Speaker 1: Pushkin hay Slight Changers, Happy Fall. Something about this time
Speaker 1: of year gets me feeling a bit more introspective when
Speaker 1: the cold weather arrives. There's something about the change in
Speaker 1: seasons that reminds me that time is passing quickly, and
Speaker 1: I get more philosophical about the choices I'm making in
Speaker 1: my life and about what it even means to live
Speaker 1: a good life. We're back with new episodes that explore
Speaker 1: some of these questions soon, but in the meantime, I
Speaker 1: revisited our archives and found an episode that I wanted
Speaker 1: to share with you. One of my favorite favorite things
Speaker 1: about interviewing people is when I realized that what I've
Speaker 1: read about them publicly does not reflect their internal experience.
Speaker 1: That's what happened when I spoke with Tommy Caldwell, one
Speaker 1: of the best rock climbers in the world. At twenty two.
Speaker 1: Tommy had a near death experience. He was held hostage
Speaker 1: for six days on a climbing trip, and what he
Speaker 1: took away from that experience, well, it kind of blew
Speaker 1: me away. And that's the magic of this show. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy.
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: 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 guy, 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 dat. 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 heightd to the Lost Arrow Spire, which is the
Speaker 2: spire that sits two thousand feet above the valley floor
Speaker 2: or in you seventy National Park, and we repelled down
Speaker 2: four hundred feet off the rim of Usemni Valley with
Speaker 2: you know, 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 rockfall event happens, and like a big rock will
Speaker 2: fall and land on a ledge twenty feet away from
Speaker 2: you and most people get freaked out by that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, like they have this emotional kind of adrenal reaction,
Speaker 2: and I don't have that so much, And I wonder
Speaker 2: 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 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 way.
Speaker 1: Honestly, When Tommy's twenty two, he gets invited to go
Speaker 1: on a climbing trip with three other climbers to Kyrghyzstan,
Speaker 1: this beautiful mountainous country in Central Asia. Tommy being Tommy,
Speaker 1: is of course excited for the challenge, but the real
Speaker 1: reason he wants to go is because of another climber
Speaker 1: on the trip, Death Rowden.
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: survived 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 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 some
Speaker 2: of the people that live in the valley came and
Speaker 2: visited with us and brought us, you know, yak milk
Speaker 2: and butter and fresh baked bread, and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was svidible. Yeah, it was pretty idealistic, like they
Speaker 2: had they had encountered climbing teams like us in the past,
Speaker 2: because this is the place that people had been coming
Speaker 2: and climbing for ten or fifteen years, so we knew
Speaker 2: that we would encounter them. So we brought toys to
Speaker 2: play 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 were 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 actually shooting
Speaker 2: at us.
Speaker 1: They were close by.
Speaker 2: We had a big camera with us with a long
Speaker 2: telephoto lens, and so we pulled out that camera and
Speaker 2: we could look down to the ground, almost like looking
Speaker 2: through you know, binoculars, and we could see these heavily
Speaker 2: armed militants on the ground. We felt very vulnerable, like
Speaker 2: we're expecting bullets to just rip through the bottom of
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Route, right, yeah, I mean moving out of the way.
Speaker 2: It would have been you know, a several hour process
Speaker 2: to just get up and around the corner or something.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then so you hear this these gunshots. 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 they're good shots with these guns, and
Speaker 2: so we're like, we have to go down. So we
Speaker 2: have a discussion and we decide that John Dickey, who
Speaker 2: is the oldest member of our expedition, will go down
Speaker 2: and try and talk to them. We're just trying to
Speaker 2: be super optimistic at this point. Maybe they just want information,
Speaker 2: we don't really know. And so John starts descending down
Speaker 2: the wall. Takes him probably nearly an hour, and he
Speaker 2: gets down there and we have these two way radios
Speaker 2: and he had taken one of them. When he gets
Speaker 2: down there, he just sounds very serious. He radios back
Speaker 2: to us and he's like, you guys are just gonna
Speaker 2: have to come down. So the other three of us
Speaker 2: just start descending down the wall and When we get
Speaker 2: to the ground, we're confronted with a pretty scary scene.
Speaker 2: I would say there's two heavily armed men that are
Speaker 2: wearing this combination of like army fatigues, so they look
Speaker 2: pretty scary, but their demeanor is actually pretty chill. They
Speaker 2: wait for us. We get to the ground and they're
Speaker 2: just kind of sitting around, not really saying that much,
Speaker 2: and then they just kind of wave us on to
Speaker 2: follow them back to base camp.
Speaker 1: A conflict had broken out in the country between the
Speaker 1: Krgeese 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, 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 a point,
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 boulder. We were behind it, sitting on the dead
Speaker 2: body of this other Kurky soldier, and they were shooting
Speaker 2: these these mortars across at us. I mean, we were
Speaker 2: kind of certain that we're 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 riting 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 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 Scheripov. 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
Speaker 2: six you know, energy bars that we had, and the
Speaker 2: demeanor became pretty friendly a lot of 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 long, every day, to the
Speaker 2: point where where our jaws and our mouths got really
Speaker 2: sort We'd be sitting there hiding for fourteen hours of
Speaker 2: daylight 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: an alternate between that and then other times of just
Speaker 2: feeling 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 with just the young scared soldier Serpov, and told
Speaker 2: to climb up this incredibly steep mountain. It was you know,
Speaker 2: true rock climbing, Like it was kind of terrain that
Speaker 2: if you fell on it didn't seem like you would stop.
Speaker 2: You would just continue falling until you got you know,
Speaker 2: bouncing down the mountain until you got to the bottom.
Speaker 2: And sherif Pov was really scared, we were actually having
Speaker 2: to lead the way because we were climbers. We would
Speaker 2: you know, grab his hand and pull him up over
Speaker 2: rock steps. We would point out footholds for him to
Speaker 2: step on. We would sort of spot him in case
Speaker 2: he stumbled, we could catch him so he didn't just
Speaker 2: fall down the mountain. And so in all of our
Speaker 2: minds like if there was a time to escape, this
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, 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, these rebels, I didn't see them as
Speaker 2: super evil people, especially Cherpov who were with like he
Speaker 2: was just he was younger, or he was probably about
Speaker 2: my age or maybe even younger. I think he was
Speaker 2: eighteen years old at the time. He was a hired mercenary.
Speaker 2: He was obviously super frightened himself, you know. He like,
Speaker 2: who's to say, if I didn't grow up in a circumstance,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been right there with him. So I
Speaker 2: thought it was sort of morally wrong to try and
Speaker 2: take these guys' lives. But I think on this last night,
Speaker 2: clouds started to roll in. I started to raigin a
Speaker 2: tiny bit, and all of us were like, if we
Speaker 2: don't escape this scene pretty soon, we are going to
Speaker 2: succumb to hypothermia. Yeah, So as we were getting to
Speaker 2: the top of the mountain, I knew that our opportunity
Speaker 2: to push him was going to be gone soon. And
Speaker 2: 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 off the mountain side. He fell
Speaker 2: 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 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 way 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'd 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 who 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 on a
Speaker 2: few other clubes 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 things are really bad, I
Speaker 2: was able to kind of like rise to the occasion
Speaker 2: and do something that was really hard for me and
Speaker 2: really fight for survival in this way that I think
Speaker 2: I was. 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, 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: 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 ways,
Speaker 2: 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 describing Kirkgason 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 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I didn't go there first. I probably win a
Speaker 2: lot of.
Speaker 1: Places in that year. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the place that I ended up finding to
Speaker 2: be the one that suited me. But if you think
Speaker 2: about it, like you know, I can I can equate
Speaker 2: it to situations as a child where I was up
Speaker 2: 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 would 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 the'll be curious
Speaker 1: what you mean by this flow state that you experienced
Speaker 1: in Kyrgyzstan, Like, what does it feel like? What were
Speaker 1: you what were you trying to reach psychologically when you
Speaker 1: came back and 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
Speaker 2: cute you notice detail in this incredible way. It's like
Speaker 2: a physiological change that is incredibly easy to notice when
Speaker 2: it happens. You know, it's like in the moment where
Speaker 2: all odds are against you, suddenly it's like the clarity
Speaker 2: comes and it's completely surreal and completely magical. I feel
Speaker 2: like I had experienced that in Kyrgyzstan, and so I
Speaker 2: was trying to get back there in climbing, but I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I wasn't finding that flow sted in that way. So
Speaker 2: I did start to shift some of my climbing to
Speaker 2: like this mega endurance days where you're out, you know,
Speaker 2: sleep deprived for you know, fifty hours in a row,
Speaker 2: and a lot of times these climbs would take four
Speaker 2: or five days, and I started to do them in
Speaker 2: one day, 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 in normal life. I think
Speaker 1: I think the alien would batny, that's all. It's why
Speaker 1: I admire climber so much. It's the relentless focus and resolve.
Speaker 1: And again, I flirted as a musician with flow right
Speaker 1: in my childhood, and I in my own way, I
Speaker 1: crave that too. There there's something about engaging with art,
Speaker 1: and I guess I see climbing as an art form too,
Speaker 1: that can put you in a certain mental state that's
Speaker 1: really hard to can't. You can't recruit it in daily
Speaker 1: life at will, right, it's not. It's one of these
Speaker 1: elusive things that happens when all the stars align right,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how it's 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 you can really only access when when your
Speaker 2: life really is on the line. Even though I was
Speaker 2: pushing way harder than I was before, I wasn't. I
Speaker 2: wasn't ever getting back to that, to that place, to
Speaker 2: the 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: Then 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 ended 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
Speaker 2: was 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 there's all this curiosity about where I
Speaker 2: could take it. It was sort of my coping mechanism
Speaker 2: for Kyrgyzstan in some ways, like this was the thing
Speaker 2: that I could focus on that could both distract me
Speaker 2: and empower me, and that was what was keeping me
Speaker 2: happy and stable in life. And then suddenly maybe that
Speaker 2: is 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 bethling 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: that our doctor ended up being a climber as well,
Speaker 2: and he and so he along with that, he said
Speaker 2: that he told us that he's like, you should start
Speaker 2: thinking about what else you want to do in life,
Speaker 2: because you're not you're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: 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 overk him, but also
Speaker 2: driven a lot by the fear that I've that I
Speaker 2: just like 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 like
Speaker 2: this moment that you have to seize, you know, It's
Speaker 2: like that only lasts for so long, and so you
Speaker 2: have to capture it, absorb it, and let it, let
Speaker 2: it like push you forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, big change can do that. Wow. What were
Speaker 1: 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 Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I'd been laying in a hospital bed for
Speaker 2: two weeks, so I was pretty excited to move. And
Speaker 2: then the doctor had 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 going to work. And we went
Speaker 2: straight to the gym and it was. It was really
Speaker 2: hard at first, and I was like, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: a starting point I can I can take this and
Speaker 2: improve on it. And then, you know, I went back
Speaker 2: to the climbing gym at first, like basically every day,
Speaker 2: and each day I would feel a little bit stronger
Speaker 2: and a little bit stronger, and before I knew it,
Speaker 2: I was sort of exceeding my own expectations. And that
Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 the 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 El Capitan 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 look 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 route,
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 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
Speaker 2: sudden there was so much pressure and anxiety and excitement
Speaker 2: wrapped up in the seven years of preparing for this
Speaker 2: that 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 for listening. See you next week when I
Speaker 1: talk with Megan Phelps Roper. She grew up a devout
Speaker 1: believer in the Westboro Baptist Church, one of the most
Speaker 1: rabid hate group in America, but then in her mid twenties,
Speaker 1: she walked away from it all.
Speaker 3: It felt like this physical, like I had a giant
Speaker 3: boulder sitting on my chest and I couldn't breathe, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't see around it, and I had no vision
Speaker 3: of the future. I had no idea what my life
Speaker 3: was going to look like.
Speaker 1: A slight change of plans is created an executive produce
Speaker 1: by 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: of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You
Speaker 1: can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at
Speaker 1: doctor Maya Schunker. I have to say I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit I was a little bit sheepish about doing this
Speaker 1: interview because I was like a budding concert violinist as
Speaker 1: a kid, and then when I was fifteen, I had
Speaker 1: a hand injury in which I tore tendons in my
Speaker 1: hand and doctors told me that I could never play again.
Speaker 1: So my life had to take a totally different route
Speaker 1: from that point forward. But I feel like you would
Speaker 1: have been the dude to play the violin with like
Speaker 1: four fingers 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