Speaker 1: Pushkin hay Slight Changer is Maya here. Last week we
Speaker 1: brought you the story of Beth Rawdon, the professional climber
Speaker 1: who endured years of post traumatic stress after an international
Speaker 1: climbing expedition went horribly awry. Tommy Caldwell, that's boyfriend at
Speaker 1: the time, was also on that trip. I interviewed him
Speaker 1: on the show a few years ago, and it's been
Speaker 1: amazing to reflect back on how differently he processed that experience.
Speaker 1: It's the same change of plans, but these two people
Speaker 1: took very different paths forward. So today we're sharing that
Speaker 1: episode with you again. We hope 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 eighties and early nineties, like big,
Speaker 2: super macho man. He had this incredible love of adventure,
Speaker 2: and he was a middle school teacher, and so he
Speaker 2: blended all those things together and used me kind of
Speaker 2: as test subject, Like I was actually, at least socially
Speaker 2: and probably mentally, a pretty meek, delayed child in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways. You know, I'm not good at the
Speaker 2: mental things. You know, I'm socially really shy and having
Speaker 2: a really macho dout. He's like, we got to figure
Speaker 2: out ways to like toughen this kid up so that
Speaker 2: he can deal with the world. And he might have
Speaker 2: 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 height to the Lost Arrow Spire, which is the
Speaker 2: spire that sits two thousand feet above the valley floor
Speaker 2: you seventy National Park, and we repelled down four hundred
Speaker 2: feet off the rim of USEMENTI 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
Speaker 1: you 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.
Speaker 1: Should m 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 feel like you were building it over time
Speaker 1: 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 fifty feet 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 1: I guess, yeah, it's so interesting, as you were simply
Speaker 1: describing that, I felt tingles in my fingers and a
Speaker 1: pit in 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 ways.
Speaker 1: When Tommy's twenty two, he gets invited to go on
Speaker 1: a climbing trip with three other climbers to Kyrgyzstan, 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, Beth Rodden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was certainly my main motivation behind the trip.
Speaker 2: I would say, we're really really kind of early on
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, got it. So can you paint a little
Speaker 1: bit of a scene for me about when you first
Speaker 1: arrived in Kyrgusan, Like, what is it like and what
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 2: mountains they are just so big and so beautiful that
Speaker 2: it's surreal. I mean, it looks like you're looking at
Speaker 2: a painting. It looks completely unreal. And so those big
Speaker 2: snow covered mountains are in the background, and then these
Speaker 2: big rock spires, these incredible rock spires with perfect rock,
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that climbers dream of, were kind
Speaker 2: of in the foreground. So we flew and there was
Speaker 2: a bit of a valley kind of below all of
Speaker 2: the rock spires, and so that's where we made our
Speaker 2: base camp. And some of the people that live in
Speaker 2: the valley came and visited with us and brought us
Speaker 2: you know, yak milk and butter and fresh baked bread,
Speaker 2: and it was like, yeah, it was. Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: pretty idealistic, like they hadn't they had they had encountered
Speaker 2: climbing teams like us in the past, because this is
Speaker 2: a place that people had been coming and climbing for
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen years, so we knew that we would
Speaker 2: encounter them, so we brought toys to play with the
Speaker 2: kids and bits of candy and stuff. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely beautiful, certainly sort of a dream trip.
Speaker 2: Everything I kind of expected and hoped for 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 scope the rocks and decided that
Speaker 2: we're going to do our warm up climb on this mountain,
Speaker 2: which is about a two thousand foot nearly vertical rock cliff.
Speaker 2: And then we had spent the first day climbing about
Speaker 2: halfway up that wall, so a thousand feet up. We
Speaker 2: know the style of climbing we're doing. You climb one
Speaker 2: hundred or two hundred feet up and then you haul
Speaker 2: all of your equipment up, which is food, water, portal ledges.
Speaker 2: There's no horizontal places to sleep, so you set up
Speaker 2: your porta ledges and we had this hanging camp a
Speaker 2: thousand feet up this wall. And that was actually the
Speaker 2: night of my birthday. Beth presents me with this candle
Speaker 2: we see, happy birthday. It's like there's no light pollution
Speaker 2: at all in this place because you're literally fifty miles
Speaker 2: from the nearest source of electricity, and the stars are
Speaker 2: brilliant and these you know, the moonlight is illuminating these
Speaker 2: these snow covered peaks up valley, and it's yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a pretty incredible scene. And 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 the first with the first few shots,
Speaker 1: but 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. It's like
Speaker 2: somebody's shooting at you and you can't hide behind anything.
Speaker 1: See, you're literally a fix to a vertical wall in
Speaker 1: a tent, right, 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.
Speaker 2: What happens next through our telephoto camera lens, we see
Speaker 2: them sort of waving at us to come down, and
Speaker 2: we know that we have no other option. Basically, they've
Speaker 2: got these big guns. They've proved that they that they're
Speaker 2: good shots with these guns, and so we're like we
Speaker 2: have to go down. So we have a discussion and
Speaker 2: we decide that John Dickey, who is the oldest member
Speaker 2: of our expedition, will go down and try and talk
Speaker 2: to them. We're just trying to be super optimistic at
Speaker 2: this point. Maybe they just want information, we don't really know.
Speaker 2: And so John starts descending down the wall. Takes them
Speaker 2: probably nearly an hour, and he gets down there, and
Speaker 2: we have these two way radios and he had taken
Speaker 2: one of them. When he gets down there, he just
Speaker 2: sounds very serious. He radios back to us and he's like,
Speaker 2: you guys are just going to have to come down.
Speaker 2: So the other three of us just start descending down
Speaker 2: the wall, and when we get to the ground, we're
Speaker 2: confronted with a pretty scary scene. I would say. There's
Speaker 2: two heavily armed men that are wearing this combination of
Speaker 2: like army fatigues, so they look pretty scary, but their
Speaker 2: demeanor is actually pretty chill. They wait for us. We
Speaker 2: get to the ground and they're just kind of sitting around,
Speaker 2: not really saying that much, and they and then they
Speaker 2: just kind of wave us on to follow them back
Speaker 2: to base camp.
Speaker 1: A conflict had broken out in the country between the
Speaker 1: Kregeese army and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Up on
Speaker 1: the mountain, a small group of the militants had captured
Speaker 1: a Keregee soldier, and when Tommy and the rest of
Speaker 1: his climbing crew were forced down the mountain, they were
Speaker 1: 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 that one
Speaker 2: moment in there where John looked over at us and
Speaker 2: he's like, we're hostages. I think we're 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 Kirky 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 him in
Speaker 2: the head right there, and then the rest of us
Speaker 2: had to go up and hide behind that boulder. As
Speaker 2: this battle sort of erupted around us. It was a
Speaker 2: 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 boulder. We were behind it, sitting on the dead
Speaker 2: body of this other Kurgey soldier, and they were shooting
Speaker 2: these these mortars across at us. I mean, we were
Speaker 2: kind of certain that we were going to die at
Speaker 2: 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. Would 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 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 language, 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 in 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 six,
Speaker 2: you know, energy bars that we had, and the demeanor
Speaker 2: became pretty friendly a lot of the time. And then
Speaker 2: during the day life we would hide in usually just
Speaker 2: absolutely miserable hiding spots, like you know, by rivers under boulders.
Speaker 2: It was always super cold. You know, our teeth were
Speaker 2: chattering all day long, every day, to the point where
Speaker 2: our jaws and our mouths got really sot. We'd be
Speaker 2: sitting there hiding for fourteen hours of daylight or whatever,
Speaker 2: 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 is 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 Shapov 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 and shrif Pov was really scared,
Speaker 2: we were actually having to lead the way because we
Speaker 2: were climbers. We would you know, grab his hand and
Speaker 2: pull him up over rock steps. We would point out
Speaker 2: footholds for him to step on. We would sort of
Speaker 2: spot him in case he stumbled, could catch him so
Speaker 2: he didn't just fall down the mountain. And so in
Speaker 2: all of our minds like if there was a time
Speaker 2: to escape, this was it.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious. I mean, it seems like the very
Speaker 1: natural 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 a he was younger, or he was
Speaker 2: probably about my age, or maybe even younger. I think
Speaker 2: he was eighteen years old at the time. He was
Speaker 2: a 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, clouds started to roll in, I started
Speaker 2: to rain a tiny bit, and all of us were
Speaker 2: like if we don't escape this scene pretty soon, we
Speaker 2: are going to succumb to hypothermia. Yeah, So as we
Speaker 2: were getting to the top of the mountain, I knew
Speaker 2: that our opportunity to push him was going to be
Speaker 2: gone soon. And Beth had been adamantly against killing somebody
Speaker 2: this whole time, but it was getting pretty dire. So
Speaker 2: I looked over her when we're at her, when we
Speaker 2: were maybe fifty or one hundred feet below the top
Speaker 2: of this mountain, and I was like, do you think
Speaker 2: I should And she didn't say anything, which to me
Speaker 2: that meant that she thought she'd come around, like she
Speaker 2: thought that this was probably the right thing to do.
Speaker 2: And so when he saw the top of the mountain
Speaker 2: kind of close, he got a little bit excited. He
Speaker 2: started to sort of rush up ahead of all of us.
Speaker 2: He is in Sharapov and I then started to sort
Speaker 2: of sneak up behind him, and he was so focused
Speaker 2: on like staying attached to the mountain, you know, like
Speaker 2: grabbing the right hand holds and stuff, that he really
Speaker 2: didn't even notice me. And I ran up behind him,
Speaker 2: and I just grabbed his gun strap and just tugged
Speaker 2: backwards on it and he started to fly off the
Speaker 2: mountain side. He fell about twenty feet, hit this ledge
Speaker 2: that was below us, bounced off of it like the
Speaker 2: sloping ledge, and then 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 Scherapov did not actually die
Speaker 1: from the fall, but at the time Tommy assumes he's
Speaker 1: killed Cherapov, 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 eyes incredibly tight and like seeing like
Speaker 2: weird starry visions. I mean, it was just like it's
Speaker 2: almost hard to explain it. It was just like emotionally
Speaker 2: overwhelming in a way that I've never experienced. You know.
Speaker 2: Beth was really comforting me. I mean she 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. You We're gonna be okay because
Speaker 2: of you, and trying to say the right things to
Speaker 2: help me 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 was kind of an evil
Speaker 2: person for having done this thing, or whether I was
Speaker 2: kind of a hero for saving us. I was both,
Speaker 2: but I'd also learned. I think very few people get
Speaker 2: to find out how they will react in super intense
Speaker 2: experiences like that. Everybody sort of wonders, and I now
Speaker 2: knew that when when things are really bad, I was
Speaker 2: able to kind of like rise to the occasion and
Speaker 2: do something that was really hard for me and really
Speaker 2: fight for survival in this way that I think I was.
Speaker 2: I was a bit proud of at the time, but
Speaker 2: I didn't want to seem proud. I didn't want to
Speaker 2: feel I didn't want to feel proud in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, but I think kind of deep down I
Speaker 2: was a little bit proud, like I felt empowered.
Speaker 1: Interesting. So, so did the adversity you faced in Kyrgyzstan
Speaker 1: change your understanding of yourself or actually just reinforce what
Speaker 1: you 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: the 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 sort of my pursuit of my craft, which
Speaker 2: 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 describing Kurgason as being a flow
Speaker 1: state in which you had like, you know, deep mental acuity,
Speaker 1: and you're that's as a lay person, right, that is
Speaker 1: a truly astonishing way of interpreting those events.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I didn't go there first. I probably went
Speaker 2: a lot of places 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 in 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? Okay? Anyway, anyway, can you describe more?
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of listeners will be curious
Speaker 1: what you mean by this flow state that you experienced
Speaker 1: in Kyrgyzstan, Like, what what does it feel like? What
Speaker 1: were you what were you trying to reach psychologically? When
Speaker 1: you came back and started climbing again.
Speaker 2: To me, that flow stayed 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 cute,
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 sted 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 it if I were an
Speaker 1: alien descending on this planet, and I heard that there's
Speaker 1: this guy named Tommy Caldwell who went through a harrowing
Speaker 1: experience in Kyrgyzstan, who's now trying to replicate aspects of
Speaker 1: that trip on his own volition in normal life. I
Speaker 1: think the alien would battony.
Speaker 2: That's all.
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 at least that's how it's been
Speaker 1: 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 lot in my
Speaker 2: life since then. But in some ways I never got
Speaker 2: back to that place that I was in Kyrgyzstan, like
Speaker 2: that flow state that I experienced that really comes from
Speaker 2: this you can really only access when when your life
Speaker 2: really is on the line. Even though I was pushing
Speaker 2: way harder than I was before, I wasn't. I wasn't
Speaker 2: ever getting back to that, 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.
Speaker 2: And one day I was working on the house. I
Speaker 2: was trying to use the tools and not knowing how
Speaker 2: to use them properly. I end up chopping off my
Speaker 2: index finger on my left hand with a table saw.
Speaker 2: So 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 and she came over and we found it like
Speaker 2: laying on the ground, ran into the house, put it
Speaker 2: on ice, 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: Krgyzstan 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 doctor came into the room and
Speaker 2: he you know, sat bethed 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 you're not going to be able to like be
Speaker 2: 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 that was going to
Speaker 1: be 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 overca 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, it was really bad in some ways,
Speaker 2: but in other ways, I'm like, I lived through it.
Speaker 2: I can find strength through this. And that drive, that
Speaker 2: drive that you can feel only in those moments is
Speaker 2: is 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. Wow, what
Speaker 1: were those early first few climbing days, Like, so.
Speaker 2: I went straight to the climbing gym, I think from
Speaker 2: the hospital, Like I don't only think we 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've been laying in a hospital bed
Speaker 2: for two weeks, so I was pretty excited to move.
Speaker 2: And then the doctor told me that since the finger
Speaker 2: was gone, I couldn't really do any more harm, and
Speaker 2: so I was really curious to see how my you know,
Speaker 2: newly remodeled hand was gonna work. And we went straight
Speaker 2: to the gym and it was. It was really hard
Speaker 2: at first, and I was like, Okay, this is a
Speaker 2: starting point. I can take this and improve on it.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, I went back to the climbing
Speaker 2: gym at first, like basically every day, and each day
Speaker 2: I would feel a little bit stronger and a little
Speaker 2: bit stronger, and before I knew it, I was sort
Speaker 2: of exceeding my own expectations. And that started this pretty
Speaker 2: incredible flywheel where I was like, Wow, this is actually working.
Speaker 2: My strength is coming back, And within a couple of months,
Speaker 2: I actually was back at the level of climbing that
Speaker 2: I had been before I chopped off my finger. Like
Speaker 2: I went back to other climbs that I had had
Speaker 2: as climbing project, and I was able to do them again,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Wow, this is working. I can't
Speaker 2: believe I'm overcoming this. This is so exciting. And then I
Speaker 2: didn't stop there. I just kept on getting better and better,
Speaker 2: and you know, in some ways it was like a
Speaker 2: 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 your strategy like the way that you climb
Speaker 1: a wall?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's experimental. Climbing is always experimental, like
Speaker 2: you're always playing with how to do moves differently, And
Speaker 2: 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 and
Speaker 2: harder roots, and I became the person that knew more
Speaker 2: about big wall free climbing on El Capitan than you know.
Speaker 2: I'd spent more time up there. I'd done more roots
Speaker 2: than anybody. The down wall it is by far the
Speaker 2: hardest big wall free climb in the world to anybody
Speaker 2: except for me at the time, just look like a
Speaker 2: pane of glass. Like you look up at the wall
Speaker 2: and you're like, there's nothing to hold on to. There's
Speaker 2: no way you could ever climb this thing. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I had spent so much time up there that I
Speaker 2: knew that sometimes these little edges formed on these faces
Speaker 2: that look totally blank from below. But this is just
Speaker 2: it was such a big scale that piecing it together
Speaker 2: was this incredible puzzle, which ended up taking me a
Speaker 2: year just to figure out the root, and then another
Speaker 2: like seven years to build the strength and everything to
Speaker 2: pull it together. I guess I saw pushing that venue
Speaker 2: to be the one place in the world where I
Speaker 2: could really explore something that nobody else.
Speaker 1: Had At any point, did you expl aerience the intensity
Speaker 1: of the Kyrgyzstan flow state when you were climbing the
Speaker 1: down wall.
Speaker 2: I feel like I did actually on the final on
Speaker 2: the final go, like when we successfully climbed to 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 sudden.
Speaker 2: There was so much pressure and anxiety and excitement wrapped
Speaker 2: up in the seven years of preparing for this that
Speaker 2: when it happened it felt magical, like that clarity emerged.
Speaker 2: I felt weightless. There was this incredible flow. It was yeah,
Speaker 2: very magical.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: hear more about Tommy and Beth's experience in Kyrgyzstan. In
Speaker 1: the aftermath, they both wrote books that will link to
Speaker 1: you in the show notes. We'll be back in a
Speaker 1: week with a new episode of A slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 1: See you then, A Slight Change of Plans is created
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. Big thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer Mola Board, associate
Speaker 1: producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive producers Mea Lavelle
Speaker 1: and Justin Lange, senior editor Jen Guera, and sound design
Speaker 1: and mixed engineers Ben Holliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks also
Speaker 1: to Luis Gara who wrote our theme song, and Ginger
Speaker 1: Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker.