where you realize that your
Speaker 1: index finger is no longer on your hand.
Speaker 2: I felt this numbness and I looked down at my
Speaker 2: left hand and saw that the finger was completely severed,
Speaker 2: like I didn't know where the other part of it was.
Speaker 2: So I think I immediately panicked. I yelled to Beth.
Speaker 2: I was just like, oh, I just cut off my finger,
Speaker 2: And she came over and we found it like laying
Speaker 2: on the ground, ran into the house, put it on ice,
Speaker 2: and drove to the hospital.
Speaker 1: What is going through your head on the drive to
Speaker 1: the hospital.
Speaker 2: I mean I was. I was certainly panicking. I mean
Speaker 2: all I could think about was climbing. Like I had
Speaker 2: gotten to this place where I was, I was a
Speaker 2: professional climber. I was living kind of my ultimate life
Speaker 2: I had, but all this curiosity about where I could
Speaker 2: take it. It was sort of my coping mechanism for
Speaker 2: Kyrgyzstan in some ways, like this was the thing that
Speaker 2: I could focus on that could both distract me and
Speaker 2: empower me, and that was what was keeping me happy
Speaker 2: and stable in life. And then suddenly maybe that is
Speaker 2: gone too. So I was panicking. I mean, at first,
Speaker 2: we're just we're just holding on to hope. I'd heard
Speaker 2: stories about people chopping off fingers and then reattaching them
Speaker 2: and everything being just fine. You know, like finger reattachment
Speaker 2: surgery is usually relatively successful thing, at least it was
Speaker 2: in my mind. The doc came into the room and he,
Speaker 2: you know, sat Beth and me down and he's like,
Speaker 2: we've done everything we can. Your finger is dead. We're
Speaker 2: going to do one final surgery and remove it. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sorry. And he was a climber. Actually
Speaker 2: our doctor ended up being a climber as well, and
Speaker 2: he and so he along with that, he said that
Speaker 2: he told us that he's like, you should start thinking
Speaker 2: about what else you want to do in life, because
Speaker 2: you're not going to you're not going to be able
Speaker 2: to like be a professional climber anymore.
Speaker 1: And when you first heard that, do you agree with him?
Speaker 1: I mean, did you believe that was going to be
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think I heard that, and I
Speaker 2: was just like incredibly sad and trying to absorb that.
Speaker 2: I mean, once again, I feel like this has been
Speaker 2: a theme in my life. I have these things that
Speaker 2: are said or things that happened to me that are
Speaker 2: almost like too grand for me to comprehend in the moment,
Speaker 2: and it takes a long time to really figure it out.
Speaker 2: But he left the room and then Beth looked over
Speaker 2: at me and she's like, fuck that guy, he has
Speaker 2: an idea, what well you're capable of it? That was
Speaker 2: like the perfect thing to say, you know. I think
Speaker 2: I came out of that hospital with like kind of
Speaker 2: this conviction that was driven partially from like this idea
Speaker 2: that I might be able to overc him, but also
Speaker 2: driven a lot by the fear that I've that I
Speaker 2: just lost this thing that was incredibly important to me,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to do everything I could, like I
Speaker 2: might as well do everything I can at that point
Speaker 2: to try and prove him wrong.
Speaker 1: Do you think you're experiencing Kyrgyzstan increased your resolve to
Speaker 1: give climbing another go, Like, do you think you would
Speaker 1: have actually tried if that experience hadn't happened and you
Speaker 1: hadn't seen your limits.
Speaker 2: I think what it did for me is that it
Speaker 2: made me not fear failure in a weird way, Like
Speaker 2: I'd had to confront the worst things that I can
Speaker 2: imagine in my life in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 2: in some ways it like wasn't so bad, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean it was really bad in some ways, but
Speaker 2: in other ways, I'm like, I lived through it. I
Speaker 2: can find strength through this. And that drive, that drive
Speaker 2: that you can feel only in those moments is is
Speaker 2: like this moment that you have to seize, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like that only lasts for so long, and so
Speaker 2: you have to capture it, absorb it and let it,
Speaker 2: let it like push you forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, a big change can do that.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: What were those early first few climbing days?
Speaker 2: Like, so I went straight to the climbing gym, I
Speaker 2: think from the hospital, Like I don't only think we
Speaker 2: went home inane.
Speaker 1: I love that though you're so passionate about it, you
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to get back on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I'd been laying in a hospital bed
Speaker 2: for two weeks, so I was pretty excited to move
Speaker 2: and then the doctor had told me that since the
Speaker 2: figure was gone, I couldn't really do any more harm,
Speaker 2: and so I was really curious to see how my
Speaker 2: you know, newly remodeled hand was going to work. And
Speaker 2: we went straight to the gym and it was. It
Speaker 2: was really hard at first, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is a starting point. I can I can take
Speaker 2: this and improve on it. And then, you know, I
Speaker 2: went back to the climbing gym at first, like basically
Speaker 2: every day, and each day I would feel a little
Speaker 2: bit stronger and a little bit stronger, and before I
Speaker 2: knew it, I was sort of exceeding my own expectations
Speaker 2: and that started this pretty incredible flywheel where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is actually working. My strength is coming back. And
Speaker 2: within a couple of months, I actually was back at
Speaker 2: the level of climbing that I had been before I
Speaker 2: chopped off my finger. Like I went back to other
Speaker 2: climbs that I had had as climbing project, and I
Speaker 2: was able to do them again, and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is working. I can't believe I'm overcoming. This is
Speaker 2: so exciting. And then I didn't stop there. I just
Speaker 2: kept on getting better and better and you know, in
Speaker 2: some ways it was like a super magical time for me.
Speaker 1: There's no manual for how to climb with nine fingers,
Speaker 1: so you're also having to relearn key form elements of climbing, right,
Speaker 1: how does that happen? Like do you have to fully
Speaker 1: adjust your strategy like the way that you climb a wall?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's experimental. Climbing is always experiment so
Speaker 2: like you're always playing with how to do moves differently.
Speaker 2: And so I was just doing that but without a finger,
Speaker 2: you know, I sort of cherished that experimenting. Like my
Speaker 2: dad actually welded me up this specific finger strength like
Speaker 2: weightlifting machine just for your fingers though, and so I
Speaker 2: started using that a bunch and I got more and
Speaker 2: more scientific about building finger strength.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you decide to climb one of the most
Speaker 1: impossible rock faces I think in the world, is that right?
Speaker 1: I mean, the don Wall. Most people deemed it impossible.
Speaker 1: And I want to know what was your motivation for that?
Speaker 1: What were you hoping to achieve?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, so this was after my you know,
Speaker 2: after I came back from chopping off my finger. You know,
Speaker 2: that was sort of when I kept just doing harder
Speaker 2: and harder roots, and I became the person that knew
Speaker 2: more about big wall free climbing on l Capaitten than
Speaker 2: any You know, I'd spent more time up there, I'd
Speaker 2: done more roots than anybody. The Don Wall it is
Speaker 2: by far the hardest big wall free climb in the
Speaker 2: world to anybody except for me at the time, just
Speaker 2: looked like a pane of glass. Like you look up
Speaker 2: at the wall and you're like, there's nothing to hold
Speaker 2: on to. There's no way you could ever climb this thing.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I had spent so much time up
Speaker 2: there that I knew that sometimes these little edges formed
Speaker 2: on these faces that looked totally blank from below. But
Speaker 2: this is just it was such a big scale that
Speaker 2: piecing it together was this incredible puzzle, which ended up
Speaker 2: taking me a year just to figure out the root,
Speaker 2: and then another like seven years to build the strength
Speaker 2: and everything to pull it together. I guess I saw
Speaker 2: pushing that venue to be the one place in the
Speaker 2: world where I could really explore something that nobody else had.
Speaker 1: At any point, did you experience the intensity of the
Speaker 1: Kyrgyzstan flow state when you were climbing the Dawn Wall.
Speaker 2: I feel like I did actually on the final on
Speaker 2: the final go, like when we successfully climbed the thing.
Speaker 2: So me and my partner Kevin Jorgan said, you know,
Speaker 2: we spent seven years. We would fix ropes to the wall,
Speaker 2: and we would descend up and down the ropes, and
Speaker 2: we would try all the different sections and we would
Speaker 2: learn it all. And then when we finally went up
Speaker 2: and successfully climbed the route, I think when I climbed
Speaker 2: those pitches, it was this moment of incredible flow. Like
Speaker 2: I said, there was so much pressure and anxiety and
Speaker 2: excitement wrapped up in the seven years of preparing for
Speaker 2: this that when it happened it felt magical, like that
Speaker 2: clarity emerged. I felt weightless. There was this incredible flow.
Speaker 2: It was yeah, very magical.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: conversation with Tommy Caldwell, you might enjoy our episode with
Speaker 1: doctor Richard Harris. He's one of the divers who saved
Speaker 1: a boy's soccer team that was trapped deep inside a
Speaker 1: cave in Thailand. The episode is called the Thai Cave Rescue,
Speaker 1: and we'll link to it in the show notes. A
Speaker 1: slight change of Plans is created and executive produce by
Speaker 1: me Maya Schunker. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: including our producer Mola Board, associate producers David Jaw and
Speaker 1: Julia Goodman, executive producers Mea Lavelle and Justin Lange, senior
Speaker 1: editor Jen Guera, and sound design and mixed engineers Ben
Speaker 1: Holliday and Jason Gambrell. Thanks also to Luis Gara who
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith who helped arrange
Speaker 1: the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound, and of course
Speaker 1: a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm a little bit I was
Speaker 1: a little bit sheepish about doing this interview because I
Speaker 1: was like a budding concert violinist as a kid, and
Speaker 1: then when I was fifteen, I had a hand injury
Speaker 1: in which I tore tendons in my hand and doctors
Speaker 1: told me that I could never play again. So my
Speaker 1: life had to take a totally different route from that
Speaker 1: point forward. But I feel like you would have been
Speaker 1: the dude to play the violin with like four fingers
Speaker 1: and like crush it, so I just feel like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't really step up. I was like, oh, the doctor
Speaker 1: said I can't play. I guess I won't play. But anyway,
Speaker 1: some of us are than others.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we could start the interview by me one